“Yes, it must be,” he said. “It is better so. I am old enough. My people trust me. They expect me to inherit, not to be ruled by an infant only because my mother insisted on the old custom. Better live under a regnant now than suffer a regent for many years and all the instability that portends. Yet what seal will you give me? What pledge, what guarantee, that you will not crawl back here in fifteen years to plague me with her claim?”
Outside, heard through a shuttered window, a hound lifts its voice in a wailing howl, and a dozen similar howls answer. That eerie clamor makes him shudder, but he holds firm.
“Come, my lord. Let me show you the hounds. Then I will take the child, and you and your heirs will be guarded in truth by that which guarantees our bargain.”
“It is better so,” he repeats, trembling because he does not really believe his own words, but he follows her out through the door into the night.
Falling, Liath tumbled onto her rump as the lion rose and, with a gathering like that of a storm, loomed over her. Its hot, dry breath gusted; it yawned like the gates of the Abyss, displaying sharp white teeth.
“Bright One!”
It leaped and vanished into the rock.
Falcon Mask’s arrow skittered over the dirt and clattered out of sight beyond the rocky slopes below. Liath heard the shaft snap, then a patter of smaller falls, and then silence. After a moment, she realized she was holding her breath, and holding the staff.
The two young mask warriors jumped into view, weapons raised and eyes flared with excitement and fear. “Where did it go?”
“It won’t be coming back.” She got up.
“What is that?” asked Falcon Mask.
The staff was lovingly shaped and smoothed from polished hardwood, oak perhaps, and crowned with a magnificent carving: a pair of miniature dogs’ heads remarkably like the heads of the Lavas hounds. A nick had been cut into the haft, as ragged as a sword’s blow.
Tarangi sauntered out from the trees, shaking her head.
“I told you. A power as strong as lightning. You are fortunate to be alive.”
The raspy call of a tern sounded from the trees. Tarangi did not even look behind her, but the two mask warriors lowered their weapons. Buzzard Mask lifted his mask, put his two little fingers between his lips, and replied with two sharp whistles.
Sharp Edge trotted into view. “Hurry!” she cried, beckoning. “Calta found trace of their passage down the other path!”
She raced away up the path before they could answer. Tarangi and the two mask warriors bolted like arrows loosed.
Liath followed more slowly. As she passed into the shadow of the trees, she heard a deep cough behind her. She paused to look back. In the dusty open space the hut stood alone, but a flash of movement drew her gaze to the top of the outcropping. There the lion prowled, but as she watched, it poured over the rocks in a graceful scramble and vanished from her sight.
A cold shudder passed through her body. The wood of the staff seemed unnaturally warm under her hand.
“Whsst! Bright One!” Ten steps up the path Sharp Edge danced from one foot to the other, waving impatiently at her.
“I have been touched by a strange glory,” Liath said.
Sharp Edge looked at her sidelong and hopped a few steps closer. She had blood on her face from a cut over her right eye that was still oozing, as though she’d been slapped by a branch while moving too fast through the trees. “Did your gods give you a vision?”
“Maybe they did.”
The clearing lay abandoned except for a single figure curled up on the ground. Buzzard Mask and Falcon Mask and Tarangi trotted past, making for the main path out of the clearing, but Liath halted beside the girl.
“Anna?”
She did not answer or even respond.
“Anna!”
Nothing.
Sharp Edge turned back, nudged the girl none too gently with a foot, and shrugged. “She’s useless. She can’t even speak.”
“Yes, she can.”
“She can’t speak our tongue. They say she lived several moons among our people but learned nothing. What good is she to you?”
“She looked after my daughter for many years. I won’t leave her behind.”
Sharp Edge moved away, paused, looked back at Liath. Waited, tapping her foot.
“Anna, we must go.” She knelt beside her.
Her eyes were squeezed shut, and her arms curled tight against her body. She had closed in on herself, as might a flower when the cold night air sweeps over it.
“Anna. I need your help. I pray you.”
Exasperated, Liath grabbed one of the girl’s wrists and tugged her upper arm away from her body. “Here! Here! You need to carry this for me. I can’t take it and use my bow, if it comes to that.” She unprised the clenched fingers and fixed them around the haft of the dog-headed staff.