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‘Enough’ He walked down to the waterline The sun threw his shadow into his wake, pulled long and monstrous

The rollers had built a huled strands of seaweed and a scattering of detritus A pace inland of this elongated rise was a depression filled with slick pebbles and rocks ‘Where should I be looking?’

‘A the stones A little further Three, two paces Yes Here’

Udinaas stared down, scanning the area ‘I see nothing’

‘Dig No, to your left – those rocks, move those That one Now, deeper There, pull it free’

A th and tapered at one end, the metal object within sed by thick calcifications ‘What is it?’

‘An arrowhead, slave Hundreds of es is measured by chance The deep roll of tides, the succession of ard storms This is how the world moves-’

‘Hundreds ofleft-’

‘A blade of simple iron without sorcerous investment would indeed have vanished The arrowhead remains, slave, because it will not surrender You must chip away at all that surrounds it You must resurrect it’

‘Why?’

‘I havein this, but Udinaas straightened and tucked the lump in his belt pouch He returned to his nets ‘I shall not,’ he eance’

Wither’s laugh followed hiing above the lowlands, like clouds dragged low and now shredded by the dark treetops

‘A funeral,’ Binadas said

Seren Pedac nodded There had been no storms, and besides, the forest was too wet to sustain a wildfire The Edur practice of burial involved a tumulus construction, which was then covered to form a pyre The intense heat baked the coin-sheathed corpse as if it was clay, and stained the barrow stones red Shadoraiths danced amidst the fla after the one

Seren drew her knife and bent to scrape mud from her boots This side of therain and h Three tions had skidded off the trail, once crushing a Nerek to death beneath the solid, iron-ri, she cleaned her knife between two gloved fingers, then sheathed it at her side

Moods were foul Buruk the Pale had not eon in two days, nor had his three half-blood Nerek concubines But the descent was finally done, and ahead was a wide, e