We made camp that night, far from the stone forest, on the side of a rocky ridge we had been forced to scale. We seemed to be heading towards the buried mountains- though whether we were close to the hidden Erin-Vulur village I couldn't tell. This was too far down, too deep. We didn't descend to the place below the ice, not on purpose. The High Epic made it clear that this was forbidden, as well as cause for summary execution due to the chance of corruption by the Dark Ones. But I had been accused of corruption already, and I seemed much the same as I had been, and I didn't know what to believe. Nissi seemed anxious about the possibility, but she wouldn't discuss it with me. Thukkar didn't appear to care. I got the feeling that any talk of gods and ancient laws didn't concern him overmuch. He was a ranger, and a ruthless pragmatist, and that was the end of it. I supposed I could respect that.

Nothing grew down here on the stone, so we didn’t have a fire for hot food. There was still some of that dukkar seal meat left, and I passed it around. Joanna shook her head, showing me her teeth and pointing at them, then pointing at my own mouth. I didn't understand, but I didn't push the issue. I looked over at Nissikul and Thukkar, but they were engaged in their own quiet conversation while they ate their meal, and weren't paying much attention to Joanna or me. I turned back to her.

She seemed so small out of her armor, though she appeared no less self-assured. If anything, she came across as fiercer than before, more intense. I noticed that she wasn't speaking to any invisible spirits anymore. I wondered why that was. I couldn't think of some hand sign to describe the question, so I dismissed it. There was something much more important that I had to ask her. "Joh-ahna," I began.

She looked up from what she was working on, and I saw the little makeshift light she had been carrying in her lap, wires protruding from it seemingly at random. She wasn't wearing the hood now, and I marveled at the dusky smoothness of her head and face. I wondered if all of her people had no hair. It lent her countenance an alien aspect when combined with her wide eyes and dark skin. She was so much like one of us, and yet she was so much different. I realized that I was just sitting there looking at her and felt my face heat with embarrassment. Joanna shaped her eyes into an Erin-Vulur smile. She responded in her tongue, her voice high and sweet, reminding me of music. "Yes, Volistad?"

I struggled on, wracking my brain to arrange the few words of her language that I knew into the meaning that I was trying to convey. "You… you say one time you no god."

Joanna made an expression I couldn’t read. “No. I’m not. Not yet.”

I frowned. Not yet? “What that mean?”

“I brought…” she said, and then she paused, perhaps stopping to try to remember which words she had taught me. “I brought someone bad with me.” I opened my mouth to speak, but she put up a hand, asking me for silence. I obliged her, and just waited. “My friend. His name is Barbas.”

“Barr-boss,” I repeated, tasting the name as I said it. It was a strange name, just as difficult to say as Joanna.

She smiled a little at my repetition and continued. "Barbas was not bad before. But we came down here and…" she trailed off.

“We found something very bad.” Her face was drawn and pained. “Barbas is now… Barbas is atvaqa.”

I understood, or at least I thought I did. Barbas was her spirit. When she had fallen into the ice, they had come in contact with the darkness, and her friend had become corrupted.

I remembered the appropriate word, and I uttered it then. "Sah-ree."

Joanna smiled again. She seemed to like doing that. I didn't mind it at all. In fact, it looked good on her. It didn't really resemble the expression of threat that my people used. It was more in the shape of her red lips and the corners of her wide eyes than it was related to the showing of her teeth. "No, Volistad. I am sorry. I brought atvaqa to your people. Now I must find him, and I must kill him. I spoke to your god, Ravanur, and she told me to do so.”

The phrase was long, and I missed a few words, but I heard the name Ravanur, and I felt my breath catch in my throat. The Great Mother had spoken to her! She was now doing the bidding of Ravanur! Even if she wasn’t a god, as she said, this at least made her special, didn’t it?

Joanna seemed to read my evident excitement, and her expression became troubled and distant again. “I am not a god. But Ravanur wants to make me into one.” That drew me up short, but Joanna continued. “I have to stop Barbas. But to do that…” she trailed off and shuddered, clutching her head, and when she continued, still clutching at her skull, she was speaking the language of the Erin-Vulur, smoothly as if she had been born into it. “A god answers to no one but a greater god,” she intoned through gritted teeth, and I felt apprehension raise all the hairs on the back of my neck. Those were words straight from the high epic, like the phrases that had been carved in that standing stone, back where we had slain the spawn of the Eater-King.

I looked over at the others, who had gone silent. Thukkar and Nissikul were both watching Joanna intently. Nissikul seemed, for the first time I could remember, terrified of what she was seeing. What did her mage's senses tell her was happening? Joanna continued speaking in our language, her face tight with obvious pain, and a vein began to pulse over her temple. "Barbas has been consumed by one of the Dark Ones, and he will destroy this place. He will set free all of the Elder Ones lying dead beneath the stone, and unleash an irreversible doom on your people and mine. I have to save your people and mine. I am looking for the lost temple of Ravanur, and I need your help to get there." Sweat had begun to run down her face. It froze as it dripped off of her chin and clattered on the stone in tiny cloudy beads. Then, as suddenly as the fit had gripped her, Joanna relaxed, and looked up at us, trepidation written clearly on her face.

I was confused, but Nissikul evidently was not. Without hesitation, she pressed her forehead to the stone and lifted a hand in Joanna’s direction. “One thousand pardons,” she intoned formally, “Chosen of Ravanur, for my attempt on your life.”

Though it was clear that Joanna didn’t understand the words that Nissi was saying, she seemed to catch the meaning. She stood, weariness apparent in her movements. She crossed our little camp, and crouched beside my sister. She placed a gentle hand on Nissi’s shoulder and said something in her tongue that I didn’t understand.

"Of course we will help you," I said. Then, remembering myself, I simply said, in her tongue. "Yes." I looked over at Thukkar, and he shrugged, the meaning clear. He didn't know what in Palamun's name was going on, but he had come along. It wasn't like he had much choice since Nissi and I were with Joanna. This was it. The reason I had been chosen to see her descent from the stars, the reason I had been killed and made into the champion of my people. It was the reason I was down here, with Thukkar and my sister. We all had a role to play. We had to find the lost temple of Ravanur.