Kalona's Fall (House of Night Novellas #4)(22)

L’ota wound her way through the prairie in a serpentine pattern that very quickly convinced Kalona she had no idea where she was leading him.

“L’ota, where exactly are these jewels?”

In cave.

“And where is the cave?”

Follow bull tracks. Find cave.

Kalona had seen the mighty beasts that the Prairie People called bison. They roamed the land in enormous herds. Sometimes there were so many of them they covered the grassland from horizon to horizon. He’d seen a few solitary old bulls, though he had never observed any of the bison, be it bull, cow, or calf, going into a cave.

“L’ota, you are mistaken. Bison do not live in caves.”

She paused in her serpentine hunt, looking up at him with a strange light in her almond-shaped eyes. Not bison. Bull.

“You are making no sense. I think it is past time that I—”

Tracks of bull! the Fey interrupted him, pointing at the ground where, as she had said, cloven hooves had torn huge indentations into the earth. Kalona was studying the tracks and thinking they had to belong to a beast far larger than any he had seen thus far when L’ota’s triumphant shouts of Cave! Cave! had him following her again.

The Fey had stopped before the mouth of what appeared to be a rocky split in the earth. It wasn’t far from another line of cross-timbers, and it was small enough that it could easily have been overlooked. As Kalona studied it and the enormous tracks that led to it and then disappeared, he realized that it was entirely too small for the bull who made the tracks to have entered.

“L’ota, where did the bull go? He is far too big to fit within the entrance there.”

Bull there. The Fey gestured stubbornly to the cave. I see him. I talk to him.

Kalona decided the little creature’s mind was completely muddled. Perhaps she didn’t have the intelligence to truly understand what she was saying. Not that Kalona cared. He only cared that she had the intelligence to lead him to jewels.

“The bull is unimportant. What is important is that there are precious stones within that cave—stones Nyx will find pleasing,” he said.

Bull important. White like frost. He not call me servant.

Kalona ran his hand through his hair. Did Nyx know L’ota was mad? If not, how was he to tell her without giving away the fact that he’d used her help to complete the last of the tests?

Above the cave a raven came to ground, croaking at the Fey. The little creature shot it angry looks and seemed ready to bolt.

“Yes, the bull is important,” Kalona said, hoping to placate her. “But the jewels are important, too. Are they within?”

Yesssss! L’ota hissed the word.

Deciding that he probably should find a way to tell Nyx that her servant was delusional—after he completed the test and joined her in the Otherworld—Kalona dismissed the Fey with a quick smile, saying, “Thank you, little one. The rest of the task I must complete on my own.” He had begun to move to the entrance to the cave when the Shaman, as if materializing from the night, appeared before him, holding a turtle rattle in one hand and an eagle-feather-decorated smudge stick in the other.

“Halt, Kalona of the Silver Wings! Do not enter the cave of Darkness. Evil will steal your spirit, and you will wander the earth empty and hopeless, having lost what you value most.”

L’ota raised up from the grass that had been concealing her, elongating her body and surprising Kalona by baring sharp, white teeth at the Shaman. You not a god! You not command him!

The Shaman whirled to face the Fey, shaking his rattle at her. “Leave this place, demon, friend of an enemy of the People. You do not belong here.” He shifted the rattle to the hand that held the smoking stick, reached into a leather pouch that was tied to a shell belt around his waist, and from it flung a handful of blue dust at the skeeaed.

L’ota shrieked and clawed at her face, tearing her flesh. The flesh that she tore writhed, as if it had life of its own. It changed, turning black and serpentine, until finally her entire body exploded, raining the ground with tendrils that continued to slither and writhe and tear at themselves until the Shaman threw another handful of blue dust at the seething nest. There was a terrible shriek that pierced the air, and the tendrils dissolved in a stinking cloud of black smoke.

“You should not traffic with demons, Winged One,” the Shaman told him.

Kalona waved a hand in front of his face, trying to dissipate the fetid smoke. “L’ota was one of the Goddess’s Fey. What did you do to her, old man?”

“I revealed her true nature, the one she has been hiding with whispers and cunning. She is demon, seduced by Darkness.”

“Shaman, none of this makes any sense to me. Have you nothing better to do than to shadow me and to cause Fey to explode?”

“I caused only the truth to be revealed. And I shadow you because you are the Kalona of the Silver Wings. You have great medicine.”

“Yes, I do. And that is why neither talking with a mad Fey, nor going into that cave will cause me harm. No one can steal my spirit.”

“Winged One, I have seen you in power dreams given to me by the Great Mother.”

“The Great Mother isn’t fond of me,” Kalona said.

“The Great Mother’s wisdom is beyond petty likes and dislikes,” retorted the Shaman.

“We may have to agree to disagree about that.”