‘It’s too hard, Grandfather. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do anymore. I can’tfollow.’ He punched the wood again. ‘I can’tkill myself.’ Another bloody-handed blow. ‘I just … can’t.’

It wasn’t often that Gariath flinched at a touch. All the steel and iron that had cursed his flesh in crimson words, all the scars and bruises they had left behind had never made him so much as tremble. But they had struck shoulders that were broad and proud, arms that were thick and fierce.

The hand that rested upon him now was upon shoulders that were broken and bowed, arms that hung limp and bloody at his side.

‘Wisest,’ the elder whispered. ‘We are Rhega. The rivers flow in both our blood and we feel the same agonies, as we have felt since we were born of the red rock. I don’t ask you to do this for you or for me …’ He tightened his grip on Gariath’s shoulder. ‘I tell you to do it for us. For the Rhega.’

‘What,’ Gariath asked, weak, ‘am I supposed to do?’

‘Live.’

‘It can’t be that easy.’

‘You know it isn’t.’ The elder rose up, walking toward the shore. ‘You’ve spent so much time bleeding, Wisest, so much time killing. You’ve forgotten what living is like.’

‘It’s hard.’

‘I will help you where I can, Wisest,’ the elder replied with a smile. ‘But there are better guides to life than the dead.’

‘Such as?’

After a moment of careful contemplation, the elder scratched his chin. ‘What of Lenk?’

‘Dead.’

‘You’re certain?’

‘What does it matter?’

‘Consider where you would be without him,’ the elder replied. ‘Still where you buried your sons? Or buried yourself, if whoever killed you had enough respect not to skin you alive and wear your face as a hat? How was it you managed to get away from there?’

‘By following Lenk.’

‘And how was it you managed to find Grahta? To end up here so that I might find you?’

‘Are you saying I need Lenk?’ Gariath growled, slightly repulsed by the idea. ‘He is decent enough to deserve a good death, but he’s still stupid and weak … still human. If he is even alive, how do I get him to lead me to where I need to go next? How can I even-?’

‘Many questions,’ the elder said with a sigh, ‘demand many answers. For now, limit yourself to simplicity. You are caught between lives. Choose one, then make another choice.’

‘What kind of choices?’

‘In time, many.’ The elder turned and walked toward Gariath, counting out each pace beneath him. ‘The choice to seek out my elder stone is one, but that is far away in time and distance. The hardest choice’ — he paused and drew a line in the earth with his toe — ‘is to recognise that you will never be as alone as you hope to be.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘That’s the point of cryptic musing, pup,’ the elder muttered. ‘But we don’t have time to discuss it. The much more immediate choice must happen within your next fifty breaths.’

‘What?’ Gariath creased his ridges together. ‘What choice?’

‘Whether to move or not. Forty-five breaths.’

‘What, like … move on? More philosophical gibberish?’

‘More immediate. Forty-two breaths.’

‘Why forty-two?’

‘The tide comes in at twenty, it’s taking me another fifteen to tell you all of this, and the Akaneed, which has been known to hurl itself upon a beach to get at its prey at distances up to twenty-six paces, has been waiting for the aforementioned tide for about five breaths, leaving you …’ The elder glanced over his shoulder. ‘Two breaths.’

It only took one for the water to rise up in a great blue wall, the Akaneed’s eye scorching a golden hole through it. Its jaws were parted as it erupted onto the shore, bursting through the liquid barrier with a roar that sent great gouts of salty mist peeling from between rows of needle-like teeth.

It took Gariath another to leap backwards as those great teeth snapped shut in a wall of glistening white. A low keen burbled out of the Akaneed’s gullet, cursing the dragonman as it might curse any man who broke a fair deal. Snarling, it writhed upon the sand, trying to shift its massive pillar of a body back into the surf.

‘Huh.’ The elder observed the younger dragonman’s wide-eyed shock with a raised eye ridge. ‘You jumped away. Nerves, perhaps. If you still want to die, I’m sure he won’t think it a hassle to come back for a second time.’

Gariath regarded the spectre through narrowed eyes. Impassive, the elder stared at him without flinching. He folded his wings behind his back, raised his one-horned head up to meet Gariath’s eyes with his own gaze that shone hard as rocks.

‘Make your choice, Wisest.’

And, with the sound of a snort and claws sinking into wood, Gariath did.

His muscles trembled, then burst to life in his arms, great beasts awakening from hibernation. The driftwood log was long and proud, clinging to the earth. But it tore free, resigning itself to its fate.

His roar matched the Akaneed’s, matched the sound of air rent apart as the wood howled. Both were rendered silent by a massive jaw cracking, teeth flying out to lie upon the earth like unsown seeds, and a keening shriek that followed the Akaneed back into the ocean. Blood leaking from its maw, it disappeared beneath the waves, sparing only a moment to level a cyclopean scowl upon the dragonman before vanishing into the endless blue.

The breath that came out of Gariath, rising in his massive chest, was not one he had felt in days. His hands trembled about the shattered piece of wood he still held, as though they had never known the life that coursed through them. When he did finally drop it, that life sent his arms tensing, his tail twitching …

His body thirsting for more.

This is what it means?He stared down at his hands. To be aRhega ? More death? More violence? This is what it is to be alive?

‘Not the answer you’re looking for, Wisest,’ the elder chimed, his voice distant and fading. ‘But good enough for now.’

When Gariath turned about, nothing but sand and wind greeted him. No footprints remained in the disturbed earth, nothing to even suggest that the elder had ever been there. And yet, with each breath that Gariath took, the scent of rivers and rocks continued to permeate his senses.

Perhaps he should be concerned that he felt alive again only when he was grievously wounding something. Perhaps he should take it as a sign that his road in life was destined to run alongside a river of blood. Or perhaps he should just take pride in having knocked the teeth out of a giant snake that had now failed to kill him twice.

Philosophy is for idiots, anyway.

His concerns left him immediately as he plucked the serpent’s shattered fangs up from the earth and felt their warm sharpness scrape against his palm. He would keep these, he decided, as a reminder of what it meant, for the moment, to be a Rhega.

But he could not dwell on that. His feet moved beneath him as the sun disappeared behind the sea, and already his nostrils were quivering, drawing in the scent of living things.

Seven

No matter how hard she stared, the sun refused to yield any answers to her.

It had been a long time since she had first turned her stare upward, mouth agape and eyes unblinking. If her throat was dry or if the tears had been scorched from her eyes, she didn’t care. Her breath had evaporated long ago, dissipating on the heat.

And Asper continued to stare.

The sun was supposed to reveal truth to her. This she knew. Every scripture claimed as much.

‘ And when the Healer did give up His body and His skin and His blood until there was nothing left for Him to give to mankind, and only when the entirety of His being was spent for His children, then did He leave the agonies of the cruel earth and ascend to the Heavens on wings heavy with lament.