Deepwater's Daughter

Chapter 23

"Is Casca all right?" Ysara asked, lifting her voice above the cold breeze as she soared over the forest, tucked in the silver naga's warm embrace. The purple light of dusk splashed across the treetops, leaving the ground beneath shrouded in darkness.

"I don't know," Xsatca said, "The Crooked Tooth said that the horned ones had hurt him and taken you. They demanded that I hand over your friend for questioning... and then everything happened too fast."

"Rasha attacked them?" Ysara said, already knowing the answer.

Xsatca gave an affirmative murmur, and then, a moment later, she mused, "She could have done the same to me at any time. Why didn't she?"

"Maybe because she knew that I liked you?" Ysara answered hopefully.

Xsatca made an unconvinced noise.

Ysara didn't really believe it either. More likely, Rasha hadn't yet worked out a way to escape the treehouse by herself.

"The horned ones must answer for what they did to Casca," Xsatca growled.

"Oh," Ysara said, remembering the way that the big naga had tumbled out of the sky when they shot him.

"But Rasha was my guest," Xsatca seethed, "and the Crooked Tooth had no right to come into my home and take her."

"What are they going to do to her?" Ysara dared to ask at last.

"They are going to hurt her," Xsatca said, her voice grim, "and then they will kill her... Those they take into the Fang do not return."

"Is that the Fang?" Ysara asked, lifting her chin toward the crooked spire of bone-colored rock that rose from the jungle ahead. The last ray of sunset bathed the spire's tip in red, giving the peak an even more sinister appearance.

"Say nothing when we arrive, child," Xsatca warned her, "My name protects you, but even our names may die in that foul place!"

"All right," Ysara sighed, her stomach sour with fear.

"Stay close," Xsatca commanded her as she spread her wings in descent, "and say nothing!"

"Yes, mother!" Ysara quipped.

Xsatca's arms squeezed suddenly tighter around Ysara's chest, and the big naga laughed, though her voice sounded thick with other emotions.

As they settled to a landing on the ledge before the Fang, Ysara lifted her medicine staff, which she had carried, wrapped in the coils of her tail, and took it in a two-handed grip. The stone beneath her tail tingled with ancient power, something she had experienced only a few times before.

This magic, however, seemed filled with a brooding malevolence. Ysara whispered a prayer to the River Spirit as she followed Xsatca into a hollow between the twisted trees that grew around the base of the Fang.

Warm, rotten air washed over them as they passed into the honeycombed tunnels beneath the rock. A faint, acidic tang stung Ysara's nose, like the taste of bile, and now the scent of incense, almost masking the fouler odors beneath. The darkness ahead yawned like a hungry maw.

Xsatca paused for a moment, placing her fingers over her heart. She drew in a slow breath, and, as she did, power seemed to flow up from the ground below, shimmering as an argent glow, covering her scales from tail to head.

Ysara stared, wide-eyed, at the beautiful radiance that now drove back the darkness.

Xsatca tucked her wings in tight as they followed the curve of the tunnel down into the rock. She ignored several side passages, as though she somehow knew the way.