Sorin glanced over at Dane, his confusion obvious.
“Tricked,” Krea clarified. “Set up. Led into a trap.”
Dane nodded. “Yep. You was rused proper, and it were a lead what did it.”
Krea turned to Dane. “You think so? What makes you say that?”
Dane looked up at her and leaned forward conspiratorially. “Didn’t you listen? They said them torbadyn would be worrying over making more troops so they wouldn’t be sneaking around the woods looking for no spies, but they was looking for spies and they found them. That’s ’cause they knowed the spies was coming, and who could know that ’cept a lead what sent them?”
“What?” Sorin demanded.
Krea let Dane’s words roll around in her head for a moment, then turned back to Sorin. “He is saying that you were sent into a trap by someone you trusted, not a torbadyn, but a leader of the callers. By someone who would be in the position of giving you orders.”
Sorin looked from her to Dane and back again. His attention went briefly to the trilling in the woods behind him before he caught himself and snapped his head back around to face the fire. He said nothing, and in the dim light his expression remained unreadable. After a few minutes and more fire poking, he shook his head. “Wouldn’t happen,” he said finally. His tone lacked the certainty of his words.
“So, if you was to see your friend again and you knowed it was him, could you make him turn back to a man?” Dane asked.
“I don’t know,” Sorin admitted. “It has never been done, but that’s not to say it can’t happen. But we are supposed to establish the connection before the shift, not after.”
“So Krea told me that she comed from a egg. I says she’s lyin’. What’s the truth?”
Krea glared over at Dane, but he just grinned and fiddled with his burl. As cute as his grin was, it was getting easier to ignore.
Sorin chuckled. “She wasn’t lying, little morni. She is a kyrni, and all kyrni are hatched from eggs.”
For no reason other than that he needed it, Krea shoved Dane off his already wobbly stump. He was grinning even bigger when he climbed back on it. Whatever he was about to say wasn’t going to be good. “Do that mean some lady spent all them months sitting on her?”
Sorin tried unsuccessfully to hide his smile by rubbing his chin with his fist. Dane was having quite the little merrymaking at her expense, but that was okay. Tomorrow he would be sitting behind her again, and when he fell asleep, as he always did, she was going to dump him on his little wizard butt.
“No, kyrni are created from a mating between two kyrni while they are both in their counter, their animal form,” Sorin clarified before Dane could interrupt him. “The eggs are laid by the kyrni counter and are then given to the temple Guardians to care for. After thirteen months, the egg hatches and the footed kyrni child enters the world for the first time. They emerge from the egg, looking physically like a human child with five or so years. They grow quickly at first, slowing as they reach puberty. A few years after their first shift, they seem to stop aging altogether, physically at least.”
He had explained all of that to her before, but it was still exciting to hear. Exciting and terrifying at the same time. Dane seemed impressed. He was quiet, at least. Sorin stood and kicked some dirt into the fire, reducing it to a pit of glowing embers. “We will need to ride hard from here on out if we are to make Shaylith before the wedding consumes the council,” he informed them. “Better find your bed and make use of it while you can.”
Krea didn’t need to be told twice. In no time, she was tucked into her bedroll with her blanket pulled up to her chin, the knife down by her feet and her money bag pushing against her back.
“What does you think Shaylith will look like?” Dane whispered from his bedroll next to her.
“I can’t even guess,” she answered, and it was the truth.
###
The next morning Krea woke to a string of profanity she had never heard the likes of streaming from Sorin’s mouth. He stood amid one of the many piles of their belongings, strewn from one end of camp to another. Their clothing was lying in the grass, hanging from branches and balled up under logs. The tack had been pulled from the limbs and, at first glance, disassembled. The saddle blankets formed a neat little row across the trail and, probably the most serious of all, their food was scattered all over the ground. Much of it appeared to be missing, and what was left was already under attack by ants and beetles.
Krea and Dane were on their feet in an instant, but the chaos was so great neither of them knew quite where to start. Krea had only a moment to wonder what had wreaked such havoc before the little sheema jumped down out of a tree, scurried across the grass, snatched a pair of Dane’s stockings in its mouth, and headed back for the tree.
“Hey,” Dane screamed, making chase. “You get back here with them leggings! Them is mine!”
Sorin pitched a stone with such speed and accuracy Krea was hard-pressed to believe he hadn’t used a sling. The rock hit the sheema dead on its left haunch with enough force to send the creature tumbling in the grass. In a blur, the sheema spun around and hissed, its head low, body crouched, tail curled up over its back. Sorin stalked forward with a fist full of rocks and a dark expression, clearly undaunted by the sheema’s display of teeth. With his fae-wood hand, he traced a symbol in the air that Krea didn’t recognize, then waved his arm across their camp in a grand, swooping gesture.
“I want the rest of our belongings back, and I want them right now,” he demanded of the creature, holding up his arm.
The sheema darted left, and Sorin jogged left with it. He held his hand palm out toward the animal. As if he projected an invisible wall, the sheema couldn’t leave the clearing. Again, the sheema tried to run, this time to the right, but Sorin hurried to match its steps. “I want them here, in a pile.” He pointed to the ground in front of him. “Everything! The bits, the ropes, everything.”
The sheema’s tail straightened and bushed. The very tip twitched and the little creature shimmered. In the blink of an eye, the sheema shifted from brown to green. Krea gasped. She could hardly see it against the backdrop of the forest. Where rich brown fur had covered the sheema’s body, it now boasted a coat of the deepest moss green she had ever seen. The light tan stripes were gone, replaced with the green of new leaves. The entire creature was green except its eyes. They now burned a deep brown.
“It’s a faerie,” Krea announced, stating the obvious.
“Aye, it is,” Sorin answered, moving again to magically prevent the sheema from climbing a tree. “It won’t work,” he informed it. “I can still see you, and I am not letting go of this spell until I have all of our belongings back from wherever you stashed them.”
“It understands what you is saying?” Dane asked, piling his clothes across his arm as he picked them up off the ground.
In answer to his question, the faerie hissed again, baring impressive fangs, and shimmered. Krea stared as the faerie blurred, rose to its hind legs, and transformed into something more human than animal, but quite unlike anything she had ever seen. Its thick fur smoothed out to a flat film of dark gray that looked, from where she stood, at least, to be fuzzy like the moss that clung to large boulders. Its head rounded out into a flatter version of a human’s, but it was nearly swallowed by huge leaf-green eyes. The sheema’s long, bushy tail was now sleek and gray and twitching furiously just above the ground where it crouched. The only thing that didn’t change were its hands and feet. Other than being larger, seeing as how the creature now stood about waist high, they were still the little clawed appendages of a tree climber.
Something about the faerie’s color— or maybe it was its short fuzzy fur— made it difficult to look at. It shifted and blurred the way a river rock looked under the rushing water. She just couldn’t keep its image still.
Without warning, the faerie creature launched itself through the air straight for Sorin. He jumped backward. His hand dropped and the spell diss
olved. In an instant, the sheema scurried up a tree, crouched on a branch, and stared down at Sorin with angry green eyes. Even in its humanlike form, the faerie moved faster than any living thing should, and without a doubt, had it intended Sorin harm, he would not still be standing.
The odd creature twisted its tail around the limb and leaned down toward Sorin, as it had the day before. Ears that reminded Krea of little arched bat wings fanned out to the side of the sheema’s head, and the row of small horns popped up once again in an expression of alert surprise. Sorin glared back, and for an uncomfortable moment Krea wasn’t sure who was going to lunge at whom.
“Nyshi will not hurt myself!” the faerie demanded with a bob of its head. “Nyshi shame,” it finished, laying its ears along its head and leaning so far forward only its tail kept it from falling off the limb.
Krea grabbed Dane and shook him. “It talks!” she said, trying not to yell. “Did you see that? Did you hear it talk?”
Dane nodded and patted her arm absently, still staring slack-jawed at the creature, the clothing he had retrieved forgotten back on the ground.
“It's so cute,” Krea said. “But, I think it's about to eat you, Sorin. Maybe you should apologize for hitting it with a rock.”
Sorin leveled one of his blood-freezing glares at her.
Krea just shrugged and focused on her bare feet. Her cold bare feet. Then she remembered her boots. Realization crashed down like a falling tree as she spun around to where her boots should have been and saw only grass. The little monster had stolen her boots. Her gaze fell on the bedroll. “No way,” she told herself. “Not possible.”
Even though part of her didn’t want to know, she picked her way back to the blanket and felt for her belongings. Sure enough, the money bag was gone. The dagger had been moved as well, but the sheema hadn’t taken it far. It lay between her bedroll and Dane’s, carefully placed in a circle of rocks and adorned with leaves, nuts, and other forest treasures.
Still puzzling out how the sheema had taken her things without waking her, Krea picked up her own rock and turned back to the little faerie. “Where is my money bag?” she demanded.
“Oh,” Sorin drawled with an infuriating smirk. “She’s not so cute now that she stole your precious pouch.”
“Shut up!” Krea snapped. “This is serious.”
“It’s a she?” Dane asked, still staring up at the creature.
Sorin’s eyebrows shot up at Krea’s retort. “I see. When she stole our food, our clothes, and our tack, she was just a misunderstood faerie and I was overreacting. Now that she has your money, well, that changes everything. Now, it’s serious. Dane, stop everything. This has now been declared a serious situation. Krea’s money is missing.”
Krea jabbed her fists onto her hips. The man was infuriating. “That is not what I meant,” she said, trying to regain some sense of composure. “I just meant that we need to be finding our belongings, not standing here arguing.”
“Does you got a name?” Dane asked, extending his hand toward the storm-gray creature. The sheema cocked her head in his direction and blinked. “Is you called Nyshi?”
“No,” Sorin answered, finally abandoning his rocks completely. “Nyshi is your name, or your kind, I should say.” When Dane wrinkled his brow, Sorin clarified. “You are called a nyshi by the fae. That’s their name for a person who wields magic. She is a faerie, and you are a nyshi.”
“Oh,” Dane said, turning back to the faerie, who was watching them with rapt attention. Her ears were up again, and as best Krea could tell given the strange way she seemed to blur, her horns were up as well.
Krea dropped her rock and stepped gingerly up to the tree. It was time for a new strategy. “Do you have a name?” she asked.
The faerie sniffed the air. “Nyshi magic burn. Poor nyshi. But it okay. Myself is here now. Nyshi be good.”
Dane and Krea both looked at each other in confusion. Krea had no idea what the little creature was talking about. Sorin, on the other hand, seemed more concerned than confused. “Which nyshi’s magic burns?” he asked.
At the sound of Sorin’s voice, the sheema flattened her ears again and pinned her three little horns to her fuzzy scalp. She glared to the extent her enormous green eyes could glare and gave a little hiss. “Shame on nyshi. Shame on it that tried to hurt myself.”
“Maybe her name is Myself,” Dane offered.
“That’s an odd name,” Krea said.
Dane nodded. “Well, she ain’t exactly regular.”
He had a point.
Sorin pressed his palm to his forehead and rubbed his temple as she had seen him do so many times before. After a moment, he collected himself again and was ready for another try. “You’re right,” he began. “I was wrong. I’m sorry. I will not try to hurt you again.”
The sheema sat back on her hind legs and regarded Sorin with obvious suspicion. Sorin just folded his arms and waited. Finally, she dropped back to all fours and cocked her head to the side. “Myself like other nyshi. Others is not mean.”
“I like them, too,” Sorin agreed. “They are much nicer than I am, and they really need their belongings back. Will you give the nice nyshi back the things you took from them?”
The faerie unfurled her tail and leaped out of the tree; her feet hit the ground in silence. Then, with a rustle no louder than a bird’s wings, she ran in a gray blur over to where Krea and Dane stood. “Myself hid nyshi treasures from nasty squirrels,” she confided. “All treasures is safe.”
“Oh,” Dane said. “Them squirrels was trying to steal our stuff?”
Krea didn’t know what to say or, for that matter, who to say it to: Dane or the faerie. Neither one of them was making much sense. The sheema just nodded. In another instant, she had darted away on silent feet and stopped directly in front of Krea. The fae stood up on her hind legs and grabbed Krea’s tunic with her clawed hands. “Nyshi burn,” she whispered, pulling Krea down toward her. “Nyshi must let magic out to be free.”
Even standing so close to the creature, Krea could not bring her into focus. She blurred and fuzzed into everything around her. It wasn’t until pain shot down her arm that she realized she was starting to shift. Sorin had her by the shoulder, shaking her violently. The sheema hissed at Sorin again, and for a second it looked like she was going to attack him, but he held out his hand and the creature backed away.
“The nyshi cannot let her magic out,” Sorin explained. “If she does, it will hurt her.”
The sheema peered up at them with eyes as dark as a cave. “No,” she said, falling back to four feet. “Nyshi hurt by burning magic.”
Sorin shook his head. “I know you mean well, faerie, but Krea’s magic must stay inside until she has help letting it out. Can we have our things back now? Will you show us where you hid them from the squirrels?”
“Nasty squirrels!” The sheema sneezed and then disappeared in a blur of gray. A second later, she was standing beneath a nearby tree trilling at them, once again in her small brown tree-climber form.
“Could it get any worse?” Sorin mumbled as he strode off toward the faerie. “I take that back. Mother of mercy, I take it back. I’m sorry I even suggested such a question. What was I…” His words trailed off as he followed the sheema into the woods, presumably to rescue their treasures from the squirrels.
“She ain’t so bad,” Dane commented as he started collecting his clothing again. “I think she’s cute.”
“If she finds my money, she will be cute. If not, I will have to make a belt out of her tail.”
Dane glared up at her. “Ain’t no way you is gonna catch her.”
Krea shrugged. “I sure will try.”
Chapter 19 - Kyrni
By the time Krea finally strapped her packs to Caldir’s saddle, the sun was well into the sky. The sheema had led them like a whirlwind up trees and into holes to her many hiding places, one of which, much to Krea’s relief, concealed the money pouch and the horses’ bits. Sorin still mumbled
as he went, but both Krea and Dane had stopped trying to understand what he was saying.
As they finished clearing camp and made ready to ride, the sheema watched them through huge green eyes, horns raised and ears perked out to the side. Now that she was back in her tree-climber form, she was as easy to see as the branch she was perched on. When Krea asked Sorin about it, he just looked up at the sheema and let out a long breath. “She has three forms,” he finally replied as he swung into the saddle. “Earth form, tree form, and shadow form. When she is in shadow form, she is hard to find, hard to look at, and impossible to catch.”
“Told you so,” Dane whispered.
Krea ignored him and climbed onto Caldir. “That makes three,” she said. “Like the mage said, I should look for threes. Earth, tree, and shadow. I need to find a thong and braid it into my hair. What color should I use?” She started to reach for a bag, but Dane was already swinging up behind her.
“You can find a cord when we stop,” Sorin said. “Let’s just get moving. It will improve my mood considerably.”
Krea was disappointed, but she didn’t argue. Goddess knew they could let nothing stand in the way of improving Sorin’s mood.
“How does you know it’s a girl?” Dane asked as they fell in behind Drindoc.
“They’re all girls,” Sorin returned.
“What do you mean, they is all girls? There has to be a boy or…” He paused, and Krea didn’t have to turn around to know he was rubbing his burl. He rubbed at it constantly, but especially when he was upset, tired, or in this case, embarrassed.
“The rules of the fae are not the same as your rules, Dane. If there are male sheema, no one has ever seen one, nor has anyone ever seen a baby sheema. At least, as far as I am aware. There are only adult female sheema, and not many of those.”
“So, she is special,” Krea said.
“Aye,” Sorin said. “You saw the kind of special she is. Most of our clothes were buried, most of our food is gone, and she raided our camp without any one of us hearing a sound. A special kind of trouble. A special I can do without.”
Hand and Talon (World of Kyrni Book 1) Page 29