a thing about domes,' observed Skintick behind them. 'But let's hope that some of those channels still run with fresh water. I feel salted as a lump of bacon.'
Crossing the dead lake had been an education in human failure. Long lost nets tangled on deadheads, harpoons, anchors, gaffs and more shipwrecks than seemed reasonable. The lake's death had revealed its treachery in spiny ridges and shoals, in scores of mineralized tree trunks, still standing from the day some dam high in the mountains broke to send a deluge sweeping down into a forested valley. Fisher boats and merchant scows, towed barges and a few sleek galleys attesting to past military disputes, the rusted hulks of armour and other things less identifiable – the lake bed seemed a kind of concentrated lesson on bodies of water and the fools who dared to navigate them. Kedeviss imagined that, should a sea or an ocean suddenly drain away to nothing, she would see the same writ large, a clutter of loss so vast as to take one's breath away. What meaning could one pluck free from broken ambition? Avoid the sea. Avoid risks. Take no chances. Dream of nothing, want less. An Andiian response, assuredly. Humans, no doubt, would draw down into thoughtful silence, thinking of ways to improve the odds, of turning the battle and so winning the war. For them, after all, failure was temporary, as befitted a short-lived species that didn't know any better.
'I guess we won't be camping in the village,' Skintick said, and they could see that Clip had simply marched through the scatter of squatting huts, and was now attacking the slope.
'He can walk all night if he likes,' Nimander said. 'We're stopping. We need the rest. Water, a damned bath. We need to redistribute our supplies, since there's no way we can take the cart up and over the mountains. Let's hope the locals just dropped everything like all the others did.'
A bath. Yes. But it won't help. We cannot clean our hands, not this time.
They passed between sagging jetties, on to the old shore by way of a boat-launch ramp of reused quarry stones, many of which had been carved with strange symbols. The huts rested on solid, oversized foundations, the contrast between ancient skill and modern squalor so pathetic it verged on the comical, and Kedeviss heard Skintick's amused snort as they wended their way between the first structures.
A rectangular well dominated the central round, with more perfectly cut stone set incompetently in the earth to form a rough plaza of sorts. Discarded clothing and bedding was scattered about, bleached by salt and sun, like the shrunken remnants of people.
'I seem to recall,' Skintick said, 'a child's story about flesh-stealers. Whenever you find clothes lying on the roadside and in glades, it's because the stealers came and took the person wearing them. I never trusted that story, though, since who would be walking round wearing only a shirt? Or one shoe? No, my alternative theory is far more likely.'
Nimander, ever generous of heart, bit on the hook. 'Which is?'
'Why, the evil wind, of course, ever desperate to get dressed in something warm, but nothing ever fits so the wind throws the garments away in a fit of fury.'
'You were a child,' Kedeviss said, 'determined to explain everything, weren't you? I don't really recall, since I stopped listening to you long ago.'
'She stabs deep, Nimander, this woman.'
Nenanda had drawn up the cart and now climbed down, stretching out the kinks in his back. 'I'm glad I'm done with that,' he said.
Moments later Aranatha and Desra joined them.
Yes, here we are again. With luck, Clip will fall into a crevasse and never return.
Nimander looked older, like a man whose youth has been beaten out of him. 'Well,' he said with a sigh, 'we should search these huts and find whatever there is to find.'
At his command the others set out to explore. Kedeviss remained behind, her eyes still on Nimander, until he turned about and regarded her quizzically.
'He's hiding something,' she said.
He did not ask whom she meant, but simply nodded.
'I'm not sure why he feels the need for us, 'Mander. Did he want worshippers? Servants? Are we to be his cadre in some political struggle to come?'
A faint smile from Nimander. 'You don't think, then, he collected us out of fellowship, a sense of responsibility – to take us back . . . to our "Black-Winged Lord"?'
'Do you know,' she said, 'he alone among us