Lakhoni stayed where he was, trying to get a better idea for how many homes there were in the cliff. There had to be at least thirty. Maybe more. But why were some of the openings in the cliff face the size of doors? Where were people going to go if they stepped out of those?
Then he noticed that the irregularities in the cliff face were far more regular than he’d thought. He slipped back into the home he stood in and went to the door, which was even with the floor of this house. Gripping the stone wall, he leaned out and found a series of cuts in the cliff face. They led from his door to one right above, perhaps three paces upward. “Ancestors,” he whispered. “They climbed between houses.” The very notion made his blood run cold.
Lakhoni climbed around the complex, regularly crossing paths with the others. How had these people made this? How did they cut through stone to this degree? More than that, how had Lakhoni never known that this kind of place existed? And why had they left?
Some of the abandoned homes had old remnants of fire circles and bits of cloth or pottery here and there, but most of them were nearly pristine except for piles of dust and twigs in deep corners. As he descended through the maze of stacked homes, Lakhoni tried to imagine what would drive so many families from such a protected home. There was no sign left of an attack or anything. But still, a sense of dread began to settle into Lakhoni’s bones. Whatever had driven these people away, or even killed them, had to be something powerful.
He slipped out of the bottom door and dropped to the ground, stepping away from the cliff face. “Shall we continue?” He called out loudly.
Hilana’s head appeared from a window up and to the right. “Yes, we still have several hours of light.” She disappeared back inside.
Lamorun leaned out of a doorway high up. “Brother! Did you see the handholds?” He swung out and descended rapidly, looking like a gangly, four-legged spider.
Lakhoni caught his breath and instinctively positioned himself below Lamorun, as if Lakhoni could catch him if he fell. “Lamorun, don’t be careless. We need you in this fight.”
“This is nothing,” Lamorun called down, climbing casually. As if he couldn’t slip at any second. “These handholds are very convenient.”
As Lakhoni watched his brother climb down, he realized that the entire cliff complex must have swarmed with people climbing all over it at some time. Had children climbed around on the cliff face too?
Lamorun dropped the final few feet to the ground just as the women emerged from the bottom door. Hilana noticed Lamorun and raised her eyebrows. “Climbed down?”
Lamorun nodded, grinning. “It was not difficult.”
“Ladders are safer.” Hilana said, leading the way down the last of the rocky slope to the hilly plain. “Safer is smarter.”
Lamorun’s booming laugh echoed up the ravine.
The setting sun painted the western sky pale orange and red, tendrils of color reaching overhead to touch what few wispy clouds there were. From the ridge above, the rolling hills had appeared low to the ground. And as they started across the grassy land, that was true. But within a mile of wading through hip-high, golden grass, heading generally toward the rugged mountains that ranged up their western edge, the hills had mostly increased in height. Now Lakhoni and the others found themselves skirting the edge of the taller hills. The ground itself was uneven, with long, curving slopes and swooping rock formations that rose from the earth at strange angles. Some of the ‘hills’ weren’t even hills. They looked as if they had once been mountains with craggy, boulder strewn lower slopes. But high up, far above the plain, it looked like a giant or god had taken a blade and cut the top half of the mountain off, leaving it completely flat on top.
The grassland was dotted with clusters of walan, which Hilana had identified. They were creatures that looked like thin, bony horses. They had two horns that spiraled up from the skulls.
And they were good eating. Hilana dropped one not long after they started across the grasslands, and the meat was far better than hapcha. Where hapcha meat was stringy, the walan’s meat was firm and juicy. Lakhoni wouldn’t mind eating it every day.
As they traversed the hilly land, Lakhoni marveled at how well these flat-topped mountains had blended into the plain from the vantage of the ridge they had come out on. How could this land have come to be this way? As they pushed through the grass, which had a pleasant, soft top that brushed at their arms while walking, they slowly approached one of the most astonishing things he’d ever seen. Far ahead, a deep crack gouged into the earth and another seemed to have split the ground many miles off to the right. As if the same giant had not been satisfied by cutting off entire mountain halves, so he had slammed his blade into the earth and cut it open.
“The light will fail soon,” Simra said. As she walked through the tall grass, she let her hands trail across the soft tops. “We should find a place to camp for the night.”
Lakhoni blew out a breath. His feet ached. The skin on his side still pulled uncomfortably when he stretched. And exhaustion from all the chasing and running and the knowledge that this was all going to lead to blood spilled gnawed at his core. “Yes. We can have another meal of salted boar meat. Or hapcha if we want to make things interesting.”
“We could make it into soup,” Simra said, quirking a smile at him.
“Sounds delicious.” Lakhoni looked around, catching sight of Lamorun, who had scaled to the top of a hill some thirty paces away. Hilana and Alronna were nowhere to be seen. He raised his voice. “Lamorun.” His brother turned. “Do you see a place to camp from there?”
Lamorun shouted back. “There is a hill with a flat side not far that way.” He pointed somewhat to the north.
“Good!” Lakhoni angled that direction. “Tell Alronna and Hilana.”
Lamorun nodded and dropped out of sight, headed down the far side of the hill.
As Lakhoni and Simra rounded a particularly tall, grass covered pile of rocks, Lamorun, Hilana, and Alronna appeared at a run. They looked like they emerged from the ground, but that must have meant there was a slope ahead. “What’s the hurry?” Lakhoni expected some kind of joke from Lamorun, but his brother’s face was serious.
“We found something,” Alronna called, arriving at Simra and Lakhoni before the others. She was breathing hard. “I mean. Someone.”
Relief and fear skittered through Lakhoni. “What?”
“Someone?” Simra pulled a tall piece of grass. “Just one person?
“No,” Hilana said. “Stop and listen.”
“We are listening,” Lakhoni said.
Hilana extended both hands out. “No. Listen.” She pointed behind her, in the direction she and the others had come from.
Lakhoni and Simra went quiet. He held his breath, wondering what Alronna and Hilana were talking about. The early evening air had cooled and the shadows of the slopes and flat mountains were stretching out toward them. Why didn’t he— But then he heard it. Thumping. No, not thumping. Something he hadn’t heard since before his village had been destroyed. Drums. And not just logs like in Simra’s village, but the tone was the distinct sound of heavy sticks hitting skin stretched tightly over gourds. Real drums. Which meant people.
People who had settled in hills west of Lukozilxa. Had they found the descendants of Lukoz?
“You hear them?” Alronna asked.
“Drums.” Lakhoni fought the urge to sprint toward the sound, instead breaking into a fast walk. “That must be them.”
Soon they were all jogging, with Alronna and Lakhoni ahead of the others. They descended a gentle slope and followed the sound, skirting rocky hills covered in tufts of grass and some strange-looking flat spaces.
The sun had dropped a finger’s width by the time they drew near the sound. Lakhoni and Alronna slowed to a stop together.
“Around this hill, I think.” Alronna pointed at the tall hill to the left. The drums were much louder and were accompanied now by the sound of voices chanting something that they couldn�
��t make out. Firelight flickered on the shadowed face of nearby hills, coming from a fire they still hadn’t seen.
Lakhoni agreed. “Let’s take it slow, make sure we’re all together. We don’t want to surprise anyone or have them think we’re sneaking up on them.”
They waited for the other three to catch up, then stayed in a group as they rounded the tall hill, following the sound and dancing firelight.
People contorted and gyrated around a fire set in the space between three hills. There were at least fifty people—more than had been in Lakhoni’s village. Three men and two women beat on large drums with heavy sticks while another woman held a hollow stick to her mouth and played a high-pitched tone that matched the chanting voices perfectly. The sight brought such a strong pang of memories back for Lakhoni that his throat tightened painfully. His village had done this kind of thing at least every new moon.
“That is some intense dancing,” Hilana said. She grimaced. “Doesn’t look very fun.”
This was true. There were probably twenty or so people dancing, while the rest of the gathered people either played instruments, sat on large, gray rocks chanting, or clapped along with the beat, intent on watching the dancers.
Lakhoni’s stomach flipped, a tight sensation of discomfort settling deep into his bones. This was like no dancing he’d ever seen. Nobody smiled or talked or laughed. Sweat poured from the dancers as they threw themselves into impossibly fast twists and bends and turns. One woman’s oblivious kick tripped an older man and he fell to the dirt. Lakhoni instinctively flinched forward to help the man up, but the fallen dancer shoved himself to his feet. It took obvious effort, but within a few seconds, the man was already galloping wildly around the fire. The dirt caked to his side dripped in long, thick rivulets of muddy sweat that looked far too much like blood.
“What are they doing?” Alronna’s voice was pitched low. She looked as uncomfortable as Lakhoni felt.
“That’s not dancing,” Simra said. She shifted closer to Lakhoni so he easily felt her warmth.
Lakhoni checked Lamorun and Hilana’s faces to see their reaction. They stood in open-mouthed surprise.
“They look like they are in pain,” Hilana said after a few more uncomfortable moments of observing the group.
“Some waver where they dance!” Lamorun’s voice was too loud, a barely suppressed laugh easily detectable. “Why do they not rest?”
One of the men nearest them heard Lamorun’s booming voice and turned jerkily. He was not one of the dancers. He sat on a skin-covered wood stump and was clapping along, chanting the same unintelligible phrase over and over with the rest of the gathered people. When he caught sight of Lakhoni and the others, he fell off his chair into a stumble that became him pushing to his feet and approaching them quickly.
His approach was so quick and aggressive that Lakhoni immediately put out his arms to either side, as if to protect his family and friends. He stood taller and squared his shoulders, trying to catch the man’s gaze and stop him.
The man stopped clumsily a pace in front of Lakhoni’s group. “Who’re you?” His words slurred and he wavered as if he stood on a rolling rock instead of the firm earth. The man was drunk!
Lakhoni looked to Simra, then Lamorun. Everyone was looking at him. “We’re travelers. We mean no harm.”
“Seen th’rain?” The man’s long, graying beard held drops of whatever the man had been imbibing so much of. He stared at Lakhoni for a long, uncomfortable moment.
“Rain? Have we seen it?” Lakhoni glanced to either side, but none of the others indicated they’d understood what the man was on about. “Not recently, no.”
The man mumbled incoherently. He shook his head, his wandering eyes lighting on Simra, then Hilana, then back to Lakhoni. He swallowed and straightened. “Y’hungry?”
“Yevun!” A woman’s voice broke through the darkening dusk. “Who have you found?”
Keeping an eye on the man, who was apparently named Yevun, Lakhoni looked for the speaker. A woman of the same tall, lean build of Yevun walked quickly toward them. She had been sitting next to Yevun on another skin-covered stump, clapping and chanting, but she didn’t seem as unsteady on her feet.
Lakhoni extended both hands out, palms up. “We’re travelers.” Remembering the Zhimana and how suspicious and aggressive they had been, he repeated what he’d said to Yevun. “We mean no harm.” He nodded pointedly at the rest of his group and they all put their hands out too.
“And we will do yer no harm,” the woman said as her long, sloping stride brought her to Yevun’s side. She flashed a quick smile and put an arm around the swaying, bearded man. “My brother’s partaken a bit much of the jondi brew this night. I hope yer will pardon him.”
Lakhoni offered a smile and lowered his hands. “No problem, of course.” He raised his eyebrows and nodded toward the still-dancing group and players. Many of them had noticed the exchange happening on the edge of the firelight, but their pace had not slackened, although they threw regular glances their way. “I hope we’re not interrupting your celebration.”
The woman’s eyes went wide, her mouth dropping open in what looked like confusion. “Celebration?”
“Is this not a celebration?” Lakhoni pointed at the relentless dancers and players.
The woman shook her head. “Oh, bless yer. No, young man.” Her lips drooped into a frown. “How we wish it was.” She pulled Yevun with her and turned. “Please, come. We will feed you and provide a warm place to rest.”
“Why do they not stop dancing?” Simra asked, hurrying to help the woman with Yevun, whose feet were dragging through the dirt.
“To stop would be to invite more displeasure,” the woman said. “We must please Khimamala or be swept from the land.”
Simra tossed a confused glance over her shoulder, mouthing “Khimamala” at Lakhoni. Lakhoni shrugged and sent a silent question to Lamorun and the other women. They all frowned and shook their heads.
“But yer are tired from a long day of traveling,” the woman said. She angled toward a dark opening in a hillside that, as they approached, was obviously a door. There were other doors in hills nearby. These people literally lived in the hills. “Come in, come in and eat meat and rest.” The woman led the way into the hill home and Simra helped her settle Yevun onto a reed sleeping pad to the side of the doorway. “Welcome to my home. I’m Aboa. Yevun’s my brother and he and I share this living shelter.” She extended her arms to the sides. “Full arms upon you.”
“Thank you.” Lakhoni took in the house. It was far bigger than he had expected, dipping in the middle and seeming to take up most of the inside of a tall, wide hill. He was able to stand up straight with at least another arm span of space between the crown of his head and the ceiling. It was at least ten paces across, with two high windows that showed the faint light of the evening’s first stars through them.
As Aboa blew coals to life in a hearth on the far side of the dwelling, the others milled around, looking for a place to sit or at least not stand awkwardly.
Lamorun solved the matter by striding across the dwelling and kneeling next to Aboa. “Allow me to help.” He sucked in a deep breath then blew a strong stream of controlled air across the coals, lighting the straw tinder that Aboa held out.
“Oh my,” Aboa said, chuckling. “Strong blowers on this one.”
“His best feature.” Alronna laughed and dropped to the floor, crossing her legs and letting the Sword of Nubal extend behind her.
Hilana sat next to Alronna and joined in Alronna’s laughter.
Simra took careful steps, exploring the house quietly. “This is an impressive home you’ve made.”
Lakhoni nodded. “Did you dig it out of the hill yourselves?”
Aboa and Lamorun fed wood to the flickering flames, which lit the house a little more, revealing shelves carved into the walls and boxes and gourds lining the walls. Aboa laughed. “Me? Oh, no. This was done generations ago. My great-grandfather, also called Yev
un, made it bigger with his children, but my family has lived here since the Settling.” Aboa rocked back and stood smoothly, leaving Lamorun to feed the fire. “Are yer hungry?” She smiled at Lakhoni, then the others. Outside, the constant beat and high-pitched pipe and the stomping of the dancers continued.
“We don’t want to impose,” Lakhoni said. “We have come a long way and wouldn’t say no to a place to rest though.” The way she said “you” sounded strange, but reminded him of Reg, the ox-guide he’d met on the road to Zyronilxa.
“Have yer come from the sea?” Aboa rummaged through several stone and woven boxes, pulling what looked like small rocks from one and a wrapped piece of salted meat from another. “From the city there, I mean.”
“We have,” Lakhoni said.
“But we’re not really—” Alronna began, then stopped at Lakhoni’s signal. “We’re not really certain how far we’ve come,” she finished lamely.
Lakhoni didn’t want to reveal everything about their mission all at once. At least not until they had spent more time getting to know this people. Aboa seemed normal, but so had the Living Dead—more or less—until they’d sacrificed that young man. “We heard about some legends of people leaving Lukozilxa many years ago, that they had come west and settled in the hills.”
Aboa nodded and smiled broadly. “Ah, yer five are following the old tales.” She set a spitted piece of salted meat over the fire that Lamorun had built up well by now and slid a clay platter of the small brown rock-like things into a groove that held it just to the side of the fire. “The tales of the people of Lukoz, I reckon.” She wiped her hands on her breeches and pulled a pile of smoothly carved boards off a shelf and handed them around.
“You know the legends?” Simra asked, taking the smooth wood plate and then freezing, her eyes focusing on something just beyond Aboa’s head.
“Know them?” Aboa chuckled as Lakhoni followed Simra’s transfixed gaze. There were pictures on the hard walls of the hill dwelling. Clear paintings of people and animals and—boats! And a big man with a tall stick in one hand.
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