| abstract
| - Dog-Runners were said to be "open to all pleasures and joys... they laugh with ease and weep with even greater ease. Every word is a confession and they do not understand dissembling. To speak with a Dog-Runner... is to be humbled and to feel blessed." Draconus said they were "vulnerable to deep hurts." Dog-Runners practiced magic through witches and warlocks called Bonecasters. Their magic was about fire and earth, and tree and root. It feared the sky. Their greatest witch was Burn, the Dreamer, who stayed behind when the Dog-Runners left Kurald Galain. In a hidden temple buried near Tulla Hold, Burn slept as her body became one with the thick roots of the forest. Rancept, the Tulla castellan and Denier, said Burn dreamed "so that we may live... she dreams, to give us our freedom." The Dog-Runners were a favorite of the Azathanai, Olar Ethil, who said she enjoyed spending time among them because she was a "cruel goddess" and they were "so easy to bait that I cannot help myself." Their worship fed her with its desperation and yearning. The prayers of the Bonecasters felt "like biting ants beneath the furs. It drives me mad."
|