Herilak stirred with quick anger and started to speak in anger—but was silent. He lifted his hands and clenched them into hard fists, then opened them again. “If a hunter had asked me that, had spoken to me in that manner I would have struck him. But not you, Sanone, for you can look inside someone and know what their secret thoughts are. Since all in my sammad were destroyed I have been two people inside one skull. One of them boils with anger always, wants to kill, heeds no council, rejects all friendship. That is the Herilak who turned away from Kerrick at the time when he needed my help. But that is done. If he were here I would have words for him. But he is gone, dead in the north. Now that we are in this valley with murgu all about us I find that my anger is dying and I feel one person again. But this is perhaps a little late.”

“It is never too late to walk the correct path to Kadair.”

“I do not know your Kadair. But in a way you are right. Ermanpadar blew the spark that became my tharm. My tharm will glow in the stars very soon.”

“The track is stamped into the rock for us to see. We can only follow it.”

The fire died down to a bed of glowing coals and the wind grew stronger, hurtling down the valley from the north. The stars were bright and sharp in the clear night sky. The sammads and the Sasku slept and the murgu grew closer with every passing day. Sanone looked at Herilak’s slumped head and wondered who would be here in the valley when the first green shoots of spring pushed their way up through the ground.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

The coast of Entoban* was a dark shadow on the eastern horizon that was barely visible in the dying light. As the boat rode up on a wave they could see the peaks of high, snow-covered mountains far inland, still touched red by the setting sun. As they dropped into the trough between the waves the sail flapped in the dying breeze.

Kerrick looked at Kalaleq slumped over the steering oar and spoke again, this time carefully choosing his words, fighting not to lose his temper.

“The water is almost gone.”

“I have no wish to drink.”

“But I do. Armun is thirsty. We must go ashore and refill the waterskins.”

There was just enough light left for Kerrick to see the shiver that moved across Kalaleq’s body, stirring the fur down his neck so that it rose into the air. He had discarded his clothes many days before when the air had grown warmer, when the worst of winter had been left behind. “No,” he said, then trembled again. “That is the land of the murgu. I saw them once, killed them once. Never again. I am hot, we must go north.”