James West - Shadow and Steel

The girl at his side moaned and shut her eyes. Leitos swallowed the bile that flooded the back of his throat.

After the Fauthians turned off the path and vanished into the forest, yanking their burden over root and rock with cold indifference, Leitos leaned closer to the girl and asked again, “What is going on here?”

“This night,” she said in a halting voice, “one of my kindred died … and a demon was born into the world.”

That hair on the back of Leitos’s neck stood on end. “I must return to Armala and warn my friends.”

“You mean the men who were with you on the beach?” Nothing in her demeanor hinted that she might still want to stick her knife into his gullet, and that seemed promising.

“Yes,” Leitos said, standing. “And it was you I saw hiding in the forest,” he said, remembering the face he had seen.

She nodded. “As long as I can remember, I have been waiting for you to land on our shores,” the girl said, gazing into the empty space between them. “The night of the wreck, I awoke and knew you had come.” She faced him, looking uncomfortable. “I went to you, but found that you had already joined the Fauthians.”

“I have not joined them, we were taken into their care.” He shot her an inquisitive look. “And what do you mean, you have been waiting for me….” He trailed off, as understanding dawned. “You are a seer, is that it?”

She made a vague gesture toward her head. “Until tonight, I have always seen you in my mind-not as you are now, but as you will be. Your name is Leitos, yes?” He gave her a startled nod, and she added, “I am Belina.”

“Belina, I must return and tell my brothers about what I have seen.” In truth, he was not sure what he had seen, but knew it troubled him.

“You cannot.”

“Of course I can. I snuck here, didn’t I?”

“I mean,” Belina said, some of the fire coming back into her eyes, “that I will not allow you to return. You must come to my camp. Elder Damoc will have questions, especially now that my visions of you can be proven.”

“I will return,” Leitos promised, “this time on the morrow. For now, I must go. My people might be in danger. When I tell them what I saw, they will join me in helping you.” Considering Ba’Sel’s apparent trust of Adu’lin, he hoped he was not telling the girl a lie.

Belina’s gaze flickered over his shoulder. “No!” she hissed.

Leitos dropped to his haunches and spun, belatedly sensing a presence. His flung up his dagger against a looming shape, but a cudgel crashed against his skull. Blackness cascaded over his eyes, stealing away the sharp pain in his temple. From far away, he heard Belina’s protests. His shadowy assailant struck again, driving him to the ground. Then he was falling in to darkness, unfeeling, unknowing.

A snuffling squeal filled Leitos’s ear, and something cold and wet bumped his cheek. He sat up, reaching for his dagger, but it was gone. A coarse-haired piglet bolted away, its squeals like spikes piercing his skull. He raised a muddy hand to his scalp, felt a pair of lumps under his crusted hair.

“Behave, and we’ll get you cleaned up,” a girl said.

Careful to not make any quick motions, Leitos glanced around in the predawn gloom. The rank air surrounding him was thick with dew and buzzing midges. For a moment, he did not recognize her. Then, slowly, the events of the night before came back, as well as meeting this young woman … Belina . She was prettier without mud covering her face.

She sat on a mossy rock outside his cage, an enclosure made of saplings lashed together with thick vines. Using the same knife she had wielded the night before, Belina sliced a piece of yellow-skinned fruit with a seedy pink center, and popped the wedge into her mouth. She chewed, eyeing him askance, as if expecting him to do something dangerous. That look of distrust annoyed him, since it had been her and her friend who had knocked him senseless, before tossing him into a pigsty.

“Is there any reason I should believe you?” he asked. She frowned as if offended. “So far, you and your people have done nothing to earn my good behavior. Having met two peoples on Yato, I can say that only the Fauthians have treated me well.”

“The Fauthians ?” she spat. “Do you not remember what you saw last night?”

“I saw the Fauthians take a dead woman from a cave-”

“-the Throat of Balaam is no mere cave,” she interrupted. “It is a place of dark powers … an abode to evil.”

“Is it?” Leitos said, arching a skeptical eyebrow. “Or is that what you would have me believe? Adu’lin warned of your kind, how savage you are, even to your own. For all I know, you and that brute who clubbed me might have been torturing the woman, and her dying screams brought a Fauthian patrol to rescue her.”

“Are you mad?” Belina said, mouth agape. “The Fauthians are vile and cruel. They take our women and they … they do unspeakable things to them. On most islands they let the Kelrens hunt us. Our men, the slavers kill outright, or chain for the Faceless One’s mines. But our women are the true prize. They capture them and force them to … to.…” She cut off with an agonized look. “They do things that I cannot- will not -utter aloud.”

If Leitos could trust anything, it was that Belina believed what she was saying. But then, Adu’lin and the other Fauthians held a similarly hostile view of the Yatoans. Still, all that about the Kelrens hunting them bothered him. Telmon had named these islands the hunting grounds, and that made him want to believe Belina. He touched his scalp again, and wondered if he could trust anyone.

“If you expect me to behave,” Leitos said, “then you had better show me some proof against the Fauthians. As it stands, nothing you and your people have done convinces me not to side with them, and see you as my enemy.”

“You remember what I told you last night, about the birth of a demon, and the Fauthian woman carrying a newborn child, and the dead woman who was dragged out after?” Leitos nodded, and Belina took a deep breath. “The Fauthians force our women to breed with Alon’mahk’lar. What comes later are nightmares made flesh, changelings, Na’mihn’teghul.”

Leitos recalled the story the changeling Hunter Sandros had told him about his own mother, who willingly gave herself into the hands of Alon’mahk’lar for just such a vile purpose. Afterward, she had eviscerated her own husband, as a living sacrifice to the Alon’mahk’lar. Or, perhaps, the man’s death had merely been for sport. Sandros had never elaborated on the reason. Leitos also thought of Zera. If Belina was telling him the truth, then Zera might have been born in that cave, the Throat of Balaam.

But there were still unanswered questions.

“I have not seen any Alon’mahk’lar in Armala,” he said.

“And neither have you seen any children, have you? Strange, wouldn’t you say, since all the Fauthians are young and hale, the perfect age to rear families.”

Leitos frowned. In the last year, he had grown so accustomed to seeing only fellow Brothers, all older than him, that the lack of children in Armala had escaped him.

Belina said, “Adu’lin has likely hidden away the Alon’mahk’lar who serve him. As to the babes, they are born but never seen. We do not know where they go or how. As for the Fauthians, as far as we know, they cannot bear children.”

“Then how can they continue to exist?”

Instead of answering, Belina glanced at the spot where his fingers massaged his head. “You must forgive Nola. She is quick-tempered, untrusting, and given to crushing heads, instead of making friends.”