Frostfell_ The Wizards - Mark Sehestedt [67]
Enough of this-back to the belkagen! part of her said, but the hard core of her, the part of Amira that fought and strived and killed in battle, recalled the belkagen's words. "Take it as far as you can. Hro'nyewachu will see to the rest."
Surprising? Yes. Damned unsettling, in fact, but this was nothing the belkagen had not told her about.
Just get to the other side, she told herself, nice and easy.
The water round her legs seemed to thicken, solidify, and as she opened her mouth to scream, she was pulled under. Water filled her nose, her mouth, and poured down her throat. She clawed for the surface, then the blackness and the thick silence beneath the pool swallowed her.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Hro'nyewachu
Pain pulled Amira back to awareness. Her lungs felt like she was breathing daggers. All she could see was a warm blood red glow, like staring into the sunset with her eyes closed. Panic froze her mind, then her body took over.
She coughed out a great gout of water, drew in a rattling breath, then coughed up more water. She coughed and gagged and heaved until she feared her eyes were going to burst from her head.
When air began to find its way into her body again, her mind was able to emerge from the panic and take stock of her situation. Still on her hands and knees-on a stone floor with a thin covering of grit, she noticed-she looked up through her drenched hair.
The red light hadn't been brought on by her panic. She was in a cavern. Stalactites large as war-horses hung from a ceiling far above. Some had melded with the stone below, forming columns of stone that glistened in the red glow.
Glow-?
She looked around. If the light had a source, she could not find it, but it filled the cavern. Even the great columns of stone cast no shadow. The chamber had no proper walls, but the ceiling formed a dome that fell to meet the floor.
Amira sat up on her knees, brushed her sodden hair out of her face, and looked around. Where is the entrance? she wondered. How did I get here? Where-?
Her gaze stopped on the floor behind her. Not ten paces away lay the deer. It had been cut in two perfect halves, right down the middle, and each half set parallel so that the twin antlers nearly touched. Even the thick bone of the skull and spine had been split. What could have done such a thing?
The entrails and a great pool of blood-black in the cavern's light-lay between them, and just beyond them was a stone pedestal. It looked as if one of the great stone columns had been severed at table-height. Whether it had been carved or formed that way through some craft of magic or by long eons of stone-growth, Amira could not tell.
Upon the stone table was the deer's heart, still beating, slowly but with a steady, unceasing rhythm. With each beat, a small trickle of blood pulsed from the heart. Already a sizeable pool had formed in the concave surface of the stone table.
Amira's eyes widened, and she held her breath. The deer had been dead. How-?
Stand.
Amira gasped at the voice. It came to her mind, not her ears, and the language was one she'd never heard, though she understood it immediately. It was deep, husky, but obviously feminine. Where had it come from? Where-?
Stand.
There. Amira stood and faced the table.
A figure stepped out from behind one of the stone columns that flanked the table. She was tall-she could've looked down upon Gyaidun-but thin. Not emaciated, for the grace with which she moved hinted at great strength, but something about the way she moved seemed… unnatural, as if her muscles and joints were not fitted to her bones like other beings. She was quite naked, but Amira could not discern the color of her skin. A slick wetness covered her from head to toe, and in the red light of the cavern it was almost black. Blood. In her heart of hearts, Amira knew it.
The woman's hair was made up in dozens and dozens of tight braids that hung to her waist. Woven among them were bits of bone, feathers, and flowers,