“Why have you kept it hidden from us?” Gonda asked.
“Because it’s none of your concern! It’s not a thing for ordinary eyes, especially not Standing Stone eyes. It’s ancient. Can’t you feel its Power?”
“I can,” Sindak said, and backed away. “It gives me a stomachache.”
A stray breath of wind stirred Koracoo’s hair, and she jumped as if at the touch of a hand. “Why would the dead girl have had an identical pendant?”
“It couldn’t have been identical,” Towa said. “It must have been a fake, a copy.”
Gonda shook his head. “I don’t think so. It was exactly like the one you’re wearing.”
Towa shook his head vehemently. “It can’t be.”
“Why?”
“Because the other belongs to the human False Face who will don a cape of white clouds and ride the winds of destruction across the face of the world. Obviously a dead girl can’t do that.” Towa stuffed the magnificent gorget back into his shirt. “It was a fake.”
Gonda’s gaze flitted to where his pack rested, as though he longed to go get it, but he didn’t.
Koracoo waited for a time longer, then said, “The end of the world will, I suspect, take care of itself. In the meantime, you suggested that the Hills warrior with the sandals might be following us. Why?”
Gonda’s brow furrowed. “He may just be tracking the children like we are, and so his path necessarily intersects ours.”
Koracoo said, “Towa? Sindak? Your thoughts?”
Towa scanned the darkness. “He is a Hills man, that’s certain, but—”
“Unless he stole the sandals.” Sindak folded his arms across his chest. “He could have taken them during an attack on a Hills village—which means he could be a Flint warrior, or Landing warrior, or anything else. Even a Standing Stone warrior.”
Koracoo gently smoothed her fingers over CorpseEye while she considered his words. The polished wood felt like silk. He was right. The sandals told them nothing certain about the man—if it was the same man. But … if he had followed them, there was a reason. Was he a spy for Atotarho? Keeping track of them? If so, the man would have been dispatched with several other warriors—runners he could send home to keep the chief informed of their progress, or lack thereof. If he was not one of Atotarho’s spies, Gonda could be correct that he was just a desperate family member trying to track down his own captured children, and his path happened to coincide with theirs. In that case, he might be an ally, at least in this pursuit.
It was the last possibility that made her hands clench tightly around CorpseEye. The sandaled man could be a scout sent out by Gannajero to monitor her back trail to see if she was being followed. If so, right now, he could be running ahead to tell the old witch about them.
“It’s getting late. Let’s all think about this, and we’ll discuss it more tomorrow. Gonda, I will wake you at midnight.”
He nodded.
Koracoo walked out into the starlight and took up her guard position beneath a towering oak tree. In the dark rain-scented gloom, three deer trotted by, their pale antlers swaying in the ashen gleam. She watched them until they caught her scent and disappeared into the trees like silent ghosts.
The three men beneath the ramada stretched out and pulled their capes around them for warmth. It took less than a few hundred heartbeats for Sindak to start snoring softly. Gonda, lying close beside him, seemed to be staring up at the ramada roof. Towa had his back turned to both of them.
After a time, Koracoo’s thoughts returned to the gorget.
If the pendants were not identical, they were very nearly so. The only way an artist could have accomplished such a feat was if he’d been holding Atotarho’s pendant in his hand when he’d carved the second one.
And that led her to some wild speculation. What if—
Movement caught her eye. She straightened suddenly. It resembled a black spider, far out in the darkness, silently floating between the trees, paralleling the trail that headed north. Now and then starlight reflected from its body, revealing long legs and perhaps flashing eyes.
It’s probably just another deer.
But tomorrow at dawn she would check for tracks to make certain. It kept her alert and watching every wind-touched limb that swayed … while she contemplated the possibility that the sandaled man had given the dead girl the pendant to take with her to the afterlife. Even if it was a superlative fake, it would have been a rare, precious gift. Why? Had she been a relative? Or was he trying to buy her goodwill? Perhaps to help him when he reached the bridge to the afterlife?