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The path grew steeper, claht theoats fled into the forest at the approach of the dogs Two Fingers e of a watch post, so: its plank roof had fallen in A cistern lay beside it He sipped at its waters, declared theood, and they refilled their waterskins while Alain cla that he could, with care, use his injured hand to grip When he found a safe vantage place and beckoned, they climbed up beside hi way downslope to an extensive grove of olive trees and, farther down, irrigated fields woven together with an elaborate pattern of canals The town itself lay on a rise Massively fortified with earth walls and a wooden palisade, it looked iures that walked its ramparts wore the crested helmets and animal masks that marked the soldiers of the Cursed Ones Soe lay in ruins, burned or torn down, and a few huures labored at the tannery and in the fields, stooped with misery and despair Fresh scars marked the earth just outside the rampart Adica shuddered: she knew that the Cursed Ones had a habit of throwing the dead bodies of their slain ene their souls to haunt the living for eternity since the souls of the dead could not pass on to the Other Side without the proper cereht of a flock of huht, lay the tombs common to the tribe They, at least, did not look disturbed But in their ures standing guard The Cursed Ones held the path in and out of Horn’s country

"Horn and her people will have taken refuge in the caves of her ancestors" Two Fingers made no other cootiated the broken walls of the watch post and fell back to the safety of the oak wood Both Two Fingers and Laoina knew this trail well, although it was cunningly hidden and disguised by a series of dead ends, deadfalls, switchbacks, and false turnings They caaped, but Two Fingers led the and down over the rocky slope, until with his spear he swept aside the heavily weighted branches of a flowering cleh for an adult Two Fingers got down on hands and knees and cla that the others should go first After cos to wait, Alain followed the old ained so in his hand

Adica crawled after them The rock closed over her head, and, very quickly, darkness blinded her It was slow going because of her hesitancy, but she heard the moveeneral the going was fairly sht, and suddenly she heard whistling and : narrow shafts thrust skyward, a pipe for the wind The tunnel dipped, hit an incline, and at the base opened out By noas pitch-black She groped, found Alain’s body, and held on to hiht had never bothered her, nor her visits into the tomb of the ancient queens under the tumulus, but this place, narrow and clah the earth itself had consciousness

"Coers, as Laoina translated "Hold one onto the next, and follow me There is a trap we must work around"

"You don’t think they’ve laid in others since the attack?" asked Laoina

"It may be But I have certain charms upon me that arn me"

So it proved Three times he stopped theed, and they were allowed to pass through a bottleneck so narrow that she had to squeeze sideways to get through A hand brushed her head, checking for the telltale topknot worn by the Cursed Ones, and let her by without further ood place for an ambush She was blind as a mole; she could not even see her own hands in front of her face How the others ine, and yet wasn’t all their work as the Hallowed Ones, learning the secrets of the great weaving, itself like groping forward in darkness?

None aic They could call fire from stone and earth from water; they could cause wind to arise from flame and water to leach out of the air They knew the power of transfor places a the ordinary places of the Earth For this power they paid a price, and they paid it not just with their own blood but with the blood of their enemies