Jaleigh Johnson - The Howling Delve

For a long time he stared straight ahead, listening for the sounds of hoofbeats or footfalls that might indicate pursuit. Hearing none, he untied the bundles from his back and clutched them tight.

His empty gaze focused on one of the unfamiliar markers. The name "Alinore Fallstone" was carved deep into the stone next to some kind of symbol. There were more words written underneath the name in a language Kall did not recognize.

He stared at the symbols, at the incomprehensible language, until the words blurred and darkness fell completely over his mind.

Esmeltaran, Amn

12 Eleasias, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR)

Balram waited at the door to Aazen's chamber. His gaze flicked briefly to Dencer, who'd found Aazen on the road and escorted him home. "Wait outside," he said.

Dencer nodded and shut the door, sealing them off from the rest of the house.

Aazen stood in the middle of the room, waiting, while Balram locked the door and slowly turned. They stared at each other for a quiet breath, measuring, Aazen thought, how much had changed since they'd last spoken in this room.

"Kall is gone?" his father asked at last. He already had the answer, but Aazen recognized what he really wanted to know.

"Kall is leaving Amn," Aazen said. "He knows that to stay is to die. Your secret is safe. I made sure of it," he added, and realized immediately that it was a mistake. He sounded too confident, too powerful, and Balram sensed it.

His father's eyes narrowed and something ugly broke on his calm, inscrutable face. "You made certain. You stood in this chamber and lied to me, took my life into your hands. . "

"I protected you."

"You were protecting Morel's whelp!" His father took a step forward. Aazen flinched. He couldn't help it. "You gave no thought to me."

"That's not true, Father," Aazen said quietly. "I give every thought to you, every breath of my life."

"What is it you want, Aazen?" his father asked, his tone altering to curiosity. "You could have gone with Kall. You were clever to lead me astray, more careful than I gave you credit for. I will never make that mistake again," he added, his face darkening. "Yet you returned to me."

"Yes. I want nothing from Kall."

"Why did you come back?"

Aazen would never know why, just as he had never understood the desire that clawed him from the inside. The galling need to please his father, to win approval from this man, this thing who might kill him with a misplaced blow-the need would destroy him one day. He knew that, accepted it, because he could not do otherwise.

He tried to hide the helplessness he felt, but his father saw, and he smiled-a small, satisfied expression. Satisfied because he still had a loyal son, or because he had a pawn he could twist and control? Aazen wondered. Deep down, he knew it was the latter, and for one burning instant, he hated his father as he had never hated anything in his life. Then the feeling was gone, fading to ash as Balram put a hand on his shoulder.

"We will talk more of this later. For now, all that matters is you chose to return."

"Yes, Father," Aazen said. Resignation drained the anger as it had long ago drained the fight out of him. He barely registered the change in pressure at his shoulder, the alteration from affection to purpose-his father's hand slowly turning him to face the wall.

Then there was only pain.

Kall awoke to the sound of a falling tree.

He scrambled up and around Alinore's grave as the sun disappeared, blotted out by the falling trunk. It struck the forest floor with a deafening thud.

Forest.. Kall's head whipped around. Trees surrounded him, and in the distance, a cap of mountains graced the southern sky. Haig's horse was gone, and so was the cemetery. All that remained were the bundles he'd been clutching against his chest and Alinore's grave.

Wrong. . wrong, all wrong. Was he dreaming? Then …

"Watch out, you!" A terrific weight slammed him from behind, knocking him to the ground as another trunk fell past his vision.

"That the last of them, by the bloody gods?" shouted a second, muffled voice.

"All clear." The crushing weight fell away, and Kall saw a man peering down at him, haloed by a sea of leafy green. The man's eyes were large and startlingly blue against a dirt-smothered face, and his ears curved as if the tips had been threaded through a needle. On rare occasions, Kall had seen half-elves in Esmeltaran, but never one so large as the figure staring at him now.

"Six young oaks! Six of Nine Hells, that's what you're in for," said the muffled voice again, this time at Kall's elbow.

Kall shrieked as a head burst up from the loose dirt where only a few breaths ago a tree had swayed. A hand followed to wipe the dirt out of a black beard on a pitted, distinctly human face.

"Garavin drew the map," the half-elf said, a bit defensively.

The head and the arm weren't having any of it. "Which you strayed from by a full thirty steps! Look, you." The human's other arm burst up, spraying Kall with more dirt. He flapped a crude drawing in front of the half-elf's blue gaze. "Any more off and you'd have taken the Weir!"

As the pair continued to argue over him, Kall started to slide backward, groping for a weapon, a stick, a rock, anything.

His hand closed on a branch that had been torn away from one of the falling trees. He raised it, and fire licked along his ribcage. Gasping, Kall dropped the branch and fell back, clutching his side.

Immediately, the half-elf crouched over him, his hands probing along Kall's flank. Feebly, Kall tried to push him away, but the man only grinned and muttered, "Cease." His brow furrowed as he examined Kall's wounds. "Get Garavin," he said to his companion. "I think the boy slipped through Alinore's gate."

"Wouldn't be the first," the bearded man grumbled. Instead of hauling himself the rest of the way out of the dirt, the man disappeared back into the earth, pulling his drawing with him.

"What is your name?" the half-elf asked when they were alone. "Who attacked you?"

"Kall," Kall said before he thought better of it. He jerked his head to the south, but kept his eyes fixed on the stranger. "The mountains-they're in the wrong place."

The half-elf nodded. "If you were lying in Esmeltaran's countryside last night, I daresay they are. Those are the Marching Mountains, not the Cloud Peaks. You've come a long way in a short sleep, Kall."

The Marching Mountains-Kall summoned a mental map. He'd crossed the lake, the Wealdath. . the Starspires, by the gods … all those miles. His mind boggled. "How?" he asked.

"My sister's fault, entirely," said a new voice, rough and engulfed by a deep, canine bark.

Kall looked up and saw the animal first, a lumbering bronze mastiff with folds of flesh dangling off its ribs and paws the size of a man's fist. Matching its stride-barely-was a dwarf with skin the color of dead leaves and a full, matching beard that fell nearly to his knees. As the dwarf bent over, Kall could see the hair was as wire-hard as the spectacle frames wedged in front of the dwarf's brown eyes.

The human whose head and arm Kall had glimpsed earlier trailed behind him, dirt-covered and oddly tall and gangly next to the dwarf. In profile, the man's face tapered and curved so prominently that Kall could have hung a cloak from his chin. Gesturing animatedly, he tried in vain to slide his parchment drawing under the dwarf's thick nose. The shorter figure's attention was entirely fixed on Kall.

"My name is Garavin Fallstone," the dwarf said in an oddly formal accent. He extended a hand. When Kall only continued to stare uneasily at the group, a corner of the dwarf's mouth turned up. "Ye need fear no attack from me or any of mine," he said, his voice quiet but still rough as a boot scrape. "Laerin"- he nodded to the half-elf-"would have been about telling ye the same thing, had I not interrupted." He deftly plucked up the human's parchment, folded it, and slid it away in a pocket of his brick-colored vest. "The other here is Morgan, and the dog's Borl. They're not brigands, at least not right now."