Don Bassingthwaite - The Grieving Tree

His eyes happened to be on the ancestor mound when silver-white light burst out of the air in front of it.

Breff jumped so sharply that water sprayed his face and ran down his chest, but he was on his feet in an instant. In the moonlight, he could see a dark figure staggering drunkenly before the mound. It fell, forced itself up, then fell again.

Others in the camp had seen the light, too. There were shouts of fear. The few surviving dogs that had stayed with the clan broke into mad howls. Those inside tents and makeshift huts threw themselves at thin walls; those outside fled into the night.

Breff watched the strange figure take another staggering step-then vanish into a second flare of light. The glare winked out but something lingered on the air for a moment longer, a wordless song like distant knife blades falling in a ringing, musical cascade.

A hunter barely old enough to have earned the name rushed up to him out of the shadows. “Breff! Tokrii eche?” she said in panic.

Cold fear spread through Breff’s belly. Coming back to the camp and the mound had been a mistake. Maybe the hunters who had fled were right. Maybe the Revered had abandoned them. His eyes swept the night and he snatched up his drinking bowl.

“Che bo gri lanano ani teith,” he whispered.

They’d been wrong to come back here. The mound was cursed-he wouldn’t keep the clan here to suffer another attack by the fiery Hand or something even worse. He turned and pushed past the young hunter, running through the recently restored camp and shouting orders for the last remnants of the Bonetree to gather their belongings and prepare to flee.