by Cindy Dees
Satisfied with her present predicament, she sat down on a fallen log to wait for someone to find her.
It took only a few minutes for a chorus of shouts to become audible. It sounded like the general had sent out an entire company of the palace guard looking for her. Excellent. Fly, my beloved children. Fly far from here.
She let the guards come, fanning out in a line, carrying torches, and when they drew close, she resumed dancing in a little patch of moss.
“I’ve found her!” a guard shouted. “Your Highness, you need to come inside. It’s not safe out here.”
“Of course it is.” She hummed a tune and danced a little jig to it for good measure.
A half dozen guards converged on her position, and one of them, who acted like a leader, said gravely, “My lady, there has been a death in the palace tonight. I request that you come inside with me and my men now, for your own safety.”
“People die all the time. And I’m enjoying the evening.” She twirled in a circle, fluffing her skirts around her so they would fly out like a parasol as she spun.
“We have reason to believe this death was a murder.”
She stopped spinning, her hair and skirts askew. “Murder? Here? That’s ridiculous.”
“Nonetheless, it has happened, Your Highness. Your lord husband would be gravely worried if he knew you were out here by yourself.”
She laughed gaily. “He would be more concerned if I were out here at this time of night and I was not by myself.”
The guards grinned reluctantly.
“Please, my lady. Come with us.”
She heard the tone of an indirect order creeping into his voice. “Oh, all right. Except I’ve lost my stockings somewhere around here. I laid them down…”
It took several minutes more of searching until her white silk stockings were located, draped over the log she’d sat on before. At last, the entire gaggle of guards and she made their way out of the deep woods and back toward the palace.
Once she had daintily picked her way out of the woods and had let the men guide her onto a main path, she asked the head guard, “Who was murdered?”
“It appears that High-Maker Meridine has met her end.”
“No! Shocking!” She did not have to feign the emotion. It was shocking to think of. “How are Archduchess Quaya and Grand Marshal Korovo taking the news?”
“She’s distraught. He’s stoic, but devastated.”
Genuine grief speared through her. “I’m so sorry for their loss. It must be terrible for them.”
“Indeed.”
As they approached the palace from the gardens, an abnormal number of lights burned in windows throughout the enormous complex of wings and halls. “The place looks like it’s in an uproar,” she murmured.
“That’s an understatement,” the guard muttered.
“Oh, dear. And here you and your men are chasing me all over the palace grounds. I don’t know what came over me. Thank you so much for finding me and escorting me back to the palace.”
The guard made her a short half bow as one of his men opened an uncharacteristically barred door for her. “Several of my men will see you to your chambers along with men from the house guard. The rest of my men and I must return to our posts.”
She touched his arm briefly, all the familiarity her rank and his allowed between them, before turning and sweeping into the palace.
Another large phalanx of guards met her at the door, and a harried-looking sergeant at arms assigned a half dozen soldiers to see her up to the Haraland chambers.
It was not hard to act dazed and confused as Kothite functionaries and Kothite lords and ladies hurried through the halls of the palace. She’d never seen the place so stirred up. She could physically feel the mental energy of agitated Kothites zinging through the air as she made her way through the throngs of people toward her rooms.
No one stopped her to specifically poke into her mind, but she had no doubt whatsoever that multiple high lords and a few archdukes did just that. She focused with all her might on the gardens, on the feel of dancing with abandon, that moment of disorientation when she’d realized she was lost.
Let them chew on that.
She made it to her chambers and asked the palace guard to search her rooms before they left her alone for the evening. When they declared the rooms clear, she nodded her thanks and closed the door behind them. And that was when she fell across her bed, buried her face in a pillow, and sobbed out her stress and fear.
* * *
The party did not spend the night with Nerra and Drest. Will led his friends into the forest, well away from the grove. Personally, Will couldn’t stand to be close to Nerra’s tree after her connection to it had been broken. Bloodroot, on the other hand, seemed aggressively, darkly pleased. Will got the impression a chain of events had been set in motion that excited the tree lord. Which could not be anything good. Bloodroot thrived on death and destruction.
Only minutes after Kendrick severed the dryad’s link to the great rowan tree, it had drooped and wilted, losing its color and vibrancy. Leaves had started drifting to the ground, and death had clung to the increasingly bare branches. The entire grove had lost its luster the moment the dryad had been separated from her tree. It was as if the grove’s luminous magic expired, a candle snuffed out.
Kendrick was distraught over what he’d done. No amount of reassuring him that the dryad had wanted the separation and that it was worlds better than killing her would console him.
As Will led the party away from the blighted grove, the entire Wychwold felt less alive. It was disturbing to him at a deep and fundamental level of his being. He would have fled the grove all night if the others had let him, but Rosana eventually asked for a halt to eat and sleep, and he’d acceded reluctantly. They set up camp, and he sat morosely by the fire staring into the flames.
Eben came to sit beside him. “Do you feel it, too?” the jann asked.
“Feel what?”
“The change in the forest. The elements feel … out of alignment.”
“How so?” Will asked curiously.
Eben shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just a feeling. Like balance was lost.”
“Bloodroot’s ready to throw a cursed party in my noggin. And he’s the king of balance. He’s all about death as the natural and necessary counterbalance to life.”
“Yeah, well, that feels like a load of dung to me at the moment,” Eben grumbled. “This wold isn’t right anymore.”
Will didn’t know what to say. Intellectually, he agreed with Eben. But in his heart, he had the feeling a great and needed chain of events had been set in motion.
“Did you see the way those dark fae reacted after Kendrick sliced the tree and Nerra?” Eben asked abruptly.
“No. I was focused entirely on Nerra,” Will admitted.
“They were all smiles among themselves. While all the other fae were busy weeping and wailing, they gloated like they’d just won a prize.”
Huh. What could that be all about? From what little he’d heard about fae over the years, they were best steered well wide of. The politics of his own world were complicated enough. He didn’t need to get himself embroiled in theirs, as well.
Eben picked up Eliassan’s bow, turning it over in his hands. The firelight danced off its warmly golden wood, making the weapon seem almost alive. It was a double curved great bow and stood nearly as tall as Rosana, its smooth, sinuous silhouette speaking of exceptional quality workmanship.
Experimentally, Eben fashioned a crude arrow, whittling a shaft from a tree branch and fletching it with trimmed leaves tied on with a bit of thread.
Sha’Li said around a mouthful of roasted quail, “They say an archer never misses with Eliassan’s bow. See if you can hit that white pine over there.” She pointed with a drumstick at a large tree some twenty yards beyond the clearing at the edge of the firelight.
Eben nocked the arrow and drew back the string. Will was surprised to see his powerful f
riend actually have to strain to pull the bow. Angling the arrow tip up to compensate for its natural drop in flight, Eben loosed the arrow.
With a twang of string and a flash of green too fast for the eye to follow, the arrow flew up into the night. A moment later, Will stared as the arrow quivered in the trunk of the white pine tree, stuck dead center in its trunk about chest high to a man.
“The legends must be true,” Eben breathed. “I’m no better than an average archer, and yet that crude shaft landed exactly where I aimed it.”
Rynn commented, “Then you’d best get busy making yourself more arrows. We could use a decent archer.”
Rosana spent the evening fashioning a torn waterskin into a quiver for Eben to hold his rough arrows. Sha’Li cut fletches out of the feathers from the brace of quail that had been their supper, and Rynn busied himself rolling an extra bowstring for Eben out of a piece of sinew Rynn pulled out of his pack. Only Kendrick and Will had no craft projects to busy their hands.
Will moved over beside Kendrick, who stared morosely into the fire. “How are you doing? You seem a little down.”
Kendrick grunted. “Don’t patronize me.”
“Okay. Let me rephrase. What’s got you in a funk now? You look on the verge of slitting your wrists.”
Kendrick actually smiled a little at that. “That’s better. And the thought has crossed my mind.”
That took Will aback more than he let on. Kendrick’s despair was worse than Will had realized if he’d actually considered ending his own life. “Well? Spill what’s troubling you, then. We don’t keep secrets among ourselves out here. Breeds too much festering ill will.”
“Of course you keep secrets. Everyone does,” Kendrick retorted.
Will didn’t feel like debating the point. Particularly since he harbored certain drastic secrets of his own. Like his real name. The identity of his father. The fact that he worried about Bloodroot fully possessing him or driving him mad one day. Or even killing him.
“You’re dodging my question,” Will persisted. “Why are you moping like a kicked puppy?”
Kendrick picked up a long stick and poked at the fire, sending up a shower of sparks. “I have failed in every way that matters. I have become the worst of Kerryl and lost the best of what I once was, of the man my father taught me to be.”
“So you’ve run around the woods killing Keepers of the Great Beasts, stealing the scions under their protection, and forcing unwilling humans to merge with them, have you?” Will asked skeptically.
“No, of course not.”
“Then you’re not the worst of Kerryl Moonrunner.” Will kicked a loose ember back into the fire. “For that matter, today you reminded me to take the high ground and not kill the satyr. You helped us choose the honorable course of action, and furthermore, you did the difficult thing that had to be done. You took no joy in freeing Nerra, and your heart was not so hardened that her pain did not affect you. It seems to me you were very much your father’s son today.”
“Thanks for trying, Will. But”—a long, pained pause—“I am lost. Without my were-gift, I am empty. I am … nothing.”
Was this how he would be after he was done with Bloodroot and removed the treant’s seed from his chest and spirit from his heart? Cold terror coursed through him. He glanced across the fire and spied Rosana, her dark head bent over Eben’s partially sewn quiver. No. As long as he had her, he would be all right.
Sha’Li came over to sit by Kendrick’s other side. The firelight flickered off her shining black scales, making her look like some sort of elemental being not of this world.
“My kind,” she said, touching the crescent moon and star mark on her cheek, “have legends of creatures gifted with were-magics by Lunimar himself.”
Kendrick stared at her intently. “How?”
She spoke carefully, obviously trying hard to be comprehensible. “Certain tribe warriors earn such great regard from Lunimar and prove themselves to be so worthy that he grants them powers much like those Kerryl granted you.”
“What powers?” Kendrick asked with markedly more interest.
“They have the power to transform at will into a creature, part man and part animal, with enormous strength, resistance to certain forms of magic, special abilities.”
“At will?” Kendrick exclaimed. “These were-creatures control their own transformations?”
“Aye. Most of them.” Sha’Li hesitated, then continued, “Some of the were-creatures are said to be cursed. They are made by means not of Lunimar himself—by birth as the child of a were-beast, or from the bite of one. The Cursed are slaves to the cycles of the moon and perhaps to their own rage. But the ones Lunimar makes—they’re known as the Gifted. And they do, indeed, control when and where they transform to beast and back to human.”
“That would be a fine thing, indeed,” Kendrick murmured.
“If you miss your gift so greatly, perhaps there is a way to earn it back,” Sha’Li said practically.
For the first time since they’d run into Kerryl and Kendrick fighting for their lives in the Sorrow Wold, Will saw real hope light Kendrick’s hazel eyes.
“How, Sha’Li? How do I earn it?”
She shrugged. “The legends speak of heroic service as a Tribe of the Moon warrior.”
Kendrick was crestfallen.
But she continued, “Have you considered asking it of Lunimar? You have already spent a long time living as a were-boar.”
Kendrick stared morosely into the fire. “I was no hero. I was merely Kerryl’s slave. A puppet on a string.”
Sha’Li made a sound that Will took for disgust. “You protected Kerryl from harm. You were willing to listen to him when no one else would.” She shot a damning look around the fire at the others, Eben in particular, but Will was not spared the silent condemnation either.
“You had a chance the first time we found you to renounce your curse, to leave Kerryl, and to return home. Instead, you told us to cure Tarryn, and you stayed with Kerryl to learn more of the threats he perceives. You turned down an opportunity to assume your father’s post as landsgrave of Hyland, and instead, you chose to stay out here in the wilderness, risking life and limb to protect all the people of Haelos, and not just those in your father’s holding.”
“Enough, Sha’Li. I’ll not sit here and have you falsely paint me a hero that I am not.”
Will commented dryly, “Sha’Li makes a good point, you know. You’re not a totally bad guy. Maybe this Lunimar fellow would give you a chance to gain back your lost skills.”
“I wouldn’t have the first idea how to go about asking some mythic being for such a thing.” Kendrick sighed.
“I would,” Sha’Li answered quietly.
Will stared at her. She knew how to talk to a being said to be one of the twelve immortal protectors of Haelos? Since when?
She placed a hand on Kendrick’s arm. “There is a ceremony—it will summon Lunimar. If he wishes to speak with you, he will come.”
“How difficult is this ceremony to perform?” Kendrick asked guardedly.
“Not difficult at all. We’ll need a mug or goblet to hold a drink. Something to eat. And a clearing where the light of the moon can reach us.”
“Can I watch?” Will asked.
“Me, too,” Rosana piped up.
“I’d like to observe if it is not forbidden,” Rynn chimed in.
“I’ll watch if everyone else is going to,” Eben said last of all.
Sha’Li tilted her head. “Normally, the ceremonies are secret and reserved only for tribe members. But we are family, and like Will said before, we do not keep secrets from one another.”
Her words cut at Will. He’d never been honest with her. They’d fought together, died together, and he’d never found it in his heart to tell her—to tell any of them, not even Rosana—the truth. Yet here Sha’Li was, sharing the deepest secrets of her order with them.
Rosana dug out a wooden mug, which Rynn partially filled from the f
lask of wine he dug out of his pack. Eben unwrapped a loaf of bread the farmer’s wife had baked for them two days ago, and they all trooped into the woods a little way, into a clearing Sha’Li had found for them. She arranged them in a circle in the blue-gray moonlight.
Will listened with interest as she dedicated this gathering to Lunimar and the tenet that he presented. She quickly recited seven oaths, and he tried to remember them all, but failed. They had to do with protecting the innocent, defending the weak, sustaining freedom, and things of that nature, though. All seemingly worthy ideals.
Sha’Li dedicated the food and drink to Lunimar and then invited him to join their gathering. They passed around the mug, and Will dutifully took a sip of the finest wine he’d ever tasted, full-bodied and rich, so dry it all but evaporated off his tongue before he could swallow it. Give Rynn full marks for having excellent taste. The bread was crusty and hard on the outside, yeasty and satin smooth on the inside. Give the farmer’s wife full marks for her baking skills.
After they finished eating and drinking, Sha’Li set the mug of wine and plate of torn bread on the ground, then stepped back to join them in their circle. At first, nothing happened, but after a minute or two of uncomfortable silence, Will thought the moonlight might be growing a little brighter.
Surely it was just the strong wine affecting his sight.
No, the light was definitely getting stronger. And one shaft of moonlight in particular was glowing down upon the mug and plate in a visible beam of energy.
And then a man was there. One second he wasn’t, and the next he was. Will didn’t blink or look away, but he never saw the man take shape. He was just there.
Dressed entirely in white, even down to his white boots and the white gloves tucked in his white belt, the man looked around the circle until his gaze landed on Sha’Li. “Greetings, Child of the Moon. Well met.”