People of the Nightland(84)

“Why does the Guide want you so much? I heard that Nashat sent Blue Wing to him, and he turned her away.” Kishkat shook his head. “She was a very beautiful woman.”

The other warriors chuckled.

Skimmer shrugged. “I was kind to him once. In those days your people had cast him out … called him the Idiot.”

Tapa cast a nervous glance over his shoulder. “We shouldn’t linger.”

Kishkat smiled. “I think Nashat still thinks he’s an idiot.” He took another drink from his cup and swallowed. “As to myself, I don’t know. That night we found him trying to set Kakala free from the cage …” He shrugged. “Well, he just left me confused.”

“Nashat is an evil man,” Homaldo agreed. “It was his order that placed Kakala in the cage.” He glanced at Skimmer. “And, but for this woman, he would have done the same to us.”

“We had better hope the woman is enough,” Tibo said.

Skimmer frowned. “Then the Guide doesn’t issue all of these insane orders?”

“No.” Kishkat bowed his head, looking weary to his bones. “The orders come from the Council. I think they come from Nashat. No one sees the Guide.” He hesitated, looking at his companions, lowering his voice. “Sometimes I think the Guide is as much a captive as the rest of us.”

To Skimmer’s amazement, heads were nodding. “Captives? But you’re the feared Nightland warriors!”

Tapa smiled wistfully. “I was a hunter. That’s all I wanted to be. Then the Council made us ‘hunters of men.’” He shook his head. “At first, it was exciting. I think we all got carried away with the glory. It makes a man feel great in the beginning. But then the fighting got harder.” He looked at her with hopeless eyes. “My brothers are dead. My best friend, whom I grew up with and loved, is dead.” He glanced back down the trail. “Now, even my war chief, whom I served and trusted with my life, is dead.”

“We have all lost so much,” Tibo agreed. “If I could have anything, I would ask to be the man I was before all of this began. I fear, however, that somehow, I am going to die a miserable death.”

“Come.” Kishkat climbed wearily to his feet. “What is, simply is. We can’t change it. Our only hope is to follow the Guide to the paradise of the Long Dark.”

Skimmer got to her feet and gazed out at the silver ribbons of waves rolling in. “Let’s go.”

The sooner I can find a way of killing him, the sooner all of this madness is over.





Thirty-six

The struggle had encompassed eternity. Silvertip could remember nothing beyond a desperate obsession with keeping himself whole. As the condor devoured his body, bits and pieces of his soul vanished. Nothing could convey the sensation of having his soul sliced up. One moment he would be frantically trying to retain some kind of hold on his very being, only to have a hole torn out of what remained … until the inevitable. But when had that been? When had the last tattered bits of his soul simply given up?

What remained of his body were bones. Little more than the scattered fragments of his soul, and then that, too, began to slip away as one by one, the ligaments rotted, and fingers, toes, legs, and arm bones rolled off the high stone, to drop … where?

Nothing remained to scream as Silvertip’s loose jaw fell away to tumble down the rock. The skull finally slipped loose from the spine, clattering hollowly … falling … .





Moonglow filtered between the boulders, shooting a sliver of light across Goodeagle’s face. He rolled uncomfortably to his back and struggled to sleep. Cramped between two warriors, he could barely stretch his legs to their full length. Worse, the constant low hum of distant voices chewed at the edges of his dreams like rodent teeth. Every time he drifted off, he heard Windwolf’s soft baritone.

Would he never escape Dreaming the nightmare of Walking Seal Village? After an eternity of restless tossing and turning, he finally sat up, and slid back to lean against the wall. Weariness clung like a granite cape around his shoulders.

Stop torturing yourself. You did the right thing.

He braced his forehead on his drawn-up knees and closed his eyes. His breathing finally melted into soothing rhythms. The voices faded … .





He was back, standing in the great ceremonial lodge at Walking Seal Village. He could see the startled expression on Kakala’s face, hear Keresa’s bitter curses. Bramble lay naked, bitten, and raped, her eyes widening as she recognized him.

“Goodeagle!” Bramble sobbed. “Goodeagle … oh, no, get out!”

That was the moment his soul died, and with it, all that remained of the man once called Goodeagle.