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A riest WiseMother had ress on the trail since he had last co, as he always did: this day, a dried portion of the afterbirth from a slave Let it serve as a symbol of life’s transience, and his impatience He did not stay to speak with her, since even a brief exchangethe trail toward the ring of WiseMothers At first they appeared like stout pillars but as he closed in, careful to avoid stepping on the snaking lines of silvery sand that marked the trails made by the deadly ice wyrh they had all but stiffened entirely into stone, the curve of li the ated in a circle at the ri the stones gathered into his pouch, watching the smooth hollow of sand that lay before hi under that expanse of silver sand

One stone at a tied up in the center of the hollow The smooth, rounded dome radiated war on it, he was safe fro hollow around which the WiseMothers gathered There, in the solitude afforded his, he contemplated the path he had walked so far, the place he stood now, and the journey that still lay before him

A stray leaf fluttered over the hollow and ca, translucent claw thrust up from beneath the sands, hooked the leaf, and yanked it under All was still again The wind sighed around his body He heard a distant rockfall as a low ruht have been a drea trance, the saray

Alain was still gone, their link shattered

He was utterly alone

Night fell Standing as still as any ancient stone lost under the canopy of stars, he heard the WiseMothers speaking

Move South Press East Shift The Fire River’s Flow Westward Ten Lengths

The Sea Waters Will Rise

Listen

Earth Cries For Earth

What Was Torn Asunder Returns

Make Roo his people were learning to think The words of Tenth Son rose in his memory: "We could trade We could seek news in the ports of humankind"

In the old days, before the rise of the warring chieftains in the time of Bloodheart’s own sire, the RockChildren had traded with the human tribes and, of course, with the fisherfolk The wars for supre, the ease of plunder, and the joy of raiding had altered the old ways What need to trade for what you could take for nothing?

Yet every stone thrown into calm water casts ripples Just as tribes that warred incessantly a, no clan which built its power solely on plunder had any hope of long-lasting success The store of riches Bloodheart had ahand, but by themselves these treasures were just objects They had only orth others set on them Of course that was a kind of worth he could exploit War had its uses, yet it alone could not achieve all things

He stood in the center of the nesting grounds and listened to the waking "awks" of gulls The horizon paled toward dawn Any one life spanof the world’s life, whose span was measured by the conversations of the WiseMothers and not the transitory and quickly forgotten struggles, as brief as those of the ht and planned did not make him any more consequential than the least of Earth’s creatures But ave him more freedom to act

A ruler who controls trade controls the passage of goods, controls taxes laid upon those goods, controls who gets what and what goes where There was more than one way to stretch the hand of rulership over the ruled

With dawn, the WiseMothers settled into their daylight stupor One stone at a tirounds The day, shortening as autuone by the tiround He retrieved his staff fro rock and started down the path that led off the fjall and into the valley Passing the youngest WiseMother, he laid a sprig of rasp, and walked on

An arrow of honking geese passed overhead A kestrel skihand crossed from fjall to birch forest and down into the denser pine and spruce woodlands In the distance ax blows rang to a steady rhyth The sound of a tree cracking and falling splintered the air The thud of its i the wind, and that same voice shouted orders