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The twins parted the bushes, stationing themselves up and downstream from Alain as he filled all four waterskins "How did you come to stumble upon us?" he asked

"The queen saw you in a vision She sent us The Cursed Ones have a fort here She feared they would capture you Then that would be the end You would have been sent to walk the spheres Skau!" He hissed the word,into the skin

"What does this led at the back of his mind, but he couldn’t place where he had heard it

"Hurry," said Agalleos "We one before dawn"

They waded back up the creek Alain smelled death before he saw it Luckily, the tumble of corpses wasdead under a sycaht them They had been only a few hundred paces behind Alain and Laoina when they had been struck down

Maklos whistled softly, like a bird, and pointed to the scar cut through the undergrohere Alain and Laoina had thrashed down froalleos scooped up s, and face with it They started up with Shevros in the lead

The twins clearly had experience clied hillsides; they swarmed up so fast that Alain, less sure of where to place his hands and feet, had finally to ask theher They rested at the abandoned nest and continued on, glancing over their shoulders toward the fort looe behind them They weren’t anxious, precisely, but they were as taut as strings pulled tight How keen sighted were the Cursed Ones’ sentries?

Shevros reached the cave rowls tre man, heaved hie practically bowled hiotten thealleos dropped down beside hi into the cave, wary of the hounds

"Are your spirit guides too heavy to groings?"

"They have no wings But we have rope"

Keeping well back fro the torch into every crevice and hole in the liht you here? On what manner of ship or beast did you travel?"

"I don’t know" Alain did his best to describe their journey, but gave up after Maklos, who had climbed down after, snorted loudly, and skeptically, when Alain told of the great marketplace where skrolin and alleos sternly Maklos had a cocky lift to his chin, the kind of youngwo hi Ones That’s made my brother’s son believe he knowsht he was smarter than the rest of us and became food for the crows!"

Sorrow padded over to Maklos, sniffing hiat the hilt of his sheathed sword

"Nay, itSorrow back "I have seen s hard to believe Have you seen the Bent People with your own eyes?"

"Not I" Agalleos shook his head "Nor any I know It sounds like a good tale told at the fireside to s beyond the understanding of simple men like you and I She is a woman, isn’t she? She is a orker, a crafter, I think you call it in the language of the Deer people She is the heir of Aradousa, as ht-eyed Akhini" He finished his examination of the cave’s depths, easily pluh these hills My grandfather called theet lost in therunted "An old alleos eyed hirandfather was a wise rinned at Alain "Lucky for us that you’re a Walking One, too ThatOne"

"How coe, then?"

"I only know the language of the Deer People, and that of my own country"