It took the hunters two days to reach the place of the encampment, as the rain storm slowed them down. The longer he pulled the travois, the more convinced Galen became of his foolishness in carrying his possessions on the journey from his distant home place. That his nephew was even willing to pull the device he had made for Galen amazed the elf more. The young man, still a boy in his eyes, had scoffed at the materials, even as he used them. Something had changed, since the fight with the buhatar. What, he could not tell.
For Tagrun, it was a time of worry, the mud made the going slower than he wished, the Otter clan were allies and friends of his people. To reach them would let him rest in peace, if only for a night. The young hunter still did not trust his uncle all the way. Nor, after the setting fire to the grass, could he ever again. The elf was a danger to others, and traveling with the elf made him the one responsible. This had come home to him, despite the feelings Arklo had expressed for Galen. Friendship could end with the start of a clan war, or just the dangers created by one unknowing of consequences of his actions.
The rain was still falling, a mist with infrequent drops to disturb pools of water left standing by the long rain, or toss up bits of the thick earth of the valley they had descended into. The camp was on an outcropping of rock, what the elf knew was called a butte by some, with a spiral road that led up to a place of ruins and forests on the plateau its top formed. The ruins were older than the Old North Empire, Galen realized in sudden fear. Older indeed than his folks time in these lands before men had come from the lands around it.
It was the work of some race, one he had heard rumors of, but never seen the ruins from before. The stones were broken and well weathered, no structure stood beyond his hips, though the foundations and floors were still there, but fading slowly to smaller rocks. That took ages, not just centuries, Galen thought. Trees and bushes of all kinds now grew in-between the stones, filling the old yards and parks, anywhere they could sink a root. Compared to the grasslands below, this large high place left from the river carving its way down to the sea, was a jungle.
And around the edge, many tents were pitched, some even back into the brambles and ruins, but most were in a narrow area around the rim, where only grass could be found, and an occasional shrub that rarely lasted long before adding to some campfire or tool the clans that used the butte needed. The name of the place was just chovan, tower in the tongue of the clans. Yet in all his years of association with the clans heard of it, or even seen it with campfires coming from it. To Galen the revelation of the place being inhabited by not just one clan, but many, seemed strange. It stretched for two days walk, from northwest to southeast, and was one of only a few dozen such on the east bank of the river. While the west bank had hundreds between the river and far off mountains of the short ones homeland.
It was more a series of mesas, connected by a long dyke, the volcanic nature of the whole system shocking the elf, who had been told these lands never had eruptions or even the other hot rock things, like geysers. But this place proved his teachers, the scrolls and even some sages he knew, wrong. The rocks were all things he recognized from the places he had encountered volcanoes in the past, the pillow rocks flows, the fencepost of basalt, pumice on the ground around it, and gems. Laying there, some polished by the pumice grit and weather. The clans sat upon a wealth unknown of to them. Even the Sandor rulers of this land during the Old North Empire had not known of this place, or had been blinded to it by some twist of fate. As he had ridden up the eastern face of the central plateau, Galen noted topaz, amethyst, garnet, and even some diamonds. Perhaps even other stones lay on the ground, openly there for the taking.
And gold. Galen gasped as he saw the vast seams of quartz so rotten with gold wire that it crumbled at his touch when he tried to touch a piece that had broken off and fallen to the side of the path. The hunter of men had to remind himself what Arklo had told him, that this was holy ground for all the clans, and not to take anything unless told to. If the dwarves of the distant mountains knew of this place, the long peace between the stunted miners and the clans would end. Better to let the wealth lie, Galen thought, than cost so many lives.
Arklo had watched him when he touched the quartz, eyes dark with a wariness the old hunter had never shown around him before. Yet a smile touched his face as the elf left the gold liberated by his touch on the ground. Somehow, someway, the hunter was letting him into the greatest secret of the wild men of these grasslands. It left the elf worried if his body would be properly burnt after they killed him, as he knew his nephew had no knowledge of the songs needed to send an elf to his next life.
After they rounded a bend, Arklo was beside him suddenly. "You we trust. You have your own wealth, and need no more." The gesture to another pumice stretch littered with gemstones was negligent, as if inviting Galen to take some.
"Temptation is not wise, my friend. Even the most stable of people can fall victim to the call that riches sing, to gather in more of them. Especially baubles like these."
Arklo's laugh was not the soft thing he normally used but louder, full of mirth. "But you have to pass this test, my friend. You stand upon something given unto us for safekeeping. It is sacred to all the clans, for it is here that the Totems came to us, and freed the people of the enchantments, charging them to never again be swayed by magic, and to protect this place until the Hunter of Souls comes to claim it."
That was something that made even Tagrun look at the hunter. Galen realized with that glance of confusion there was more to being here than meeting the rest of the Otter clan. The boy had some rite of passage to take, perhaps one that would be offered unto him as well. Though he had many loyalties, he was not sure he could avoid telling of this place to the Allegiance of Blades. The final reports he filed had to be complete, not just from his reputation, but also as this was something the Allegiance may need to know. The guild charged highly for its services, all the buyer of a life taking blade could bear. It would not do for the guild to leave money on the table when dealing with the clans in the future.
Not that many of the clans ever bought such a thing. Those of these grasslands tended to be sufficient enough in violence to do their own killings, unlike those of the more "civilized" lands.
At the top of this central mesa, there was a path into the ruins and forest growing in them. It was a curving thing, one that Galen found twisted so many times, that had it not been for the sun above him, he was not sure where on the plateau he was. Every turn had paths branching off, and after a while it became a wide spiral, leading inward towards some old towers set in a low opening in this massif.
A last turn, and there was the central encampment, one with a vast area of monoliths still upright, stones marked with the emblems of the clans. A few lay on the ground, with marks of beasts that no longer had their own clans to protect them, like the scorpion and the long nosed tusk beast known to elves as the mastodon. Five hands of stones upright, with two more leaning over to fall, and three hands and one already back on the ground. The lowered area led to a great hole in the center. One the assassin shivered at seeing. This was the crater of a volcano, and it was still too sharp to be one dead, unless it had just died in the last few centuries. around the rim of the crater, many still softly smoking fumaroles let loose steam, rich in the yellow crystals that formed on the rocks around them as the air cooled letting it and the water coat them.
Many pools of water steamed in the rays of the lowering sun, seeking the embrace of the mountains to the west across the river, like a child does the arms of its mother at day's end. The steam tickled Galen's senses, telling him this place was deadly, yet they lived here, safely. And in numbers he had not seen in all his dealings with the clans over the millennium he had lived. And in lodges of wood and stone, not the tents they used on the lands below.
Arklo met his gaze, as he turned to the man he had known since the human's childhood. "Yes, you have earned this trust. But it has a price, hunter of men. It has a price you may not wish to pay." The voice was still friendly, but the bite of cold iron was in it, chilling to one allergic as his kind was to iron. His green blood felt like sludge in his veins suddenly.
Galen found his voice after a goodly number of heartbeats. "I think I understand. And there is the price of grass set to fire as well, is there not?"
The eyes crinkled in the silent amusement hunters used so often, used to the ways of silence when stalking prey. Something the assassin knew well. "That can be considered paid by the end of the dead beasts still walking the grass, spoiling the herds. If the clan elders agree. Fires come often of their own in the warm seasons. And your fire came of the earth, which would not have answered had it not wanted its flesh purged of that evil, my friend." Arklo turned then, leading them to a group of tents along the outer rim of the crater, not near the throat of the earth below.
There he saw the grim boy he had always known as his nephew change to a smiling adolescent. It started as a sweet voice began to sing, hitting notes a human could not touch. It was the voice of an elven woman. The song, though in the language of the grasslands, was obviously one made by this woman. It was a love song that broke ones heart, stirring the emotions deep within his cold exterior to flames themselves. And by the looks of those around him, this was not the first time they had heard the song.
The tone of it was one of longing, where distance and time tried to quench the flames of the love she had. Within it the winds blowing her lover from north to south up the valley of grasslands, passing her by so often while not letting him stop to hold her for more than a moment. The wind was a cruel thing in this song, the demons of the winds trying hard to end a love they themselves were damned never to feel. With a softening, she dropped to a delicate wordless set of sounds, the ululating cry of sorrow of his folk, one that bordered upon the Nenia sung to move a spirit on after death. There was an incompleteness, until from beside him, the boy raised his own song, in the same melody as she had sung, but a bit deeper in pitch, a resonance there that few of his kind could achieve, as his half human heritage gave him a dusky baritone sound, something few elves had, touching on the edge of what was called the bass range.
The song was of the hunter seeking to make the big kill, the one to make his own tent from one beast's hide, so he could take within the love he left on the high cold buttes, to be safe from the beasts of the fields, the grass fires, and furious storms. It was full of longing to be the provider she needed to let her have what she would need to raise a family, yet not get himself killed. Hints of their current situation slid in somehow, as the young hunter sang, as if this was their way of trading the things they had been through over the moons between their meeting. His words were of the love he had, the power of which was like the rushing of a flood down a gully in the emotions their voices evoked.
There were tears in Galen's eyes as the song went back and forth for a while, each time he sang, Tagrun walked a bit closer to the tents, each time she sang, he would stop, moving slowly back and forth, in dance of the hunt, listening, yet still evoking the hunter needing to make his kill to feed the people and keep his love alive. The elf had never known of such things amid the grassland folk, this love song duet he was hearing. It was more something from his folk. But the voice of the woman was that of an elven female, still young, perhaps just coming into her adult years. Definitely, he thought, this is her first love, one that had grown with her over a period of years, knowing his nephew was only eighteen years old, no more than two or three years, a short romance to have reached such a point, but the boy was perhaps the only other with elven blood in the clans.
Glancing around, he found other faces as marked by the trails of tears as his was. Some tried to hide it, others stood around him weeping openly at the feelings stirred by this love song. He would never have believed the clans to have romance in their hearts, even though he knew his sister and levir had a romantic number of years, until the family had come to haul her back to the west and the duties they felt she had abandoned. Now he wondered if that had perhaps made the clans he dealt with more reticent about showing their emotions around any of the elves they met, scared they would come and take this voice from them.
Tagrun at last reached the tents, and a gorgeous young elf came out, indeed in the first bloom of her womanhood, face strained with some pains, which among such a short lived folk as the humans was inevitable, but still open, warm and loving. The cold fingers of lost friends had yet to freeze her heart, though it might. Then again, by choosing one with half the blood she bore, she might not have that ice form around her spirit to lock her emotions away forever. Tagrun taking on this hunt, though, could be the thing that set the glaciers moving about her love, for there was no guarantee he would come back alive.
They held hands at last, letting their voices die to a soft whisper, as they turned from song to words. Then the winds they had sung kicked up a small cloud of pumice dust between them and the hunting band, making their forms like ghosts. For a moment, there was a hint of a dark hand in that cloud, reaching out to snatch them away forever. In the space of a blink, that was gone, as were they, though he could hear them, laughing and talking softly amid the tents, seeking some private place. Where they had stood, now and elder of the Otters stood. His face bright with hope, streaked with tears from the song as so many others were. A touch of wariness as they found Galen, though, appeared.
Arklo ran a hand across his face, no shame at his tears, something unusual in Galen's experience. "To be young again," he whispered softly, taking the elbow of the elf. "But we cannot, and you must tell the elders all you know. Or, given the blade you bear openly, all you may."
Business went on, was the implication in the words and grip. Among these folks, their business was living. Which made it very serious business, something that love was a part of but could not get in the way of.
With a heavy heart, he approached a man he had not seen in decades, the only Otter besides the hunters he had ever met before. Drixaz was the last of the adults from when he first entered this land still alive. Drixaz had been the young hunter in training then, when Galen had stalked a man across the prairies to the south. When the one he had sought, another rogue magician, this one who had combined the arts of knives with illusions to kill outside the purvey of the Allegiance. One who had been foolish enough to slay the member of the guild sent to offer him membership. It had been taken as a refusal, and an insult, by the head of the local chapter, and led to Galen chasing the woman across a half dozen kingdoms. At least she had not destroyed the souls of those she killed, as his current prey was doing.
They walked to the fire, seeking seats on stone benches around it, another thing of permanence the assassin had never seen before at the other camps he had visited. This place was shaking his conceptions of the people of the grasslands, there were huts amid the tents, not many, but obviously inhabited, and many other things these folk claimed to not use, like a water wheel to grind the grains gathered someplace he had yet to see, and a small vineyard to his right, as they moved west along the northern edge of this caldera. So many things, the cultivation, the permanence, told him there were two separate societies here. Yet it was the tongue of the grasslands they all spoke, as he moved into the settlement, the clothing of the hunters and gatherers he knew so well.
Galen felt angry at being mislead for so long by those he thought of as friends, and surprised that no one else seemed to know of this place and its contradictions, not even the sages of the Colleges at Thogras had ever given him a glimmer, yet he saw a sage he knew, sitting in talk with an elder whose left shoulder bore the mark of the distant Beaver clan, who existed not in this watershed, but along the far off Altorus River basin's northern and western sides.
So many clans, usually in some conflict, sitting together here, on a place the trails the hunters made to force the travelers of the land to avoid. So they lied, at last he accepted this. Or perhaps this was a sacred ground, as implied by Arklo as they climbed it, where different rules applied. Tagrun had disappeared into the crowded areas, with the elven girl. At the fire, with those already seated, he found many other elders he knew, or from clans not close to the land. Off to one side, a young runner was recovering from the climb, wearing the mark of the eagles, while two grey hairs listened to what he had to say. They were far enough off Galen could not overhear, but the reading of lip movements was a skill he had learned over the years, and he had honed it among these folk, who he now knew did have a secret hidden from others, as he had first thought of them.
He was led to sit by Drixaz, with a place beside him soon occupied by Xibo of the Eagles, the true elder, one he had thought dead for a hand of years now.
"You are here to give word of this thing that defiles the land, my old friend. We had never meant for you to see this place, and know that we have our own sacred lands that others may not tread, as the tales say of the distant plains you come from." Xibo's voice was not weak, but still strong. Still, there was a faint tremor in its timber, one the elf was all too familiar with from his many short friendships with the humans. The man had two, maybe three seasons of snows left in his frame. To get back a friend thought gone, only to find he may not be there the next time sorrowed the elf more.
"I never dreamed that you had a city." Then a twinkle entered the assassin's eyes. "And to think, you called me a deceiver when I first came to the grasslands."
The old human chuckled softly. "Yes, for you kept seeking the secret you sensed somehow from those first meetings we had. We will ask you to join with the grass and stones, to vow not to let this place be known of again until the Redeemer comes to renew the lands we live in now."
Galen shook his head to clear the fogs more revelations were causing him. "Redeemer?"
Xibo merely shook his heads, and made the trade language sign for patience, as the others at last all turned to the fire, and the Council of the Clans came to what passed for order amongst them.
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