tell that underneath it was tall and lean. 'Hruucan will accompany you as my Hand,' said the Revered. 'Address him as you address me. When the time is right, he will summon the children of Khyber to aid you.'
'Revered! Hand!' Ner dropped back down to his knees. 'You honor us!'
The Revered reached out and rested his hand on Ner's head. 'Use every trick and tool you have. I must have her back!'
Ecstasy washed over Ner's face at the man's touch. Ashi, however, frowned. 'Revered,' she said as loudly as she dared, her eyes downcast, 'there is something. The woman you want… with the fire behind her, we didn't see her. And when we approached, she vanished!'
She felt the weight of the Revered's gaze on her. 'Ashi, you are as bright as you are strong. Look up.' She did. The Revered favored her with a smile, then looked to the second figure who had come with him out of the mound. 'Medala, show them.'
As the figure moved out from the Revered's shadow, the gathered hunters fell silent. Dressed in draping robes of fine but soiled green fabric, Medala was a woman with dusky skin and dark hair streaked with gray at an early age. An outclanner. One of the three outclanners the Revered had brought back from his recent journey downstream and taken away into the depths of the ancestor mound.
By all rights, she should have been dead instead of standing at the Revered's side.
For a moment, the woman's gaze swept over the hunters, her face as hard as if she could sense their fear and dislike. Then, with an effort, her face smoothed and she nodded to the Revered. 'Of course,' she said in a knife-edge voice. She looked back out at the hunters.
Ashi's ears seemed to ring with the sound of a single, pure note and an image leaped into her mind-an image of the woman they sought, as clear as if she had stood before her in broad daylight. Her name poured into Ashi's mind. Her name, what she was, what she was capable of doing. What she had done within the mound-or at least some shadow of it. Ashi gasped out loud, her exclamation part of a chorus that erupted from all the hunters. She clutched at her head. 'Rond betch!' she cursed. 'Cheo kint? What kind of magic-'
'Not magic,' said Medala. 'Psionics. The power of the mind.'
'Kint by any name has the same stink,' groaned Breff.
Medala's eyes narrowed, but the Revered gave her a sharp glance. 'Medala,' he said.
The green-robed woman flinched as if he had struck her, shrinking back in terror from the rebuke. 'Your pardon, Dah'mir.'
Her words silenced the hunters more than any actions ever could. The name of the Revered hadn't been spoken aloud among the Bonetree clan in four generations. Ashi held her breath, waiting.
But if the Revered was offended, he didn't show it. 'What of her vanishing?'
'She can step short distances across the dimensions of space,' said Medala. Confusion must have shown on the face of the hunters because she looked disgusted. 'She moved from one place to another,' she added, then looked back to the Revered. 'She can't manage it more than once a day and she can't go very far. Two hundred paces at most. Enough to break her trail.'
'Two hundred paces?' asked Ner. His pride seemed to return. 'Nothing. We'll pick her trail up again, Revered.' His hand dipped into a pouch at his hip and emerged with a thin bone whistle. He put it to his lips and blew a series of shrill notes.
A moment later, Ashi heard a splash and a rustle from the specially prepared pond close to the village. Wings beat into the sky. 'Your birds, Revered,' said Ner. 'They will see her and guide us to her.'
The Revered smiled. 'Move fast, Ner. Bring her back to me.' He held out a strange band of woven copper wire and clear crystals, folded like a cloth headband and big enough to stretch around someone's head. 'Take this. If you need to speak with me, wear it and Medala will hear you.'
Ner bowed his head and accepted the device, but not before Ashi saw him throw a look of malice toward Medala. She understood his anger. How could an outclanner claim a favor and trust from the Revered that he barely showed to the Bonetree, a clan he had guided for generations?
The master of the hunters said nothing, however, and Ashi knew he never would. She kept her mouth closed as well.
The Revered raised his hands over them. 'Go,' he said. 'Do my bidding and with it the work of Khyber. The Dragon Below promises glory to the Bonetree!'
The gathered hunters might not have understood the Revered's words, but they understood the blessing. Their voices rose in a roaring response. 'Su Drumas! Su Darasvhir!'
For the Bonetree! For the Dragon Below!
Ashi mouthed the words, but her eyes were on the Revered and Medala. And Medala's eyes, she saw, were on Dah'mir.
998 Year of the Kingdom
CHAPTER 1
The golden light of late afternoon filled the little valley like honey. Insects flashed as they drifted through the still air, lazy now that midsummer's fierce heat had passed from the far west of the Eldeen Reaches. There was a spot Geth knew of, up high on the valley's northern slope, where a slab of bare rock thrust out from the trees. On an afternoon like this, there was nowhere better to lie out and bask in the sun, alone with the sky, the forest, and the stone.
On another afternoon, the shifter thought, but not today. He shook thick, sweat-damp brown hair out of his eyes and growled between sharp teeth, 'They're toying with us, Adolan. Three times back and forth across the valley. Are they going to run us all the way to the Shadowcrags?'
Well-worn leather leggings whispered as Adolan paused and looked back along the valley's length. His nose, sharp and pointed as human noses tended to be, crinkled. 'If we take a straight path, it's not so far back to Bull Hollow.'
Geth stared at his friend, then blinked wide amber eyes. 'You'd see the Ring of Siberys in a mud puddle,' he grumbled in annoyance.
Adolan's smile broke through his red-brown beard. 'What's the matter, Geth?' he asked. 'Can't enjoy your fleas when someone's scratching you?'
Geth paused in the act of reaching to scratch at the thick sideburns that grew down a shifter's jaw line. Another low growl rolled up out of his throat. The heavy hair on the back of his neck and on his forearms rose and his lips pulled away from his teeth. 'If one of my fleas ever bit your thin skin, Ado, we'd need a needle and thread to sew up the wound!'
'Then it's good thing they like your furry hide better, isn't it?'
'Small-eye human.'
'Furball shifter.' Adolan held out a flat packet. 'Jerky?'
'Tak.' Geth plucked a strip of the dried meat from the druid's packet with thick, heavy-nailed fingers. He stuck it in his mouth and sucked at the smoky saltiness for a moment, then said around the meat, 'They are toying with us, though.'
'They're too bold,' Adolan said as he took a piece of jerky for himself. 'We're closer to them than they think. We'll catch them soon.'
The tall human slid the jerky into his mouth and started walking again, eyes scanning the ground for signs of their quarry. Geth followed him at an easy, loping gait. 'Do you think they'll talk?' he asked. 'I hate it when they talk.'
Adolan's only answer was the slow grind of flat teeth on jerky. Geth snapped at his jerky twice. Sharp teeth tore the hard meat into slivers. 'More?' he grunted.
Adolan tossed him the packet.
'There's something in the woods,' Sandar had said when he dropped by their cabin that morning. The man who owned the last inn in the Eldeen had somehow appointed himself the mouthpiece of Bull Hollow's elders.
'There are a lot of things in the woods, Sandar,' Geth had told him with his usual bluntness.
