The mountain did not have a name anymore.
Whatever the tiger clan had called it before — 'the place where the sky bows' — was now academic, because the sky had been replaced by something that was not sky, a churning void-dark ceiling of stolen vitality that moved in slow clockwise spirals and had been doing so since the naked woman and the broad man with the axe had established their temporary residency on its eastern ridge.
The stone was gray where it had been green.
The grass was gone.
The birds were not coming back.
The woman — Chulteka, she had a name, though she had not introduced herself to anyone on this mountain — was currently face-down on the dead stone with her cheek pressed against the cold of it and both hands spread flat for purchase because purchase was what you needed when a man of Arvij's particular dimensions was operating at the pace he was operating at.
