6.

THE SECRET OF AURALIA'S CAVES ite sails and pieces of driftwood became tents as if Soro had designed them for that very purpose. But as Cal-raven helped raise these uncanny lakeside shelters, his attention fractured. Those caves at the base of the colorful cliffs called to him.

"We should have a look inside," he said as the sheer, smooth stone face purpled with the sunset's hues.

"Must I, master?" The Abascar pillarman lay on the shoreline stones staring skyward as stars awoke. "I've spent too much time in the Underkeep's dark. I'd like to lie here and look at the sky." He wore a smile of happy exhaustion. Their flight with Old Soro's kites had left them both dizzy.

Absently, Cal-raven pinched the line of lighter, smoother skin that circled his ring finger. The colors on that cliff face ... I've only seen colors like that in things that Auralia made ...

Soro, spreading a canvas to sleep on, said, "Shouldn't you get some rest before you wake the cave's trouble?"

"Trouble?" said Cal-raven. "I have to see what's inside."

Nat-ryan sniffed a deep breath of the lakeside air as if drinking from a glass of chilled plum wine. "Think I'll sleep in the open for the rest of my life."

Cal-raven shrugged and marched up the scree-strewn slope to the mouth of a cave, then pressed on into the shadows.

Bird nests of twigs, leaves, and strands of luminescent string perched on stone outcroppings. Scattered shreds of fabric, clumps of crumbling chalk, fading lines of wall-sketches-each chamber was filled with echoes from a vivid symphony. What figures remained were abstract and strange, the traces of a half-remembered dream.

Could this have been her workshop?

He passed through a high-ceilinged chamber with a waterfall wall of luminescent blue, then moved up a tunnel to pull back a dust brown curtain. Faint light fell on a slender arm of vapor that reached out and rested its fingers on his shoulder. Beyond, a small bowl of a cave rippled with shallow water. Beside the pool a blanket of sewn leaves was cast back from a bed of dry sponge-bark.

Looking up, Cal-raven found what seemed another pool of water suspended on the ceiling. Glowstone stalactites, wet from the rising mist, punctured its shimmering surface, dissolving the illusion. Cal-raven was looking at a canopy of cavespider webs. The thickly woven mesh rippled in the currents that wheezed through the wall's intricate fissures. He shivered, even though he knew that cavespiders are as gentle and fragile as they are enormous and long legged. If he stared, he could glimpse them there, picking their way nimbly through the nets in search of tiny flies and beads of water.

He let the curtain close and knelt beside the rumpled leaf-blanket, cautious as if he might wake some invisible sleeper. A square platter of thin, broken slate held a rough crust of bread. He sniffed it, then laughed. It was not bread at all but a brick of brown clay that warmed in his hand and emanated the scent of a freshly baked bun, which only made him hungrier for the real thing. Toy food, he thought. When hunger woke Auralia, she crafted what she could not reach.

A sound like oars splashing came from far away, a distant echo from a world below. This pool, he realized, came not from seeping rain or springs but from fog that rose from a deeper reservoir; the mist dampened the webs and stalactites until they dripped a slow rain. He cupped a hand to the pool, touched the water to his tongue, then drank several handfuls.

The water was warm and invigorating, but it awakened the white pulse behind his eye. Weary of his vision's bright stain, Cal-raven lay down, rested his head on the feather-weave pillow, and looked up into the ceiling's shining spikes.

Waking dreams filled his mind as if the pillow were soaked in them. "I want to pick berries. I want to catch fish from the lake for my lunch. And I want my dog."

Dear old Hagah. He'll forgive me anything, no matter how often I disappoint him.

He drew from his shoe the pebble of the Keeper's footprint and began to soften its edges, flaring them out into a star-shaped ornament. He did this without thinking-had done so since childhood at Scharr ben Fray's urging. "Practice until you don't know you're practicing. Practice until a day is not complete without a new sculpture. Keep the power hot on your fingertips." The work calmed him.

"I want to sculpt something new. To return from the day with soreness in my back and find a feast waiting at the fire. I want storytelling. And music." He began to hum the verses of the Abascar hour songs.

I need these songs. I need the order of an Abascar day, an Abascar night.

Drunk on the strange water, he sang his way back through ceremony songs, ballads of history, poems of epic romance, as many as he could recall, rediscovering a tapestry of memories.

He was eight years old, kneeling beside the River Throanscall, pressing the mark of the Keeper's footprint into this pebble. The white scar pulsed brighter, as if from the stone.

He was a young soldier in training, riding a vawn alongside Tabor Jan, driving beastmen from the Gatherers' harvesting ground. But a girl among the Gatherers drew his eye. The white scar blazed from her forehead.

He was leading a charge in a fangbear hunt, a hunter's chant on his tongue. But Forbidding Wall peaks snagged his attention, gleaming like the serrated jaw of a flay-fish, while Tabor Jan turned and, without hesitation, cast an arrow into the prize. The scar flared so sharply it hurt.

As he sang, he began to see a subtle golden thread that bound these memories into a story-a thread of longing that had led him from mountains to fields to faraway city walls. The cord stretched into mystery, and his restlessness burned strong as ever.

He stared into the canopy of glowstone spikes and sparkling webs, which glistened like a clear night sky. I want to know where Auralia's colors come from.

He was back in Barnashum's Blackstone Caves, in a chamber where his people had assembled pieces of Auralia's art. The gallery's aura enveloped a figure playing soft, sad notes on a string-weave-a song of lament for House Cent Regus. Cal-raven thought of Jordam, of the faint hope that the beastman represented.

In my hatred I almost killed him.

In the singer's final verse, the dissonant chords resolved into a hopeful, ascending anthem. She sang of a fallen tree, its branches filling with birds that lifted it up and carried it away. Something might yet rise from the ruins of failing houses. The last note floated into the air like a firefly.

The singer looked up, and he knew her. Lesyl. He let go of the music's golden thread and reached out, instead, for the freckle-faced singer. Leave Bel Amica, Lesyl. Forget about Partayn. Come with me.

At once the pulsing light faded. Lesyl smiled softly, and Cal-raven felt a cold knife against his neck. He gasped, falling back against his attacker-Ryllion, with blood on his teeth.

Cal-raven woke beside the pool, water dripping against his neck. He choked on Ryllion's name.

"Fallen tower of Tammos Raak!" he gasped. "Cal-raven, you fool's fool, you've forgotten!"

Hiding inside a statue before the throne of the Cent Regus chieftain, Cal-raven had listened to a Seer describe a plot against Bel Amica, a trap about to spring. Had it happened? Had Captain Ryllion killed Queen Thesera, Partayn, and Cyndere? Or had the rebellion failed?

"My failure made me forget," he growled, as if making an excuse to himself. He rose and stepped into the pool, took hold of a glowstone stalactite, and snapped it loose from the ceiling's webbed hold. Sculpting a hilt and a blade from the long stone spike, he cringed at the bloody images that filled his imagination.

Ryllion's slaughtered my people or thrown them in prison. Tabor Jan, Say-ressa, Lesyl ... I'm not fit to be their king. And what of the Bel Amicans? Emeriene ...

Leaving the pool behind, he found the corridor dark. The sun had set.

Through the strange echoes of wind and trickling water, he heard a distant footfall on the lakeside pebbles. As he moved quietly down the steep tunnel toward the sound, his knuckles brushed against a velvet curtain. He paused. He had not noticed this doorway on his ascent. He pushed it aside.

A fading glimmer caught his eye, as if someone carrying a lantern were hurrying away. The space was heavy with the air of decay. As he stepped through into the dark, something rolled and cracked underfoot like dry kindling. His grip tightened around the shining stalactite sword.

"Is someone there?"

A splash like an oar in a lake. There was water, deep water, nearby, perhaps on the other side of this chamber's wall.

But the sound faded, and the air was still, like a predator waiting for the right time to strike. He felt strangely cold. He felt observed. His throat went dry. Holding out the glowstone sword, he looked down.

Bones were strewn all across the floor. Bones of animals and beastmen. But this was no accidental scattering. The figures below-a wild, violent struggle of twisted bodies-were all turned toward the same subject, their white skulls gaping.

Fighting a wave of revulsion, Cal-raven stepped through the bonefield toward the goal of their skeletal reaching-a pinnacle of black stone. In the sword's faint light, he could see a shape. He ran his hands along contours too symmetrical to be accidental.

A statue. A young woman.

Cal-raven climbed onto the carved sweep of the figure's trailing cloak and worked his way around to stand before her. The cloak and hair were littered with bones, twigs, leaves, and pebbles in wild whorls and patterns.

Cal-raven's questing hands found a gob of wax-the stub of an old candle-resting on the figure's outstretched arm. He found crumbs of broken sparkstone beside his feet and molded the fragments together until they were large enough to break against a sharp edge. In a moment the candle was lit, the light swelling to illuminate a small sphere of space.

He had seen her once a long time ago, deep in Abascar's dungeon, only moments before he rode out through his father's gates for the last time. But he recognized her even though the sculptor had given this Auralia a posture of anguish and desperation. Caught in midstride, she strained to escape her pursuers, the ghastly swarm of bodies and bones that clutched at her garments.

More candles waited around the ripples and wrinkles of her cloak. Cal-raven lit those too, freeing more details from shadow. The ceiling's stone had been molded into vicious expressions, and hands clawed at the hair as if reaching for the girl.

You saw a world of death and desperation. It made you lonely. Cal-raven thought of some of the horrors he had sculpted-monsters that had troubled his mother by their violence, figures that had offended his father by their ugliness. This was the safest way for Auralia to scream. To wring light from the darkness. To name her fears, know them, and leave them behind. She knew if others saw this, they'd condemn her as a danger.

He touched her outstretched hand, the figure's most complete detail-small, fine boned, and pointing forward through the dark. As he squeezed her hand in sympathy, his fingertips found the ridge of a ring on her finger, and he felt a pang of shame.

Something in her hand shifted, like a lever giving way. He looked ahead into the shadows, for he heard the sound of rusty hinges flexing in an adjoining chamber. Slowly he discerned faint light on the outline of a narrow door.

"Full of secrets, aren't you?" He stepped down and moved toward the hinges' fading echo. As he did, he glimpsed other faces gazing from the wall. Even there, sculptures waited, watching Auralia. But these figures were not reaching out to her. They were forbidding her to reach her destination. One had a stone mask sculpted like a sneer. Another had a jaw that hung open in derision.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another statue with lifelike detail. He turned and leaned in closer to study it.

It looked like Ryllion with a dagger drawn.

It was Ryllion.

Cal-raven swung his makeshift sword, but Ryllion seized his wrist with astonishing speed, halting the blow, and drove his dagger's tip up beneath Cal-raven's jawbone. He dropped the stalactite. Ryllion kicked it away, then pushed Cal-raven back between two of the towering figures carved into the wall.

"Are you alone?" he hissed.

"Well," Cal-raven gasped, "there's you ..." The blade bit into flesh, and he felt warm blood trickle down his neck. "Two men," he whispered. "By the lake. They'll come at a run if I shout."

"It would be a short shout," said Ryllion. "And your last."

Cal-raven sucked in two deep breaths, then relaxed, as Scharr ben Fray had taught him to do. It would be funny, wouldn't it? Auralia, imprisoned by Abascar, dies in its dungeon. But Cal-raven, new king of Abascar and free, dies in Auralia's cave.

"These are my caves now. Take your men away, and never come back."

"They're not my men," said Cal-raven. "They only brought me here."

"Tell them the caves were empty. Give up the hunt."

"The hunt?" Cal-raven's mind raced.

As he gained a measure of calm, he could see his attacker more clearly. Ryllion was bruised, battered, ugly with scars, as if he'd been mauled by a fangbear. Teeth were missing from his distorted mouth, and his eyes, once blood red, were pale, as if he were half-blind. The crimson mask around his eyes from a burn he'd suffered was painted with purple bruises. Scraps of a timeworn bandage clung to his face. Patches of his striped mane had been ripped from his scalp, leaving scabs of dried blood. He held his knife with only three fingers, the others crooked and useless.

Beaten half to death. And hiding. Ryllion's on the run. The plot failed. Cal-raven felt a thrill of relief.

"Who are you?" Ryllion demanded.

Thinking fast, Cal-raven replied, "An Abascar survivor. Trying to make it through another day."

"Do you know who I am?"

"I don't," he lied.

Ryllion leaned in close, and his breath caused Cal-raven to recoil. He had been eating fish from the lake. "I'm a survivor too." Cal-raven heard something more than anger in that voice. He heard bitterness and despair.

"You're not from Abascar." Cal-raven spoke tentatively. "The accent's wrong."

"What does it matter where I'm from? World's been poisoned. We're all going to die."

"Bel Amica." It was a risk, but Cal-raven took it. "I heard rumors of trouble there. Something about the Seers."

His captor, in a rage, threw him into a scattering of bones. Cal-raven fumbled backward on all fours, gathering his thoughts. If he could press his fingertips through the debris to the stone floor, he might gain an advantage.

Ryllion sheathed his dagger, picked up a tree-branch spear he had fashioned, and thrust it at Cal-raven's face. "Seers are liars." His voice was like ice breaking. "You haven't heard? They betray anyone. Even those who gave up everything for their promises. Tried to kill me." He spat out curses.

"We agree then," said Cal-raven. "The Seers planned a slaughter for Abascar's people, even as we struggled to survive."

"Look what they did to me!" Ryllion turned the spear upright and spread his arms. "I was their servant. They promised me a throne. And they made me half a monster."

"But you're free now," said Cal-raven. "Free of a lie. And you're not alone. I hate the Seers as much as you do."

Ryllion stood still before the candle-ringed statue of Auralia. Panting like a frustrated hunting dog unsure which path his prey has taken, he narrowed his eyes and said, "Get up."

For a heartbeat Cal-raven considered melting the floor to bring down his assailant. But Ryllion still held that spear, and Cal-raven knew, in his weariness, that he might not have the strength.

"I'm not going to hurt you," said Cal-raven. "We can talk."

"Don't presume to instruct me." Ryllion's eyes flared, but his legs were shaking, and his arm wavered. He was weakening.

"I would never instruct you," he said, making an appeal to the soldier's pride. "You're the most powerful soldier in the Expanse. Yes, I recognize you now, Captain. The Seers may have cast you aside, but they've underestimated you. You'll surprise them someday."

Ryllion grinned. "I'll surprise everyone."

Cal-raven stood, holding his hands open before him. "Let's surprise them together." He advanced slowly, unsure where this courage was coming from. The scar in his left eye burned bright as a star. "No man in the Expanse is in a better place to help you strike back at them than me."

Ryllion raised the spear again.

"Test me. Let me prove it."

"Who are you?"

"I have Partayn's ear. Cyndere trusts me. They know the Seers are deceivers. I can win your pardon." Every word was a step on a razor-thin wire. "I'll tell them that you're with me and that you're ready to pay every debt. You'll become Bel Amica's champion again. They'll listen to me."

Ryllion nodded slowly. Then he pushed the tip of the spear between Cal-raven's ribs. "You're clever, King of Abascar, but you're wrong. Cyndere might play along to bring me within reach. Then she'll feed me to the Deathweed." He laughed, and every bark struck Cal-raven like a slap. "She'll kill me and enjoy it."

"Cyndere forgives beastmen, Ryllion. Imagine what-"

"I murdered Deuneroi!" Ryllion drew back the spear and raised it over his head, then snapped it in two and cast it aside. Cal-raven was stunned. "I ... I didn't know."

"Neither did Cyndere for a while. But she knows now. The hunters are out. What kingdom would ever give me better than prison?"

"Mine." Cal-raven stood very still, astonished at his own answer. "New Abascar will be a safe place for you, Ryllion, if you'll leave your old ways behind."

Ryllion glared at him.

"You're sleeping beside Auralia's pool, Ryllion. You've heard her story. You've seen her colors. I know where they come from. I'm taking my people there. We need all the help we can get. We'll set up a refuge, safe from the beastmen, safe from Seers, safe from Deathweed."