by Barb Hendee
"Your answer, advocate!" Sgäile called with more force.
Fréth stood up, and her head dropped as she shook it slowly. "No… nothing."
Sgäile stepped to the clearing's center. "The Advocates have retired. We ask the elders to deliberate and render judgment on the claim presented."
Gleann didn't return to his clan. Instead, he simply cast a stone—black—and gave Magiere a curt bow. It was a kind gesture, but not enough to make her hopeful.
Another black stone arched out from behind her and tumbled across the ground. Magiere looked back.
The tall female in maroon stood halfway down the slope, the one Sgäile had called Tosan… something on the night they searched for Wynn. Her calculated study of Magiere turned suddenly upon Leesil, and then she walked back up to her chair between her like-clad attendants. How her filmy eyes saw anything was disturbing.
Magiere wasn't certain how long it would take the others, or whether a quick or protracted vote worked more in her favor. She tried not to meet the silf's steady stare, for its strange face was too difficult to read. She didn't want to think about her own past, her birth, and why this creature had mistaken her as kin.
One at a time, then in twos and threes, black and white stones fell into the clearing.
Magiere closed her eyes. She felt Leesil's arm slip around her shoulders and tighten.
She didn't watch Sgäile gather the stones, but after long moments she heard their clatter as he poured them into piles upon the ground.
Gleann's voice rose so loud it startled her, and her eyes snapped open as Wynn translated.
"As the claim against her is now dismissed, Magiere's companions cannot be held in blame either. They came here as guests of Most Aged Father and under oath of guardianship. No reason has been given to breach either. They must be released, and their property returned. Then other matters require our collected attention"—he glanced toward Most Aged Father—"concerning Anmaglâhk ways in conflict with those of the people."
"It's over," Leesil whispered.
Magiere couldn't see any difference between the stone piles at Sgäile's feet. He seemed to understand her confusion and nodded to her.
"It is over—for now," Brot'an added. "I will take you back to quarters, so you may rest."
"Not quite," Leesil returned. "I still have a claim to make for my mother."
"It will be addressed," Brot'an answered. "The rest will be settled without either of you, and should cause you no more concern. Do not press the matter when it is not yet necessary."
Leesil glanced at Magiere, caught between concern and stubbornness.
Magiere put a hand on his chest. Both looked up as a rush of wind around Magiere whipped Leesil's loose hair wildly about.
The silf dropped upon the table behind Magiere and reached out too quickly, startling Leesil into the defensive. Magiere grabbed his wrist.
The tiny female flexed her wings and raised her hand more slowly this time. She lifted the side of Magiere's hair, letting its strands slide between narrow fingers ending in roan-colored nails that curved slightly like talons. The silf cocked her head, watching the hair fall bit by bit.
Magiere pulled back at the thrash of her wings as she lifted into the air and flapped away beyond the treetops.
Leesil exhaled. "As if we haven't had enough for one day."
"There is one more thing," Wynn said. "Brot'an, would you please wait with Magiere?"
The sage grabbed Leesil's arm, pulling him along as she followed Chap toward Most Aged Father.
Chap had no idea what this séyilf—silf—truly wanted. Like Magiere and even Wynn, he was confused as to why it mistook Magiere for kin. Somehow the small winged female sensed the blood of its own used in Magiere's conception.
He had tried reaching for its mind to catch any memories, but he found nothing besides images of himself and his charges climbing downward through the mountain. The female had been the one to leave them a trail… the one who had called out to him amid the blizzard. This was all he gathered from it. He was left wondering why it had twice interceded on their behalf and how long it had watched them from hiding.
Chap had planned for a fight, even wanted it in part. Or at least enough distraction to take the one person who mattered—Most Aged Father.
He had watched the an'Cróan shaken by how the majay-hì cast their
"vote" in this matter. Lily had likely strained her place among the pack in convincing them for him, but they all shared some strange animosity for the leader of the Anmaglâhk, a being too old for natural life and yet making claims against Magiere as an undead.
Perhaps his rejected kin were correct—flesh and heart made him reckless. He did not care anymore.
Most Aged Father's bearers had not come for him. Even this did not matter to Chap. He wanted answers, and he would take them.
Fréthfâre stepped in his way as he closed on the old one.
"We only have a message for Most Aged Father," Wynn said.
Chap barked once, not turning his eyes from the patriarch.
"Snaw… hac…" Leesil began, then sighed in frustration.
"Snähacróe," Wynn pronounced for him.
At the name, Most Aged Father's milky eyes widened and he sat up as straight as he could.
"He said to tell you…" Leesil called out clearly, "that he's waiting for his comrade to join him… when you're done."
Chap lunged into the old one's mind, waiting for whatever might come.
Sounds and images rose, led by the face of a tall elf with wide cheekbones. Chap let go of all else, even anger, and sank into Most Aged Father's rising memories.
* * * *
Sorhkafâré stood amid the night-wrapped trees surrounding Aonnis Lhoin'n, First Glade.
It had been the longest run of his life to reach his people's land and what now seemed the only sanctuary in a blighted world. He led his dwindling group to this place hoping to find other survivors, hoping to find help. But he could still hear the grunts and weeping and madness of the night horde ranging beyond the forest's edge.
All through his flight home, every town and village, and even every keep and stronghold, was littered with bodies torn as if fed upon by animals. The few living they encountered joined them in flight from the pale predators with crystalline eyes, always in their wake.
The numbers of their pursuers grew with each fall of the sun.
Fewer than half of those who fled Sorhkafâré's encampment with him reached the forests of his people. Not one of the dwarves made it on their stout legs carrying thick heavy bodies. Thalhómêrk had been the last of their people to succumb, along with his son and daughter.
In a dead run through the dark, Sorhkafâré had heard the dwarven lord's vicious curses. He looked back as Thalhómêrk submerged under a wave of pale bodies. He shuddered at the sound of bones cracking under the dwarf's massive fists and mace. And still the horde flowed toward Sorhkafâré and over Thalhómêrk's son and daughter. He could not tell which one had screamed out, as Hoil'lhân's voice smothered it with a visceral shout. She whirled to turn back.
Her hair whipped about her long face as she swung the butt of her thick metal spear shaft. It cracked through a pale face. Splattering black fluids blotted out the creature's glittering eyes and maw of sharp teeth.
Sorhkafâré did not understand Hoil'lhân's preference for dwarven and human company, nor her restless and savage nature. Perhaps she had been killing for too long.
Hoil'lhân spun her spear without pause as three more pale figures closed on her. The spear's wide and long head split through the first's collarbone, grinding into its chest. She jerked her weapon out as the other two hesitated, and she screeched at them madly, ready to charge.
Sorhkafâré grabbed her, pulling her around as more of the horde rushed at them through the dark.
"Run," he ordered.
Even in renewed flight Hoil'lhân tried to turn on him with her metal spear. Snähacróe snatched her other arm, and they dr
agged her onward.
"You cannot save Thalhómêrk," Snähacróe said in a hollow voice.
The endless running took its toll. Two more of Sorhkafâré's soldiers dropped in their tracks before any saw the forest's edge. All he could do was hope they died of exhaustion before…
In the clearing of First Glade, humans and elves now huddled in fear. Sorhkafâré could no longer look at their gaunt faces.
So few… and in the distance, beyond the forest's limits, carried the shouts and cries of dark figures with crystalline eyes. A part of him found that easier to face than to count the small number who still lived.
A small pack of the silver-gray wolves came out of the trees. They moved with eerie conscious intent. At first their presence had frightened all, but they never attempted any harm; quite the opposite. They wove among the people, sniffing about. One stopped to lick and nuzzle a small elven girl holding a human infant.
These wolves had eyes like crystals tinted with sky blue, and neither he nor his troops had ever seen such before. But during his campaigns against the enemy, Sorhkafâré had heard reports and rumors of strange wolves, deer, and other animals joining allied forces in battles in other lands. Which made these wolves a welcome sight.
The survivors in First Glade ate little and slept less. If sleep did come, they cried out in their dreams. Every night, Sorhkafâré waited for the pale horde to surge in upon them.
But they never came.
On the sixth night, he could stand it no more and walked out into the forest. Léshiâra tried to stop him.
Youngest of their council of elders, she stood in his way, soft lines of coming age on a face urgent and firm beneath her long graying hair. She pulled her maroon robe tight about herself against the night's chill.
"You cannot leave!" she whispered sharply. "These people need to see every warrior we have left ready to stand for them. You will make them think you abandon them."
"Stand against what?" he snarled at her, not caring who heard. "You do not know what is out there any more than I. And if they could come for us, why have they not done so? Leave me be!"
He stepped around her, heading into the trees, but not before he caught Snähacróe watching him with sad disappointment. In days past, his kinsman's silent reproach would have cut him, but now he felt nothing.
Sorhkafâré followed the sounds of beasts on two legs out beyond the forest, wondering why they had not come for the pitiful count of refugees. These things on two legs… things that would not die… blood-hungry with familiar faces as pale as corpses'. He heard them more clearly as the trees thinned around him, and he stopped in the night to listen.
The noise they made had changed. Screams of pain were strangled short beneath wet tearing sounds.
Sorhkafâré stumbled forward, sickened by his own curiosity.
Through a stand of border aspens before the open plain, he saw three silhouettes with sparking eyes. They rushed, one after another, upon a fourth fleeing before them.
Still, he kept on, slipping in behind one aspen.
In days past, Sorhkafâré would have leaped to defend any poor victim. But not now. It did not matter if anyone out there on the plain still lived. He peered around the aspen's trunk.
The three hunkered upon the ground with lowered heads, tearing back and forth. Beneath them, the fourth struggled wildly, its pain-pitched voice ringing in Sorhkafâré's ears.
The sound of such terrified suffering ate at him.
He lunged around the tree, running for the victim's outstretched hand. Halfway there, the figure thrashed free and scrambled across the matted grass with wide, panicked eyes…
Glittering, crystalline eyes.
Sorhkafâré's feet slid upon autumn leaves as he halted.
Out on the plain, dark silhouettes chased and hunted each other with cries of fear and hunger. The moon and stars dimly lit shapes tearing into each other with fingers and teeth. With nothing else to feed upon, the pale creatures turned upon each other.
These things… so hungry for warm life.
One of the three lifted its head.
Sorhkafâré made out a pale face, its mouth smeared with wet black. Its eyes sparked as if gathering the waning light, and it saw him. It rose, turning toward him as the other pair chased the fourth through the grass.
Sorhkafâré heard his own breath. He retreated a few paces, just inside the forest's tree line.
This pale thing he saw… a man… was human.
His quivering lips and teeth were darkened, as if he had been drinking black ink. He sniffed the air wildly and a ravenous twist distorted his features. He began running toward Sorhkafâré.
This one smelled him, sensed his life.
Sorhkafâré jerked out his long war knife and braced himself.
The human came straight at him, its feral features pained with starvation. Perhaps it gained no sustenance in feeding on its own. But he no longer cared for anything beyond seeing these horrors gone from his world.
It ran straight at him like an animal without reason.
When it stepped between the first trees of the forest, it stopped short, hissing and gurgling in desperation. Sorhkafâré saw the man clearly now.
Young, perhaps twenty human years. His face was heavily scratched, but the marks were black lines rather than red. His flesh was white and shriveled, as if it were sinking in upon itself. The thing cried piteously at Sorhkafâré and took another hesitant step.
Why would the horde not enter the forest, if they were starved enough to turn on each other?
Sorhkafâré raised his knife and cut the back of his forearm. He swung his bloodied arm through the air.
"Hungry?" he shouted. "I am here!"
The sight of blood drove the man deeper into madness. He charged forward with a scream grating up his throat. Sorhkafâré shifted backward, feeling blindly for smooth and solid footing.
As the pale man lunged between two aspens, he grabbed his head with a strangled choke. He turned about and cried out—but not in anguished hunger. This was a sound of fear and pain as he whirled and wobbled. The man stumbled too near one aspen, and he clawed wildly at the air, as if fending off the tree.
Sorhkafâré watched in stunned confusion. A howl carried around him from within the forest.
It was like nothing Sorhkafâré had ever heard—long and desperate in warning. Two of the silver-furred wolves burst through the underbrush and out of the dark, their eyes glowing like clear crystals tinted with sky blue.
The first slammed straight into the screaming man and latched its jaws around his throat, ripping as it dragged him down. The second joined in, and their howls shifted to savage snarls as they tore at their prey.
The man's scream cut off in a wet gag, but still he thrashed and clawed.
On instinct Sorhkafâré ran in to help the wolves, but they kept snapping and tearing at the man's throat.
One of them shifted aside. It pinned the man's arm with teeth and paws. The other did the same, and they held him down as the first one looked up at Sorhkafâré.
The wolf waited for Sorhkafâré to do something—but what?
The man's throat was a dark mass shredded almost to the spine—yet still he writhed and fought to get free. Black fluids dribbled from his gaping mouth and blotted out his teeth. A mouth that either snarled or screamed with no voice.
He could not still be alive. No one could live after what these wolves had done to him… tearing at his neck as if…
Sorhkafâré dropped to his knees and snatched the man's hair with his free hand. With so little sinew left on that neck, it was easy to hold the head steady. He pressed the long knife's edge down through the mess of the man's throat until it halted against bone.
In a quick shift, he released his grip on the hair and pressed on the back of the blade with all his weight.
The blade grated and then cut down through neck bones.
The pale man ceased thrashing and fell limp as a true corpse.
Sorhkafâré sucked in air as he lifted his gaze to the first wolf, its muzzle stained with wet black like his own hands. He stared into its eyes as his mind emptied of all but two truths.
The forest would not allow the horde in. And if one got through, these wolves sensed it and came.
He climbed to his feet, still breathing hard, and crept back to the forest's edge to look out upon the rolling plain.
Dark forms rolled, ran, leaped, and crawled in the grass. Others barely moved, little more than quivering masses choking in the dark. Pale figures chased each other—slaughtered each other.
Sorhkafâré stood watching, unable to look away. Every figure that came close enough for his night eyes to see was human.
He saw not one elf. Not one dwarf. Not even a goblin, or the hulking scaled body of a reptilian locathan, or any of the other monstrosities the enemy had sent against him.
Only humans.
He turned and stumbled back toward First Glade. The wolves paced him all the way to his people.
He found Snähacróe kneeling behind an injured human youth, bracing the boy up while Léshiâra worked upon the boy's leg. In the past days, these two shared company more and more.
Léshiâra closed her eyes, and a low thrum rose from her throat. She lightly traced her fingertips around the boy's deeply bruised calf, over and over, and then went silent. She opened her eyes and rebandaged the boy's leg.
When she stood up and found Sorhkafâré watching her, she frowned.
"Come with me," he said.
Snähacróe looked worried and followed as well.
They walked into the center of the glade.
In the open space stood an immense tree like no other in this world. Its trunk was the size of a small citadel tower, and high overhead its branches reached out into the forest.
Sorhkafâré saw where those limbs stretched into the green leaves and needles of the surrounding trees and beyond. A soft glow emanated from the tree's tawny body and branches, bare of bark but still thriving with life. Massive roots like hill ridges split the clearing's turf where they emerged from the trunk to burrow deep and far into the earth.
Sorhkafâré laid a hand upon the glistening trunk of Chârmun, a name that humans would translate as "Sanctuary."