rock-riddled region of brown grass, dusty soil and withered trees, Princess Romy, daughter of the Emperor, waited, and watched. It was three months since she had gone to the Pridelands to ask the help of King Kovu and Queen Kiara to aid them against the rogues and Goldencrater pride. Obbler had managed to form and alliance with a small pride living to the South, near the land known as the Elephant Graveyard. It was help much-appreciated help, although still not enough. The Stone Lions would need much larger numbers in order eradicate their foe for good, and their army had been growing only slowly, especially since the disappearance of Comoros and Meno Mosso, their Fuuno generals . . . 

Perched on a large blue-grey boulder under a warm morning sun, Romy acknowledged the great plain of grass which lay around her, a sea of mud-brown stalks swayed by the breeze. Her alert gaze flickered in all directions; to her left, her right, straight ahead. Occasionally she twisted her body in order to scan the land behind her. Romy waited and watched.

She'd been sitting around for a long time, longer than she had expected to.

Huffing a sigh, Romy lay her stare upon the distant horizon directly in-front of her, to the Northeast, where approaching storm clouds loomed, a dark, dark and violent violet. Under the clouds, far away across a mile or so of brown grass, lay a white streak.

That streak was bare desert-land, where the territory of the Stone Lions came to an end - and where the Banished Ones had gone . . . Romy's eyes glazed over as she pondered over that long war that had been fought against the now-vanquished Jafiya and Jet, and won by her Pride. After all that violence and trouble of conflict had ended, it had been thought that a time of peace would reign - for ever after - a time like when she was younger and the Tribe of Stones was in its prime. When the conflict ended, she and her betrothed Comoros had been finally wed; they had made plans to start a family, once Comoros had dealt with military issues that were the aftermath of the war. But as it happened his business was to last two long years. Although he and Romy did have their little family in some respect (after adopting sweet little Tamura, a cub Romy had found on the Stone territory border ) all other dreams for the future had been dashed away; Comoros was gone. Nobody knew exactly how or where - nobody knew if he was even alive. Lost in action,  on a mission, that was all that was certain. But whatever had happened, with Comoros had disappeared a large portion of Romy's happiness. Now, more than ever, she was bonded more than ever to who was left of her family:  her poor father and mother who suffered under the pressure of many enemies attacking the territory borders; her little sister Emiliia, who had always been Romy's closest confident in times of trouble and who was now even closer; and poor Tamura, who Comoros had loved like he would have his own blood cub. When duties would would allow, Romy spent as much time as she could with the only family she had, to keep them safe, to forget  . . .

The Princess was suddenly shaken from her thoughts, as her eye caught a small flash of dark fur to her left. She laboriously pushed away her sorrow and smiled, growling in readiness and shifting position on the boulder to face a grey shape which, mostly hidden by grass about twenty metres away, moved slowly towards her.

'Oh, Em-illia!' chuckled Romy inwardly. 'Not very tactful . . . I can see you!'

Romy noted also the pungent smell of mango fruit which drifted on the stormy wind from the position of the figure, who must have walked through a mango grove and thoughtlessly forgotten to get rid of the smell.

As the Princess watched, the grey shape came to a halt, wriggled momentarily, then disappeared altogether. But Romy could still detect that fruity aroma breezing from the same direction.

'Emillia! Your scent! Get downwind!' Romy thought, and she waited, every muscle prepared. 'What's the point of concealing yourself when you smell like a -'

'Hah!' A  sharp, triumphant yell caught Romy off guard. A split second later, she felt claws catch like small grappling hooks into her back. She stiffened, shocked to silence. Her attacker however, laughed loudly.

'Hahahaha! Got you, Romy! Didn't expect that, did you?'

Lapsing into giggles, Emillia unlatched herself from Romy's back. She did a little celebratory amble around the boulder, red-on-amber eyes shining merrily from a head held high.

Romy crouched with mouth half-open, still recovering from her surprise.

'How did you do that?' she managed finally to gasp. 'Stop moving about ... Emillia, as your elder sister and elite Princess of this Tribe, I demand to know how!'

Emillia stopped gamboling and stretched, with claws splayed and rump in the air. She grinned; 'Hahah, it's a secret . . . no, alright, I'll tell you. Heheheh, it was so easy!' The triumphant lioness swallowed another outburst of giggles and cleared her throat. 'Before I started my test, I took a little helper to that bunch of mango trees over to the west. I got my 'Little Helper' to have a good roll in the fallen fruit there - quickly as she could - and then we both started to stalk you. Once we were the right distance away (that's when you saw me, as I hoped you would), I left my Little mango-smelling Helper hiding to distract you, then zip! I scooted aroun' wide to give you the surprise of your life!'

Romy jumped off the boulder to give Emiliia a playful nudge.

'Very clever. No, no ... really, I couldn't have done better myself,' she smiled. 'You've definitely passed the test and won the bet and thus I will be hunting your dinner today . . .'

'Yay!' Emillia's grin widened.

'. . . Now tell me: who is your Little Helper?'

'Oof!' A shape rolled out of the grass and flopped down at Romy's feet. Tamura, her chestnut fur smeared with browning mango flesh, smiled shyly up at her adoptive mother, green eyes shining. 'Hi!'

'Tamura!' Romy stared. 'You're -'

'A mess!' laughed the young lioness. 'It was a good trick of Aunt Emiliia's, though, wasn't it?'
 

'Hmm,' Romy chuckled, raising an eyebrow at her younger sister. 'Yes, I thought so too. But the bugs'll be after you, Tam, covered in that stuff. Flies love mango. Come on, you two, let's go to the waterhole . . . Race you!!'

The wateringhole wasn't far. They reached it in ten minutes, and as soon as they reached its banks, Tamura raced into the shallows to bathe off the mango pulp from her fur. A flock of egrets wading in the water were disturbed by the sudden arrival of three lionesses, and they fled in a chaos of feathers and cries. Romy  took advantage of the situation. With a powerful leap she snatched two egrets out of the sky with her claws, just as they darted over her head. The birds were dead within seconds, and were dropped at the feet of Emiliia, who had watched the smoothly executed hunting with awe.

'Your dinner,' smiled Romy,' as earned.'

'Why, thank you!' said her sister. 'Care to share?'

'No, I'm fine,' Romy replied. 'I'm going to the other side of the 'hole. There's one of the Tribe's markers there, remember? It may need re-clawing.'

'Well, I'll come with you, Romy,' Emiliia said. 'We can all three of us eat together after, when Tamura's done with her bath . . . Behind the ears, Tam! There's loads of it there!' called Emiliia to her niece.

The sisters skirted the watering hole. They soon found one the territory marker near a straggly tree: the emblem of the Stone Lions,  a circle filled with parallel lines going across its diameter, drawn in the dirt.

'Hmm, it's not too faded,' remarked Emiliia. 'But shall we re-claw it anyway?'

'Hey, Romy?' Emiliia had not got answer. Her older sister was staring, fixedly, on the straggly tree, confusion burning in her eyes. 'Romy, what - ? Oh . . . '

They both gazed in bewilderment at the bark of the tree. It was raked with claw marks. Four deeply-scoured lines ran alongside each other in a sweeping curve, like the motion of the breeze.

'It - it can't be!' breathed Romy. 'Jafiya and Jet's mark? No, it's a coincidence . . . ' She closed her eyes, shook her head violently and stepped closer to the tree to get a better look.

'Is it fresh? Oh my gosh, it is!' Emiliia, having also examined the marks, let forth something like a hiss. 'They can't be back! They can't be alive! Romy, tell me it's not them!'

'It's them.' Romy's voice was faint. 'It's their scent. I know it well. I would hope that some other lion, some other animal would have made this mark. But . . . Come on. We need to get to camp at once and tell Father!' Romy spun around and rushed back around the watering hole to rouse Tamura, cutting through the shallows to shorten the distance. Emiliia, giving the tree one last scowl, followed her sister at a run.
 

CHAPTER V

The storm that had been brewing in the East now pounced upon the Stone Lion