Cian.
He stirred reluctantly, unwilling to heed the voice that hummed inside his head.
I am here.
Who? he asked, half awake. No answer came, only an image of fierce beauty and restless hunger. Cian snapped to full alert, the air squeezed from his chest by a fist of terror.
Yseul.
All the forest was her lover, and Yseul could not get enough.
She stripped off her ragged clothes, and coated herself in moist soil and decaying vegetation, preening as if they were the rarest oils and spices from the distant East. She hunted by night, glorying in the deaths of the small, hapless beasts that fell under her claws. And sometimes, when she felt charitable, she brought a carcass back for her sullen companions, who did nothing but complain of the heat and brood over their failures.
Three times since leaving the desert, Urho and Farkas had challenged Yseul’s leadership. Each time she had fought them back with her own strength and will, reminding Urho that Tahvo had defeated his efforts to drain the waterholes and Farkas that his one attempt at direct attack had ended in disaster.
But it was not logic or her own superior intelligence that kept the males in line; they submitted because even their dim minds understood that she held all the advantages in this place. It was as if she had been born here instead of in the dark rooms beneath Karchedon’s great temple. As if the forest had been waiting for her all her short life.
She knew exactly where the enemy hid. She knew of the village and the naive mortals who lived in it, believing they could compel their savage, ignorant deities to aid the godborn. She felt Cian’s presence like a constant ache in her belly.
Now, as the light of the day drove the night-hunting creatures to their nests, and the damp, stifling warmth dropped its stillness over the forest, Yseul carried her latest kill to camp and tossed it into Farkas’s lap.
He pushed the bloody carcass away with a curse. He had shed most of his clothing, and his muscular chest gleamed with perspiration. Urho glanced up with seeming indifference and resumed sharpening his knife on the rock he had found buried under a mat of leaves. The Children of the Stone sweltered in their armor, unmoving save in direct obedience to their commander’s orders. Their long spears were useless in the tangle of undergrowth beneath the canopy of interlaced branches, and even Farkas glared at them as if they were more hindrance than help.
Yseul still watched for the one Child whose eyes were too knowing…for the moment when Baalshillek’s spy would reveal himself and seal his fate.
She rubbed at the stone in her aching forehead and nodded at the discarded meat. “Not hungry?” she asked Farkas with false concern.
He scowled and smeared a spot of blood on his arm. “Where have you been?”
“Watching the village.”
“No movement?” Urho asked, his blade rasping on stone.
“Only the usual human scurrying.” She kicked the carcass toward the Children’s commander. “You. Prepare this for cooking.”
The man met her gaze for the span of a heartbeat, rose and retrieved the dead animal with the smooth, efficient motions typical of Baalshillek’s unnatural soldiers. He drew a knife from his belt and began to skin the carcass while his men looked on without expression.
“How long must we wait here?” Farkas asked, aiming a mouthful of spittle at Yseul’s feet. “Can you learn nothing more?”
Yseul stepped daintily over the puddle. “Always you ask the same questions, Farkas, and always my answer is the same. We have tried to stop them, you with force of arms and Urho with his magic. We will not win this battle by confrontation but by cunning…a skill with which you have little acquaintance.”
He thrust out his hand and curled his fingers around her ankle. “When I learn to wield my power…”
“But you have not.” She jerked her leg from his grasp. “At least Urho has an understanding of his Element and the discipline you lack. He almost succeeded.” She knelt and gathered a handful of soil. “The forces of Air might have been some use in the desert, but not here. This is the realm of Earth. My realm.”
“It will not be so forever.”
“Then you had best become more than a sack of wind forever wailing and groaning, unless you want Baalshillek to return you to the filth from which you sprang.”
Farkas scrambled to his feet, fists swinging. Yseul dodged him easily. She sprang up into the nearest tree, agile as one of the long-tailed, clever-fingered beasts she had killed at dawn. “Surely you can summon up a little breeze to shake me from these branches,” she said, laughing.
Farkas roared. His rage dislodged a few leaves from the end of the smallest branch. The air remained thick and still. He paced across the small clearing, snatched one of the Children’s spears and slammed its shaft against the tree trunk.
“Oh, very good,” Yseul purred. “Why don’t you take your weapon to the village and demand our enemy’s surrender?”
“Give me one of the females,” Farkas said. “Give me that bitch Rhenna and I will break her.”
“Not while an Ailu protects her.” Yseul jumped down from the tree, landing well out of Farkas’s reach. “Not until they have led us to the Hammer.”
“And when we have it?” Farkas tossed the spear, narrowly missing a blank-eyed soldier. “Do you think to keep it for yourself?”
The red stone in Yseul’s forehead throbbed again with warning pain. “What would I do with it?” she asked innocently. “I have no part in the prophecies. They—”
“Silence,” Urho hissed. He cocked his head toward the edge of the clearing. A moment later a small animal trotted out from among the trees, its fur the color of dried grasses, its nose sharply pointed beneath a wrinkled brow and triangular ears.
Farkas drew his knife and prepared to throw it at the beast. Yseul struck his wrist, spoiling his aim.
“You fool,” Urho said softly. “Do you not recognize a spirit when you see it?”
“That?” Farkas scoffed.
Yseul drew near to the dog, searching its bright brown eyes. “Yes,” she said. She closed her eyes and drew on the wealth of memories Baalshillek had bestowed upon her on the day of her birth. So little of it made sense to her, even after a year of life, but now she sifted through the names and images of a thousand gods, deities who had fought in the Godwars for and against the Exalted. And a few who had been clever or lucky enough to remain apart from the slaughter….
“Eshu,” she said.
“I am Eshu,” the dog said, though its mouth didn’t move. “You know me.”
“I know of you,” Yseul said, crouching before the beast. “Southern god of tricks and deceptions. You were present at the great battles of the Godwars, but you did not take part in them.”
The dog yawned and winked one glittering eye. “It was not our battle,” he said. “Your Northern quarrels were never of concern to the òrìshà of the forest. Olorun sent me to observe, not fight.”
“As your Lord of the Sky has sent you now?”
Eshu flicked his ears. “I see all that goes on in the forest,” he said. “I saw the first pale-skinned strangers come to seek the help of the òrìshà, and I watched you watching them…servants of the Exalted.”
Farkas lunged for his discarded spear and made as if to fling it at Eshu. The shaft snapped in half. The iron point spun about, sliced the flesh of Farkas’s hand and buried itself in the trunk of a tree. Farkas cursed and sucked at his injured flesh.
“That was not at all wise,” Eshu said mildly. “Yet what more can be expected from soulless beings shaped not by Obatala, like all natural living things, but by the priest of defeated gods?”
Yseul shivered, sickened to hear such words from the mouth of a smug little spirit who had no notion that his people’s time was nearing its end. But even this creature still had his power, as he had proven to Farkas.
“The gods you call defeated have escaped their captivity,” she said, swallowing her rage. “They grow more powerful every day,
and their priests rule many lands. Can it be that even your great Olorun does not see everything?”
Eshu bared his teeth. “Make no mockery of the Lord of the Sky,” he barked, “or you will never find what you seek.”
“And what is it we seek, great Eshu?”
“That which was stolen by your masters’ former allies. That which was made to defeat them.”
“The Hammer,” Urho said. He crept forward on his knees and bowed to Eshu. “Have you come to help us find it, mighty one?”
Eshu turned to sniff at Urho. “This creature, at least, shows the proper respect.” He scraped at the earth with his hind paws, and a shower of leaves and bark fell from the trees. “This is my land,” he said, “and here you are intruders. You have come far and have much farther to go. I could stop you. I could cause you to lose your way in the forest until your flesh rots from your bones and the worms burrow into your eyes.” He grinned. “But perhaps I have come to help you. Perhaps I have come with a bargain from my brother and sister òrìshà.”
“A bargain,” Farkas said. “A bargain to spare the lives of weaklings and traitors when the Stone sweeps across the Great Desert to devour you and all your kind?”
A branch snapped from the tree above and clattered down on Farkas’s head. He toppled over and lay still.
“Now that fool will be silent until our business is concluded,” Eshu said. He licked a forepaw. “Will you listen, or shall I go to your enemies?”
“We listen,” Urho said.
Eshu groomed his other leg, fastidious as a cat. “It is true that I bring an offer from the òrìshà,” he said. “We know that your Eight masters stir again in the North. We know they hunger to rule all the earth and consume every god in their path.”
“Every god who opposes them,” Yseul said.
Eshu gave a strange, wavering cry very much like human laughter. “So you say. We, the òrìshà of this land, hold this forest and its people for our own. We have no interest in the world beyond. We wish merely to be left alone.”
“And you would lead us to the Hammer,” Yseul said, “if the Exalted agree to leave your forest untouched.”
Eshu snapped at a hovering insect and crushed it between his teeth. “It is a fair bargain. Your masters are mighty, but they are not without weaknesses. They could not compel us to fight in their wars. The Eight may find that we are not helpless ekute to be eaten up in one bite.”
Yseul smiled. “Why do you believe that we can negotiate for our masters, unnatural creatures that we are?”
Eshu gave another howling laugh. “There is no certainty,” he said. “All is accident and chance. It is my whim to trust you, female of the North. And perhaps we are not without other strategies, should your masters betray us.”
“They will reward those who serve them,” Urho said. “This is the promise of the Stone God.”
“We do not serve,” Eshu said with a lift of his lips. “But you will take the Hammer to your masters as proof of our…friendship.”
“And we should, of course, trust you,” Yseul said softly.
Eshu leaped into the air, spun about and landed exactly where he had left the ground. He trotted over to the Children and sniffed them one by one. None stirred save for a single soldier, who twitched his hand away from Eshu’s questing nose.
And Yseul knew. She pretended not to notice the Child’s misstep and met Eshu’s eyes with the slightest of nods.
“Trust me or not, as you choose,” Eshu said. “But I alone know who guards the Hammer. They are females, and they hate all men.” He grinned at Urho. “You they might kill swiftly. But that one—” He pointed a paw toward the immobile Farkas. “He is most ill-mannered. He might die very slowly indeed.”
“Who are these females?” Yseul asked.
“They are like you. They walk in fur and hunt when the moon is high.”
“Like me?” Yseul sprang toward the little god and barely stopped herself from seizing his scrawny neck. “They are Ailuri?”
“They call themselves Alu. They guard the compound of a foreign goddess whose name is only whispered, even among the òrìshà.”
But Yseul hardly heard the rest of his words. Alu. The name could be no coincidence. Unless Eshu lied for his own purposes, she was not the only female of the Watcher breed. And even the Ailuri had not known it.
Neither had Baalshillek.
“Alu,” she said with a show of indifference. “Have these creatures always lived in the forests of the South?”
Eshu saw through her pretense. “They, unlike you, were given life by Olorun,” he said. “But perhaps they will not kill you if you prove your worth.”
“Take me to them, and I will.”
“Even if they let you pass, you must face the outlander òrìshà. It is she who holds the Hammer and will never let it be taken, save by her death.”
Yseul’s heart beat fast with excitement. “It is said that the four Exalted who betrayed the Eight stole the weapons and carried them to the farthest corners of the earth. Is this goddess one of the Four?”
“Who can say? No mortal or òrìshà has approached her compound in a thousand years.”
“But you can lead us to it.”
“If you and your human servants can endure a journey of many days and nights being attacked by beasts, bitten by insects and soaked by rain, then I will show you the way.”
“We will endure whatever trials you set us.”
“Then make yourself ready. And remove those accursed stones, or the Alu will know you for what you are.” Eshu flattened his sharp ears behind him, as if he followed some distant sound. “I go. Be prepared to travel at dawn tomorrow.”
He ran off into the forest as quickly as he’d come. Farkas stirred with a groan.
“Where did it go?” he croaked.
Yseul gave Farkas’s head a cursory glance and judged him unharmed save for the large lump on his thick skull. “Eshu has agreed to take us to the Hammer.”
Farkas sat up. “You trusted him?”
She shrugged. “It is possible that these òrìshà truly hope to spare their own lives by giving us what we seek.”
“The Stone will never let them go.”
Yseul pressed her finger over Farkas’s lips. “Cunning, my stubborn friend. Let them believe.” She glanced at the Children, her gaze sweeping casually over the soldier who had betrayed himself at Eshu’s examination. The depleted ranks of Children would sadly lose another of their number before this day was ended.
The crystal in her forehead began to burn. Yseul took Urho’s knife and stared at her reflection in the polished iron. The stone was a baleful third eye, an excrescence, a malignancy that would continue to weaken her as long as it remained a part of her. But she had been born out of the Stone. If she severed herself from it…
Better to die now than live as a slave.
She lifted the knife’s blade to her brow and laid it to her flesh.
Urho caught her arm. “What are you doing?”
“Eshu said to remove the stones,” she said calmly.
“You’re mad.”
She wiped at the blood trickling from the first cut and licked her fingers. “Be rid of them,” she said, “or let the Alu kill us. Which do you choose?”
He backed away, silver eyes hollow with dread. “The stones sustain us. Without them—”
“Without them we may become more than the ‘soulless beings’ Eshu named us.”
“Baalshillek will send punishment.”
“Not if we succeed in our task.”
“What of the Children?” Farkas asked.
“They will stay here until we have the Hammer. Perhaps you would care to join them?”
Farkas sneered and unsheathed his own blade, wetting his lips as he contemplated the prospect of self-mutilation. Urho sat down hard, shaking his head. The Children made not a sound.
Yseul smiled and continued her grisly work.
Chapter Fifteen
T he portal to th
e country of the little people was as formidable a gate as one might find in any stone fortress of the North. Even in her blindness Tahvo could feel its power, and as she and her companions rested at the end of many days’ travel through the heart of the forest, she remembered what she had learned of the place the Ará Odò called the Cave of Dreams.
“The cave is the entrance to the only passage through the mountain,” Nyx had explained as she made final preparations for the journey. She had gathered Tahvo, Cian, Rhenna, the Imaziren and two village hunters at the edge of the village, distributing packs of provisions while she revealed what the little people demanded in exchange for their aid in locating the Hammer.
“The little people have long been our allies,” she had said, “but they do not trust what lies beyond their forest. They believe that no evil can pass through the Cave of Dreams.”
“Another test,” Rhenna had grumbled. “Will there ever be an end to them?”
Cian hadn’t spoken, but Tahvo had felt his weariness. She herself had struggled during the long march beneath the giant whispering trees. Rhenna, the Imaziren and the villagers set a modest pace, but often she had been compelled to accept Cian’s help when the path grew rough. Sometimes her knees trembled, or she heard voices that were not there. And always she felt the multitudes of forest spirits dancing around her, drawn to her soul as the swarms of biting insects sought the sweet taste of human blood.
Now it was just past dawn, and the insects were at their worst. She pulled her head between her shoulders and tried to pretend that her skin was as tough and impenetrable as a turtle’s shell.
“Are you all right?” Cian asked, settling beside her.
She tried to smile. “I did not sleep well last night.”
“Who could, in this cursed heat?” he said, killing a dozen winged biters with one slap of his hand. “How you must be longing for your snowfields now.”
She thought that Cian must be speaking as much for himself as for her. “Do you miss the mountains?” she asked.
He went very still, barely breathing. “It’s strange,” he said slowly, “but at times I think I belong here more than I ever did in the Shield.”
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