Chapter 131

And then She's gone, but he still feels Her watching him as he does what She'd commanded--buries what he is beneath what he will need to be in this place of Her making, with its walls of malachite that stagger and shift with the flicker of lamplight. They sigh, their weathered faces full of worry and sorrow as they lead him, weeping and confused, from Her embrace, and it's only when he is taken from them by his mother and hauled, resisting mindlessly, through the fires and the screams and the clash of bone and metal, shoved into the back of the cart, that the horns blow. He grasps at what it should all mean, but he can't remember.

It doesn't matter anymore. He is a different man now, he is what he's made of himself, and those things he was before are the building blocks he's used as foundations even when he didn't know it. He is the Shaman, he does have magic, and he almost thinks he feels Her smile in his mind as he reaches for it, takes it in his hand, directs it.