The two dark wolves, the guard of Shar-hai, stepped back in bloody triumph, howling their defiance to the skies. Yet slowly the stir of the kill was dispersed, and the birds in the willows sang untroubled.
***
Kalus had been awake for almost an hour. He had risen to find the wolf gone, but gave it little thought. Akar had his own life to live as well, and he had not failed to note his companion's dark mood the night before. He could not fully reason its source, but knew that it must be something fairly serious. For the wolves were stoic and infinitely survivable creatures, who rarely let emotion get the best of them. Returning from the smaller enclosure with the four poles and his sword, Kalus thought back to the day of his banishment, and realized for the first time that Akar's gesture of submission in the cave—-rolling over in the dirt—-had not been a plea for mercy. . .but an act of acceptance. An acceptance of death. He shook his head at the irony, though the word meant nothing to him. He had no regrets.
He sat down on a stone inside the entrance and worked quietly and steadily, peeling long strips of bark from the poles, to use along with the strands of rabbit fur, to bind them together into a frame. Sylviana stirred dreamily beneath the covers of her bed and he smiled, then rose to greet her. Her face was to him as a flower in the desert, or a piece of fruit hanging from the tree when one is very, very thirsty.
His steps were checked halfway by a familiar but unsettling sound: the hollow wail of human breath through a conch-shell.
'What was that?' asked the girl, stretching, now awake. The sound came again, faintly louder.
'I must leave here,' he answered. 'One of my people is in trouble. I will return as soon as I can.'
'Kalus, wait—-'
He took his sword from its sheath and left the cave and bounded down the slope toward the ravine, then up again and on to the flat lands beyond.
*