Grinding his teeth, Draven forced his body to take another step. One more, that’s all he needed! At last the candle flame touched the final root, and half of Draven’s hair burned away as the whole thing went up in roaring fire.
The beast on his back let go as Draven fell to the ground. He twisted in place and thought he saw a shadow flicking in and out among the pillars of fire. Draven’s body spasmed with coughing, and he believed he must lie down and die, for he could not bear to move again, and the smoke was so thick, and his skin was blistered and blackened with burns.
But the candle’s light was still in his eye. By that light, he saw the shadow of Yukka leaping for the stairway.
Sudden strength surged through Draven’s soul, lending life to his failing body. He was on his feet and staggering between the flaming pillars, through the blackened smoke. With each step he found more strength offering itself to his limbs, and he took it and proceeded faster. He gained the stairway in a leap and, just as the first of the pillars fell and the cavern crumbled in after it, he sprang up that winding ascent. Another pillar broke, and ash and dirt nearly overwhelmed him. But Draven kept running, the candle held out before him. He made a turn and saw Yukka, or the shadow of Yukka. He saw the long-fingered hands grasping the stone walls on either side. The creature’s strength was almost gone.
Overhead the sky gleamed. The world of mortals waited. What had Akilun said so short a while ago?
“He must be buried and dead or he will return to hunt again.”
The stairway was collapsing now, only a few paces behind Draven. He ran with all the strength left to him, his heart roaring with terror, his eyes bright with the candlelight. Itala had caught the beast. She had caught the shadow and held on fast. Which meant it could be done.
Draven leapt.
His empty hand—the one not holding the candle—latched onto Yukka’s ankle.
The beast turned. Draven beheld red-flaming eyes. He felt the beater’s hands pummeling his face, his arms, his chest. He did not let go. Even as he fell, and the crumbling walls closed in on top of him and the candlelight vanished and his eyes were blinded, even then he did not let go.
He fell with Yukka, and the collapsing cavern buried them both.
Still.
Still the candle’s glow was caught in the coward’s eyes.
Once caught, it cannot go out.
So he glimpsed the heavens. The Moon’s great starry host of children. And he heard them singing. Singing to him as he died.
True Brother . . . Greater Love . . . Brave Heart . . .
He knew they sang his name.
Itala woke.
At first her body felt so numb that she did not know whether she were truly awake or merely lying in a semi-conscious paralysis, a lucid dream. Her clubfoot began to smart with pain that slowly ran up her leg, into her gut, and on up through her neck to fix in her brain. She lay, eyes closed, feeling the pain and along with it the return of her conscious self.
She realized suddenly that nothing clutched her neck.
Itala sat upright, gagging, her long hair falling about her face. She felt her neck, felt her face, felt all the bruises inflicted upon her. Her breath caught in her throat until she feared she would suffocate. But at last her body shuddered, her chest heaved, her lungs expanded. With a sob she fell forward, sucking air in and blowing it out.
Her teeth were clenched down upon a stick which was tied to her head. At first this realization made her angry. Who would bind her so ignobly? But then she recalled the wild convulsing of Oson and the others. Of Draven. If her strange, dark memories were true—if the beater had been pulverizing her body so that every limb flailed and every muscle strained—then whoever placed that stick in her mouth may very well have saved her from biting off her own tongue.
Fingers trembling, she worked to untie the cords, struggling, for the knots were fast. Who would have done this for her?
“Gaho,” she said the moment the stick fell from her mouth into her lap. It must have been he. No other would take such care of her. No other would dare. She looked around her dark chamber. Night had fallen, yet no fire burned in the coal-heaped pit, no moon shone through the smoke hole. “Gaho?” she asked, this time questioning the shadows to see if her brother would answer.
But no answer came.
Itala put her hands to her neck and felt where the beater had held her so tight. She had known, in those brief moments of awareness before the pain overwhelmed her completely, that the creature—the devil—would never let her go. She was doomed like Oson, like Accata, like all the others.
Yet here she sat. Alone in the darkness. Truly alone, with no invisible devil to keep her company.
Suddenly she knew what must have taken place. How she knew, she could not say. But as she sat there searching the shadows, she also searched her heart. In her heart there was an empty place. Something was lost. And she knew what it was.
“Gaho!” she cried. Those outside her hut startled at the sound of her voice. Even Gaher, brave chieftain though he was, feared that he heard the voice of his daughter’s ghost crying out in the darkness. But then they heard the scrape of Itala’s crutch upon the ground, and Itala herself stuck her head out through the doorway. She was no ghost. They saw by the light of their torches that she lived.
“Daughter!” cried Gaher. “It is a miracle! An act of the gods!”
He stepped forward to take her in a huge embrace. But Itala startled back from him, her eyes wide, without recognition. The torchlight lit her face in harsh lines, and she looked feral and dangerous even to her mighty father.
“Gaho!” she cried again. “Where is Gaho?”
Her father said nothing, and the men beside him drew back, intimidated by the passion of her voice. No one could answer her, and none dared try. She stood in their midst, staring from one face to the next, finding no help in any of their gazes.
But a song reached across the great distance of the sky, a silver song that promised morning even in the deepest night. Itala heard it and turned toward the sound, turned toward the river. It was the thrush. The same morning thrush who had sung at dusk the day she hunted Hydrus.
The men of Rannul stood close all around. With a snarl, Itala shouldered her way between them. Hands reaching out in restraint were shrugged off, and once she even snapped her teeth like an angry cur. She almost fell, so great was her need for haste and so weak her limbs from the beating they had received. But she pushed on, leaning her full weight upon her clubfoot and ignoring the pain. After what she had experienced these last evil days, the pain of her twisted foot seemed as nothing.
The village of Rannul gathered, crying out in both delight and dread at the sight of their chieftain’s daughter making her way through the village center and on down the path to the river. Some believed that in the wake of the horrible scream they had heard a few hours earlier, some greater evil must have struck. Perhaps the sickness now possessed Itala’s limbs and was made mobile. Some men drew weapons, prepared to hack the girl down. Gaher leapt at these, barking commands they dared not disobey.
So all of them watched as the girl progressed at her painfully hobbled pace down to the water. She heard the song of the morning thrush again, across the water. It called to her, she knew.
Casting her crutch into the nearest canoe, she caught the small watercraft in her hands and pushed it down the river’s bank. Her clubfoot flared with pain as it pressed into the ground. Grinding her teeth, Itala forced her body to work against its own restraints. She pushed the canoe into the water and leapt on board, taking up a paddle.
“Itala!” her father cried, splashing into the shallows and catching hold of the canoe, his massive arms keeping it from Hanna’s pull. “What insanity is this? Come back to me, child, and rest yourself.”
“No,” Itala replied. “Let me go, Father.”
“Will you embark in your own funeral canoe?” Gaher growled, tugging as though he would haul the canoe back to shore even then. “You c
annot navigate these waters in the dark. The fever is upon you, and you are gone mad! Come back now.”
“I must find Gaho,” Itala said. Then, much to her father’s surprise, she raised her paddle and swung with all the strength in her limbs. This was not much, but the paddle struck Gaher on the side of the head, startling him so that he let go and fell back into the water. By the time he stood again, dripping on the shore, his daughter was already well out into the river.
“Itala, come back!” the chieftain cried, but to no avail. The song of the morning thrush was keen in her ears, and Itala followed it.
She allowed Hanna to do most of the work, carrying her craft down its currents. She steered the nose of her canoe toward the opposite shore. When at last she heard the rapids ahead, she knew she must seek landing. For she was not her brother, and she would not be able to survive such a mad course.
She lacked the strength to draw her canoe up onto the bank but moored it as securely as she could, knowing it would likely be pulled out into the river and lost. This did not matter. Nothing mattered except finding her brother.
She fell in the shallows but dragged herself out, her crutch trailing behind her. Shivering with cold and exhaustion, she lay in the tall grasses, afraid that she would not have the strength to go on.
The thrush sang again. In its liquid voice she believed she heard an urging. Follow me. Follow me. Won’t you follow me?
Summoning strength she did not know she had, Itala pushed herself up and leaned heavily on her crutch. The wounds left behind by Yukka throbbed, but no more than the throbbing in her heart. Using her free hand to ward off stray branches and protect her face, Itala crashed through the forest along the river’s edge, making her way slowly in pursuit of that silver voice.
Her going was slow. The night passed on over her head, and the sun appeared on the horizon. But she did not see this, for her face was to the west. She saw the crest of the bare promontory, and the stones there were stained pink and gold with morning light. Still the thrush urged her on: Follow me. Follow me.
Now she thought she glimpsed the bird in the branches ahead of her. A little brown body, a white, speckled breast. It led her to the promontory and into the woods growing on its lower slopes. When she stepped beneath those trees, she felt the strange sensation of stepping out of her own world.
Almost at once, a red aster bloomed at her feet. She saw it raise up its little head and unfurl its petals swiftly, like a fledgling stretching its wings. Then another bloomed beyond it. Even as she watched, a whole host of blossoms sprang up from the ground, creating a path of scarlet through the shadows and the green.
She followed it. She could not take care where she stepped, for she was clumsy, and her crutch must crush many of those small flowering faces. But they sprang up before her and behind, and she smelled the wild perfume of their hearts.
Up the hill she climbed, slowly, painfully. At last she saw the break in the trees, the bare crown of the hill before her. She saw the twisted solitary tree, but it no longer stood upright. Indeed, it was half-sunk into the soil and heavily leaning to one side.
“Itala!”
She nearly fainted, so great was the startled thrill in her heart at the sound of that voice. “Callix?” she gasped.
She found him sitting at the foot of a nearby tree. Itala hobbled to him as swiftly as she could and sank to her knees beside him, her eyes drinking in the sight of his beloved face, bright with morning light. “Are you hurt?” she cried, wondering that he did not rise to greet her. No sooner had she spoken than she saw the belt binding him tightly to the trunk of the tree.
“My arms have gone dead,” Callix said, indicating the belt with a nod of his head. “When I struggle, it tightens.”
Itala recognized the belt. She had seen it and its bronze fixtures around her brother’s waist every day for as long as she could remember. He had worn this same belt the night he ceased to be Gaho and became the outcast, Draven.
“Where is he?” she demanded even as she worked to free Callix. He sagged in relief the moment the belt was loosed, and Itala gently massaged the blood back into his fingers, wrists, and arms. “Where is my brother?” she asked.
Callix raised sad eyes to the fallen tree. “He went down into the pit,” he said. “Alone. I have not seen him return.”
And Callix told Itala all that had transpired since she fell prey to the beater devil. He told how Draven found him on the exodus road with the Kahorn tribe. He told of their venture into the Wood and spoke of their meeting with Akilun.
As he spoke, he helped Itala back to her feet, and as she leaned heavily on him for support, they climbed to the crown of the promontory and stood before the dead tree. For dead it was in truth now. The pit formerly surrounding it had caved in, leaving a deep depression into which the tree had sunk. There was no sign of any stairway, of any light.
No sign of Draven.
“I would have done it,” Callix said. “But your brother . . . he overpowered me. I think he knew there could be no return from such a venture. He knew he would not survive. He saved my life, Itala. Even as he did once before.”
“And mine,” Itala whispered, her voice so soft it scarcely made a sound. She gazed upon the twisted evil of that tree. But it was not a tree she saw.
Instead she saw her brother. Her strong, mighty brother. She saw him standing tall though his heart was fearful. She saw him descending that long stair, holding his light high. She saw it as clearly as though she had been living witness to his final efforts.
She turned to Callix then, her beloved. Seeing him alive was like seeing her own life restored to her all over again. The courage of her brother swelled in her breast.
“Callix,” she said, and now her voice was strong and deep, strangely deep in her throat. “I will marry you. I will live with you on this side of the river, and I will work and serve to see your people restored. Here. In their own land, in their own country.”
But the Kahorn prince frowned at this and shook his head. “That is impossible,” he said. “We are too ruined. We cannot face another war with Rannul, and I would not see you endure such disaster. Your brother gave his life so that you would survive.”
“No,” Itala said. “My brother gave his life so that I would live.”
The village of Rannul was all but silent, caught up in an atmosphere of anticipation. What they anticipated, none of the villagers could say. Perhaps they waited to see who would next succumb to the evil sickness. But all of them had heard the scream. All of them had seen Itala rise up from her deathbed and walk.
Somehow they knew that the dread in which they had lived since Oson’s collapse was now past. But some other dread remained, something they could neither name nor understand.
All eyes turned to Gaher, who sat in the village center, his bronze ax across his knees. He too waited, though he could not have given voice to any expectation or need. He simply sat with his head bowed, sometimes muttering the same chants the warriors said before marching off to battle.
The villagers called out to each other the news of Itala’s return even as her canoe was spotted on the water. Someone was with her, and rumor traveled swiftly that it was the Kahorn prince. Gaher heard but made no sign of acknowledgement. His warriors rose and held their weapons at the ready, their eyes watching their leader.
Then Itala appeared. She left her canoe on the water and her companion waiting in it with a paddle at the ready. Slow with pain and exhaustion, she progressed up from the water and along the dirt track to the village center. The sun high above shone a brilliant gold upon her hair, and her pale face, always frail, never beautiful, seemed to have acquired an ethereal glow. Quick eyes, however, could see the bruises on her neck and cheeks, could spot the increased labor in her limping stride.
Yet her steady pace did not slow as she entered the center and stood opposite her father, leaning on her crutch. Gaher, his head swollen where his daughter had struck him the night before, slowly raised his eyes to
look upon Itala. The anger of his gaze was enough to cause even his bravest warriors to tremble.
“Daughter,” said Gaher in the voice of a beast, “where have you been?”
“I went to seek my brother,” Itala replied, making a respectful sign with her hand. “I went to seek my brother, who is dead.”
The villagers turned to each other, many whispers coursing from mouth to ear at this news. But Gaher only growled, “Gaho died more than a year ago.”
“And Gaheris died last night,” Itala said.
True silence fell upon Rannul. All eyes fixed upon the frail girl and her mighty father. All ears rang with the sound of a name that had never been given.
Gaher said nothing. He sat still as a carved statue, his fist clenched on the hilt of his ax. Itala took a step closer, the sound of her dragging crutch loud in the ears of all listening. She said:
“Gaheris gave his life to end the evil we brought upon our own heads. For when our warriors marched upon Kahorn and spilled the blood of our brothers and sisters across the river, who had done us no harm—then we carried back with us a brutal curse. A beast. A devil. A monster that would have destroyed us one by one. There could be no fighting such a curse, for we had welcomed it into our village with feasting and celebration of bloodshed.
“But Gaheris spilled no man’s blood. And when he saw our suffering, he did not say, as I did, that we deserved our fate. He went forth into the darkness. He carried with him a small light, too small, some would say! But it was enough.
“My brother Gaheris conquered the devil. My brother Gaheris gave his own life to save us.”
She took another step, and her fierce gaze was like a sword thrust into the heart of her father.