Kovo grunted. Then he sprang into motion, hurtling past Briggan and hustling off down the trail. A second too late, Briggan lunged at him, his jaws clamping over empty air. Briggan shook his head, surprised to have missed, then took off to follow Kovo, his teeth bared.
“Do you have any idea where Kovo is going?” Conor asked Takoda.
Takoda shook his head. “I wish I did. Kovo only signs to me when it’s useful for him.”
“Hustle, guys. We don’t want to lose them,” Meilin said. She took off after Briggan and Kovo.
“What about Olvan and the others?” Conor asked, casting a glance back along the trail. They could hear the sounds of the rest of the Greencloaks, still far off.
“They’ll have to go around or find some other way across,” Meilin said, “Kovo can’t go free. That has to be our first priority.”
Part of Takoda thought that losing Kovo sounded pretty appealing, actually. But he suspected that, for good or bad, he’d always have Kovo to deal with.
Takoda saw Briggan’s tail only a short ways down the path, fur sticking out stiffly. He couldn’t see what the wolf was looking at, but he was at full attention.
“What is it, Briggan?” Conor asked.
As they turned the corner, Takoda saw it.
The giant maw.
It was like the earth itself had a mouth, open and hungry, waiting for prey to fall in. Cupped in the face of a mossy shale cliff side, here were the rows of sharp teeth above and below. And above it all, carved into the cave’s overhang, the symbol of a twisting spiral.
It looked like that mouth wanted to drink the world above, drink and drink, as long as it took to swallow the sky down.
Seeing the gaping maw, all Takoda wanted to do was turn around and go back. Rattled, he tried to reason with himself. This cave entrance must have been designed to strike terror, he scolded himself, and you’re letting it work.
Kovo was on his feet, swaying trancelike as he stared into the opening. Then he got down to all fours and stepped forward.
“Can you get him to stop?” Conor asked Takoda. “Olvan and the others should be here for this.”
“Um, no,” Takoda said. “But if you want to try, be my guest.”
Kovo stepped under the overhang, then disappeared into the darkness.
“He can’t get away!” Meilin gasped. “Kovo has a plan, and whatever it is, I don’t trust it!”
Briggan looked at Conor, waiting for him to act. But Conor was retreating inside himself, his hand nervously clutching the arm where the parasite was growing and spreading. Seeing Conor’s indecision, Briggan barked.
“This is what we came here for, right?” Takoda said, lips set in a grim line. “Saving the Evertree. I’m going after him.”
Steeling his courage, he stepped over the carved lower teeth and entered the gaping jaw. He could hear the others following behind him. Whether or not Takoda trusted Kovo, they were all going to follow the ape. The fate of the Evertree—of the spirit animal bond itself—depended on them.
Light had been scarce in the dense forest city, but it was pitch-dark beneath the overhang. Takoda reached at his belt for one of the skinny torches Conor had given him from the Greenhaven stock, and struck it against the attached flint. It lit with a flurry of sparks and then a steady flame.
Takoda gasped. Scarlet eyes glittered at him, only inches away. Takoda nearly dropped the torch in fright. Steadying himself, drawing on every ounce of self-control the monks had instilled in him, Takoda forced himself to meet Kovo’s gaze. The gorilla gave one grunt in his direction and made a sign: Follow. Then he lumbered off, his black hair soon merging with the surrounding darkness.
Meilin and Conor tight by his side, Takoda shuffled after Kovo, probing the ground with the toe of his boot to make sure they didn’t walk into another chasm.
Briggan whined softly but kept moving forward. The wolf had better dark vision than the humans did, so it was a small reassurance that he was comfortable with traveling deeper into the cave.
Takoda felt a sudden cold draft, then the ground pitched unexpectedly downward. He swung the torch forward, and its light caught the trail of silver hair along Kovo’s spine. The gorilla was close in front of them, staring at something farther along the passageway.
Takoda maneuvered the torch so it would illuminate whatever had caught the ape’s attention.
The stone walls of the cave dead-ended at an ancient wooden door. The wood was splintered and riddled with wormholes, and probably would have fallen apart centuries ago if it hadn’t been for the thick rusty bands that reinforced it lengthwise and crossways.
“Here’s our doorway,” breathed Meilin.
“Olvan!” Conor yelled, in the blind hope that the elder Greencloak had somehow found a way to follow. The only response was his own echo. They were on their own.
“Well, we’ll just have to wait here,” Meilin said. “No way we’re going through that door without the others.”
“That sounds wise,” Takoda said, though he didn’t relish the idea of waiting in this dark and mysterious cave, either. He could hear large skittering insects somewhere nearby, and the plunk-plunk of dripping water beneath the hissing of his torch.
“We should go back into the daylight and wait for them,” Conor said.
Apparently Kovo didn’t relish waiting by the door, either. But his solution was different: The gorilla picked up its iron-ring handle and, before anyone could stop him, gave it a tug.
The door held firm. Briggan growled warningly, snapping his jaws.
“Stop him!” Conor said.
Meilin was the first to leap to the attack, her quarterstaff out. She streaked it toward Kovo’s head, but he pivoted and knocked it aside with a massive forearm. The quarterstaff glanced away harmlessly.
The gorilla gave the door another mighty tug.
It was Briggan’s turn to attack. The wolf lunged forward and caught Kovo’s ankle in his jaws. Kovo roared in pain but kept his footing.
Enraged, Kovo switched tactics. Instead of pulling, he battered.
Yanking his ankle out of the wolf’s jaws, the gorilla took two thudding steps before hitting the door squarely with his meaty shoulder, the poles that had once restrained him clattering at his sides. The door bent and groaned, then finally tumbled from its hinges entirely.
There was a rush of fetid air from a frigid black corridor, and an ominous rumble.
Kovo stepped in.
As soon as he did, there was a crunching sound. The heavy stone arch above the door fell an inch. The rocks shivered: They wouldn’t hold for long.
Takoda wavered. From behind him, the crunching sound got louder. It sounded like loud crackling now, almost like a giant tree being felled. He could flee back into the daylight if he wanted.
Meilin yelled, but her words were lost in the clamor.
The stone around them crackled again, a sound almost like fireworks, and then it roared. Suddenly Briggan was rushing by Takoda, sprinting into the corridor after Kovo. The kids ran after the wolf, hurtling into the passage just as the cave behind them collapsed in on itself. That door must have been holding up the great weight of stone and earth, and once it had fallen, all the rest had tumbled in, too.
“Run!” Meilin yelled, her footsteps clattering in the darkness.
Something heavy caught Takoda’s heel and he spilled, tumbling onto slick stone. The corridor slanted sharply down, and as he rolled forward he bowled into someone—Meilin or Conor—and they tumbled together. Down became up, then went back to being down. Takoda’s nose smashed into a wall. He tasted blood in his mouth as he continued to plummet deep into the earth, only slowly coming to rest.
For a moment, all was noise. Then black stillness. Though he couldn’t see any of it, rock dust must have been everywhere—every time Takoda breathed in, he coughed and gagged.
Takoda felt Briggan’s tongue lick his cheek. He managed to free one hand where it was wrenched under him, and reached up to stroke the side of
the wolf’s snout. If Briggan was safe, did that mean the others were? The thought gave him some strength, which he used to lift his head and look around.
On his other side he discovered that the torch was still lit, sputtering against the stone nearby. Takoda took it into his sore fingers and lifted it.
Meilin and Conor were sprawled together on the other side of Briggan, laid out flat. Takoda watched them blink back at him in the darkness. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” Meilin groaned. “Just.”
Conor nodded gingerly.
Takoda didn’t need to ask Kovo whether he was okay. The ape was seated to one side. His black hair was covered in a soft layer of clay dust, but otherwise he seemed unaffected by the collapse. For a moment his penetrating eyes seemed to look right through Takoda. Then he turned his head and peered off into the darkness, where a corridor sloped into the void, seemingly without end.
Calmly, as easily as if it had been made of wet paper, Kovo reached up and plucked off his collar.
“BUT IT’S SO CLOSE,” ROLLAN SAID, AN UNCHARACTERISTIC whine to his voice as they sailed past the Concorba skyline. He stretched his arms as far as he could over the railing of Tellun’s Pride II, as if hoping to stroke the buildings.
Their ship was going right by the city where Rollan had spent his childhood. Since he’d been a homeless thief back then, Abeke hadn’t expected to see Rollan feeling nostalgic for the place. But home was always home, she knew, and that fact could never be changed.
“Don’t worry, we’ll visit Concorba on the way back,” she said. “You can give me a tour, and we’ll stop in and say hello to all the shop owners you stole from back in the day. That should be fun.”
Rollan chuckled, but it didn’t last long. Abeke noticed his hand absently toying with his green cloak. Maybe Rollan actually did want to go to Concorba, wanted to let everyone from his street urchin past know how much he’d made of himself.
“Maybe on the way back we can stop in the market and see if they have anything our friends would like,” Abeke continued quietly. “I’ll help you pick out something for Meilin.”
“She’s the one who gets to go cave diving,” Rollan said. “Meilin should be picking a gift out for me. Like a fossilized cave bat or something.”
It was windy on deck, and Abeke wrapped her own cloak tightly around herself, tucking it under her arms for extra warmth. Much as she tried to stay open-minded, she suspected she was never going to like northern Amaya. The people were friendly, and there were cloudless skies and vibrant woods circling brilliant blue lakes. But it was also so cold. It would only get colder, too: Tellun’s Pride II would be heading farther north into the wild lake region before they disembarked.
Rollan smiled ruefully at himself. “When Lenori sent word that another Great Beast was being reborn, I hoped she’d send us to some tropical island. Like maybe Mulop had showed up beside a pristine beach, and we could have a nice philosophical conversation with our favorite octopus while sipping from coconuts.”
“Could be Ninani the Swan,” Abeke mused. “Since swans spend time in the north of Amaya during the summer. It’s spring now, but she might have arrived here early.”
Rollan snapped his fingers. “Arax the Ram, of course! He was from Amaya.”
An idea suddenly struck Abeke. “You don’t think it could be … Tellun?” The idea of it was awe-inspiring. The other Great Beasts had often deferred to Tellun. The elk had been their leader, powerful enough to imprison even Kovo.
“Tellun,” Rollan said, knocking on the wooden rail of Tellun’s Pride II. “Huh. That would be appropriate enough, wouldn’t it?”
When a cry rose from the ship’s crow’s nest, Abeke fell into a fighting pose and prepared to summon Uraza. But Rollan laid a restraining hand on her arm. “That means the crew sighted the drop-off point. We’re nearly there.”
Abeke forced her shoulders to relax. She’d been tense ever since she got on board, and because Uraza hated ship travel, she didn’t even have the comfort of her leopard companion to sustain her. With its burnished cherry wood, the new flagship of the Greencloaks was even more beautiful than the previous, but this trip had brought back memories of navigating with Shane all the way to Greenhaven, sharing tender moments on deck, only to arrive and discover that he’d betrayed them all. That felt so long ago now, but as much as she tried to blot him from her mind, memories of the handsome blond boy resurfaced in unexpected moments.
The ship pulled up at a simple wooden pier that jutted from the mossy banks of the lake far into the sparkling water. This was the last spot of deep water before the inlet they were traveling on dissolved into streams and tributaries. From here they’d have to continue on foot.
Abeke and Rollan clambered below and emerged with the rucksacks they’d packed and repacked during their few days at sea, struggling on the swaying deck to get the straps over their shoulders.
“You know,” Rollan said as Tellun’s Pride II eased alongside the pier, “it might work to our advantage that we’ll be hunting for our meals. Many of the people of Northern Amaya are nomadic, following the herds throughout the year. They sold meat in Concorba sometimes. Finding good hunting should also mean finding them.”
Abeke’s fingers strayed to the smooth Niloan wood of the short bow strapped to her back. She hadn’t needed to hunt while at Greenhaven, and she missed the pleasure of it. Not the killing of the animal—that always came with a fierce sorrow—but roaming the open country, at one with the natural world.
Abeke’s heavy canvas bag creaked and shifted as she stepped toward the gangplank. “We need all the luck we can get,” Abeke said, “if we want to find the next Great Beast before Zerif does.”
Abeke and Rollan fleetly made their way down the pier, striding out into brisk open air. Abeke opened her arms and stared up at the cloudless sky, its broad blue struck through with sunshine. She couldn’t control herself—she let out a loud giggle at the beautiful and grand adventure promised by that huge sky. She practically danced off the ship.
“What’s gotten into you?” Rollan chuckled. But then Essix left her perch at the summit of the ship’s crow’s nest and swooped over them, giving a joyful cry. Rollan, too, broke into a broad smile. When Abeke released Uraza, the leopard sprang forward, bounding over the grassy tufts that dotted the firm black soil of the Amayan earth. Abeke laughed out loud as Uraza hunted an azure butterfly, pouncing after it wherever it fled.
It felt great to be free.
“Where to?” Rollan asked.
“Anywhere!”
“No seriously, where to?”
Abeke pivoted, scanning the landscape. The land stretched flat as far as she could see, cupped on three sides by snowcapped mountains. There was a lot of territory to investigate. “Good question,” she said, stalling.
Rollan smirked. “Erlan told us that springtime means the yak are herding and heading north. We should be able to catch them wherever we see the most green, because that’s where there’s food for them to eat.”
Abeke gaped at him, dumbfounded.
“What?” Rollan said defensively. “I can’t have a good idea every once in a while?”
“It’s a great idea,” Abeke said, smiling to herself. “Scouting the greenest area means first getting to a vantage point. I say we climb that hill over there and see what we can see.”
“Hill?! By hill do you mean that staggeringly high mountain?”
Abeke grinned and started off.
Rollan grumbled all the way up, but Abeke sensed he didn’t mean it. She was well aware of his sprightly step and how his eyes shone whenever he looked up at the brown arc of Essix wheeling in the bright sky. Abeke felt her body limbering during the hike, long-unused muscles stretching and lengthening.
It was late afternoon by the time they crested the summit, orange scatters of light from the declining sun bursting over the landscape. Between dense stands of pine were rolling expanses of emerald grass, and passing along one of those swaths w
as the largest herd of animals Abeke had ever seen. There were so many of them that at first Abeke thought she was seeing a river.
“Amayan Yak,” Rollan reported. “I used to see their pelts for sale in the Concorba market, but I’ve never seen a live one before. Any hunter worth her salt in this region will be tailing them.”
“Which means we need to be tailing them as well,” Abeke said. “Though I don’t think we’ll be reaching that herd by sundown.”
“Time to make camp,” Rollan said. “And let’s do it somewhere other than this windy mountaintop, please.”
The next day, they made better time than Abeke had predicted; it wasn’t yet midday before they’d reached the edge of the herd. A pair of elderly yaks were lagging behind, ribs stark under their patchy fur. Though either of them would make for an easy kill, Abeke resisted stringing her bow and taking one down. She and Rollan had discovered fresh water and plump breadtree buds near their campsite, and they’d filled their bellies without needing to hunt.
It became clear that Abeke had made the right choice when the pair of yaks parted and revealed a calf between them, no more than a few days old, poking its way forward on knocking knees. Perhaps its own mother had died, and this elderly pair was caring for the little beast. It, too, would make for an easy kill. Though Abeke had spared these yaks, she knew that another hunter easily might not; they’d strayed too far from the herd and were easy pickings.
Beside her, Rollan made a loud clicking noise at the back of his throat. All three yaks stilled, heads raised. From where he and Abeke were hidden in a thatch of plainsgrass, Rollan clicked again. The yaks startled and raced back toward their herd.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Abeke asked.
“They need to be back with the safety of their kind,” Rollan said indignantly. “I only—”
“You clearly don’t know herding animals!” Abeke pointed to the herd, where the three scared yaks were joining the rest, bleating their heads off. Alarmed, the thousands of yaks took off at high speed. The resulting roar shook the countryside, the ground rumbling.
Spirit Animals: Fall of the Beasts #1: Immortal Guardians Page 5
