Murmurs of alarm spread through the crowd and even among the elders.

  Eldest Isak clapped his hands again.

  “Order!” he boomed. “If we have any further such disruptions from the spectators, we will take this meeting elsewhere.”

  It wasn’t quite an empty threat, Mariella noted. The village had one building large enough to hold such a meeting, the Chief’s house. It had been untouched by the flames from the recent attack, as it was the building furthest from the direction the squad had approached from.

  “Vidalia,” Eldest Isak said in a frustrated tone of voice. “You must have known what sort of reaction your words would provoke. Please tread more carefully as you express yourself. I know you are young, and I have often seen you show wisdom beyond your years, but remember that we must make decisions at this gathering that you requested, not provoke panic.”

  “Deepest apologies, honored elder,” Vidalia replied, bowing her head. “It was not my intention to provoke panic, only to present the facts as they exist honestly.”

  “Doubtless you have a plan for how we might win such a conflict,” Elder Michael observed. “Or at the very least, how we would survive it?”

  “As I said, we could flee, or we could fight. I rule out hiding as an option, because the enemy will send so many soldiers in their efforts to retaliate that any hiding place would be found when they scour our mountains. They will not stop at the ground level of the Salt Waste, perhaps not ever again. They will march through the sand, they will march down the beaches on the other side of the mountains, and yes, they will march up into the mountains or down into any cave or crevasse we might slide into. Because we beat them. Yes, we won a glorious victory. They will remember it.”

  “Fine, seer, you were right, and we elders were wrong,” Elder Michael said in a snotty tone. “Now what would you propose we do if we don’t want to be slaughtered?”

  “Fleeing is the first option,” Vidalia said, keeping her composure remarkably well despite a rather hostile reaction from both the Council and, Mariella could sense, the crowd. “Our people came here on boats long ago. We were many, then. Ten thousand. A fraction of that number remain now. We were reduced from our peak even then. We had been many thousands. Perhaps millions. Still, ten thousand then was many relative to what we are at this point. I’ve seen them in visions when I delved into the past. Our brave ancestors, fleeing everything they knew, crammed into hundreds of boats. They never destroyed those vessels. They still exist. I know where we could find them, if we so chose. Many will still be functional. Likely enough that we might make our way to other shores.”

  The crowd began to mutter among itself again, some seemingly interested in the idea of leaving this place, while others—mainly the young men, again—were angry at the suggestion that they abandon the home they knew.

  Eldest Isak cleared his throat loudly, and the crowd grew quiet.

  “Place that option in the back of your mind, for now, seer,” he said. “We certainly appreciate your efforts to consider all our options and even to create new ones using your powers. But please keep the boats’ location to yourself unless you’re asked. Best not to air that in public.”

  To make sure they’re still in place in case we decide we need them after all, went the unspoken logic.

  The dream seer bowed her head in a gesture of obedience.

  “Is there another option besides flight?” asked Elder Cyril. “You had suggested we could fight, but how would that even work?”

  “The other choice is war,” Vidalia said. “Brutal and messy and with no possibility of victory except one.” The entire village seemed to have grown silent as she spoke. “We must empower Lord Necromancer using all means at our disposal. A simple choice. Place all the resources that we can at his command, or face defeat and destruction.”

  The reaction from the Council of Elders didn’t seem particularly bad at first. There were a few who nodded to themselves, and Elder Michael opened his mouth to speak, a sincere smile dancing across his lips for once.

  “Including access to the Valley of Martyrs,” Vidalia added.

  That brought a sudden change to the mood.

  Multiple members of the Council suddenly spoke all at once, talking over each other in their desperation to make their voices heard.

  “Are you certain you’re not allowing your feelings on the subject matter to cloud your judgment, Vidalia?” asked Chief Mihalic, eyebrows raised.

  “Surely you’ve seen it wrong this time,” said Elder Michael. “We cannot be so desperate as to do that, trusting so much in a stranger…”

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  “The Valley of Martyrs is sacred,” protested Elder Cyril.

  “What is the Valley of Martyrs?” Mariella asked quietly.

  “Where we lay all our dead to rest,” Victoria replied in a somber tone. “Going back centuries to when we first arrived here.”

  “Everyone, calm down!” boomed Eldest Isak. He donned an obviously forced smile, a vein throbbing in his temple as he spoke. “The seer is… testing our flexibility with her suggestions today, but I should remind the honored members of our Council that she has never once been wrong in warning of approaching danger. We may not agree with her solutions, but if the Army is indeed coming in force, we must at least hear out all proposals. And we have no reason to doubt her word that the Army will come to avenge their fallen men. You are certain that is the track our future is on, Vidalia?”

  The foxgirl simply nodded.

  “I personally think that what you ask is a major step and goes too far. A rash suggestion that shows you are still young and headstrong,” said the Eldest. “Disturbing our honored dead before the appointed time… Why would that be better than simply fleeing? Your first suggestion is equally viable and does not violate our religious beliefs. I assumed you would have some more reasonable way we might wage a war with the Kingdom, perhaps hiding and using hit and run tactics as Andric’s men did, but on a larger scale.”

  Do they have some sort of anti-necromancy custom? Mariella wondered. The idea seemed strange, since they primarily worshiped the same death god that had empowered Tybalt. But the Eldest had said something about violating their religious beliefs.

  “I do not dismiss your idea out of hand,” said Elder Vladmir in an interested tone. “But this is a powerful card we possess. We can only play it once. In all our history, we can only attempt something like this on one occasion, before the resource is exhausted for good.”

  “What of the religious significance of the Valley, seer?” asked Elder Cyril. “Those committed to that consecrated place are meant to be left there until Lord Mudo’s reckoning with the usurper gods. So it was passed down from our ancestors, including their dream seer.”

  “Who exactly is this necromancer that you would trust him with such a heavy thing?” asked Elder Sybil. “All that I have heard about him is that he is a human and, yes, that he helped our people through this dark time—but a human…”

  “Even if he were not human, he is a stranger,” said another older woman wearing a headband. “It is dangerous to empower a stranger, a man we do not truly know well.”

  “She’s Elder Sonia,” Victoria muttered.

  Mariella nodded absently, entirely focused on the interaction. Vidalia was trying to strongarm the Council of Elders, and they were fighting her hard. It was hard to imagine how she might win. But the dream seer could literally see the future in her sleep and anticipate her opponents’ views. An argument with her, if she was prepared, ought to be nearly unwinnable.

  “Yes, let us wait for him to wake up and make his own case,” said Chief Mihalic.

  Vidalia drew an object from within her dress.

  “This is who he is,” she said loudly, her voice almost a yell. She held the object up, and Mariella recognized it as a ring that Tybalt wore. The foxgirl approached the chairs where the Council of Elders sat in a semicircle, and she placed the ring in her palm and circulated the space in front of the elders, showing them the appearance of the item.

  “There is a prophecy of a reckoning among the gods,” Vidalia continued. She faced the body of elders, but Mariella couldn’t help but notice, she really seemed to be speaking for the benefit of the crowd. “The prophecy speaks to a war for Lord Mudo’s place in the gods’ pantheon—a war waged, on our side, against their human agents in the Kingdom and beyond. The necromancer who helped save our village is Lord Mudo’s agent. I found this ring on his finger. Its symbols match those of our god and past representatives sent to work his will on Abadd. The man who saved us before is our god’s strongest servant. In visions, I have seen him lead our people to victory. But it can only happen if we stand behind him with all our strength.”

  “That ring, may I examine it?” asked an old woman of the Council of Elders who had not spoken at all yet. She carried a staff with skulls dangling from it, which Mariella recalled was a telltale sign of a high-ranking beastfolk shaman.

  “Elder Elswyth,” Victoria breathed.

  Vidalia handed the ring over to the old woman without hesitation, and Elder Elswyth proceeded first to examine it, and then—to Mariella’s incredulity—to stick it between her teeth and bite it.

  After that, Elder Eswyth placed the ring on a flat rock on the ground, she pushed mana into the tip of her staff, and she swung it down as hard as she could at the jewelry. The impact made a loud noise of stone cracking and kicked up a little puff of dust.

  When the dust settled, Mariella saw the flat rock had cracked into several pieces.

  The old woman stooped, picked up the ring, examined it, and then lifted the staff to look at the end of it. Mariella saw that the tip of the staff had a thin, semicircular indentation in it. The ring had left a mark while remaining itself unmarked.

  “I am satisfied,” Elder Eswyth said, nodding to herself. “This is a divine object.”

  Vidalia stepped up, and the old woman gave the ring back to her with a little smile.

  A murmur took hold of the crowd again, but Eldest Isak spoke loudly over it before the noise could get out of hand.

  “Very well, we must carefully consider what the dream seer has suggested,” he said. “For now, we will preserve the remains that linger from the battle and present those to Lord Necromancer once he awakens. I don’t think there is anyone on the Council who wishes to bring the matter of the Valley of Martyrs to a vote right now, correct?”

  He looked around with a warning glare at his fellow elders, as if daring any of them to contradict him.

  Elder Eswyth crossed her arms in front of her chest and looked as if she disagreed. Elder Vladmir also seemed to be on the side of holding a vote.

  But ultimately, neither of them said anything.

  “Very well, if there is nothing further, I would like to declare this meeting at an end!”

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