“This is Hro’nyewachu,” said the belkagen.
Amira heard a rustling in the grass behind her, and she turned. Gyaidun had placed the deer in the grass before him, and both he and Lendri knelt with their heads bowed. Behind them, among the trees, Amira saw silver shadows keeping a respectful distance. They too knelt, and even those that walked on four legs through the trees stopped and lowered their heads.
“From here,” said the belkagen, and Amira turned back to face him, “we go alone, you and I.”
Amira tried to swallow but found her throat dry. “Lead on,” she rasped.
The belkagen knelt beside the deer carcass. “If you would, Yastehanye …”
Gyaidun lifted the deer and placed it over the elf’s shoulders. He moved with a reverence that only deepened Amira’s trepidation. The belkagen stood, holding the deer secure with one hand and his staff in the other. If the carcass was a great burden to him, he didn’t show it.
“If we are not back by sunrise,” said the belkagen, his voice raised for everyone to hear, “do not tarry. Go to the aid of Jalan, son of Amira of Cormyr, and bring the vengeance of the Vil Adanrath upon those who took him.”
The belkagen turned and proceeded into the cave. Amira followed. Behind them, the howling of wolves rode the autumn dark. She hoped their song was a salute, but to her the mournful howls sounded more like a dirge.
Their path descended almost at once, the ground beneath Amira’s feet ranging from steps hewn out of the rock to gravel-strewn sand. The trail wound back and forth, deeper and deeper into the heart of Akhrasut Neth. At times they walked through tunnels low enough that both were forced to crouch, and the green flames from the belkagen’s staff lit the path before and behind them a long way. At other times they emerged into caverns so vast the darkness swallowed the light.
Amira expected to hear the chitter of bats or the scuttle of insects, but there was nothing. Save for the shuffling of their feet and the sound of their breath, all was utter silence, a heaviness beyond even sound that weighed upon Amira the farther they went. The beating of her own heart sounded loud in her ears.
They left the biting cold of autumn night behind them and fell into a uniform coolness that did not change through the seasons. The air tasted dry and clean, and the change in it was Amira’s first clue that they were approaching something new. Dampness. That’s what it was. Amira could smell water in the air.
She and the belkagen descended a flight of stairs in a tight tunnel, then emerged into a cavern, broad beyond the reach of the staff’s light but with a low ceiling littered with stalactites. The inverted cones of stone glistened in the green light of the belkagen’s flame, and they drip-drip-dripped into a pool that filled all but a sandy strip of dry land before them. If the path continued on the far shore, Amira could not see it, for the far side was beyond the reach of the staff’s light.
“From here,” said the belkagen, his voice lowered to a reverent whisper, “you must go on alone. I cannot aid you.”
“Go on?” said Amira. “Where?”
“Through the water. You can swim?”
“Yes.”
“It is not deep, but before you reach the other side, the water will be over your head. On the far shore is an opening to the Heart. You must go alone. What happens there is between you and Hro’nyewachu.”
“And if”—Amira took a deep breath—“if something happens to me, if I need your help …?”
“There is no help I can give you, Lady. If Hro’nyewachu takes you, I will honor your memory. But there is nothing I can do to hinder the will of Hro’nyewachu.”
Amira considered that. It was not bravery or blind faith that decided her, but simple pragmatism. She knew she was no match for the thing that held Jalan. She knew that without help her best hope would be to get away with her son and spend the rest of her life running, jumping at every shadow, never trusting to a night’s rest, and putting everyone who aided her in danger. If there was a way to defeat Jalan’s abductors once and for all, if even an inkling of the belkagen’s suspicions and counsel were true, she’d be a fool not to try.
“You’ll be here when I return?” she said.
“I will.”
“How … how am I supposed to take the oracle’s gift?” She pointed to the deer carcass. “I can swim well enough, but not carrying that.”
“Take it as far as you can. Hro’nyewachu will see to the rest.”
Amira wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that. No matter. Do or die. Let it be done. She motioned for the belkagen to hand her the deer.
“There is … one thing more,” said the belkagen, and Amira could not tell if his tone was solemnity, embarrassment, or both.
“What?”
“You can take nothing with you. Your staff, your spellbook, your dagger, and your, uh … your clothes must remain here.”
“I go … naked?”
“The water is not that cold.”
“Naked? Why?”
The belkagen lowered his eyes. “It is the way. So it has always been done. So it must be done. You must take with you only your purest essence, no aid beyond body, soul, and spirit.”
Amira scowled. It was a trivial thing at which to balk, perhaps, but still …
“I am Vil Adanrath,” said the belkagen, “not human, and Lady, I am very old, but if you wish it, I shall turn my back to honor your people’s customs of modesty.”
Modesty be damned. “Let’s get this over with,” she said and began to strip, first her elkhide cloak, then her boots, her outer clothes, and finally her smallclothes, all of which she laid in a neat pile not far from the water’s edge. She placed her staff, belt with sheathed blade and pouches, and her spellbook atop the pile, then stood and motioned for the deer. Though it was not the biting cold of the outside world, the air inside the cavern was cool, and her bare skin crinkled into gooseflesh.
The belkagen leaned close, averting his eyes, and placed the deer over her shoulders. It was not unbearably heavy so much as awkward in its utter dead weight. The coarse fur made her skin itch.
She turned to the water. “The other side? An opening, you said?”
“Yes,” said the belkagen. “Your gods and ancestors go with you.”
Amira closed her eyes. A strange feeling washed over her. Dread, yes, but not one that was entirely unpleasant. Fear, yes, but also an odd exhilaration and eagerness. It was not unlike the first time she had been with a man, the one who’d changed her from maiden to woman, the one she’d loved and later watched die. She prayed—Azuth, Mystra, Kelemvor … keep me alive long enough to save my son. If not, grant the enemies of my enemies bloody vengeance.
She stepped into the pool.
The water was warmer than the air, and it sparked a sharp awareness in her skin. Amira felt every grain of wet sand between her toes, every tiny pebble beneath her feet, and against her bare shins she could even feel the slight ripples caused by the water dripping off the stalactites.
She walked on, dragging her feet through the soft sand, enjoying the sensation. Ten steps and the water was already above her knees. Another four and her hips and waist disappeared beneath the water. The green light cast by the belkagen’s staff on the shore behind her grew fainter, and by her thirtieth step she walked in dim, wet shadow with the water caressing the swell of her breasts.
As the darkness swallowed Amira, her other senses sharpened. She could distinguish every drip striking her scalp, feel the tiny waves caused by their impact and her own movement, and she could almost sense a rhythm in dozens of tiny hammer-strikes of water droplets hitting the pool’s surface. Almost like sharp heartbeats. Her own pulse slowed and steadied but beat with such strength that Amira could feel blood coursing through her limbs.
When the water reached her shoulders, Amira knelt, allowing the water to lift some of the burden of the deer. It became lighter, but the pull and tug of the water made it even more awkward, and her pace slowed. The belkagen’s light was gone now. She knew that if s
he turned, she could have seen it like an emerald beacon behind her, but before her all was impenetrable blackness.
The water licked at her chin, and her next step fell into nothingness. The ground dropped out beneath her and Amira went down. She felt the water soak through her hair as she entered the thick, pulsing near-silence beneath the pool. She sank less than half a pace before her foot hit solid rock and she pushed. She rose again, but the weight of the deer hindered her, and she had to shrug it off and arch her neck to get her mouth above the water long enough to draw breath.
The deer carcass drifted off her and she held onto its foreleg with one hand as she sank again, farther this time to get more strength for her push. She knelt there in the calm silence of the pool, for just an instant listening to the distant plip-plitip-plip of the water droplets striking the surface. Then she pushed off. She broke the surface, took a deep breath—
—and felt the deer yanked away from her. Her breath rose to a scream, then she was below the surface again. Her grip had not been tight—why should it?—but still she’d felt the immutable strength of something take the deer from her. The young buck’s antler had scraped the back of her forearm as the head passed, then it was gone.
There, alone in the darkness beneath the water, her heart hammering in her chest, Amira listened. She felt the wake of the deer’s passage, and somewhere just beyond hearing she thought she might have heard harsh laughter, then she was alone again.
Enough of this—back to the belkagen! part of her said, but the hard core of her, the part of Amira that fought and strived and killed in battle, recalled the belkagen’s words. “Take it as far as you can. Hro’nyewachu will see to the rest.”
Surprising? Yes. Damned unsettling, in fact, but this was nothing the belkagen had not told her about.
Just get to the other side, she told herself, nice and easy.
The water round her legs seemed to thicken, solidify, and as she opened her mouth to scream, she was pulled under. Water filled her nose, her mouth, and poured down her throat. She clawed for the surface, then the blackness and the thick silence beneath the pool swallowed her.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Hro’nyewachu
Pain pulled Amira back to awareness. Her lungs felt like she was breathing daggers. All she could see was a warm blood red glow, like staring into the sunset with her eyes closed. Panic froze her mind, then her body took over.
She coughed out a great gout of water, drew in a rattling breath, then coughed up more water. She coughed and gagged and heaved until she feared her eyes were going to burst from her head.
When air began to find its way into her body again, her mind was able to emerge from the panic and take stock of her situation. Still on her hands and knees—on a stone floor with a thin covering of grit, she noticed—she looked up through her drenched hair.
The red light hadn’t been brought on by her panic. She was in a cavern. Stalactites large as war-horses hung from a ceiling far above. Some had melded with the stone below, forming columns of stone that glistened in the red glow.
Glow—?
She looked around. If the light had a source, she could not find it, but it filled the cavern. Even the great columns of stone cast no shadow. The chamber had no proper walls, but the ceiling formed a dome that fell to meet the floor.
Amira sat up on her knees, brushed her sodden hair out of her face, and looked around. Where is the entrance? she wondered. How did I get here? Where—?
Her gaze stopped on the floor behind her. Not ten paces away lay the deer. It had been cut in two perfect halves, right down the middle, and each half set parallel so that the twin antlers nearly touched. Even the thick bone of the skull and spine had been split. What could have done such a thing?
The entrails and a great pool of blood—black in the cavern’s light—lay between them, and just beyond them was a stone pedestal. It looked as if one of the great stone columns had been severed at table-height. Whether it had been carved or formed that way through some craft of magic or by long eons of stone-growth, Amira could not tell.
Upon the stone table was the deer’s heart, still beating, slowly but with a steady, unceasing rhythm. With each beat, a small trickle of blood pulsed from the heart. Already a sizeable pool had formed in the concave surface of the stone table.
Amira’s eyes widened, and she held her breath. The deer had been dead. How—?
Stand.
Amira gasped at the voice. It came to her mind, not her ears, and the language was one she’d never heard, though she understood it immediately. It was deep, husky, but obviously feminine. Where had it come from? Where—?
Stand.
There. Amira stood and faced the table.
A figure stepped out from behind one of the stone columns that flanked the table. She was tall—she could’ve looked down upon Gyaidun—but thin. Not emaciated, for the grace with which she moved hinted at great strength, but something about the way she moved seemed … unnatural, as if her muscles and joints were not fitted to her bones like other beings. She was quite naked, but Amira could not discern the color of her skin. A slick wetness covered her from head to toe, and in the red light of the cavern it was almost black. Blood. In her heart of hearts, Amira knew it.
The woman’s hair was made up in dozens and dozens of tight braids that hung to her waist. Woven among them were bits of bone, feathers, and flowers, which surprised Amira—spring flowers of many colors, here on the verge of winter, some in full bloom and some still in tight little buds.
As the woman walked to the stone pedestal and stood behind it, her eyes held Amira’s. They were set deep beneath hairless brows, and they seemed to deny the blood red light of the cavern and shone back a pale, dusty white—the color of the waxing moon on a cloudless winter night.
You bring the gift to fulfill the covenant. As sworn. Name yourself.
“I—” Amira’s voice came out a croak. She swallowed and tried again. “Amira of House Hiloar of Cormyr. You are the … the oracle?”
The woman raised her right arm and pointed to the bisected deer carcass. In life, we walk in death. In death, life. Come.
“Come?”
To me. Now.
Amira took a deep breath and began to walk around the bloody remains of the deer.
Stop! said the figure, though in her head Amira heard the roar of an animal. A predator.
“What—?”
Through death you will walk, or to death you will go.
The woman lifted her head back and took in a deep breath, her nostrils flaring. Though the stench of blood and death filled the cavern, Amira knew the oracle was smelling her, and she knew her promise of death was true.
Amira closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then opened them again and walked between the halves of the deer. The blood was warm—almost hot—beneath the soles of her feet. She winced but did not look down as she almost slipped on the entrails. The stench was overwhelming, and tears flowed down Amira’s cheeks.
Amira stood before the table, and the tall figure looked down upon her.
I smell winter upon you.
“I … I have come to seek your aid,” said Amira. “Something has my son. Something too powerful for me to defeat. I need your help.”
The oracle smiled, and it sent a shiver down Amira’s back. There was no warmth in it, no pleasure, no human emotion at all. It was merely muscles drawing the lips back over teeth, and the teeth were sharp. The oracle placed her hands on the edge of the table, then bent over and buried her face in the pool of blood and drank, lapping at the blood like an animal. Amira wanted to look away, but she stood frozen.
The oracle straightened, fresh blood smeared over her face and running down her neck and breasts. With her right hand, she seized the still-beating heart, brought it to her open mouth and tore into it. Amira heard the tough muscle snap between the powerful jaws. The oracle put the heart back on the pedestal. Still it beat with a steady, if weaker rhythm.
The oracle chew
ed and swallowed. Now, you.
“What?”
Eat. Drink.
“What? I … I can’t! The belkagen said noth—”
Again a predator’s growl cut her off, and this time Amira heard it in her ears as well as her mind. Her own heart skipped a beat, then set to hammering like a bird’s. Looking up into the eyes of the oracle, Amira knew beyond doubt that her life now hung by the barest thread.
Eat the flesh. Drink the blood.
Amira placed her hands on the pedestal as the oracle had done. The stone was warm, and Amira almost thought she felt a pulse beating within it. Before her sense and thirty years of ingrained Cormyrean propriety could talk her out of it, Amira plunged her face into the blood. She felt her hair fall around her, soaking up the blood, and she drank. Not just a sip, for at the first taste a thirst she had never known opened in her innermost being, and the blood down her throat seemed both to slake it and make her even more aware of the need to be slaked. Amira drank until her body cried out for air, then pushed herself up.
The oracle looked down on her, eyes still shining, but now Amira thought she could almost see her own reflection in those pale depths.
Now eat and fulfill the pact.
Amira reached out. Her hand was trembling, but not from fear or weakness. Amira could feel the blood coursing through her, filling her spirit with a strength and warmth she had never known. Her skin burned with sensation, feeling even the tiniest stirring of air. Scents overwhelmed her—raw flesh, warm blood, stone older than Cormyr itself, the tiny buds and petals in the oracle’s hair, and beneath it all something to which she could put no name but which awoke something ancient and primal in her, some part of her mind that still dreamed of the time before men built cities of stone and kept the wild at bay with their fires and prayers, when the wild was still part of them.
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