They climbed toward her from every side. Nessa shivered. What did they want? Who had sent them? She could not hide, she would not run. Instead, she set her hands to the stone again, grimacing with effort. Sweat made her fingers slip, pain shot like fire across her shoulders. She gripped the rock anew, and now other hands set themselves by hers, hands as gnarled and knotted as dead roots, one pair, two pairs, three, and all heaved together, and the great stone freed itself from earth with a wrenching, rasping sound like a death rattle. Foul air arose from below; Nessa recoiled, her hands over her mouth and nose. There was movement around her now, stones shifting, rising, being passed down to the ground below, long hands scrabbling in the dirt, lights moving in total silence save for the constant, rustling whispering. The hole widened, the stench dispersed in the night air. Guard whined, looking up at her anxiously.

The cairn was open. Dark forms dropped down within, blue light shone up from the interior. Hands like bleached bone reached up toward her. It was at that moment that Nessa remembered how she had called for help; it was she who had summoned them. She moved, lowering herself, until the stretching hands caught her and their owners lifted her down inside as if she were no heavier than a single owl feather. She stood by the slab where Ulf the far-seeker lay on his bed of heather, covered by his brave red cloak, and the Hidden Tribe stood about her in a circle, waiting.

Lifting the stones, making the way in, had required strength, and she had found it, with a little help. What she must do now required an entirely different kind of strength. Every instinct shrank from the task; her thudding heart told her the fear she had felt before was nothing to this. She took a corner of the cloak between her fingers and peeled it back.

Time and the small creatures that dwelt within the earth had wrought their changes here. Decay had touched this chieftain’s noble form, had shrunk and crumbled his fabric and painted him livid and gray and night-dark. The skull showed stark beneath the matter that still covered it, the body was collapsing within its shroud of fine clothing, braid-edged tunic, cape of close-woven wool, broad studded belt, fine soft boots. Ulf’s weapons lay by him; a helm with gilded eyepiece, a long sword, a dagger whose hilt bore a pattern of waves and suns, as if to show the will to voyage, which had been so strong in this chieftain from the snow lands. His hair lay long and dark about head and shoulders; the band of braided cloth, which had kept it neat, still circled his skull above the empty sockets of once far-seeing eyes.