The little place was less a village and more of a camp, so it did not take long to get to Malach’s hut, which was near the large common flame of the once high bonfire. Other than its nearness to the flames, it was identical to all the others in every way but one. As Archos looked it over, he saw that it was decorated with various familiar stones pressed into the dried mud. “What are these?” He asked her curiously, pointing to the stones with a single talon.

Ayente looked at where he pointed. “Kos madil” She answered. At his cockeyed look she clarified, “Prophecy stones. Each shows a successful prophecy, this one is mine...” She hovered her finger over a small stone Archos recognized as a diamond. “It is the one that foretold I would destroy the tribe if I did not redeem myself.” She kept her voice calm, but Archos saw the way her finger trembled as she got the words out.

“This one was Keesa’s.” Ayente moved her finger over a sapphire. “It was foretold that if she redeemed herself to Malach when she came of age, she would be happy. When we were small, she smiled very little, after she bore Malach’s daughter, well she smiles much now. Or she did, before my defiance of Malach saw her husband to his end.” She lowered her hand quickly as if the stone were a serpent poised to bite her, she blinked a great deal as she pointed to a ruby. “This prophesied a great fire in the summer, because of it we stayed close to water, and avoided the danger when the fire caught. Malach has heard the gods more than any other that our Knowers have ever spoken of. As I look at this now… I can only think… I was such a fool.”

Ayente looked over her shoulder at Archos as if she could not bear to look at the stones that reflected the nearby torchlight. “My chief, our chief, took special interest in me when I was small, he taught me how to fight, and when my mother would send me away from her side, he let me sit with him and listen when his son would not. When my path to redemption or tribal destruction was foretold... I was still below my heart’s age for womanhood, but some... some so feared it that it was proposed that if I refused, then for the good of the tribe I should be forced, or if necessary, slain as a sacrifice. But he refused to hear it.”

Archos’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Tell me more of these prophecies.” He commanded as he would have one of his warriors.

Ayente’s eyes widened at the order, but she did not argue, instead she pointed to a ruby. “He foretold a good hunt if we prayed to the gods from in the trees and in silence, he said we would be closer to the gods and they would hear us better, so we went to the spot where he said to be at night, a small water place, and we prayed all night in silence from high in the branches. The gods answered, we never took so many deer.” She pointed to another ruby, “I put this one into place, he foretold that we would lose a fight over a water crossing. We did.”

“Why did you fight if you thought you would lose?” Archos asked curiously, “Even your chief seems to rarely defy these ‘prophecies’.”

Ayente’s body got goosebumps, Archos noticed the small hairs seemed to stand on end, and though she spoke clearly, there was a catch in her voice for almost every word, causing her to speak very slowly. “We did not know he had been given that prophecy until after we lost, one of the ‘potentials’ revealed it to us. I put this one into place on his hut that very day on my mother’s order. It was the same day he prophesied what would happen to us because of me. I was still a child that day, but though it was summer, I have never felt so cold.”

She took a few steps from where she was, so that she was standing in front of him, and placed her hand flat on his body. She looked up, craning her neck, “Can this shamed one ask your indulgence, that you wait outside. The voice of the gods is waiting for me, I promise, I will not keep you long.”

Archos growled unhappily, a different woman stood before him now than the one who selflessly begged him to help her people while she lay blinded and battered, different than the one who rushed him with a pathetic wooden stick and got between him and her comrade. “Do you not revile Malach?” Archos asked rhetorically.

“His very eyes make me feel dirtied!” She hissed between clenched teeth, “Yet as I look there,” She spun her entire body on her heel so that she was now faced to the side and she pointed at the many precious stones embedded into the dried mud, “I see the proof of his powerful connection to the gods. I do not know why they chose him for his fate, and me for mine, when I die and stand before them, then I will ask... but until then, what else can I do?!” Her final words were almost a wail or a whimper, but she held her eyes up to him as if he were one of the gods of which she spoke, longing for answers she did not have.

“Gods. What curious beings they must be.” Archos thought aloud as he scratched under his chin, he felt his suspicions about Malach harden like mud into brick. “You seem to think they revile you and those like you.” He said calmly as he looked over the stones in the mud wall.

Ayente nodded, “I am a punishment to my mother, of course the gods care nothing for the likes of me or those like me.”

“Yet if your gods create all life, did they not also create you, if they dislike their creation, how can you be at fault?” Archos pointed to the hut, the firelight clearly illuminated a crack. “Your people built this hut, does it then make sense to say to the hut, ‘Oh you terrible hut, how can you be so flawed, your cracks are vile in my eyes and so I despise you!’ to me, that seems madness. If they made you, they are to blame for any part of you they dislike. If how you exist displeases them, they should stop making more of you.”

Ayente managed a pathetic laugh at the way he pretended to speak to the hut, but lowered her gaze and shook her head, “If you were one of our gods, perhaps I would be happier, yet they are as they are.”

“Perhaps they are as they are, and if that is true, then I am as I am, and this is what I do.” Archos answered and he shoved aside the long dark fur that covered the entrance and ducked his head into the place. “Malach, awaken, I have come for information.”

Ayente gasped with shock at his blasphemy, but she had no opportunity to object. She could only hurry to the common flame and touch a scrap of wood to it, then rush after him into the hut.

Archos expected that Malach would be asleep, that he wanted the female to go and wake him up if she were giving herself over, as if it were some quiet rendezvous from an eager supplicant. Or so he wouldn’t waste a good night’s rest if she didn’t appear. Archos was not wrong. Malach awoke groggily, sat up, and began to rub the sleep from his eyes..

Ayente’s blond hair bounced behind her as she entered in a rush, but as soon as the light hit the voice of the gods, she turned away. Malach was naked, and had fallen asleep atop the skin of a doe. The dim torchlight clearly illuminated his body.

Archos raised a scaled brow and looked over his shoulder at Ayente, he pointed down at the now angry, and not a little fearful looking, Malach. “Are they supposed to look like that?”

Ayente could not suppress her laughter. Malach might not have understood what Archos had said just then, but between his pointing and her laughter, he worked out enough to turn red with anger as he threw on the rough and unrefined skins that passed for clothing among his people.

When her laughter stilled and she finished wiping away the resulting tears, Ayente caught her breath and straightened up, “Malach, he wishes to know more of the Cave Children. You withheld your knowing from me, but I do not think he will take no for an answer.” She jerked her thumb towards the dragon next to her.

Archos took the hint and lowered his face to within a few inches from Malach’s own. “Lopba a’ya.” [Speak to me.] Archos said, using their own language for emphasis, putting a very low, very angry growl behind his words.

Malach, to his credit, tried to look angry and disguise his fears, but the shaking of his body was made evident even in the dim firelight, and he finally seemed to collapse in upon himself. He sat cross legged and looked down with slumped shoulders.

“The Cave children are those who rule the mountains, that much Ayente could tell you, they total many manies of families perhaps less so now, and use mostly war clubs, they have little love for the spear.” Malach explained, speaking slowly so that Ayente could translate his words, he did not look at the dragon that was staring a hole through his heart.

“Why not?” Archos asked, he ‘did’ look only at the one to whom he was speaking, as Ayente served as his tongue for the time being.

“Because spears are little use in caves, too long, clubs are short, easy to use, and a man with a crushed skull fights less hard than a man with a spear through his belly.” Malach said gruffly, looking less than pleased as he grumbled out the words and kept his eyes anywhere but on the scaled face in front of him.

“I still do not see a problem.” Archos said bluntly. “What makes them so special?”

Ayente wrung her hands anxiously, “It was my fault.” She whispered out.

“Explain.” Archos demanded patiently, turning his gaze away from the one he disliked, to the one he did like.

“Every year the Cave Children are more, they take the good fish, they drive us and others away from the good waters where their young drink and do not die, when we come, they emerge from their caves and drive our little bands away, by coming all together. We were no match, so I convinced our chief that we should also send out many manies, I had hoped we might talk, not have to fight, or win, if we had to... but they knew of our coming, the gods spoke to them I guess, to punish me... punish me.” She bit her lip and stared down at the dirt.

“They hid, and attacked us from two places, I thought our many spears would do better than their many clubs, but I was wrong. Perhaps I would not have been, had I not defied the will of the gods and submitted myself to their will.” Ayente finished speaking, it did not take a masterful linguist to know she was explaining herself, and blaming herself. But too, such was the smugness and the sneer on Malach’s face at her unhappiness, that understanding of his attitude was not lost on Archos when he glimpsed it out of the corner of his eye forming on the shaman’s face.

“How big are the caves, can I fit?” Archos asked reasonably.

Ayente looked him over and scrunched her eyelids down as she thought it over. “I do not know if you can fit in all of it, however you can fit through much.”

“I understand, can humans see well in the dark, or do you have magic for it?” Archos asked hopefully.

Ayente shook her head, “We must use fire, were this bit of flame to go out, I should be as blind as I was when you met me. We have also seen no magic of the sort you say.” Her eyes widened in awe, “You have such magic?!”

“For but a few, however that may be enough. Tomorrow we go, with what few volunteers you can gather, for now, rest.” Archos said and flashed his teeth, exposing his predatory nature, his tail twitched with bloodlust.

“As you say, Archos. I... will rest when I can. I have something to do here.” Ayente said humbly as she looked back down at the ground.

For a moment Archos was unsure of what she meant, until he caught the lecherous look of the shaman. “No, you do not. You are under oath to me and will not be beyond my reach.”

Malach snapped a glare to Archos, a glare that vanished immediately as the narrowed eyes honed in on him from above. “Ayente, return with me.” Archos said succinctly.

“As you say.” She whispered humbly, and followed him with downcast eyes that he would have deemed impossible when he met her at the lake.

They returned to his oversized hut, and he held the fur covering the entrance open. When Ayente passed through it behind him, he dropped the cover and let it close.

Alone in the dark, Ayente sat in a corner of his hut with her knees pressed up to her heaving chest. “Do your people sleep?” She asked stiffly.

Archos chuckled a little at the question, “We do, though not as often and in truth I am accustomed to rather different conditions, but it has been a... trying series of events, therefore I will make the attempt.”

“I will as well then but... may I ask something?” Ayente inquired as she ground the already failing fire of her small torch upside down against the earthen floor, extinguishing it utterly and plunging them into pitch darkness.

She was glad of the dark, even if she knew he could see her, the illusion of the privacy of the shadows was a comfort.

She wrapped her arms tight around her legs as she sat in the corner and cast the now useless stick away. “Ask.” Archos said patiently as he laid himself down on his stomach.

“Why did you stop me... back there, with Malach?” She whispered, “You have heard the power of the gods, how they speak through him, you know my disobedience nearly destroyed us already, I have refused too much, but seeing the many prophecy stones, I remember now, I am ‘supposed’ to do this. So why? Why did you interfere? What do you know, that you invoke my oath to draw me away with you?”

Weariness began to hit Archos like a mountain, his enormous maw opened in a yawn, but he managed to answer, “I do not know of any gods, but I know when someone pursues his own interests over those of others. The things you say Malach has done, I have my doubts that there are gods behind it at all, I find it dubious that the will of the gods align with the will of what I assume was his cock as often as you suggest.”

Her eyes went huge as he blasphemed the voice of the gods, she could not say the words she wanted to, and he filled the gap more words of his own, “When I met you at the lake, I saw a selfless being who though wounded and in pain, blind with agony, still had it in her to call upon another to aid her people first. I saw your courage when you jumped between myself and your comrade, ignorant that it was I who helped you. Such brightness and fire, such ferocity in battle as I saw from you, is admirable. I respect it. But...” He hesitated to say more, he could see the way she was staring at him. ‘Should I say more? Or not?’ He wondered.

She answered that when she said, “Please... tell me.” In a still, small voice.

“But when I see you here, calling yourself a shamed one, disgraced and disliked even by your kin, looking down at the ground as if afraid to see the future that lies ahead, kowtowing to someone who in my eyes is nothing but a manipulative insect, who claims the power to redeem you from a sin that was never yours in the first place... I question the worth of abiding by the supposed will of these supposed gods! If they do not respect your virtues, if the shaman who calls himself the voice of the gods considers you a disgraced and shamed one, not worthy of the tribe, when I saw the heroes light shine from you when you faced four to protect a single wounded one of your own, then what are they that I should care for their words?!” He exclaimed and snapped his jaw shut.

He could have said more, he wanted to say more. There were definitely more words to be said, but as he cut himself off with a vigorous exclamation, he pounded the club end of his tail hard on the ground instead, shaking the hut around them. That said the rest, for him.

“What means this ‘heroes light’?” Ayente asked uncomfortably.

Archos stretched out slowly, then replied in a voice of awe, “It is what our people call the truest state of the warrior, where all vice is burned away in the fires of necessity, and only the greatest virtues remain. Where courage, will, and fearlessness reside. It comes on those who have resolved to give up their lives for the sake of their comrades. In those moments, pain is no obstacle. No one who is capable of such a state can be called a ‘shamed one’. He snarled out the last two words with distaste.

“I have seen worthless before, fearful dragons who did not do their duty, who fled from battle against even one of their own… they betrayed great lineages by their own display of weakness, yet a small, hairless, scaleless, weak little you thrust yourself against ‘me’ with nothing but a pointy stick? No, you are NOT a ‘shamed one’, I refuse to believe any sin was passed to you and I will not see you diminished by putting yourself into the power of... that thing you call the voice of the gods. You have a better and more noble end than that ahead.” He said emphatically and then yawned long and loud. “Now if you please, I wish to rest.” He whispered roughly.

Then the weight of exhaustion hit him as the span of silence stretched, his eyes began to close and he could not see, nor hear as sleep took him, the way she wept in the darkness at what he said. She slowly stood up and approached him, her little hand caressed the long face and the many small, smooth scales that made up what passed for lips, she looked down, she could barely see even a little of him here, just what the moonlight through the crack between the fur and the wall at the entrance allowed. She knelt in front of him, and kissed him on what she would consider a ‘cheek’ and curled up beside him. “Yes, when you consume me, I will truly have had a glorious future first, to rest within you, will be an easy end. It is a wonder that you could be so kind to one who is merely to be your food but... I am glad that it is so.” She whispered to the sleeping being, and then drifted off to sleep herself.