"I've heard of such thinking," Thanar said. "Do you believe it?"

Kellin shrugged. "It's not my area. It makes sense to me, though. And it cuts to the heart of what you said: that all of life may have a common origin and therefore be linked."

"I need no sage to tell me that. I feel it." He asked, "What god do you revere?"

"Principally," she said, "I worship Oghma. Why?"

"The Binder of What Is Known," he said, repeating one of the titles of the Lord of Knowledge. Kellin was faintly surprised Thanar knew of it, that he even knew of Oghma. She supposed it made sense for him to know of a god so opposite to his world view. "Tell me, why should the world be bound? Is not everything dead once it's bound? Once it is written in books or scrolls, it no longer lives in nature."

"I'd rather think that it will live forever if it's written," Kellin answered.

"And our tribe?" Thanar probed. "If we are destroyed, will we live forever in your father's books, or those you will write in the future?"

"You will be remembered," said Kellin, "by anyone who cares to remember you."

Thanar caught a fallen leaf. It was dry and withered, and he crushed it in his fingers.

"Perhaps that's better than nothing," he said.

"You're not like the others," Kellin pressed. "I understand you lived apart from the Thunderbeasts for many years. Do you consider yourself a member of the tribe?"

"Still the sage." Thanar smiled mysteriously. "Do you mean to put my answer in a book?"

"I can't promise I won't," said Kellin, smiling back. She felt much more comfortable with him.

"I spent many years away from it, truly," said Thanar. "But I was born a Thunderbeast and a Thunderbeast I remain. Even if the rest of the tribe withered and died, and I spent a lifetime in the Spine of the World, never seeing another human or speaking another word aloud, a Thunderbeast I would stay."

"Yet in the past you sought to distance yourself from your tribe."

"Others have done worse. Thluna's closest friend left the tribe to join the Black Lions, a matter which weighs heavily on him. The Black Lions' way holds much appeal for the young Uthgardt, it seems. I wonder, in Garstak's soul, does he still think of himself as a Thunderbeast? As for myself, after all this is over—and assuming I still live—I may choose to leave them behind for good. I hold that my tribe is something I carry around inside my heart."

"I'm worried about Vell," Kellin admitted. "He doesn't feel much connection to his tribe. Not now."

"Not ever," corrected Thanar. "He was one of the silent. You have seen them—Hengin, Grallah, Ilskar, and Draf—our warrior companions who follow their chief's orders absolutely and who seldom speak. I would wager that in their depths, they do not identify with their tribe as they feel they should, and that this is a matter of private shame. Many generations have pressed on in such anguish."

"What worries me," said Kellin," is that Vell doesn't have anything else solid to hold on to."

"He'll have his own choices to make," said Thanar. "We must have faith that he'll make them properly."

Kellin looked up at the vast Canvas of Grandfather Tree's leaves and was lost again in its beauty and majesty. "Do you think it would be all right to stay here a bit longer?" she asked.

Thanar smiled. "I don't think it will do any harm," he said, and together they lingered and marveled at the tree's everlasting dignity, undiminished by the nagging hollowness they felt in their hearts.

* * * * *

Vell flinched as the scales took him. Like an arrow to his brain, the change came, and he could feel all of his flesh awaken with thick natural armor, making his limbs heavy.

What scared him most was how natural it felt.

Two trolls were bearing down on him, their green flesh stretched taut over jagged bones. The woods were bright here, the trees spaced far apart and the sun shining brightly above. This was the reason Lanaal had lured the trolls here, where the space was open enough to accommodate even a behemoth.

Lanaal was here, Vell knew, perched somewhere in the trees above, watching and waiting. Within his blood frenzy, his eyes were clouded over with the insensibility of rage, but he could still hear a sharp, shrill bird call—Lanaal goading him forward, daring him to call on his full transformation. But he held back, even as one of the trolls wrapped its huge hands around his neck and twisted.

Vell clapped his hands on the troll's forearm and squeezed tight, ripping the arm free of his scaled neck. He kicked the troll's left knee then the other, sending it tumbling backward onto the leaf-covered forest floor. Before it could recover, he jumped onto it with all of his weight, landing with both feet on the troll's chest. Troll bones snapped under his impact, and he watched its hideous face as the shock hit home, it eyes bugging out and its mouth spewing forth a plume of thick green liquid that splashed over its face.

Vell knew he shouldn't finish the fight too swiftly. Though his sense of reasoning was weakened in his state, he had no intention of drawing the death blow yet. He was enjoying himself. When Vell shifted his attention to the other troll, staring up into the green-gray face topped with a wiry shock of black hair, he saw something he never would have suspected: fear.

The ground trembled around Vell as he walked. So it was with the beast shamans of his tribe when they called on the powers of the Thunderbeast and grew armor of scales.

Vell commanded the tremors to cease, to see if they would. And they did.

Hopping off his downed victim, Vell strode toward the troll slowly and it stepped backward, watching him intently and bracing for the attack. Armed with nothing but his own scaly strength, Vell plunged forward toward the troll's middle, delivering a forceful punch. The troll withstood the blow and struggled with Vell, raking its claws through his tribal robes, ripping them to find any skin beneath not protected by those thick scales. Finding none, the troll brought its fist to the side of Vell's head. The blow echoed like thunder through his skull and sent him flying against a fragile tree nearby. The trunk cracked behind him as the full brunt of his weight struck. The tree toppled into the clearing with a mighty noise.

The first troll's regenerative powers worked to knit its shattered bones together, and the monster rose to confront Vell again. With his feet against the stump of the broken tree, Vell wrapped his arms around the fallen trunk and spun it in a circle, its branches breaking off as it struck other trees. This brought complaint from the treetops above, and even in his rage, he thought of Lanaal in bird form, likely dislodged from her perch.

Facing the two trolls, his arms still around the trunk, Vell used it as a caber, hurling it full on against the trolls. It struck them both in the midsection, knocking them both backward. Like a great pin it rolled, over their chests and faces, stripping its bark on their rough skin. And like an engine of destruction, Vell was on them, tearing into their bodies with foot and fist.

A high-pitched trill sounded above him, and Vell was partly drawn out of his blood fury to remember what he was here to do. Standing tall and straight, he summoned the heart of his courage, not the courage that compelled him to fight monsters, but that which let him look into the most frightening things lurking inside him. He clapped his eyes shut and searched his depths for the will to leave his body behind and fully accept the scales' embrace.

Vell's throat went dry and his mouth filled with the acrid taste of growing fear. Troll breath washed upon him, but he paid it no mind; the danger would make it easier, he decided. The beast within must emerge—this was life or death, just as it was when Sungar's Camp was under siege. His blood coursed faster and thicker through his veins, his pulse throbbed in his neck like a drum beat, but the beast stayed sleeping. Vell's mood disintegrated and his energy with it, and when he looked down at his hands they were pink flesh, the scales retreating as suddenly as they had come.