Ayente’s body did not stop shaking as Archos sat back, his long tail swished out like an undulating snake behind him, her ice blue eyes looked up through shining pools of tears. ‘So very different, yet that absolute trust… like his when we were ambushed…’ Archos touched the tip of his talon to just below her left eye and caught a tear there.

“Please… explain, tell.” She begged shakily, holding onto his other arm as if desperate for his strength.

“Let me begin with his prophecies. You tell me of this time when he had you hide in trees, and to do so near water. Deer need water, yes?” He asked hesitantly.

“Yes, they do, as do we.” She replied as if it were obvious.

“And they also do not look up much, if they are always going for water in the morning, and never looking up, then to hide in trees is to ensure an easy hunt. This was not the promise of gods, this is just noticing behavior in the prey.” Archos said bluntly and drew his talons away from her face. He held his palm up and closed one of his sharp tips into his palm.

“Predicting a fire in summer is no harder, dry things burn often, and it was only a matter of time before a fire began. Too, he could simply make one himself if it didn’t occur when needed.” Archos drew another talon in to his palm.

“Predicting death on a hunt for these unikoslof, the cave bears, is just playing to probability. You often lose people, he made this prediction knowing it was going to happen sooner or later. And when it did, he could claim word from the gods and say it was fulfilled.” Archos drew a third talon into his palm.

“When he promises disaster, he avoids being exact, with no time limit, he can never be said to have a failed prophecy, and when he is vague, his telling to you of what the gods say is open to interpretation. This is part of it, did you not say? That the prophecy can be said after a thing has happened?” Archos asked gently, but in a ‘prompting’ sort of voice that imitated his teachers when he was asked a question that he was supposed to find the answer for himself.

“But so many successes…” She proposed, “Remember the marking stones…?” She argued, but he could see in her face she had begun to understand just as she slowly turned it away to look in the direction of her people.

“Yes, he relies on you remembering when it ‘works’ and forgetting when it doesn’t. After all, think, if there is no time limit, and it must be interpreted, then it can ‘never’ fail clearly and beyond doubt. Thus he may always say he has heard the will of the gods!” Archos said emphatically and closed a fourth talon into his palm.

“But what of I?!” Ayente screamed and fell to her knees. “He said I would destroy it all! Everything… and now look! My chief died, my people, in such numbers, the many… gone… gone because of ‘my’ idea! He knew! How could he know that?! Only the gods could bless him with knowledge, or curse me as a destroyer!” Her right hand formed a fist and pounded against Archos’s body.

Archos’s face was stone until he looked down at her, and closed the final talon of that hand, that which bore her tear, and enfolded it into a fist, “He did not. He said these things to bring you fear, misery, and pain. He said that prophecy to force you to open your body to him. That your tribe lost so many, is because you knew nothing of war. I believe if that had not happened, incited another fear, or created a new lie to explain why you did not destroy anything. In the end, he may even have simply traded you away and claimed he prevented disaster by one act or the other. Either way, he could then put another stone into the mud to decorate his hut.”

“Do you say there are no gods, then?” Ayente asked in a whimper that was barely her own voice as he knew it.

“I do not know of any gods, but if I have not met them, I have also definitely not ever met any who spoke for them. Malach is a liar, he has manipulated your people through tricks and mental traps, using observations and guesses, asserting to know things he did not know, after they happened. Any can do this.” Archos replied in a slow, calm, even voice, his fist tightening in as if to crush the tear that rested in the center of his palm.

“I predict that the Unikoslof will be slain and a great feast will happen when we return.” Archos said casually, and Ayente stared up at him, slack jawed.

“It is easy to predict what has already happened, and easy to predict what is very likely to happen, or to make happen, that which i predict, and then claim to have fulfilled a prophecy. All I need is to know the story I wish to tell, and I can tell ‘the future’ especially if I can simply say afterward what was ‘truly meant’ the whole time, after something happens that fits it, however slight.” Archos chopped his hand out dismissively, his palm opening and casting her tear into the flames, creating a brief sizzle before it vanished into steam and its salt found a home in the dirt.

“No!” Ayente’s head snapped back so that she was staring at his body, “My mother’s contempt… my… my status, my life… all as it is, because he lies? My nightmare, the day I gave into him in fear… all lies to serve himself?” She let her head fall forward, her forehead landing against his hard, scaley surface.

“I… my hope of being redeemed, if you say truth, it is gone.” She whispered and pounded her fist uselessly against his body.

“Yes, but that is good.” Archos said, ignoring her feeble frustration.

“Good… how is that good?” Ayente wept bitterly and raked her nails over his scales as if burrowing for answers in the flesh beneath them.

His right talon went beneath her chin, and though it was sharp enough to tear flesh, she felt no fear as it raised her eyes upward to him. “It means you need not be redeemed at all. That there is nothing to redeem. That you were never a cursed one. It is true that it means all your life as you knew it was a lie, but look closer. It means that all the bad you feared, all the bad they told you, all the ways you loathed your life, were never there. You are not going into a nightmare, you wake from one, right now.” Archos said gently, and brought two talons beneath her chin and tilted her face up.

“I do not lie to you, little sister. Malach does. Who wants to use you, will lie, will deceive, will take and expect you to be glad of it. Who does that fit? Malach, or me?” Archos asked and his gaze held hers, she could not look away.

“You bled with me… how can I deny you… but this… this, what was word for a thing that is and is not?” Ayente asked, her small fleshy hands turned no more into fists, but going flat against his body, her nails curved and dug against his scales as if he were made of stone.

“Hypothetical, should, could, or maybe. It is one, but knowing not what is.” Archos repeated the explanation, and she nodded slowly and rested her head against him as he let his talons come away from her.

“It is this, I do not know what is. Tell me, can he not know he lies to us, to me?” Ayente asked and bit her lip hopefully.

“I think he does know he lies. His words are too self serving, he wants you, perhaps because you despise him, and if he truly feared his gods, if they truly had him as a servant? No, I think he would hesitate to do as he does, or that they would tell him not to do as he is doing.” Archos said with gentle reproof, and let one arm go around to her back, his massive talon covered most of it.

‘His body… burns compared to mine, warmer, like he is more alive than the living.’ Ayente thought, grateful for the brief distraction.

“Then… I, can you be wrong? Is it possible that all I know is not a lie?” She didn’t look up when she asked the question, and was deeply grateful to the night for covering them so, even with the blazing bonfire, half their bodies were wreathed in dancing shadows. Beyond, she could feel the eyes of the deep people, their confusion was like a tingle on the back of her neck.

A series of howls in the distance might have drawn alarm an hour before, but she barely heard them, a whirlwind ran through her mind as she looked at her memories again through fresh eyes.

The lecherous look when Malach gave a pretty cursed one the promise of happiness if she would join him in his furs. ‘Yes… it wasn’t the prophecy… it was that she was no longer outcast among us. Her laughter and smile, her joy, her happiness, was that she was not scorned. The gods didn’t deliver her happiness, we did. Malach only stopped giving her pain.’

One by one she ran through the memories of her life, and reframed them one after the other, looking at it as if he were not the voice of the divine, but a liar taking what he wanted by lies.

They ran like wild horses through her mind, faster and faster, till horses could not have kept up with them and it was more like a raging river in a great torrential flood. Every thought, every word, every deed, every thing he’d ever said for or against anyone, all taken through her mind that she could remember until she could bear no more…

And Ayente screamed into the darkness, the glazing shimmer in her blue eyes went from trickle to raging flood. However as she arched her back and screamed at the sky, Archos felt her entire body go tense, it wasn’t the cry of the faint.

He felt her body shaking violently, and felt her blood racing in her veins, and her heart beating with wild abandon. The corners of his maw drew back in the fraction of a smile.

‘That’s what I hoped, what I believed I’d see.’ He thought to himself.

Rage burned in her eyes.

Ayente’s wrath poured out like a bowl of spilt milk and spread throughout her every bit of flesh. Ya'los sto tope! Ya'los sto tope! Ya'los sto tope! YA’LOS STO TOPE!” She shouted ever louder with ever growing fury that Archos had not seen out of her since she bared her teeth and thrust his spear at him to protect her fallen comrade. A bloodlust he knew to well of those resolved to end lives or die in the attempt. He looked down into her eyes as she arched her back and howled her anger into the uncaring night sky where the water moon in the sky tugged back and forth again and again in an endless cycle. Her eyes were cracked with blood around the icy blue, as if something new was being born within them.

Archos didn’t need a translation from her to know just what she was saying even as fast as she spoke, but she said it again in his own tongue. “I… will… kill… him.”

“Yes, yes you will.” Archos said calmly as he stroked her from the back of her head down to her waist.

A low growl emanated from deep within her body, her teeth were bared with hate. “Liar… liar… liar. I’ll kill him for it, he made me into a curse since I refused to be his plaything… He wanted me to be his, I will make him mine. I will take away his favorite plaything, make him choke on his stones. I will take ‘everything’ from him. I will have… yurif.” She was barely whispering words, but they poured out as if they had a will of their own.

“What is ‘yurif’?” Archos asked uncertainly.

“To hurt one who has hurt you, that we may feel better, and so others fear to do as the first hurter did.” She explained with a weak smile.

“Yes, we have this, we call it ‘revenge’.” Archos replied, and another bridge between their races was formed in common understanding of the fruits of wrath.

“Yes, revenge, I like this word sound.” Ayente replied viciously, her eyes reflecting the ever shifting watery moon above as if the tug of war between gods was going on inside her own eyes. “I will have revenge. Against Makine, and against Malach. They want a curse… I will bring them curse, and they will weep to the gods for mercy. When those gods give them only what I received, and they beg mercy from me, I will give them as much as the gods.”

“Good, very good.” Archos said, then they paused as they sniffed audibly at the same moment as the smell hit them.

“I… seem to have burned my meat while we spoke.” Ayente said unhappily.

“It’s fine, I will give you more, you can cook it again.” Archos replied, and reaching out with one talon, he sliced a portion free.

“No. I think… I will eat it as you have.” She said, and as she took it in hand, she turned the fur side away, and chomped down hard on the raw flesh and fat, as if she were a half starved predator herself. A thing which, while he watched her smear the blood over her now hardened and forever scarred face and below her savage eyes, he recognized that she very clearly was.

Malach sat alone in his hut, glaring at the little piece of black rock he’d pulled from the mud. It sat defiantly in his palm, refusing to disappear or to become something more familiar. Light from the small gaps in his hut, glinted off the surface making it shine with an otherworldly light. He gritted his teeth in hatred at the stone that the monster pulled out of the lake. The light caught flecks of blood on his palm where the edges cut his flesh as if the damned rock hated him.

“That bitch… that monster…” He muttered and threw the stone at the dirt where it bounced away.

The memory of vomit was still fresh and even now he wrinkled his nose at the sense that he still smelled it on himself. ‘Outcasting that damned fool was not enough.’ Malach thought to himself, his lip curled into a snarl and his body shook with rage, only his excellent hearing warned him to don the expression of serene meditation. His eyes closed and hands resting on his crossed legs while breathing slowly and evenly, he was to any who saw him, completely at ease.

The flap to his hut was moved aside by a big, meaty hand, and when he saw who it was, he snapped, “You touch the furs of the shaman? You know the unredeemed cannot do that!” He barked in rebuke and shook his fist angrily.

The young man, flinched, his long dark hair bounced behind him, and his brown eyes went down to the dirt in shame. “I would not, but strangers come.”

Malach’s fury vanished, less at the young man’s contrite and submissive voice, and more out of curiosity. He stewed on the matter for only a moment. “Your next boar head comes to me to atone for your taint. I will then pray to the gods that you are forgiven, and bless your next attempt to take a mate.”

Barely more than a boy, the young man’s voice still cracked as he spoke humbly, “Thank you, voice of the gods, for your generous forgiveness.”

Malach’s smile spread slowly over his face, he could taste the face meat already sliding over his tongue. It buried the slight resentment at the humbled one. ‘That’ll teach you to follow that defiant bitch.’ He mused as he recalled the defeated face of the boy, and all the remaining unredeemed that went with the chief and with Ayente out to the Cave Children’s range.

He scurried away before Malach even reached the fur covering the entryway.

The boy was right at least, a pair of men were standing in the distance, visible on a low rise, not moving.

Malach was quick to act and bark orders, “Raise the smoke!” He exclaimed, and the tribe began to gather together in earnest. It was with some disgust that he saw a number of spears had replaced their former gray stones with the black rock the dragon dredged up. ‘All the unredeemed… they all use the black stone. Why does that give winter’s chill to my spine?’ He asked himself the question, but pushed it down as the fire went up and the smoke rose into the sky.

“Good, for a moment I was afraid they were not going to raise the smoke for us.” Kelo said with relief, he relaxed the grip of his hand on his spear and felt the flow of sweat begin to cease.

“Of course they did, brother. The Red Axe may be fierce, but they are not stupid. Where we do not strike, they will not, as long as we honor their customs.” Seyi replied, but he too, felt relief rise and relaxed the grip he held on his own spear ever so slightly.

“Just be careful, Seyi. Their shaman is said to possess the power of future knowing. The gods speak to him, and so we must show him all respect as we discover what moves among their people.” Kelo reminded his brother pointedly, a memory coming quickly to mind of the time his brother blasphemed by trying to get on a horse he found sleeping in a field.

Seyi blushed, “I know what you’re thinking, but we were children, my pain was punishment enough, and I am not always so rash.”

Kelo stared at him deadpan, at which Seyi blushed and rubbed the back of his head where fire red hair hung braided to the shoulder. “I said not always, not ‘never’.” He added pointedly.

Kelo shrugged, “Truth, come, they wait.”

So saying, the brothers bent down and picked up the bundled furs by the long strip of interwoven furs and hefted them against their backs, looping it across their bodies and keeping their hands free, they walked down into the place where the fire of the Red Axe burned, and fell to their knees in front of the flames. “We are Kelo and Seyi of the Spirit Horse, we come to trade, and ask for one day’s fire and food as part of our trade.” Kelo said in the Red Axe tongue as he lowered his spear across his body and rested it reverentially on the ground in front of him. His brother did the same, and finally one of the tribe approached the pair.

“I am Malach, voice of the gods, shaman of this tribe, and we welcome our neighbors in peace.” Malach held out his hands and placed one on each of the brother’s shoulders, his smile was wide and true as his fingers closed over the strong, broad frames of the young walkers. ‘Yes, you may serve my needs.’ He mused privately and turned his back to them in good faith to give instructions to his followers.