“Takaminara,” Dart whispered, naming both god and mountain. She remembered Brant describing it earlier, the sleeping volcano. It slept no longer.
“She saved us,” Harp said and pointed across the ruin. A bit of green forest could be seen on the far side, pinched between the western mountain ranges. “We fled toward the hinterland beyond the Divide, where the mountains fall into the lower wild lands. But the Huntress found us. She led two hundred of her best against us. Two hundred against three score. We were too young, too old, too weak. We would never make the hinter in time. Neither could we withstand such a force against us. So we kept running well into the night. First one moon rose, then the other. We helped each other as best we could, but as we reached the foot of the western mountain passes, the weakest, the oldest, the youngest began to falter on the steeper slopes. All seemed hopeless.
“Then in the darkest part of the night, the ground began to tremor. Leaves shook, trunks cracked. And behind us, the land split open in a thunderous crack. Fiery rock surged up, brilliant in the darkness. It separated our group from the hunters, raising a river between us, impassable. The hunters were driven off with flame and clouds of brimstone. The wound in her land sent the Huntress deep into seclusion.”
Harp stared toward the mountain. “She protected us, sheltered us.”
“Why?” Dart asked. “It is not her realm.”
“Takaminara might have sensed the corruption here,” Rogger said. “Probably had an eye turned in this direction. Perhaps she had witnessed enough slaughter, so lashed out as best she could to protect what was left.”
“Or shake the Huntress back to her sensibilities,” Tylar said. “The Huntress is a god of loam. To tear her realm must have struck her like the lash of a whip, one that cut deep. No wonder she retreated into hiding, to lick her wounds.”
Krevan overheard their conversation. “But why did Takaminara act at all? It is rare enough for a god to assault a neighboring realm. And that one, buried in her mountain, barely acknowledges the outer world as it is.”
Harp turned from his grateful gaze upon the mountain. “Whatever her reason, she saved us. The Huntress avoids this place. Refuses to let her hunters cross. Our camp on the far side remains secure. But we don’t know how long such fear will last. Or if Takaminara will act a second time to protect us. For days afterward, her volcano rumbled, yellow steam issued from a thousand cracks. But now the mountain sleeps again.”
Dart heard the worry in his voice.
“And it’s safe to cross now?” Malthumalbaen asked, carrying the rear of Brant’s litter, eyeing one of the glowing cracks.
“If you know the right path,” Harp said and started across the rock.
Dart followed. “Where are we going?”
Harp pointed to the two tallest spires ahead. The tips of the peaks glowed above shrouds of mists and smudgy smoke. “Our camp lies between the Anvil and the Hammer.”
Rogger squinted. “In other words, within the Forge?”
Harp glanced back and nodded.
They continued in a stretched line across the frozen black river. Dart felt the heat of the rock through the soles of her boots. All around, thin vents wept steam, smelling of brimstone and staining the surrounding rock yellow, turning the cracks into festering wounds.
Pupp kept close to her side, sensing her unease, glowing a bit brighter as if challenging the heat with his own molten form.
On the opposite side of Brant’s litter, Rogger dropped closer to Tylar.
“The Forge,” the thief whispered to Tylar and nodded toward Brant. “Where the boy and his father found Keorn’s burning form. Seems we’ve just about come full circle.”
“But where from there?” Tylar mumbled. He held his wrapped hand over his left side, favoring it. His limp had grown much worse.
Behind them, a sharp trill of a jungle loon rose from farther out in the forest, as if calling to them, warning them.
Ahead, Harp glanced back, eyes narrowed with suspicion. He didn’t say anything, but he increased their pace.
Words died among them as the heat rose and noxious seeps tainted the air. Ahead, the green beach beckoned with a promise of shade and dripping canopy, but it grew too slowly.
With no choice, they marched onward as the sun sank before them. The twin peaks of the Forge-the Anvil and the Hammer-blazed ever brighter. Dart’s eyes ached at the glare, but she could not turn away. It was their destination.
At long last, the line of jungle swelled, and the rock under foot cooled as they left behind the deeper flows near the river’s center. They stumbled gratefully off the rock and into the welcoming embrace of shade and green leaf.
“The way is steeper from here,” Harp warned. “But it’s not much farther. If you look to that cliff, you can see one of our watchtowers, where we can watch the burn and spy for any trespass against us.”
Dart squinted. Half-blinded by the heat and glare, all she was able to discern atop the indicated cliff was a shroud of trees. She bit back a groan. They might not have far to go, but it was high.
For Tylar, it was both too far and too high.
He suddenly sank to a fallen log, half-collapsing. His black hair was slicked to his scalp with his own sweat. His face shone with exhaustion and was etched with deep lines by pain. Near the end of their fording of the black river, he had leaned heavily on the giant. His bad leg seemed to have twisted under him, bowing, turning his heel. He cradled his arm with the bandaged hand to his chest. His fingers poking from the wrapping looked as if they had already healed, but crookedly.
Master Sheershym approached and knelt beside him. “You’ll not make it to the camp. We’ll have to cut a litter for you.”
Tylar just hung his head. “If I rest…” he said weakly.
Rogger joined the master. “You can sleep the year away, and you’d still not be able to climb that far.”
Harp already had his boys cutting and weaving another litter. They did it with a practiced speed. He also waved to two boys to run ahead and alert the camp of their pending arrival.
“This weakness,” Sheershym said. “It is more than mere tired limb. I may not be the best healer of Saysh Mal, but even I can tell that what ails you goes deeper than broken bone.”
He took Tylar’s hand and deftly unwrapped it. The broken finger had indeed healed crooked, evident when Tylar tried to clench and pull away. But in his exhaustion, he could not break even the elderly grip of Sheershym. Worse still, the two neighboring fingers, unbroken before, had also curled into calloused knots, and it appeared his wrist had locked up as much as his knee. It was as if the damage had spread, wicking outward into healthy flesh like some poison from a wound.
Even Tylar gaped at the sight, surprised what the wrap had hid. His other hand rubbed his knee. His leg was plainly more twisted.
“It’s like you’re going back,” Rogger mumbled.
“Back where?” Sheershym asked.
Rogger shook his head.
The master sat on his heels and glanced between Tylar and Rogger. “Silence will not serve you here. Whatever is at work had best be attended with full knowledge.” This voice took on a tone of a master at the front of his students.
Tylar nodded. “You know my story,” he said weakly. “A broken knight, healed by Meeryn of the Summering Isles as she lay dying. How she instilled her naethryn undergod into me, curing me at the same time.”
“Who doesn’t know that tale by now?”
“What many don’t know is that when I loose the naethryn, my body returns to its broken form.” Tylar lifted his gnarled hand. “When the naethryn returns again to my body, so does my hale form. But now…”
Rogger finished. “He failed to loose the naethryn with the Huntress. And his body continues to slowly break and twist again, driving him back toward his crippled form.”
“It started slow. An unhealed break. But it spreads ever faster. I don’t know why it’s happening, nor what it portends.”