Rays with greenish reflections fell inside the stone cylinder. Amplified by the singular shape of the chamber, the slightest rustle seemed to leap from the floor to meet the light. I couldn't help but hold my breath as I entered the well of light. Far above, an impressive mosaic, built of specular stone chips shredded the blinding daylight. Some fragments had the size of small tables, but their astonishing translucence had nothing to envy to the most crystalline glasses, because by squinting the eyes you could see through the bluish tint of the sky. The room, though high, wasn't that large, but the unexpected contrast with the sticky darkness of the other parts of the fortress we had passed through made my emotion grow at least as much as the context. Even when the initial glow had faded to reveal the ascetic sobriety of the place, the architecture, and especially the transparent interlacing of the dome, was still spectacular.

A large chiseled pewter flare, similar to the one I had seen in the shelter, was set up in the middle of the cylindrical room. Smoke rose from it in opaque spirals, wriggling like a living thing to the ventilation holes embedded under the dome. Around the flare, which had been filled to the brim with glowing coals, several stools had been placed. My seat seemed to be much smaller than the others, and it wasn't draped with any comfortable embroidery. The remaining seats were occupied. Blurred and disembodied by the pale, quivering air, five stern figures awaited me. Their outlines undulated unearthly in the heat. Someone more superstitious than me might have seen in them the mark of the spirits of the rock and snow, or of the ancient gods whose legends populate the mountains.

Forcas and Urixx didn't accompany me further than the entrance. Facing me was the cera lord and, on his right, the pale young woman I had seen the day before. On the other side was an old man with sunken cheeks dressed in one of the strangest outfits I've ever seen, a costume of animal skins with long strips of colored cloth sewn on. Opposite him was a woman of a certain age, whose hair was caught in a beautiful blue silk headdress, tied in a crescent shape. Her piercing eyes shone with the same sapphire brilliance as the fabric she was covered with. As I hesitantly approached, a helmeted warrior, who had been standing back until then, snorted. His heavy gauntlets rattled, and he walked around the flare, nonchalantly swinging his scythe. With a gesture, the lord invited me to join the place that had been prepared for me. For the next few hours, the masked warrior never stayed very far from me.

Doing my best to suppress the apprehension, but also the emerging confusion - because I didn't understand how an escaped slave deserved so much decorum - I paused before sitting down, and, as I had been taught in Castle-Horn, executed an awkward bow. The impassivity that greeted my dubious etiquette made me immediately regret my action. The Greyarm massacres had been perpetrated by the brownian nobility, and now I was mimicking their customs in front of the survivors of the slaughter. I looked down at the worn stone floor, swearing inwardly. There was silence. The old man in the costume had a coughing fit. I wondered if they wanted me to beg for my life. Then, against all my expectations, it was finally the young woman who spoke, her brownian accent strange and rolling. She articulated each word with exaggerated precision, as if she had been rehearsing these words for a long time. "I am Breanna, daughter of lufe Thurl," she said. "My father has authorized me to speak with you on his behalf. We want to understand who you are, and what you have come to do in our mountains."

I was surprised by the absurdity that accompanied these words. In spite of myself, a half-smile appeared on my bitter lips. After five years in chains and death, after the plague, after nearly losing my hands to the glacier, and now at the mercy of her father, she was being so formal with me. I raised my head, struggling to hide my hilarious anxiety, because suddenly I wasn't quite sure if this was serious. I looked around at the members of the assembly in turn. No obvious answer came to mind, except the idea that perhaps I had been made the plaything of a somewhat cruel whim. The day before, I had seen the young lady bully her father for the right to lead my interrogation. Today, she was respecting the conventions that she had been taught, and I didn't understand. The mark of Carm's slaves was carved on my face. The stained clothes I wore had been stolen from a corpse. The problem caused by my presence didn't require this staging, and could be solved with ease, with one sharp blow. I hesitated for a moment, not knowing if I should engage in this comedy when I didn't know the rules.

"My name is Fyss, and I have the blood of a Fyss," I finally replied as I looked at lord Thurl. "As I told you last night, the Brownians gave me that name because..." I was interrupted by Breanna, who clapped her hands together with the force of a whip. I flinched involuntarily. The sound was amplified by the room, then suddenly dispersed. "You must speak to me," the young woman said in an authoritative voice. Her father gave a grunt of approval, and my gaze returned to her. I wasn't sure how old she looked, with her determined look and her pale complexion, and that childish look that her skimpy makeup couldn't quite hide. "Sorry," I said, after a moment. My hands were shaking despite the welcome warmth of the flare. I decided at that moment that I had to take a chance, be as honest as I could afford to be, and hope that was what they wanted from me. Maybe my fate wasn't predetermined. So I held the gaze of the lady, which was opaline but very intense, and let her know very precisely what the situation inspired in me. "I don't know anything about your customs, and I don't understand what you want from me," I said very clearly. "I'm an escaped slave. Your warriors captured me. I don't deserve these deliberations."

The woman with the headdress made a face that unmistakably expressed her approval of my analysis, but my young interlocutor's face immediately became troubled. Lord Thurl also frowned, but the old man waved his hands and said a few words to Breanna. For the first time, I noticed that his eyes were veiled in white, and I realized that the carved staff he was clutching in an iron grip wasn't just a ceremonial accessory. The lady took a deep breath and seemed to pull herself together. However, the impassive mask that she had been wearing since the beginning had slightly crumbled, and I thought I could see a great deal of anger underneath. "We don't decide how to treat you," she said in a sharp voice. "Whether you're a slave or a spy, the spirits who inhabit our mountains have granted you passage, and our augur believes they have used you to speak to us."

"I'm not a spy, I fled from Ifos, on the other side of the mountains", I stated clearly, trying to avoid the tricky question of the spirits. My stay with the Carmians, the pile of corpses that went along with their devout customs had only increased my contempt for religion. I had erected the Vals' Padekke into a fortified tower on top of which I could ruminate my silent morgue. Besides, I knew only too well how unpredictable people became when it came to the supernatural: after all, when I had been suspected of witchcraft in Brown-Horn, I had almost been hanged. Lufe Thurl waved his hand as if my words were unimportant, and a dry sentence escaped from the thickness of his beard. Breanna nodded. "We want to know how you found out about Méti finéri." My doubtful expression was enough to trigger further explanation. "The Eye of the kings, the lighthouse in the chamber of augurs. You stopped there after having crossed the royal cemetery", completed my interlocutor. I stammered for a while before I managed to gather my thoughts. "Well, when I left Ifos I looked for a road through the mountain. I found a glacier, and I followed it. I was lucky at first, the weather was good, and then I hit a storm. I had to continue under the blizzard not to die and I found this place by chance while I was looking for a shelter. I couldn't see anything because of the storm. I didn't want to offend your gods or your dead kings."

"If you had offended them, you would not have passed," Breanna retorted somewhat curtly. "My brother Dorl says you passed through the kings' graveyard, but you didn't disturb any bones or steal any treasure." I smiled weakly. "To tell the truth, I never knew that I was passing through a cemetery, nor that kings lay there with their wealth. I was only afraid of dying, and I didn't have time to dwell on it. At that moment I would have exchanged shelter and fire for all the gold in the world." As I spoke, the lord translated my words to the old augur, who made a toothless grimace. He looked delighted. Thurl's thick face also showed a satisfied expression.

"So you lit the lighthouse without knowing what it was?" asked Breanna in a curious voice. I scratched my head thoughtfully. "I remember being confused by the canopy and the inscriptions on the burner. I couldn't read them. I wondered what it was for, but I was too cold to hesitate for long." I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying more. As I remembered, I would have set fire to the bones of the kings and the entire sanctuary to drive out the cold, and I didn't want to offend the Ceras by letting them know. The augur croaked a few words and waved his staff in my direction. "Thelis wants to know if it was the cold of the mountain that made you act the way you did," she said. I squinted my eyes. Of course it was the cold that made me loot the reserve and light the fires. It seemed to me that the questioning was heading into territory that I would have liked to avoid as an unbeliever, but also because I knew nothing about cera superstitions. The fact remained that the augur and the lord seemed convinced that I had acted under the influence of a mountain spirit. Since it seemed to me that this belief had probably kept me alive, I gave them an answer that I hoped was in accord with that belief. "Yes, it was the cold. The wind from the storm left me no choice. I thought I was going to freeze to death."

"But you didn't freeze in the storm," Breanna said hastily. "You still have your life, and all your fingers and toes." I looked down at my swollen hands, which I had protected with all my might at every step of the climb. "Yes. I don't explain it," I lied, hoping not to go too far, and I was surprised to feel a doubt creep into me, as it had when I realized I was the only survivor of the camp. Were my intact fingers that miraculous? Should I really have frozen in the mountains? Regardless of my feelings, the old man laughed out loud when my words were reported to him. He then babbled at full speed, waving his long staff here and there. Breanna translated when he was done. "Thelis thinks you have brought a good omen. The augurs light the Méti finéri when a king passes into the other world, and another succeeds him. We've not had a king for a long time, and our people are scattered. The fire in the Eye of the kings shows that a change is near." I bowed my head again, to show my acceptance of what had just been said.

Lufe Thurl spoke when I had straightened up, and I saw a glint of disappointment in the eyes of lady Breanna, who had sensed, as I had, that the leading of the interrogation had just been taken away from her. "You made a good impression on my son Dorl, and on some of my men too. You didn't try to run away, or hurt anyone." I nodded. "They treated me well, even though I had trespassed on your mountains and helped myself to your supplies. Many men would have killed me on the spot for less," I replied, my gaze shifting between the lord and his daughter. "Especially since I'm wearing the clothes of your enemies," I added, hoping to turn the discussion to more political matters, which would be more likely to inform me of my situation. Thurl grumbled his approval. "My men do not venture north of the mountains, but other lufes besides myself sometimes fight the father-folk. Our discord with the Carmians is ancient, and we don't like them. But it was the red king who killed my people, and the Brownians who owe the Ceras a blood debt." The lord pinned me with a look that meant a lot.

"Lufe Thurl," I said in a humble voice, "for the past five years I've been working at the bottom of a carmian mine. I know nothing of your customs, your history, or even what has happened to the world in that time. I must seem very foolish, but until I set foot in these mountains, I didn't know that anyone inhabited them." The lord looked at me thoughtfully. "That's a good thing," he finally said. "You have been the instrument of the spirits, and perhaps you still are. But we don't know you, and we don't trust you. The less you know, the more honest you will be. You can't lie about what you don't know." For the first time, the woman with the headdress stirred and opened her mouth, and it was to send a disdainful spit into the flare. She then spoke to the lufe while staring at me, and she did so in brownian so that I could understand her. Her voice was clear and sharp: "If the spirits are done with him, they won't stop us from mounting this Brownian's head on the gate."

"I'm not Brownian," I repeated, but my voice sounded weak and unconvincing. The woman watched me like a wild beast staring at a crippled prey, and for the first time since the interrogation began I felt the reptilian rings of fear winding through my gut. Her hostility toward me had been latent from the moment I appeared. Thurl's intervention confirmed this impression. "My brother was the husband of narche Chara," the lord said, as if he owed me an explanation. "He died in Greyarm, along with her firstborn. My sisters and my mother and fifty thousand other Ceras perished with them. That was a long time ago, now. I wasn't yet a man, but like narche Chara, I have not forgotten. We returned to our old homes and customs. My people survived, the mourning was carried out as it should be, and other children were born. But since that day narche Chara has asked me for the head of every Brownian that fell into my hands, and I have never been able to refuse her a single one."

I swallowed quietly, and nodded, wondering how many captives had stood in my place, and how many others had lost their heads without a word of conversation. "I understand," I replied, my heart pounding. "The Brownians also slaughtered the clans of the Stone Forest. As far as I know, it continues. Five years ago, shortly before I was taken prisoner by the doka Hiroï, I learned that Brown-Horn had fallen into the hands of the old families, and that those of the clans had been hunted, and sold." Thurl stirred on his stool, and poured himself a mouthful of wine from a silver tumbler. His daughter took the opportunity to intervene. "Are you from Brown-Horn?" she asked me in a too innocent voice. I protested immediately, without any ambiguity. "No. I understand your suspicions, and I know what you want to hear from me, but things are more complicated than that. I grew up near Brown-Horn, but I wasn't born there. I'm a child of the clans, and my tattoos prove it. Your men have seen them, and I can show them to you too, if you don't mind."

Narche Chara laughed curtly and turned up her nose as if I had just shown her my penis. I wondered if she had not been driven half mad by her grief. On the other side of the lufe, Breanna was whispering in the ear of the augur. After a moment's thought, Thurl silenced everyone with a single gesture, before staring at me with a sharp gaze. "You speak well, Fyss who has the blood of a Fyss. You speak brownian well and other languages too, my son told me. You stand like a warrior, you say you were captured, and yet you can read. All this is disturbing. I haven't yet decided what to do with you, and I'll wait until I hear your story before I decide. However, for now, I'm sure of one thing: you have walked the secret roads of my people and that makes you dangerous. I don't want to upset the spirits, but if you don't change my mind, then narche Chara will get your head."