“I am well indeed. Thank you,” he said. Turning, he retraced his steps across the octagonal room, his attention drawn to the intimidating sword in its human-sized scabbard by the fire.
Mindful of his wings, he settled on the rug in front of the hearth and cautiously sipped at the broth as he studied his friend.
“Ah, so you came for the sake of my health,” Grevelin rumbled. He stood in the cook-room doorway, his sea-gray eyes thoughtful beneath his prominent brows. Barefoot and clad in his tattered white sleep shirt, he looked nothing like the fighter he was.
“Of course I did,” Ponu said. He glanced about him at the home’s cozy interior—to Avalar’s feminine touches here and there, the pile of her quilts and her basket of yarn near the hearth, and her curtains softening the only window. He met the serene gaze of Alaysha, Grevelin’s mate, in the painted likeness Avalar had rendered from her many glimpses of her father’s memories. Beyond the frosted panes of the window by the portrait, he heard the frigid ocean, the relentless drumming of Hothra’s arctic surf.
Raising his head, Ponu met Grevelin’s stare. “I know how anxious you get when I am away too long, so I thought I would visit tonight rather than make you wait.”
Grevelin, returning his smile, retreated once more into the cook-room, the fringe of his auburn hair sliding about his shoulders. “Tonight, or tomorrow,” he called. “You are always welcome, my friend.”
Left alone, Ponu peered at his abandoned staff by the front door, with Grevelin’s black waders standing upright next to it. Compared to the staff’s gleaming crystal, the boots were as unremarkable and homey as the rest of the house. Like Avalar’s green-and-blue-striped curtains, they belonged, while his Staff of Time did not.
Reappearing with his own helping of the savory soup, Grevelin grinned at his expression, the apprehension he failed to conceal from the giant. “Go and contemplate your stick if you must,” the big warrior said with a sigh. “Mayhap its mysteries will ease you in ways I cannot.”
Ponu set down his dinner, climbed to his feet and flexed his white wings. Unable to hide his fears any longer, he hurried to retrieve his staff and grip the heat-sculpted crystal. “I worry about Avalar, too,” he said. “Something is wrong. Ever since Tierdon’s destruction, I have felt nothing but distress from her.”
Grevelin dropped onto his stone seat, hissing when the broth inside his bowl sloshed his palm. “Could she be wounded?” he asked. “My daughter is yet untrained for battle. If she tried to defend your city . . .”
“Will you wait?” Ponu strained to concentrate on his staff. “Please, dear friend, let me see.”
He sifted through the crystal’s matrix, beholding reflections of the present in its multiple forms, the past hidden behind its elusive curtain of mist, and the tantalizing glimpses of the future. Fixing on Avalar, he directed his thoughts to the lone giant while employing the subtle power from his homeworld, a magic of language, gesture, and nuance of tone.
As he hummed through his teeth, his staff responded, pulsing softly in rhythm. “She sleeps,” he said. “They’ve housed her in . . . a kind of shelter.”
“They?” Grevelin placed his bowl on the stone floor by his chair.
“Yes, they.” Ponu squinted as he sorted through the staff’s uneasy layers. “Grevelin, something is amiss. Your daughter tosses in her sleep. Her dreams are haunted by a danger she senses . . . someone she . . .”
Ponu stared at the visions within his staff. He recalled witnessing through his lion familiar how Avalar had rescued the child near Firanth. His interest in her encounter after—the prowler who had answered his magic’s call—had made him forget the little human.
“That boy!” He whirled on Grevelin. “She has always loved children, Grev. Kray was in trouble, and she saved him. You know what that means. He is linked to her!”
With three long strides, Grevelin crossed the room. His gray gaze was hooded, dark with suspicion and fear as he glowered at the staff. Before Ponu could reassure him, Grevelin lashed out and seized his wrist. “Speak to me, elf!” the giant demanded. “Who is this Kray? Who has dared to confine my daughter?”
Ponu, wincing, struggled to grin at his bearded friend. “Not confined, Master. Given,” he said. “She rests within a tent they provided for her. They are showing her courtesy and respect. Now ease up, Grev! Please! I am not made of stone!”
Grevelin frowned and relaxed his grip, his eyes welling with tears.
“I must leave you,” Ponu told him. “I’m sorry, but if I ignore what she feels and something terrible happens to Kray . . .”
Seeing his companion’s dawning comprehension, Ponu nodded. “She would never forgive me, as you well know. Do you recall when you fished me out of the sea after I transferred into the storm? There was a connection between us even before your heart bonded, and it’s because you saved my life.” He took a breath and, trying to lighten the giant’s mood, waggled his brows at his friend. “Well?”
“Ponu, no!” Grevelin said. “She cannot bond with this child. Not with a human. You need to stop her!”
“She won’t.” Holding his breath, Ponu pulled himself free. “She rescued him, Grevelin; that is all. Therefore, she can sense when he’s in trouble. Since his is the only life she has ever preserved, I have to assume he is the cause of her unrest. Now—”
He lifted his staff, visualizing in his mind the forested town of Firanth where he knew Kray lived, the abandoned farms and neglected fields surrounded by trees. “Fear not, Grev! I will help Avalar. I swear it!”
Power surged in his palms, a flash of burning followed by an intense cold. The transition was swift enough to make him gasp, the energy propelling him quickened by his misgivings.
Something dire was happening. Within the kaleidoscope of images he plunged through, he saw fire, an orange-red destruction blazing toward the heavens. A seething vapor rose to block his view. Momentarily blinded, he lost control of his staff and landed with a thud on the frozen ground.
Gray smoke billowed in front of him to obscure the stars, the fire below it blistering the shingled rooftops of the clustered buildings that formed the diminutive town. Fueled by the wind from the mountains, the flames raged at the sky.
Ponu choked as he rubbed his stinging eyes. Grabbing at his tunic, he tore off its hem, then pressed the clump of fabric over his nose and mouth. He swayed as he dragged himself erect to peer upward.
Pushing with his mind, he wove his consciousness deep among the strands of Talenkai’s magic, visualizing new pathways to guide its currents. Firmly he nudged the Circle’s fragile web, compelling it to obey until the clouds clashed and swelled overhead. With a deafening crash, the power released as he lifted his hands, torrents of rain hammering down.
“Kray!” Ponu fought to see past the angry spats of steam. He waded from the town and across a soggy field, the snow dissolving fast into muck and slushy puddles. He spied a blackened house beyond the trees, a fading orange flicker beneath the glow of its flayed roof. Kray? he thought, spreading out his fingers. He grimaced, catching no sense of life, only terror, echoes of pain in the scorched wood—the brutal death of the woman, the capture of the man.
“Sails!” With a sharp cry, Ponu slumped to his knees.
“Foolish bird!” A sibilant voice hissed behind him. “Fire, so fly! Or run like diradil do. Flee burning!”
Startled, Ponu scrambled to his feet and turned. A heavily maned prowler squatted low in a refuse ditch and glared back at him, the carnivore’s striped head resting on massive forepaws. The creature lifted his ebony lips as their gazes met, his curved fangs glistening. Ponu crouched on his heels. “Did you witness what kindled this?” He pointed to the burning town.
The creature bristled. “Prowler see everything,” he boasted. He lowered his muzzle between his leg and his dappled belly. “Humans gone. Blood take ’em like others. This kitten mews like cubling alone, so I catch!”
Ponu squinted, discerning through the rain the trembling figure th
e predator guarded. “Kray?” he said.
The prowler snorted. “Little one whimpers, fears big male. I hunt him before when hungry. Toy good sport, but now comes water from eyes. Sick, maybe, notter good hunting. Notter run.”
“You must be Shem,” said Ponu, standing to shake the water from his hair.
“Ah!” the prowler spat and, grinning, puffed out his chest. “Great male, yes? Big. Strong!”
“Indeed, you are,” said Ponu. He motioned toward the child. “Is he your dinner or not? Do you claim this prey?”
As Shem rose from the ditch, his movements fluid and graceful, Ponu stared. He’s too big, he thought. Is he a hybrid?
The creature grinned at his reaction. “Grandsire Sherkon Raider,” he explained. “See you?” Unsheathing his claws, Shem reared upright, his tufted tail whipping the air as he arched back his neck and roared.
“Help!” a voice cried. Then Kray’s head poked into view from the darkness below the ditch. The tow-haired boy scuttled swiftly away from his captor to cower, trembling, behind Ponu’s wings.
“Magic favors cubling,” Shem observed with a nonchalant yawn. He dropped to all fours in the mud, his green eyes aglitter below his hairy brows. “He mighty friends. Great male notter claim scrawny human.”
“Good.” Ponu glanced down at the sliver of Kray he managed to glimpse under the drenched arch of his wing. Such interesting creatures, humans, he mused. What candle-flicker lives, and yet they have so much spirit! “Since you give him up freely,” Ponu said aloud, “I will accept this gift from you.”
Shem humphed and sank onto his haunches. “I prowler!” he spat. “Who say what prowler do?”
Ponu inclined his head, keeping his expression severe. “When it comes to prowlers, one can never say.” He grinned at the big male’s response, the haughty sneer on Shem’s leonine face. Then Ponu seized the boy by the waist, flared wide his wings, and transferred.
He felt, rather than heard, the little human screaming against his wrist. Sensing the child’s distress, his unfamiliarity with the forces buffeting his small body, Ponu shielded him as best as he could, until his underground home sprang into existence around them both.
As his staff’s power dissipated and his cave went dark, Ponu leaned the molded crystal against the protrusion that served as a shelf. With a thought he lit the braziers in their nooks along the walls before placing the youngster on his feet. Stepping back, he bowed to the bewildered child and gestured, giving him leave to explore.
Ponu watched Kray totter across his workroom’s granite floor, stopping to examine the stone table Ponu had carved from stalagmites that had once divided the room—complete with its pile of books, its jumbled assortment of dried plants and instruments. When the boy spotted the tangled bedclothes on his unmade cot, Ponu sighed. “I will make another bed for you,” he said. “For now, however, you may sleep there.”
If Kray heard, he gave no sign. Then, as the child neared the room’s only doorway, he hesitated again, this time to stroke the polished black tube Ponu had taken care to set aside in the corner, the cylinder tilted up and mounted on wooden legs.
“That’s my stargazer,” Ponu told him. “The stone is called obsidian, and the legs are wrought from bottomwood, from trees under the sea. I set a crystal at its core for the light to pass through. It’s crude, but with some help from my magic, it lets me view—”
“What will you do to me?” Turning, Kray acknowledged him for the first time. His voice quivered as he spoke.
“Do?” Ponu pulled a chair from next to the wall and scooted it at his guest. Then, his chest still burning from the smoke he had inhaled, he moved to sit on his bed. Carefully he smoothed its blankets before emptying out his vest’s bulging pockets, arranging the baubles he had collected on the giant-woven fabric beside him.
A few of these I can use, Ponu thought, touching the colorful disks of surf-polished glass scavenged from Hothra’s shore, the petrified bark from a tree even older than he was. These others are trinkets, he admitted to himself with a smile.
As he had hoped, Kray goggled at the treasure, forgetting his recent trauma and fear. “Are all those real?” He pointed to the gems.
“I know humans value these,” Ponu said, smiling, stirring with his forefinger the stones he had taken the time to cut, nudging them with magic to make them flash with rainbow colors.
Enchanted, Kray padded over. Ponu studied the child while the boy examined the sparkling rocks, his brown eyes marveling.
“Perhaps we can work a deal,” Ponu said. When the boy glanced up, Ponu tapped the stones. “If you agree to feed my ferret and keep my cave tidy, I shall pay you one bauble every ninth day . . . along with food and shelter, of course.”
“Really?” The child gaped at the riches spread out before him. “I’d—I’d have to ask my . . .” Kray trembled, tears glistening on his cheeks.
Ponu clasped the boy’s shoulders until Kray raised his head. For a long, quiet moment, he held the youngster’s gaze. “Your people are gone.” Ponu made his voice as gentle as he could. “You must be brave for me now like your mother was for you. As you were the first time that big prowler chased you. Can you do that for me?”
The tiny human was silent, quaking with grief. Ponu wiped the boy’s face with the corner of his blanket. At last, not knowing what else to do, he drew the shuddering child to his breast and held him tight.
Chapter 17
FELRINA GRIPPED THE altar’s dead stone, shutting her eyes when the chamber faded to spin around her. Teeth clenched, she inhaled, feigning a dramatic pause. Stop it, you fool, she thought. Don’t let them see that you know him. She chewed her lip and nodded, breathing slowly until her vertigo stopped. Try not to look at him and it’ll be fine. If you give yourself away, they’ll force you to torture—
“Rina?” The sacrifice spoke from the tilted slab, and his familiar voice, so much a part of her old cherished life, shattered her self-control. Biting back a cry, she bent, her knife forgotten as his unfocused gaze found her face. Stiffly she leaned over his chest with a summoning motion to her god, letting her thick brown hair tumble forward.
So much blood, she thought, regarding her friend’s shackled arms, his kind mouth and the freckles around his nose.
Camron’s muscles flexed under his scraggly beard as he lifted his head to stare at her. “I’m glad it’s you,” he whispered. “If you find my father or Terrek . . .”
“Hush!” Felrina hissed, sensing the watchful eyes of the young assistant next to her and the Attendant First behind her standing on his wooden stool and holding his torch. Two other clerics also observed her movements, a man and a young woman waiting with their buckets near the wall. Mens is here, too, she thought. Glancing up with another ritualistic flourish, she glimpsed her superior scowling beside the chamber’s front entrance. “I do this to spare you, Camron,” she said under her breath. “Be silent.”
“Tell them I love them,” he responded. “My father, Lucian, needs to know it didn’t hurt. He’ll blame himself for this. I don’t want . . . Tell him your being here helped me.”
She made a show of checking his bonds. His wounded wrists extended beyond the stone, his arms bound to the altar above his elbows. “If the others realize I know you,” she murmured, “they’ll make me hurt you even more. You’ll die in terrible pain. Or I’ll be forced to make you a dach, and, trust me, death is better.”
Camron struggled to move, his hands twitching weakly over the basins positioned on the floor to catch his blood. “Remember when I hit the bottom of the river with my head,” he asked, “and you and Terrek had to jump in to save me?”
Felrina rocked, and with theatrical gestures—taking care not to strike the burning torch above her—she called upon Erebos.
“Remember when I wouldn’t leave you alone?” Camron was saying. “What a pest I was back then. A silly little boy. I never minded that you loved Terrek. He was older and the best rider in Kideren. Of course you’d love him. I loved
him, too.”
“Oh, Camron!” She caught his wrist and squeezed it tight. “I know it hurts. But I have to believe it’s for the good of us all. You’ll come back to me. You’ll see. We’ll build our houses, the castles Erebos gives us, beside another river someday. And we’ll play our water games like we used to.”
Felrina paused. “Why did it have to be you? Why did you let them catch you?” Fighting back tears, she caressed his cheek. “Why? Forgive me!”
For a moment more, Camron gazed at her. “I love . . . Always have,” he said. “Tell Terrek . . . and Father . . . Tell . . .”
She gulped down sobs as she clung to her knife. His eyes were closed, his lips smiling. She bent to kiss his forehead and mouth, her thumb drawing a thin line with his blood from between his brows to his chin. Listening, she heard his last breath, a gentle sighing between his lips. Only then did she open his throat, slicing from ear to ear.
She stumbled back, memories flashing through her brain. Everything I loved is dead, she thought, gagging as she clutched at her chest. Now I am dead, too!
Her body rigid, she walked from behind the altar and passed the Attendant First on his pedestal. Stopping at the center of the platform where the altar sat, she lifted her hands and confronted her seated congregation. Except for Allastor Mens, the twenty-eight men and women were oblivious now in their hooded robes, their minds immersed in the ecstasy of the ritual.
With reverent care, they passed their bowls of greenberry wine mixed with sacrificial blood, their lips glistening as they each took a sip. She nodded when her turn came and went through the motions expected of her, staining her brow and chin with the liquid before accepting a taste herself. Swallowing hard, the wine helping her to keep it down, she handed the bowl to the waiting junior cleric. On reflex then, she touched her forehead. I drink to honor and share in the sacrifice, she thought. She tilted her neck to gape at the ceiling, stretching out her arms as the potent beverage took effect. I am yours, great Erebos, completely and forever. Do with me as you will!
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