“Why us?” Danr asked suddenly. “Why are you doing this for us?”
“To us,” Aisa corrected.
“Hmm.” Bund flicked one claw toward the pouch at Danr’s throat. “Because you can see truth, boy. Or you will soon. The Tree needs to tip again, and it will tip around the five of you.”
“Five?” Danr said.
“He can count.” Bund poked at their backsides with the stick. “Go on. Twisting is almost never fatal.”
“Almost?” Aisa squeaked.
“Nothing valuable comes without risk. Go!” And she shoved them into the design of light and shade.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dreadful light smashed through Aisa’s skull. Her feet left the ground, and for a moment the world turned upside down. Nausea split her stomach. For a terrible moment, she lost her body and was no longer herself. She had branches and roots that twisted through not just three worlds, or three dozen, or even three million, but a countless infinity of worlds. Aisa was connected with every tiny piece of everything everywhere. Even the eternal hunger for elves receded. She was losing herself.
And then a tiny particle, a seed of time and place, grew and blossomed nearby. Greedily, she snatched at it, felt it strengthen under her hand. She yanked at it. With a vicious wrench, she landed hard on a hard stone floor. A thud, and Hamzu, the strong one, landed beside her. They both lay there a moment, breathing hard. Hamzu sat up first and helped Aisa to her feet with his immense, gentle strength. The cave swayed and settled.
“Are you all right?” Hamzu asked in his gruff voice, and not for the first time Aisa wished she knew his real name, even if Hamzu suited him better than Trollboy.
“I am not at all all right,” she said, secretly gratified that his first question came for her welfare. “But I believe I will adjust. Where are we?”
They were standing at the end of a long, high tunnel lit by the ever-present mushrooms. It was as if Bund had shoved them into her tunnel and they had emerged from this one. Perhaps, Aisa considered, they had.
Ahead of them, far distant, echoed the sound of female voices raised in argument. Hamzu gave Aisa a glance. “The Three?” he asked.
“Seems likely.” Her mouth was dry despite the dampness of the tunnel. “Perhaps we should find out.”
Hamzu tapped the wall behind them. It remained unmoving beneath his fingers. “Do you think it’ll work, calling Bund three times to get back?”
Aisa had to try twice before she could answer. “I am unsure. But since we cannot now go back, the best we can do is go forward.”
He snorted. “Go forward. That’s usually my philosophy.”
“Is it?” Aisa was aware she was blithering, talking about nothing to cover her unease. “Then it would appear we are both intelligent, sharp-witted people, except for one thing.”
“What?”
“We are neither of us actually moving forward.”
Hamzu snorted again, and together they set out down the tall tunnel. As they walked, the gnawing desire for elven company returned full bore. It tugged at Aisa, drilled through her bones. This cold and brutal place felt empty without the shining light of the Fae, and she longed for her lord’s tantalizing fingers on her skin. She did her best to push the feeling aside. Hamzu was there. Tall and strong and gentle. Except when he had roared to life and crushed the monster White Halli. That day would live forever branded on her mind.
Aisa had been half waiting for the word witch to fly from someone’s mouth like a poisonous wasp and sting her. Healer women always seemed more susceptible to such accusations. More than once, she had almost given up healing entirely for fear of it. But not only did healing give her a sense of purpose; it also let her build a road to freedom, coin by coin, and she kept at it despite the risk. And when White Halli’s inevitable accusation came, Aisa had known then that she was a dead woman. She would be either beaten to death as an accused witch, or executed as a confessed one.
And then … then Hamzu was there, standing between her and White Halli’s beating stick. In that moment, she had seen her chance to do some real good. If Hamzu wielded the cane as White Halli ordered, he could kill her in one painless blow, and Hamzu himself would go free in the bargain. Her death could buy his liberty.
But it hadn’t happened that way. Hamzu had given up his life for her instead. The event left her at a loss. No one had ever done such a thing for her. Not her father, not her brothers, certainly King Vamath, her former elven owner. When Aisa looked at Hamzu, she felt she might fly apart or shout for joy or dive into the deepest ocean. Instead of doing any of these things, she wrapped herself deeper in her scarves and followed him underground, despite trolls and tunnels, mushrooms and magic. She would follow him until she had the chance to learn if she would do the same thing for him that he had done for her.
The tunnel sloped sharply downward, and they made their way slowly to avoid falling. Great stone teeth hung down from the ceiling, and equally great stone spikes thrust up from the floor. Aisa pulled her rags tighter around her, trying to drive the ever-present cold hunger away. There were no bats or worms here, just dripping water, a few glowing mushrooms, and Hamzu’s soft breath in the darkness. And the squabbling. It grew louder, and Aisa was eventually able to make out three distinct voices.
“It’s my turn,” one voice cried.
“It’s not,” contradicted another. “It’s mine.”
“You’re both wrong,” snapped a third. “It’s still mine.”
Aisa and Hamzu crept around a pile of rocks and found the entrance to a cave. Cautiously they slipped closer to peer inside. What Aisa saw made her heart pound. Three gigantic women, taller even than Kech, sat on the floor around a fire that was small to them but would have been a bonfire to anyone else. Their clothes hung in black tatters, and so many wrinkles creased their faces that Aisa could barely make out any features. Aisa exchanged a nervous glance with Hamzu. Their eye sockets were black and empty, and they had no ears. Skulls and other bones littered the floor. The Three.
The woman closest to Aisa snatched something from one of the others and clapped her hand to her face. When she took her hand away, her left eye socket was no longer empty. A single glittering eye looked around the cave.
“Give that back!” the second woman howled, revealing dark, toothless gums.
“You have the ear,” the first replied, peering at the fire, then at her clawed hands.
“Only because she stole it from me,” the third snapped. Her lone yellow tooth gleamed in the dim light.
A chill crawled over Aisa. She knew the story of the three mountain women who shared a single eye, ear, and tooth, and who ate the flesh of those who entered their cave, but she’d had no idea the women were real or that they were the ones Bund was sending them to see.
Hamzu was watching the women. They passed the eye, ear, and tooth among themselves with dazzling speed, bickering all the while. Aisa’s teeth chattered, and not just from cold.
“They’ll tell you what you need to know,” said the memory of Bund’s voice. Aisa knew in an instant what they needed to do, and she also saw that Hamzu hadn’t yet come to the same conclusion. She gnawed her lip. People often treated Hamzu like an idiot, but she had long ago realized that he was far from stupid. He just took his time in making up his mind, and he moved with a deliberation that the less observant mistook for imbecility. However, in this particular case, they had no time for deliberation. The longer they stayed, the greater the chance the giant women might notice them and their bones would join the ones on the cave floor.
Aisa straightened one of her scarves and forced herself to focus past the cold, past the hunger, focus on the eye as it passed from hand to hand. Eventually it came to the woman closest to her hiding place. Before she could lose her nerve, Aisa launched herself toward the giant as she passed the eye to her sister. With speed she didn’t know she possessed, Aisa snatched it from the giant’s hand and dashed back to the boulder again. It was bright green, and felt cool an
d heavy against her palm.
“What have you done?” Hamzu whispered in horror.
“What you would have done if you had thought a moment longer,” she whispered back. Her fingers barely encompassed the eye, and she tightened them around it.
A blackness swept out of the orb and wrapped itself around her in a warm, velvet cloak. Aisa nearly cried out, but then the aching cold and the awful hunger vanished as if they had never been. Delicious, heavenly warmth filled her like soft truth. Her stomach was full, and even her fingertips felt warm. The eye wriggled against her hand like a fish.
“Where is it?” the first giant screeched. “Give me the eye!”
“I did,” the second cried.
“You lie!”
Aisa gripped the eye and took a breath. “I have it!”
The first two women continued shouting at each other, but the third, who had the ear, turned her face toward Hamzu and Aisa.
“Sisters!” she snapped. “We have a visitor.”
The other two instantly fell silent, and Aisa understood that without the ear, the sisters could hear each other, but nothing else.
“Who’s there?” the third sister asked.
Aisa swallowed despite the wonderful warmth. Even empty, the giant’s black eye sockets seemed to be looking straight at her and Hamzu, and their hiding place was only a few paces away, within easy reach of a giant’s arm.
“I—we—have come to pay our respects and to learn what we need to know,” Aisa said, her voice shaking slightly.
“What did it say?” the first sister demanded.
“Tell us!” shrieked the second. “Tell us quickly!”
“There are two. They seek knowledge,” the third replied. “And the female has our eye.”
The two deaf sisters immediately set up a howl of dismay. “Give it back!” “Thief!” “Give back our eye!”
Aisa took her time and replied carefully, despite her pounding heart. “If you answer my questions, I will hand over the eye. If you lie or try to trick me, I will squeeze your eye until it breaks.”
The third sister relayed her words and the trio whispered briefly among themselves.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Hamzu murmured.
“No,” Aisa replied. “So be ready.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” His strong, steadfast presence made her feel a little better.
“We agree,” the third giant said at last. “But we will only answer three questions from you.”
“Agreed,” Aisa said.
“Ask!”
“How can I free myself of my hunger for my elven lord?” Aisa blurted out, then blinked. She hadn’t meant to ask that. Her face grew hot. Hamzu stood next to her, his jaw strong, his face impassive. He knew of her constant desire. Everyone in the village did. That made it no less embarrassing to talk about.
The question bounced around the cavern and spun back to Aisa herself. The Three cackled among themselves.
“See the truth,” said the third. The eye pulsed in Aisa’s hand and a burst of warmth rushed over Aisa, and abruptly she knew the answer, like truth that lived down in her long bones, like an answer she had always known and was just now remembering:
She had to seek out the Iron Axe, and the quest for it would break her hunger.
The new memory made her legs go weak, and she grabbed for Hamzu’s arm with her free hand. He gasped at her touch, and she knew that he understood the same truth she did.
“This is not possible,” Aisa said aloud. “Bund said the Iron Axe was destroyed a thousand years ago.”
“That is not a question,” said the third giant.
“All right. Where is the Iron Axe?”
Again, the question bounced around the cavern and spun back to Aisa herself while the Three cackled. “See the truth!”
The eye pulsed warm and dark, and a new memory poured heavily through Aisa. Except this time, there was no great revelation. She already knew that the Iron Axe had been destroyed a thousand years ago. Aisa sighed.
“A foolish question,” mocked the third giant. “Ask your last question.”
Aisa gave herself a mental kick. “Why are the spirits of the dead hanging about instead of going to the underworld?”
“Good one,” Hamzu breathed in her ear, and she shivered.
“See the truth!”
The heavy eye pulsed a third time, and a third time truth came to her, but the new memory landed with the force of a blow. She staggered against the cold rock:
The Stane had chained up Death itself, and without Death, no one could truly die.
Hamzu shared this truth with her, and his mouth fell open. Even his great strength seemed to drain away. Death itself was chained up? How could anyone do such a thing? Why would anyone do such a thing? This question was on Aisa’s lips when the third giant interrupted.
“The eye has spoken to you,” she said. “Give it back!”
“I’m hungry,” said the second giant.
“I’m thirsty,” said the first.
Aisa’s fingers tightened around the eye. Its warmth kept Aisa so calm, so free of the terrible elven hunger. She couldn’t possibly give it up now. Hadn’t she earned a respite after all these years of cold and hunger? And what did these women who lived in a dark cave need of an eye?
But no. She had made a bargain with these giants, and she must live up to it. With a trembling hand, she dropped the bright green eye into Hamzu’s startled palm.
The awful hunger returned, slammed into her like an icy hammer, and sent her to her knees. Hamzu inhaled sharply as the eye’s dark warmth swept over him, and she longed to trade places with him, take even a scrap of the eye’s gift.
The Three set up a howl. “You gave your word!” the third one screamed. “You promised to return the eye!”
Aisa pulled herself to her feet. “I promised to hand it over,” she gasped. “I never said to whom I would hand it. Our bargain is complete, and I offer my respectful thanks. If you want your eye back, I suggest you bargain with my friend.”
The Three howled again, and the stones trembled. Aisa clapped her hands over her ears at the awful noise. Hamzu finally got hold of himself and held the eye high over his head. It was much smaller in his hand.
“I offer the same bargain,” he bellowed. “Three questions for your eye.”
The Three fell silent, leaving only the drip of water in the quiet. “He smells familiar,” whispered the third to the second. “He smells delicious.”
“We should answer. It will be amusing.”
“Very well,” said the third. “But the person to whom you hand the eye must be me.”
“Agreed.”
“Then ask!”
Aisa let herself sag against the rocks and slide to the chilly floor. The hunger was all the worse now for the few moments when the eye had removed it from her. She huddled in her rags and watched Hamzu wield the eye.
“Who is my father?” he asked. The question spun around the cave. Hamzu stiffened, then staggered under new knowledge. Was that how she had looked when the eye answered for her? Timidly, she reached out and touched his shin as the giants cackled. Aisa didn’t feel the warmth of truth, but she did share in the knowledge:
Hamzu’s father was Kech the troll.
“Oh,” she said.
“Yes,” said the third giant through her gums.
“It makes sense,” Hamzu murmured. “He said he was sure his youngest son could open the door on the third try, and I did. Bund told me to call her Grandmother because that’s what she is. Kech wanders the forest outside the mountain. That was how he found my mother.” He held up the eye again. “Did Kech rape—”
Aisa saw what was coming. She pulled herself upright and clapped a hand over Hamzu’s mouth before he could finish the question. “Don’t!”
His half-finished sentence spun around the cavern and died in the dark. The third giant shifted on the cavern floor. “Ask!” she growled.
“I’m still hungry
,” said the second.
“I’m still thirsty,” said the first, and this time they turned their heads toward Hamzu and Aisa. The second giant felt around the floor with a huge, clawed hand. “He smells familiar.”
“Ask after the nature of their relationship,” Aisa hissed. “You’ll learn more. Quickly! Bargain or no bargain, I think they’re losing patience.”
“What kind of relationship did my father and mother have?” Hamzu asked in a shaky voice.
Because her hand was still on him, she felt the memory drill into Hamzu. This time she caught a little flash of the past, of Kech the troll and a pretty young woman sharing a fire out in the forest. Their arms went round each other, and they kissed. The embrace became more intimate. Hamzu leaned against a boulder. He was sweating.
“My mother … she was in love with him.”
“But they couldn’t stay together,” Aisa said softly. “Kech was married. And a troll.”
“That ring of stones I found in the forest was where they … it was where I was …”
“Do you have a third question?” cackled the giant.
Hamzu straightened and held out the pouch he wore around his neck. “Why did my mother wear these splinters around her neck?”
This time there was no pulse from the eye. Instead the third giant repeated the question to her sisters, and all three went into harsh gales of laughter. Hamzu’s face went red and his arms trembled. Aisa recognized the signs of his anger.
“Stop laughing at me!” Hamzu snarled, and he squeezed the eye. It made a squelching sound.
The giant sisters ceased laughing and clapped their hands to their eye sockets, shrieking in pain.
“Please!” the third sister begged. “Please don’t hurt our only eye!”
To Aisa’s relief, Hamzu relaxed his grip, looking ashamed.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I don’t mean to be a monster.”
The third sister brought her hands down, then cocked her head. Her empty eye sockets came around, and a chill went down Aisa’s spine. The sister seemed to be staring at them, and Aisa had the feeling that, eye or no eye, she knew exactly where they were.
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