I made a helpless gesture. “I’m not doing anything.”
“Also interesting.” Xivan looked at the lantern light sparkling against the cave wall. “In the old days, before we Quuros arrived, the witch-queen Suless had an understanding with her worshippers. She’d grant any wish her female devotees asked, but only if they sacrificed an unmarried girl to her. Usually a woman would sacrifice a daughter, but technically speaking, the sacrifice didn’t have to be a relative.”
“I don’t feel sacrificed,” I said.
But I also remembered hearing the whooping laughs of the hyenas closing in and wondered. What would have happened if Aeyan’arric hadn’t arrived?
“Aren’t you glad Suless is dead?” Her gaze was thoughtful. “But it’s hard to stamp out a religion. People still practice the old ways, hold hyenas and bears as sacred because Suless and Cherthog claimed those animals as their symbols. Men still marry off their daughters as soon as they can too. They probably don’t even remember that once the practice derived from a desire to keep girls from being offered to the witch-queen—and being sacrificed and used against them.”
“That’s barbaric. Let me guess—the sacrifices were left out in the cold.”
“Yes, to be claimed by the snow hyenas or worse. Suless ate babies. Ask anyone. I have my doubts that’s really true. The old stories never said where the witch-mothers came from. You see, Suless used to have these priestesses—witches, naturally—whom she crafted from snow and would send to marry chieftains who pleased her.”
I scoffed. “Crafted from snow?”
“Now I think she was taking all those sacrificed girls and raising them herself, before sending them back among the clans as her own personal enforcers and secret police. After all, if Suless really had been able to create witches out of frozen water, Yor wouldn’t have lost the war.”
“What happened to the witch-mothers then?” I thought of Bikeinoh’s claim that Wyrga was the last.
“Quur killed them all, of course.” She waved a hand. “Decades ago, long before you were born.”
“Yet if the witch-mothers have been gone for decades, someone had to show Veixizhau how to sacrifice me to Suless.”
“Is that who did it?” She smiled. “Now I could be wrong. Maybe you were just dumped outside to freeze to death because Veixizhau was jealous, but you said she found your maiden status interesting. Her reasons for that interest wouldn’t be the same as a man’s, so I’m jumping to conclusions. Hug the wall to the left. Whatever you do, avoid wandering too close to the cave mouth on the right.”
“Why, what’s in there?” The rays of the lantern cast long shadows into the opening.
“Death.” She pointed to a place where the cave opened into a medium-sized room. Blue smoke hovered on the ground to the opening’s right.
I straightened. “I’ve seen that smoke before.”
“Then you know how dangerous it is.” She pointed down the left passage. “This way is safe.”
I stepped to the left. I didn’t need any explanation to know to avoid the right-hand passage. I’d recognized the witch-smoke we’d encountered in Mereina.
As she walked, the cave path smoothed out and became something more finished and navigable.
“Stay left. We’re passing another dangerous cavern.”
We walked on a slim ledge with a precipitous drop to our right, revealing a yawning darkness. Normally, I wouldn’t have been able to see far into those depths, but something was creating light down there. I saw the blue smoke lurking on the ground, twining through abandoned ruins.
Then the light source itself held my attention.
It was a spear.
A golden spear rested on a stand in the cave’s center.
“What is that?” I realized I had stopped to look.
I pretended at ignorance, but I recognized the spear Thaena had shown me. And once I’d found a way to steal Khoreval, I’d be finished with the easiest part of my mission.
I had no false illusions about how difficult it would be to slay a dragon.3
“A slower death than the last cave,” Xivan said, either ignoring my question or misunderstanding it. “I’m the only one who can walk there without dropping dead, since I already have. If the smoke doesn’t kill you, the stone will.”
I looked back at her. “The stone? What do you mean?”
“It’s a curse the Academy came up with when it proved too hard to dig the Yorans from their caves. They changed the caves themselves, turned them toxic. Rather like setting a castle on fire to force everyone out in a siege, except the castle is still burning a century later.”
My throat felt dry. “How many people lived here?”
“Thousands,” she answered. “And this is just one cave system. Hundreds were rendered unlivable in pockets all over Yor.”
I stared for another minute, feeling dread. As in Mereina, the blue smoke obscured a floor littered with the dead.
She put a cold hand on my shoulder. “We shouldn’t linger. Not here.”
I let her lead me farther on. The passage looked old, sturdy, and almost comfortable to me, given the Joratese love of cellar homes. We walked rather deep into the mountain, at least another half hour beyond the poison caves where the Yorans had once lived. By the time the tunnel opened into a cavern again, the temperature had turned warm.
The large cavern floor had been polished smooth and divided into sections. Living areas, I realized, although I didn’t know how useful or necessary they were for Xivan. Did she need to sleep? Did she need to eat?
If she did need to eat, what did she eat?
Also, the cavern was occupied. In one section, someone had drawn rings on the ground and set up wooden mannequins. A beautiful young woman was whacking a wooden practice sword against these pretend enemies, stopping to adjust her footing. She dressed in practical trousers and a loose-fitting shirt, and like Xivan, she looked Khorveshan.
But unlike Xivan, she looked alive.
“Here we are,” Xivan said. “Home sweet home, such as it is.”
As Xivan’s voice echoed, the woman who had been practicing stopped and looked back toward us. Her liquid brown eyes widened as she spotted me, and I flushed. For the first time since entering the caves, I felt embarrassed at my nudity.
“Talea,” Xivan said, “we have a guest. Let’s find her something to wear before we stir up trouble upstairs. This should be fun.”
44: THE COURT OF TRUTH
Jorat Dominion, Quuros Empire. Three days since Kihrin realized he was homesick
Ninavis came back from the kitchen with a pot of coffee. “What did I miss?”
“This is all a trap set up by Relos Var, I’m going to kill him, anyway, and Duke Kaen’s wife is dead but still walking.” Kihrin stole the coffee from her and helped himself to a cup.
“You told him about Relos Var?” Ninavis turned to him. “And you’re still here?”
“Are you kidding? And miss the chance to know exactly where he’s going to be next?”1 Kihrin turned to Janel. “So is Xivan Kaen a vampire like Gadrith?”
“Similar,” Janel admitted. “At least I think so. Less into sorcery, though.”