The meal lasted into the night, the copious meat supplemented by a heady brew that smelt strongly of pine. Vaelin took only a sip before setting it aside although Alturk seemed to appreciate it. “Like drinking a tree,” he said, voicing a rare laugh as he drained his bowl.
“We ferment wild berries and pine-cones,” Astorek said. “Let it sit long enough and you can use it to light fires.”
“Lights a fire in my belly, true enough.” Alturk lifted another bowl to his lips, drinking it down in a few gulps. As the evening wore on Vaelin was relieved to find the hulking Lonak a morose drunk rather than a fighting one, watching him slump forward, head rested on his hand as he continued to down the pine ale, muttering to himself in his own language, much to Kiral’s evident disgust.
“You shame the Mahlessa Sentar with this display,” she sniffed.
Alturk curled his lip and said a few short words in Lonak. From Kiral’s furious reaction Vaelin judged they were not complimentary. She snarled a curse in Lonak, getting to her feet, her knife half-drawn.
“Enough!” Vaelin told her, voice heavy with command and loud enough to herald a sudden silence in the hall. “This is not your home and you insult our hosts,” he went on in a quieter tone, his gaze shifting to Alturk. “And you, Tahlessa, should go and sleep it off.”
“Merim Her,” Alturk slurred, half rising, fumbling for his war club and promptly dropping it. “Son killer!” He braced his arms on the table and tried to lever himself up. However, the task seemed to be beyond his diminished limbs and he collapsed, his face connecting with the table with a painful thump. He remained in the same position and soon began to snore.
“Varnish,” Kiral sneered, sitting down again and glaring at Vaelin. “You should have let me kill him. My song finds little of worth in him.”
“A troubled mind deserves healing, not death,” Astorek told her, casting a sympathetic gaze over the slumbering Lonak. “And those of the same tribe should not kill each other.”
Kiral laughed, popping a berry into her mouth. “Then, since we’re no longer allowed to kill the Merim Her, the Lonak would have little else to do.”
Astorek gave a sorrowful shake of his head. “All so strange, but so familiar.”
• • •
The feast came to an end some hours later, the Sentar carrying the still-unconscious Alturk to the far end of the hall where Astorek told them they were welcome to make their beds, the settlement lacking any empty dwellings to house so many newcomers. “The tribe grows larger by the year,” he said. “We are required to build constantly.”
Whale Killer and Many Wings appeared at his side along with Wise Bear, the shamaness pointing her staff towards the hall’s broad doorway. “It is time for our tale,” Astorek said.
After the warmth of the hall the cold outside felt crushing, stealing the air from Vaelin’s lungs and provoking an instant thumping in his temples. Dahrena and Kiral accompanied him as they followed the ice folk into the forest, Astorek leading the way with a flaming torch. The path was steep and thick with snow, the way ever more difficult the higher they climbed though the Wolf People moved with the unconscious speed born of having walked this trail many times.
Finally they came to a flat expanse at the base of a rugged cliff, Astorek lifting his torch so the light played over a narrow opening in the rock face. Vaelin saw how Kiral and Dahrena stiffened at the sight of the cave, and how Wise Bear took a firmer hold on his bone-staff. “Power?” he asked him.
“Much power,” the shaman confirmed, peering into the cave with obvious unease. “Maybe too much.”
“There is no danger for you here,” Astorek said, moving into the cave and beckoning Vaelin to follow. “This place is as much yours as ours.”
The cave entrance was narrow but opened out into a broad cavern, the walls dry and the air musty with age. Numerous bowl-like indentations had been carved into the cavern floor, each stained with dried pigment of different hues, but it was the walls that captured Vaelin’s attention. The cavern curved around them in a long semicircle, two-thirds of its length richly adorned in paintings, the colours so vibrant they seemed to shimmer in the light from Astorek’s torch.
Many Wings spoke, ushering Vaelin towards the stretch of wall nearest the cave mouth. “Mother bids you welcome to the memory of the Wolf People,” Astorek said.
Vaelin peered at the images painted onto the stone and was surprised to find the paint fresh, the images clear and easily discerned, a large patch of black paint adorned with small pinpricks of yellow he took to symbolise the night sky. A little farther along he found an image of crude stick figures, all arranged into a single large group, and next to them the same group divided by three black lines.
