The girl tilted her head at him. “Shows what you know.”
Leo shifted his beanpole from hand to hand, squaring his shoulders. “It’s just a cave,” he repeated as he took several steps forward. And it was. But it wasn’t as well. His imagination worked powerfully on his mind, and he could almost swear he felt the pulse of air flowing to and from that gaping maw. And were those merely trails of moss and stone, or were they teeth?
He stood at the threshold and peered inside. There were signs that a stream had once issued from the cave mouth down the mountainside, but it had long since dried up. The light ended only a few feet in, leaving a blackness so absolute that, just by looking at it, one could almost forget what daylight meant.
Something tugged at his memory. “I know this place,” he whispered.
“Not likely,” the girl snorted. “No one finds this place who don’t know the Paths.”
Leo shook his head. “I don’t mean I’ve been here. I just know what this is.”
“It’s called the Monster Cave by folks round here,” the girl said. “Though none of them knows how to find it no more.” She crossed her arms and stuck out her skinny chest with pride. “I’m the only one what does.”
But Leo wasn’t listening. His mind was furiously at work, struggling to recall tutorials and lessons he’d spent the last several summer weeks trying to forget. “Ashiun!” he declared at last.
“Bless you,” said the girl.
“No!” Leo glared at her. “No, the Legend of Ashiun. That’s what this is . . . or could be right out of. It’s the cave from the Legend of Ashiun!”
She shook her head, bewildered.
“You don’t know the legend?” Leo grinned, self-importance momentarily eclipsing his fear as he stood at the mouth of the cave. “The Brothers Ashiun were sent from the Far World to help the mortals of our world when it was new.”
“What’s the Far World?” the girl asked.
“The Faerie Realm,” said Leo. “It’s not real. At least, I don’t think it is. The Legend of Ashiun is one of the oldest Faerie stories there is. I have it in a text back home. One of the engravings shows the older brother approaching the gateway to Death’s Path. It was a cave that looked exactly like this. . . .”
Leo’s voice trailed off, and he shivered. When he backed away from the cave mouth, the girl said nothing, only followed him quietly. It was just a cave, of course. Dark, dank, mysterious . . . but just a cave. Leo took a seat on an obliging boulder. The girl sat beside him, folding her knees up to her chest and wrapping her twiglike arms around them. “There’s a stream inside,” she said.
“A stream?”
“Yup. Deep down, but I think you can hear it if you listen close.”
Leo strained his ears but heard nothing from that distance. He felt no desire to draw closer to the cave’s mouth again. “You went in there?” he asked, his respect for the girl rising despite himself.
“Yup.”
“Isn’t it . . . dark?”
“Yup. But not too bad.”
Leo made a face. If that wasn’t too dark, what by all the dragon’s teeth was? He shivered again and hoped the girl would think he was merely cold.
“So what did they do?” the girl asked.
“Who?”
“The brothers you were talkin’ about. What did they do what made them story folk?”
Leo thought back over his lessons. The Brothers Ashiun featured in many of the oldest stories in the history of the Near World. The earliest ballads attributed to the famous Bard Eanrin were about the brothers and their great gifts. Leo preferred the legends of his own kingdom, in which the heroes had names he could pronounce and the locations were familiar landmarks. But he recalled what he could of the Legend of Ashiun.
“They were two Faerie warriors,” he said. “The great Prince over all the Faerie folk sent them to aid mortals when the Near World was newly created. You see, there was this Dragon . . . not just any dragon, mind you, but the King of all dragons, and he hated the people of the Near World. So these two warriors, two brothers, were sent by the Prince to rescue mortal men and to teach them to fight the Dragon. And the Prince gave each brother a gift to use on his mission.
“The younger brother was given a sword. Let me think, what was the name? Hasli . . . no, Halisa, maybe? Something foreign. It translates as Fireword, though. And the older brother was given the Asha Lantern, which means hope, or life, or something like that.”
Leo saw he was losing his audience’s interest. The girl began to fidget, her veiled face tilting to one side as though she was ready to fall asleep. This would not do. Leo narrowed his eyes. Perhaps he wasn’t the greatest hero in the world, nor the most successful monster hunter. But by Iubdan’s beard, he was a masterful entertainer!