Chapter 14

Kitaglu, Lower Panak

Eldako said the village was not as he remembered it. This was not a surprise; a hundred years had passed since he'd last visited the lands of the Ice People—perhaps longer. It baffled Forlo to think of this, as it usually did when elves spoke of their age: to know that both the merkitsa and Shedara had been alive long before his own grandfather was born was difficult to grasp. To think they might still be alive, and unchanged, when he was long dead was even harder.

All the people the wild elf had known in Panak were dead now, as were most of their offspring. Some of the grandchildren were elders. Kitaglu seemed to have shrunk in that time, he said, as they entered the village. The gathering of huts, dug into hard-packed snow and frozen earth and covered over with seal skin, seemed almost absurdly few, a fragile thing amid the blizzard's blustering wrath. Hard times had visited Panak.

Angusuk had told him about the hard times during their trek. The Dread Winter, and the Godless Night after it, had been hard on the Ice People. Entire clans had perished. The Fox were gone, and so were the Orca. The Elk were scattered, many of them living with other tribes now. The Spirit Wolf had nearly succumbed as well, but long and hard struggle had kept them alive. Forlo listened to Eldako translate the tale in a half-baffled haze: he knew nothing of these strange folk or what other clans might lurk out on the wastes. He had never expected, even in a life mostly spent far from home, to come to these lands.

Slowly, the people of Kitaglu were beginning to recover, but there were still only about two dozen family huts, gathered in a hollow that gave meager shelter from the hungering wind. Ragged white pelts flapped on long poles; others had been stripped away, blown the gods knew where by the storm. The yakuk, the tall tribal totem carved from dragonbone to resemble a snarling wolf's head, leaned precariously, on the verge of falling. The outdoor peat fires had all gone out. A handful of older boys came out to greet them, their faces muffled and masked. They took the warriors' spears, then sprinted off toward their tents.

Angusuk took a moment to speak with his men and take a count of how many the Eyes had claimed. Seven were missing, and Forlo knew they were gone forever. If the Uitayuik hadn't gotten them, the storm certainly would. Seven men dead, to bring them here. Eldako counseled them all to lay their hands over their mouths, the Ice People's sign for mourning; everyone but Hult, who was too dazed to think properly, did so immediately. Seeing this, Angusuk nodded. Though his face remained covered, the sorrow in the gesture was unmistakable.

"Come," he said. "Tulukaruk awaits in the anho-ti."

They followed him. Forlo asked what an anho-ti was. In response, Eldako pointed at a long hut ribbed with whalebone that stuck out of the top, like crisscrossed fangs. Snow-pack covered the hut, dyed with blue and violet symbols, spirals and jagged lines, faded and blurred by the storm's passing. Nine wolf tails hung before it—three white, three black, and three rusty with what had to be dried blood. There was no mistaking the portent: a sorcerer dwelt within.

The makau of the Spirit Wolf, eldest of the clan.

Angusuk stopped before the anho-ti. Ruddy light spilled out around the edges of the flap, along with curls of pungent smoke that vanished on the wind. Forlo felt the others tense: there was warmth in the hut, and they yearned for it. But before they could take a step closer, Eldako raised his hand.

"We must lay down our weapons," the wild elf said, shrugging off his bow and laying it upon a skin in the snow. He did the same with his sword and hunting knife. "None can bear arms in the presence of the makau."

Forlo was a soldier and loath to lay down his arms to any who didn't command him, but there were limits to military stubbornness. The Ice People clearly wished them no harm, or they would have simply left them out in the storm to die. Besides, he sensed his sword wouldn't be much use against the makau, so he drew it and set it down with Eldako's weapons. Numbed by cold and by their ordeal with the Uitayuik, Hult did the same.

Shedara had blades secreted all over her, however; Forlo counted eight, in all, when she finally stopped producing weapons. He gave her a hard look, and she rolled her eyes, pulled a stiletto from her boot, and laid it with the rest. Nine.

"That's all," she said, folding her arms. "Or would you like to search me?"

That was enough to satisfy Angusuk. He stepped aside, holding open the flap. A yellow-brown haze billowed out, and the wind ripped it apart. The hunter waved them in with a felt-wrapped hand, and so they went, back into warmth, and light… and low, watchful growling.

"Khot," Forlo swore, reaching for where his sword had been. He put a hand out to keep Shedara back. Hult did the same at exactly the same moment.

Three large creatures lay within the smoky hut. At first, Forlo thought they were wolves—larger than any he'd ever seen, with dead white fur and ice-blue eyes—but then he realized he was wrong. There was something half human about the beasts' faces, and their forelegs ended not in paws, but in stubby hands. Something about them made him think of Chovuk, in the tiger-shape he had worn just before their duel at the Run; glancing sideways, he could tell from Hult's pallor that the same thought had crossed the mind of the Uigan.

The half-wolves rose from the floor of the anho-ti, baring teeth like knives, their ears flattening back at the sight of strangers. Looking at them, Forlo realized there was something else strange about the creatures: he could see through them, just a little. Not just man-wolves, then, but ghost-man-wolves. Cold hung about them like a cloud.

"What in Nuvis' name…" Shedara breathed.

"Amaguik," Eldako whispered. "Spirit-wolves. Do not move. Their bite will turn your blood to ice."

Forlo stared at the beasts; the look of them alone seemed enough to draw the last of the warmth out of his body. Freezing mist puffed out of their snarling mouths. Head lowered, one of them sniffed the air, then took a step toward the tent flap.

"Suka, lie!" snapped Angusuk behind them. "Pachak, Pamir—be still!"

The spirit-wolves obeyed immediately, settling back down, their heads lowering to the tent's earthen floor. Angusuk let the flap close, then took off his mask, scarf, and hood. He was older than Forlo had expected, gray in his wispy beard, with a bald patch on his head. A scar ran the length of his nose, either from battle or some ritual disfigurement—both seemed equally possible. His eyes were dark, framed with wrinkles. He smiled, gesturing toward the fire.

"Go on," he bade. "The Amaguik will not trouble you. The makau awaits."

"So I do, Master of the Hunt, so I do," crowed a voice from the far side of the anho-ti.

The words startled Forlo, for they were in the language of the League; unlike Angusuk, Eldako did not need to translate them. The wild elf and Shedara were also taken aback. Only Hult, who understood everything thanks to Nalaran's amulet, didn't react with surprise.

Eldako led the way past the spirit-wolves. Forlo and Hult eyed them suspiciously as they crept past. But the creatures looked bored, no longer even meeting their gaze.

As they drew nearer to the fire, the heat of it was almost painful. Smoke watered their eyes. Heaps of skins lay around the flames; on the highest pile, wrapped in a blanket of white fur, was Tulukaruk. He looked even smaller and frailer than he had out on the wastes, when he cast the spell to destroy the Eyes; he was a wizened husk of a man with skin the color of old wood. Tulukaruk raised a hand in greeting, his fingers as thin and frail as bird bones. His dragon-horned staff leaned against the tent's wall behind him. This, and the tingling Forlo felt just looking at him, spoke of the makau's power. Shedara bowed her head, recognizing an archmage every bit as mighty as Nalaran.

Eldako steepled his fingertips before him, a sign of respect. "We greet you, Eldest. We owe you a great debt for saving us from the Uitayuik."

"It is not I you should thank," said Tulukaruk, "but the men whose families now wail in their tents, who went west to meet you and did not return."

"We weep for them, makau," Eldako replied. "And we shall pray for their spirits when this meeting is done. Your people have risked much and suffered greatly to bring us here."

The creases in Tulukaruk's face deepened. "We have." The makau's eyes glittered as they fell upon Forlo. "You are surprised I know the southern tongue. We have much lore, we elders. I can understand the hawk's cry and the wolfs howl. I can speak the languages of men just as well. I would have you all know what I must say."

Forlo bowed his head. "Thank you," he said.

"Not so swift!" Tulukaruk said, favoring them with a smile that boasted mostly bare gums: Forlo doubted the old man had more than six teeth. "The way ahead is dark for you. Are you not the one whose child was stolen?"

Forlo blinked, astonished, but said nothing.

"Yes," the makau continued. "The child, and the woman who carries him. Your beloved Starlight. Yes. And you, Shedara of the shadow-haunted wood, you seek the statue, the one whose hood has fallen. I know this. I have dreamed it, here in my tent." He gestured to the spirit-wolves, who looked back at him with glittering gazes. "The Amaguik sing to me of your tale while I sleep, for they can travel far beyond the winds when they will it. I know of your people's doom, Hult, son of Holar. I know you abandoned your master, in the end—and I know that you all will know fresh grief before this journey is done. Most of all you, Eldako, Prince of the Green—though what form this woe might take, I do not know."

The tent fell silent, save for the dull roar of the storm outside. Forlo shivered, and Shedara and Hult were both pale. Eldako looked even more unsettled, and he lowered his eyes to stare into the fire. Seeing that the merkitsa wasn't likely to speak again soon, Forlo coughed and cleared his throat.

"Then you also know why we're here," he said. "You know what we seek."

Tulukaruk smiled his toothless smile, which made him look disturbingly like the oldest infant in the world. "Ukamiak! The silver sage, the namer of dragons. Yes, yes, I know. That is why I sent Angusuk and his warriors to find you. For no man has sought the Namer since the ancient days, before the First Destruction. No man has dared. Yet you have come, at great need. Much rides on your shoulders—perhaps more than any of you know. Have you the scale?"

Forlo nodded. He shrugged off his pack, opened it, and rooted inside. He pulled out a bundle of cloth, and unfolded it to reveal the plate of glittering black. Head bowed, he laid it at the makau's feet. He heard movement behind him and glanced back to see that the spirit-wolves had risen again and were staring at the scale as well. Shuddering, he forced himself to turn his back on the Amaguik.

"It is as the spirits sang, then," Tulukaruk said, gazing at his own reflection in the scale's surface. "Ukani nau gut-apang, my wolves called it."

"A shard of broken night," murmured Angusuk.

"And so it is," the makau declared and looked up again. "Go, Angusuk. Tell the families of those who are lost that their kiri have not died in vain. The Namer shall be awakened. Ukamiak shall speak again."

Steepling his fingers, Angusuk pulled on his mask then walked back past the Amaguik and out of the tent. The wind's screaming grew momentarily louder, then muffled again as the flap swung closed. Tulukaruk stared into the flickering fire, his eyes narrow.

"Will you show us the way, Eldest?" asked Eldako. "Will you tell us where the silver sage sleeps?"

Tulukaruk looked up. Again, the childlike smile. "No, brother merkitsa. That is something I do not know."

The others looked at him, troubled. "What?" Hult blurted—the first word he'd spoken since the Eyes disappeared. "But you must—"

"Must?" Tulukaruk interrupted, his voice suddenly as sharp and forceful as a spearhead. His expression grew fierce, his eyes like shards of flint. "Do not speak to a makau of must, child of the steppes."

Hult scowled but fell silent, chastened—and a little afraid, if Forlo read his expression right.

"Then what?" Shedara asked. "Who can tell us?"

Slowly, Tulukaruk's smile returned. "The same who tell me," he said and shrugged off his blanket to reveal his bare chest, webbed with scars. "I do not know the road you must take… but the spirits do."

With that he rose and went to fetch his staff.

The makau's chanting began low and soft, a rhythmic wheeze that wasn't words at all—only breathing. Tulukaruk stood before the fire, head bowed low, white hair spilling forward to hide it. The flames guttered and danced as if a wind blew upon them, though the air in the anho-ti was still and stifling. The dragon-horn staff in Tulukaruk's hand bobbed with his voice, rapping the ground again and again, strings of beads and teeth rattling against its shaft. The air seemed to darken at the hut's edges, while brightening around him. Bit by bit, so slowly Forlo didn't notice it at first, the ruddy color leeched out of the firelight, turning it gray. The flames did the same—before he knew it they had gone from golden to dead white. Their heat faded as well, and the cold of Panak seeped into the tent.

Outside, the storm roared.

The others watched, rapt, silent. This was not magic as it was practiced outside the snow-wastes—not even on the Tamire, among Hult's people. This was primal, frightening. The language Tulukaruk spoke wasn't the same, the gestures he made were strange. The energies that flowed through the anho-ti were different, more dangerous. Shedara, in particular, watched with wide eyes. Her people's wizards, even Nalaran, wielded power that, when unleashed, could rage like a mighty thunderstorm, whose thunderbolts might shatter towers of solid stone. What the makau tapped was a hurricane that could blast entire cities from the face of Krynn. It was sorcery, chaos, blood-magic; it had nothing to do with the power of the moons. If it went wrong, it would kill not just them, but everyone in Kitaglu. Forlo felt terror gnaw at his guts, and had to will himself not to jump up and flee out into the blizzard, just to get away from this terrible magic.

Tulukaruk's song grew louder with every breath, now not just a breath but a song with words, uttered in a deep, growling drone. His feet shuffled, his body swayed; sweat glistened on his wrinkled, many-scarred body. His free hand rose, scattering gray dust over the flames. The motes caught and leaped up in a billow of sparks. The fire shimmered, then turned blue, draining the last vestiges of warmth from the hut. Shadows swallowed everything more than a pace from the fire.

Hult whispered something, too soft to make out, but Forlo guessed it was a prayer. The Uigan little trusted even their own sorcerers; with someone like the makau, it went against all his instincts to hold still, not to flee or find some weapon to use against the old man. His hands were clenched into fists, the knuckles yellow-white with pressure. Even Eldako sat quiet, subdued, his face lost in thought.

Tulukaruk's voice grew deeper, lower still. The staff struck the ground twice for every beat: one-two, one-two. His hair rose in snakelike strands, floating about his head as though it were under water. He sprinkled more of the powder, and the flames leaped in reply, blazing violet now. A second voice, high and whistling, rose from the makau's throat, as before. The eeriness of it raised bumps on Forlo's arms. It warbled higher and higher, building into a shrill, hurtful sound; then, abruptly, it stopped, and Tulukaruk threw his head back at last, looking up at them.

But it was not Tulukaruk they saw. The shriveled, toothless old man was gone, and in his place was something that wasn't even human. Its eyes glowed like blue stars, their pupils the thinnest of slits. Mouth and nose had changed into a snout full of long, sharp teeth. His ears had lengthened, and hair had burst from his brown, wrinkled skin: pure white fur, the color of frost. Only his hands didn't transform, only they remained human, still gripping his staff.

In the darkness of the hut, the spirit-wolves howled. Hult let out a yell, then stumbled backward, reaching for where his sword would have been if he hadn't given it up outside the anho-ti. Shedara raised her hands, fingers tensing, ready to cast a spell of her own to escape, if necessary. Eldako stared, not breathing. From the neck up, Tulukaruk had become the image of a white wolf.

Forlo understood now. Tulukaruk communed with the spirits by becoming one of them, an Amaguik. And the three creatures, the spectral beasts who shared the makau's tent? Had they been sorcerers once, too? Were they Tulukaruk's predecessors, and would he become one as well, when his life finally ended?

The spirit-wolf swept its heavy gaze over his four visitors. Its lip curled, eyes flaring wide. When it spoke, the words did not come from its lips; they simply resonated in Forlo's head.

WHO DISTURBS MY SLEEP? it asked.

Forlo and the others exchanged glances in the stillness. The tent was growing colder by the moment; soon it would be just as frigid as outside, where the blizzard continued to wrack the village. Forlo licked his lips and stepped forward.

"We do, Great One," he replied. "I am Barreth Forlo of Coldhope. My companions and I seek your aid."

YES. I HAVE SEEN YOU BEFORE. The wolf's head craned forward, teeth bared. Nostrils flared; frost danced in the air above them. Forlo had the sense that if Tulukaruk—or whatever was now living in his skin—breathed on him, he would freeze solid. YOU ARE THE ONES CHASING THE STATUE.

"The Hooded One?" Shedara asked, her voice so soft they could barely hear her words. "You know where it is?"

AND HOW WOULD I KNOW THAT, CHILD OF THE SHADOW-WOOD? The spirit's voice curdled with scorn. YOU KNOW THE QUESTION YOU MUST ASK.

"The Wyrm-namer," Eldako spoke. "Ukamiak. We seek him, but know not where he dwells—only that he is in the north."

THE NAMER… The Amaguik drew the word out into a growl. Something popped in the fire, sending a shower of blue cinders billowing toward the ceiling. YES, I KNOW OF HIM. I SEE MUCH, SON OF THO-KET. I SEE YOU IN THE NAMER'S CAVE, WITH THE BLACK DRAGON'S SCALE. I SEE YOU WITH THE STATUE AS WELL. THIS IS WHAT SHALL BE.

"Then… you will tell us?" Forlo murmured.

I WILL. BUT YOU MUST PROMISE A SERVICE TO ME FIRST.

"What sort of service?" asked Shedara warily.

AVENGE ME. WE AMAGUIK WERE ONCE LIVING THINGS. ONCE, LONG AGO, WE RULED THESE LANDS… UNTIL THE DRAGONS CAME AND SLAUGHTERED US ALL, TO CLAIM PANAK AS THEIR OWN. UKAMIAK LED THEM. I DIED BECAUSE OF THE NAMER AND HIS KIN—AND I WAS NOT THE ONLY ONE. ALL OF MY KIND PERISHED IN THOSE DARK DAYS, AND WE LINGER FOR REVENGE. WE REMAIN IN THIS WORLD BECAUSE HE STILL LIVES. I WILL TELL YOU WHERE TO FIND THE NAMER… BUT YOU MUST PLEDGE TO SLAY HIM, ONCE YOU HAVE THE KNOWLEDGE YOU SEEK.

Forlo caught his breath. To kill a dragon… it seemed impossible, especially one as ancient and powerful as the Wyrm-namer. The others all looked horrified, Eldako more than the rest. The wild elf's people revered Ukamiak, as did the Ice People.

But that was the price, and Forlo knew there would be no negotiating with the spirit-wolf. The hunger for vengeance blazed in Tulukaruk's eyes… and eagerness shown in Forlo's as he stepped forward, his head angled back.

"You have our word," he said. "We will do what you ask. Once we know where the black dragon is, the Namer shall die."

"What?!" Shedara asked.

The Amaguik laughed, and the last of the light vanished from the hut. The spirit-wolf's eyes gleamed hungrily in the darkness. It was not a pleasant sight.

VERY WELL, said the voice. SINCE YOU SUBMIT, I WILL AID YOU. JOURNEY EAST WHEN THE STORM BREAKS. IN NINE DAYS' TIME, YOU WILL COME TO THE MOUNTAINS KNOWN AS THE HOARSPINES. THERE YOU WILL FIND WHAT YOU SEEK, BENEATH THE HIGHEST CRAG, CALLED GREYTOOTH BY MORTALS. THAT IS WHERE THE NAMER DWELLS, WHERE YOU WILL FIND THE MURDERER OF MY KINDRED… AND WHERE HIS ACCURSED BONES SHALL LIE UNTIL THE WORLD'S ENDING.

The makau threw back its head and bayed at the roof of the tent. The other Amaguik picked up the call as well, joining so loudly Forlo had to clap his hands over his ears to stop the pain. The fire burst, loosing a huge tongue of flame that started blue, then faded back to white, and finally to familiar orange again. When it was done the light returned, and the spirit was gone. Tulukaruk stood in its place, swaying on his feet, his face old and brown and wrinkled once more.

The shadows fled. Warmth returned. The makau gazed at them, his eyes clouded, then sagged to the floor.