“Or what’s left of him,” Oleg said.
Cob and Rolan looked his way.
“It has been many days,” Oleg said plainly. “The scratchers and the buzzers may have done some ugly work.”
“Then we will send you in first to find out,” growled Cob, “while you still have one good eye to see with.”
Oleg saw the humor in this, but Rolan guessed Cob meant what he said. And now that he thought about the prospect himself, he could understand Cob’s reluctance. Oleg was right: Retrieving Waylen’s body was not going to be a pleasant business. “We should draw lots to decide who enters first.”
“Aye,” Cob grunted. “Let the fates decide who will carry the mulch of death on his shoulders. Break the twigs. One for each man—and a fifth for the girl.”
He met Ty’s gaze.
“No,” said Rolan, sensing a storm about to blow between them. “Pine cannot be involved in this.” He glanced at the girl, who lay asleep beneath a blanket.
“She rides, she draws,” Cob said bluntly.
But Rolan would not have it. “Break five,” he said to Oleg, “and I will draw twice. The girl can scarce lift the flowers she plucks. How could we send her to heave a dead man out of a cave? I will take her place.”
“I say two should go in,” said Ty, not looking up from his whittling. “One to bear torches, the other to wield a free hand.”
“Against what?” sniffed Cob.
Ty twisted his knife. “Who knows what lurks in the darkness? I know more about skalers than any of you. I put myself forward. I will enter first, without fear. Draw your lots if you would light the way for me.”
“Wait,” said Rolan, as Oleg looked for a twig to break. “I also put myself forward. I will go into the cave with Ty.”
Cob spread his hands. “Has the stew made heroes of us all? This was my burden, pledged to Evon. If it’s to be this way, without twigs, I will lead us in and Ty will bear the torch. And there’s an end to it.”
“So be it,” said Ty, when no more was being said. “I go with Cob and light his way.” He tossed the twig aside and pushed his knife into his belt. “Sleep beckons me. Rest well, friends.”
“Aye,” they muttered, with some hesitation. Who was he yet, to call them friends?
That night, a shadow visited Rolan’s sleep. It had no face or erthly form. Again and again it spoke Ty’s words, but in the tenor of Waylen’s voice: Who knows what lurks in the darkness? Who knows? In the morning, Rolan was pale with sweat. The first thing he saw in the misty half-light was Oleg standing by a tree, passing water.
Rolan approached him and made in like manner. “Oleg, I must speak a worry to you. Do not look around until my words are out.”
Oleg trickled more water on the ground. “Speak. What ails you?”
Rolan glanced over his shoulder. Ty was tending Shade, the white whinney. Pine was nowhere to be seen. “Before we left, Mell Whitehair told me a tale. She came to me saying that Evon believed that Ty had stolen Waylen’s spirit. Do not look around! Face the tree. He may be watching. I fear you may be right about Waylen’s body. Some ugliness has surely been done to him, but in a manner no good Kaal could predict. I think this stranger who calls himself Ty is not a man possessed by Waylen’s spirit—I believe it to be Waylen, possessed by a demon that lurked in that cave. Listen to me, Oleg, this is not the berries talking. When Ty and Cob go into that hole they will leave us outside to watch the skies. I say we follow, with knives and arrows ready and sharp. Ty is planning something, I know it. I would take my side with a host of skalers before I would trust this stranger in our midst.”
“I agree he is sly,” Oleg whispered, “but where is the proof of what you say?”
Rolan lowered his robe. “I have no proof. But the terrors were in my sleep last night and I swear they were trying to show me something. My gut is sour with grave foreboding. Say you are with me in this.”
“Aye, I am with you,” Oleg replied. He bent down and picked up the stick that Ty had been whittling the night before. “If the terrors speak true, let this become the arrow that pierces the demon’s fiendish heart.”
“Aye,” said Rolan, gulping at the thought.
And with that he made his way back to the camp.
Rolan’s dark imaginings were to trouble him for the rest of the ride, but he spoke no more to Oleg about it and instead took counsel within himself. How could men protect themselves, he wondered, against that which they could not see or understand?
He had still not settled on any kind of answer by the time they arrived at a branch of the river that trickled around the foot of a common green hill. Over this sleepy rise, Cob said, the darkeye cave would be found.
Oleg slid off his mount. He picked some hairs off a dried-out thornbush. “These came from a whinney’s tail.” He let the hairs float on the wind, then knelt to the ground and ran his fingers over a trace of hoof marks invisible to all but a hunter’s eye. He looked east of the way they had come, then turned to squint at a chin of rock that jutted out of the hill about three-quarters of the way up. “The others were here, for certain. They tied their mounts and climbed the rest on foot. The whinneys left at speed. Mebbe the skaler frightened them off.”
Cob dismounted and cupped one hand in the stream to drink. “Well, I see no skalers now. Tie the whinneys and let’s be on. We climb the hill together.”
“Not Pine,” said Rolan. “I say we leave her to tend the mounts.”
Cob dried his hand on his beard. “You would bring her this far and deny us the amusement of her skaler songs?”
“You said yourself, there are no skalers.”
Cob grunted. “What does Ty have to say?”
Ty slid off Shade’s back and handed Pine the reins. “I see pretty flowers growing all about. Let the girl gather them if she will.”
“Aye,” said Pine, who liked the prospect.
“And if a skaler should happen upon us?” said Oleg.
“Then we call her to us and she sings.”
“Or dies with flowers in her hand,” Cob snorted. “Let’s be on, before my legs forget their use.”
Rolan counseled Pine as he dismounted. “When we are over the rise, hail if you see a beast in the sky, for it is possible we may not.”
Pine looked at Ty, who raised no objection.
She nodded, her one tooth glinting.
So, leaving the whinneys with Pine, they began their steep ascent of the hill. Though the ground trod heavy with the rain it had gathered, the grass was well grown and thickly tufted. An easy climb for mountain men. Cob posted Oleg wide with his bow, while he led himself and the others on a straight path up to the jutting rock. At the brow of the hill, all three pressed themselves low to the ground and peered at an area of barren gray scree on the other side. Straightway Rolan touched his heart, for any grass that had clung to that side of the hill had been deadened by fire, leaving a black streak on the erth. Oak Longarm had lost his life there, he guessed; those were his arrows scattered about.
“And so we come to it,” Cob said grimly, his gaze, like Rolan’s, resting on the scorch marks. “Curse every skaler from here to the sea.”
“This is an unforeseen prospect,” said Ty.
He nodded at an area of rockier ground. Not far below their position, the land cut away like a yawning mouth. Great cracks had appeared in the rock face above it and some generous hunks of stone had fallen, blocking the entrance to the cave with rubble.
“That will not be easy to get through,” said Rolan. “A slitherer would struggle to find any passage.”
“Yet we must look for one,” Cob said heavily. “Evon’s spirit will haunt us to our end if we abandon this quest too soon.”
With one eye on the sky he climbed over the ridge and scrambled down to the edge of the rockfall. He found Oleg, who had come at the cave from a different route, there already.
Oleg shook his head in disbelief. “If this were a tomb, my spirit would sleep most snug in it.” The task h
ad looked bad enough from above, but at this level the plugs of stone were impossibly huge, too heavy for a group of four men to clear.
Cob clambered up them nonetheless, looking for any gap he might squeeze through. He leaned against a wedge with all his might, but managed to move nought but the sweat on his brow. He slapped the rock in anger. “Skalers,” he said. “Skalers have done this. Buried their kin, and Waylen too.”
“I find that unlikely,” said Ty. He had set himself down on an isolated rock, a role that by now seemed customary for him.
“How so?” asked Rolan, feeling no less easy in the stranger’s presence. This tumble of stone had dismantled any plans Ty might have had, but the look in his eyes suggested the pursuit was far from over. Rolan felt his hand creeping nearer to his knife.
“Aye, amuse us, say your piece,” Cob grunted, sitting down on top of the rock pile. “Maybe your clever words can charm the rocks aside.”
Ty studied the sky for a moment, as if he was looking to the clouds for inspiration. After a moment’s thought, he said, “Skalers flame their dead or let them fade into the dirt when their tear is shed. They do not bury them away in caves. Most likely the skaler that entered here disturbed the hollow during the fight and in time a collapse occurred—but it does not have to be an inconvenience.” He leveled his sinister gaze at the men. “I cannot charm the rocks aside, Cob Wheeler—but I can call upon something with the strength to move them.”
“Sweet mercy of our Fathers,” Cob said suddenly. He leapt up and tried to draw his sword. Almost at once his ankle gave way and one foot became lodged in a gap between the rocks. He roared in pain and called for assistance. But Oleg and Rolan had followed Cob’s gaze and were staring in terrified wonder at the sky, where a strange formation of clouds was brewing. “W-what’s this?” Oleg jabbered, fumbling for an arrow.
“A lure,” said Ty. He had not moved.
Now Rolan did draw his knife, though he seemed uncertain of what to attack: the sitting man or the changing cloud. A familiar shape was forming above them, casting its shadow over the hill. A monster in puffs of grays and blacks. A darkeye full with horns and teeth.
“A lure for what?” Rolan demanded.
Beyond the brow of the hill, Pine’s voice rose shrill. “Skaler!”
She had seen the cloud too. And more.
“Curses! Help me!” Cob was all the while crying.
Oleg lowered his bow and ran to Cob’s aid.
Meanwhile, Rolan chose his target. “What foul deed are you about, magician?” He aimed his knife at the flesh of Ty’s throat even though he was more than an arm’s length away.
Ty gave the blade nought but a cursory glance. “You would be wise to take cover, boy. Or better still, let Shade hide you. The girl sees a dragon coming. The beast is going to attack this apparition, then land and claim this hill. When it moves these rocks aside and finds what lies inside that cave, it will kill every Kaal it sees.”
Rolan’s gaze jumped feverishly into the sky. He could see no sign of a skaler yet, but he had no reason to doubt Pine’s call. A furious drumming started up in his heart. His teeth were so tight they could have trapped water, but he managed to force one word off his tongue. “Dragon?”
Ty pressed his fingertips together. “That is how skalers name themselves.”
Rolan shook his head in disbelief. “How do you know this? How can any man claim such knowledge of the beasts?”
Ty stretched his arms, as casual as if he’d been around the fire, whittling sticks. He seemed to care nothing for the threat of the knife or the approaching danger from the sky. “I know, because I was one of them once. What you see before you is a darkeye in the form of a man.”
A droplet of sweat fell off Rolan’s brow. It seemed to take an age to meet the ground. Impossible as it was to make sense of Ty’s claim, the dread of thinking it might be true had frozen the young man where he stood. He risked a glance behind him. Oleg was calling for help, desperately trying to free Cob’s foot. Pine was riding up the hill on Shade, singing, but taming nothing yet. In the sky, the dark shape was almost complete. The knife shook in Rolan’s hand, cutting tiny slivers of air. He stepped closer, at last more menace in his shape. “What do you want with us, demon? Why did you come among the Kaal?”
“To draw one of you here,” Ty said, standing up. “The timing of this quest has been most … convenient. Lower your knife, Rolan. A dragon is about to swoop. I can scent it. Only one of this party can survive and join me. My choice would be you.”
But with that, the balance tipped against Ty. Rolan lunged at him, crying devilry and murder. Yet Ty had time enough to spin a finger and call some magick out of the sky.
A flash of light shot out of the cloud apparition and danced along Rolan’s blade. The force of it catapulted Rolan backward. His head struck a rock at the side of the pile and he was knocked half-senseless. An arrow winged through the air, fired fast from Oleg’s bow. Ty’s heart was its target and its aim was true. But at the moment the arrow struck, Ty’s body turned to dust and regathered into the form of a caarker. It flew fast at Oleg, driving its talons deep into his face. Oleg screamed as his flesh churned loose. He raised a hand to protect his one good eye. Cob, still fighting to free himself, roared at the heavens and lifted his sword. He swung wildly. It was not a kind outcome. The blow missed Ty and instead half severed Oleg’s arm. Oleg screamed loud enough to burst a lung. Cob cursed and struggled to free the blade. But by now a worse fate was upon the men. Their blood ran cold as a screech split the sky.
Just as Ty had predicted, a skaler, a real one, had entered the fray.
It was bright, bright green, the kind with the terrifying slanted eyes. Ty fled as it plunged on the cloud from above, blazing at the shape without calling out any challenge or warning. The cloud burst in a veil of steam, but the skaler’s fire continued to travel, laying its ferocious heat across the rocks. Oleg and Cob were burned where they stood. Long after the blistering wave had subsided, their scalding residue was still floating down to coat the stones.
Incredibly, Rolan survived the flare. Ty’s blow had sent him to the rear of the rubble, where there was one small nook the fire hadn’t found. Rolan had curled tight into it, though he feared he must be only counting the moments until the skaler poked around and scraped him out. He found himself praying that the scent of two incinerated men might be pungent enough to cloak the living sweat of another. A shameful thought, but no worse than Oleg or Cob would have begged for, had they been in his position.
With a thump, the skaler landed. Rolan tried not to breathe or make a sound. The ground beside him darkened into shadow. The skaler clumped forward, three, four paces. It pressed itself right up against the rubble, its weight making even the largest stones grate. It grizzled and pawed at the wreckage, all the while clicking and growling in confusion. It seemed unsure of what it had flamed. A few stones tumbled clear of the pile, landing close to Rolan’s hiding place, blocking him slightly from view. He tensed as the beast made a graarking sound, its muggy breath finding the nicks between the stones. The heat coming through them tickled one side of Rolan’s face, making all the sweat trails sizzle. Such a horrible sensation that was, as if the skaler were giving him an early warning of what its abominable fire could do. With a whup, the giant lifted its tail and raked the rocks. Another large boulder hit the dirt. With it fell what was left of Cob: a blackened corpse, missing one leg. Small fires were flickering on patches of skin not fully burned. Rolan retched but managed to contain it. The skaler graarked again. This time its voice rang clear with surprise. After that there was no more raking of rock. With a scrabble, it took off in a plume of dust, shrieking loudly across the moorlands as it took a turn back toward the mountains. Rolan’s heart thumped with a greater fear than ever. He felt sure the beast had seen into the cave (or scented the air drifting out of it). That could mean only one thing: It had discovered its dead companion and gone to seek help.
But where was Ty in all this? An
d Pine, for that matter? Through the faintest of cracks, Rolan saw the girl appear out of nowhere, repeating the vanishing trick with the whinney.
“Master,” she called. “Master, where are you?”
Master. The taste of her deceit fouled Rolan’s throat, a tang far worse than the food he’d tried to vomit.
A caarker, the one that Ty had become, landed on the whinney’s head.
Ark?! it cried.
Rolan saw Pine nod, wide-eyed. Somehow, the bird had mesmerized her and made her understand it. “Aye, master. The fire blew harsh. It covered every rock. Nought could escape it.”
A tear ran from Rolan’s eye, forced out by his churning anger. For there was nothing in the tone of Pine’s wispy voice to suggest she knew that he had survived. Her words were not a deliberate pretense intended to save him from any more harm. She assumed him dead and now basked in it, despite his previous kindnesses to her. Let me live through this, Rolan begged the Fathers, for now there are many more scores to settle. Pine would pay dearly for her betrayal one day.
The caarker took off and landed with a scrabble on the rocks, not far above Rolan’s head. He couldn’t see what the skaler had achieved with its poking, but if it had dug a hole, there was every chance that Ty could fly through it, into the cave. A sudden flurry of wings confirmed this.
Five heartbeats passed. From deep within the hill came faint echoes of caarker cries, as if Ty was calling something to wake. Rolan considered his choices. If he sprang out of hiding now, he could try to block Ty’s exit and seal him within the cave forever. But that would be a risky venture, for his body was raging with pain and he could not be certain of stopping up the hole, especially if Pine called out to her “master.” So he chose the safer alternative, which was to wait and see what came out of the cave and to judge what might be done about it.
From out between the stones there came a pink mist.
Rolan watched in confusion and dread as it swirled around Pine like a slitherer preparing to crush its prey. In the same breath, Ty flew out of the cave and turned into a man without losing momentum in his stride.
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