Hywel the blacksmith measured the powder – a mix of charcoal, iron dust, the black scrapings from the forge’s chimney – into the stone-cut bowl. Just so much, then three pinches of pure, sifted sand and five of the gray ash, freshly fallen across the bore’s smoldering slopes. To Hywel’s sensitive touch, he could yet feel an echo of the fiery deeps from which it had been exhaled. Push. Twist. Push. Twist. Sweat trickled down his creased jawline to collect in dirty rivulets, finally soaking into the folds of rough spun cotton he kept tied around his neck. The torn length of faded red cloth had once hung from a legionary’s shoulders; had kept him warm on a chill night, the fierce sun from his armor in the day. Now it clung dark and blood-red against Hywel’s skin. Much like the gaping frown Hywel laid across the Krîll’s throat those many years past. Push and twist. Push and twist. It would be another turn of the glass before the bowl’s contents were fine enough. Then he would add water, a drop of nâzrill’s venom, simmer over the forge’s fire until it thickened to an inky paste . . . Time still to grind and remember.
I am Gwenllian, daughter of Faeryn, who fought and died at Devil’s Gap. They say her bow kissed over two score Krîll souls before it fell from her dead grasp. She fought beside her sister in Caelyn’s Talon. They stopped the Krîll legions that day. And all the days that followed.
Today is my sixteenth naming day. I was clan-named a fourday after my birthing because I was battle-born on the slopes of the Glîm Mountains. My mother was raiding that day. It is said she killed a Krîll centurion within hours of my birth. Today I join the talons. Raise my bow against our enemy as my mother and father did. And theirs before them. I will bring honor to my ancestors. And death to my enemies.
I will tell you a secret. One last confession before I abandon my childhood forever. The pain. I have never known such pain. It is said I will know more before I am free.
Fire burns new-bright. Spears of yellow flame rise as fresh laid logs settle atop coals of black firerock. Wood hisses and pops while sparks, like angry hornets, fly free in wild gyres only to fade and die amongst the stars’ brittle glitter. Wood. Precious as water. Found many leagues to the north, beyond the ashen verge that marks an end to the eldritch desiccation of dust and stone that so haunts this once verdant land. But tonight, precious wood burns. Tonight, it casts light upon the rights of passage for Elen, Gwenllion, Gwgon, and Cyngen. Tonight, these four will pass into their talon’s ranks. Children no more, but warriors proven, comrades accepted. Bearers of their clan’s mark. Clans of the Aestrâgor – People of the Promise.
Esyllt, High Singer of Clan Raven, raises her arms above the four figures, her fire-lit shadow casting long wings into the dark. Two women, two men. Each kneels, sitting on their heels, backs straight as spears; eyes blinded in blood, ablaze with febrile exultation; faces weeping sanguine tears. Determination and purpose writ hard in pain across each bloody mask. They kneel, clothed only in their own bloody ruin. From cheek to brow the skin lays raw, punctured until not a sand grain’s part remains whole. Faces torn to render the sigils of their clan. Here a crimson wing, sweeping free as flight to cross eye and brow; there a taloned claw, grasping a cheek with painful strength.
