No, of course not. In the First Age of the Sundered World, when Satoris was sore wounded and at his weakest, when Haomane First-Born, the Lord-of-Thought, had called upon the Souma and brought the sun so near to earth it scorched the land and brought into being the Unknown Desert, the Fjeltroll had sheltered Satoris and pledged their loyalty to him. After his Counselors had been defeated, Haomane First-Born uttered his Prophecy into the ears of his allies. The Prophecy was not shared with the Fjel.

Instead, it doomed them.

“And yet you still honor Neheris,” Tanaros said, fingering the rhios in his pocket. “Who sided with Haomane, with the Six, against his Lordship. Why, Hyrgolf?”

“It’s Shapers’ business,” Hyrgolf said simply, setting down his axe. “I don’t pretend to understand it. We made a pact with his Lordship and he has honored it, generation after generation. He never asked us to stop loving Neheris who Shaped us.”

“No,” Tanaros said, remembering his Lord’s cry. Oh, Arahila! “He wouldn’t.”

And he fingered the rhios in his pocket again, and longed for the simplicity of a Fjeltroll’s faith. It was not granted to Men, who had been given too many gifts to bear with ease. Oh, Arahila! Second-Born among Shapers, Arahila the Fair, Born-of-the-Heart. Would that you had made us less.

“How do your people tell it?” Hyrgolf asked. “The Prophecy, that is.”

Tanaros relinquished the rhios, his hands fisted in his pockets as he turned to face his field marshal. “In Altoria,” he said, and his voice was harsh, “when I was a boy, it was told thus. ‘When the unknown is made known, when the lost weapon is found, when the marrow-fire is quenched and Godslayer is freed, when a daughter of Elterrion weds a son of Altorus, when the Spear of Light is brought forth and the Helm of Shadows is broken, the Fjeltroll shall fall, the Were shall be defeated ere they rise, and the Sunderer shall be no more, the Souma shall be restored and the Sundered World made whole and Haomane’s Children shall endure.’”

It grieved him to say it, as if the Fjeltroll might hold him in some way responsible. After all, if he had killed the babe … if he had killed the babe. The House of Altorus would have ended, then, and there would have been no Prophecy.

Blue eyes, milky and wondering. Red-gold hair plastered to a damp skull.

He hadn’t been able to do it. The babe, the child of his cuckolded marriage bed, had succeeded Roscus in the House of Altorus.

“Aye,” Hyrgolf said, nodding. “That’s as I heard it. The Sundered World made whole, but the cost of it our lives. Well, then, that’s only a piece of it, this wedding. There’s a good deal more needs happen before the Prophecy is fulfilled, and who knows what the half of it means?”

“His Lordship knows,” Tanaros said. “And Malthus.”