Their names were no longer spoken among the tribes of the True People, such an onorous weight did they carry, such a taunting and summoning of the Ancestors it was to breathe the words by which they had once been known.

They were brothers, horsemen when the tribes were young, when the stars stretched far across the sky, when the grasses swept across the earth, long before the Those That Stayed had grown deaf to the Call and broke the horses to the whip.

Their tribe, at such a time, was the Great Tribe, long before the Ancestors gave us the art of feathercrafting, long before they stole for us the whistles of our horsemen from the heathen Fate. Long before long before had happened.

The Great Tribe thundered across the Plains, across the Mountains, across the Seaside. They bled out the herdbeasts, sacrificed those that were demanded, and lived the life of pleasure. The whole of the world was theirs for the taking.

But these brothers had a quarrel with the tribe, a quarrel with the Ways, and the Call had reached out towards them, stretched out towards them, and Called out towards them.

And they heeded this call.

The horse breathed thunder beneath him.

Gershwin plowed up the mountain, the frost setting into the gelding's mane, sparks striking out from its hooves beneath them. Forever. Forever upwards.

All he could hear was the swelling, the rushing, insistant surge of surf in his ears. All he could feel was her push, her demanding push, her urgent push up the mountain. All he could feel was a need to do her will.

His hand instinctively went to the rope hanging at his side as he pushed the bare-backed horse as hard as he dared. It kept its footing, and Gershwin could only be thankful. It took the curves at breakneck pacing, and Gershwin could only be thankful. It didn't need the push from his whistle, and Gerswhin... well, he could only be thankful.

They left the tribe, these brothers, bound forever by flesh, blood, spirit, life. They left, and each began a journey of his own hand. They were chosen by the heatehn Fate to fulfill her desires. And what she wished upon them was exile from their brothers, their fathers, their daughters. What she wished on them was a journey most taxing, a life most wretched.

Gone was the safety and survival and community of their places in the Great Tribe. All they had for safety and comfort was themselves and their horses, and even those were carefully guarded and sometimes stolen from the Great Tribe's herds. They were among the first to take our herds under the whip.

But Fate guided their hands, the great decadant heathen that she was, and they reached out to worlds to places far distant from those we can call our own. And when they returned, their ways had changed, but so, too, had our own. For many years, many seasons, many moons and tides and rains had come and gone in the time between their departure from the Great Tribe and their return to its people.

*Where are they taking her?* Kendra asked quietly, dolefully, as she curled her tail around Feivel's neck.

"She'll be safe. They dare not touch her, not since she's channeled an Ancestor."

Kendra turned towards him for a moment, fixing him with a bright green eye. *That's why they won't touch you,* she said, and he only nodded. She turned back to where they had walked off with her bondmate, feeling the pain and emptiness in her heart as she could not reestablish their bond. Whatever these Ancestors were, they were too strong, too brutal, too violent to slip in, slip under, and overthrow.

If Kendra had hackles, she would have felt them rise. As it was, her wings twitched and buzzed in the hot sun.

*I don't like this place,* she muttered mutinously. *I don't like that it takes Janice. I don't like that the earth is something I dare not touch. I don't --*

"Enough," Feivel snarled. "You're alive, aren't you? Count your blessings."

But once one leaves the Great Tribe, one can never be certain if or when one will be allowed to return. The brothers, names unspeakable, were gone a long time. And though it had been years, seasons, moons and rains since they left, they were indistinguishable from what would have been their grandchildren in the number of their years. Only the elders, now nearing the twilights of their memories, could hope to identify them.

And so the true people, sensing a bewitchery, sensing a slight, sensing a Wrong of the Greatest Import, set upon them, and slit them gut to gizzard.

As they lay dying, these brothers, names unspeakable, better off forgotten, stared into the emptiness of eternity, their eyes dull in lifeless pain. Their blood boiled up from their bodies, danced and swelled and bubbled and spoke. And the True People saw this, and they knew that they had been fooled by one among them, for this blood spoke with the appearance of the Ancestors, moved with the sound of the Ancestors, and it soon became apparant that blood price would have to be exacted for this deed.

Each blamed his brother. Each blamed her sister. Each blamed mothers and fathers and children for inciting this horror upon them.

And so the Great Tribe fractured, and for many years there was not peace.

But these brothers, though their names are ill omens to speak, are sometimes called back from the Ancestors, are chosen by those who leave, the loyal seeds who join the Those That Stayed in practice but remain with the tribes in heart.

And should any so much as dare a claim to these names - never spoken but Known, oh certainly Known - they are to be spared any such punishment as befalls them until such time as they might be proved liars among liars.

And should that time come, then they are to be laid out to roast for two days in the highest sun. They are to be stretched as skins and leathers. They are to be boiled, dyed, pierced as the finest of feathers, and they are to have their eyes and ears cut from them while their heart still beats within them before being slit, gut to gizzard, so great is this duplicity to be taken.

Beyond this, let the Ancestors drink of their blood and consume their souls as we spit at the ground on which they bleed.