them and the light of the sun was lost. A new chill crept along the pass like invisible fog. The horses breathed out white vapor.
“What do you want, Tadarus?” Fangodrel finally asked.
“You seem troubled, brother,” said Tadarus. “Do you think of our father?”
Fangodrel started to laugh, but checked himself. He turned his lean face again to Tadarus.
“No,” was all he said.
“You do not seem your usual self,” said Tadarus.
“You hardly know me, brother,” said Fangodrel.
“True,” said Tadarus. “But this must change. We have a long journey ahead of us. Why must we stay at such lengths from each other? We are the same blood. Things should be different between us.”
Fangodrel mused on his brother’s words awhile. He tilted his head. “Tell me,” he said. “Why do you wait until now to make this offer? You have spurned me all your life. You are favored by Mother and Father. I am at best tolerated. Now you find yourself forced to endure my presence, and you wish to make a peace?”
Tadarus pursed his lips. He would not let his brother anger him, as he was so skilled at doing. He must see past the harsh words, the mistrust. This man was his brother, and however different they were, there should be love between them. Should be.
“We’ve had our differences,” said Tadarus. “But Father is gone; our family is changed. Soon the world will change too. By the things we go to do now, we will change it. Let us join together and write a new story. We are no longer children, Fangodrel. We must act like Men.”
Fangodrel guffawed. “You, who are younger, lecture me on maturity? Your ego knows no bounds, Prince.”
Tadarus ignored the pressure rising in his chest. “You are but a year my elder,” he said.
“Still… I am your elder,” said Fangodrel.
“What of it?” said Tadarus, a sliver of anger slipping into his words.
“The t [='3 Hehrone will be mine when Mother dies,” said Fangodrel. “You cannot accept this fact. It eats at you like a disease. I see your envy dripping like poison from your eyes.”
“The throne will never be yours,” said Tadarus. Rage stole his words and ran away with them. His face flushed bright red. “You are too weak, and you are too cruel! Men will not follow you, nor Giants. What little wisdom you do have you waste on stale rhymes and cheap whores. That is why I lead this company – not you. Do not forget it.”
Fangodrel rode on unmoved by his brother’s anger. He blinked as the sun appeared above a ridgeline. “This is how you make peace,” he said. “Well done, my loving brother.”
Tadarus groaned, cursed between his teeth. His brother had done it again. Made him lose his temper. Gods be damned, he wouldn’t make the mistake of reaching out to this wretch again. He leaned over in the saddle, bringing his face close to that of Fangodrel.
“Just you mind your place in my company, brother,” Tadarus said, teeth gritted.
“Or what?” said Fangodrel. “You’ll kill me? You’d be a kinslayer, a cursed criminal.”
“If I wanted to kill you I’d have done it years ago.”
“You haven’t the stomach for it,” said Fangodrel. “You’ll always be Mother’s little boy. Play at war if you like, throw your stones and wrestle your Giants… but that’s all you are. You hate me because I know this better than anyone.”
Tadarus refused to follow the conversation any further.
“Mind your place,” he said again, and spurred his horse back to the front of the line. Once more he rode alongside Andoses.
“How fares my cousin?” asked the Prince of Shar Dni.
Tadarus breathed deeply, calming himself the way a warrior prepares for battle. “Always the same,” he said. “Miserable, offensive, and insufferable.”
“Good thing he’s riding back there then, eh?” said Andoses.
Tadarus looked at his cousin and laughed. Andoses caught the laughter and returned it.
Fangodrel rode grim and silent behind them.
In the narrow belt of sky above the ravine, stormclouds scudded and rumbled.
Tadarus and Andoses were still laughing when the first of the cold drops fell.
The cave was a tunnel leading deep into the bowels of the hill. The darkness lived there, seething and flowing and breathing like some ancient beast. Sharadza walked into the depths of the earth, the dark flowing thick about her like honey. She smelled damp granite and the spoor of little blind creatures. She heard her own footfalls, clattering and booming in the lightless regions, and the crone’s voice called her deeper and deeper into the subterranean void.
“The [ze=, clatteri five senses are lies,” said the crone’s voice. She was somewhere nearby, hovering in the darkness. “Down here, without light, you will see more clearly.”
Stumbling, groping, crawling through the dark. Echoes of her own movements dancing across the walls, the invisible ceiling.
“The first step in learning sorcery,” said the crone’s voice, “is to look beyond the lies of the world. To see the invisible that dwells behind and beneath the visible. The world you know up there does not exist. Down here you are a newborn, and you must relearn. So you will come to understand the world in a new way. Eat this…”
Sharadza’s head swam, and she felt the crone’s hand against hers. She closed her fingers over some kind of root like a gnarled carrot. It smelled of dirt. “Eat,” said the crone’s voice.
Crunching molars, bitter taste vibrating on her tongue. The aftertaste of the sweet tea mingling with the earthy flavor of the root. Then a lightness, a dizzy flow, the pounding of blood in her ears.
The rough ground at her feet glowed now, a phosphorescence she had not noticed. A hue of nameless color. She raised her head. A vast cavern opened before her, a forest of stalactites and stalagmites stretching into the darkness. Some of them had melded into magnificent pillars, glowing with that same colorless color, glinting with crystalline deposits like skeins of diamond. The roof of the vault was too far overhead to see, as were the walls. Here was another world altogether. Now white mushrooms tall as Giants grew in the murk, with lesser fungi sprouting beneath them in masses of shifting, pulsing colors. How had she not seen all this a moment before? Where was the source of light? There was no light. She was seeing the darkness. No… seeing through the darkness.
The crone stood near a tall stalagmite, supporting her bent back with a wooden staff. She glowed like a rainbow, translucent and glimmering in wondrous shades that had no names.
“Who are you?” asked the crone.
“You know who I am,” said Sharadza, the non-lights dazzling her eyes.
“Who are you?”
“Sharadza.”
“Who is Sharadza?” asked the crone.
“The daughter of Vod and Shaira.”
“Who are you?”
The crone was gone. Tiny beings moved among the wilderness of fungi, glowing with life. Now the fungi sprouted above her like the forest of Uduria, and she walked – no scuttled – among the blossoming foliage. She sniffed, smelling color and sound and a dozen mysteries. Her hands and arms were gone. She had four clawed appendages now, and a proboscis nose, snuffling along the ground. The cave creatures greeted her with subsonic noises and bursts of scent. She responded by instinct. She roamed the fungi world for a time without measure, sometimes alone, sometimes with her pale-furred companions, dragging a long tail that switched and slapped the ground. She nibbled at the choicest of fungi, savoring its taste, going on to sample more. She ate, defecated, and [efeped moved on. She screeched, and fought, and fed again, and sang with her sightless brethren in the swirling fungus groves.
“Who are you?” came the crone’s voice.
It took her a moment to answer. “Sharadza,” she chirped as best she could.
Now she came to a dark underground lake lying serene beneath a vast dome of granite. Ripples moved across its surface now and then, and she saw the glow of life drifting in its depths. The crone said something, and Sharadza slithered forward, letting the frigid waters envelope her. She swam the black currents, moving her lithe
