Only the shepherds came to honour him, when the lambing was over, and to leave a new cheese or a hank of fleece by the rough cairn on the summit. It was rare to find a god close along the Kinsai'aa’s course, at least on the eastern bank, and the goddesses of the tributary streams that struggled through the dry hills of the east were less than the least of demons, all force and will lost in great Kinsai. The land to the west was different, stronger, and the goddess of the Bakan'aa that rolled down from Varrdal on the forest eaves had a will to match Kinsai. Busli, the hill-god's name was. He watched, nothing more than a faint, cold touch of attention in the night. Moth knelt by the boulder, ignoring him, but the black-and-silver-hilted sword in its sheath was tucked under her arm, cold as an iron doorlatch in the Baisirbska winter. It sucked heat from her body even through the scabbard. The black marks the young Nabbani wizard had made were just visible in the faint light that preceded the dawn, though she could have read them in utter darkness, if she'd had to, by the differing natures of charcoal and stone.
