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.
*
Akar hesitated outside Kamela's lair, a stone-lipped hole cut into
the hillside. This far his progress had gone unchecked. His nose low
to the ground, he searched the fern-scattered earth and outlying bramble
for unfamiliar scents. He thought it unlikely that she would take
another mate, willingly at least, but if he were to have any real chance
of freeing her, he had to be certain. He found at first only the
day-old scent of an elder female, then traces of an altered musk that
turned the blood to poison in his veins.
Suppressing inner violence, he entered the dank and root-lined swell to
find her lying ruefully in the dirt, nursing her one remaining cub.
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