Analla Faestar's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

Analla knelt at the low stone and lifted the mushroom higher. Its light fell on the altar and on the tunnel behind her, where old symbols ran down both walls. The hound sat still at her side. She reached toward the altar to touch it. A voice came out of the dark ahead. "Nalla?" it asked. Analla stood fast. The hound rose with her. She saw no one. The voice came from beyond the altar, from a deeper shadow the mushroom could not reach. "Analla," she answered. She kept her voice steady, though her heart beat hard. "A Nalla. Yes, another Nalla." The voice was dry and slow, like wind over old bone. "I have seen a long line of you over the ages. Each one comes with a hound. Each one comes to ask." Analla gripped the mushroom tight. "Who are you?" "I keep this place," the voice said. "I keep what your line has left here. You are not the first princess to walk this tunnel. You will not be the last." The words struck her cold. She had thought this shrine was hers to find. Instead her own blood had come here before her, seeker after seeker, hound after hound. She was one link in a chain she had never known. The hound stepped forward. It did not snarl. It bowed its scarred head toward the dark, as if it knew the voice. "Your hound remembers me," the voice said. "It has worn a collar before. It knows the cost of bonds made wrong. Ask your question, Nalla. That is why the beast dug open my wall." Analla swallowed. She had come to lead her people. She had found her familiar. She had thought the finding was the whole task. "Am I truly bonded?" she asked. "Is this hound mine to lead beside?" The dark was quiet a long moment. Then the voice spoke. "The bond is real," it said. "But a bond is not a throne. Every Nalla before you found her hound and thought the road was done. It was not. To lead your people you must bring the hound home to the isles and pass the trial your line forgot. None of them did it. Their hounds died in this world, far from the sea." Analla went still. "What trial?" "That, I do not keep," the voice said. "I keep only the warning. Go south. Cross the water. Ask the shrine that stands where the sun reaches. The answer waits at home, not here." The shadow gave nothing more. Analla waited, but no further words came. The hound turned and started back up the tunnel. She followed it, her hand on its shoulder. She had come seeking a familiar and found one. Now she knew that was only the first step. To rule, she had to go home and face a trial no princess before her had survived. She climbed toward the den with a new road set before her.