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‘They suspect you will join the renegades, don’t they?’

‘Broken kin Aye, they do’

‘And will you?’

Onrack studied the Tiste Edur for a ar’

They were at the very edge of cultivated land, and so it was relatively easy to avoid contact with any of the local residents The lone road they crossed was empty of life in both directions for as far as they could see Beyond the irrigated fields, the rugged natural landscape reasserted itself Tufts of grasses, sprawls of water-sulches and ravines, the occasional guldindha tree

The hills ahead were saw-toothed, the facing side clawed into near cliffs

Those hills here the T’lan Imass had broken the ice sheets, the first place of defiance To protect the holy sites, the hidden caves, the flint quarries Where, now, the weapons of the fallen were placed

Weapons these renegades would reclai those stone blades, at least with respect to Tellann They would feed the ones who held them, provided they were kin to the o I lost Also, finding those weapons would give the renegades their final freedo the power of Tellann fro your clan,’ Trull Sengar said as they approached the hills ‘These seem to be old memories, Onrack’

‘Perhaps we are destined to repeat our criar Meht lost I do not knohy’

‘The severing of the Ritual?’

‘Possibly’

‘What was your crime?’

‘I trapped a woman in time Or so it seemed I painted her likeness in a sacred cave It is now , I was responsible for the terriblethe clan She could not join in the Ritual that made us immortal, for by my hand she had already beco Logros and the First Sword? There are no answers to that What madness stole her mind, so that she would kill her closest kin, so that, indeed, she would seek to kill the First Sword himself, her own brother?’

‘A woman not your mate, then’