Sanctuary Tales (Book 1)

by Robert J. Crane

  Amalys waited for her to come close, looking back over his shoulder at her as he navigated a fallen log to cross a stream. He waited, perched at the end of the tree, the roots all spread out in front of him. He looked at home, she thought, oddly at peace crouched on a tree. He spoke when she came into close range, his voice a whisper low enough to keep from spooking any nearby game. “My legs had forgotten their strength, I’ve been invaliding by the fire for so long.”

  “Is that so?” she asked in a low murmur. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “You need not be false, my daughter,” Amalys said, taking to his feet and leaping lightly off the log, making a little noise as he landed, then looked up to her with a cringe on his face. She could tell he knew he’d erred, but he was years out of practice. She gave him a gentle smile, a little forced, and he went on a bit slower. “I have done little to aid you and Gareth in your hunts these last years.”

  “As is your right as Elder,” she said but felt herself repeating his chosen words only, with none of the feeling.

  “The Elders of my day were old men, long past the turn,” Amalys said, crouching as he stalked along, allowing room for Martaina to follow just in his wake, as they had done in the days when he taught her to hunt. “They were men nearing six millennia, with the creases of age on their faces like the gnarled bark of the oldest trees in the woods.” He flashed her a smile. “I am far behind them in age, though I do feel worn like I imagine they did. Though less, I think, from the weariness of a long life and more from the aches and pains of a life spent watching all I love diminished.”

  “Aye,” Martaina agreed, surveying the uneven ground ahead of her. There was a dip where an old stream had flowed perhaps decades ago, now overgrown by weeds. She’d found a few herbs and spices there in the past and a weed that made an excellent salve for blisters.

  “I pray to the gods that you not see half the diminishment of our people in your life as I have in mine,” Amalys went on, pausing in a thicket of long grass. “It would not take much, of course, since I have seen our people all but wiped out. Only the three of us remain now, but I would find it a terrible tragedy if you and your brood were to see the end of our days.”

  “I have no brood, father,” Martaina said with deep amusement, her fingers running over a blade of long fal’thes grass, taking it between her fingers and stroking it idly.

  “But you will,” he said without looking at her. “As our people long have, our women finding good seed where they may and taking the children unto their own to be raised here in the woods, steeped in our ways.” He glanced back at her with equal measures discomfort and impatience, as though he wanted little to have this conversation.

  “Of course,” she said awkwardly, not deigning to mention the foul brew that Nethan had introduced her to, ventra’maq, the enchanter’s mixture that he had promised would keep his seed from quickening within her. She had never worried about any such thing in her past endeavors with other men; it was expected among the Iliarad’ouran that any child conceived would be raised in their ways, by her, Amalys and Gareth. As it had been since the beginning of their days.

  Amalys moved on, stalking low, the faint sound of something ahead of them and upwind. Martaina took a deep sniff, trying to decide if it was a raccoon. It smelled far different, though it was clearly not moving at the moment. She could scent the earthy aroma of fur matted with dirt. She wondered if it was a boar, though those were rare, having been hunted in these grounds to near-extinction several millennia earlier.

  The woods were a curious place, bereft of many animals that had once been there, hunted low back when the woodsmen were still strong and Pharesia was growing but had not yet turned to domesticated livestock for its needs. Many of the woodsmen had left the fold during those winnowing days, when all that was left were few deer, small game, and occasionally fish, before the larger streams were cut off to them by the King’s guards.

  Martaina followed her father, taking care not to disturb so much as a blade of grass as she went, now up on her feet in only a slight crouch. Amalys was bent lower than she, her slightly shorter frame allowing her to keep naturally closer to the ground. She had gotten her height from her father, she’d always heard, though she’d never met her mother to be certain.

  Amalys suddenly stopped, holding an arm out stiff for her to do the same as she sniffed the air again, unable to see past him to find out what had gotten him to halt in such a hurry. It was an unfamiliar scent, something she had not encountered before. She tried to see around him but he turned to her, now squatting down to hide his outline, and she hesitated only a moment before following so she could glimpse for herself what awaited them.

  It was a bear.

  Martaina thought she could recall seeing one in her youth, a triumph for the Iliarad’ouran in the waning days when there were still a handful of them remaining, before Yeram left, back when the twins were still hunting with them, before those two had left to go north for some reason she’d not understood as a child. She remembered the bear carcass being dragged into camp when she was still too young to be on the hunt herself, back when she chafed at having to wait at camp, to prepare the food that the hunters brought back while they reveled in the day’s successes. She caught herself drawing a deep breath and held it, eyeing the black-furred animal pawing at a stump.

  Her father had already unslung his bow and had it nocked, and Martaina did the same, mirroring him. They looked sidelong at each other as Martaina slid into place next to him. For an animal this large both of them would fire and fire again, working in coordination to bring it down before it could run away. She saw the gleam of excitement in his eyes and knew she had a similar one in her own. The last bear had sent a thrill through the camp that had lasted for weeks, had reinvigorated the last of them like nothing else before or since.

  She drew back her bow and looked down the shaft of the arrow at her target. It would be an easy shot, the bear only twenty or so paces away. She thought about waiting for her father to fire first but ultimately released in a hurry.

  The arrow slung through the air, followed less than a second later by Amalys’s. They whipped through the intervening space, the bear roaring with fury as her arrow impacted between his ribs and her father’s landed in the thick meat of his back. She fired again after only the briefest pause, enough time to grasp an arrow by the fletching and nock it, drawing the string back and checking her aim before letting it fly.

  This one impacted in the side of the bear’s neck, the broadhead causing the beast to jerk and grunt in pain as a spurt of blood geysered out from beneath the black fur. Her father’s second shot was aimed almost the same as his first and buried itself in the meat of the animal’s back.

  The bear grunted and began a long, loping run on all four legs that was, she imagined, more ponderous and labored than it would have been before the arrows hit. It slowed as it went, and she planted another arrow in its hindquarters, her father doing the same. It slowed to a desperate pace, dragging the last bit of distance before it fell.

  Martaina exchanged a look of satisfaction with Amalys, his eyes gleaming and a broad smile under his dark beard splitting his face. “I suppose I should come hunting more often, eh?”

  Martaina paused before answering. “We do seem to have had good luck with your presence. I haven’t ever even seen a sign of one of these creatures, let alone run across one of them.”

  “We’re deeper in the woods now than we’ve been in some time,” Amalys said as they stood and slowly worked their way toward the bear. They approached hesitantly; it was likely still alive, and moving at it too quickly might allow it to land a fearsome strike on one of them. Giving it time to bleed out while death settled upon it was far more preferable, keeping the animal from running off again. “Doubtful we would have ever seen it had we not been forced to move camp.”

  “Aye,” Martaina agreed.

  “Can you imagine what Gareth will say when he returns?” Amalys’s voice was quivering with ex
citement of a kind she could not recall hearing since she was a child. “Do you even remember when last we brought a bear back to camp?” He did not wait to see her nod assent. “It put a fire and food in our bellies that lasted for quite some time.” He was bursting with pride. “Months, even. I still sleep under the skin on the coldest nights.” She nodded, well aware of the bear and the story behind it. He grinned at her. “This one can be yours. Your own.”

  She felt a little numbness at the thought. Only a year earlier she would have been smiling with a wide grin of her own, but now her enthusiasm was muted, as though it were a fire that had had a bucket of water dumped upon it. “Yes,” she said finally, but Amalys did not even notice.

  “Come on, then,” Amalys said, outpacing her now toward the fallen form. “We’ll dress it out here and get a sling ready. It’ll take both of us to haul it back.” He reached the side of the creature, moving quietly, then gingerly slit its throat when he arrived at the side of it. He did it quickly, and the bear stirred only a little, the last of its vigor nearly gone now.

  She stood back while Amalys did the dressing, removing the guts and emptying out its belly. “Time was we could have found uses for all this,” he said. “But not now, not with so few of us and so many things easily available by barter.” He turned his face toward his task at hand, cleaning it out quickly as Martaina pulled rope from her pack, tying the legs and readying it for dragging.

  They said little as they dragged it back to camp, her father glowing with the pride of the first kill he’d been on in years, Martaina still too stunned to believe what they’d done. A bear. A real, live bear, like something out of the old stories.

  It took them almost two hours to get back to camp, and Amalys’s enthusiasm did not diminish one whit on their way. “This is just what we needed,” he said as the camp drew into sight. “The forest has provided for the Iliarad’ouran once more.”

  Martaina nodded her agreement, feeling the burn of the rope even through the gloves she wore for dragging the sling. The bear was heavy and her muscles were already weary from yesterday’s long trek back to the camp from Nethan’s plantation. She had thought herself in fine condition for such things, but the longer distances had begun to wear on her, her hip moaning protestations in a place where she’d hurt it against a tree while running a few months prior.

  “Gareth!” Amalys shouted as they dragged the big animal right into the heart of the encampment. “Gareth, turn out! You won’t believe what we’ve got!” He let a cackle of warm enthusiasm, an infectious sound that made Martaina smile even in spite of her aches. She dropped the ropes as they settled the bear into place next to the fire, and gave herself a moment to stretch before she looked about, wondering if Gareth had made it back from his prior night’s activities.

  “Confound that boy,” Amalys said under his breath. “Caught the smell of sweet honey in some city tart’s hair, the yeast of some baker’s daughter, and it pulls him out of the woods.” He clapped his rough hands together. “He’ll be in for a surprise when he returns.”

  Martaina felt a rough drop of her stomach, the sudden, unfortunate gasp of her insides as she caught sight of a scrap of parchment laid out on the ground where Gareth’s bedroll had been when they left. She took a step closer to it, a lone piece of flat parchment torn from something, with writing on one side in rough letters, all Gareth’s unstudied hand was probably capable of producing. Martaina knew the letters, had learned to read from the only book her father owned, from hours of instruction by Yeram. She shook her head and clapped Amalys on the shoulder once to get his attention.

  Amalys looked from her to the scrap on the ground, looking down at it and cocking his head. “What’s this?” He asked, staring at it, dumbstruck.

  Martaina let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding and stared at it for a moment before looking away and turning her gaze to the horizon, scanning the forest for any sign of life. She wondered if Gareth was still out there, watching to see if they’d gotten it, then dismissed that thought. He wouldn’t have waited around, not if his mind was made up. She looked back down to it and read it again, a single word by itself, followed by Gareth’s own scrawled name.

  Farewell.

  Eight

  One Thousand Years Later

  Martaina caught the scent again, edging closer to a defined trail. The edge of the Waking Woods was creeping ever nearer, and she cursed mildly, under her breath. I do not want to go in there. Not tonight. She sighed and looked back at the hunting party following her. It had been months of action in Luukessia followed by days of defense across the Endless Bridge, a terror chasing her every waking moment and every sleepless night.

  The Scourge.

  She could see their grey faces when she closed her eyes, the horror of them still fresh in her mind as she’d fired every arrow she had at them and been left with nothing when they’d returned to Sanctuary. They were an implacable foe, the sure destruction of everything she’d ever known and come to care about.

  Meanwhile, the dark elves were here, trying to destroy everything I care about. She felt the glowing embers of her rage inside, a slow burn of fury that kept her driving on even though she desired nothing more than to retire to her chambers and sleep, possibly for a decade, to return to a state of non-fatigue. She wished for a millberry plant, the leaves of which could be crumpled and placed under the tongue to increase one’s alertness. It was something she had learned from the Wanderers’ Brotherhood after a lifetime of passing it by as a tasteless weed.

  “He’s gone into the woods, hasn’t he?” Longwell’s voice was tentative but hopeful. She looked back to see him close at hand, Thad back a ways now, talking with three of the warriors from Sanctuary who had accompanied the hunting party.

  “He has,” Martaina said, trying to keep herself indifferent to the King of Galbadien’s words. She looked back at the faintest hint of a trail, the trampled grass and spots of blood that were leading to the forest’s edge. “He’s not terribly far ahead now, though. We’ll catch him in the next half hour if we hurry on.”

  “Very well,” Longwell said with excessive stiffness. He was always a stern fellow, his every expression a guarded one, save for a very few, very occasional few. He leaned in closer to her, to speak. “About—”

  “We are in the midst of a hunt for a dark elven officer,” she said, as though she needed to remind him.

  He almost flinched, blinking back his surprise at her words, which she suspected had come close to a rebuke. His face showed a hint of expression, hardly the most she had seen from him in the last months, but surely more than anyone else had. “I will tend to my duty, you need not fear for that.”

  “Good,” she said and turned away from him. “All else need wait for a different occasion.”

  “Very well,” Longwell said, and she heard the hint of disappointment in his voice. His soft footfalls carried him back to his horse, and she listened to them, every one. It was unusual for a man of the sword to walk so softly, in her experience.

  But then again, until him, never had she had a man so noble and high who hadn’t turned away from her in shame at the first morning’s light, either. A King, no less, though of a land now dead and lost.

  Martaina ducked her head low and put it down, sighing out her frustration, her fatigue, and taking another deep inhalation of the night air. The chill mixed with her tiredness, and all she wanted was to get beneath a blanket and find a wagon to take her back to Sanctuary, wrapped up in the warmth until she could lie before the hearth in her chamber and sleep, just sleep in her soft bed.

  Instead she forced that image out of her head and breathed in again. She smelled the blood and put one unsteady foot in front of another as she went back to the trail, careful to mind her walk so her feet didn’t betray her. Careful to keep herself steady, she paced after him, this dark elf, this enemy that she would hunt down just as surely as if he were any other beast that she’d been called on to slay.

  Nine


  One Thousand Years Earlier

  Amalys had been quiet, mutterings only occasionally escaping as they’d skinned the bear. He’d said nothing for the first hour, nothing at all, had just worked as they’d cut up the meat, readied some of it to be dried, and cut up other parts for immediate frying. Martaina had saved some fat from the beast that she’d culled out as they’d worked it, and the fire was already going. She was prepared to make a gravy from it, something to add some flavor to the meat.

  “He’ll be back,” Amalys said with a certainty that Martaina thought bordered on delusion. “He’s lived his whole life among us.” There was no hint of the desperation she felt certain she’d have let slip under the circumstances, and though it should have worried her, it didn’t. “He doesn’t know any other way.” Amalys licked his lips, and Martaina watched him, wondering if it was simple nerves or something else. “He’ll see soon enough that the greenest fields always belong to someone else. When you have to tend to them yourself, they suddenly lose their verdancy.”

  “I don’t think he much cares about that,” Martaina said quietly then halted, scarcely believing she’d said it.

  Amalys didn’t respond at first, favoring her with a near-suspicious look. “Oh? How’s that?”

  Well, now I’ve said it. Might as well finish it. “He was lonely, father. The kind of all-consuming lonely that drives a man to find a companion.”

  “Nonsense,” Amalys said, shaking his head stubbornly. “He could have had his little side dishes and still come back to us. Like you have. Like I did, in my day.” His beard swung as he shook his head. “That’s how we grow after all. That’s how I ended up with you. You go out and have your fun and bring the child back to the woods for proper raising—”

  “Not everyone wants to give up their child to the Iliarad’ouran, Father,” Martaina said, not meeting his eyes.