A Sword from Red Ice

SIX The Lamb Brothers

The dreams were like deep wells; once you stepped into one you kept falling. The sense of dizziess and suspension of thought as you waited for the landing, was the same. Most of the time Raif knew he was dreaming. Dream had a texture to them, a vivid thickness, as if you were viewing them through an inch of clear glass. And they always had an edge, a point beyond which you could not set. Most of the time Raif didn't even think to look. He fell. Days passed, or perhaps they only seemed to, as he plunged deeper and deeper into a floorless world.

All the people he loved were there. Da and Drey, Effie, Ash, Uncle Angus. The world made no distinction between those who were alive and those who were dead. Bear was there, watching with solemn inter-est as she chewed a mouthful of grass. Da told him never to leave his boots wet overnight. Shadows ebbing and swelling formed a cycle, not unlike night and day. When the shadows lifted, people came to visit him. Some watched, others spoke. Angus Lot usually had something to say. "A pretty shot," he offered more than once. "What's next?" None of it made much sense, but it was not unpleasant, just vaguely frustrating Raif seldom had the chance to answer back.

When the shadows gathered and deepened, the nature of his dreams changed. Drey left, that was how the nightmares begin. His brother would be there, at his side, and they'd be facing the danger together and it felt scary yet somehow good. They were brothers, and that was how it was between them. Then Drey would leave. One moment he would be there, his shoulder brushing against Raif, and the next he would be gone. Disappeared Raif's gut would clench. His hand would map out to the darkness, and his fingers close around air.

He fell alone after that. Head spinning, fingers splayed like pinion feathers, he plunged deeper into the darkness. There was no going back, that was the true horror that lay waiting in the shadows.

Drey had gone, and there was no going back.

Time passed. Sometimes Raif would experience a deep bone-numbing cold and grow frightened as he lost sensation in his hands and feet. If the cold continued he would become certain that his hands and feet had broken off and his limbs now ended in stumps. Panic came then. Without hands, how could he break his fall?

An eyeblink could change everything. Cold could be replaced by heat, silence by animal howls. Things huffed and grunted on the far edge of his perception. Feeding. Shadows ebbed and swelled, creating an undertow that sucked him down.

Raif saw things he did not understand: a face staring up at him through a foot of pressure-formed ice; a wound smoking like a piece of kindling about to burst into flame; a thick and unlovely sword without fullers or decorations sinking to the bottom of a lake. Clan and kin loomed from the darkness, then fled.

Effie called out his name, and Raifs heart jumped in his chest. Where was she? He could not see her. Effie, he screamed at the darkness,EFFIE!

Bitty Shank came then, smiling with a closed mouth. He was dressed in armored plate bossed with iron studs and mounted with hammer chains. The chains rattled as he approached. He was shambling slightly, as if he'd had too much to drink or wasn't well. Raif smiled back at him. Bitty spread his lips in a death grin, revealing teeth pointed like fangs. Suddenly he lunged forward, and as his hand shot from his chest Raif saw a fist-size hole in Bitty's armor. The skin and rib cage were gone, and something black and gristled and not quite heart-shaped beat in Bitty's chest. Raif turned and tried to flee, but Bitty's hard, pincerlike fingers grabbed hold of his shoulders and bit into his flesh. Corpse breath pumped along Raif's cheek. Bitty hissed, "Where you running to, Raif? I've got a new heart for you to kill."

Stop! Raif cried, trying to wrench himself free. Bitty's armored fingers sank deeper and deeper, ten knives slicing his muscle like cheese.

From somewhere far in the shadows Angus asked calmly, What; next?"

Bitty jumped on Raif's back. Stumbling forward, Raif struggled to keep his footing and failed. Air punched from his lungs as he landed hard on his stomach. Bitty clung to him like a spider, strong and inhumanly fast. Panicking, Raif bucked against Bitty s hold. Every time he took a breath Bitty squeezed him harder. Bitty's knife-fingers slid through the spaces between Raif's ribs, and Bitty was laughing, laughing, and Raif could feel the heart-shaped thing in Bitty's chest thumping against his back.

Leave us. The voice that spoke was chilling, an icy wind blowing through an open door.

Bitty froze, yet even as he stilled he became something other. Something dark and malleable, a heavy shadow spilling over Raif's shoulders and rolling across his face. Gasping for breath, Raif sucked in the shadows and breathed in the substance of Death.

Air crackled as she approached. Light failed her, sliding off her presence like dark wine poured over glass. The sweetly corrupt scent of spoiled pears preceded her as she leaned forward and laid a kiss on Raifs brow.

I believe I will call you son.

Noooooo, he screamed at her. NOOOOOOOO!

"Sshh."

Raif moved his head, tracking the new voice. As he shifted his attention one way, Death withdrew. Chuckling softly, she pulled her nightmare robes behind her, beckoned the darkness, and left. She always had the last laugh.

Droplets of lukewarm water pattered across Raif's face. As he scrunched his eyes tightly closed, he became aware that he was no longer falling. Somehow he had landed on solid ground.

Light filtering through his eyelids flickered as something moved between Raif and the source. I am awake, he said to himself, testing, his mind carefully calibrating each word. When water began to patter against his face a second time he cracked open his lips and let it fall into his mouth. His tongue soaked up the droplets like a sponge, and there was some pain as parched flesh expanded. As if that first pang had opened a door marked «Pain» Raifs mind began receiving signals from his body. His throat felt raw and scratchy, and his back and rib cage were stiff. A deep, unsettled ache in his left shoulder seemed the worst thing. It moved through his muscle like liquid.

Noises began to register. A strange chittering was followed by a rattling sound, like stones being shaken in a jar. Then footsteps, or rather footfalls for the sound was soft, subtle, owing more to the yielding of floor than the striking of feet.

Raif wondered whether he should open his eyes. Caution made him hesitate. The same instinct that told him his memory was working even though he had not probed it, told him his position here-wher ever «here» might be-was vulnerable. So he listened and waited.

Time passed. The quality of light changed, the colors filtering through his eyelids shifting from blue to red. Air cooled. A sharp burnt odor reached Raif's nose, followed by the scent of unfamiliar cookery. Bittersweet spices, licorice, clove and sumac floated upward with the scent of pungent smoke. Footfalls sounded again. A light was struck, then silence.

Raif waited, limbs still, body cooling. After a while it seemed to him that the silence had an expectant quality to it and he began to imagine he was being watched. As the hour wore on he grew more and more certain that someone was waiting for him to make a move. Raif wondered how long the watcher could keep silent, how long he or she could play the game.

More time passed, and aches and needs began to assert themselves. A muscle in Raif's damaged shoulder had tightened and needed to be flexed. Thirst gnawed at his throat, and he became aware of the fullness in his bladder. Quite suddenly he had to move.

He opened his eyes, and blinked against the light. It took him a moment to understand what he saw. He was lying in a small, high-roofed tent braced with slender yellow bones that were double-curved like sycamore wings. The tent canvas was made from clarified hides; skins of stillborn animals that had been melted to the point of translu-cence. Clan did not have the knowledge to prepare them, and Raif imagined he was looking at great wealth. Rays from the setting sun shone through the hides, illuminating whorl patterns where fur had once grown. Raif could not guess what animal they came from.

Lines of silky blue smoke rose from three seaglass lanterns raised on longbone poles. To his left Raif saw a loose pile of saddle blankets dyed in colors of yellow: saffron, ocher, wheat. The tent floor consisted of thickly piled pelts and fleeces. Raif recognized the curly-haired fleece of a bighorn sheep and the dappled white pelt of a snag cat, but he did not recognize the others. One was orange with black circles, another was horse-shaped and striped black-and-white, and another still was stiff and ridged and green as pondweed. He was lying on a mattress or mounded earth overlaid with sheepskin, and he was covered by a single blanket woven from a wool softer and lighter than musk ox.

When he was ready, Raif turned his attention to the figure standing by the roped-down tent flap. The man was tall and lean. Sable-colored robes so dark and richly dyed they absorbed light were wrapped around his head and body in loosely twisted folds. The headpiece consisted of tiers of fabric hung from a curved hood. A single bow-shaped slit revealed his eyes.

The man bowed his head slowly but did not speak. He had been waiting, Raif decided, allowing his visitor time to grow accustomed to his surroundings. Squatting, the man poured green liquid from a copper pot into a glass cup with a copper base. The liquid steamed as he crossed the small, circular space of the tent and laid the cup on the hides by Raif's bed. The man's eyes were an inky brown and his eye whites had a faint bluish tinge to them, like a bird's. His skin was ash brown and there were three small black dots spaced evenly across the bridge of his nose that might have been tattoos.

Nodding once toward the cup and then to a wooden bowl close to Raif's feet the man withdrew. Night air purled through the tent slit as he raised the guide rope and disappeared. Raif watched the tent flap spool back down. Thick raw air circled the tent, dragging down smoke from the seaglass lamps as it sank.

Raif sat up. Pain shot along his left side, spiking in his shoulder. Blood rushed to his head, making his skin flush, and then rushed back down, leaving him faint. Planting his feet on the strange green hide, he rested for a moment before standing. A question that had been waiting just beyond the radius of his thoughts came sharply into view. How long have I been here? He had no answer, he realized, no experience to relate his body's condition to time.

Standing brought on a wave of dizziness, and he clung to one of the yellow bones as he waited it out. The bone echoed when he tapped it with his knuckle; hollow as a birdbone. When the tent stopped spinning, Raif reached for the green drink. It smelled of licorice and something his memory couldn't find a name for. He did not taste it, simply drank in deep gulps, swallowing rhythmically. Done, he glanced down at the wooden pot. Shaking his head, he decided to go outside rather than piss in a bowl.

He was still in the Great Want. The knowledge came to him the instant he stepped upon the gray, powdery earth. Overhead, the great wheel of stars blazed and turned. Knowing better than to gauge the passage of time in the Want by lunar phases, Raif ignored the rising moon. A light wind was gusting, shifting the dust into dunes and car-rying the smelted-metal scent of new-formed glaciers. Raif was standing within a circle of five tents, all similar in shape and size to the one he had slept in. Outside the circle a corral consisting of tanned leathers hung from ivory tusks sheltered woolly mules and a single saffron-fleeced milk ewe. Inside the circle, at its center, four men squatted around a cook fire, spearing food from a black pot with sharpened sticks. No one spoke. All four glanced Raif's way before returning to the business of eating. They were dressed in similar robes of varying shades and it was impossible for Raif to tell which one of them had been in his tent. One of the four had plunged a lean copper spear into the soft earth, and it stood, point-up, within reach of his left hand.

Raif walked to the far side of the tent and urinated. From what he could make out the Want looked flat here, with only dunes and boulders casting shadows against the moon. On impulse he bent down and scooped up a fistful of earth. The soil was pulverized pumice, and it poured through his fingers like cool, dry sand. Watching it he was struck with the idea that the Want had allowed him closer. Closer to what he could barely put into words. Something had happened long ago in this place. Sadaluk, the Listener of the Ice Trappers, had told how the Want had once been like any other land. It had a North and South and stars that could be relied on. Water flowed, trees grew, animals grazed and others hunted. People had lived here; if not Men, then perhaps another, older race. Raif had stood in one of their cities: Kahl Barranon, the Fortress of Grey Ice.

He shivered. Placing a hand on his left shoulder, he worked away at the pain.

A doom had been laid upon this place. Life had been destroyed. Time had been broken and now leaked. Space and distance had been stretched and folded, worn so thin in parts that you could see things on the horizon-mountains, hills, cities-that were thousands of leagues away, and so thickly gathered in others that you could spend all day walking and then turn to see your starting point less than a hundred feet behind you. Raif could not begin to imagine the magnitude of catastrophe that could break the bones of a continent, crush it so com-pletely that its relation to nature and the heavens changed.

not imagine it, but standing here, bare feet sinking into soft pumice as he watched the wind carve the dunes, he had the sense that its after-math could be seen. Forces of heat and pressure had left scars Angus had once told him that pumice was formed when mountains exploded and molten rock gushed up from the center of the earth. Was that what had happened here? Or something worse?

Raif headed back to the tent. The hooded men had finished eating and were now sipping hot liquid from glass cups. One man held the cup beneath his chin and let the steam roll over his face. No one spoke. Raif guessed the temperature to be just below freezing, yet they did not appear to feel it. Again, they noted him as he passed but did not halt him. They knew the Want then. Knew that the phrases "free to go" and "you cannot leave" had no meaning here.

As soon as he was inside the tent, Raif felt his strength drain away. His body was tired and achy, and it seemed difficult to think. Turning, he spied a copper jug filled with ice melt. A hot stone from the fire had been dropped in the jug to thaw the ice, and the water tasted burned. After he had drunk his fill, Raif lay on the bed and slept.

He did not dream. At some point during the night he awoke. The lamps had burned out and it was wholly dark. A strange note, low and plaintive, rose outside the tent. At first Raif thought it was the moan of the wind over the dunes, but then other notes sounded. Slow and mournful, they joined the first note in harmony before glancing away. The song created was like nothing Raif had ever heard before, hollow and deeply resonant, and he was reminded of a story Angus had once told him about the great blue whales that swam beneath the frozen ledges of Endsea. "They travel the coldest, deepest currents where the water is heavy enough to crush men. Alone, they call out in the darkness, searching for more of their kind,"

That was what the song of the hooded men sounded like to Raif: a cry in the dark. Who is there?

The song continued, solemn and questing. Raif listened for a while and then slept. When he awoke in the morning the memory of the hooded men's song had gone.

Dawn light, silvery and diffused by mist, shone through the tent's clarified hide walls. Inside all was cold and still. Raif lay and watched his breath crystallize in the frigid air. His body felt better. Rested. The pain in his shoulder was still there, but other things seemed more important. He was thirsty and hungry, and he wanted some answers.

Finding his belongings piled against the tent wall, he dressed himself against the cold. The Orrl cloak had been treated with some care brushed and properly folded. No one in the clanholds could made cloaks like Orrl, cloaks that shifted color along with the landscape. They took months to prepare, the master furrier laying down countless layers of light-reflecting varnish on specially softened hides. Only white winter warriors were allowed to wear them, and Raif imagined the hooded men had never seen such a cloak before He thought a moment and then drew his on. Unarmed, he went outside.

A shallow sea of mist washed across the dunes. The sky was pale and featureless, filled with haze. Two of the four hooded men were standing by the cookfire, gazing out through the tent circle toward the Want. They turned to watch as he approached. When he could see their eyes clearly, Raif greeted them.

"I am Raif Sevrance. Tell me who is owed my thanks."

Two pairs of brown eyes regarded him. Neither man spoke. After a moment the younger of the two turned to the elder, who nodded. The younger man headed away toward the tents.

Raif waited. The older man crouched by the cookfire and began turning over embers with a stick. From the little Raif could see of the skin around his eyes, Raif decided he was not the one who had first tended him in the tent Over the bridge of his nose, he had five black dots, not three. Hooking the kettle handle with his stick, the man pulled the copper vessel from the fire. Flames crackled in the mist as he poured hot liquid into a cup and offered it to Raif.

Steam pungent with licorice and wormwood condensed on Raif's face as he accepted the glass cup. He did not drink. Wormwood was considered poison in the clanholds, yet he did not think this man meant to harm him.

A third man emerged from the farthest tent and made his way toward the fire. The ewe bleated as he passed the corral, begging for a milking. Raif set the cup on the ground. Within seconds it was swallowed by the mist. Coming to a halt before the fire, the third man nodded once to the elder. A dismissal. The elder rose with the aid of his stick and walked toward the corral.

Watching the third man Raif decided two things. One, it was the same man who had waited in the tent as he feigned sleep. And two, he, Raif Sevrance, would not be the first to speak.

The third man's gaze pierced Raif, passed through the holes in his eyes and saw inside. Raif felt known. There was a moment where something hung in the balance, as if a cup standing on a table had been knocked over and was rolling toward the edge. The cup might stop before it reached the edge or fall and break. Raif did not breathe. The brown-black gaze held him. And then withdrew.

"Sit." The man spoke softly, long brown fingers uncurling to indicate the mist.

One word, yet Raif knew instantly several things. Common was not the man's first language. His accent was long and lilting, filled with smoke. Raif had the sense that he rarely used any language, that he was speaking solely for the stranger's benefit. Finally Raif knew that he had not been judged by this man. The cup had come to rest on the edge.

Raif sank to the ground. It was like diving into water; the coldness of the mist.

The man touched his chest. "Men once called me Tallal." Holding the back of his robe against the back of his knees, he dropped into a crouch. "If it pleases, you may use that name." "And the others?"

"They are my lamb brothers. Their names are not mine to give." Absently, he made a slight stirring motion with his index fingers, rousing the mist.

"I owe you thanks. For saving me." Tallal thought for a moment and then nodded. "Perhaps." The word troubled Raif. He felt out of his depth, and wished he could see the whole of the man's face not just the slit containing his eyes. "How many are you?" "Eleven."

It took Raif a moment to realize Tallal was including the animals in the count; six mules and the milk ewe. Four then. Yet five tents.

Tallal had tracked Raifs gaze as it moved from the corral to the tents. "In my homeland we have a saying: God will only come if there is room in your house." He smiled; Raif could tell by the crinkling around his eyes. "My lamb brothers and I very much want God to come."

Raif became aware of a light pricking sensation around the small of his back. The mist was receding. For some reason he thought about the small gesture Tallal had made seconds earlier, the finger rousing in the mist. "Are you and your brothers lost?"

"No."

How can you be in the Want and not be lost? Raif wanted to ask yet didn't. A sense of propriety stopped him. It was too early in their acquaintance for such a question. "Where did you find me?"

Tallal shrugged. Anyone who hadn't spent time in the Want might take the gesture as a careless dismissal, but Raif understood it. Anywhere. Nowhere. Who can say?

"And my horse?"

The wind pressed Tallal's facepiece against his lips as he murmured. "The tide carried her away."

Raif nodded once. Now the mist had gone you could see the pumice dunes clearly. The wind was whittling them down, blowing streamers of dust from their crests. He let the icy particles scour his face awhile before turning back to Tallal. "How long have I been here?"

"Four nights as you and I count them." Tallal's voice was quiet. As he spoke he fed pale, barkless driftwood to the fire. "Much ailed you. My brothers and I did what we could to heal your body. We gave you water and tonics so you might sleep. I cleaned your wounds. If this breaks one of your holy laws I ask pardon."

Raif knew nothing of religions that forbade healing. "It does not."

Tallal nodded softly as if Raif were confirming something he had already guessed. "Strong gods guide you. They would not be petty, such gods."

A piece of driftwood hissed as moisture trapped inside it turned to steam. Raif imagined for a moment he could be anywhere: in a distant desert, a foreign shore, the face of the moon. Unfamiliar territory, and it was becoming his domain. Sometimes it seemed as if every step he'd taken since leaving clan had been a step into the unknown.

It was in his mind to say to Tallal that he had no gods, that he had broken an oath and abandoned his clan, and no gods that he knew of would keep faith with such a man. Yet he didn't. Instead he remembered the nightmare. It made him hope Tallal might be right.

"Where do you head?" he asked.

Behind his face mask, Tallal's expression changed. Raising his hand, he touched the dots on the bridge of his nose. Three separate movements. "Where the Maker of Souls leads."

Raif wondered what kind of god would lead his followers here. The Stone Gods had no dealings with the Want; their domain ended in the hard, fixed earth of the Badlands. "Your god claims this territory?"

Tallal lifted his gaze to the Want. "My god claims souls, not land. He commands us to search for souls in need of peace."

A compulsion out of his control, like an involuntary knee jerk made Raif ask, "Dead or alive?"

Tallal looked at him, his dark eyes filled with knowledge. "We are lamb brothers. We care for the dead."

The wind moaned, skinning the dunes. Raif shivered deeply, his neck bones clicking. For an instant he had an image of himself as a carcass and the four hooded men as ravens picking at his dead flesh. He shook himself. You had to guard yourself against the distortions of the Want. All of them. Tallal and his lamb brothers had nothing to do with him, and to imagine otherwise was some kind of vain and crazy blasphemy. They were here to do the work of their gods. He was here because he couldn't find a way out.

Observing Raif's disorientation, Tallal said, The buffalo women and the bird priests deal with ayah, the souls of the living. Their numbers are many. It is said that there is a herd of buffalo for every sheep." Tallal smiled gently; Raif could hear it in his voice. "It is not wise to get in their way. They can be fearsome when it comes to saving souls. When a man hears the rumble of many hooves and turns to see the buffalo stampeding it is not unlikely he will change his course."

Raif grinned. He was beginning to feel better, but he had a hunch it wouldn't last. "And the souls of the dead?"

A smoke ring of breath blew from Tallal's mouth. "Morah." The word had power. Raif felt it pump against his eardrums. Slowly, rhythmically, Tallal began to rock back and forth on the balls of his feet. "Morah is the flesh of God. Every man, woman and child who passes through this mortal world grows a portion of God within them. This we call the soul. When someone dies their soul rises to the heavens and God claims it and sets it in place. The Book of Trials foretells the day when the Maker's body is whole and he will walk amongst us and we might look upon his face. We, the Sand People, await that day with hope and deepest longing. Yet if as much as a single soul is lost God's body will remain incomplete and he will be forever unknowable.

"The Book of Trials commands the lamb brothers to seek out the lost souls of the dead. All must be counted and released. They are precious to us beyond reckoning, for they contain the substance of God.

Raif stared into the flames whilst Tallal spoke. The wood burned green and white and gave off the cold and empty smell of high places.

Listening to the lamb brother made him feel sad. Tallal had been set a task that would never be completed. His god would never come There were too many men and women out there who had lost their way and died without peace or salvation. Generations of bodies had disappeared; flesh eaten by maggots, bones dried to husks then ground into sand. How could they be saved when there was no record of their existence?

And who would save the souls of the Unmade?

Heritas Cant had said that every thousand years the creatures of the Blirflride forth to claim more men for their armies. "When a man or woman is touched by them they become Unmade. Not dead, never dead, but something different cold and craving. The shadows enter them snuffing the light from their eyes and the warmth from their hearts. Everything is lost."

Without thinking, Raif raised his hand to his shoulder. The wound, had begun to sting. If Heritas Cant was right, then countless people over thousands of centuries had been lost, their souls claimed by the Endlords. Raif glanced at Tallal. Did he know this? Was he aware of the impossibility of his task?

Tallal's gaze was level. "Once a year in the hottest month of summer, when the sand snakes grow bold and even the blister beetles search for shade, the storms come. Day falls dark as night. Rain crashes from the sky and lightning strikes. Once in a very long while when lightning touches sand it turns to glass. This glass is very rare. A thousand thunderstorms may pass overhead yet everything—the sand, the wind, the moons and the stars—must be in accordance before lightning can transform sand into glass. Stormglass is a powerful talisman. Kings and shamans covet it. It is said that when you look into it you see other storms; storms that are gathering and may come to be, storms of thunder and storms of men. My people sweep the sands for it when we travel. Like gingerroot it lies beneath the surface, out of sight, and we use acacia branches to comb the dunes as we walk the cattle. We dream of finding the perfect unbroken piece, long as a sword and clear as water. In my lifetime I have never known anyone to find such a piece. Yet still we sweep."

Tallal paused, waited for Raif to meet his gaze. "To search is to be sustained by hope. Every morning we may wake and say Perhaps today I will find what I seek. A sense of purpose is like a meal of lamb and rice; it can fill an empty man."

Raif breathed in deeply, letting the cold air steep inside his chest He wondered at what point Tallal had ceased talking about the search for stormglass and started talking about the two of them instead Glancing down at his hands, Raif saw the cold had turned them gray. His fingers felt raw, and the stump on his left hand where Stillborn had chopped off the tip of his little finger looked bald and misshapen. The wound had healed months ago, but the ridge of scar tissue left behind by the stitches would never make a pretty sight It was the price of admittance to the Maimed Men. You could not become one of them and remain whole.

Will you come back?

Raif thrust his hands into the folds of his Orrl cloak, hoping to thrust away Stillborn's words. Sunlight broke through the haze, giving off a weak silvery light that made nothing seem warmer.

Tallal rose to standing. A figure emerged from the farthest tent and headed toward the fire. Judging from the stoop of his shoulders and the slight rocking motion of his walk, Raif guessed it to be the elder lamb brother he had addressed earlier. The man was carrying a rolled-up prayer mat.

"We pray now," Tallal said.

Raif stood. He needed to think. Crazy ideas were getting tangled in his head. Did the lamb brothers know who they had rescued? I watch the dead. They save them. Does it mean something or nothing?

Tallal walked to meet the elder man and the two of them exchanged a handful of words in a foreign tongue. Wind twisted their cloaks around their legs. The elder nodded once. More words were spoken and then Tallal headed back toward Raif.

"My brother asks if you will join us in prayer."

Raif was surprised by his desire to say yes. He had not expected to be included. Shaking his head, he said, "Perhaps tomorrow." As he spoke he knew it was a lie.

Tallal knew it too. "As you wish."

A moment passed where Raif wanted to say something but didn't How could you tell someone that the reason you didn't want to pray to their gods was because you feared being struck by a bolt of lightning. Nodding farewell to Tailal, Raif headed back toward his tent.

The lamb brother stopped him with a question, "How long have you walked the Want?"

Turning, Raif smiled gently. A distance of twenty paces separated him from the masked and robed figure of Tallal. Pumice blowing from the dunes was already beginning to fdl in his footsteps. "Too long."

Tallal did not return Raif's smile. His eyes were serious, and for the first time Raif noticed deep lines around them. "A man who does not know where he is headed will never find a way out."

Raif turned and walked away.