LITMIR.BIZ

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tendrils like reaching fingers into the twilight.

      Since he was fasting, Zayn walked to the edge of the camp while the others ate. When he looked into the mist, he saw points of bluish light drifting close to the ground – spirits, or so the mullahs would call them, gennies and evil spirits. Ammadin called them spirits but nothing evil, just spirits, who existed as men and animals did, with neither malice nor good will. She had been teaching him the ways of her gods, to prepare him for his quest. In the darkening swirls of mist, it seemed he saw vast figures striding and drifting: Ty-Onar, the god of the swamps, all green and crested like a lizard; Hirrel of the high places, slender and black, with bright pink gills along his sides. Deep within the mists other figures seemed to gather, but never close enough for him to identify. Tomorrow he would be among them, asking for a vision.

      Sharply Zayn reminded himself that he was a Kazrak and a follower of the one true god. He was only undergoing this ordeal to keep the confidence of the comnee, because if he lost that confidence, he would have a hard time reaching the Cantons. To a fifteen-year-old boy, he supposed, the quest would be terrifying, the first and likely the only time in his life that a comnee boy would be alone. Doubtless the terror blended with the fasting and the simple pride of becoming a man to produce the visions they were supposed to see out there. Thanks to his studies of Tribal customs, Zayn could make up a convincing vision to tell Ammadin, something that would satisfy these primitive people. That was all there was to it. Superstitious nonsense. Of course. But out in the mists the blue lights danced, brighter in the thickening night. He felt a cold seep into his heart that had little to do with the dampness of the air.

      Zayn hurried back to Dallador’s fire, but since he was fasting he refused the usual keese. Maradin and the child were visiting friends. They sat together silently and watched the pale flames. After some while Dallador went into the tent and came back with a long knife in a sheath inlaid with red leather. He handed it to Zayn.

      ‘Your father’s not here to give you one,’ Dallador said. ‘Take it.’

      ‘Thank you. I can’t thank you enough – I mean that.’

      Dallador merely smiled.

      ‘I didn’t think a comnee man would have an extra knife,’ Zayn went on.

      ‘I won that one in a fight. Some loudmouth from another comnee insulted Maradin.’

      ‘Ah. To get this away from him you must have killed him.’

      ‘Oh yes.’ Dallador smiled at the memory. ‘No one’s said a wrong word to her since.’

      Zayn unbuckled his belt, slid off the sheath of his Kazrak hunting knife, and replaced it with the long knife. Settling this new weapon at his hip made him feel like a different man. As for the old knife – he picked it up and offered it to Dallador.

      ‘It’ll be a curiosity to show around, if nothing else.’

      Dallador hesitated for a moment, then took it. He looked so solemn that Zayn realized they’d just bound themselves together in some ritual way. It was a mistake, he supposed, making a friend, but he refused to go back on it now.

      That night Zayn took his bedroll and slept outside far from the camp. Just at dawn, Apanador and Ammadin came to waken him. Since he’d slept fully dressed, Zayn started to pull on his boots, but Apanador stopped him.

      ‘The rocks are too slippery. Your boots could drown you out there.’

      ‘All right.’ Zayn laid them aside. ‘Can I take my knife?’

      ‘Of course. At the end of this, you’ll either be a man or dead. If you die, we’ll bury you with the knife so you can protect yourself in the spirit world.’

      ‘All right,’ Zayn said. ‘I like that way of thinking.’

      ‘Good.’ Ammadin handed him a long, smooth pole, sharpened to a point at one end and bound at the other with a blue thread, two true-hawk feathers, and a silver talisman. ‘This is a spirit staff. Don’t lose it. Now kneel on the ground for a moment.’

      When Zayn knelt, she held up a tiny ground-stone jar.

      ‘Go to the gods. Beg them for your true name.’ She paused to dip a bit of rag into the jar, which turned out to hold a pale pink ointment. ‘Either return with your vision, or pray that Ty-Onar drowns you. How can a man with no vision live his life? How can a man with no name be a man?’

      She marked his forehead with a smear of the ointment, then rubbed it into his skin. The warmth of the rag – or was it the ointment? – was disturbing, far too hot for normal cloth. Zayn felt as if the warmth were boring into his forehead and spreading through every nerve in his body. She dipped the rag into the ointment again and wiped it across his lips. Reflexively he licked them, and she smiled, pleased. Slowly the warmth faded, but he saw with different eyes. Every blade of grass, every detail of her face and clothing, were so vivid that he nearly cried out. He turned his head and saw that Apanador seemed to be standing in a cloud of bright light.

      ‘Walk in as a boy,’ Apanador said. ‘Then ride as a man ever after.’

      Alone, carrying the spirit wand in both hands like a quarterstaff, Zayn headed towards the Mistlands. He was just out of sight of the camp when he came to the first stream, running slowly, clogged with purple tendrils of weed and pale, lavender scum in little backwaters. He stepped in cautiously, but the bed proved to be firm sand and stone. As he crossed stream after stream, the ground began to turn spongy. Even when the ground rose above the water, his bare feet made a sucking, squelching noise on the short hummocky grass. He used the spirit staff to tap his way through the marshy ground, where here and there stagnant pools of water oozed among lush red-orange lichens. Slowly the mist came to meet him, arching up and covering the sky like a tent, the torn edges gleaming in the sunlight. When he walked under the cool greyness, he could see it lying on the ground ahead as thick as a wall. The air turned cold; drops beaded on his shirt. His view shrank as the greyness built an ever-receding wall some yards ahead. Near him everything looked abnormally clear and significant: each hummock of grass, each ooze of water carried an urgent if unreadable message. His hearing, too, seemed sharper than ever before. From the mist came the sound of water slapping and splashing in slow movements, each sound like the cry of some live thing.

      As he was tapping his way along, the mist swirled to reveal a darker grey. Ahead stretched one of the lakes, a flat rippled sheet of shallow water, disappearing into the white drift. Red rushes grew sharp and dark, like strokes drawn with a scribe’s pen. Among them stood a grey flying creature of the species called cranes. With a squat body, a long slender neck, and enormous wings of naked skin, furled close to the body at the moment, it perched on one thin, pink leg and looked at him with beady yellow eyes.

      ‘Little brother,’ Zayn said. ‘Ask the gods to bless me.’

      Even as he spoke, Zayn wondered why he’d say such a thing – him, a rational man, educated at the best school in Haz Kazrak. The crane, however, bobbed its head to him, then spread great wings to reveal the pair of vestigial arms that dangled underneath. It flew off with a slap against the heavy air, its pink feet and lashing tail trailing awkwardly after. Zayn followed as it circled the edge of the lake, but soon he lost it in the mist. He began to wonder how many boys camped right here and never dared to go further into the unnerving not-quite-silence.

      He stopped at the place where the lakeshore bulged out in a muddy spit of land, pointing to a hummock out in the water. Testing his way with his staff, Zayn stepped off the spit and into the lake. He nearly cried out in surprise: the water was warm. So was the muddy bottom as it clung to his bare feet. He slogged his way out to the hummock, and from this higher ground, he could see a good ways out into the mist-shrouded lake.

      Lumps of sodden land lay like a chain of tiny islands and seemed to lead to deeper water. He was debating whether to go further when he saw the crane, perched on a hummock just at the limit of his sight. He stepped off and began making his way towards it, going from hummock to hummock, but spending most of his time in the turgid water, which grew warmer and warmer the farther in he went. It was hard going, fighting the water, testing every inch of muddy ground, clambering

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