This time when we went to Beast Valley was near the end of Sea Season. After we said farewell to the Royal, we didn't know where we should go. We couldn't go back to Black Stag Vale, and some places would see us as outlaws. But we couldn't stay in Beast Valley either. We wanted to help the Starbrow find the other parts of the dragon's spirit.
Before we left we sacrificed some of our magic power to Shah'vashak to seal the bargain between us. Then we went out to see what we could do to prepare for the struggle that the dragon said was coming.
At the start of Earth Season we came to a village of people from the Ismeldr clan who were starting their planting. They welcomed us and we helped them. We witnessed their ceremony when they sacrificed a bull and annointed the seeds with its blood, and the village chieftain plowed the first row. The three men with me helped the village men prepare the fields for planting, and I helped the women sow the seeds.
After the planting was done there was a feast. That night, Fire night, we stayed with them. Their hall was mostly empty, as many of their people were away. During the feast a cowherd came running into the village to report that they had been raided and the raiders took thirty head of cattle. The raiders had also killed some of the other herders. The raiders were from the Gray Dog clan and had with them a man named Danakos whose name we had heard before. He had reputation as a troublemaker. The villagers asked us to help recover the stolen cattle because they were short of people.
We went up to Starfire Ridge. We found another cowherd wounded. He told us that the other Gray Dogs had seemed surprised when Danakos killed the herders. Collan found the tracks of the cattle and we followed them.
The tracks led us into the badlands. The clouds above us were dark and seemed to hang lower in the sky than clouds usually do. We found a body lying on the ground, surrounded by dirt that had been stirred up by the passing of cattle. The body was one of the Gray Dogs, being eaten by crows. His throat had been cut. Someone had cut his purse too. He didn't have any weapon with him, only an eating knife. There was a dead campfire nearby. We didn't want to take the time to burn him or bury him, but we were afraid his spirit would come back so we piled rocks over him. After we left him Collan lost the tracks.
Jaryan saw something moving in the distance near some trees. He looked harder and said that it was a person with a walking stick and wild hair, who seemed to be trying to hide from us after they were noticed. He and Wurk went after the person. It wasn't hard to catch him. He was an old man who was blind in one eye. He said his name was Carthalo, and I remembered the one called Red Crow talking about him. He had been a shaman until he lost a fight with a powerful spirit. Now he lived as a scavenger, taking things from the burial mounds in the badlands and selling them.
Wurk used his words to calm Carthalo so he wouldn't fear us and would talk to us. He knew who we were. He had heard our names before. He told us we must take care to avoid the Stone Woman who haunted the badlands. He said she had cast a spell on the Gray Dogs. They had gone to the north, he said, not back toward their village of Talavaldas. They had left at night half a day ago. He thought they were probably going to a stone tower ruin that was probably a temple, on a hilltop. That was where the the Stone Woman was, he said. He was very frightened of her.
We left him in the morning after staying that night in his stone hut. The walls inside were all covered with runes and glyphs and he had herbs hanging overhead and various bits of broken pots and other things scattered about that he had found in the burial mounds. It was cold there at night but he gave us tea and he had good food.
The next morning the weather was worse. During the night there had been thunder. Now there was rain and we could hear rumbling from the hills and see flashes of lightning. After a while we came to a place where there were carved stones scattered about. Some of them looked like women with big breasts and no faces. They were broken long before. There was an old road made of stones that had also been broken and pushed aside. The trees around looked like spirits in the rain.
Wurk heard a sound, and then the rest of us heard the lowing of a frightened cow and then pounding hooves. A bull appeared between the trees. It was chased by six big lizards, as big as Jaryan's horse Skycourser. We knew we couldn't fight six of them so we turned away before they could notice us.
Collan and Jaryan noticed an odd smell. It was very quiet there, no sound of birds or animals. At the top of a hill we came to an area surrounded by a crumbling wall. In the center of the walled area was a round tower, also old and falling down. Jaryan said this was not a good defense as the walls were in too much disrepair. I knew that this place was very old, from the time of the First Men perhaps.
There was a ramp around the bottom of the broken tower. Wurk spied someone's head peeking over the top of the old wall. But we didn't hear any alarm being sounded. We decided to go through a place where the wall had fallen down. There were skulls on the ground everywhere, skulls of cattle and deer and other animals. Some of them were partly buried in the ground. Others were set into the walls of broken buildings. The shape of the place was strange, the buildings and streets not built like anything that we knew.
We caught a glimpse of the watcher Wurk had seen, but he looked like he had gone mad, his eyes wide with all the white showing. He just stared at us as though he didn't know what we were.
We made our way very carefully through the ruins, avoiding all the skulls and touching nothing. The cattle that had been stolen were all on the ramp outside the tower. But we ran into one guard who was not a wild-eyed staring madman. This one threw a javelin, and then Wurk hit him in the head with a slingstone and he fell over like a felled tree and gave up his spirit.
As Wurk started to lead the cattle off, aided by Ropps, we saw a terrible thing. One of the skulls rose up out of the ground. It had a body that looked like it was made of twigs and roots and bloody vines. This thing grabbed the man who had been staring at us and tore his head right off! Then it sank back into the ground.
We hurried the cattle away from that place as fast as we could. Perhaps someday I will go back and try to find the Stone Woman or smash all the skulls, but on that day I was glad to put that place behind me.
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