Epilogue

Ghosteater emerged from the silence into the springtime forest.

He had left the émigré’s home some days before, angry at the man’s refusal to hand over Ryzik, the golden-haired native. The émigré had spoken for hours. Laws had been invoked, wrongs had been weighed, a compromise had been sought. None of that meant a thing to the beast. Either blood would be shed over the matter, or it would not.

In the end, Ghosteater had chosen not to defend his claim. He’d staked it on a whim, and fighting the émigré might be fatal. It just wasn’t worth it.

But anger, oh yes, there was anger. And disgust at these late-born creatures who knew no honesty. Their brains were too big for it. Revolting.

As the beast left the émigré’s land, the wind had curled around his ears, whispering, suggesting a path. Ghosteater panted, taking in the air, tasting what it offered. Incompletion, fragment. He knew that scent: the strange woman, Justine. Tears and sunlight. He knew that one as well: the pup, Beth. Heat and serpents: the émigré. Old blood. Salt water. Bronze and burning sand. The breath of one with an empty stomach. Liquid rock in the darkness.

Great hunt, the wind murmured. Hunt for home.

Intrigued, Ghosteater turned aside and took one step on the wind’s path, then another. Soon he was on his way.

The path led a few hundred miles north. After several days of travel, he recognized his destination — a strait that had appeared recently in a small human structure some ways inland. He had noticed it during his last wanderings through the area, perhaps two hundred years ago. Made of heavy logs locked together, the structure had been built as a place of refuge during warfare. Perhaps the rage and hatred and blood of the place had drawn it closer to the other world. It was hard to say. Wild straits were strange, fickle.

Ghosteater stepped into the roofless dwelling. Unlike the carven strait, which contained its own capacity, this one did not tug at him. It would have to be forced open. His ability to do such things is what made him, like the man Cordus, a power and an émigré. Once, in the distant past, he had opened a strait without understanding what he did and had crossed through, finding himself in another world.

The other world. Unlike most émigrés, he did not consider that place his home. This continent of this world would always be his place, however changed it might be.

Still, the scents on the wind were interesting, its words tantalizing.