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Parhron. He’d never seen such a look on a Vaemyn before. The savages traditionally wore their pale hair long and tightly braided for combat. He wondered if maybe these were renegades, not warriors. It’d explain their trespassing so far north, though it wouldn’t make them any less dangerous than conventional warriors.
    The rest of the squad poured in from the forest behind him. Their armor was camouflaged just as this first one’s was, though these warriors all wore their tresses in the traditional Vaemysh braids, some boasting one solid braid snaking down their backs and others with a mess of finer braids sprouting irregularly from their heads like unmanaged brambles. None wasted any time freeing their arrows. Beam pulled back behind the tree as a round of death thudded the wood behind him.
    Not inclined to wait for further discussion, he grabbed up his weapons and began limping into the forest. Yet, in spite of his pain, in spite of the stiffness of his heavy, wet leathers, he simply couldn’t resist his roguish impulses. Pausing at the edge of the trees, he turned and flashed them a gesture that transcended their language barriers.
    An instant later, he was gimping his way into the forest, cursing the Vaemyn and laughing for his life as the sharp cracks of arrows worried the trees behind him.
     

 
     
     
     
     
    III
     
    THE CAVE
     
     
     
B
    EAM SAT ON A TALL, FLAT-TOPPED BOULDER AND WATCHED THE CAMPFIRE SLOWLY DIE.
    The last fingers of flame struggled stubbornly atop a glowing pot of embers, but they didn’t seem long for this world. Yet, even with so small a fire, the cave was glowing as brilliantly as a cathedral full of candles.
    A dense, hoary skin of clear, jagged crystals adorned the inside surface of the cave. These shards completely covered the walls and ceiling, the smallest being the size of his fingers and the largest as big as his leg. The faceted surface threw out an array of light that sparkled and danced across the gravel floor around his fire. These crystals received the weak light of his flames and reflected it back down on him a dozen times brighter than they’d found it. It lent the impression that the walls were glowing from the outside in, like stained glass viewed against the sunlight.
    A light wind kicked up from the gaping mouth of the cave. The breeze sifted through the crystals, whispering as nervously as old memories.
    He was lucky to have found this shelter in the mountain, though it was a bittersweet gift. Most men would find the room’s presence inspirational, its ambience peaceful, maybe even restorative, but he’d never been most men. He loathed caves, crystal or otherwise. His dread of confined spaces had been a curse on him since his earliest memories. In his youth back in the priory, he often slept out under the eaves of the courtyard rather than suffer in the warm comfort of a bed imprisoned within a windowless room.
    Fortunately, tonight his fear of exposure outranked even his confinement dread, and so he surrendered to the unsavory option of sleeping inside this rocky space, a disagreeable exchange of comfort for safety. He’d taken a slug of his dwindling elixir before entering the cave, and then he spent an unhappy half-hour performing the vomiting ritual the medicine invariably induced. Only once the nostrum instilled its calm could he enter and build a respectable fire. Unfortunately, the vomiting only doubled the pain gripping his chest, so while now safely sheltered, he was nothing like at peace.
    He was thankful the river hadn’t thieved the medicine during his ride from the falls. The elixir enabled him to search through the ancient Vaemysh tombs scattered throughout the dusty hills of the southern scrubs. The elixir allowed him to prowl through the tombs by night and hide in them by day. The elixir bought him the strength to find victory in his quest.
    Still, elixir or not, he wasn’t about to venture any deeper into the cave than necessary. He wanted the