The bodies were the first thing Kellen noticed. The only time he’d seen a dead person was at a funeral, cared for and lying in repose inside a casket. This… this was a different matter entirely. Dead people were strewn in all different positions. Some lay face down with arrows in their backs, other crumpled on their side and some lying face up, mouths and eyes open as they stared forever up at the cloud-covered sky. A cold wind moaned through the abandoned camp, rustling hair, clothes and feathers, so that out of the corner of his eye, Kellen swore some of them were still moving.

“I don’t like this,” Vex whispered, pressing himself against Kellen’s boot. Kellen had no words. He picked up the little fox and gave him a comforting squeeze as much for his benefit as Vex’s.

The Gray Dawn warriors spread out among the corpses and the scattered remnants of campfires, searching for any signs to unravel the mystery. Ira scouted overhead, doing the same. Tracks ran in all directions, though the largest group had apparently continued in the mountains. From what the warriors could gather, a separate group had surprised the slavers at night, though some had clearly been killed by a Mana Beast. Nokom guessed it had been the black bird, which only confused the matter.

Kellen felt helpless. He’d checked for himself that Allison was not among the dead, the desire to know overpowering his aversion to the dead bodies. Relief that she wasn’t there fought with the every-present unknown. Had she escaped? Had she been taken into the mountains?

A shout rang out down the hill at the edge of an aspen grove. Kellen joined the others and found Totoso kneeling next to a woman. At first, Kellen thought she was dead — blood soaked her abdomen, surrounding an arrow jutting out of her just below the ribs. But she groaned as the others arrived and a twisted snarl crossed her face. The golden hue of her skin marked her as one from Kingdom of the Sun Hawk. She held a pair of knives, but the grip was weak and Kellen doubted she could stand even if she wanted to. The tension from the Gray Dawn warriors circled like a coming storm and only Tama held them back from cutting the woman to pieces.

“Talk, slaver, and we will make your passing quick,” the chief said. “What happened? Where are the rest?”

“Challenged Ubira,” the woman said between pants and gasps of pain. She moaned and dropped her knives, hands grasping at her blood-covered midriff. “The slaves ran. Others came from the mountains.”

“Who were they?” Nokom asked in a loud voice filled with urgency. “Did they take everyone else?”

The woman hissed in pain. “Don’t know. Some slaves escaped. I think. They caught others, took them and Ubira into the mountains… the Mother-cursed snake.”

“Why did you fight Ubira?” Tama asked.

They waited a long time, while the woman groaned again and squeezed her eyes shut, twisting on the ground. “Ahh! Make it stop!”

In a flash, Shani strode forward. Her knife flashed, opening the woman’s throat. Tama gave her a disapproving look but said nothing. Kellen stared, eyes wide, as the woman slumped over. He wanted to look away but found himself transfixed on the slaver’s last fading movements. The world spun, and he stumbled away and sat down hard behind the circle of warriors.

“Are you okay?” Vex asked from his spot in front of Kellen. His voice sounded far away, like an echo from the end of a tunnel.

Kellen tried to nod but had to close his eyes as the world titled.

“What now?” he heard Nokom ask Tama.

“Why is that a question?” Shani cut in before the chief could answer. “If Ubira is still alive, we must follow him into the mountains.”

“Some slaves escaped, this one said,” Nokom pointed out. “Perhaps Ira can seek them out. The mountain path will be dangerous. We cannot take the Storm Horses, so either we turn them loose or some will have to remain behind. That will weaken our strength even more.”

Kellen opened his eyes. The world was no longer spinning, though he still felt light-headed. The warriors stood in front of the slaver woman’s corpse, thankfully blocking his view. Tama had yet to answer. For the first time, Kellen sensed uncertainty in the Gray Dawn chief.

“There is little sunlight left,” Nokom said, filling the emptiness. “To attempt the mountain path in the dark would be too dangerous.”

“Why did we walk through the night if only to let Ubira escape again?” Shani said, voice raising to a shout. “If we wait here, we will lose all advantage we gained. It will have been for nothing.”

The others muttered in agreement. Everyone was weary and tempers ran thin. Instead of addressing her granddaughter, Nokom looked at Tama.

“You are the chief. You must decide.”

Kellen considered their options. Allison might have escaped. If so, following Ubira into the mountains would be pointless. On the other hand, Allison could be wandering around the plateau even now, and chances were she had little or nothing to eat. Only was thing was for certain: if Kellen made the wrong decision, he might never see his sister again.

And what if Tama’s decision was wrong? What if Kellen needed to go a different direction than Gray Dawn? How could he escape? Could he make it on his own? He needed more information. Betting Allison’s life on a fifty-fifty chance wouldn’t cut it.

“Ira, fly around and see if you can find any sign of the escaped slaves,” Tama said at last. “Try to speak with them. Tell them they may return here for food and fire. We will want until nightfall to decide the path we take.”

The coyote nodded, trotting away before unfurling his wings and flying away once more. By the looks of the others, no one loved the chief’s ruling. Especially Shani.

“And what if some escaped and some are still with Ubira?” she asked. “What will you do then? Will you split the band?”

Everyone looked at Tama. It was a fair question, if one without a simple answer. Kellen knew what Shani wanted to hear: hunt down Ubira at all costs. If he had to guess, Kellen bet the others were thinking the same thing he was: where were their loved ones? Would one of them be forced to leave someone behind after they’d come all this way?

“We will search for signs that may tell us more,” Tama said. “When Ira returns, we will decide a course of action.”

The gathering separated, some going off alone, others in groups of twos and threes until only Nokom remained behind.

“What do you think we should do?” Kellen asked her.

Nokom shrugged. “Tama must decide. There is no right or wrong answer. That is what makes it difficult.”

Kellen wanted to ask her what would happen if he left the band to find his sister. He thought better of it at the last moment and after a cautious head shake from Vex. For all the mentoring she’d given him, Kellen still felt like Nokom saw him as an asset to the tribe when it came down to it. Neither she nor Tama would let him abandon the group easily.

“I’m going to see if I can find any sign of my sister,” he said.

Nokom looked at him and he felt like she could sense his thoughts. Her worried expression did not change, giving Kellen nothing to read. At last, she nodded. “That is good.”

With no idea where to begin, Kellen returned to the fires. His first thought was to look for any boot prints. The heavy tread of Allison’s shoes should have stood out against the smooth moccasins, sandals and boots wore by the people of Oras. The area around the fires was a jumbled mess from the fight the night before and Gray Dawn’s scouring of the abandoned camp earlier in the day.

Vex, who’d changed into his bat form, fluttered back to Kellen. “Maybe we should split up? I can look from up here. We’ll cover more ground that way.”

Kellen nodded. “Let’s make circles around the camp.”

They spread out, heading in opposite directions a few yards past the outer perimeter of the camp. The Gray Dawn warriors were doing something similar, although they were much more spread out, following individual or small sets of tracks leading off in numerous directions. When Kellen came across these, he was careful to step over them, then followed alongside them for a short distance, each time hoping and praying for any sign of Allison’s boot prints. He found none.

The sun had dipped behind the mountains soon after they’d reached the camp. Now the shadows deepened into true night. The tracks on the ground were just hard enough to see that Kellen considered giving up the task when he and Vex met back up.

“Nothing?” Kellen asked. He already knew the answer. If Vex had found something, he would have told Kellen right away.

The fluffy fox-bat drifted side to side in the air. “Nothing.”

Disheartened, they returned to the center of the camp. Rather than search for clues, Obishi had undertaken the task of burying the dead slaves. He’d been laboring for hours, hauling rocks to build cairns over each body, since they had nothing to dig with. When Kellen and Vex approached, he set one last rock on the latest cairn and leaned backward to stretch.

“Why aren’t you looking for tracks like the rest of us?” Kellen asked. It was a noble thing to bury people he didn’t know, but if Kellen were Obishi and his mom was missing, he didn’t think he would have had the selflessness to lay complete strangers to rest.

“I do not know how to read tracks,” Obishi said. “Hopefully, the coyote Mana Beast will return with news of my mother. Until then, I needed to keep my hands busy.”

That seemed like a wise decision to Kellen. “Can I help?”

They followed Obishi down a well-worn trail leading into a boulder field where the Earth Badger boy had been gathering stones to build the cairns. Finding rocks small enough was a task by itself in the fading light, forcing Kellen to bend over. The smallest stones were those closest to the trail, which gave Kellen a chance to study the path as he search for one small enough to carry that could be dislodged from the ground.

The trail was well worn, but Kellen didn’t think it was from animal traffic. For one, animals of any kind usually only made trails on steep side hills or through narrow areas like trees. For another, the trail ended in kitchen table-sized rocks. Kellen doubted any animals other than rock chucks or badgers bothered to go into the rocks and they would never make a trail so clear. Kneeling down, he studied the footprints. Obishi had made dozens of trips back and forth, but there were enough tracks to suggest others had been this way. When he asked Obishi if he’d noticed anything on his first trip down the path, the boy nodded.

“There were several marks on the ground from people — too many to miss.”

“Vex, your eyes are better than mine in the dark,” Kellen said. “Do you see any footprints that might be Allison’s?”

Vex popped back into his fox form and scurried along the side of the trail, nose almost touching the ground. Kellen resisted the urge to follow him as the fox went up one side of the path all the way to the boulders and back down the other. When he reached Kellen, he shook his head. “There’s been too many people along here for me to tell.”

Their task forgotten, Kellen sat down on a rock to think. Obishi watched him like Watson, waiting on Sherlock to make some grand revelation. Unfortunately, Kellen didn’t have one.

“Why would so many people have passed this way?” Kellen wondered aloud. They’d found no bodies along the path to the boulder field, which meant the people had either turned around or continued into the rocks.

“Maybe they didn’t want to go into all those rocks?” Vex suggested.

“But it would have been a good place to hide,” Obishi pointed out.

“Then why didn’t they come out when they saw us?” Vex asked.

Kellen thought about this for a moment. “If there were slaves hiding in the rocks, they probably wouldn’t have trusted us unless a Storm Horse person was with them.”

Obishi’s eyes went wide. “You’re right!” He ran down the path and scrambled atop one of the largest nearby rocks. Cupping his hands in his mouth, he shouted “mother” over and over until his words echoed all around the boulder-strewn bowl.

“Allison!” Kellen yelled, joining in. “Allison!”

“Allison! Come out!” Vex too added his voice. “We’ve been looking for you forever!”

No one answered.

“It was worth a try,” Kellen said when Obishi rejoined him. The boy’s head hung low, matching the way Kellen felt inside. It would have been too good to be true. They each gathered a few more rocks in their arms and returned to finish the last cairn.

“Why were you shouting?” Nokom asked. When Kellen explained, she nodded in understanding. “At least we know. It wasn’t a bad idea.”

Before Kellen could say anything, Vex’s ears perked up and Nokom turned to the north. “Ira is coming back!” Vex said. In a pop, he shifted into his bat form and disappeared into the dark. A few minutes later, both Mana Beasts landed in the middle of the abandoned camp. When darkness fell, Tama had ordered a fire built. In the flickering light, Kellen saw Ira’s face split in a wide canine grin for the first time in days.

“I found them!”