Hand of the Hunter: Chosen of Nendawen, Book II

by Mark Sehestedt

  “Don your helm, Hand of the Hunter,” he said.

  She did. It fit her head perfectly, almost like a second skin, and as its warmth settled onto her, she felt the presence inside it settle into her mind.

  Hweilan sent out her own thought—Ashiin …?

  But whatever was left of Ashiin had no voice. Only the cunning of the Fox remained. Through the mask’s eyes, Hweilan’s sight seemed more focused, as if Ashiin herself pointed out the stir of leaves, the sound of Gleed’s breath, the last cracklings of the fire were all distractions. When something small and furred leaped from one pine tree to the next, Hweilan’s eyes were already on it, expecting its movement.

  Thank you, Hweilan thought, her heart aching.

  “I’m ready,” said Hweilan, surprised.

  “Not yet,” said Gleed. “There is one more thing you need.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  WHY HAVE YOU BROUGHT ME HERE?” SAID Hweilan.

  Gleed had taken her back in the direction of his tower, but when they made it to the lake, rather than summoning the bridge, he led her along the shore to where the stream tumbled into the lake. These were the falls she had heard on her very first night in the Feywild. They had seemed to shun her then, warning her to go away, and she had avoided them ever since. Even now, standing with her bow in hand, filled with new power, she wanted nothing more than to leave. The constant susurrus of the water in the dark sent a shiver down her spine.

  The old goblin smiled at her discomfort. “A minor enchantment only,” he said. “I keep it here to ward off … undesirables.”

  That didn’t change Hweilan’s question, which he still hadn’t answered, so she asked again, “Why are we here?”

  Gleed scowled at her lack of good humor. “Ashiin taught you of the meaning of the Hand. It is an extension of the heart and mind, made up of many parts.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have all that you need,” said Gleed. “Almost.”

  She raised an eyebrow, but she was still wearing the bone mask, so he did not see it.

  “Where you are from, hunters have hounds, do they not? And even the Master hunts with his wolves.”

  “So?”

  “So I am thinking the Hand could use a wolf.”

  He turned to face the falls, raised his staff, and shouted something in his native tongue.

  Beside the stream, a huge tree, gnarled and twisted with age … moved. Hweilan gasped and took a step back. Two knots about halfway up the tree’s trunk parted, one moving up, the other down, and Hweilan realized they were more than just knots. They were eyelids. Two shining eyes—one amber as hardened sap in sunlight, the other a rich brown not unlike the color of Gleed’s favorite tea—looked down on them.

  “Gergalgellem,” Gleed said to it, “if you would be so kind.”

  The tree twisted further, lowering one massive branch into the water, parting it like a torn curtain. Beyond lay a cave.

  “Follow me,” said Gleed, and he stepped into the stream, skipping over rocks just below the surface, stepping in to the deeper water that rose well above his knees, then climbing onto the lip of rock and into the cave.

  Hweilan followed, soaking her boots in the crossing, then having to bend low to fit inside. No sooner had she passed inside the cave than the tree outside moved, and the water fell back over the entrance.

  Whether it was Ashiin’s spirit, Nendawen’s blessing, or just Hweilan’s intuition, something about this errand seemed wrong, as if they shouldn’t be here.

  Green light from Gleed’s staff lit their way as he took them deeper and deeper into the earth, through dripping tunnels that twisted and turned, sometimes even seeming to spiral back around. Hweilan could sense an immense weight overhead, and her brain knew for certain—

  We’re under the lake, Hweilan thought.

  “Where are we going, Gleed? I’ve never heard of a wolf living under a lake.”

  Gleed kept walking as he talked. “I’ve kept him down here, safe from prying eyes.”

  “Him?”

  “It was a near thing. When I went back for him, something else was nearby, looking for bones of its own. Some thing of Jagun Ghen, I think. I risked my shriveled old neck to retrieve these things, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know,” she said. “ ‘A wolf’ and ‘him’ and ‘bones.’ What are you going on about?”

  Gleed stopped, turned to face her, and the light of his staff flared. The green glow spread out, and Hweilan saw that they had stopped in a large chamber. Arcane and holy symbols glimmered on the stone walls and from the dozens of stalactites and stalagmites throughout the chamber.

  She had never seen the old goblin look more pleased with himself. “Come. Look.”

  He motioned with his hand to a mound of stone behind him. It might have been a massive stalagmite once, but it had been flattened and hollowed out, forming a stone basin, filled with water that drip-drip-dripped continually from above. Rivulets of overflow ran off one side, forming a small stream that ran off into the darkness.

  Gleed held the light of his staff over the water, and as Hweilan looked down, she saw that the basin was no more than a couple of feet deep, the water clear as finest crystal. The scent of it—she had never smelled water so clean and pure—defied all reason when she saw what was at the bottom of it.

  A pile of bones, the round, grinning skull resting on top.

  “That’s …?”

  “Lendri,” said Gleed.

  Hweilan was more confused than ever. What did this have to do with—?

  “You remember what we spoke about before,” said Gleed. “That Lendri might know things. About you. Things that you could … put to use when the time comes. Well, every hunter needs a wolf. You are Vil Adanrath. The way of the wolf is the way of your people. Call him. Call Lendri. Bring him back to fight at your side and redeem himself.”

  Hweilan let that settle in. If Lendri would come, he would be a powerful ally. But he’d told her that wouldn’t happen.

  “He saw this coming,” said Hweilan, though it was more to herself.

  “What?” said Gleed.

  “Lendri saw this coming somehow,” she said. “It’s why he told me what he did: ‘You can call me, but I will not return. Not even for you.’ ”

  Gleed nodded and finished for her, “ ‘Let my exile end. Let me rest.’ Heed my counsel, Hweilan. Do this, and you may both get what you want. You need an ally. For now and for later. If this Lendri helps you, perhaps he will earn his rest at last.”

  Hweilan looked down at the bones for a long time.

  At last she tore her gaze away from Lendri’s bones, looked at Gleed, and said, “Tell me what I must do.”

  The old goblin smiled, the old mischief back, and said, “Take off the mask.”

  Hweilan reached for the strap and took off the helmet, severing her link with Ashiin’s spirit.

  Gleed gave the bone mask in her hand a pointed look. “She is a good friend to you, but she is the Master’s, heart and soul. After you’ve sent Jagun Ghen and his ilk back to the Abyss, if you choose to set your sights elsewhere …”

  He didn’t finish the thought. Didn’t need to.

  She said, “I’ll deal with that when the time comes. Now what do I do?”

  Gleed’s mirth faded. His one good eye closed to little more than a slit, and he fixed the other on her. “Tonight, Hweilan, we walk the ghost path. You must not falter, and you must not fear. I can get you there. I can bring you back. But only you can call your friend.”

  “I understand.”

  The old goblin prepared the rite. He prayed to Dedunan, his voice bold and clear, as he sprinkled a fine powder of ground oak leaves around the rim of the basin. Where the trickle of water spilled over the basin, he poured even more, then kissed the rim. He then took holly berries, crushed them one at a time between his fingers, and painted a stripe down the back of both his and Hweilan’s eyelids, then a long stripe from forehead, down the nose, across the lips, and fina
lly ending at the chin.

  “So that all we see and all we speak may have the Blessing of the Forest Father,” he said.

  When he was finished, he sprinkled more things into the water. Their scent told Hweilan what some of them were—dried rose petals, blue pine, moss, and lichen—but many were strange to her, smelling sweet, foul, and everything in between.

  “Drakthna will stop our hearts,” he said, “and the roots of the sweet white iruil will wake them again.”

  Hweilan swallowed hard and said, “You mean …?”

  “We walk the ghost path, girl. The living do not go there. Only the dead.”

  He put both hands into the basin, formed a cup with his palms, then lifted them out. He drank the water, though much of it spilled down his face and neck.

  Hweilan stepped forward. She had a bad history with drinking Gleed’s concoctions. She swore to herself that if she woke naked in the woods after this, her first order of business would be drowning the little goblin in his own lake. But surely if he was drinking the same thing, had even gone first …

  “Hurry, girl,” said Gleed, and she heard the strain in his voice.

  She put both her hands into the water. It was cold, but in a way that was more soothing than painful. Blood still smeared her hands in places. Too late for it now. Hweilan brought her full palms to her face and drank.

  The water had an earthy taste, and it seemed to go to work inside her at once.

  Her body began trembling so badly that she had to sit down. Other than the rite in which she’d eaten part of Nendawen’s heart, she hadn’t had a thing to eat since the day before, and her body seemed light and fragile as a hollow eggshell.

  Only a few feet away, Gleed shuddered, his breath caught in his throat, and he fell over. His head actually bounced off the stone floor as it hit.

  Hweilan’s heart had taken on an irregular beat, each more painful than the last, and she just had time to set her bow aside and lower herself to the ground when the darkness closed in around her.

  Sight did not return first, but sound. She could hear a wind blowing, and from somewhere far off the raucous song of a murder of crows. There was no sensation of opening her eyes, but suddenly she could see. No sense of smell or taste, or even feeling. Hweilan had the senses found only in unremembered dreams.

  What she saw did nothing to dispel her feeling of dreaming. A featureless plain, gray as ancient dust, stretched in every direction. Something on the plain swirled, but she could not tell if it was dead grass or swirls of dust. Her vision wouldn’t focus.

  Wolves howled in the distance, and she heard the ravens again.

  “Gleed?” she called, though she couldn’t even be sure that she had a mouth. But she heard the words, and she heard the response—

  “Here … here …”

  She went toward the sound, wading through the grayness. She found him, though he seemed little more than a slightly darker, slightly more solid bit of grayness amidst the gloom.

  “What is this place?” she said.

  “Where the dead wait,” said Gleed. “Quickly. Find your friend.”

  “How?”

  “He is your blood, and sworn by oaths to your family. You are bound. Follow that binding.”

  She had no idea what he meant by that, but just thinking about it, she became aware of … something. Some sense pulling her in one direction. She followed it.

  The howls of the wolves faded behind them, but the sounds of ravens grew closer. And then Hweilan saw them—a black cloud of hundreds of ravens, swirling over the gray plain, one or more of them diving down again and again.

  And then she saw at what the birds were diving. Lendri walked the plain beneath them. Or shuffled more like. He moved like an injured man, in a sort of dragging limp, one hand clutched to his body. As she drew closer, she saw why. Just as she had seen him before, he held his own heart in his hand, and the gaping wound in his midsection that had killed him was still a bloody mess. Blood drenched his naked body. Only his almost-white hair seemed clean, which struck her as strange.

  “Lendri,” she called.

  He didn’t stop. Didn’t even look up.

  A raven dived down, gouged a large bit of flesh out of Lendri’s back, then flew off again.

  “Go to him,” said Gleed.

  She did, stopping in front of him.

  One of the ravens shrieked and dived for Hweilan, but one look from her and it exploded in a mass of burning feathers. The others cawed their displeasure and flew away.

  “I will not come,” said Lendri, not even looking up.

  She said, “Why?”

  “Let me rest,” said Lendri. “Just let me rest.”

  Hweilan heard the ravens again. They had flown off, but not far.

  “As soon as I leave, they’ll come back. Is that the rest you want?”

  He looked up at her then. His eyes were empty sockets, and tears of blood leaked from them. “Why can’t I rest? So long … I have been apart from my people. Even in death, I cannot join them. Why?”

  “Because your work is not done,” said Gleed.

  “What more can I give? I died trying to protect the girl.”

  “What did you do?” said Hweilan.

  “I tried to stop that monster, and he ripped my heart out.”

  “No. Not that. What did you do that earned your exile?”

  Lendri actually laughed at that, though it was all bitterness. “I chose my friend over my clan. When my sister chose to love a man rather than one of her own people, my father sent me to kill him and bring her back. But she was already carrying his child. And he was my friend. So I chose to stand by them.”

  “That’s it?” Hweilan couldn’t believe it.

  Or could she? Her mother was only part Vil Adanrath, but Hweilan had run up against that unyielding hardness on many occasions. Her father had often said that her mother’s will could crack stone and make the mountains bleed.

  “I broke my oaths,” said Lendri.

  That hit Hweilan hard. Was what Gleed was suggesting to her—fulfill her mission as Nendawen’s Hand, then run on her own—anything less? No. She knew it was far worse. Betraying oaths to family and clan was one thing. Betraying an oath to a being like Nendawen …

  “Did you know my mother’s father?” said Hweilan.

  Lendri recoiled at that, so strongly that for a moment he was no longer a bloody, broken elf, but looked like a wolf, caught in a trap.

  “You did, didn’t you?” said Hweilan. “Why does the question frighten you? Tell me his name!”

  “I knew him,” said Lendri, “and I know his name. But I will not speak it before a goblin sorcerer.”

  Hweilan tried to look at Gleed, to see his reaction, but he was still only a blur. No matter. She’d deal with that later. She was here for a different reason.

  “Lendri, Nendawen came to you. Sent you to find me. You remember?”

  He turned away at that, trying to get away, but she stopped him.

  “I told you before—on the mountain that day with Menduarthis—and I tell you now: I want this. I want to serve Nendawen and hunt those who killed our family.”

  He turned back to her then and looked up at her through those empty, bloody sockets. “Then why do you ask your father’s name?”

  Hweilan ignored the question. “Will you come back with me? I need your help.”

  Lendri closed his empty eyes and turned away. “Let me rest.”

  “You have no rest, you fool!” said Gleed. “You have only an endless existence of ravens pecking at your flesh while you feel sorry for yourself. You want to rejoin your people? Regain your honor? Die in peace? Then redeem yourself! Help the girl!”

  “I am the last,” Hweilan told Lendri. “The last of our people. Your oaths to my ancestor bind me to you. As long as I need you, you will never rest. Come with me, Lendri. I beg you. Help me.”

  “She speaks the truth,” said Gleed. “And consider this: She may be your last chance. Help her, redeem y
ourself, and then you may die in peace. But if you stay here, sniveling under hungry ravens when you could have helped her, and she dies out there fighting Jagun Ghen, who do you think will come for you then? It will not be Dedunan, come to take you to rest. If Nendawen comes, it will only be to drag away your cowardly soul to make sport for a High Hunt.”

  “Be silent, Gleed,” said Hweilan, then she returned her attention to Lendri. “He will not help me to save his own skin—or his own soul. He will not help me for his own reward. He will help me because it is the right thing to do. That is honor.”

  The featureless plain suddenly shook around her, and Hweilan heard a huge thunder that she instinctively knew was only in her mind. Ravens cawed again, but they seemed faint, and Lendri was fading away.

  “The iruil!” Gleed shouted. “It’s working. It’s—”

  Hweilan and Gleed both sat up at the same time, drawing in such a great draft of air that it sounded like a scream in reverse.

  “—bringing us back!” Gleed finished.

  Hweilan was still trembling and felt weaker than ever. Gleed fumbled for his staff, and its meager glow flared again, but Hweilan couldn’t make her eyes focus. Everything seemed to waver before her.

  “Did it work?” she said. It came out a raw croak.

  “It is in Dedunan’s hands now.”

  Hweilan heard it first. A bubbling like a heated cauldron. The sound drew her gaze to the basin. Still shaking, she forced herself to her feet. Gleed did the same beside her, leaning heavily on his staff. Together, they looked at the basin. The sprinkling of oak leaves around its rim was sparkling, and the water within was no longer clear or calm. It had gone cloudy as milk. It bubbled. Steam rose from the water, and a thousand lights of as many colors danced within.

  Gleed rasped, “I think we should stand ba—”

  The basin erupted in a spray of water, steam, and light. A wolf leaped out of the water. It landed on the ground, its legs shaking, then fell over. Hweilan noticed at once that its sides weren’t moving. The wolf wasn’t breathing.

  She said, “Is that …?”