A Sword from Red Ice

Shadows in the tower vault lengthened and grew richer as Dry spoke. Light shining between the slats of the boarded-up west window threw horizontal stripes across the walls as the wind died to a murmur.

"It is told that what the universe creates it will destroy. Gods are birthed with stars to give us light, and Xhan Nul, the Endlords, are birthed into the void of space to bring destruction. These powers are locked in a war that is finite. For many Ages, the gods and the light have prevailed. Earth has thrived. The sun shinesland makes life. Civilizations grow and people have inhabited all lands that can sustain them. The Sull are taught this cannot last. From the moment of its creation the world was doomed. It exists and therefore must end. The destiny of the Endlords is to bring about that destruction.

"The destiny of the Sull is to stand against them. Many Ages ago, after the War of Blood and Shadow, the Sull sealed the Endlords and the creatures they had taken in a prison named the Blind. How they did this, I do not know. The walls of the prison are said to exist in a place beyond the physical realm. We cannot see or touch them. Once in a thousand years one is born, Jal Rakhar, the Reach, who can approach these walls and break them. I have heard whispers from the forests east of Bludd. The Reach exists and she has caused a crack in the wall between worlds. And the Sull make ready for battle as the first of the Endlords' creatures force their way out."

It took a moment for Vaylo to realize Guff Drybannock had stopped speaking, for his words lived on in the quiet of dusk that followed. How long had they been in this tower? To Vaylo it felt like days.

I am an old man, he told himself. A chief in search of a clan. This battle is not mine.

It took an effort to speak. "These are the creatures you believe slew Derek Blunt and his men?" After the words spun with cool beauty by his fostered son, Vaylo's voice sounded harsh and world-weary to his ears. "What are we dealing with here?"

Cluff Drybannock did not appear to notice. All the while he had been speaking he had not moved from his place by the north window. He did not move now as he replied. "The Endlords are voids that can spin matter around themselves and take on living form. They walk the earth to claim men and other living beasts for their armies. One touch of an Endlord and you are taken. Unmade. Men beome other, their flesh sucked dry of life and replaced with an absence of light. The Endlords arm them with Kil Ji, voided seel, wich is said to be forged from the strange meals of time itself. If you are killed by voided steel you are also taken."

Vaylo was beginning to understand things now. "The sword-shaped pit in the earth?"

Dry dropped his gaze from his chief. "This warrior believes it was made by Kil ji."

Drawing a hand over the stubbie on his chin, Vaylo looked through the hole in the roof at the sky. It was the color of deep mountain lakes. Underwater, that was how he felt, plunged from a world that allowed him to stand upright and see ahead, into one that was murky and had no place to rest his feet. Nine men lost, and if Cluff Drybannock's fears were true they weren't even dead. Did that mean they would never rest in the Stone Halls of the gods?

"Yet they died fighting," Vaylo said quietly, barely aware he was speaking out loud.

You could not be a clansman and fail to comprehend the full horror of those words. Dry nodded softly. "The Stone Gods have long memories. If the men are ever freed from the thrall of the Endlords the manner of their deaths will not go unrewarded."

The Dog Lord found he had to think about this statement for a moment. Light was leaving the tower quickly now, making way for the chill of night. "How can my men be freed?"

Straightaway he could see this was a question that Cluff Drybannock had hoped not to answer-perhaps not even to himself. He turned to look out the window and fill his lungs with fresh air. "Once a man or woman is unmade they join the ranks of the Endlords. They too will wield Kil Ji and unlike those who are imprisoned, they have no need to force their way out. They are here, amongst us, and they walk by night. To reclaim them for the Stone Gods we must slay them through the heart."

"Mother of Gods" Vaylo murmured.

They both fell silent after that Vaylo could see Dry's profile, see him blinking as he worked the air in and out of his chest. After a while Vaylo asked him, "How do you know so much? A boy eavesdropping in a tavern would not have learned all this."

Dry turned so he could look directly at his chief. "Ihe ranger Angus Lok told me much of this last winter, when we held him in the pit cell below Dhoone."