Then Mena understood. And she knew what to do. She dropped one shoulder and twisted her body around, throwing all her weight behind the other shoulder, which came up and around, lifting Aaden off the ground. She swung him in the crook of her arm, which she snapped taut at the exact moment to hurl him into the air. It was an awkward move, her force not entirely controlled. The boy somersaulted in the air. Only then did Mena see Elya.

She had landed at a run and was closing the last few strides with her head low to the ground. She moved with a frightening, reptilian rapidity, all sinewy snapping and writhing, her feather plumes erect and trembling, her mouth open in a rasping hiss. Her head stretched out, neck reached to receive the tumbling boy. He slid down her length and his torso smacked against her back, cradled between the nubs Mena used as a saddle. And then Elya leaped over Mena, wings snapping out and smashing down, shooting her and the prince up into the waiting sky.

C HAPTER

This place is eating itself," Skylene said. "That's what's wrong with the Auldek. They thought they had bargained for a blessing; instead they got an everlasting curse. They live on, bodies the same, souls more and more twisted. That's the curse of the soul catcher."

She poured water from a small stone pitcher into two beakers of the same marbled material. One she pushed across the table to Dariel, the other she held up for Tunnel, who shook his head. She sipped from it herself. "Think of it. On one hand you live on year after year. You die every now and then, only to rise again. Wonderful, yes?"

Dariel rolled the stone beaker between his palms, enjoying the smooth texture of it, the coolness against his skin. His wrists had been unbound only a few days before. He was still relearning mobility. A short length of chain still hobbled his legs and chafed his ankles, but he was making progress, earning their trust. That was what this sudden discourse was about, wasn't it? Something had changed. He could hear it in Skylene's voice and see a hint of something tickling the edges of Tunnel's bizarre features. He said, "I don't think that immortality is so great a gift, not if it keeps you forever separated from loved ones who have died before you."

"True. And what if you can never have children? You cannot see yourself in generations that will continue after you. For some, this doesn't matter; for others, it drives them crazy."

"Is that why they started to"-Dariel hesitated, glancing between the two of them, one looking like a bird woman, the other like some muscle-sculpted boar man-"make these changes to you?"

"That's not what I mean," Skylene said. "What they do to us, we call 'belonging.' They did it as a way to maintain a connection with the animal deities, so that they did not give them up entirely. It is painful at times, but pain passes. We grow used to the changes. Sometimes proud of them."

"How is it even possible?"

Skylene smiled. "Tattoos are tattoos. We do much of that ourselves. There were some chosen by the Auldek to make other changes to, but anything truly difficult was done by the Lothan Aklun. Tunnel's tusks. They are metal, but they are also part of him, fused right into the bones of his skull. The Lothan Aklun can-or could-do many strange things.

"No, what I referred to were greater corruptions. There have been two clans punished for unpardonable perversions. The first, the white-eyed snake clan, is called the Fumel. Their crime? Guess it."

Dariel stared at her, his face blank. He had no idea, and it seemed a waste of time to even try to guess.

"The Fumel broke the first restriction. They started to raise the humans as their own children. They pretended they were their own blood. Some among them tried to make their slaves look like Fumel! Imagine that. They had these slaves in Fumel guise subjugate the other slaves.

"When the other Auldek heard of it, they punished the Fumel, demanding that they turn over all the altered children to be exterminated. They would not. The other clans united to attack them, but the Fumel fought. By the time it was over too few of them were left, and upon those, the crimes done against the other clans were too great. The Fumel were wiped out. If you journey to the south to what used to be their lands you may someday see the Bleeding Road. It's where the Fumel corpses still adorn the stakes they were impaled upon. They once had a city built on a hill surrounded by a network of shallow canals. When the other clans were done there, the hill was a hole in the earth, filled with water. The Bleeding Road leads for miles across their lands and ends at that lake. It's symbolic, you see?"

I imagine so, Dariel thought. It sounded like the kind of punishment Tinhadin might have meted out.

"That was three hundred years ago. Since then, Auldek have not killed one another. There was another clan more recently that did another forbidden thing." She paused. She glanced at Tunnel, then at the silent scribe who sat listening.

"What did they do?" Dariel asked.

As if she needed the prompting, Skylene sighed and said, "They ate them. It may have been a madness that took hold of them. It may have been because they believed it was the easiest way to acquire their souls. It may have been, as some argue, that they believed by eating young flesh they would become fertile again. They may have done other things as well. We don't know all of it. We know that it was disgusting. The other Auldek took all this clan's slaves and put them to death."

"The slaves?"

"There is no prohibition on killing the People, just on eating them or adopting them. This time, the Auldek didn't kill the clan as well. After the Fumel, they vowed they would not do that again. Their lives-even if they were tainted by crimes-were too valuable to waste now that there were so few Auldek left. Instead, the clan was banished. Sent from Ushen Brae and cursed never to return."

"The Numrek," Dariel whispered.

"Exactly right," Skylene said. "Your traveling companions. The other Auldek killed the souls within them, so that they had but their one mortal life, and then drove them into the north. During that time they were not heard from. Exile meant death in all likelihood, but not as a certainty. That distinction was enough for the Auldek to accept it as just punishment."

"The Numrek ate people in the Known World, too," he said. "Mostly when they had just arrived, but at other times as well. Corinn forbade it when she took them into her service. I've not heard that they ate human flesh since then."

"They would not," Skylene said, "not if they had their sights set on returning to Ushen Brae."

Dariel's head swam with questions. "What does it mean… that they've come back? It's all with a purpose?"

"A purpose, yes." Skylene hooked her foot around a stool and pulled it out from under the table. She sat and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. Not for the first time, Dariel noticed how slimly athletic she was, feminine, but in a way that had a coiled physical danger to it. She said, "Think about what's happened. The Auldek didn't punish them when they returned. By their own decree, they should cut off Calrach's head and set it beside that leagueman's. They didn't. And they haven't banished them again. To put it plainly, they've been talking with them. Your friend Calrach returned with an offer. They have been discussing it ever since. They haven't been this excited for centuries."

"What offer?"

"That I don't have permission to tell you."

"You'll tell me half a thing?"

Skylene smiled. "When does anybody tell all of a thing? I've told you what I can."

Her words had finality, but her posture-leaning toward him, knees apart, face close to his-sent different signals. He wasn't sure how to read them.