Then, as suddenly as it had come, the noise ceased. Eanrin found himself kneeling in a great quiet. He realized there were tears on his face. This was a strange, painful sensation. He had never before wept. Not he, the brightest and blithest of his kind. He put up wondering fingers to touch his damp face. Then he sobbed and covered his eyes with his hands, catching his tears until they overflowed onto the ground, dropping into the pile of scales scattered at his feet on the banks of the Dark Water. When at last his sobbing eased and he could look down, he saw those scales gleaming wetly. And he realized how close he had been to becoming a dragon himself.
Light glowed gently, reflecting off the tears. The scales themselves remained only black. The light was steady, white and pure. For a moment Eanrin glimpsed the face of the Hound. Long and noble, with solemn black eyes surrounded in a golden aura of soft fur. When he blinked, however, the vision was gone.
The Hound was vanished; perhaps he had never been.
But the light remained.
A silver lantern sat before Eanrin, there in the depths of the pit. It was small and delicately wrought, and in its heart glowed a light more potent, more beautiful, more colorful than starlight.
Eanrin recognized it at once: Akilun’s lantern, the fabled Asha. A gift from beyond the Final Water, crafted in the realm of the Farthest Shore. Akilun himself had died grasping it in his hands.
“And so I might die,” Eanrin whispered. “So I might lose myself.”
He put out a hand. It glowed with life in the light pouring from that lantern, but it trembled as well. He took hold of the lantern’s handle and stood.
A Path appeared at his feet, leading away from the Dark Water.
6
STARFLOWER
OATHS WERE FORGOTTEN that day. Even as I watched Elder Darkwing from above the gorge, I could see his new loyalties fading from mind. Battle would have broken out in an instant with all the Crescent warriors gathered in Redclay. I felt the tension mounting behind me as I stood on the gorge edge. I felt the blood heat rising in the men, both my father’s loyal warriors and the furious men of the Crescent Lands.
But when Darkwing and his two warriors at last climbed from the gorge—Darkwing with tears staining his face—my father stepped forward and said, “We are dismayed at this loss. I will send men into the forest to find your son.”
Darkwing’s eyes flashed. “Murderer,” he snarled. “You are behind this.”
“No,” said the Panther Master. “This is not the doing of any man in Redclay.”
“No. Not any man,” said the elder. Then his gaze fixed upon me and my sister, standing in the Eldest’s shadow. “This is the work of the curse you brought upon the Land!”
I heard the war cries not yet uttered in the men’s straining throats. The face of every warrior, though he stood in stoic silence, shouted his desire for battle.
But the Eldest said simply, “My men outnumber yours.”
“Are they yet your men in light of this treachery?” cried Darkwing, casting about to all those gathered.
And for a moment, I wondered. I wondered if the time of my death had come, and the deaths of my father and sister. Darkwing’s words were like poison among the men. Would they, in light of their master’s sin before the Beast and this evidence of the curse’s work, turn upon him now? My heart stopped beating. I could scarcely even think of Sun Eagle and his fate. My arms tightened about Fairbird, and she was like stone in my arms.
The Eldest said, “Take your people and go, Darkwing. Mourn for your son as is right. Then we will meet again and see what is to be done.”
Darkwing’s hand crept to the dagger at his side but did not touch it. His gaze locked with the Panther Master’s. I knew that whatever decision he reached would determine our fates. If he believed he could best my father and made the attack, I did not doubt that half my father’s warriors would turn upon us as well.
But the Panther Master did not back down. His face was calm and sad, as though he looked into the future . . . a dreadful future, but one that did not include a battle that day.
Darkwing’s hand slowly dropped away from the dagger, then passed across his face as though to wipe away traces of his tears. His shoulders bowed like an old man’s as he turned and descended into the gorge. One by one, his men followed. They did not stop to take provisions. They left as swiftly and silently as shadows.
They could not escape our cursed land soon enough.
After that began the dark time. War broke out once more with the Crescent Tribes, more bitter and bloody than before. It lasted late into the winter, and only in the worst winter months did the men of Redclay return to our village, my father among them. He had not been wounded in the fighting, but his face was that of a dying man. His skin had a yellow cast, and his eyes were hollow. He scarcely looked at my sister or me when he entered his house. He allowed me to feed him and serve him as always, but he did not speak to us. Rarely did he go down to the Long Hall in the village to sit among his warriors.
My mind was a tumult during those months. More than ever, the people of the village avoided me. The village women would not permit Fairbird and me into the fields, and we more often than not lived on whatever I could harvest from the Eldest’s garden. Every day I woke afraid, and when I put down my head to rest at night, I thought I heard someone crying up from the gorge. Sun Eagle, far away and lost, a phantom in the darkness: