The Seedbearing Prince: Part I by DaVaun Sanders Page A

mattock. Swallows fluttered away
from hidden perches as his strikes echoed.
    Dayn tested his handiwork, hanging from the
pole with his full weight. It held him without so much as a creak.
He let go and swung away gently, allowing the rope to assume his
weight once more. He could not help but grin over his progress.
    It took even less time than he expected. I
should have brought more down. He dealt the completed pole one
last victorious whack. The second pole, along with Dayn's sparring
staff, tumbled free of their binding on his back.
    “Oh, blind me.”
    He groaned in dismay as they clattered to the
ledge ten spans below. Sunlight still shone from the other side of
the Dreadfall, perhaps an hour left. There was time to hammer
another pole into the cliff side, but not if he wanted to get that
staff back.
    Strapping the mattock to his back―securely,
this time―Dayn descended, losing himself in the rhythm of push and
catch as he rappelled down the cliff.
    Despite his blunder, he felt exhilarated.
These new perches would allow him to practice leaping and roping at
the same time, something he could never do on the ground above.
Honing this skill brought him a big step closer to coursing. Soon
enough, his feet touched mossy rock. This marked the deepest he had
explored yet.
    “Hello!” he called. The space swallowed his
echo. He shouted louder, insistent that the cliffs acknowledge his
presence. “Dayn Ro'Halan, the greatest courser in the World
Belt!”
    As Dayn retrieved his staff, a sudden flash
caught his eye, near the ground beyond his fallen pole. He picked
his way over to investigate. This looked a poor place to find gems,
but anything Dayn found would be a welcome prize after Joam’s
flight.
    The ground began to squelch sickeningly under
his feet. Dayn gagged at the sudden, pungent odor in his nostrils.
He looked up. The swallow nests were directly above him, bird
droppings and dead, fallen nestlings covered the ground. The flash
pulled Dayn's eye again, it was coming from a triangle-shaped
recess deeper in the cliff. Dampness slicked everything near the
opening. He heard a steady dripping beyond the rock.
    Something odd tugged at Dayn's gut, a sense
of wrongness about this place. Sunlight did not penetrate the
recess at all, which made the light emanating from it even more
curious. The opening reeked of offal, and Dayn refused to crawl
inside, so he held his breath and reached. Slick beetles and the
creeping things feeding upon them scurried from his hand. His
stomach heaved in protest. Dozens of bulbous mushrooms brushed his
grasp, forming an odd cradle around the object he could barely make
out. Dayn's hand closed around a smooth, cool surface and he pulled
it from the grime in triumph.
    He held a strange little orb that fit easily
in his palm. Dayn had never seen anything quite like it before. It
appeared to be a perfect sphere, despite the feathers and insect
shells caked upon it. In the few spots where Dayn could actually
see the surface the orb shone with a mysterious red glow. He turned
away from the cave to better examine his find in the upward
sunlight. Joam's abandonment did not sting so badly now.
    “This is better than all of my gems put
together. Wait until I show Joam!” Dayn laughed, turning the orb
about in his grime-covered fist. It glowed stronger for a moment,
close to the dangerous crimson of dewshade berries. He did not hear
the stirring behind him in the shadowed recess.
    Pain tore into his shoulder, sudden and
sharp. Dayn screamed, flailing wildly with his staff. He staggered
for balance, but agony forced him to his knees. A sinuous shape
unraveled lazily from the opening. Dayn's eyes followed the
variegated black scales and bone ridges stretching over powerful
coils of muscle. A blunt, wedge-shaped head fastened to his
shoulder, full of the teeth that were buried in his flesh. A
wreathweaver.
    He thrust his staff at the closest eye and
missed. His shoulder caught fire with the movement.