Hro'nyewachu will see to the rest." Amira wasn't sure she liked the sound of that. No matter. Do or die. Let it be done. She motioned for the belkagen to hand her the deer. "There is… one thing more," said the belkagen, and Amira could not tell if his tone was solemnity, embarrassment, or both. "What?" "You can take nothing with you. Your staff, your spell-book, your dagger, and your, uh… your clothes must remain here." "I go… naked?" "The water is not that cold." "Naked?
Why?" The belkagen lowered his eyes. "It is the way. So it has always been done. So it must be done. You must take with you only your purest essence, no aid beyond body, soul, and spirit." Amira scowled. It was a trivial thing at which to balk, perhaps, but still… "I am Vil Adanrath," said the belkagen, "not human, and Lady, I am very old, but if you wish it, I shall turn my back to honor your people's customs of modesty." Modesty be damned. "Let's get this over with," she said and began to strip, first her elkhide cloak, then her boots, her outer clothes, and finally her smallclothes, all of which she laid in a neat pile not far from the water's edge. She placed her staff, belt with sheathed blade and pouches, and her spellbook atop the pile, then stood and motioned for the deer. Though it was not the biting cold of the outside world, the air inside the cavern was cool, and her bare skin crinkled into gooseflesh. The belkagen leaned close, averting his eyes, and placed the deer over her shoulders. It was not unbearably heavy so much as awkward in its utter dead weight. The coarse fur made her skin itch. She turned to the water. "The other side? An opening, you said?" "Yes," said the belkagen. "Your gods and ancestors go with you." Amira closed her eyes. A strange feeling washed over her. Dread, yes, but not one that was entirely unpleasant. Fear, yes, but also an odd exhilaration and eagerness. It was not unlike the first time she had been with a man, the one who'd changed her from maiden to woman, the one she'd loved and later watched die. She prayed-Azuth, Mystra, Kelemvor… keep me alive long enough to save my son. If not, grant the enemies of my enemies bloody vengeance. She stepped into the pool.
The water was warmer than the air, and it sparked a sharp awareness in her skin. Amira felt every grain of wet sand between her toes, every tiny pebble beneath her feet, and against her bare shins she could even feel the slight ripples caused by the water dripping off the stalactites. She walked on, dragging her feet through the soft sand, enjoying the sensation. Ten steps and the water was already above her knees. Another four and her hips and waist disappeared beneath the water. The green light cast by the belkagen's staff on the shore behind her grew fainter, and by her thirtieth step she walked in dim, wet shadow with the water caressing the swell of her breasts. As the darkness swallowed Amira, her other senses sharpened. She could distinguish every drip striking her scalp, feel the tiny waves caused by their impact and her own movement, and she could almost sense a rhythm in dozens of tiny hammer-strikes of water droplets hitting the pool's surface. Almost like sharp heartbeats. Her own pulse slowed and steadied but beat with such strength that Amira could feel blood coursing through her limbs. When the water reached her shoulders, Amira knelt, allowing the water to lift some of the burden of the deer. It became lighter, but the pull and tug of the water made it even more awkward, and her pace slowed. The belkagen's light was gone now. She knew that if she turned, she could have seen it like an emerald beacon behind her, but before her all was impenetrable blackness. The water licked at her chin, and her next step fell into nothingness. The ground dropped out beneath her and Amira went down.
She felt the water soak through her hair as she entered the thick, pulsing near-silence beneath the pool. She sank less than half a pace before her foot hit solid rock and she pushed. She rose again, but the weight of the deer hindered her, and she had to shrug it off and arch her neck to get her mouth above the water long enough to draw breath.
The deer carcass drifted off her and she held onto its foreleg with one hand as she sank again, farther this time to get more strength for her push. She knelt there in the calm silence of the pool, for just an instant listening to the distant plip-plitip-plip of the water droplets striking the surface. Then she pushed off. She broke the surface, took a deep breath-and felt the deer yanked away from her.
Her breath rose to a scream, then she was below the surface again. Her grip had not been tight-why should it? — but still she'd felt the immutable strength of something take the deer from her. The young buck's antler had scraped the back of her forearm as the head passed, then it was gone. There, alone in the darkness beneath the water, her heart hammering in her chest, Amira listened. She felt the wake of the deer's passage, and somewhere just beyond hearing she thought she might have heard harsh laughter, then she was alone again. Enough of this-back to the belkagen! part of her said, but the hard core of her, the part of Amira that fought and strived and killed in battle, recalled the belkagen's words. "Take it as far as you can.
Hro'nyewachu will see to the rest." Surprising? Yes. Damned unsettling, in fact, but this was nothing the belkagen had not told her about. Just get to the other side, she told herself, nice and easy. The water round her legs seemed to thicken, solidify, and as she opened her mouth to scream, she was pulled under. Water filled her nose, her mouth, and poured down her throat. She clawed for the surface, then the blackness and the thick silence beneath the pool swallowed her.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Hro'nyewachu
Pain pulled Amira back to awareness. Her lungs felt like she was breathing daggers. All she could see was a warm blood red glow, like staring into the sunset with her eyes closed. Panic froze her mind, then her body took over. She coughed out a great gout of water, drew in a rattling breath, then coughed up more water. She coughed and gagged and heaved until she feared her eyes were going to burst from her head. When air began to find its way into her body again, her mind was able to emerge from the panic and take stock of her situation.
Still on her hands and knees-on a stone floor with a thin covering of grit, she noticed-she looked up through her drenched hair. The red light hadn't been brought on by her panic. She was in a cavern.
Stalactites large as war-horses hung from a ceiling far above. Some had melded with the stone below, forming columns of stone that glistened in the red glow. Glow-? She looked around. If the light had a source, she could not find it, but it filled the cavern. Even the great columns of stone cast no shadow. The chamber had no proper walls, but the ceiling formed a dome that fell to meet the floor.
Amira sat up on her knees, brushed her sodden hair out of her face, and looked around. Where is the entrance? she wondered. How did I get here? Where-? Her gaze stopped on the floor behind her. Not ten paces away lay the deer. It had been cut in two perfect halves, right down the middle, and each half set parallel so that the twin antlers nearly touched. Even the thick bone of the skull and spine had been split.
What could have done such a thing? The entrails and a great pool of blood-black in the cavern's light-lay between them, and just beyond them was a stone pedestal. It looked as if one of the great stone columns had been severed at table-height. Whether it had been carved or formed that way through some craft of magic or by long eons of stone-growth, Amira could not tell. Upon the stone table was the deer's heart, still beating, slowly but with a steady, unceasing rhythm. With each beat, a small trickle of blood pulsed from the heart. Already a sizeable pool had formed in the concave surface of the stone table. Amira's eyes widened, and she held her breath. The deer had been dead. How-? Stand. Amira gasped at the voice. It came to her mind, not her ears, and the language was one she'd never heard, though she understood it immediately. It was deep, husky, but obviously feminine. Where had it come from? Where-? Stand. There.