chimney smoke behind it and no footprints at all.
Josef gave a low whistle as he watched the line of smoke vanish behind the trees. “No wonder the bastard was so hard to find.” He looked over at Eli. “So, you’re his friend; are the storms here that dangerous or was the bear man spinning a story to get rid of us?”
“I don’t think that’s the case,” Eli said quietly, looking south. There, barely visible over the treetops, the black smudge of a storm front was building on the horizon. That much wasn’t so unusual; the weather in the mountains was finicky, but something was off. The clouds around the storm front were drifting south, yet the dark thunderheads were plowing straight north against the wind, and moving fast.
“Come on,” Eli said. “I don’t think we want to be around when that hits.”
Josef nodded and they began to move east, following the streambed, walking as fast as they could go in the loose sand. Behind them, the storm rolled on, veering slightly west in the direction Slorn’s house had gone.
The walking house stopped on a rocky cliff at the edge of the Awakened Wood. It turned twice in a circle and then crouched on the cliff’s edge. As soon as the house stopped swaying, Slorn opened the door and stomped down the rickety steps, his bear face unreadable. Pele was right behind him, and they took their positions in the high, scrubby field that led up to the cliff.
The storm rolled over the forest, lit from within almost constantly by arcs of blue-white lightning. The treetops tossed sideways where it passed, yet no rain fell. Slorn and Pele hunched against the wind as it came, howling and heavy with the ear-splitting pressure of the storm. The clouds flew overhead, blotting out the afternoon sun, and the cliff went as dark as rainy midnight. Slorn could feel Pele shivering next to him, and he put a hand on her shoulder, steadying her as they waited in the dark.
Lightning flashed all around them, jumping between the clouds in spidering arcs. Then, with a crack that split all hearing, a single tree-sized bolt struck the ground in front of Slorn, blinding what little night vision he had gained. But no light could blind the world Slorn saw through his spirit sight, and as the clap of thunder followed on the lightning’s heels, he saw it appear. A primordial storm, such as had not been seen in the world since creation, stood before them, an epic war of air and water spirits and the lightning spirits they birthed, embroiled in an endless conflict hundreds of miles across. Yet all of this was bound into the shape of a tall man in a black coat carrying a long sword, crushed together by the white mark Slorn dared not look at. The flash of the lightning faded, and Slorn let his normal eyes, the bear’s soft-focusing, near-sighted vision, take over. It was best not to look at the Lord of Storms as he truly was for too long.
For a long, awkward moment, no one spoke. Finally, Slorn took the initiative, lowering himself in a small bow. “Welcome, as always, my lord. What can we do for you?”
“Spare me the gracious-host routine,” the Lord of Storms said. His voice was impatient, and he was looking around, his flashing eyes seeing through everything. “I’m just here to get our new recruit his sword.”
The Lord of Storms stepped aside to reveal another man standing behind him. Slorn’s eyes widened in surprise. He hadn’t even seen the man until now, though that was due to the Lord of Storm’s control over his thunderheads. There certainly was no other way Slorn could have missed the monster of the man who stepped forward. He was taller even than the Lord of Storms, and nearly twice as wide. His head was clean shaven and crisscrossed with pale, puckered scars. His black coat, which was too small, he wore open and fluttering in the wind, the sleeves ripped off to make room for his bulky, overmuscled arms. His face had the strange, smashed look of a brawler’s, the bones broken too often to ever sit right again. Yet what made Slorn look away in disgust wasn’t his crooked fingers or his sharp-toothed, murderous sneer, but the sash he wore across his bare chest.
It was a strip of crimson fabric tied over one shoulder of his ripped coat. The cloth had several long, telling splatters streaked