CHAPTER 14
They arrived at the Bonetree camp with the sun high in the sky. The young hunters leaped out of the boats and splashed through the shallows to draw the vessels up on shore. On the riverbank above, there were excited shouts that rose into one of the fluting trills that Singe had learned to identify as Bonetree hunting calls.
'What are they saying?' he asked Ashi.
'That Dah'mir has returned,' the hunter whispered. 'That the hunt was successful.'
There was no emotion in her voice. She'd said almost nothing to him since the night Dandra had woken screaming, but neither had she strayed far from his side. The young hunters were always watching Singe now, at least as much as they watched Ashi. True to Ashi's prediction, there had been two more challenges for her sword. The second challenger she wounded as she had the first. The third she killed, her face hard.
That hardness hadn't lifted.
As they climbed out of the boats, one of the young hunters began shouting at the others, forming them up into a pack, ready to lead Dah'mir and Medala up the riverbank. A ragtag honor guard, Singe realized. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw anger flicker in Ashi's eyes. She started to move toward the hunters but Dah'mir glanced at her. 'Stay with the prisoners, Ashi,' he told her.
'My place is leading the hunters, Revered,' she said, but the green-eyed man shook his head.
'You have a greater honor,' he said and once again Singe could feel the persuasive touch of his presence. 'Bring the prisoners behind me so that the clan can see them.'
Even Ashi's anger softened before his charm. She nodded and moved forward obediently. Dandra needed no encouragement to follow Dah'mir, of course. She stumbled after him like a zombie. Even after days of travel, it still hurt Singe to see the proud, bright woman reduced to a dim automaton.
Singe, though, froze on the river's edge. This was the end of their journey-and Geth hadn't come for them. The hope of rescue that he might have nurtured over the past several days wavered like a candle flame.
Ashi reached back and took his arm. 'Come,' she said.
At the top of the riverbank, the Bonetree encampment spread out around them, a scattering of rough shelters that seemed to be half hut and half tent. Men, women, and children-the first of the Bonetree clan he had seen, Singe realized, who were not hunters-hurried forward, calling out to the hunters and kneeling down to Dah'mir. The young hunters marched with all the self-conscious stiffness of fresh recruits to the Blademarks, but Dah'mir smiled and held out his hand, offering blessings freely. At his side, Medala's eyes darted across the gathered clan as if seeking out any hint of a threat to her lord.
Calls and praise turned to stony silence when Singe and Dandra passed.
As they passed a cluster of better shelters, a handful of older hunters stood watching. Singe's gut sank a little lower. He thought he recognized some of the hunters. They were the ones who had attacked Bull Hollow.
Ashi's face lit up. 'Breff!' she called out to one tattooed man. Singe saw her eyes dart among the older hunters, then narrow. She said something to Breff in the language of the Bonetree clan. 'Ches azams esheios?'
Breff shook his head.
For the last several days, Singe had been listening to the hunters as they traveled upriver, trying to unravel a little of their language. He strained to make some sense of Ashi's words. Azams were other members of the clan. Shei was to hunt. Sheios — they hunt… Are the others hunting?
'Ashi,' he murmured, 'should there be more hunters?'
'Yes.' She called to Breff again, waving him closer. 'Gri'i ans kriri?'
'We're the only ones,' Breff said. Singe felt a shock at hearing him speak another language. The hunter's words were low and his voice was brittle, as if he was discussing some terrible, haunting secret he wanted no one else to hear. 'Hruucan set a hard pace on the journey back. Anyone who was too badly wounded…'
He stopped, glancing up.
Dah'mir stood beside them.
Ashi's face fell and Singe's belly trembled, but Dah'mir ignored them both and instead looked at Breff. The tattooed man's gaze slid to the ground.
Dah'mir took a step back. 'Hunters,' he said gently, 'come to me.' He gestured to the younger hunters as well as the older. 'All of you.'
They clustered around him, pierced and tattooed savages kneeling before a dark, immaculate priest. Only Ashi stood back, staying in her place between Singe and Dandra. Dah'mir stretched out his hands, laying one on Breff's shoulder. 'First among the Bonetree,' he said, 'my loyal servants, be glad! To fall at the command of a child of Khyber is an honor! The clan will tell tales of the fallen for generations. Yours was a hunt to be remembered.' He gestured with his free hand, indicating Dandra and Singe. 'What you sought has been found and new blood for the Bonetree along with it.' He smiled and his green eyes flashed. 'Be blessed, hunters of the Bonetree! May the Dragon Below restore your ferocity!'
Singe felt the breath of magic as foul as Fause's healing of his arm and shivered. He couldn't imagine that more than few of the kneeling hunters understood Dah'mir's words, but when they looked up, there was a new light in their eyes. Their fingers rose, darting to their lips and their foreheads. Breff's eyes seemed brightest of all. 'Harana!' he moaned, and leaned forward to kiss the hem of Dah'mir's leather robes. The green-eyed man raised his hand and all of the hunters leaped to their feet, joining in his honor guard.
None of them looked at Ashi a second time, so caught up were they in reverent adoration of Dah'mir. Singe glanced at her, but her expression was once again hard. He turned away and looked ahead.
The Bonetree mound rose above them. Singe bit his tongue. It was as large as a hill, but after the flatness of the Shadow Marches and with no other hills around, it looked enormous. 'That can't be natural!' he said.
'It isn't,' Ashi grunted. She didn't look at him, but she said, 'There are stories told by the elders that describe how the earliest members of the clan built it in honor of the Dragon Below. It's said that once a Gatekeeper circle stood here, but that Dah'mir shattered it and raised the ancestor mound in its place. Now he lives beneath the mound with the children of Khyber. No member of the clan sets foot inside it, but there are other stories of passages that lead deep into Khyber and of Dah'mir's treasure.'
Singe knew that it could only be a sign of growing desperation that his mind fixed on the least appropriate fragment of Ashi's words. 'Treasure?' he repeated.
'Dragonshards,' said Ashi. 'For all the generations that he's guided the Bonetree, he's gathered dragonshards, like those he wears the and the ones he gave Vennet. The elders say that he's building a great shrine to the Dragon Below and when it's complete, the clan will be allowed to worship there.'
She didn't sound like she believed it, but Singe had a vision of a shrine as large as one of the great halls of Wynarn lined with ten generations' accumulation of dragonshards.
'Twelve moons,' he choked, feeling like a greed-maddened dwarf.
It was a feeling that lasted only until Dah'mir's procession reached the tunnel that gaped in the side of the mound. Standing inside the shadows of the stone-lined tunnel was a dolgaunt. His face and chest were terribly scarred, patches of the writhing buds that covered his skin replaced by tissue that was smooth, shiny, and raw. Clumps of his thick hair-tendrils were limp and dead, and the tentacle that sprouted from his left shoulder moved sluggishly compared to the right. Singe's belly felt hollow and cold. It was Hruucan.
The dolgaunt stood stiff as the crowd of hunters split apart. When Dah'mir and Medala stepped forward, he bent to them-stiffly-in respect. Dah'mir's eyebrows rose. 'Hruucan, when Medala said you had been injured…'
'I recover,' Hruucan answered in the same harsh, grating voice that Singe remembered from Bull Hollow. 'The scars are… inconvenient.' His shoulder tentacles lashed the air with an agitation that betrayed his words. 'Dah'mir, you have the one who did this to me with you!'
Dah'mir looked over his shoulder and his eye fixed on Singe. 'I have plans for Singe, Hruucan,' he said. 'He will be brought into the Bonetree. His blood will make the clan stronger.'
'Scars don't pass through the blood,' Hruucan rasped. 'If you command, any woman of the Bonetree will mate with him no matter how ugly he is. I'll leave him a man. That will be enough.' The dolgaunt's empty eye sockets turned to Singe. 'A rematch, wizard,' he said. 'A duel to finish what we started.'
