would hire Raelech stonecutters to come down and throw up some walls and basic structures for us. I told him to lie and say the work was for a new settlement near Tharsif. If he sailed cleverly and timed it right, returning under cover of darkness, the Raelechs might not even realize they were building on Nentian soil.
Taking stock of our population as they filed off the boats was a sobering task. I had hoped to save more. The lack of warning doomed many.
But the culling might end up saving us in coming months, horrific as it is to say. I do not think we could support Harthrad’s entire population here, having no existing infrastructure on which to build. As plentiful as the game is in Ghurana Nent, it is not sufficient to support so many giants for long. The sea will provide for a while; only when we have reliable crops coming in will we be out of danger. But what potential exists in this land!
Trees on the mountains for the taking. Metal inside the mountains to be scooped out. Fertile land for us to tame and ocean waters that have rarely been fished. We will sow and we will reap a future undreamt of in the minds of Hathrim, who have so long thought themselves confined to Hathrir—who have, for too long, shied away from taking what is here to be taken.
That is, if we do not combust out of sheer stupidity.
Once we got a communal hearth going—a row of fires, really, over which we were roasting our first meal slain by Halsten’s pack of hounds—I was forced to let the new head priestess of Thurik speak to the people as soon as the sun set. Or at least there was no reason to deny her. If I’d known what she would say ahead of time, I might have simply cut out her tongue, but the old priest, lost in the explosion of Mount Thayil, had never given me cause to worry before.
She was a different creature from old Durif Donorak. Where he was staid and musty, she was a riot of color and energy. All the lavaborn draped themselves in the fireproof leathers of lava dragons out of practical necessity, but she wore a fitted corselet fashioned from their spiny tails, and at the center of it she wore a harness of blown glass chains that looped over her shoulders, under her arms, and about her waist and were clipped front and back to a brushed bronze and copper circle of Thurik’s Flame, similar to what I wore on my own armor. But the chains had been heated and treated to reflect different colors—the entire spectrum if I wasn’t mistaken—and she used this to dazzling effect. When she stepped near the fires, her shaved head gleamed in the light, and the glass chains shimmered over the lava dragon scales. Putting a finger between her brows, she sparked it, and the whale oil she had smeared over her shorn skull ignited, setting the glass chains to gleaming. That made for quite the visual; Durif had never indulged in such theatrics. She had a chain leading from her right nostril to her ear as well and additional chains around her neck. Only ten feet tall, but she dressed and carried herself to command attention.
“We gather around Thurik’s Hearth for comfort,” she said, her voice ringing like a hammer striking steel. “And a comfort it is. That’s one of the many uses for fire. It can give us a sense of safety and protect us. But we know better than all Hathrim now how destructive it can be as well. And while we mourn the loss of our homes and especially the loss of our friends and family, after every fire it is our duty to consider what comes next. Do we rebuild? Do we move on? How best to proceed? For one of Thurik’s most sacred commands to us is to use fire as a creative force more than a destructive one, to craft tools so fine that they are themselves works of art.”
There were some nods and grunts at this, and the priestess lifted a finger. “And while we are creating, we must not forget to build for strength as well. And we do that by burning away our impurities.”
The response to that was far louder than I expected. I realized I might have misjudged the mood of the people and shot a startled glance at Sefir, who