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“You heard him!” the minemaster barked at the guards on the platform. “Untie them all!”
“What do you think Thrailkull wants with her?” Kah whispered.
I shook my head. I had no idea.
The girl’s tangled black hair fell across her tear-stained cheeks as they dragged her over to Commander Bloodbain.
“Kah, look …” I said under my breath. The girl’s sleeve was torn, and on her forearm was a tattoo. A tattoo of black feathers. We’d seen that marking before.
“Blazenhell,” Kah murmured in disbelief, surprising me. He almost never cursed. Too “human,” he claimed.
Commander Bloodbain ordered the towerguards to take the girl off the platform. She didn’t look at me as she passed, the fragile trust between us permanently severed.
As they dragged her toward the exit, the prisoners’ heads swiveled as if they were watching the first worker ever to leave the mine alive. Some were clearly envious of the girl’s good fortune, while others harbored looks of pity, certain she would meet a far worse fate with the Rathalans’ leader.
“You,” the minemaster barked at me. No doubt he’d noticed my hesitation with the whip earlier and was about to find another way to test my loyalty. Or punish me. Or both.
Before he could, though, Commander Bloodbain leaned close to the minemaster to speak to him privately.
I took the opportunity to get out of sight. I descended the platform and stepped into the throng of workers below. They shirked away from me as I passed, creating a clear path toward the stairs leading to the surface.
While everyone’s eyes were fixed on the platform, I bolted up the stairs.
Behind me, the minemaster’s voice echoed in the deep.“Get back to work!”
“I know what you’re thinking,”Kah said. “You think she’s a Zavien.”
“Maybe,” I admitted. I was taking the steps two at a time, desperate to leave the nightmares of the mine far behind me. I must have already climbed a thousand steps, and we still hadn’t reached the tower. Sweat was trickling down my back. Next time, I was going to be the one who got to ride around in the blazen magical necklace.
“I’m guessing reminding you that the Zavien tribe is a myth isn’t going to change your mind?”
“Tell me it’s a coincidence that her tattoo is identical to the illustration in the book,” I said.
“It could be a coincidence,” he said flatly.
I exhaled, stopping briefly to pull out the page I’d torn from the book in the archives. We studied the illustration of the Zavien marking. “She had this marking, Kah. We both saw it.”
“Except her marking had four feathers, not three,” Kah pointed out.
I’d noticed that. This illustration was of three black feathers. The girl had four distinct feathers. Was that important? Otherwise, it was an exact match.
“She has to be the clue we’ve been looking for in Malengard. The reason the Magi seer sent us here. But what’s the connection between the Zavien tribe and the stone?”
“This is all assuming the Zavien tribe actually exists.Andthat the girl in the mine is from the Zavien tribe.Andthat she has some connection to the stone. That’s a lot of assumptions.”
“But if she’s not important, what does Thrailkull want with her? And why did someone rip out that page from the book?”
Kah’s silence told me I was winning him over to my side.
After quickly glancing at the drawing of the strange key again, I folded the page and stuffed it back in my shirt before continuing the arduous climb to the surface.
“I have a feeling we’re about to pay Thrailkull a visit,” Kah said, clearly not liking the idea.
“You guessed it.” If that’s where Bloodbain was taking the girl, that’s where we were headed.
7
Raven
