She sat on a mossy rock outside his cage, an enclosure made of saplings lashed together with thick vines. Using the same knife she had wielded the night before, Belina sliced a piece of yellow-skinned fruit with a seedy pink center, and popped the wedge into her mouth. She chewed, eyeing him askance, as if expecting him to do something dangerous. That look of distrust annoyed him, since it had been her and her friend who had knocked him senseless, before tossing him into a pigsty.
“Is there any reason I should believe you?” he asked. She frowned as if offended. “So far, you and your people have done nothing to earn my good behavior. Having met two peoples on Yato, I can say that only the Fauthians have treated me well.”
“The Fauthians?” she spat. “Do you not remember what you saw last night?”
“I saw the Fauthians take a dead woman from a cave-”
“-the Throat of Balaam is no mere cave,” she interrupted. “It is a place of dark powers … an abode to evil.”
“Is it?” Leitos said, arching a skeptical eyebrow. “Or is that what you would have me believe? Adu’lin warned of your kind, how savage you are, even to your own. For all I know, you and that brute who clubbed me might have been torturing the woman, and her dying screams brought a Fauthian patrol to rescue her.”
“Are you mad?” Belina said, mouth agape. “The Fauthians are vile and cruel. They take our women and they … they do unspeakable things to them. On most islands they let the Kelrens hunt us. Our men, the slavers kill outright, or chain for the Faceless One’s mines. But our women are the true prize. They capture them and force them to … to.…” She cut off with an agonized look. “They do things that I cannot-will not-utter aloud.”
If Leitos could trust anything, it was that Belina believed what she was saying. But then, Adu’lin and the other Fauthians held a similarly hostile view of the Yatoans. Still, all that about the Kelrens hunting them bothered him. Telmon had named these islands the hunting grounds, and that made him want to believe Belina. He touched his scalp again, and wondered if he could trust anyone.
“If you expect me to behave,” Leitos said, “then you had better show me some proof against the Fauthians. As it stands, nothing you and your people have done convinces me not to side with them, and see you as my enemy.”
“You remember what I told you last night, about the birth of a demon, and the Fauthian woman carrying a newborn child, and the dead woman who was dragged out after?” Leitos nodded, and Belina took a deep breath. “The Fauthians force our women to breed with Alon’mahk’lar. What comes later are nightmares made flesh, changelings, Na’mihn’teghul.”
Leitos recalled the story the changeling Hunter Sandros had told him about his own mother, who willingly gave herself into the hands of Alon’mahk’lar for just such a vile purpose. Afterward, she had eviscerated her own husband, as a living sacrifice to the Alon’mahk’lar. Or, perhaps, the man’s death had merely been for sport. Sandros had never elaborated on the reason. Leitos also thought of Zera. If Belina was telling him the truth, then Zera might have been born in that cave, the Throat of Balaam.
But there were still unanswered questions.
“I have not seen any Alon’mahk’lar in Armala,” he said.
“And neither have you seen any children, have you? Strange, wouldn’t you say, since all the Fauthians are young and hale, the perfect age to rear families.”
Leitos frowned. In the last year, he had grown so accustomed to seeing only fellow Brothers, all older than him, that the lack of children in Armala had escaped him.
Belina said, “Adu’lin has likely hidden away the Alon’mahk’lar who serve him. As to the babes, they are born but never seen. We do not know where they go or how. As for the Fauthians, as far as we know, they cannot bear children.”
“Then how can they continue to exist?”
Instead of answering, Belina glanced at the spot where his fingers massaged his head. “You must forgive Nola. She is quick-tempered, untrusting, and given to crushing heads, instead of making friends.”
“She?” he said ruefully. “You threatened to cut my throat, and this Nola clubbed me. Are all Yatoan women so hungry for blood?”
“Not by choice,” Belina said, an abashed grin turning her lips. Her study returned to his face, and the grin became a scowl. “To stay alive under the heel of Fauthian dominance, we cannot suffer remorse, or show mercy to our enemies … or those who might become our foes.”
They sat in silence for a time, Leitos considering what she had told him, and Belina paring her fruit and chewing the slices as if angry at them. Awakening birds sang to the brightening dawn. The piglets wallowed in the mud, snorting and grunting.
While he saw no easy way out of his predicament, Leitos judged that Belina’s choice of the word camp had been accurate. Small, domed huts sprouted from the forest floor like mushrooms. Made from cut branches and layered leaves, the shelters were almost invisible, even close up. Leitos supposed they would keep off the rain well enough, but were in no way permanent. Even his cage had the look of something made in haste, meant only to keep a few feral piglets alive until the time came to eat them.
Roughly in the center of the encampment, a ring of stones contained a fire that gave off more smoke than flame. Above it hung a sooty earthenware kettle. Something bubbled within the kettle, but Leitos could not tell if the aroma filling his nose came from the contents or the rooting swine.
A rustling noise drew his eye to a man with dark, close-cropped hair emerging from one of the huts. Like Belina, he wore snug trousers, a tunic, and soft leather boots that laced to the knee, all dyed in mottled greens, and slashed with browns and grays. As with the huts, even standing in plain sight, the man blended well with his background.
“Damoc, our clan’s elder, will soon question you,” Belina said. Leitos sensed a tone of warning, which did not settle his apprehension a whit. “He has spent the night with his council, discussing your presence and purpose.”
“I have little to say that they do not already know,” Leitos said. “Unless, of course, you held back what I told you.”
“My father knows all that I do,” Belina answered. With that, she stood up and strode away.
“Your father?”
Belina’s departure captured the man’s attention, and his gaze moved to Leitos. His was a face of angles and edges, and his hazel eyes contrasted sharply with deeply tanned skin. Leitos saw no mercy in that stare, no compromise.
“I am Damoc, leader of my clan,” he said after coming close.
“Well met,” Leitos said, giving his own name with a respectful bow of his head. A life of submitting to his slavemasters had taught him that deference often smoothed paths.
Damoc stared silently, and Leitos felt like an insect under that stolid gaze. He wondered if Damoc would stomp on him, or let him go free.
“Why are you here?” Damoc finally asked.
Leitos gazed around, wondering if the man was mocking him. “I would not be, but for Belina and Nola.”
Damoc’s scowl deepened. “Why have you come to my homelands?” he growled.
“Not by choice, and not for your hospitality, I can assure you,” Leitos said, his deference already exhausted.
“Answer my questions, or I will feed your corpse to these shoats.”
“Very well,” Leitos began. “Kelrens came to the Singing Islands, where my brethren and I had hidden from the Faceless One’s forces.”
“Brothers of the Crimson Shield?”
That Elder Damoc knew of his order startled Leitos, but there was no point denying it. “Yes.”
Damoc rubbed his chin. “It is unlikely that the sea-wolves would have sought out men who are known, even in Yato, as deadly adversaries … not without good cause. When they come to these hunting grounds, they gather scores at a time. Why do you think they would have wasted so much effort gathering a few Brothers?”