I watched the great storm carry Joanna and Nissikul away to battle, and felt a brief pang of jealousy in my chest. I couldn't go with them, I couldn't help with this fight. This was a battle for a god and her head mage. I would probably get in the way. I sighed. I wasn't used to being no good in a fight. I was a ranger. Fighting was what we did. But the sensation of feeling insignificant before the power of someone like my sister- I was well used to that. She had been a Stormcaller since the day we left childhood behind. On that day, she had ceased to be my little sister and become something more- she had become her own woman. Much as I wanted to be by Joanna's side for any danger she chose to confront; I knew there was no shame in being left behind. Besides, this gave me a chance to speak to the Deepseeker- to Palamun- alone.

I trudged up the stone path to the old shaman's hut, still wearing my armor, though I had tucked the helm under my arm. I was unsurprised to hear the sound of the Deepseeker's many strange tools at work. It wouldn't have shocked me to learn that the old man didn't ever rest. It was too early for anyone decent to be sleeping, anyway. I stepped past the smear of ash that was all that remained of the afternoon's fire. Perwik was gone, as I expected. As the only remaining Elder from the previous Council, he had a lot to do to keep the tribe running smoothly. There were over fifty-thousand of the Erin-Vulur remaining, though on an average day I saw less than a tenth of that number moving around in the village. Not every Erin-Vulur lived at the tribe's heart. We lived together out of necessity, but we preferred to have our space when we could, carving out little spaces far beneath the ice or deep with the great mountain for little packs and knots of Erinye families to live. Perwik was dealing with the duties usually carried out by Vassa and his priests- making sure that every single pocket of Erin-Vulur living in and around the village had what they needed. It struck me then that he had even more work than that- with Vassa proved to be corrupted, the Master of the Rangers had to make sure every single family of hidden Erinye was alive and unaffected by the dark influence that had infected the High Priest. I did not envy his job. It actually explained why I hadn't seen so many rangers out and about lately.

I pushed through the hide flap to the Deepseeker’s hut and found him working at his stone table, making adjustments to the strange, pipe-like device he had been carrying when he had reappeared at the duel. My neck ached just thinking about that disastrous fight, but I supposed it could have been worse. Palamun looked up, a brief smile wrinkling the corners of his mad eyes before he turned back to his work. “Welcome, young ranger.”

I crossed the hut and stepped up beside the old man, peering down at the silvery, complicated weapon that lay before me. “What is this?”

Palamun grunted. “It’s a… well in our newest god’s language, it would probably be called a grenade launcher.”

I frowned at the unfamiliar words. Unlike Joanna, I hadn’t had an entire language dumped into my mind by an ancient dead god. “She hasn’t taught me those words yet. Grin-yate lawn-chair?”

“There’s no ‘ya’ sound in grenade.” He shrugged. “But it doesn’t matter. What it’s called isn’t important. You should just call it…” he trailed off for a second, musing. “Call it a dragon-pipe.” He laughed for a moment at his own joke, and then, realizing that I wasn’t laughing with him, stopped and cleared his throat.

“Eld- I mean, Great Father-” I began, but Palamun cut me off.

“No, don’t start with the honorifics. I don’t like those any more than my crazy old friend down below. Just call me Palamun. It happens to be my name.” He rocked his head from side to side as if weighing something in his skull. “One of them, anyway.”

“Palamun,” I said, feeling blasphemous. “You seem a lot less mad than you were before all this.”

The shaman looked up at me, a dangerous glitter in his eyes, and I swallowed hard. That might not have been the best thing to say. But the moment passed, and a smile narrowed the old man’s eyes. “Yes. Well, perhaps it is time I explained that, and explained what it could all mean to you.”

“Alright,” I said, warily.

Palamun seized a cloth from the side of his table and threw it over the strange weapon. “Follow me.”

We left the hut and circled the village, passing clusters of little houses and tents set up around clusters of fungal crops and pens of livestock. The old man moved with his usual erratic gait, and some of the twitches and tics that had been missing since his return came back into his face. I wondered how much of that was an act. We left the crater that cradled the village and climbed toward the craggy peak, following a trail of steps hewn roughly into the rock. Despite his bizarre affectations, the Deepseeker had no problem navigating these, and it became clear that he had walked this path many, many times. After just a few minutes of uneven steps, the path leveled out and ended in an iron hatch, much like those that capped the side entrances to the village. I frowned. There was a ranger mark on the hatch, but I didn’t recognize this tunnel, and I thought I knew about all of the ways in and out of the village. I remembered the old abandoned network that the Deepseeker had used when he had saved my life the first time and stopped. “We’re going down to that… workshop that you took me to the first time, right?”

Palamun gave me a look that could have killed a vulyak goat at fifty paces. “Obviously, boy. Now quit standing there and lift the damned hatch.”

I smiled to myself. That was the temper I knew. I crouched and slipped my fingers into the openings in the iron that had been left as handles. As easily as I would have moved a chair aside in the ranger’s lodge, I lifted the heavy iron portal and set it aside. As I had expected, a narrow shaft opened up before me, descending into darkness. The only distinguishing feature of the tunnel was the ladder of simple iron spikes driven into the wall. I groaned. Someone had to come up with a better way of doing that. At the shaman’s prompting, I clambered down into the tunnel. I was beginning to hate these.