Ortnar was not happy. He spoke in a low whisper, his head lowered, his long hair hanging over his face. “This has pulled me in two directions at the same time, Kerrick, still pulls me. Herilak was my sammadar, we two are the only two still alive from the sammad killed by the murgu. That is a bond that is hard to break. When Herilak ordered none to help Armun I obeyed for it was a good decision. The path was long and dangerous. Yet when she asked me to help her I felt that she was right too. This pulled me apart and in my stupidity I gave her only half the help she needed. I should have given her all, gone with her, I know that now. I told her the path and gave her my death-stick. Half help.”

“The others gave her none, Ortnar. You were her only friend.”

“I told Herilak what I had done. He struck me down and I lay as one dead for two days, this I have been told. Here is where he struck in his anger.” Ortnar’s fingers crept to the crown of his head, fingered the scar there on his scalp. “I am no longer of his sammad; he has not spoken to me since.”

He raised his face and interrupted before Kerrick could speak. “I had to tell you this first, so you would know what happened. Since then I have looked for traces of her, scouting as we came east. I could find nothing—no bones or skeletons of any of them. There were three of them who left together, Armun and your son, and a boy who she took with them. There should have been some trace. I asked all the hunters we met but none had seen them. But there was one, a hunter who traded stone knives for furs, who traded with the Paramutan to the north. He understands some of their talk. He was told that a woman with hair like ours was with them in their place, a woman with children.”

Kerrick seized him by the arms, pulled him to his feet and shook him wildly.

“What are you saying—do you know what you are saying?”

Ortnar smiled and nodded his head. “I know. I came south to tell you this. Now I go north while it is still summer to find the Paramutan, to find Armun if I can. I will bring her to you . . .”

“No, no need for that.”

In an instant everything had changed for Kerrick. He straightened up as though an invisible weight had slipped from his shoulders. The future was suddenly as clear as a path, stretching sharply marked out ahead of him, like Kadair’s footsteps stamped into stone that Sanone always talked about. He looked past Ortnar, to the city street that led to the north.