Obsidian and Stars (Ivory and Bone #2)(43)
Seeri nods, but her eyes slide to Morsk as she shoulders her spear. It’s clear she trusts him no more than Kol does. With Pek in solidarity with his betrothed and his brother, Morsk is without an ally.
Unless I am his ally. Right now, I’m not sure how I feel.
Before Kol walks away, he squats down in front of a thicket of thorns. At first I worry he is getting sick—his skin is still gray, his eyes still dull—but when he straightens, Chev’s knife is in his hand. Relief washes over me at the sight of it. Though it may have been used to kill him, it is still his knife—the work of his own hands—and I would’ve hated to have left it behind.
Kol hands it to Seeri. “Hold on to it,” he says, glancing at Morsk. “You may get a chance to use it.”
For just a moment, anger flares in me, though I’m not sure why. Is it because Kol refuses to trust Morsk, or because he chose to give the knife to Seeri instead of me? It doesn’t matter. I shove the anger down. This is not the time for emotional reactions. I can’t be selfish now. I need to stay focused on our task.
I need to think like a High Elder.
As we move downhill toward the sound of Black Dog’s howls, I notice changes all around us. Off to our left, the chime of water spilling over rocks comes from the stream that feeds the lake. The trees begin to thin, even as the underbrush thickens. A cold breeze whistles past my ears, chilling them. Overhead, a circle of blue appears—the open sky above the lake—ringed by dark green treetops.
And straight through the shade, running straight toward me, is Black Dog.
He jumps against my leg, runs a few paces back the way he came, then circles around and jumps against me again. He wants me to follow.
We move closer to the edge of the trees, and I notice the scent of algae mixing with evergreen, and a sound I had not expected. The roar of falling water.
Sun hits my face as we step out from beneath the trees. Finally Black Dog stops. He runs out ahead of us and looks up, letting out another piercing howl.
Right in front of us lies the lake—an oval stretch of water that reflects the blue and white of the sky. A sharp cliff of black rock rises behind it, and tumbling from its top ledge is a spray of water and light—the waterfall.
Black Dog howls again, and I scan the ridge at the top of the falls and spot two figures seated on the highest ledge. Two figures under the broad sweep of the sun, waving at me.
Lees and Noni.
SEVENTEEN
Lees raises her hands above her head and calls out. “Mya Mya Mya!” Her voice rolls like a wave, a ripple of sound expanding over the trees. “You found us!”
And though relief washes over me at the sight of her, my stomach twists into knots at the sound of her voice. She is loud and she is high in the air, her voice carrying on the breeze, uninterrupted by the trees below.
It’s likely that the sound of my name has been carried far enough to reach Dora and Anki. Maybe far enough to reach Thern and Pada, too. A shiver runs over me as I realize I have no idea where those two are. Perhaps they are quite close, and will emerge from the trees at any moment.
“And look who you’ve brought with you,” Lees continues, her hand sweeping toward Morsk. “My future betrothed.” Though Lees’s words are mocking, there’s a quaver in her voice. She had expected me to be alone, but here I am with this group of four. I’m sure she’s surprised to see anyone with me at all, but to see Morsk must be particularly alarming to her. “Have you come with my brother to try to drag me back? Or has Chev sent you to say that he has changed his mind?”
These last words—so innocent and terrible—tear a hole in my heart.
I will have to tell her. I will have to be the one who tells her that her brother came here to give her whatever she wanted, as long as she came home to him and to her clan. And then I will have to tell her that he is dead.
“You need to come down,” I call, yelling to be heard over the waterfall. I stride toward her, skirting the edge of the lake, trying to get closer so our words are more private. The others follow. I almost tell them to stay under the cover of the trees, but I think better of it. It makes more sense for us all to stay together. “There are things happening. Things I need to tell you—”
“But I want you to come up here!”
“We need to go!”
I watch her as she begins to scramble down, though Noni stays right where she is. The rock is steep, but handholds and ledges are plentiful, and she makes the climb appear easy. Still, the sight of her clinging to such a sheer face makes it hard for me to breathe. She stops about halfway up from the bottom and calls out again.
“You should climb up! There’s a cavern at the top that leads to a passageway through the rock. I want to show you!”
A passageway through the rock . . . Could it lead to the other side of these cliffs—the side that faces the sea? Could it lead us closer to our camp on the beach?
“What kind of passageway? Where does it go?”
“I’m not sure—we didn’t crawl the whole way through. But light comes in from the other side.”
Climbing might be our best option, I realize, because of the need to get out of sight before one of the Bosha follows Lees’s voice to the lake. Even if we couldn’t use the passage as a path back to the beach, a cave at the top of these cliffs would hide us, at least for now.