She had seen so much in such a short time since leaving Nakkiga, first the plains and headlands that had seemed to throb with life, then the ship and the impossibly wide ocean, and now on this island mountainside the mad cacophony of colors, a thousand different trees and vines crawling over each other to stretch toward the sun. It was almost hard for her to believe that it was all happening to her, a halfbreed, perhaps the youngest Talon ever gifted with the Queen’s trust.

Yes, see me now, Father! she exulted. At the order of the queen herself, we seek the bones of Hakatri, brother of the Storm King! It was like a story—a new one, a tale whose ending she had not heard time and again.

“You make too much noise,” Makho the chieftain growled. “I hear your every footfall.”

The Queen’s Talons, their guides from the village, and their translator, the ship’s captain, had begun climbing again by dawn’s first light, when the mortals could see. Makho was clearly disgusted at being delayed by mortal frailties, but the islanders had warned that the shrine, as the ship’s captain called it, was guarded against strangers and there was no way to tell them of the Hikeda’ya’s arrival beforehand.

As the sun rose higher and Nezeru grew more used to the rioting greenery, the slopes on either side of the mountain trail continued to produce more astonishing colors; crimson, cup-shaped flowers like falling blood drops, great swaying banks of yellow mountain olive, and lavender-blooming heathers that clung to the slopes like a fur mantle, delighting Nezeru’s eye. The Singer Saomeji insisted on naming them all, breaking in on her pleasure to identify marsh marigold in wet ditches, moss campion and saxifrage, as if naming something added to its pleasure, or knowing was somehow better than simply seeing.

The sun was still well short of noon when they reached the summit and what the mortal captain called “the place of the bones,” a large, low, circular stone house with a sod roof. Many more of the small, brown people came out of the building to greet them, all of them males with shaved heads and wearing similar clothing, yellow and blue robes belted at the waist by colorful scarves. To Nezeru, some seemed no more than children, and it was these who watched the approach of the Hikeda’ya and their escort with the greatest curiosity. Then, as Makho and the rest approached the low front door of the building, a final small group came out, two shaven-headed men helping a third who was the strangest, oldest mortal she had ever seen, his skin so full of wrinkles he might have been made of jerked meat.

The Rimmersman captain stepped forward and made a long speech in the villagers’ tongue that had the old man nodding and smiling. When the captain finished, the wrinkled old man replied at some length.

“The head priest welcomes you,” the captain explained. “He says he is very pleased that the People of the Bones have come to this place to pay their respects, and he wishes to let you know that he and his priestly ancestors have honored and cared for them for more years than the meadow has grass blades, and will do so until the sun falls from the sky.”

Nezeru understood now that this place was some kind of religious shrine, and that all these men and boys were either priests or in training to become priests, like order acolytes back home. But how had mere mortals become the stewards of Hakatri’s remains?

Makho was not one for decorated speech. “Tell him we will see the bones now.”

His abruptness caused more than a little consternation among the priests, but at last they led their Hikeda’ya visitors inside the building. A few hides covered with swirls of paint hung on the walls, but otherwise the large main room with pounded dirt floors was dark but for the firepit in the center and the smokehole in the roof. The place smelled of many things, mortal human bodies not least, but Nezeru could also detect sweet oils and the charred dust of flowers and plants, small offerings, burned over many years, whose cloying scents had infused everything.

The old chief priest said something, gesturing with his hand.

“The fire always burns,” the captain translated. “That way the sacred bones are always in the light.”

The collection of brown bones was piled in a shallow pit just beyond the fire—a skeleton, neatly stacked, with the skull placed on top. The bones were oddly pitted, filled with holes as though someone had attempted to make them into musical instruments, then put them aside again, unfinished.

The old priest spoke. “He says, ‘Behold,’” the captain translated. “‘These are the bones of the Burning Man.’” His fellow priests made a kind of moaning sound, but precise and measured, as though part of a long-practiced ritual.

“See the scars made by the dragon’s blood,” said Saomeji. He spoke quietly, but there was exultation in his voice. Nezeru, too, was awed to see the actual remains of Hakatri, the Storm King’s brother—Hakatri the Dragon-Burned, revered by both Sithi and Norns. Together Hakatri and his younger brother, who would one day be known the world over as Ineluki the Storm King, had slain the black worm Hidohebhi, but the curse of Hakatri’s unhealing wounds had driven him out of the lands of his people and neither Zida’ya nor Hikeda’ya had ever seen him alive again. Could these bones truly be his? Nezeru looked to Makho, but saw no doubts in the chieftain’s expression.

“These are what we came for,” was all he said. “Mortal, tell the priest that our great queen needs them, so we will take them now.”

The captain stared at him, his bearded face so pale he almost looked like one of Nezeru’s band. “But I c-cannot say that,” he stammered. “They will kill us!”

Makho looked at him with contempt. “It is possible they will try. No matter. Tell them.”

“Please do not make me say these words, immortal ones,” the captain begged.

“Tell them!”

The priests had been watching in apprehension, understanding something was wrong, but when the captain translated Makho’s words they cried out in agony. The old priest pulled free from his two helpers and limped forward until he stood between Makho and the bones. He raised trembling arms. His high-pitched voice was full of agitation and anger. But when the captain started to translate, Makho waved his hand for silence.

“I do not need to know his objections. They are unimportant. The Queen of All has sent us for the bones of her kinsman. Tell the old man that his people have cared for them well and they have the queen’s gratitude. That should be enough for them.”

But the captain had barely begun speaking when the old priest let out a cry of anguish, then turned and threw himself across the bones where they lay on their bed of sand, shielding them with his scrawny body. Makho stared at him, then looked at the other priests and acolytes now shoving in through the door, their faces dark with anger.

Makho had his sword in his hand so quickly that Nezeru did not see him draw it; a moment later it swept out and the ancient priest’s head rolled to one side. Before the severed neck had pumped twice, Makho used his foot to shove the body away from the bones so that the blood only seeped onto the stones and into the crevices between them. The old priest’s comrades cried out in horror.

“Singer, gather noble Hakatri’s remains,” Makho ordered. “We return to the ship.”

Even as Saomeji hurried to comply, the nearest of the dead priest’s helpers leaped at Makho with a shout of fury, only to be sliced through to the backbone by an offhand flick of Cold Root, the chieftain’s witchwood blade. More priests began streaming into the temple-house, screaming as if they had lost their minds, grabbing at the Norns with the clear purpose of tearing them to pieces. Kemme immediately killed two with one thrust of his spear, spitting them like meat on a skewer.