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A few hed down, by nothing less than an oldnature He stood for a while, un past Like ants in a kicked nest And the next kick is going to be a killer …
Stonny watched Gruntle leave, then turned to Keruli ’You said you had instructions for me?’
’Our friend the captain has a difficult path ahead’
Stonny scowled ’Gruntle doesn’t walk difficult paths First sniff of trouble and he’s off the opposite way’
’Sometimes there is no choice’
’And what am I supposed to do about it?’
’His ti Soon I ask only that you stay close to him’
Her scowl deepened ’That depends on hi found’
Keruli turned back to tend the oven ’I’d rather think,’ he murmured, ’that his talent is about to fail hiht bathed the array of dugout canoes and their wrapped corpses The entire pit had been exposed, gutting ranite pillar with itsalone in the very centre -- to reveal the crafts, crushed and cluttered like the harvest of an ancient hurricane
Hetan knelt, head bowed, before the first dugout She had not moved in some time
Itkovian had descended to conduct his own close examination of the ree, Cafal following in silence The Shield Anvil’s attention was drawn to the carving on the prohile no two sets were identical, there was a continuity in the thehast clearly recognizable in their long, low dugouts, struggling with a singular enee, alh-walled ships
As he crouched to study one such panel, Cafal murmured behind hilanced back ’Sir?’
’The ene Spirits T’isten’ur, the Grey-Skinned Demons in the oldest tales who collected heads, yet kept the victi … heads that remained watchful, bodies that worked ceaselessly T’isten’ur: deht the, then continued, ’The Blue Wastes We had no understanding of such a place The shouldermen believed it was our Birth Realm But now … it was the sea, the oceans’
’The Barghast Birth Real Spirits drove the T’isten’ur from the Blue Wastes, drove the demons back into their underworld, the Forest of Shadows -- a realm said to lie far to the southeast …’
’Another continent, perhaps’
’Perhaps’
’You are discovering the truth behind your oldest legends, Cafal In arth, far to the south of here, there are stories of a distant continent in the direction you have indicated A land, sir, of giant firs and redwoods and spruce -- a forest unbroken, its feet hidden in shadows and peopled with deadly wraiths
’As Shield Anvil,’ Itkovian resu his attention once s, ’I am as much a scholar as a warrior T’isten’ur -- a name with curious echoes Tiste Andii, the Dwellers in Darkness And, ht but fearful whispers, their shadow-kin, the Tiste Edur Grey-skinned, believed extinct -- and thankfully so, for it is a nalottal stop ie is kin to that of the Imass Close kin Tell runted ’The Moranth speak the language of the Barghast shouldere that rose froht and all words first cahast -- they call us their Fallen Kin But it is they who have fallen, not us They who have found a shadowed forest in which to live They who have embraced the alchemies of the T’isten’ur They whosecrets, before retreating into theirfor ever behind their insect masks Ask no more of the Moranth, wolf They are fallen and unrepentant No more’
’Very well, Cafal’ Itkovian slowly straightened ’But the past refuses to remain buried -- as you see here The past hides restless truths, too, unpleasant truths as well as joyous ones Once the effort of unveiling has begun … Sir, there is no going back’
’I have reached that understanding,’ the Barghast warrior growled ’As my father warned us -- in success, we shall find seeds of despair’