Eanrin licked his dry lips slowly, his eyes narrowed. Then he turned to Alistair. “She’s a traitor. She brought us here so that the Black Dogs could snatch your cousin for the Dragonwitch.”
All trace of a smile fell from Alistair’s face. He wiped dust from his eyes with a quick, annoyed gesture, turning away as he did so. Then, his head low like an angry dog’s, he looked at Mouse again. This time she felt the force of his gaze and felt herself obliged to meet it. Her eyes swam, and she hated herself for allowing any trace of emotion to show.
“Is it true?” Alistair asked.
She did not need to understand his language to know his meaning. She said, “It’s true,” and he understood her as well.
“Dragon’s teeth,” he growled, and turned his back on her and the cat. She addressed herself to Eanrin, hoping she would be able to suppress the sob in her throat before it broke.
“The Chronicler is gone,” she said, “down into the Diggings. The Dragonwitch sent the Black Dogs after him, but I don’t know if they’ll catch him. I don’t know if it even matters.”
“What are you doing here?” Eanrin demanded. “Why have you come? If you have some brilliant little scheme to save the day up your sleeve, do you really think we’re going to listen to you a second time?”
“I don’t, but that doesn’t mean I won’t try,” she replied, her resolve much firmer than her voice. “Etanun came to the Dragonwitch. He has offered himself in his heir’s place, to go down to the chamber and retrieve the sword. Tomorrow night, he said.”
“Traitors abound,” Eanrin said. “And what, pray tell, is an honest man to do?”
“What is she saying?” Alistair demanded.
Mouse persisted. “We must find the Chronicler. We must find him and get him to take the sword before Etanun can.”
“The Black Dogs have been sent for him.” Eanrin sighed heavily and shook his head. “They always catch their prey. We’ll never find him.”
“That’s not what Etanun said.”
“Really?” Eanrin ground his teeth. “Go on, turncoat. I’ll hear you out. But make it fast.”
Mouse quickly related the conversation she had overheard on the rooftop—the power of blood ties that even the Dragonwitch could not deny. And she expressed that she believed Etanun was telling them how to prevent the disaster about to fall.
“I don’t believe it,” Eanrin said. “Not from the Murderer.”
“Alistair is the Chronicler’s cousin,” Mouse said. Alistair, who had understood none of their conversation, half turned to her at the sound of his name, then looked away again. “If anyone is to find the heir in the Diggings, it would be him.”
“Yes,” Eanrin acknowledged grudgingly. “I know about kinship bonds. So what are you suggesting? That we sneak our redheaded hero into the Diggings right under the noses of your priestesses?”
Mouse shook her head. “The opening to the Diggings is too heavily watched. You as a cat might be able to slip through, but I could not get Alistair even within the temple limits.”
“It would seem a hopeless business, then, wouldn’t it?”
Here Mouse bit her lips, afraid of the reaction to what she was about to say. After all, why should they trust her? She scarcely trusted herself anymore.
“I know another way into the Diggings,” she said.
10
DEATH WAS NOT TO BE MY FATE, HOWEVER. After that dread fall, I landed in the Near World upon the crest of a high, green mountain. The explosion of my landing shook that world, and fire shot high like a volcano’s eruption and burned all within the vicinity.
Thus they call that place Bald Mountain to this day, for nothing will ever grow upon its slopes again.
The old woman sat in the cold, but she was too old by now to feel it. Only a few years ago, the biting winds of the mountain had been enough to set her reeling. Now she sat wrapped in her thin shawl, looking down from the barren heights to the lowlands far below. To the place where the red light of the temple flickered and where black smoke gathered above the horizon.
She felt the gaping mouth of the cave at her back, but she did not turn to it. She had been promised, yes, and she believed the promise. But now she found her gaze drawn to the temple, that horror to which her granddaughter and great-granddaughter both had run with open arms.
“Won’t you return to me?” she whispered.
What tricks life played upon folks, especially if they lived long enough. She shuddered and drew her shawl closer. Goats wandered the rocks below her, nibbling grasses and yanking up vines by their roots, but she had no attention to give them.