Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

Maklos whistled softly, like a bird, and pointed to the scar cut through the undergrowth where Alain and Laoina had thrashed down from the hillside. The waning quarter moon was rising. Agalleos scooped up mud from the streambed and streaked Alain’s arms, legs, and face with it. They started up with Shevros in the lead.

The twins clearly had experience climbing rugged hillsides; they swarmed up so fast that Alain, less sure of where to place his hands and feet, had finally to ask them to slow down. The moon rose higher. They rested at the abandoned nest and continued on, glancing over their shoulders toward the fort looming darkly on the ridge behind them. They weren’t anxious, precisely, but they were as taut as strings pulled tight. How keen sighted were the Cursed Ones’ sentries?

Shevros reached the cave mouth first. Low growls trembled in the air. Alain scrambled up beside the young man, heaved himself over the lip, and slid down inside. Sorrow and Rage practically bowled him over with their greeting. When he’d gotten them down, he let them drink. Agalleos dropped down beside him, struck fire, and got a torch burning before moving into the cave, wary of the hounds.

“Are your spirit guides too heavy to grow wings?”

“They have no wings. But we have rope.”

Keeping well back from the hounds, Agalleos prowled the cave, thrusting the torch into every crevice and hole in the limestone wall. “It was the Bent People who brought you here? On what manner of ship or beast did you travel?”

“I don’t know.” Alain did his best to describe their journey, but gave up after Maklos, who had climbed down after, snorted loudly, and skeptically, when Alain told of the great marketplace where skrolin and merfolk traded their wares.

“Peace,” said Agalleos sternly. Maklos had a cocky lift to his chin, the kind of young man who believes, with some justification, that the young women of his acquaintance persist in admiring him. “He and his brother are learning to be Walking Ones. That’s made my brother’s son believe he knows more than he does.” His tone changed as he addressed the young man. “Do not forget the lesson of your cousin, who thought he was smarter than the rest of us and became food for the crows!”

Sorrow padded over to Maklos, sniffing him up and down while the young man held very still, one hand twitching at the hilt of his sheathed sword.

“Nay, it matters not,” said Alain, whistling Sorrow back. “I have seen many things hard to believe. Have you seen the Bent People with your own eyes?”

“Not I.” Agalleos shook his head. “Nor any I know. It sounds like a good tale told at the fireside to me. But our great queen Shuashaana knows many things beyond the understanding of simple men like you and I. She is a woman, isn’t she? She is a word worker, a crafter, I think you call it in the language of the Deer people. She is the heir of Aradousa, who was mother of our people, the daughter of bright-eyed Akhini.” He finished his examination of the cave’s depths, easily plumbed, and returned to Alain. “There are caves all through these hills. My grandfather called them ‘the mouths of the old ones’ and he said people would get lost in them and never come out.”

Maklos grunted. “An old man’s smoke dreams!”

Agalleos eyed him sharply. “Say what you will about the old stories. My grandfather was a wise man. I do not ignore his wisdom.” Then he grinned at Alain. “Lucky for us that you’re a Walking One, too. That makes it easy to talk.”

“I’m not a Walking One.”

“How comes it that you speak our language, then?”

“I only know the language of the Deer People, and that of my own country.”

Agalleos measured the hounds, and then Alain. “This is a mystery,” he admitted, “since I started speaking to you in my own language once it seemed to me you understood me well enough.”

“How can that be?” demanded Alain, alarmed and confused by Agalleos’ statement.

The sound of a horn calling soldiers to battle rang faintly in through the cave’s mouth. Shevros scrambled in through the opening and jumped down to stand beside his brother. The resemblance between the two was uncanny; Alain could tell them apart only because Shevros had a scar on his belly and because Maklos had belted his linen kilt—the only clothing except sandals that the men wore—lower along his hips than the other two, exposing a great deal of taut belly.

“The Cursed Ones come,” said Shevros. “The horn has been raised at the fort. They have found the dead ones.”

Agalleos frowned. “This is bad. They will swarm like locusts into the defile. Now we cannot go down again by the low ground.”

“Are we trapped here?” Alain asked.

“There is a longer road back. We must move quickly, before light comes.”

It wasn’t easy to wrestle the hounds out of the cave’s opening, nor to maneuver them into position. Alain carried Sorrow as a heavy weight draped over his shoulders, and brave Maklos took Rage. Shevros led the way, climbing up toward the ridgeline above, while Agalleos hung back at the rear. Clouds drifted across the crescent moon, but Alain still felt the prickle of unseen eyes watching his back as they ascended. The horn blasted thrice more. Calls and shouts drifted to them across the gulf of air. Just as they reached the ridgetop and let the hounds down, throwing themselves on the rocky ground to rest, a line of torches sprang into life along the fort’s walls, spilling out the unseen gate and scattering like falling sparks down the slopes of the defile.

Agalleos regarded Sorrow and Rage solemnly. “From here we know only two paths which can lead us safely back to the camp of our queen. But the shorter of these the hounds cannot walk.”

“Even with ropes, and our assistance?” asked Alain.

“Even so. It is a worm’s path, underground and underwater. We cannot risk it. We will have to go north and circle around the river.”

Maklos hissed sharply.

“Go soon,” said Shevros. “Look.”

Torches had reached the bottom of the defile and a dozen now began to search for a way to climb while the rest followed the course of the stream. Cursed Ones spread everywhere, as numerous as a nest of baby spiders spilling into life. Pink painted the eastern horizon, the brush of dawn.