CHAPTER 1
The songof Urkot’s hearts, of his soul, had always been found understone.
It was the clacking of tools against rock, the light scraping of legs over a cave floor, the airy whispers of the ground breathing, and the voices of his companions talking, boasting, and jesting, all layered and bolstered by faint echoes to enwrap him in a familiar cocoon.
He’d known this song from his earliest memories, and it ran through this cave just as surely as it ran through Takarahl, where he’d hatched and had spent most of his life. Long had it meant duty, purpose, family. Long had it provided comfort in its steadiness and dependability.
Urkot paused his tools and glanced around. This chamber was what delvers back in Takarahl called a crystal garden. Countless crystals in formations of varying sizes covered the walls, shedding a gentle blue light that made him recall old tunnels, old faces.
Five thornskulls stood spread out within the chamber, their burly forms stained new colors by the crystals’ glow. Like Urkot, they all had picks and chisels made of yatin horn, stone-headed hammers of different sizes, and bags filled with the silk-wrappedcrystals they’d gathered attached to loops on their broad leather belts. All five were working.
Zotahl and Tahlken, both a bit older than Urkot, were experienced delvers who’d been harvesting and expanding this cave for years. Both possessed calm, quiet confidence that Urkot appreciated.
The other three, Enikor, Jezahal, and Dostrahn, were relatively younger—younger than Urkot and his friends had been when they’d gone to claim glory in Zurvashi’s war all those years ago. The trio had no shortage of confidence, but their skills were as rough as unpolished stone. Their voices were loudest, most often accompanied by chitters.
Urkot turned his attention forward and resumed his work, carefully freeing a crystal from the surrounding rock. After wrapping it in a scrap of cloth, he placed it in the bag hanging from his belt, adding it to the others he’d harvested.
Normally, the thornskulls did not gather crystals in such large amounts, but these were for the upcoming festivities. Singer’s Promise was coming, the day when the vrix of Kaldarak would celebrate the end of the floods and thank the Rootsinger for the bountiful harvests to come in the season of warmth and sunshine. The delvers were enthusiastic about their part to play this year. Urkot was excited right alongside them.
He enjoyed their companionship, enjoyed talking and working with these thornskulls. The understone song they produced was the same as the one he’d always known. It didn’t matter that they were thornskulls instead of shadowstalkers, or that this place was several days’ travel from Takarahl.
But that song didn’t call to Urkot as it once had. It was the same, yes, but everything else had changed.
He had changed.
Urkot was sure of that, even if he couldn’t tell exactly how he was different.
“You give few words this day, Three-Arm,” said Zotahl from beside Urkot.
With a quiet chitter, Urkot glanced at the yellow thornskull, drawing his upper forearms together in an apologetic gesture. “Forgive me. I am…tangled in my thoughts.”
Zotahl clicked his mandible fangs. “Your thoughts give you trouble?”
Using delicate taps with his hammer, Urkot wedged the tip of his chisel behind another crystal, grasping the formation with his lower hand, before pausing. The answer wasyes, but was this the time, the place, to explore his hazy, confusing feelings?
“They are heavy,” Urkot finally said, tapping the chisel deeper behind the crystal. “But it is a weight I can bear.”
“Even the lightest burdens grow heavier with time,” said Tahlken from his place on the wall behind Urkot. “Carry it no longer than you must.”
“This is true beneath sun and sky,” Zotahl intoned.
Urkot’s gaze flicked upward. The cave’s ceiling was run through with fissures no wider than silk threads, with downward-pointed stone formations clustered around those cracks. “True beneath dirt and stone as well, I hope.”
The two thornskulls chittered and returned to their tasks.
Not very long ago, Urkot wouldn’t have believed friendship could be shaped between shadowstalkers and thornskulls, especially not after the bloody war they’d waged against each other. The scars inflicted upon the survivors’ spirits were so deep that nothing could have healed them. Thornskulls were enemies, forever enemies—that was what the vrix of Takarahl had long been taught. That was what Queen Zurvashi had told them.
She had lied.
And now Kaldarak, home of the enemies he’d once fought so fervently, was Urkot’s home too.
Truly,everythinghad changed.
The crystal in his grasp came loose. He folded silk around it and added it to his bag.
A glint on the cave floor drew his attention down. Tilting his head, he lowered himself and plucked up the tiny object, holding it closer to his eyes to examine it.
With flat planes that formed a rough, not-quite-even cube and no natural luminescence, this crystal was unique within this chamber. While the glowing crystals usually ended in jagged points, making them resemble fangs jutting from the jaws of a fearsome beast, this one was reminiscent of the humans’ odd, flat teeth.
