The Wild Road by Jennifer Roberson Page B

place.”
    Davyn expelled a rush of breath and words upon it and closed one hand around his string of charms. “Oh, thank the Mother! Oh Mother, bless you!” He reached toward Rhuan, then recalled how Brodhi had reacted. He let his hand fall back to his side. “Please,” he said. “Are they all right? Are they—whole?”
    â€œThey are safe. When last I saw them, they were safe.”
    Davyn’s belly felt tied in knots. “But—you couldn’t bring them out? “
    â€œI could not.”
    He attempted to keep his tone casual, not accusatory, but failed. “ You came out. You and the courier both. If you could do so, why not my family?”
    Mikal frowned, looking at Rhuan. “What’s he talking about? Where were you? Where are his folk?”
    â€œIn Alisanos,” Davyn declared.
    â€œBut—” Mikal’s frown remained, “You and Brodhi came out. You told us that.”
    Something flickered briefly in Rhuan’s eyes. His face was still, composed of angles and hollows. “Alisanos occasionally gives up what it has swallowed.”
    â€œAnd they’re no longer human!” Davyn cried.
    The ale-keep scrutinized Rhuan. “But you’re not human anyway. Is that why you escaped?”
    Before Rhuan could answer, a wave of fear and desperation rose in Davyn’s breast. “Why didn’t you bring them out with you?” He drew in a tight breath and tried to reknit the fraying shreds of his dignity. “Put yourself in my place. If you saw them, if they are well—” He broke off and lifted his arms then let them fall slack. He felt very much like crying. “Put yourself in my place.”
    Compassion softened the guide’s expression and tone. “I’m sorry. It was not possible to bring them out.”
    â€œI don’t understand.” Davyn’s mouth felt numb. “How could you leave them there?”
    Rhuan glanced briefly at Mikal, then nodded as if to himself. To Davyn he said, “Is your wagon whole?”
    â€œYes, but—”
    â€œThen let us go there.” Rhuan handed the tent pole to the ale-keep. “There is much to tell you, to explain. Let us do it in private.”
    Davyn thrust out an arm in the direction of the old grove. “There.”

Chapter 4
    S TRIATED, RUDDY CLIFFS rose up from the earth, loomed as concave palisades over the Kiba. Audrun shaded her eyes against the double suns and squinted upward through the spreading limbs of a wide-canopied tree where she and her children had been summarily escorted.
    The massive cliff face was infiltrated by a seemingly haphazard assembly of natural caves as well as hollows chiseled by hand into clean, precise lines and angles. Dwellings were stacked side by side and one atop another, interconnected by a skein of staircases running up, down, and sideways, and wide, arched openings that formed passageways leading more deeply into the cliffs. She could not tell how deeply the caves reached into the cliffs, but all of them were fronted by walls formed of chunks of stacked flat red stone mortared together, mudbrick facades, and beamwork. Colored cloth fluttered in many of the square windows, while tall doorways were warded by shimmery scaled hide or loomed hangings.
    Audrun could not begin to count how many dwellings the cliffs hosted. The network of caves, dwellings, staircases, and passageways was vaster than anything she had seen, including the tent settlement where she and her family had joined Jorda’s karavan. Awed, she could not imagine how long it had taken to build the cliff dwellings, to refine the extant caves and make homes of them. Many years. Many hands. Many tools.
    â€œMam.” It was Torvic’s voice, and plaintive. “Are we just supposed to stay here?”
    Here was the stone bench beneath the tree; the sloping rock table immediately opposite the bench; a pathway of russet paving stone and