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  “Suhto is dead, father. I am sorry.”

  “Who are you sorry to? Yourself, I think. Suhto was one man, and now you have the rest of your tribe to think on. These have been tidings of ruin and rebirth, nay, for all of us? The Oudwnii accuse us of witchcraft at Abswyn.” His sleepless, bloodshot eyes settled on the Atreiani. “Have we done some witchcraft for which the Oudwnii might be angry?”

  The devil refilled the cups and passed the first to him. “One thing of which I am quite certain, Ahtros, is no E’cwni has committed any witchcraft. You’ve never seen an Atreiani before me, have you?”

  “Not in my years. None have. You are creatures of dream.”

  “Do I look as you dreamed?”

  “Less of nightmares,” he said matter-of-factly, “but you are no woman.”

  She laughed dryly, taking another sip. “Depends how you define woman.”

  “Are you evil, Atreiani? Do we need fear you? Beg our lives?”

  “Everyone should fear me.” She gave again her uncommitted shrug. “That’s the truth.”

  The Ahtros filled the pot with water and mint, the odor sharp as he crumbled the leaves. He set the pot to boil.

  “What do you remember of Swyn Templr?” yw Sabi asked, using the E’cwn name.

  “I was there twice—once as a small boy, once in war. Its pillar is as Abswyn’s was, but taller. Its ghost-fires lit a wide valley between peaks which touched the sky. There stood a stone house, a fortress as I never saw elsewhere, with a village and a forked river below many orchards.”

  “What was the fortress called?” asked the Atreiani

  “S’Eret, the Oudwnii name it.”

  “From some older word.” Yw Sabi narrowed her eyes. “Maybe turrets? What about the Templarii, details you remember?”

  “Not well, but the Oudwnii revere them.”

  “You call them flesh walkers.”

  “Demons who walk in the skin of men.” He nodded. “Demons or not, when I was a child they traded fairly with my father and treated me well. They wrote the ancient letters on fragile leafs, and it seemed their main occupation—filling their house of books with words.”

  “They wrote in books?” The Atreiani creased her brow at this. “What is that settlement called, where the flesh walkers dwelt?”

  “Cohltos,” he said. “Oudwn families work its valley from one edge to the other, their huts touched each day by the shadow of the pillar. We used to trade bison for bear hides, fat and pelts, otter and beaver for silver and coral and shells from the waters over the mountains. The Oudwnii bartered with people still farther west.”

  “Tell me about Shwn Jhon Oudwn?” she said, sitting motionless as a sayi snake, a sudden and unnatural stillness.

  Human or not, Nyahri reminded herself, she is still flesh.

  “Ay,” the Ahtros said, “he will hold grudges till he dies.”

  “Because you killed his family?” yw Sabi asked.

  “It is true.” The Ahtros frowned as if tasting something bitter. “Since his father failed to take Abswyn, since our raids on Cohltos, there have been starvation-times when the Oudwnii and E’cwnii warred outright for game trails, or when our arroyos ran dry and only the Oudwnii had any water. We would fight them for it and there has been plenty of death. Other seasons our hunting herds gave us just enough to eat while the Oudwnii starved. During the worst winters, they murdered aplenty for food.”

  “When was the last time?”

  “Nyahri was a child, last time it grew serious, but these skirmishes have happened so many times before.” The Ahtros hesitated, weighted by memory. “My raiders burnt a portion of the flesh walkers’ house of books, torched many Oudwn houses. Shwn Jhon was a young man, and his wives and most of his children died, though I hear he has long since had new wives in an old hall in the lower valleys. For nine years we and our cousin tribes warred with the Oudwnii for Abswyn.”

  “That was a long time ago?”

  Long for a human, Nyahri thought, not for her.

  “Twenty-six years,” the Ahtros said. “What is that time compared to wives and children killed in flames? During those years, you resided in your house in the ground, yea? You resided there long before.”

  “Resided isn’t the word.” Yw Sabi tried another term, but neither the Ahtros nor Nyahri caught it, something outside their experience and language. Trying other phrases, the Atreiani said, “Tied up, bound, kept. In any case, I slept.”

  “How long did you sleep?”

  “I don’t know.” Her jaw tightened, her eyes narrowing. “If even your grandfather had no memory of woken Atreianii, if it was your father who retook Abswyn from the Oudwnii, if it was your ancestors’ remains piled up around it, so many thousands of bones? A few hundred years. Longer than I should’ve.”

  “Why do you awaken now?”

  “Again, I don’t know.”

  “Suhto awakened you, put all this into motion?”

  “That would be impossible.” Yw Sabi shook her head, considering for a moment. “I’m going to Swyn Templr. As much as I dislike the flesh walkers, the Templarii might have answers for my questions.”

  He nodded. “As for your journey to Swyn Templr, you are faith made real to E’cwnii and Oudwnii. My guess, you will find welcome in the woodsmen’s lands, but take care, and if there is some word you can give the Oudwnii to keep them from warring with us, I beg you do.”

  The Ahtros forced a polite cough and Nyahri read his pain in it.

  “You leave tonight?” he asked.

  “I’ve need to hurry,” yw Sabi said, “but not so quickly as that. For the next night or two, I’ll want a tent.”

  “You are our guest.”

  Silent moments passed. The Ahtros sipped his tea, easing his lungs.

  He added, “Would you tell us what the world was like when you went to sleep?”

  Yw Sabi sighed, moving her body at last, leaning on her knees. “Darkness and shadow and immolation and terror,” she said, “desperation and disagreement and madness.”

  “Was your world ever anything better than mad?”

  “There existed,” she said, “between two great eras of horror, a time of unparalleled beauty and achievement. Nothing I wish to speak about.”

  The fire crackled, the Ahtros adding a pinch of sage to it. He relit his pipe, its smoke thickening.

  “If that is all,” he said, “then I ask more to our purpose. What danger are we E’cwnii in, now you are walking the world? What should we do?”

  “My advice? Move your people east, as far from here as you can go. My business at Sojourn Temple is dire.”

  The Ahtros’s eyes widened, his words hastening. “You mean to do evil?”

  “Evil is already there.”

  He nodded, an acknowledgment. “Did my daughter tell you the story of Suhto?”

  Yw Sabi looked at Nyahri.

  “She should recount it,” the Ahtros said. “Nyahri intended no evil for him, I am sure, but nonetheless he is dead.”

  Nyahri flinched, bowing her head.

  “I will do what I will do,” the Atreiani said, “because it is my will to do so, evil or not. In the end that is all there is to it.”

  ◆◆◆

  E’cwn maidens raised a decorated tent for the Atreiani and they brought the best morsels for her to eat. They sang sacred songs, and Nyahri almost joined them. The women also left long-legged breeches for the devil, along with a wide serape adorned with malachite-set silver, new boots, and fleeces. The Atreiani packed these. Standing among the horses, keeping her distance, Nyahri observed all who came and went from the Atreiani’s shelter. Yw Sabi nodded her thanks to every E’cwni who offered gifts.

  The afternoon waned and cooled, clouds thickening and darkening on every horizon. A storm approached.

  Cold rain, Nyahri thought, mayhap wet snow.

  After she brushed the stallion, Nyahri retreated to her own tent, pausing inside the door, faced with her sister. Cirje’s eyes glistened and flashed, and Ny
ahri braced for a tirade, for insults and accusations. Instead, Cirje embraced her, gripping her so hard Nyahri’s tender ribs pained her. Nyahri offered no complaint, stroking her sister’s hair.

  “I am sorry, Cirje.”

  The girl shook her head, wiping her nose. “I thought you dead.”

  “Only injured.”

  Cirje pulled away, her expression limned with concern. Nyahri showed her the gashes at her side and neck, where the Atreiani’s unnatural film still clung like egg yolk. Cirje touched it but withdrew as if from a flame, filled with witchcraft-fear.

  “There must have been so much blood,” she said. “It is all over your breeches. You are healed so speedily!”

  “Medicine-craft, the Atreiani’s—”

  “Yea, her.” Cirje shuddered. “You entered Abswyn?”

  “Nay.”

  “Suhto?”

  “Yea.”

  “Did she kill him?”

  “She would not answer me straight. She likes half answers.”

  “She is a devil.”

  Nyahri shrugged. “She is Sultah yw Sabi. She is an Atreiani.”

  “The Sultah yw Sabi? I cannot believe that.” The priestesses’ rituals mentioned the Mistress Sultah yw Sabi only once, an Atreiani feared by her own kind. “What is she like?”

  “Dangerous, but she showed care enough for me.”

  “What happened at Abswyn?”

  “Only yw Sabi knows, but she has not told the whole tale.”

  “I am glad you are back, Nyahri.”

  Raindrops pattered the tent. The sisters lay beside each other, Nyahri stroking her sister’s hair. She blew out the lamp, stretched, and closed her eyes. Sleep eluded her, though Cirje’s breaths soon deepened.

  When at last the rain ceased, the odors of mud and wet grass permeated the air. Horses snorted and someone added logs to the fire.

  Too anxious to remain still, Nyahri donned a cloak and climbed from the tent. A frigid evening breeze wrapped her, raising gooseflesh on her arms, and she warmed her hands at the campfire. The firmament cleared, its relentless stars twinkling.

  Lwn and Stashwn and Trwl hovered as crescents in quarter light, and upon a hillside they silhouetted a lone figure, too tall and lean to be E’cwn. The Atreiani shouted at the sky, repeating a name from the ancient tongue:

  “Borea!”

  Nyahri shivered, setting out through soaked grasses to the Atreiani, who watched her come.

  “What were you calling to, goddess?”

  “Difficult to explain,” yw Sabi said. “Something you might think of as another god.”

  “Does it answer you?”

  The Atreiani clenched her jaw. “Much to my frustration, she doesn’t say a damn thing.”

  “You expect her to?”

  “Yet another change in the world. Borea won’t answer.”

  Nyahri looked into the heavens. “I was taught you put the moons on their paths.”

  “We only put the lesser two up there. Ehl-Seven, which we called Vo Misa after its designer, or simply the Station. Then the smallest, Ehl-Thirteen, which I think you named Trwl.” The Atreiani glanced at Nyahri. “Interesting to listen to your syntax, the words your people use. Your language is quite lovely.”

  “You did not speak our language before?”

  “Cobbling it as I go—a skill, and good algorithms.”

  Not knowing what to say about such a remarkable skill, or a new word like algorithms, Nyahri asked again about the moons. “Lwn was there before your kind came into the world?”

  Yw Sabi nodded. “We Atreianii covered it with the pattern of lights you call the ghost-fires, but it was there from the world’s beginning.”

  “Those lights are the Web, the house of the Great Spider.”

  “Interesting story.”

  “It is no story,” Nyahri said, then remembered with whom she argued. The cold numbed her thoughts.

  “There’s no spider there,” yw Sabi said, “unless some of the ordinary variety stowed upon a shuttle. No great spider web. The web you see is the network of industry.” The Atreiani spoke more to herself than to Nyahri. “The Moon—near thirty-five hundred kilometers across, marked by our handiwork to this age—and its little sisters, our children, the larger a mere five hundred clicks wide and completely artificial. Either someone up there is alive, which I very much doubt, or the Stations’ automatic systems are still doing their job. So far I’ve counted four OpNet satellites too, tiny ones, orbiting up there, but I’m sure they’re many more whose trajectories are still strong. You must have names for those?”

  Nyahri knew, at least, the name of the fast-moving star to which yw Sabi pointed. “We call that one the Little Rabbit.”

  “Little Rabbit is a self-maintaining communications satellite. We launched those models in twenty-eighty.” She smiled, someone pleased with her craftwork. “It’s part of a network with which I’ll need to communicate. Borea won’t answer me, though, and I’ve no satcom. What am I to do?”

  “I do not understand anything you are telling me, goddess.”

  “I suppose you wouldn’t.” She looked briefly at Nyahri, a flash of annoyance, and then toward the darkened edges of the hills. “This world’s climate has changed. It had warmed before, but this region had still been short grasses and pines. Now, bounty! Ferns and fruit trees and pampas, some of it engineered for a dynamic biosphere. Pumice smothered everything here, massive earthquakes, all altered the mountain line.” She pointed toward the night-hidden hills, sweeping her hand to encompass the horizon. “It wouldn’t surprise me if the atmospheric carbon dioxide has dropped—”

  So many unfamiliar words. Biosphere, atmospheric, dioxide.

  “Atreiani?” Nyahri’s teeth chattered, fresh rain soaking her cloak, weighting her hair.

  “You know what a volcano is?”

  “A peak of fire.”

  “You’ve seen one?”

  “Nay, only heard of them.”

  “Imagine volcanoes so great their ash blots the sunlight for years. We Atreianii existed to fix a broken world. Little good it did.” Yw Sabi laughed.

  A bitter laughter, Nyahri thought.

  Yw Sabi returned to stargazing. Nyahri sidled closer, basking in the Atreiani’s warmth, but her shivering grew stronger.

  “The Gallatin had risen for over two centuries,” yw Sabi said, again talking to herself, “its pressure compounded by our own machinations. We thought we tamed it, if only just enough. We thought we had control, and perhaps we did—”

  “Mistress—”

  Yw Sabi turned, drawing a sharp breath through her teeth. “You mistress me! Not a word I guessed your people knew.”

  “We use it only to speak of the Atreianii. It was what some men called you?”

  “These are mysteries to you, aren’t they? The word mistress has special meaning between an Atreiani and a human, and you’re using it incorrectly.”

  “Teach me to use it correctly?”

  “Willful girl.” The Atreiani shook her head. “You’ve no idea how ignorant you are, how foolish that is to ask.”

  “Then teach me why it is foolish.”

  “How much would you learn?” Yw Sabi folded her arms, regarding Nyahri.

  Danger in the invitation, but promises too.

  For a moment Nyahri ceased shivering, not daring to breathe. She had learned the histories with her father, hunting and warfare with her brother. Nyahri learned of the Atreianii on her mother’s lap, her mother who made herself the devils’ deepest devotee, who swore that in her own childhood the gods told her to worship the Atreianii above all others, to bind herself to them.

  What learning I did at my mother’s side! Nyahri thought. But what questions she had!

  A pale scar crossed the back of Nyahri’s arm, a cut reminding her of her mother’s death, the day she’d no longer hear her mother’s stories, learn what her mother had to teach. A cut self-afflicted.

  My uncle’s death followed, no great loss. Then my brot
her’s, too great a loss. Now Suhto’s! I never wished for the tribe to depend on me. Mother was their healer. Brother was to be their leader. Gods how I miss them! Gods how I could exceed them!

  “I would learn everything,” Nyahri blurted.

  “What if I told you I killed Suhto?”

  The hairs tingled along Nyahri’s arms, at the back of her neck. Her stomach dropped and she reached for her longknife, only to realize she had left it in the tent.

  “I didn’t kill him with my own hands,” yw Sabi added, “not with any weapon I wielded.”

  Nyahri stayed light on her toes. “What do you mean?”

  “The world I helped create—that’s what killed him.”

  Nyahri clenched her teeth, in part to show her anger, but mostly because the cold seeped the last of her warmth. “No riddles—tell me.”

  “You want to learn? See more with your own eyes?”

  Nyahri nodded.

  “Hmm. Tell me,” the Atreiani said, turning back to the stars, “who among your people will guide me to Sojourn?”

  “To Swyn Templr?” Nyahri’s teeth chattered as she spit the words. “No good men are left. Who remains? Muuteh?”

  “I’d like none of your men—I was rather thinking you.”

  Again Nyahri nodded.

  “And perhaps,” yw Sabi said, “you’ll discover a thing or two along the way.”

  The Atreiani set her hand at Nyahri’s cheek. The gentle motion came without warning, and Nyahri flinched, her skin warming where the goddess touched her.

  Yw Sabi’s brow lowered, a sign of concern. “You’re freezing.”

  “I am fine,” Nyahri said, shivering to her core. “If it is warm enough for you, it is warm enough for me.”

  “You’ll never see me shiver in a frosty autumn rain. If it’s cold enough for me to shiver, you will be dead. Let’s get you some warmth and furs and a good night’s rest.”

  They walked back to camp.

  “I want to hear more,” Nyahri said, “about the night sky. These sah tel ites? You could teach me that?”

  Yw Sabi accompanied Nyahri to the communal fire, then left her, starting toward the guest tent.