by Sharon Hinck
After a short walk, Galena and her mother led us into a large cavern, where hundreds of iridescent blue icicles dangled from the ceiling. They created a glow on the uneven cavern walls. Muted fabric draped across small alcoves, and I glimpsed sleep pallets inside one.
A man crouched beside a collection of heat trivets. His knobby fingers emerged from grey sleeves as he ladled stew from a bowl. His physique, his eyes, even the smoothness of his motions triggered memories of my past encounters with hooded creatures and drawn swords. If we’d met him first, I would have caught on much sooner that these people were Kahlareans.
The scent of chowder and raw fish tweaked my nose.
The man looked up and dropped the ladle. Stew splashed onto the heat trivets, spitting and sizzling.
“Travelers, Papa,” Galena said cheerfully as her mother set her down. “We found them in the blue cave.”
“I’m Lazul.” The man stood and exchanged a look with his wife. “Would you like to share our meal?”
“No,” Mark said sharply. His body language radiated hostility, and not without cause. His history with the Kahlareans contained even more bitterness than mine. They had killed his father in battle, assassinated his mother years later, and hunted him until he’d had to flee through the portal.
Even though Lazul’s small family had little in common with the assassins, polite conversation wouldn’t come easily to Mark.
The woman’s large eyes bulged. “We have plenty. The grenlow fish were swarming yesterday.” She cast a nervous look at Mark’s stony profile.
I eased away from my husband. “Thank you for offering, but we’ve already had dinner.” I spoke softly. Sounds rang harshly against the stark walls. No wonder Kahlareans spoke in whispers.
The woman’s receding chin almost disappeared as her lips curved shyly. “Do you need help?”
We needed far more help than they could realize, but I shook my head and waited for Mark to take the lead.
He finally cleared his throat and forced out a few words. “How far are we from Cauldron Falls?”
The man and woman looked at each other, their large, unblinking eyes communicating something I couldn’t translate.
Lazul sighed and squatted beside the heat trivet. “How did you come to be lost? We’ve heard of the banished, but none has made their way this far into Kahlarea before.”
The Council and their practice of banishment. If they had sent out some sort of Peace Corps to surrounding nations instead of the worst of the clans’ criminals, the tensions might not be running quite as high.
“Just tell us how to get to Cauldron Falls,” Mark gritted out. His neck muscles hardened into tense ropes.
The man spooned stew into a small mug and handed it to his daughter. “Several days and nights of hard travel. Where are your provisions?”
“We’ll manage,” Mark said. “Which way?”
“You’ll need light to leave the cavern.” The woman pulled her daughter close. “I can guide you out.”
I smiled warmly. “Thank—”
“No!” Lazul stepped in front of his family, matching Mark’s suspicion and hostility. “I’ll take them.” He moved silently toward the back wall of the grotto and pulled on a long vest with numerous pockets and pouches. He tossed a light rod toward Mark. “How did you make your way so close to our grotto without lights?”
“We got turned around. Lost our lights.” Mark kept his head down as he mumbled his evasions and studied the smooth, five-foot long stick. A few twists made it glow. “I’m grateful your daughter found us.”
Lazul sucked on his lower lip, increasing his resemblance to a frog, but he nodded, and his knobby fingers eased their stranglehold on his own light rod. “This way,” he said, moving off toward a narrow passage opposite the way we’d come.
“Thank you.” I looked back and waved at the mother and daughter, then started forward.
And crashed into Mark’s unmoving back.
“Susan. The portal stone. Where is it? It was in my hand when we came through.”
“I . . . I don’t know. I don’t remember seeing it, but I wasn’t looking. And there were all kinds of stones in that cave.”
By now, Lazul had noticed we weren’t following. He returned, his broad, hairless forehead creased, and his eye ridges raised. “The way out is this way.”
Ignoring him, Mark strode back through the cavern, past the heat trivets. “We have to find it.”
The mother and daughter squeaked and moved out of his way. Lazul and I hurried to catch up.
“What is he doing?” Lazul’s harsh whisper had no trouble reaching my ears as he kept pace with me.
The raspy sound sent pinpricks down my limbs and stirred flashbacks of assassins arguing. Who knew how a mild-mannered family man would react if he felt threatened? Those vest pockets could hold venblades. Why couldn’t Mark try a little harder to put these Kahlareans at ease? “He just realized we left something,” I said, glancing over at him. “Can you show us back to the cave where your daughter found us?”
Lazul’s face creases hardened.
“Once we find it, we won’t cause you any more trouble. I promise.” Hard to sound soothing and reassuring while loping behind Mark, who was storming forward like Indiana Jones brandishing a torch.
Mark ducked under a cluster of stalactites and stopped when two tunnels branched off. “Which way?”
“Left,” Lazul rasped. “But—”
Mark strode onward and I scurried after him. Lazul followed us, making swishing noises with his tongue that might have been a Kahlarean version of grumbling.
“Yep, this is it.” Mark pulled ahead as we broke out into the cavern. He held the light up, and turned in a slow circle, studying the piles of thousands of rocks on every side. They looked as if they’d been caressed to smoothness by eons of flowing water. Any one of them could have been the portal stone.
Mark picked up a rock, examined it, and set it to one side.
Lazul squatted by the tunnel entrance, braced on his staff. His swishing sounds progressed to a throat gurgle that held a hint of threat. Overhead, the fluorescent strands in the roof of the cave absorbed the glow of our light rods.
I shifted a few egg-shaped rocks back and forth. “Our host is getting upset,” I said in an undertone. “Let’s get out of here.”
“We need to find it.” He stooped and grabbed stone after stone, glancing at them and tossing them behind us.
The ugly clatter echoed against the cavern walls, and I winced. “Why? We know where the…” I glanced at Lazul. Was he far enough away not to overhear? I cupped my hand and brought my lips closer to Mark’s ear. “We know where the portal entrance is outside of Lyric. That’ll take us home.”
Mark stopped. “And then we’d never be able to come back.”
Would that really be so horrible? Couldn’t we find Jake and take him home and live happily in our own world, with the portal closed to us forever?
As if he read my thoughts, Mark grabbed two more of the thousands of rocks in the pile closest to him. “Susan, we can’t leave it behind.”
I squatted beside him to help, lowering my voice again. “Well, we can’t stay here looking for it. We don’t know what’s happening back home. We don’t know what danger Jake is facing in Lyric. And if we wait around in Kahlarea, they may figure out who you are. We have to get back to the clans. We have to cross the river.”
“Enough.” Lazul stretched upright at the entrance of the tunnel that led to his grotto. He pointed one bony arm in our direction. “You are disturbing the grubs. We must leave.”
“Grubs?” I looked at the back of the stone I’d just pulled from the pile. A flat white worm clung to the surface. “Eww!” I flung it down.
Lazul took a few steps forward, then retreated. “Careful. Do not wake them.”
I didn’t l
ike the sound of that. Even Mark stopped his frantic search. “Are they like ground crawlers? Poisonous?”
Lazul flapped his arms. “No, no, no. But they don’t like to be disturbed.”
Mark snorted and turned back to the next mound of stones. “Well, sorry for irritating the little worms, but I have to find—”
I grabbed his arm. “Um, Mark?”
He frowned at me, then slowly straightened.
All around the cavern, stones began to clack lightly against each other, as if a mild earthquake were humming deep inside the bones of the earth. White goo seeped out between the seams of the stones, gathered, and lifted to float like a growing spider web.
Hampered by the dim light, I had to squint to understand what I was seeing. Thousands of the grubs slithered out, stretched, joined, and levitated into a threatening, undulating curtain over our heads.
Mark grasped my hand and we backed slowly toward the tunnel entrance. “Lazul, what should we do?”
No answer. I took my eyes off the massive organism and glanced behind us. Our guide had disappeared.
“Mark?” I choked out. The slimy white sheet swayed back and forth across the cave ceiling and began to descend. “I think we’d better—”
“Run!” he shouted.
Chapter
10
Linette
The dim room became a forever place. I couldn’t remember how I’d come to be there. Sometimes I dreamed of vast skies, scented trees, and soft mist that brushed my skin. A vague sense of being someone else teased me, but when I tried to follow those thoughts they slipped away.
Then I would open my eyes. Black walls glowered at me, and the mesh door spat stinging electricity if I got too close. The tiny window far above my head let in the soft hint of first light, along with distant sounds: mini-trans on a nearby road, whirring insects, gruff voices. The unfamiliar sounds unsettled me, even though I’d been assured that this room beneath the shrine was my home.
During my first days there, Bezreth visited me often. She told me about the training I would receive to serve the hill-gods. Ceremonies, sacrifices, rites that I was meant to embrace, but that instead made my stomach turn. She reminded me of my purpose over and over, as my clumsy brain struggled to comprehend. Bezreth was my one certainty. High priestess, teacher, mother. She brought food and reassurance.
She also brought the medicine that I needed to survive. Each day she pulled off my wristband and slipped a new strip of drug-patch into the lining. When it clicked closed over my forearm again, tranquility seeped through me, banishing stray, disturbing memories.
One morning a melody woke me, drifting in from the sliver of window above my head. A long-whistle trilled and skipped through a playful chorus. My soul rose up in answer. I left my pallet and stood on tiptoe, reaching toward the music, as if my fingers could grasp it.
New thoughts flickered to life. I belonged with someone . . . somewhere else. Somewhere with music, and broad grey skies, and tree limbs that braided a shelter over quiet homes. Yearning welled up in me. Where was that place? How could I find my way back? I couldn’t dredge up a name or remember a single clear day of life before I’d come here, but the song stirred my spirit.
“You seem restless.” Bezreth’s whisper crept past the mesh gate, twined coldly around my ankles, and sent dread up my spine.
I turned to face her, my back pressed against the wall for support. The music had drifted off. What had I been trying to remember? A dull throb in my skull ate away my ability to think. I pressed a palm against my forehead.
“Poor child.” Bezreth opened the gate and stepped toward me. Her gummy smile stretched in her gnarled face. “Are you feeling more confusion today?” She removed my wristband, replaced the drug patch, and clamped it back onto my arm.
I stared dully at the silver band. I’d seen it before. What did it mean?
“Let your worries float away.” Bezreth’s hoarse voice no longer sounded harsh, but gently wizened with age. “All you need to remember is that you are safe in my care. As long as you wear this band, you’ll get better. Soon those tortured thoughts will never disturb you again.”
The ache behind my forehead faded. She was right, of course. She was always right. “Thank you,” I whispered.
She squeezed my forearm until her nails dug into my skin. Numbness began to swirl through me. Her husky voice took on a hard edge. “You would die without a new patch from me. Within a few days. I’m the only one keeping you alive.”
When she left, I curled up on my pallet, breathing slowly as another day drifted past and blended into another night.
Sometime in the last watch of the night, I woke to heavy feet tromping down the hallway. Drunken laughter. Pen doors slamming. A girl moaned, and her whimpering lingered long after the other sounds quieted.
When Bezreth felt I was ready, footsteps would come to my room in the night. I would be expected to welcome the visits that fed the cravings of the hill-gods. But for now, I pressed my hands over my ears. Dark horror crept through me. When would Bezreth’s medicine finish making me strong?
The next morning, the music returned with the birds. The sweet sound of a familiar tune soared and then plunged into me, pulling me along with it, awakening a fragile link to a deeper self—a truer self. Memories rose so close I could almost push away the waterweeds clogging the surface and find my past revealed in bold colors.
But then Bezreth’s feet shuffled down the row. Her rasping voice interrupted the music as she stopped at each pen to speak with the girl inside. Murmurs were punctuated by a squeal of joy. The high priestess had selected someone to serve in a shrine rite, and the girl’s excitement carried through all our rooms.
When she opened the mesh door of my room, I dully held out my arm. This time after she changed my drug patch, she traced one fingernail down my face. “I think you’re ready to spend time with your sisters. Follow me.”
A hint of interest rose for a moment, then faded back into the sea of indifference. “If you think it’s a good idea.”
She led me along the hall, past jagged stairs, beyond two huge guards, then to a large room filled with comfortable chairs, pallets, and dozens of other girls. Many of them sat quietly staring into the distance. Others carried on conversations in small clusters around the room.
Ria sprang up. “Over here.”
I knew her. Relief washed over me at the flare of recognition, and I happily took a chair beside her. Ria picked up a length of fabric and began to stitch metallic thread onto a stole. She kept her focus on her work until Bezreth withdrew from the room.
“Guess what?” she whispered. “Bezreth told us that the shrine will be reopened before the end of the season. And she’s been so pleased with my service that I’m to be one of the first shrine girls to serve.”
She seemed excited, so I tried to smile.
“Oh, I forgot. You wouldn’t know. Bezreth and the priestesses made sure the rites continued, but all in secret. The shrines had been closed because of the king’s bargain with—” She glanced up at me. “Never mind. He’s gone now. It doesn’t matter.” She held up the stole. “What do you think? It’s for one of the priestesses.”
Silver threads wove through a tumble of crimson. The design looked like blood spilling toward the maw of stone depicted along the hem. What did I think? Some dark reaction welled up but disappeared before I could identify it. I smiled weakly at Ria. What had she asked me?
Ria sighed. “The drug patches. You’re barely awake.”
“They don’t bother you?”
She showed me her bare arm. “Don’t need them.”
But Bezreth had said we needed them to stay alive . . . or I needed them . . . or . . .
I picked up a skein of thread and held it for Ria, forsaking the painful effort to think.
Just before lunch, Bezreth came into the room followed by
two robed priestesses who carried wide, flat baskets of stones. No, not stones. Carvings. Angry, drooling faces like the ones on the doors I’d passed through when I came here.
A chill brushed over me. Hill-gods. Or an image of them. Was there a difference? Surely Bezreth had explained it to me, but I couldn’t remember.
The old woman moved around the room, stopping before a girl. She picked up a statue and weighed it in her hand, stared deeply into the eyes of the girl, then handed it to her. She continued around the room, followed by the young priestesses, and stopped by Ria. The girl held her breath, her body so tense her tunic quivered.
Only a few of the stone images remained in one of the baskets. Bezreth looked at each of them as if greeting friends, then chose one and presented it to Ria.
Ria’s face lit and her braids bounced as she grabbed the statue. “Thank you, high priestess.” Her voice squeaked, but then she composed herself and bowed her head.
Bezreth turned to study me. My heart beat faster. My life had been given to the hill-gods, yet I still hadn’t been found worthy to serve them in any way. Not even to scrub the floor of the shrines.
She turned away and handed a statue to someone else.
I shrank into my chair. Inadequacy gripped me, vaguely familiar, as the chance to prove my worth again passed over me in favor of others more worthy.
A form stopped in front of me. “Linette.”
I looked up, startled. Bezreth stared at me, her lips stretched in a smile that chilled me. “Congratulations. You’ve been here long enough. It’s time for you to be of use to the hill-gods.”
A feeble sensation twisted in my stomach, then faded. “I’m glad,” I said, but my voice sounded dead in my ears. Where was the euphoria, the fulfillment I’d longed for? “I want some way to serve.”
She poked my chest with one gnarled finger. “You will. Tonight.”
I dipped my chin, trying to hide the fear that roiled again, this time with more strength.
She chose the final stone statue from the basket, communed with it briefly, then handed it to me. The sculpture depicted a leering face framed by clawed hands, frozen in a moment of attack. Loathing washed through me like a swallow of the bitter clavo I was brought each morning.