Hand of the Hunter con-2 Read online

  Once, she thought she heard singing in the distance-childlike voices, though raucous. But when she stopped and held her breath to listen, there was only the sound of the breeze in the highest boughs. Down here, the air was deathly still. Black moths and dark blue butterflies flitted around her now and then, and once a dragonfly shot past her so fast that her first thought was that someone had loosed an arrow at her.

  Which brought Gleed's words from the night before fresh to her mind.

  There are far crueler things in these woods than me.

  Almost as if summoned by the thought, she heard something approaching from her right, crashing through the brush.

  Hweilan stopped and held her breath. A few of the black moths fluttered around. But nothing more. She looked for a weapon. Nothing. Not even a sizeable rock or broken branch.

  Then she saw it-a flash of red. A fox bounded out of the brush, its back almost arrow straight as it ran. It saw her, stopped, then bounded off again, disappearing as quickly as it had come.

  Hweilan let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. Her heart beat so fiercely that she could feel her face pulsing like the skin of a drum.

  "Only a fox." It came out a whisper, but still seemed very loud in the silence of the forest.

  Hweilan kept going, following the lee of the hill. It was getting steeper the farther she went, and the light dimmer.

  The trees grew even larger, and some of their roots broke out of the ground, forming arches under which she walked. Spiderwebs draped the low branches, and although the few spiders she saw were no bigger than her smallest fingernail, still she walked around the webs rather than through them.

  The hill was getting steep enough that Hweilan was beginning to slip and had to lean against one hand as she walked. But she could hear the rush of water again and thought she might be getting close to the lake and Gleed's tower.

  Ahead of her a particularly massive root broke out of the side of the hill and arched over her path before seeking ground again. Sitting atop it, watching her, was the fox. Its golden eyes seemed very bright in the gloom.

  Hweilan's feet slipped out from under her. She went down and caught hold of a sapling before she slid down the hill. Lying there in the cold, wet leaves, she looked up and saw that the fox was gone.

  In its place atop the gnarled root, a woman crouched. Like Hweilan, the woman's feet were bare, but she was dressed in an array of stitched skins and leathers. She had the look of an elf-lean, angular build, a face of sharp angles, canted eyes, and ears that topped in sharp tips. Crouched as she was, her hair, thick as a pelt, hung past her shins, and in the gloom of the wood it seemed just a shade above black. Her skin was even darker than Scith's, and black designs-whorls, waves, and vinelike twists sprouting thorns-decorated her hands, bare arms, and face. Seeing someone, if not human, then at least more familiar than Gleed, almost put Hweilan at ease. But then she saw that the woman's eyes were a golden yellow, very bright in the gloom, and split by vertical pupils. And her toes and fingers ended in claws. A dark, wet something ran out of the corner of the woman's mouth-that can't be blood, Hweilan thought-and then the woman licked it away.

  Gleed's words sprang to her mind-Tomorrow you will meet Kesh Naan. Kesh Naan will give you the Lore.

  Hweilan swallowed, took a deep breath, and said, "A-are you K-Kesh Naan?"

  The woman canted her head to one side, expressing something between curiosity and amusement. " 'A-are you K-Kesh Naan?' " she said, in perfect imitation of Hweilan's own voice. She licked her lips again, as if tasting the words, then shook her head, left shoulder to right shoulder, very slowly, and said, "No."

  "Who are you?" said Hweilan.

  The woman's lips peeled back, revealing sharp, yellow-white teeth.

  Hweilan almost screamed, but her breath caught in her throat. She pushed herself carefully to her feet.

  The woman jumped down, landed a few feet in front of Hweilan, then slowly stood and said, "I am…" She paused, as if searching for the word, then finished, "… hungry."

  Hweilan turned and ran.

  She made it perhaps five or six strides, then a weight hit her square in the back and two arms wrapped around her-one around her neck, the other under her arm. Claws bit through the cloak and into her skin.

  Hweilan fell, the full weight of the woman coming down atop her, knocking all the breath from her body. But they kept moving. The slope was steep and they slid, gaining speed, crashing through bushes, over roots, breaking through young saplings and bouncing off bigger ones.

  A snarl, and then Hweilan felt sharp teeth sink into her shoulder. She screamed, and an instant later they slammed into the trunk of a tree. The rough bark scraped a swath of skin off Hweilan's arm, then they were moving again.

  Hitting the tree had weakened the woman's grip around Hweilan. The next broke it altogether. But it also knocked all the air out of Hweilan, and she thought she felt a rib crack.

  She kept going down the hill, the world tumbling around her, branches and rocks scraping and gouging her skin. Hweilan could hear the other woman crashing just behind her, but all she could see was a blur of green and brown as the world shot past.

  And then there was nothing. No grasping arms. No roots scraping her back or trees slamming into her ribs. Just open air washing past her. She had time to take in an agonized breath as she went over the cliff.

  Hitting the water felt like slamming through a wall. But this wall had a current. Hweilan scraped along a rocky bottom that tore away the cloak she'd been wearing. Panic seized her. Hweilan had just enough rational thought left to clench her jaw shut. Terror pushed her to scream, but she knew that if she did the river would fill her lungs and she would die down in the cold gloom.

  Hweilan pushed off the riverbed. Her head broke the surface just as the river crashed down a steep slope over boulders in a series of rapids. She had only an instant to take a breath, then she went under again.

  This time she tumbled. She lost the light, had no idea which way was up, and could no longer see the bottom. Hweilan clenched her jaw shut, fighting the reflex to breathe.

  I'm dying, she thought. A moment of panic, so fierce it shut out all other thought, then a strange sort of peace settled over her. The pain in her chest was beyond agony, and her head felt as if it were about to burst. She knew that no matter how hard she tried, she wouldn't be able to hold her breath much longer.

  Then her foot scraped along the bottom.

  Her body reacted instinctively, and when she pushed, half her body shot out of the water, and she filled her lungs with sweet air.

  She had never learned to swim. In Narfell, the only water were the shallow streams that thawed in summer. At Highwatch, the deepest water she'd ever seen was her bathtub. But the river wasn't deep-not much above her head. Hweilan sank, pushed off the bottom to breach the surface, took a breath, sank, pushed off the bottom, breached, took a breath… again and again and again.

  The initial panic subsided, but she knew she couldn't keep this up. Already her limbs were aching, and she knew all it would take was one cramp to put her under the water forever.

  On her next breach, she took a look around. She was in the middle of the river, and the shores on either side were at least fifty feet away-and both were sheer rock walls, slick and mossy. Upstream and behind her was only the river-no sign of the woman that had attacked her. Downstream…

  Panic seized her again at what she saw.

  Nothingness.

  A hundred yards or so, and the river just ended in a mist. She'd grown up in mountains. She knew what that meant. She was headed for a waterfall. It might only be a few feet, or it might be a thousand. No way to tell from her vantage.

  She went down again-and this time she went deep. Her feet could not find the bottom. The constant roar of the river deepened, strengthened, filling her so that her entire body thrummed with it-and by that she knew the fall before her was no slope of a few feet. She was about to go over a cliff.

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sp; Hweilan scrambled and kicked and thrashed, desperate to find the bottom. Nothing. Only water, flowing faster and faster by the moment. Her lungs, wanting air, began to ache. She gave up trying to find the bottom and began to try to claw and thrash her way to the surface. But for every foot she gained, the current pushed her down another two.

  Hweilan clamped her jaw shut, but her body betrayed her. Try as she might, pure instinct took over, and she inhaled, filling her lungs with water.

  The water's roar became an explosion. For a moment she felt herself going down and down, water above crushing her, and then…

  Hweilan sat up and retched so hard that her ears popped. Water and bile poured out her mouth and both nostrils, splattering the ground in front of her. She took in a ragged breath, then retched some more. Again and again, until she fell over on her side, her eyes closed, panting like a dog.

  Never had she felt so wretched. Every fiber and pore of her body, inside and out, pulsed with pain. But she was alive, and every ragged breath filled her body with air. She lay there a long time, listening to her own hammering heart and labored breathing. Before, up on the hill, she'd been shivering from the cold. But suddenly, she was shaking so hard that she could feel her flesh bruising against the rocks. But she couldn't muster the strength to move.

  After the fall, after drowning…

  She didn't know. Had no idea how she'd come here. Come… where?

  Hweilan opened her eyes. She lay on a bed of stones-gravel really, though each one was round and smooth as river stones. Lifting her head, she saw that a black pool lapped the shore just beyond her toes.

  Hweilan rolled over onto her stomach, forced herself to her hands and knees, then fell into another coughing fit that tinged the world red. When she was able to breathe again, she raised her head and looked through the wet lanks of her hair.

  The red tinge hadn't been just brought on by her coughing. She was in a cavern. Stalactites large as temple columns hung from the ceiling above. Some had melded with similar columns springing from the floor and formed pillars of rock that glistened in the red light. Roots poked out from the ceiling, some twisting around the stalactites in thick braids. Long strings of lichen and spiderwebs dangled between the stone like thin curtains. They waved back and forth slowly, almost as if the cave were breathing.

  Hweilan looked around, searching for the source of the light. It wasn't red like fire or late sunset, but it completely filled the far side of the cavern away from the pool. She could find no direct source. Even the columns of stone cast no shadow. It was almost as if the rock itself glowed.

  Hweilan pushed herself to her feet. Her legs felt hollow and brittle. Looking down, she saw that under her right breast a swath of skin wider than her palms had been raked away, and blood oozed down flesh that was already turning an angry purple. She could feel more blood running down her shoulder from where the woman had bitten her, and the rest of her naked body was a latticework of shallow scratches and deeper cuts, oozing blood.

  From somewhere in the distant dark beyond the water, she thought she heard a voice. She almost caught the words. Just enough to stoke the memory of what Gleed had told her.

  Tomorrow you will meet Kesh Naan, and it will be most dangerous if she smells blood on you.

  And here she was, smeared in her own blood and leaking more with every heartbeat.

  Hweilan looked around. No one in sight. The cavern had no real walls. The ceiling simply lowered and the floor rose until they met, forming a great domed chamber. But across from her, framed by two of the columns, a cave broke through the rock. The red glow of the cavern did not penetrate there.

  She couldn't bring herself to brave the water again, and there didn't seem to be any other way to go. She took a step forward.

  And then she heard singing.

  At first she thought it was just a trick of her mind, but when she stopped and listened, she heard it even clearer. A woman's voice, coming from the darkness of the cave. There were words in the music, but in no tongue she'd ever heard before. Still, something in the cadence and melody reminded her of the songs her mother had sung to her when she was small. It called to her and repulsed her at the same time. She imagined that was how a moth must feel at the sight of the candle's flame.

  "Wh-who's there?" she called. Hearing the tremor in her voice, Hweilan realized she was shivering again.

  "Alet, kweshta."

  Hweilan gasped. Those words she knew from her mother. Come here, dear one in the tongue of the Vil Adanrath.

  The singing had stopped, but the voice called again, "Alet…" followed by a long string of words that Hweilan could not understand.

  Hweilan's skin seemed to tighten around her, and every hair stood on end. There was a tone to the voice now that she didn't trust. No malevolence or threat, but somethingCoaxing.

  "Alet, kweshta. Alet."

  A woman emerged from the cave. At first, she was nothing more than a pale something amidst the darkness, then she stepped fully into the light of the cavern.

  She was tall, elf lithe, her skin pale as old bone, her face ageless. Her nose was little more than a slight bump on her face with two slits of nostrils to either side. Her eyes, both browless, had no whites, but seemed to swirl with a half-dozen colors, like a thin sheen of oil over black water. Silver hair hung past her waist, and she dressed in a gown of what Hweilan first thought was black silk. But as the woman moved, threads of it floated in the air around her, finer than pollen on summer breezes.

  "Hweilan, is it?" said the woman. "She who knows her name." The woman's voice held no warmth, but neither was it particularly cold. Simply dryly curious.

  "Yes," said Hweilan, and she found herself taking a step back for every step the woman took toward her until her heel touched the edge of the water. She stopped. "Are you… Kesh Naan?"

  The woman gave a tight smile, revealing no teeth, just a curve of her lips. "And you know my name."

  Hweilan didn't understand, so she said, "Gleed sent me."

  The woman's smile melted away and she stopped a few paces in front of Hweilan. She watched Hweilan a long time. Hweilan was suddenly very conscious of her nakedness, though she no longer felt cold. On the contrary, the blood suddenly felt very hot under her skin.

  Kesh Naan closed her eyes, bent her head back, and took in a deep breath through her open mouth, almost as if she were tasting the air.

  It would be most dangerous if she smells blood on you.

  Gleed's words. Hweilan looked down and saw the blood streaking her side, running down her hip and leg to mix with the mud.

  Kesh Naan lowered her head, and when she opened her eyes, the look in them had changed. She had the gaze of a hungry beast, the leader of the wolf pack who has just caught sight of the straggler in the herd.

  Hweilan swallowed and said, "I-"

  Kesh Naan struck, a lunge so swift that there was nothing Hweilan could have done had she tried. The pale woman seized her. Kicking and clawing and screaming, Hweilan could not break free, could not even loosen the woman's steel grip. Kesh Naan pulled her in close. A black tongue emerged from between her pale lips, and Hweilan felt the cold flesh slide along the wounds on her shoulder, licking at the blood.

  Hweilan screamed.

  Kesh Naan held her at arm's length and sighed, like a destitute drunkard enjoying his first taste of a truly fine wine. But then, as Hweilan watched, the look froze on Kesh Naan's face. Her upper lip curled into a snarl, and Kesh Naan threw Hweilan away-so hard that she flew across the cavern, slammed into one of the stone columns, then hit the ground, dirt and grit raining down upon her.

  She heard Kesh Naan spitting. "Blood burns and bites-gah!"

  Almost paralyzed with fear and confusion, Hweilan managed to look up. Kesh Naan was staring at her-studying her-through eyes narrow as the slash of a razor. Very slowly, she wiped her lips with the back of one hand.

  "What are you?" Kesh Naan said.

  "I… I-"

  "What are you?" Kesh Naan's v
oice came out more the roar of a beast than that of a woman. Each word brought her a step closer.

  "I-"

  "What are you, girl?" This last came out a whisper, but she was so close that Hweilan could feel her breath against her cheek.

  Hweilan squeezed her eyes shut and tried to crawl away. But she came up against the stone column and could go no farther. She felt the strong hands grab her again, lift her, and when she dared to open her eyes, all was darkness. They were in the cave.

  Blind panic seized Hweilan. She knew they were moving, could feel the steady rhythm of Kesh Naan's tread and the slight movement of air against her bare skin. Kesh Naan had a grip like steel chains, and one arm held her chest so tight that it was all she could do to draw shallow breath after shallow breath. The dark was utter and complete. The only sound that of Kesh Naan's heavy breathing and the slap of her feet against the tunnel floor.

  Hweilan bucked and thrashed, but Kesh Naan only held her tighter. Hweilan tried to scream, but Kesh Naan's grip was too tight. Every movement made seemed to find the crack in her rib and grind it. She could not gather breath. Lights danced before her eyes.

  Just when the play of light and darkness was about to overwhelm her senses, she heard Kesh Naan scream-almost in disgust, she thought-and the crushing grip was gone. Hweilan felt cool air rushing over her naked skin and knew she was again flying through the air.

  She landed on one shoulder, then tumbled and slid across gritty stone. For a long while she could do nothing but lay there, desperate for air, each breath sending a lance of agony through her side.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw that the lights were still there-but farther away. She was in a huge cavern, far larger than the one from which she'd come. It was devoid of any sun- or starlight, yet it sparkled with a thousand colors. Lying on her back, she watched them. Thousands had been too timid an estimate. By far. Looking up, she saw what were probably millions of tiny lights, all constantly on the move, some on a ceiling that sloped into a deeper darkness where the lights would not go, some scuttling across the walls and floor, and some hanging in midair-a few close enough that had she reached out she could have touched them.