faces to the dawn. Their slopes were strewn with boulders.
Jagged shards jutted like teeth from the pitted flows of
settling topsoil scoured from ravaged ranges above.
On one such slope a searching falcon circled near the
surface, drawn by scurrying rodents among the stones. The
bird spiraled downward, gliding just above the stones, then
beat its wings and darted away when something moved in a
place where nothing should be.
The falcon beat away, and behind it a grotesque, recum
bent figure stirred. Half buried in silt, it had seemed only a
fragment of thrown rock – until it moved. It stirred, shifted
a portion of itself upward, and drying mud sloughed away
to reveal a large, rounded head surmounting great, knotted
shoulders. It raised its head and opened puzzled eyes,
peered this way and that for a moment, then pushed its
huge torso upward on massive arms, and the rest of it
became visible. Legs the size of tree trunks bent and
flexed, and the creature paused on hands and knees to look
around again, then shifted to a sitting position.
Big, calloused hands went to its head, and it closed its
eyes in momentary pain. A growl like distant thunder
escaped it. Its grimace revealed teeth like yellow chisels, in
a mouth that was wide and cruel.
The jolt of pain passed, and the creature sighed,
opening its eyes again. Something had happened.
Something inconceivable that seemed at the edge of
memory but was just beyond recall. In a muttering voice as
deep as gravel in a well, it faltered with words. “Wha . . .
what? What happen? Where?” Wincing at the effort, it tried
to remember . . . and could not. Only a word came to memory, one
significant word. A name? Yes, a name.
His own name. Krog.
Sore and shaking, he stood. Small, unseen things
scurried away among the tumbled stones.
KROG. “I… am Krog,” he muttered. It was true. He
knew that, but nothing more. His name was Krog, but what
had happened to him? Where was he? And WHY?
“Who am I?” he whispered. “Krog… what is Krog? WHO is
Krog?”
The battered landscape told him nothing. In the
distance, where dawning grew, were smoke and haze. In the
other direction were high mountains, but they meant
nothing to him. Everywhere he looked, he saw a bleak and
sundered landscape that was the only landscape he knew
because he remembered no others.
It was as though he had just been born, and abruptly he
felt a terrible loneliness – a need for … something … for
belonging. There must be someone somewhere, someone to
care for him. Someone to teach him, to help him
understand. There HAD to be someone.
He turned full circle, big hooded eyes scanning the
distance. Nothing moved. Nothing anywhere suggested that
there was another living creature other than himself.
“Not right,” he muttered, the words a low growl that
came from deep within a great chest. “Not just Krog. Not all
alone. Has to be … somebody else here.”
He started walking on unsteady legs. All directions were
the same, so he went the way he had been facing, with the
mountains to his left and the gray, hazed morning to his
right. Ahead was a caprock hill, and he headed toward it.
Remembering nothing except his name, knowing nothing
except that he had awakened from nowhere and was headed
to a place, aware of nothing except his aching head and the
driving need not to be alone, Krog went looking for
someone.
*****
“Even the mountains are different,” one of the men said,
pointing with a coiled whip at the distant peaks standing
against a high gray sky. “What in the names of all the gods
could have done this?”
Those nearest him shrugged and shook their heads.
Men of the tribe of Shalimin – reviled by those who knew
them as “the raiders,” or “marauders,” or, simply, “the
slavers” – were men who knew the ways of the wild, not the
ways of the world. The changes they saw now in that world
were abrupt and massive; the night of change had been
terrifying. Yet, whatever had done it, now it seemed to be