“We will talk,” she said. “Ninety-nine years, I’ve waited for someone willing to listen.”
“What about the hunter?” Delna’s father insisted.
Rina couldn’t blame him for wanting to know, but somehow she knew that the hunter had not come to a good end.
“If you had been raised in Barleyfields or Goatsfart, you would have heard the story, although you would not have known that it happened so recently,” Raki said. “There is a bawdy tale teenagers love to tell each other about the hunter who went looking for the Mountain King, and got caught by his sister instead. You’re supposed to snigger at that, and imagine her as a strong, handsome woman. But that is not what the Mountain’s King sister is.”
Rina thought of the orange eyes in the night and shivered, but Raki barely paused for breath.
“Wh
