The trees Haret spoke of were half a league away, but between their current spot and the scrubby pines was nothing but barren ground, dotted here and there with tufts of dried grass.
“I can’t do it,” she moaned, her legs buckling.
“You can, human. You must. You have survived this far. You must do this one last thing—get to the pines.”
Abisina tried to look back toward the Cairn entrance, which she could feel threatening behind her, ready to swallow her whole, but Haret held her firm against him. “Don’t look back. Just go. I’m looking for both of us.”
They limped across the open ground, Abisina straining to hear the thunder of hoofbeats at every step. She felt like a mouse waiting for an owl to dive from the sky and grasp her in its talons. Once, she looked back at the Cairn, sure they were coming for her, but it remained a silent, sinister pile of rock rising from the desolate plain.
“Keep going, human!” Haret urged through clenched teeth.
Abisina willed herself to take step after step. Her mother’s necklace bumped against her chest at each footfall, and she let this rhythm guide her feet. Step, bump, step bump.
But a few paces before the edge of the forest, Haret stumbled and Abisina cried out, hitting the ground with a jarring thud. She crawled forward before Haret had time to help her to her feet. She reached the first trees, crawled a few more paces, and collapsed. Haret threw himself down beside her, panting heavily.
They didn’t move for several moments, but finally Haret stirred. “We must go farther—to the cave. Can you stand?”
Abisina got onto hands and knees. “I think so.”
Haret, standing, offered his hand, which Abisina grasped. When she got to her feet, she put her arm around his shoulders again. She looked at Haret, taking in his face for the first time. His right eye was swollen shut. A long scratch festered on his left cheek. His nose was crooked, his lower lip split.
“I don’t want to meet the centaurs again any more than you do, human,” he said, with a half-smile. “Let’s get to the cave.”
Somehow, they did. Abisina’s strength gave out just after darkness, and Haret had to carry her inside, laying her on the rough floor. Barely conscious, she felt him change the bandage on her foot with gentle hands. She tried to murmur her thanks, but she wasn’t sure if she made a sound.
Abisina woke several times in the night, jerking up with a scream, sure she would see Icksyon’s mad eyes staring into hers, his hands on her feet. But each time, she woke to Haret’s voice telling her she was safe, they were in the cave, she could sleep.
The last time she bolted awake, a wan sunlight filled the low, wide mouth of the cave. She lay on a bed of pine boughs with heaps of leaves piled on top of her. Abisina sank back onto the bed and placed her hand on her heaving chest. She found her mother’s necklace, cool to the touch, and held it for a moment before putting it back inside her tunic. Haret was not there.
Probably out finding breakfast.
She knew he would be back.
Haret returned, his arms full of firewood, a bunch of greens clutched in one fist. His face was worse than the night before—his eye and lip more swollen, the festering cut on his cheek weeping yellow tears.
Haret touched her forehead. “No fever,” he said, relieved. He held the greens out to her, and Abisina sat up. As she took them, he reached into his pocket to retrieve a few brown mushrooms. “Eat these, human. A few nibbles of greens, then the mushrooms, then wait before doing it again.”
Abisina groaned. “No mushrooms.”
“You haven’t eaten in two days, and you lost a lot of blood. To heal, you must eat.” He sounded like Hoysta.
“I’ll eat the greens. Not the mushrooms.”
“You need the mushrooms for strength!”
“I can’t,” she insisted. “I ate one before. . . . It was poison.”
“What kind of mushroom?” Haret asked.
“A red cap with white flecks.”
“Red cap? White—oh, the Earth! How much did they give you?”
“Not the centaurs. I ate it myself.”
Haret put his head in his hands. “You can’t eat any mushroom you find, human! You’re lucky you’re alive.”
“Lucky? I saved myself by eating that mushroom!” Abisina’s indignation gave her new energy. She sat up straighter. “My mother showed it to me. She’s a—she was a healer: Sina, the healer of Vranille.” It felt good to say her mother’s name out loud. “I knew if I ate a little, I would appear dead. If I ate too much, I would
be
dead. Either way, I’d be better off.”
Haret was silent, then said, “Still, you’re lucky I came along when I did.”
Abisina didn’t reply. She could hear the respect in his voice. She started nibbling at the greens. “How did you find me?”
“I found you because I’m a dwarf,” Haret said matter-of-factly. “I tracked you. The centaurs left a trail I could have tracked next winter. But then I ran into them coming back. A few of them came galloping by me—hard. They never move like that after dark. Vision like humans—useless at night. One called out not six paces from where I hid: ‘Surl! Herd-traitor—we’ll find you! Offering rotten flesh! We’ll teach you to insult Lord Icksyon!’”
Abisina felt a grim satisfaction at these words.
Haret continued, “When they called you ‘rotten,’ I thought they meant your coloring—but now I understand. You were sick! That’s what broke up their little party.”
She shuddered.
“I found you at the back of the Cairn—curled in a ball. They must have thrown you aside. I thought you were dead.” Haret’s voice shook slightly. “But then I found a weak heartbeat. I had to climb into the Cairn, hide you, and find a cave. I came back to get you before evening, but it took much longer to wake you than I thought.”
“That’s when you gave me this,” she said, pulling out the necklace. Wearing it, she felt like a piece of herself had been restored.
Haret swallowed hard and looked down. “Please—put it away.” Thinking how many times she had said the same to Haret, Abisina tucked the necklace into her tunic. Haret went on: “I couldn’t save our bags. When the brown one got me, I couldn’t reach my knife, and I had to fight with my hands. He collided with a tree. Stupid brute. Got me, too.” Haret pointed to a cut on his forehead. “He didn’t try to follow me after that. From there, I followed his trail to the one who had you.”
They lapsed into silence.
“I’ll replace the gear we lost,” Haret said at last. “But now we need water. You need to flush out what’s left of the poison. And your foot needs to heal.”
Abisina refused to look at the empty space on her right foot. Was Icksyon wearing her toe on his belt even now? Her voice was steady: “It won’t slow me down.”
“You’re not going to give up.” It was not a question.
“I’m going to Watersmeet.”
“Suit yourself, human,” Haret said, but as Abisina got to her feet, he offered her his hand. And a smile.
Abisina and Haret spent more than a week in the cave recovering and replenishing their supplies. Her foot still wrapped and painful, Abisina was limited in what she could do, but Haret worked untiringly. He taught Abisina how to make a cooking pot by digging a hole, lining it with clay, and building a fire on top to harden the clay. He set traps near a stream for rabbits and squirrels, but the most important trap he set was a spring trap for deer.
He whittled down a few saplings into deadly points, attached these spears to a flexible branch near the stream, and set up a trip line using creeper vine. The first night, he returned with a doe; the night after that, he got a buck. The stomachs and bladders became new water carriers; the hide was stretched on a frame, dried over the fire, rubbed with wood ash, soaked, rubbed with a nauseating mixture of deer brains and fat, dried again, then sewn with a bone needle and sinew to become sacks and new boots for Abisina; more bone was sharpened into arrowheads; and a veritable feast of venison was prepared with plenty left over to smoke on a tepee of sticks.
Haret was his usual gruff self, barking “Human!” when Abisina let the drying deer hide get too close to the fire, when she asked too many questions about how dwarf snares worked, and when she washed the greens instead of leaving the “good, clean” dirt.
Still, Abisina knew their relationship had shifted. Haret let her apply her poultice of slippery elm to the cuts on his face and nodded his curt approval when he found her making ointment of elder leaves to help with bruises and sprains. He may have saved her because she could lead him to Watersmeet, but he had endangered his own life to do it. By eating that mushroom—and surviving—she’d shown him that she was made of stronger stuff than he’d thought.
And he had returned her mother’s necklace. She knew that cost him. Several times she noticed him staring at her tunic where the pendant hung hidden from view. Once, when she was leaning over the fire, the necklace had swung loose and Haret groaned as the light reflected off it.
She quickly put it away, and he let out a shaky breath. After that, she took more care to keep the necklace out of sight.
For Abisina, the worst part about their time in the cave was the closeness of the Cairn. Whenever she left their hideout, she felt like Hoysta, terrified of the surface world. Even with the new bow and arrows that Haret had made her, she was nervous. She would have insisted they have no fires, but they needed them to smoke the meat and dry the clay and hides. Every morning before dawn, Haret stole back to the trees near the Cairn to watch the herd ride away. Then he would come back to the cave and stoke the fire for the work of the day, putting it out well before nightfall and the centaurs’ return.
By the time they were ready to continue on their journey north, Abisina’s injuries were almost healed; she still had fingermarks on her upper arms and bruises on her back and sides where she had been stepped on or kicked, but even these were fading. Her foot ached where she had lost her toe, and she limped as she walked, but there was no infection, thanks to Haret’s careful cleaning and her poultices. Haret’s cuts would leave scars, but they were no longer inflamed.
They set out one evening, the waning moon obscured by clouds. Haret crept to the Cairn and waited until the centaurs’ mead-fueled songs and arguments rang out before returning to the cave for Abisina. As she stepped out into the cold night, she knew she wouldn’t stop listening for hoofbeats until they were leagues and leagues away from Giant’s Cairn.
They went northwest into the foothills of the Obruns, and the terrain grew rockier and steeper, with fewer tall trees, more underbrush to wade through, and less shelter. It would take them several days to reach the Mines, “especially at this pace,” Haret groused, more out of habit than irritation.
On the fifth night of walking, Abisina realized that Haret was heading toward a ribbon of gray threading its way through the trees. She trotted to catch up and ask what it was, but he reached the ribbon first. When she got there, she found the ruin of a road paved with enormous stones. The stones were cracked and broken, and trees grew through fissures in places, but even in its dilapidated state, there was no mistaking the grandness of this road. The paving stones were great slabs of rock several body lengths long and one or two wide. Ten broad-shouldered men could walk down it abreast. Haret picked up the pace, and Abisina had to hurry to keep up.
“Haret!”
“What?” He sounded truly irritated this time, but he stopped.
“This road! Where did it come from?”
“My ancestors built this road,” he said proudly. “The dwarves of the Obrun Mines.”
“They’re true then? Hoysta’s stories?”
“You still can’t believe it, can you? That the dwarves are capable of something the humans are not?”
“It’s not that, Haret,” Abisina tried to explain, though she worried that there was some truth in what he was saying. “But Hoysta’s cave . . . it’s nothing like what she described of the Obrun City.”
“Humph” was Haret’s only response before continuing up the road.
Abisina followed, excited but nervous. The Mines marked the beginning of her mother’s directions. Arriving there would make Watersmeet so close! Would Haret understand what Sina’s directions meant, or would he think them as flimsy as they sounded to Abisina?
The road began to climb more steeply. Haret set a pace that left Abisina far behind, her limp more pronounced after a night of walking. She caught up with him when he stopped in the middle of the road. Dawn had arrived, and in the cold light Abisina could see slopes of loose rock falling away on either edge of the road. A few scraggly trees clung to the slopes, but mostly the bits of green came from clumps of grass, weeds, and wildflowers. Cut into the side of the mountain directly ahead of them was an immense archway. The road disappeared into the darkness beyond.
They had reached the entrance to the Obrun Mines!
Abisina stared. All but a few of the top stones of the archway had fallen out. On the center stone Abisina could just make out what remained of intricate carvings and words, now eaten away by weather, lichen, and time.
Haret’s voice startled her. “I’ve done my part and gotten you to the Mines, human. Now tell me what you know of the passageway.”
“You want to search for it now?” Abisina said, stalling. “But we’ve been walking all night.”