The Grieving Tree

EPILOGUE

There had been no more trouble since the Revered had returned to the ancestor mound, then vanished again, taking his fiery Hand with him. Still, Breff had seen enough to be wary. For three days and nights after the Revered’s brief appearance, he’d sat watch in a hidden place among the remains of the Bonetree camp, staring at the scorched battlefield before the mound, watching corpses fester and the scavengers come to call. Just before dawn after the third night, he’d risen, weak with hunger and delirious from lack of sleep, and made his way across the battlefield. Ravens and jackals had watched him pass, not even bothering to rise from their decaying feast.

At the mouth of the mound, he’d kindled a new honor fire and sat with it, half-dreading the reappearance of the dolgaunt with his flaming tentacles. Nothing happened though and as the sun rose, he had let loose one of the fluting calls of the Bonetree clan. The camp was safe again. The clan could return.

There hadn’t been much to return to, but there wasn’t much left of the clan, either. They’d moved into the charred remnants of the camp, buried their dead and scoured the battlefield, and begun to reclaim their lives.

As the moons soared overhead on the finest night for many weeks, Breff sat back beside a campfire, his favorite drinking bowl-recovered from the burned camp-in his hand, and looked up at the sky. He was the huntmaster now. The clan was his to command, to keep ready for the Revered’s return. If the Revered returned …

He buried the thought. The Revered would return. He hadn’t abandoned the Bonetree, no matter what some of the hunters who had fled after the fiery Hand’s attacks might have said. “Su Drumas,” he murmured to himself, “Su Darasvhir.” For the Bonetree. For the Dragon Below.

He sipped from the bowl. It held only water flavored with rotto stem. His first command to the clan, he decided, would be to begin brewing beer again. His second would be to track down and bring back the cowards who had fled-

His eyes happened to be on the ancestor mound when silver-white light burst out of the air in front of it.

Breff jumped so sharply that water sprayed his face and ran down his chest, but he was on his feet in an instant. In the moonlight, he could see a dark figure staggering drunkenly before the mound. It fell, forced itself up, then fell again.

Others in the camp had seen the light, too. There were shouts of fear. The few surviving dogs that had stayed with the clan broke into mad howls. Those inside tents and makeshift huts threw themselves at thin walls; those outside fled into the night.

Breff watched the strange figure take another staggering step-then vanish into a second flare of light. The glare winked out but something lingered on the air for a moment longer, a wordless song like distant knife blades falling in a ringing, musical cascade.

A hunter barely old enough to have earned the name rushed up to him out of the shadows. “Breff! Tokrii eche?” she said in panic.

Cold fear spread through Breff’s belly. Coming back to the camp and the mound had been a mistake. Maybe the hunters who had fled were right. Maybe the Revered had abandoned them. His eyes swept the night and he snatched up his drinking bowl.

“Che bo gri lanano ani teith,” he whispered.

They’d been wrong to come back here. The mound was cursed-he wouldn’t keep the clan here to suffer another attack by the fiery Hand or something even worse. He turned and pushed past the young hunter, running through the recently restored camp and shouting orders for the last remnants of the Bonetree to gather their belongings and prepare to flee.