Elafi’s lamp illuminated the young man’s face as he scrambled up the embankment. He lifted the lamp to reveal a maw ridged with huge teeth. The jawbone and teeth of some huge creature, yawning, made the archway through which they must pass into a low tunnel.
“What is it?” asked First Son as Last Son grunted with surprise.
“A wyvern,” said Ki, behind him. “In ancient days the old sorcerers killed it and laid it here in the earth. A wyvern’s bones hold magic. That’s why it’s never been found by our enemies.”
Stairs made of slate slabs had been laid into the earth, braced on one side against the huge spinal column. As the creature had died, it had rolled to the right, and it was the impossibly long rib cage of the dead wyvern that gave support to the tunnel’s damp earth walls, so it seemed they were climbing up inside its belly. Only Ki and Elafi could stand upright; the RockChildren had to hunch over as they climbed the stairs by feel, since Elafi’s body blocked most of the light.
Maybe it was the magic lingering in the wyvern’s bones. Maybe it was the darkness, or the proximity of the stone crown. With each careful step up to the next slate stair, flashes of sound and sensation ripped through Stronghand.
“I don’t like the sound of that!” says one of the men—they all smell rank, that much he does know. “Move on! Move on! If we’re caught here, we’ll be slaughtered.”
His fingers slipped along a smooth rib, but he steadied himself and took another step up.
“Get up, bitch! Or I’ll kill the baby.” A woman sobs, crying for mercy.
He turns, seeking the direction of that despairing voice.
Far away, as in a dream, he hears horses’ hooves.
“Go! Go!”
“We’ll split up and meet in the town.”
He gropes, finds the weeping woman’s arm, and helps her up. A switch cuts into his ear, the one that throbs all the time, the swollen one, and he jerks back as pain roars through his head.
He staggered and barely caught himself, hand grasping at dirt, claws shicking out to scrape earth and send it spattering to the ground.
“Stronghand?” First Son sounded surprised, as well he might to see any sign of weakness.
Elafi hissed. “Hush, now! Hush!”
They waited as Elafi went ahead into the darkness, the gleam of curved bone flashing above him with each step until the young man simply vanished.
Stronghand took a step forward to follow him.
“I’ll take the woman.”
Screaming, she fights them. Her arm is torn from his grasp but as she is hauled away, she thrusts a bundle into his arms. The wagon lurches forward and he almost loses his footing as the rope snaps tight. He stumbles forward in its wake, clutching the bundle against him, wondering what it is. Moisture leaks onto his hands through cloth. For a while he has as much as he can do to trot along behind the rolling wagon, with staffs prodding him and the others who are bound.
There were more like him once, but over the course of many days—he can’t keep track of how many—the rest fell behind or were taken away or died. He doesn’t know. He can’t see, and what he hears is often interrupted by gouts of pain that stab through his head.
He is missing something, though. He knows that much. Now and again he weeps with anger and despair.
As the wagon steadies onto a smooth forest path, the grassy track a pleasant tickle under his callused, battered feet, he pulls the cloth free and searches the bundle with a hand.
An infant. He is carrying an infant. Blood curdles in the hollow of its sunken chest.
It is already dead.
The torrent of sensation and emotion raged through him until he was overwhelmed, awash. He gasped for air as he staggered again, leaning on his staff to stop himself from falling. His feet slipped on something round and cylindrical, and he swayed as he struggled to regain his balance, to show no weakness before the others. The bone beads tied to the standard rattled softly. Stray bits of dirt spun past his nostrils and dusted his tongue.
“Careful.” Elafi’s touch on his arm came out of the darkness. “There are bones. You’ll slip, just so. Just past here.”
The tunnel debouched into a corbeled chamber, dry and dusty and crammed with neat piles of bones laid into alcoves that gleamed fitfully as Elafi turned all the way around to shine his light into each one. Stronghand straightened, as did First Son and Last Son, and stared somberly at this burial ground. Ki’s breathing sounded very loud, as if she were frightened—or awestruck.
Yet what was there to be frightened of? He glanced back at the tunnel, all but this last portion of which had been formed by the framework of the wyvern’s skeleton. The living could find uses for the dead.
“The wise ones of our tribe are buried here,” said Ki.