Don Bassinghtwaite - The Binding Stone

Calls and praise turned to stony silence when Singe and Dandra passed.

As they passed a cluster of better shelters, a handful of older hunters stood watching. Singe's gut sank a little lower. He thought he recognized some of the hunters. They were the ones who had attacked Bull Hollow.

Ashi's face lit up. "Breff!" she called out to one tattooed man. Singe saw her eyes dart among the older hunters, then narrow. She said something to Breff in the language of the Bonetree clan. "Ches azams esheios?"

Breff shook his head.

For the last several days, Singe had been listening to the hunters as they traveled upriver, trying to unravel a little of their language. He strained to make some sense of Ashi's words. Azams were other members of the clan. Shei was to hunt. Sheios — they hunt… Are the others hunting?

"Ashi," he murmured, "should there be more hunters?"

"Yes." She called to Breff again, waving him closer. "Gri'i ans kriri?"

"We're the only ones," Breff said. Singe felt a shock at hearing him speak another language. The hunter's words were low and his voice was brittle, as if he was discussing some terrible, haunting secret he wanted no one else to hear. "Hruucan set a hard pace on the journey back. Anyone who was too badly wounded…"

He stopped, glancing up.

Dah'mir stood beside them.

Ashi's face fell and Singe's belly trembled, but Dah'mir ignored them both and instead looked at Breff. The tattooed man's gaze slid to the ground.

Dah'mir took a step back. "Hunters," he said gently, "come to me." He gestured to the younger hunters as well as the older. "All of you."

They clustered around him, pierced and tattooed savages kneeling before a dark, immaculate priest. Only Ashi stood back, staying in her place between Singe and Dandra. Dah'mir stretched out his hands, laying one on Breff's shoulder. "First among the Bonetree," he said, "my loyal servants, be glad! To fall at the command of a child of Khyber is an honor! The clan will tell tales of the fallen for generations. Yours was a hunt to be remembered." He gestured with his free hand, indicating Dandra and Singe. "What you sought has been found and new blood for the Bonetree along with it." He smiled and his green eyes flashed. "Be blessed, hunters of the Bonetree! May the Dragon Below restore your ferocity!"

Singe felt the breath of magic as foul as Fause's healing of his arm and shivered. He couldn't imagine that more than few of the kneeling hunters understood Dah'mir's words, but when they looked up, there was a new light in their eyes. Their fingers rose, darting to their lips and their foreheads. Breff's eyes seemed brightest of all. "Harana!" he moaned, and leaned forward to kiss the hem of Dah'mir's leather robes. The green-eyed man raised his hand and all of the hunters leaped to their feet, joining in his honor guard.

None of them looked at Ashi a second time, so caught up were they in reverent adoration of Dah'mir. Singe glanced at her, but her expression was once again hard. He turned away and looked ahead.

The Bonetree mound rose above them. Singe bit his tongue. It was as large as a hill, but after the flatness of the Shadow Marches and with no other hills around, it looked enormous. "That can't be natural!" he said.

"It isn't," Ashi grunted. She didn't look at him, but she said, "There are stories told by the elders that describe how the earliest members of the clan built it in honor of the Dragon Below. It's said that once a Gatekeeper circle stood here, but that Dah'mir shattered it and raised the ancestor mound in its place. Now he lives beneath the mound with the children of Khyber. No member of the clan sets foot inside it, but there are other stories of passages that lead deep into Khyber and of Dah'mir's treasure."

Singe knew that it could only be a sign of growing desperation that his mind fixed on the least appropriate fragment of Ashi's words. "Treasure?" he repeated.

"Dragonshards," said Ashi. "For all the generations that he's guided the Bonetree, he's gathered dragonshards, like those he wears the and the ones he gave Vennet. The elders say that he's building a great shrine to the Dragon Below and when it's complete, the clan will be allowed to worship there."

She didn't sound like she believed it, but Singe had a vision of a shrine as large as one of the great halls of Wynarn lined with ten generations' accumulation of dragonshards.

"Twelve moons," he choked, feeling like a greed-maddened dwarf.

It was a feeling that lasted only until Dah'mir's procession reached the tunnel that gaped in the side of the mound. Standing inside the shadows of the stone-lined tunnel was a dolgaunt. His face and chest were terribly scarred, patches of the writhing buds that covered his skin replaced by tissue that was smooth, shiny, and raw. Clumps of his thick hair-tendrils were limp and dead, and the tentacle that sprouted from his left shoulder moved sluggishly compared to the right. Singe's belly felt hollow and cold. It was Hruucan.

The dolgaunt stood stiff as the crowd of hunters split apart. When Dah'mir and Medala stepped forward, he bent to them-stiffly-in respect. Dah'mir's eyebrows rose. "Hruucan, when Medala said you had been injured…"

"I recover," Hruucan answered in the same harsh, grating voice that Singe remembered from Bull Hollow. "The scars are… inconvenient." His shoulder tentacles lashed the air with an agitation that betrayed his words. "Dah'mir, you have the one who did this to me with you!"

Dah'mir looked over his shoulder and his eye fixed on Singe. "I have plans for Singe, Hruucan," he said. "He will be brought into the Bonetree. His blood will make the clan stronger."

"Scars don't pass through the blood," Hruucan rasped. "If you command, any woman of the Bonetree will mate with him no matter how ugly he is. I'll leave him a man. That will be enough." The dolgaunt's empty eye sockets turned to Singe. "A rematch, wizard," he said. "A duel to finish what we started."

The smile that spread across Dah'mir's face was at once both horrible and entrancing. "He'll do it," he said.

Singe's hollow belly shrank even further. He felt Ashi's hand, still on his arm tighten sharply.

Dah'mir swept his arms wide, his voice full of a terrible joy. "A spectacle!" he declared. "Here before the mound. To celebrate my return!"

"Varda!" shouted Breff, translating for the Bonetree. "Varda su teith e harano!"

Those were words Singe knew. The younger hunters had used them as easily as they drew weapons. A fight! A fight for blood and honor! He watched matching smiles break across the faces of the Bonetree hunters. Their arms punched the air and their voices rose enthusiastically.

Dah'mir looked back to Hruucan. "Will tonight be soon enough for you, Hruucan?" he asked,

The dolgaunt bent again. "I welcome the sunset!" His tentacles quivered as if in anticipation.

"Excellent!" Dah'mir looked to Ashi. "You've taken care of these two admirably, Ashi," he said, "but you can relax now. They aren't going anywhere." His charming smile broadened but it didn't seem to Singe that Ashi relaxed at all. He turned to look at her, but she wouldn't return his gaze. When she did force her hand to drop, it almost felt like she had to wrench it away. The instant she let go, though, she stepped back and looked away from him.

Dah'mir's voice seemed like it was coming from a distance. "Breff, put Singe in an empty hut and see that he rests and has food. I'm sure Hruucan wants a challenge tonight. Guard him carefully-he is a wizard, after all."

"Yes, Dah'mir." A new hand replaced Ashi's on Singe's arm and pulled him back toward the camp.

Singe pulled away and spun to Dah'mir, a desperate plan trying to put itself together in his head. Maybe there was something he and Dandra could do together… "Please," he pleaded to Dah'mir. "Wake Tetkashtai. Let me say good-bye to her, at least!"