“That’s the site of the old roundhouse.”

Bram Cormac didn’t need to follow Hew Mallin’s direction to recognize the spot where the Lost Clan’s roundhouse had once stood. A perfect circle of white heather marked the spot. So the legend was true then. Dhoone had raised it to the ground and then salted the earth to prevent anything from growing on the site. The white heather, it was told, had seeded three hundred years later. A blessing from Hammada, mother of the gods.

“What say we camp there?” Hew Mallin’s hard, weathered face gave away nothing, but Bram suspected a test.

To spend the night sleeping on the white heather of the Lost Clan was the last thing any sane clansmen would want to do. Bram took a breath, exhaled. Ever since he had forsaken his oath to Castlemilk, he’d had the sensation he was falling.

A month later and he still hadn’t come to land.

“I’ll get some firewood.” His voice sounded a bit strange so he covered it by sliding from his horse. “I’ll meet you at the camp.”

Nothing got by Mallin, but often it suited the ranger to act otherwise. Taking Gabbie’s reins from Bram, he said only, “Take your weapon.”

It was a struggle to free the big two-handed sword from its mounting across Gabbie’s rump. Suspecting that another struggle would be necessary to cross-mount it against his back, Bram tucked the sheathed blade under his arm and quickly turned away.

He was beginning to hate Rob’s sword.

The Lost Clan was in the highlands northeast of Dhoone and west of Bludd. They were on the northern edge of the clanholds with only a stretch of Copper Hills separating them from the Rift. The wind was high and fresh and half of the snow had melted. Needle-thin streams and glint ponds flashed in the late day sun. Bram was glad to be afoot, though the weight and bulk of the greatsword slowed him. Any time spent delaying camp on one of the most haunted and hallowed spots in the clanholds was just fine with him.

The ground was soft underfoot and most of the fallen wood was slimy. Tall, upright trees didn’t grow in this part of the highlands; Bram had to make do with pieces of wind-stunted yew and white pine. Lines of smoke rose in the hills just to the east. He wondered if they marked the site of one of the settlements that had sprung up in the disputed territory of the Lost Clan. He liked the idea of new clans forming, though he was pretty sure it wouldn’t be long before Robbie sent bluecloaks to wipe them out. They know the risks, Bram told himself. The question was: How would their removal change the game?

Bram thrust a length of yew with the needles still attached into his pack. Every day he was sounding a little less like clan and a little more like the Phage.

He glanced north toward the campsite. Mallin had set up his tent dead center of the ring. Instantly aware that Bram’s gaze was upon him, the ranger turned and tipped his bearskin hat. Knowing he was outmatched, Bram raised his hand in response.

Hew Mallin was breaking him, and he, Bram Cormac, had no choice but to be broken. He’d agreed to it. It wasn’t enough that his oath and ties to the clanholds were severed. Old loyalties and ways of thinking had to be destroyed along with them too. Camping on the site of the Lost Clan’s roundhouse was part of that destruction.

Strange how you could agree to something, know it was coming, and still be unprepared when it came. Stuffing the last space in his daypack with pine-cones, Bram headed for the camp.

The Lost Clan’s roundhouse had been built on high meadowland with the River Sigh guarding its southeastern approach and the Copper Hills like a fortress to the north. Bram wondered how it had been broken. Surely it would have been difficult to take by surprise?

Mallin was skinning an ice hare as Bram approached. They’d been camping out for the past four nights and Bram fell into the routine of building the fire, setting water to boil and brushing down the horses. Both Gabbie and Mallin’s stallion were grazing on the sacred heather. Bram frowned, but they ignored him. He hoped it would grow back.

Mallin was a good cook and once the fire was settled he laid the spiced and quartered hare on the hot rocks. Bram’s mouth watered as the fat began to sizzle and the sweet aroma of thyme and wild garlic was released with the steam.

“Keep your bow at hand,” Mallin said, leaning back against his bedroll.

Bram rose to fetch his bow and arrow case from his saddlebag. The sun was failing in the west, sending out a blaze of red light. He wondered what they were doing here, on the edge of the clanholds. When he had accepted Mallin’s offer to join the Phage he had imagined they would travel to the mountain cities—Trance Vor, Morning Star, Spire Vanis, Ille Glaive—places that were worlds apart from the clans. Instead they had traveled through the very places he knew best: Dhoone, Wellhouse and Castlemilk.

It had been at Wellhouse where Mallin had made the decision to head north. They had been working their way east from Dhoone when they met a group of tied Wellmen on the Bluddroad. They were miners, heading west to look for work. Mallin had spoken to them at length. He was a good listener and he knew how to make people talk. Bram couldn’t tell what piece of information had caught Mallin’s interest—the ranger always held his cards close to his chest—but Bram did know that something Mallin learned from one of the old miners had been enough to change his course. Before the miners were out of sight, Mallin had turned north.

They’d spent the next five days and nights at Ebb’s stovehouse on the River Ebb, north of the Wellhold. Hannie May, the stovemaster, had welcomed Mallin like an old friend. She’d turfed a Croserman from his quarters to make room for him, and always gave him the best table at supper—the one closest to her stove. Hannie kept a rookery above her stables and Mallin had taken Bram up there the first evening and showed him how the Phage sent messages by bird.

“That’s my beauty there,” Mallin said, pointing to a raven with glossy blue-black plumage and yellow claws and toes that was perched in a large bamboo cage with other corvids. “Take her out.”

Bram had hesitated. The bird looked mean.

“Take her firmly by the breast. Talk to her. Don’t hesitate.”

Bram unhooked the little brass catch that held the cage door closed. He had no idea how to talk to a bird so he talked to her like a horse instead. “Easy, girl. Want some treats? How about some carrots, eh?” To reach the raven he had to slide his hand past a magpie and a blue jay. The blue jay looked ready to peck him so he quickly grabbed the raven.

“That’s her throat.”

Bram adjusted his grip. The bird was was lively and surprisingly light in his hand. She chuffed as he stroked her head.

“See the collar on her left foot. That’s where the message goes. Here.” Mallin slipped Bram a slender roll of paper. “Push it in.”

Bram was aware he had not been asked to read it. The collar was made of a metal he wasn’t familiar with; ash gray and very light. He molded the paper to fit the hollow ring and with a little bit of jiggling managed to slot it in place.

“Now we seal it with resin.” Mallin took a small vial from one of the pouches in his saddle coat, uncorked it, and handed it to Bram. “Work quickly. It hardens on contact with air.”

Pressing the bird’s body against his lap to still her, Bram poured a line of resin onto the ring. It was yellow-red and smelled strongly of pine. Some got onto the bird’s foot and onto his fingers. It tingled as it hardened, pulling on his skin.

“Wipe it off.” Mallin handed him a strip of linen soaked in alcohol. “Otherwise she’ll peck it and might damage the load.”

“Won’t she peck the collar anyway?”

“No. She’s had it since she was a chick. It’s normal to her, but bits of hardened resin aren’t.”

Bram took it in. He was hungry to know more about the Phage but had learned that Mallin never revealed anything before he was ready. “How will she know where to go?”

“She’ll home.” Mallin’s yellow-green eyes narrowed and Bram guessed he wouldn’t be learning where home was anytime soon. “And then we wait on a reply.”

Bram thought about this. “Will the same bird be sent back?”

Mallin crossed his legs. He was sitting on a bale of hay, leaning against the dusty red-stained boards of the stable wall. “No.”

“How will the new bird know where to go?”

“It will fly directly to this hayloft.”

“How?”

Mallin smiled, his lips paling as he stretched them. “No need to ask why?”

Bram shook his head. This was a stovehouse. It was a place where people met, drank, talked, slept. Neutral territory in a land of warring clans. It made sense that the Phage kept birds here. “No.”

“Good.” The ranger took an apple from one of his pouches and bit on it. “Check the resin. If it’s set take the bird to the window and release her.”

Bram checked. “Is it meant to be rubbery?”

Mallin nodded

Taking the bird in both hands, Bram rose and crossed to the small triangular window at the end of the loft. The window faced southwest and Bram wondered if he could see the Dhoonehold in the distance.

“Throw her.”

Bram did just that, tossing the raven into the cloudy afternoon sky. She opened her wings immediately and beat hard to keep aloft.

“Ravens home to where they were raised,” Mallin said, surprising Bram. “When they fly from this stovehouse they are homing to the Phage. That bird was brought here overland in a cart and caged until needed. Now it’s been released it will home. The person who receives the message will send a reply with a bird who was raised here, in this stovehouse.”

Bram counted five major stovehouses in his head, and there had to be a dozen lesser ones. “That’s a lot of birds… and a lot of carts back and forth.”

Again there was that smile from Hew Mallin. Standing, he leant forward and fed the apple core to the magpie. “People work for us every day without knowing that they do so.”

Hearing the low and pointed tone of the ranger’s voice, Bram decided they weren’t talking about birds anymore.

Mallin’s gaze was surprisingly frank. Yes, it confirmed. Everything you imagine is correct.

Bram hardly knew what he imagined. He had an image of hundreds of tentacles reaching out and spinning things… and the spinning things did not realize why they spun.

The sun broke through the clouds sending a prism of light streaming through the window. Feathers and haydust stirred in the warm air as Mallin let his silence speak real and vital truths about the Phage: the scale and reach of its connections and resources, the subtlety and longevity of its plans.

“Let’s get some food,” Mallin said abruptly, ending the lesson. “Nothing makes me hungry like knowing I must wait.”

Five days passed before the reply arrived. Mallin had spent the time grooming—he’d had a local woman rebraid his hair—bartering goods, extracting information from stovehouse patrons, eating well and often and bedding whores. Bram spent time with the birds. Hannie May let him feed them. It was a revelation. They were continually mounting one another and even the pigeons ate meat. It was Hannie who informed Bram the message had arrived.

“Got a live one,” she told him as he was sitting by the stove, breakfasting on scrambled egg and trout. Mallin wasn’t around. He’d spent last night with one of Hannie’s girls. Bram decided to head to the hayloft without him.

The new raven was on top of the corvid cage, goose-stepping from bar to bar and screaming up a racket. Bram had learned a little about handling birds by then and bundled her in a blanket to calm her while he retrieved the message. Using his handknife, he broke the resin seal on the collar and winkled out the small roll of parchment. Ink had run through the paper and Bram could clearly see letters on the other side.

“I’ll take that.”

Hew Mallin climbed through the loft hatch. His expression was blank as he held out his hand. Bram had not heard him coming. Aware his cheeks were heating up, Bram handed over the paper and caged the raven.

Mallin read the message, rolled it back into a cylinder and fed it to the raven. “Get the horses ready,” he told Bram. “We leave within the quarter.”

As Bram saddled the horses on the stovehouse’s hard standing, a party of Wellmen rode in from the south. Bram’s mind kept slipping from its task and he was having trouble latching Gabbie’s belly strap. He kept thinking about the message, wondering what it said and where it was sending them, and worrying about what Mallin thought of him. Had he concluded that Bram was about to read the message?

Was I?

Bram’s thoughts were interrupted by shouts from the Wellmen. They were sworn warriors, road-weary with a heavy complement of arms and armaments, and they made the assumption Bram was the stable-boy. They were anxious to get inside to rest so Bram took their horses from them. The groom was out exercising Hannie’s mare and would not be back for a couple of minutes.

The senior warrior threw Bram a coin for his trouble. Bram caught it and opened his fist to look at it.

“It’s only a copper,” the warrior said, mistaking Bram’s silence for disappointment. “But I’ll give you a gold coin’s worth of news to top it. Robbie Dun Dhoone has taken the Withyhouse and crowned himself a king.”

Bram couldn’t recall much for a while after that. Gabbie’s belly strap must have been successfully fastened and both horses saddled and loaded but he couldn’t remember doing it. He hadn’t even mustered much surprise when Mallin had informed him they’d be heading north.

Kingmaker, Bram kept thinking. Bram Cormac had helped Robbie Dhoone become king. He still wasn’t sure what he felt about it. Mostly it didn’t feel good, but there were moments when he felt small thrills of triumph. Power had shifted in the clanholds because of a message he had delivered.

To become king, Robbie had needed his brother’s help.

Bram sat down by the campfire and strung his bow. It was dark now and the wind had dropped. Mallin was turning over the quartered ice hare with his knife. The juices were running clear.

“There’s no need to unsheathe the sword.”

Mallin was always watching him. Bram nodded toward the strung bow and half dozen arrows he’d taken from their case at Mallin’s request. “I thought we had to be ready for attack?”

A sound came from Mallin’s throat. Leaning forward, he speared the hare and set it on his plate to cool.

Bram was busy thinking. Why only a bow? What if they were surprised at close quarters? They’d need swords then.

Mallin transferred one of the hare pieces onto Bram’s plate and handed it to him. “Why was the Morrowhouse built here?”

Morrow, the name of the Lost Clan. No clansmen worth his salt would speak it. Bram cleared his throat. “Good defensive position.”

“And?”

“The river?”

“Eat,” Mallin said. He might as well have said, Don’t speak.

Bram ate. By the time he’d reached the bone he’d worked it out. “Good hunting.”

Mallin wrapped the remaining hare, turfed the fire to extinguish it, and grabbed his bow. “Let’s see what we can bring down.”

It was a long night. They took up position by the river and then did a slow circuit of the meadow. Mallin, who was an excellent shot by day, compensated for poor nightvision with stealth. Bram was glad to have something useful to contribute: he’d always been known for his eyes. They brought down a goat, and a sheep without markings that Mallin said was probably part of a wild flock that had been founded by strays. By the time the carcasses had been split and bled the sun was up and it was another day.

Bram ran his hand knife along the whetstone, honing the edge. He was anxious to get the butchering done so he could bathe in the river. He was tired and he stank of goat.

“No skinning,” Mallin said. “We’re loading them onto the horses.”

“Whole?”

Mallin threw his tent canvas over the back of his stallion. “They’re gifts,” he explained lightly, “for the Maimed Men.”

Bram managed to close his mouth about an hour later, as they walked the horses through a pass in the Copper Hills. The Maimed Men. He had never imagined a future where he visited the world beyond the Rift. What was Mallin up to? What had that message said?

Excitement stopped Bram feeling weary for half a day. Mallin kept his own counsel, but Bram knew the ranger well enough to sense that he was anxious for the journey to be done. They stopped briefly at midday to rest the horses and reposition the carcasses. Both tent canvasses were stiff with blood. In the afternoon, the land began to descend and Bram spotted the thin black line on the horizon. He knew it instantly. The break in the continent, the Rift.

They walked toward it for the rest of the day and into the night. When they reached level headland the wind picked up, blowing hard into their faces. Bram began to notice lights in the distance and then, as they drew closer, he saw how heat venting from the Rift distorted those lights and the stars above them. A low current of fear kept him alert.

“What’s that sound?” he whispered as they turned on to a well-maintained path that headed straight for the edge.

“Rift music.”

It didn’t really clear things up, but Bram could tell from Mallin’s voice that no further explanation would be offered. Bram had never seen the ranger so alert. His hands and eyes were never still. As they approached the edge, Mallin slid his hat from one of his coat pouches and put it on. It was his badge, the means by which people identified him from a distance. He was the man in the bearskin hat.

It meant they were being watched. Bram dusted down his cloak and pants. It seemed to intensify the smell of goat. They were very close now and Bram could see the Rift spread out before him. It was the darkest object on a dark night, a gap that held nothing to please or rest the eye.

Yet something was moving across it. A light appeared to be suspended above it. As Bram watched he realized it was a torch. Somehow, someone was crossing the Rift.

The path ahead suddenly turned and they were there, on the ledge. Bram could smell the center of the earth.

“You’re lucky,” Mallin said, coming to stand by him. “A night crossing’s always best first time.”

Bram’s gaze was on the torch. It was very close now and he could see the figure carrying it. He could also see that figure was walking on a rope bridge, not air.

“Take the kills off the horses and spread some feed by the rocks.”

“Gabbie and Strife stay here?”

“Horses won’t cross the Rift.”

Bram found nothing reassuring about that statement. As he untied the sheep carcass from Gabbie, Mallin called out a greeting to the figure on the bridge.

“Welcome, friend,” came the response. “I’ll send a boy over to watch the horses.” The figure stepped from the bridge onto the suspension platform and looked with interest at Bram. “And who else do I greet?”

“Bram Cormac,” Bram said, acutely aware of the space after his name where of Castlemilk or of Dhoone should have gone.

It seemed to him that the stranger from the Rift heard the space too. “Welcome, Bram Cormac,” he said, raising the torch to reveal his face.

“I am Thomas Argola, Rift Brother. Once of Hanatta… in a different time and life.”

Seeing his features and hearing his voice, Bram realized the man was from the Far South. He was slightly built, with olive skin and clever features. A speck of blood floated in his left eye.

“Keep your gaze on the horizon,” he told Bram, turning, “and don’t forget to breathe.”

Crossing the Rift with a sheep carcass slung over his shoulder after two days without sleep was something Bram would never forget. The rope bridge swung and some of the treads were gone and the light from Argola’s torch was fitful. Bram’s cloak filled with air and as he tried to flatten it he dropped a glove. Before a man could blink it was swallowed by the darkness. Bram stared at the spot where it had disappeared. He had an impulse to chuck away Robbie’s sword, and let it fall for a very long time.

By the time they completed the crossing, Maimed Men had gathered in the landing area to inspect them. They didn’t look friendly. Bram watched Mallin closely, following the ranger’s lead.

“Meat,” Mallin said, shucking off the goat carcass and letting it fall to the ground. “Brought down yesterday.”

Bram copied the maneuver with the sheep carcass. He was glad to have it gone. A fire was burning on the ledge and the flickering flames made the Maimed Men look like ghouls. None of them made a move toward the carcasses but Bram sensed that some vital requirement had been met.

Argola led the way through them. “Stillborn will want to see you,” he told Mallin. “He calls himself the Scar Chief now.”

Mallin nodded tersely, and Bram followed him and Argola into the city on the edge of the abyss.