Jerrick took the old healer’s hand.
The thunder of the og’re charge echoed off the cliff face, sounding like the advance of an army. Tol’chuk stepped forward. He reached into his thigh pouch and pulled out the chunk of heartstone. He raised it high, straightening his back to stand taller.
“I am Tol’chuk, son of Len’chuk of the Toktala clan!” he boomed out in the og’re tongue, challenging the thunderous echo with his own voice. “I come at the bidding of the Triad!”
His words seemed to have little impact on the avalanche heading their way. Tol’chuk felt his companions close in behind his back; he kept his position, rock-steady before the onslaught. “Don’t move,” he murmured in the common tongue to his friends.
The wave of og’res reached them, parting to either side and encircling the group, with weapons at ready. The silence was even more intimidating than the thunder from a moment before.
Tol’chuk found himself facing a scarred boulder of an og’re. The ridge bristles spiked along his arched back and almond eyes squinted with menace. Tol’chuk knew this og’re—and he knew Tol’chuk.
“You slew my son,” the og’re grumbled, his eyes flaming with fury.
It was Hun’shwa, the father of Fen’shwa, a young thug of an og’re that Tol’chuk had accidentally killed on the eve of his magra ceremony. When last Tol’chuk had seen this og’re, the father had been stricken with grief and despair.
His words now were spoken like a warrior. No grief sounded in his voice; it was shame to openly show sorrow for the dead. But anger rang as clear as a crack of lightning.
“I did,” Tol’chuk admitted. He didn’t try to explain how he had been defending himself against an ignominious attack by the other. A father did not need to hear those words, and those words did not forgive the act.
“Why should I not kill you all and grind your bones to dust?”
The answer did not come from Tol’chuk, but from the skies overhead. The blanket of perpetual clouds parted, and a dazzling ray of sunshine shone through, illuminating the valley, brightening the green floor, casting a rainbow through the mists to the south.
But all of this paled when compared to the beauty of sunlight striking the raised chunk of heartstone. The Heart ignited with inner fire. A deep warm glow pushed back the morning chill and opened all their eyes to the majesty of life around them. For a moment as the Heart ignited, every living thing shone with its own inner light and force.
Gasps arose from the hardened hunters and warriors. Weapons were lowered. Some fell to their knees.
Tol’chuk stepped forward, keeping the stone in the sunlight. He held it out toward Hun’shwa. It glowed like its name, the true Heart of his people. Even a vengeful father could not deny the truth before him.
“This is why I came back,” Tol’chuk said. “To make sure your son and all other spirits of our people could enter the next world. I do the bidding of the Triad. I ask that you allow us to pass.”
The older og’re stared at the stone. One clawed hand reached toward the brilliant facets. “Fen’shwa . . .” Grief again sounded in his voice.
A few of his fellow hunters and warriors glanced away. Do not see the grieving. But Tol’chuk stared at the father. “He has passed beyond.”
Hun’shwa held his hand over the stone as if warming his fingers before a fire. “I feel him.” Tears rolled down the craggy features. “Fen’shwa . . .”
Tol’chuk remained silent, allowing this father his moment of communion with his son. No one spoke; no one moved.
Finally storm winds closed the gap in the clouds, and the Heart’s glow dimmed and faded. A fine drizzle shed from the skies, misting over the valley.
Hun’shwa pulled back his arm; the red fury had died in his eyes. He turned away with a grunt. He had not forgiven Tol’chuk, only acknowledged his right to live. The other og’res followed his lead and swung away.
“Is it safe to go with them?” Jaston asked. His face was white.
Tol’chuk nodded. “We’ve been accepted. But tread carefully and stay at my side.”
“Like a leech,” Magnam promised. He and the rest eyed the giants around them nervously, but they crossed the valley unmolested.
Once near the cavern opening, Fardale sniffed the air. Tol’chuk noticed the smell, too. Cooking fires, morning porridges, and the overpowering odor of og’res. The smell brought Tol’chuk back home. He remembered the happy times with his father, and with the few friends who would play with the misshapen og’re, the games of toddledarts beside the fire at night. But also came darker memories: being shunned for his half-breed status, the ridicule, the rejection, and worst of all, the day his father’s limp body had been carried past him, still bloody from the spear wound. He had never been so alone.
His feet slowed as he neared the dark threshold. The lights of hearths glowed inside, but after the long journey here, Tol’chuk feared taking these last steps.
He felt a touch on his elbow. Magnam whispered up to him while staring straight ahead. “You’re not alone,” he said, repeating his earlier words.
Tol’chuk glanced around and realized Magnam was right. While out among the lands of Alasea, in a world so much larger than a single cave, he had formed a new family. Taking heart and strength from those at his side, Tol’chuk ended his exile.
He walked forward under the arch of granite.
Once past the entrance, it took him a breath for his eyes to adjust to the gloom of the gigantic cavern. Small fires marked the hearths of each family, bordered by stacked boulders decorated with carved bones. Beyond these home fires, tunnels and smaller caves opened into the family warrens.
Almost every hearth was empty. Tol’chuk was sure the young ones and females were all in their warrens, hiding from these strangers. Only a few bent-backed elders, old hunters, guarded their dens with sharpened logs, eyeing the newcomers with sharp suspicion.
Hun’shwa guided them deeper into the cavern. Tol’chuk spotted his own family caves—dark, cold, and empty. The spark of familial strength he had felt a moment ago dimmed at the sight of a crossed set of deer antlers across the low bouldered gate to the homestead. He knew what the tiny rat skulls dangling from them meant: cursed.
Even the neighboring dens were vacant and empty. No one was taking any risks when it came to curses.
Tol’chuk could not blame them. His family traced its roots to the Oathbreaker. Was it any surprise that doom and failure grew out of that accursed lineage?
From a safe distance away, Hun’shwa pointed to the entrance of the warren. “You stay here.”
Tol’chuk nodded. He stepped forward and lifted apart the crossed antlers, rattling the old rat skulls. From the corner of his eye, he saw the nearest flank of og’res back away. Tol’chuk ignored them and waved the others through the waist-high gate. “They’ve given us these caves,” he said in the common tongue to his friends. “We can camp here.”
“We will bring you wood for your fire,” Hun’shwa grumbled as the other og’res dispersed. Once they had cleared away, Hun’shwa approached the stone fence.
Tol’chuk readied himself to be accosted or challenged by the father of Fen’shwa. Instead Hun’shwa reached out and rested a clawed hand on the top stone. Tol’chuk’s eyes widened. To touch a cursed homestead was a brave act.
Hun’shwa spoke in a graveled whisper. “Fen’shwa has passed beyond. You’ve freed his spirit. A father knows these things.”
Tol’chuk bowed his head in acknowledgment.
“And though I cannot forgive you for taking my son from me and lessening the joy of my family’s hearth, I thank you for bringing us some peace.”
Tol’chuk could hear the strain in the other’s voice. These were not easy words. Neither were the next.
“Be welcomed home, Tol’chuk, son of Len’chuk.” Hun’shwa grunted and swung away, knuckling across the cavern into the gloom.
Tol’chuk watched after him, feeling the first flicker of acceptance. Magnam stepped over to
him. “What was that about?”
Tol’chuk shook his head. “Putting ghosts to rest,” he mumbled, and turned to help set up camp and bring life back to the cold and empty hearth. It wasn’t his blood lineage returned, but it was still family. Maybe this one could lift the curse from the other.
Around the home cave, og’res reappeared from their warrens, returning to stoke fires and stir pots. A pair of females slunk over with an armload of wood that they tossed from beyond the stone fence, fearing to approach any nearer.
As Tol’chuk gathered the scattered branches, he felt a prickle of warning over his skin, a bristling of hair along his arms and neck. Then a deep chiming echoed through the cavern, reverberating off the domed ceiling, vibrating his very bones. Even the hearth fires dimmed, smothered by the sound.
Across the room, all og’res stopped their work.
Mama Freda stood nearby. Tikal ran across from his exploration of a pile of bones and leaped to her shoulder. “What is it?” she asked as the sonorous toning continued.
“It be a call,” Tol’chuk whispered.
The noise seemed to rattle the stone under his feet. It was as if someone had struck the granite heart of the mountain with a monstrous crystal hammer.
Mama Freda consoled her pet as it cowered. “A call? From whom? For what?”
“The Triad calls for all the og’res to assemble.”
Jaston moved closer with the elv’in captain. “But why?” He stared over the cavern. “Most of you are already here.”
“No,” Tol’chuk said, “you don’t understand. It be a summons for all og’res. Every clan, every og’re, young or old, male or female.”
“Does this happen often?” Mama Freda asked.
Tol’chuk shook his head. “Only once before during my lifetime, when I was a child. It be during the last og’re war, when clan fought clan. The Triad called the assembly to broker peace.”
“And now?”
“I do not know.” He thought upon the conflict with the og’res from the Ku’ukla tribe, the death of their leader. Did the Triad already know?
Slowly the chiming slowed and stopped. Across the chamber, no one moved from the hearths. Low murmurs echoed among a few tribe members.
“Look,” Magnam said. “Someone comes.” He pointed toward the deepest recesses of the central cave.
A bluish light flickered, outlining a long crack in the back wall, growing brighter as someone approached.
They were not the only ones to notice the intrusion. The low murmurs died away; even the fearful cries of the females were extinguished.
Limned in blue flame, a figure limped from the crack, then another, then one more: three ancient og’res, naked and gnarled. Their eyes glowed, shining green in the darkness.
“The Triad,” Tol’chuk breathed.
He watched the skeletal ghosts hobble across the granite floor. Og’res fell to their knees, bowing their heads, hiding their eyes. The trio were the spiritual guardians of the og’re clans, the walkers of the dead. They seldom left their own caves and tunnels, but now the trio sidled wordlessly down the central path of the home cave, moving with clear determination.
Tol’chuk remained unbowed as they approached. He had walked the path of the dead to the Spirit Gate at its end. While he respected the Triad, he no longer feared them. He had done his duty, freed the Heart of their people. A spark of fire entered his heart: They had kept so much from him, sending him blind into the world, knowing that he would discover the truth, but not preparing him.
The Triad stopped before the gate to his homestead and spoke, though it was impossible to say which one uttered the words: “You know the truth now.”
Tol’chuk’s eyes narrowed. The spark in his heart flamed hotter. “You should have told me.”
“It is not our way.” Words rose like mist from the group. “The Heart of our people had to guide you . . . not just your own.”
“And what now? I’ve rid the heartstone of the Bane. But what of the Oathbreaker?”
The lead og’re reached a frail arm toward Tol’chuk. There was no doubt what was asked.
Tol’chuk retrieved the heartstone from his thigh pouch. Even in the feeble flames of the cavern, the jewel sparked with an inner radiance. He held out the stone, and clawed fingers wrapped around it.
“At last.” The words were an exhalation of relief. The lead og’re turned his back on Tol’chuk and showed the stone to the others. The Triad gathered closer. From among them, the ruby radiance of the Heart flared momentarily brighter. “We’ve waited so long.” This last sounded so tired and forlorn. “Let it be done.”
The glow burst out, blinding. The three og’res were shadows in the glare.
Around the cave, exclamations of alarm arose.
“What’s happening?” Jaston gasped.
Tol’chuk simply stared, bathed in the edge of the glow himself, awash again with the beauty of all living things, himself included. He stood taller, straighter, unashamed.
Then in a flicker, the light snuffed out. Darkness descended. Tol’chuk felt a hollowness in his heart as the glow left him. Heavy silence again blanketed the cave.
In the feeble shine of firelight, the Triad continued to stand in a cluster around the Heart. From deep in the mountain, the dark chime sounded once more, a single reverberating note, somehow mournful this time. At the threshold to Tol’chuk’s homestead, three bodies collapsed to the stone floor with a rattle of bone and limb. The Heart fell amidst the tangle of limbs.
Tol’chuk lunged forward, but he knew the truth before he reached their bodies. The ancient og’res were dead.
As he knelt on the stone floor, other og’res rushed forward, including Hun’shwa. He stared across the dead bodies to Tol’chuk, his eyes on fire. “You’ve slain the Triad!”
Cassa Dar sat in the libraries of Castle Drakk. In her heart, she sensed the danger to Jaston and the others. Though her magick’s reach did not extend all the way to the Northern Fang, there were bonds deeper than elemental magick between her and the swamp man she loved.
Frightened for Jaston, she hunched over the books strewn across the table. With no other eyes to spy on her, she did not bother with the glamor of her magick and simply worked in her true form: a d’warf, wrinkled and bent by centuries of time. She rested one finger on a page in the ancient text she was perusing, a tome that spoke at length on the magickal connection between the two Fangs. A new dread filled her chest and quickened her breath.
Straightening, she waved to one of her swamp children. “Fetch the map from over there!”
The small boy scampered from his post by the table. In a moment he returned, burdened with a long, rolled parchment. She snatched it and quickly unrolled it, spreading all of Alasea before her. She read the passage again from the book and quickly scanned the jotted calculations and noted the paths of power written in the margins.
She sat back and closed her eyes.
Both the Fangs were fonts of the Land’s elemental power; from their slopes, veins of power flowed down into Alasea like snowmelt. It was one of these silvery veins that the Dark Lord had sought to sever during his invasion into these very lands. The damage done had caused the sinking of this region, turning plains into swamps and half drowning the island of A’loa Glen.
But it was not the vein that ran down into her lands that concerned her now—but those that ran between the peaks. She traced a finger on the map while repeating the words from the book. “Where the northern-flowing veins of the Southern Fang merge with the southern-flowing veins of the northern peak, a twisted knot of power exists, a twining centered between the two mountains.” She followed the calculations to the point on the map: Winter’s Eyrie. She also saw the small town in its shadow. Winterfell—the home of the wit’ch.
Deeper than her bonds to Jaston, Cassa Dar was tied to the Land itself. She knew that whatever affliction weakened her came from there. Touching the map she could almost sense the malignancy there.
“Winter?
??s Eyrie . . . ,” she whispered.
She pushed from her desk. She had to let the wit’ch know that something foul was afoot. She headed toward the tower-top rookery, to send a crow to A’loa Glen. She prayed word reached someone in time.
As she climbed the stairs, her fears for Jaston grew in her heart. She clenched a fist to her chest. “Be careful, my love.”
Jaston stood with the others, clustered behind Tol’chuk. The og’re still knelt before the bodies of the elderly trio. The chunk of heartstone nestled among their dead limbs and lifeless forms like a bright egg in a dreadful nest.
Beyond their bodies, a wall of og’res had formed, led by the same one who had challenged them earlier. His words were unintelligible to Jaston, just the grunts and growls of og’re speak. But the giant’s fury and accusation were clear. Blasted by this tirade, Tol’chuk remained silent, kneeling by the bodies.
Fardale brushed against Jaston’s leg. The swamp man felt the tremble as the giant treewolf readied for a fight. Beyond Fardale, Jerrick kept one arm around Mama Freda, while sparks danced among the fingertips on his other hand. Magnam’s hand rested on the hilt of his ax. All were ready to defend themselves and their friend.
The angry og’re in the lead moved in Tol’chuk’s direction, clearly having finally stoked enough fury to risk stepping through the fallen dead. But before he could reach the nest of bodies, the egg at its center flared brighter, warding him away. From the glow, a dark mist spread out.
All backed away, except for Tol’chuk. He simply stared at the display.
The strange fog swirled high, spinning off in three directions, then sweeping back to the stone floor. Each cloud of black mist condensed down, forming the figure of an og’re, twisted and skeletal. Even Jaston recognized the Triad. It was as if their shadows had come to life.
Og’res fell to their knees before the sight. Even the leader dropped with a small cry of surprise.
From this misty trio, words flowed, but it was hard to say which shadow spoke. Even more surprising, though the words were clearly og’re speak, Jaston understood their meaning.
“We are free at lassst,” the shadows intoned, their words echoing as if coming from afar. “For centuries we have held off passing until the Heart was purified, opening the path to the spiritual lands beyond. Now we can shed our weakening bodies. It is time for a new leader to guard the clans. It is time for the three to become the one.”