He grunted his thanks, no more.
Kel had a funny lopsided smile that betrayed his fear, although he wanted to look brave. “Will the Wise Ones kill us for trespassing in their territory?”
“Surely they could have killed us by now,” said Beor, “if they meant to. How did it come about that they fought with the party who kidnapped you, Hallowed One?”
“I do not know. At first I thought the white-feathered one, he who was the leader, meant to take us to the loom.”
Both Kel and Beor looked shocked. “Surely the Cursed Ones do not know the magic of the looms,” said Kel, voicing what Beor knew better than to speak aloud. “Isn’t that the only power we have that keeps us free of their dominion?”
“So I have always believed,” murmured Adica. “In any case another party ran up to the stones, perhaps as a decoy. White Feather and his soldiers dragged me into the queens’ grave, and there, as you found, was a tunnel built by the Wise Ones who live under the hills.”
Beor coughed judiciously, as might a person who meant to step from hiding out behind an armed adult. “I never heard tell stories of a passageway leading beyond the graves of the holy queens.”
“Truly, neither did I. It may be that the Wise Ones attacked White Feather and his party simply because they trespassed. The Wise Ones are not our allies, to come to our aid.”
Kel said nervously, “I wasn’t sure they really existed.”
At once, Adica drew a complicated spell in the air to ward off bad luck. “Do not speak so! Just because you have not seen something does not mean it cannot exist! Have you seen the ocean, as I have? Nay, you have not. Have you seen your mother’s mother, may her soul be at rest on the Other Side? Does that mean she did not exist, to give birth to your mother, who in turn gave birth to you? The elders were not fools, to tell stories idly. Listen to their words, and do not close your ears to what they have to say!”
He bent forward, touching his forehead to the ground in apology, fearful of the spirits that always eddied around her, smelling death. “I beg your pardon, Hallowed One. Do not curse me!” He was almost weeping.
She felt immeasurably ancient, watching his young face, even though they had been born in the same season, the same year. He wasn’t even old enough to grow a proper beard, although fuzz shadowed his jawline. “I won’t curse you, Kel. You were brave to rescue me.”
“Nay, it wasn’t my idea,” he said, and added defiantly, “nor even Beor’s. It was Alain. We only followed him.”
Alain gave up fiddling with the armband and, turning, paused when he realized that they were studying him. The grandmothers told many stories about ancient times. Adica had always supposed that some were true and some were not, and yet now Alain faced her wearing an armband woven of magical substance. She had always known that the Wise Ones who live under the hills existed, but she—who had seen so much!—had never seen them nor had she believed the tales about the potency of their magic. She had witnessed their magic today: light without flame and the ability to split the very rock. Truly, what she had seen awed her, for she did not understand the root of their power.
Yet here also stood Alain, wearing an armband forged and shaped by the Wise Ones. She had seen him fighting, when she had had time to look. Nothing had touched him. He hadn’t hesitated. Nor did he seem afraid now, watching them with a puzzled expression on his face, as if he expected them to ask him a question. The armband’s light cast strange shadows on his face, but somehow it only made his eyes seem brighter and more sweet.
Maybe she understood then that he was not quite like other people. Some unnameable quality separated him from the rest of humankind, perhaps because he had walked on the path that leads to the land of the dead. Except he had stepped off of it. He had come back to the land of the living. He had been touched by a power outside any she understood.
She loved him.
One of the dogs brushed up against her legs and leaned into her so heavily that she staggered sideways, half laughing because her heart was beating so hard already. The other dog, standing at the edge of the light, whined softly and padded a few steps away into the blackness, down the ridge toward the far wall of the cavern, made invisible by darkness.
“I think we must follow the spirit guide.” Her fingers still hurt as she collected three spears and two arrows from the floor. It was hard to really get a good grasp on anything, but her legs worked well enough.
As Alain moved, the light shifted, and together they walked cautiously along the ridge of stone, a crevasse gaping on either side.