People of the Nightland(20)

Floods during summer and early fall were another hazard. A collapse somewhere deep in the ice could block a passage, backing the water until it roared into a different fissure, only to flood down a long-dry tunnel.

For generations, the dead had been carried back into the ice, left in orderly ranks, and allowed to freeze. Then, when he was a child, the ice had shifted in midsummer, and a sudden flood of meltwater had been diverted through the burial chamber. The icy, gravel-filled water had washed the corpses out into the Thunder Sea, where they bobbed and floated, fouling the shores and terrifying the people for months until the bodies finally sank into the depths—or washed up on the shores to feed the birds, foxes, wolves, and bears.

That would have been a warning for anyone with sense to leave this place!

But his people hadn’t. They’d been living inside and around the ice for so long they could imagine no other existence.

But I can. Nashat made a sour face as he followed the deep-ice passage. He knew the way by heart. The Council liked to hold their meetings where people couldn’t listen in. Nashat lifted the little bark lamp he carried before him. The pale flicker illuminated water-sculpted walls. Dirt-encrusted ice was layered with crystalline streaks of bluish white. Fog froze from his breath, wavering. His feet crunched on the gravel that had settled on the floor.

He alone, of his people, had seen the south. As a young man he had traveled, following the highland trails down to the south. There, at long last, he had stood at the edge of the crystalline turquoise waters of the gulf and stared out at the sunlight glinting on white beaches.

Along the way, he had visited with many of the forest peoples, those who hunted mastodon, forest buffalo, and the giant tortoises that lumbered along chewing on lush green vegetation.

I must have been out of my mind to come back. He fondly remembered the woman he’d lived with down there. The weather was so warm that clothing was optional.

But a longing for family, friends, and clan had stubbornly uprooted him, bringing his wandering feet back. Sometime in the five winters he had been in the south, he had changed. The homecoming he had longed for had turned hollow on the first day. People had marveled at his stories, and then dismissed them as the ravings of a fertile and overblown imagination.

But I know the truth!

He still did. Once he had managed to stifle his disgust at his own narrow-minded people, he had considered the things he knew. That he had traveled so widely had exposed him to different ideas, different ways of dealing with problems. After the first six months, he had begun to speak up at Council, to offer new ways to deal with hidebound traditional problems.

The fact was, he was no longer blinded by old teachings and beliefs. His Nightland People addressed problems the way they always had, as their Ancestors had before them. “But that’s not how we do things!” The tired old refrain had irritated him endlessly.

“Well,” he had countered, “try it my way for once.”

Grudgingly at first, they had adopted some of his suggestions, and when they worked, they had paid heed to his opinions.

Over the years, Nashat had risen to become the youngest Elder on the Council.

He smiled at that. All he had to do was make his wishes known, and the Council just nodded, as if he, and he alone, had the ear of wisdom.

Then Ti-Bish had come to him. The Idiot had looked up with his glassy eyes, awe filling his thin, half-starved face. The Idiot literally gushed about Raven Hunter’s Dream.

Nashat chuckled. “And you gave me everything.”

He had taken a calculating gamble by asking the Council to let the Idiot address the summer festival. But no more than a finger’s time later, the entire crowd was enthralled, eyes widening, mouths forming little circles of wonder.

From that moment on, the four Nightland clans had surrendered themselves to the Idiot’s Dream. Fueled by Ti-Bish’s glowing promises, they were a people possessed; and he, Nashat, possessed the sacred Guide.

He puffed out a breath, shaking his head. Everything had gone right. Well, but for a couple of bumps like the mess Karigi had made of the Walking Seal Village trap. Nashat would have been much better served with Bramble here, under his thumb, than a dead symbol of resistance.

In time, however, even that pesky Windwolf would be dealt with.

He caught the faint flicker of light ahead and walked across the crunching gravel into a small cavern in the ice.

His three counterparts—Ta’Hona of the Loon Clan, Satah of the Wolverine Clan, and Khepa of the Ash Clan—were already seated on folded sections of mammoth hide to keep their old butts from freezing.

“We almost gave up,” Satah muttered. “How long did you expect to keep us waiting?”