Midnight tides

Udinaas made a face, studied the tossing waves that warred with the river’s outpouring current. ‘The Edur claim it was the other way round, Wither.’

‘Then why am I dead and they alive? If we were the ambushers that day?’

‘How should I know? Now, if you intend to lurk in my shadow, Wither, you must learn to be silent. Unless I speak to you. Silent, and watchful, and nothing more.’

‘First, slave, you must do something for me.’

Udinaas sighed. Most of the noble-born Edur were at the interment ceremony for the murdered fisherman, along with a half-dozen kin from the Beneda, since the Edur’s identity had finally been determined. Fewer than a dozen warriors remained in the compound behind him. Shadow wraiths seemed to grow bolder at such times, emerging to flit across the ground, between longhouses and along the palisade walls.

He had often wondered at that. But now, if Wither was to be believed, he had his answer. Those wraiths are not ancestral kin to the mortal Edur. They are Tiste Andii, the bound souls of the slain. And, I was desperate for allies… ‘Very well, what do you wish me to do Wither?’

‘Before the seas rose in this place, slave, the Hasana Inlet was a lake. To the south and west, the land stretched out to join with the westernmost tip of the Reach. A vast plain, upon which the last of my people were slaughtered. Walk the shoreline before you, slave. South. There is something of mine – we must find it.’

Udinaas rose and brushed the sand from his coarse woollen trousers. He looked about. Three slaves from the Warlock King’s citadel were down by the river mouth, beating clothes against rocks. A lone fisher-boat was out on the water, but distant. ‘How far will I need to walk?’

‘It lies close.’

‘If I am perceived to be straying too far, I will be killed outright.’

‘Not far, slave-’

‘I am named Udinaas, and so you will address me.’

‘You claim the privilege of pride?’

‘I am more than a slave, Wither, as you well know.’

‘But you must behave as if you were not. I call you “slave” to remind you of that. Fail in your deception, and the pain they shall inflict upon you in the search for all you would hide from them shall be without measure-’

‘Enough.’ He walked down to the waterline. The sun threw his shadow into his wake, pulled long and monstrous.

The rollers had built a humped sweep of sand over the stones, on which lay tangled strands of seaweed and a scattering of detritus. A pace inland of this elongated rise was a depression filled with slick pebbles and rocks. ‘Where should I be looking?’

‘Among the stones. A little further. Three, two paces. Yes. Here.’

Udinaas stared down, scanning the area. ‘I see nothing.’

‘Dig. No, to your left – those rocks, move those. That one. Now, deeper. There, pull it free.’

A misshapen lump that sat heavy in his hand. Finger-length and tapered at one end, the metal object within swallowed by thick calcifications. ‘What is it?’

‘An arrowhead, slave. Hundreds of millennia, crawling to this shore. The passage of ages is measured by chance. The deep roll of tides, the succession of wayward storms. This is how the world moves-’

‘Hundreds of millennia? There would be nothing left-’

‘A blade of simple iron without sorcerous investment would indeed have vanished. The arrowhead remains, slave, because it will not surrender. You must chip away at all that surrounds it. You must resurrect it.’

‘Why?’

‘I have my reasons, slave.’