‘I see wisdom dawning upon you,’ Thorin smiled. ‘So, you understand it is nothing personal. We just wanted to spare you from any vile thoughts of vengeance. Now rest, warrior. You have earned it.’ Thorin turned to someone on the ship. ‘Are the arrangements ready?’

Muchuk felt the frost settle over him like a glacier on a river. He lay sprawled and helpless, trapped in a coffin of ice, breathing in the stink of his own blood. His eyes darted around desperately, searching for some way to escape. But all that remained was the wreck of his body – the bloody stump at the end of his hand and the bone sticking through the leather of his breeches.

‘You could…’ Muchuk rasped, barely able to hear his own voice, ‘you could still let me go. I won’t come back. I wouldn’t even know how to.’

‘True, true. But you cannot be permitted to go back with all you have learned, to become a threat to us when we return,’ Thorin said. ‘You see, Mortals think they are liberated now, since they defeated us. But they are slowly forgetting everything that made them victors in the first place. Sorcery is gone from your world. You think yourselves to be lions, but you are merely scurrying rats upon whose tails our paws linger. The fact that the rats still live is not because of anything the rats have done.’

Thorin stroked the hair on Muchuk’s head. Icy crystals snatched greedily at Muchuk’s body, forming a crackling sheet over his legs, his stomach, his neck. ‘A Protector is required to be harsh sometimes, son. A gardener needs to save his flowers by being cruel to the pests. We cannot have you upsetting the balance. So…sleep well, warrior. Dream of spring. May your Night be Bright.’

The frost spread over his heart, then his throat, and then spread to his face, capturing him in an ice sculpture of grief and agony. Thorin smiled sadly as he closed the lid of the sarcophagus. It shut with an ominous hiss, trapping Muchuk Und in cold darkness, for eternity.

TEN THOUSAND YEARS LATER

Masha’s Auguries

I

There was a time when young Oracles awaiting investiture were made to witness the slaughter of their families, to sear into their souls the futility of hope. This sacred tradition had however, been abandoned by the Matrons over time, in favour of a meeker rite of passage into the House of Oracles. They reckoned the trials of initiation were lessons enough for the novices. Masha, on the other hand, thought the Matrons had grown soft. Truth be told, she considered it unfair since she herself had been made to watch her father burn alive.

But she did not have the time to brood over life’s injustices. Today was a big day, an auspicious day. Today was Initiation Day in the House of Oracles, her first as a Matron.