Derka’s hooves raised a thick pall of dust as he rode Obvar down, concealing the subsequent ugly spectacle of the Stahlhast champion’s demise. The stallion reared and stamped amidst the dust for some time, so long in fact that Vaelin found himself lying on his side with darkness encroaching his vision by the time Derka was done. He could feel his life seeping away into the soil of the Steppe, feel the hard-packed earth beneath his cheek as the dust cleared to reveal Obvar’s corpse, a broken bundle of sundered flesh and bone.
“Bloody nag,” Vaelin muttered as the stallion’s head dipped to nudge him. “I expected you sooner.”
Derka snorted and nudged him again. With victory achieved he apparently expected them to ride away, but the icy chill creeping into the core of Vaelin’s being left no illusions that he would be riding anywhere. Despite his infinite weariness, he felt a burgeoning panic. With death so close he wanted to remember so much, bring so many faces to mind, but time conspired against him and he could only summon one before the shadow claimed him.
PART III
For those of us who spend our days attempting to parse meaning from the myriad enigmas of existence, one essential dilemma will forever remain unresolved. Life, you must understand, is dependent upon death. For new life to flourish, what has gone before must perish. The deer must die so that the tiger may live, the tiger must die so that it does not eat all the deer and its cubs will have prey to hunt. We, in our arrogance, imagine ourselves removed from this cycle. Have we not crafted wonders? Have we not divined the course of the stars and measured the weight of the world entire? Have we not cloaked ourselves in this concordance of trickery and comfort we choose to name “civilisation”? Yes, we have done all these things, and yet in essence we remain no different to the tiger or the deer. For a new concordance, a new civilisation to rise, the old must and will fall. The Emerald Empire may call itself eternal, but it is no more than rice paper drifting ever closer to the flame.
—FINAL STATEMENT OF THE MOST ESTEEMED KUAN-SHI, PHILOSOPHER AND POET, EXECUTED FOR TREASON AND HERETICAL TRANSGRESSION, EMERALD EMPIRE, C. LATE FIRST CENTURY OF THE DIVINE DYNASTY
LURALYN’S ACCOUNT
The Third Question
My people have no calendars, at least none that have ever been written down. The obsession with carefully tracking the passage of days amongst those who live beyond the bounds of the Iron Steppe is seen as baffling and pointless by the Stahlhast. Can they not see the stars in the sky? Can they not feel the chill of a coming winter or the warmth of summer? When the days grow warm it is time to hunt or fight. When frost sparkles on the Steppe it is time to pitch tents for the long camp and guard your food stocks well.
But there is one particular day that must be marked, its arrival being so important. When the star the priests call the Herald of the Unseen appears between the two stones that form the gate to the Great Tor, it is time for the one considered worthy of elevation to Mestra-Skeltir to face the question of the Unseen. And so, as the wind took on the bite of winter and the first icy jewels beaded the grass, we gathered to watch the Herald crest the horizon so that my brother could answer the third and final question.
There was a sense of inevitability to the whole affair, the great swath of encamped Skeld possessed of a celebratory mood that left little room for doubt. Regardless of what rituals the priests might insist on, Kehlbrand was now acknowledged as Mestra-Skeltir by almost all who called themselves Stahlhast. Furthermore, he was the chosen Darkblade of the Unseen, greater than any mere man. All Skeltir followed his word and the artisans considered him a god, or at least godlike in his generous and merciful deeds. I was as lacking in uncertainty as any other that first night; as the songs grew loud and the Stahlhast fell to their revels, there was no doubt in my mind. Tomorrow my brother would answer the third question, ascend to Mestra-Skeltir and the great southward march would begin. What I didn’t know, what the True Dream had never revealed to me, was that the Mestra-Dirhmar also had a question