Of Truth and Beasts

by Barb Hendee

  Ore-Locks let out a guttural growl through clenched teeth. He wrenched sideways on the saddle’s girth. Rider and horse began to topple, and then both tumbled off the road in a crackle of branches and brush.

  “Stay down, you yiannû-billê!” Ore-Locks shouted as his opponent thrashed in the tangle.

  A clang of steel jerked Wynn’s attention ahead. The third rider had dismounted, sword in hand, and was trying to drive Chane out of the plain’s grass and toward the wagon. He was holding Chane at bay, at least, and Shade . . .

  Wynn ran past Ore-Locks before he could grab her.

  Shade had forced the patrol leader along the road into the plain. The man held out his sword, still sheathed, fending her off. Wynn saw only one way to end this quickly.

  “Chane, no blood!” she shouted.

  He ignored her and sidestepped, trying to get around to his opponent. The elven patroller shifted the other way, never taking his eyes off Chane, but he stalled at the sight of Wynn and exposed his side. It was a terrible mistake, and the only thing Wynn could hope for in a panicked moment.

  Wynn ran headlong, ducking at the last instant as the patroller raised his sword.

  “Wynn!” Chane rasped.

  Wynn’s small shoulder rammed into the elf’s side. She tumbled more than rolled through the tall grass, and she kept tumbling blindly to get out of reach. When she regained her feet, her shoulder ached even more, and she wavered a little.

  The elf rose out of the grass with his long, delicately curved sword in hand.

  “Back off, Chane,” Wynn called, and turned to face his opponent. “No blood! Na-fuil!”

  The elf hesitated. Before he changed his mind, she spun and ran for Shade.

  The leader stood three paces off, shifting at each of Shade’s snapping lunges as she tried to find an opening. He gave her none and held his ground, though his sword was now out of its sheath.

  Apparently, any tradition against spilling blood went only so far here when they thought a human had taken a majay-hì. But the leader held his blade at guard rather than readied to strike.

  The patrollers appeared to think Wynn had stolen a sacred majay-hì from their forest. But if they’d stopped to think about the obvious, she might have had a moment to explain. She was entering, rather than leaving, their lands.

  “Shade, stop it!” Wynn shouted, resisting the urge to grab the dog, and she looked to the leader. “I’m no despoiler—na-re-upâr! I didn’t steal the majay-hì. She came for me . . . â a’cheâva riam—”

  “I understand you, woman,” the leader returned in clear Numanese.

  Shade broke off her attack, circling back and rounding closely against Wynn’s legs. The leader stared at her for a few seconds, and then raised his voice.

  “Na-bârt—a’greim äiche túâg!”

  Wynn glanced back as he ordered his men to hold their positions.

  There was Chane right behind her, his back to hers. He had his shorter blade in his left hand, point down, with the dwarven sword at the ready in the other. His opponent stood beyond sword’s reach, looking to his superior.

  Back near the wagon, Ore-Locks stood in the brush, staring down, with one large fist clenched. Wynn could only assume he had the third patroller pinned under his foot.

  This was a mess, and one she should’ve foreseen. She’d seen how the an’Cróan had first reacted to Chap traveling among humans. Here, by what little she knew, majay-hì didn’t mingle among the Lhoin’na as they did among the an’Cróan, let alone outside their lands.

  Wynn reached back to touch Chane’s elbow. “It’s all right. I can . . .”

  Her voice failed when she felt the shudder in his arm, and he did not stop shaking at her touch.

  “Chane?”

  She glanced back again, and then lifted her gaze briefly.

  In the west behind her, the sun had barely dropped into the treetops beyond the wagon. Chane’s outer protection obviously wasn’t enough for him to last much longer.

  Wynn turned and grabbed his arm.

  “Get in the wagon, quick,” she whispered in Belaskian, so no one else would understand. “I can handle this, and—”

  “No!” he rasped, though it came out grating under strain.

  “Don’t be an idiot.” She jerked on his arm, though she couldn’t pull it down. “Shade and Ore-Locks are here. Just do it, before this gets any worse and someone gets suspicious.”

  He stood there until she pulled on his arm again.

  Chane half turned, lowering his head, but all Wynn saw was a featureless leather mask and dark, round lenses. He finally pulled away, slowly and widely sidestepping around his opponent.

  Wynn turned back to the leader, not knowing how to explain Chane’s disturbing appearance, so she didn’t try.

  “Look at me,” she said, brushing a hand down her short robe. “I am a sage, come from Calm Seatt to deliver an official communication from my Premin Council to that of your branch. So either please escort me to the city . . . or get out of my way.”

  Shade stepped forward, growling at the patrol leader. He didn’t even flinch, but as he looked at her, his brow wrinkled in confusion. A majay-hì, far from where it should be, was ready to turn on him for the sake of a human.

  This was the last way Wynn could’ve ever wished to enter Lhoin’na lands for the first time.

  Chane lay alone beneath the canvas in the wagon’s back, listening. He heard the clop of horses to the left and the right, and he knew the patrol was still present as the wagon rolled along. But he could also hear his companions.

  Ore-Locks whispered, “Why did they bother inspecting our horses for wounds before letting us onto the plain?”

  “I don’t know,” Wynn answered.

  Neither did Chane. He still puzzled over Wynn’s instruction that no blood be spilled in this place.

  “Wait!” Wynn whispered excitedly. “Stop the wagon.”

  The wagon lurched to a halt.

  “What’s wrong?” Ore-Locks asked.

  “Look at all of this,” Wynn breathed.

  Chane frowned. This was no time for her to be taking in the view.

  “Just flowers,” Ore-Locks scoffed. “Strange enough, but nothing to—”

  “Not just wildflowers,” Wynn answered. “They’re anasgiah, a sacred—”

  “What did you say?” interrupted a third voice.

  The strange accent and blunt tone marked it as the patrol leader, the one who had finally introduced himself as Althahk.

  “The flowers,” Wynn answered. “Why do you have anasgiah planted all over here?”

  A long pause followed.

  “You mean anamgiah?” he asked. “It is a healing and cleansing herb that grows wild, suitable to this plain’s tranquillity.”

  Chane was already trying to get his mask and glasses back on. Premin Hawes had corrected him the same way when shown translated notes from the Seven Leaves of Life. If he had heard right, one of those seven was here, all around him.

  “Yes, um, that’s what I meant,” Wynn answered.

  Chane heard Ore-Locks cluck and then flick the reins. As the wagon lurched, Chane peeked out from beneath the canvas’s edge.

  The sun had not fully set, and he ground his teeth as the glasses darkened. He waited for them to adjust, hoping he would not miss what Wynn had seen. As the wagon moved onward, a small bit of white appeared in the tall grass beyond the road’s edge.

  Chane’s gaze locked as it slipped slowly by.

  The dome of tiny, pearl-colored flowers was almost phosphorescent in the fading light. Their leaflike blossoms grew in clusters that shimmered like white velvet. The stems appeared so dark green, they were nearly black.

  All Chane wanted was to climb out and snatch them up. Then they were gone. As the wagon rocked down the road, he searched the grass, though his view was far too limited. He caught only two more glimpses of white too far out in the deep grass to see clearly.

  “Hand me the reins,” Wynn said.
>
  “Why?” Ore-Locks returned.

  “We’ll be entering the forest shortly, and I should drive.”

  This was not an adequate answer to Ore-Locks’s question, but it said much to Chane. Wynn had told him of her experiences within the Elven Territories of the an’Cróan, and of what Chap had learned concerning the Ancient Enemy’s hordes of long ago.

  No undead could enter an elven forest. Or, specifically, by Wynn’s reasoning, no forest protected by an ancient tree called Sanctuary, or its like offspring on Chane’s own continent.

  The forest itself would sense any undead and confuse it with madness and fright. Then the majay-hì would come to pull it down and slaughter it. In Chane’s time with Welstiel, that cold madman had also mentioned this.

  As an undead, how could Welstiel have known and survived to speak of it?

  Chane stroked his thumb over the ring of nothing, fitted snuggly on his left third finger. Perhaps the forest had not known Welstiel was there. Chane braced himself, waiting.

  He did not know what to expect, and Wynn had also worried about this moment. He lay there so long in hiding, wondering how close they were. He began feeling exhausted by tension, and at last his grogginess began to wane.

  Had the sun finally set?

  “Chane, you can come out,” Wynn said softly. “We’re there!”

  Chane flipped the canvas aside and heard Shade, who was also in back, growl as its corner flopped over her rump. Darkness filled his view, and he pulled off the glasses and mask, immediately pivoting onto one knee. They were surrounded by the trees.

  Wynn glanced over her shoulder, first at him and then beyond. He followed her gaze to the two elven patrollers still behind the wagon. They both took note of his sudden appearance and frowned slightly in silence.

  Likely Althahk was out in front. This was not good. If Chane was wrong about the ring, the last thing Wynn needed was to be caught bringing an undead into their land.

  Chane began to feel . . . something.

  A nervous twitch squirmed through his body. Perhaps it was only some effect of the violet concoction amplified by his anxiety. He peered into the trees all around. They were everywhere. One passed by right next to the wagon, and he leaned away on instinct.

  The trunk was as large as a small fortification tower, and at least so wide that the wagon did not reach its far side before the trailing riders drew parallel with it.

  A tingling, annoying itch began swarming erratically over Chane’s skin. There was no breeze in the forest, but the sensation was like streams of dust blown over his exposed face and hands.

  The prickling grew.

  It brought a memory of toying with an anthill as a child. Chane remembered speck-sized insects crawling over his shirtsleeve, looking for a way to get in . . . to find out what he was. He pivoted slowly, beginning to shake, until he faced Shade sitting on the wagon’s far side.

  She watched him silently, her large, crystalline irises too bright in the dark.

  Chane turned away. He knew the forest’s wards, or whatever guarded it, were no superstition. But even that told him more as his thumb rubbed nervously over the ring he wore.

  His thoughts were still sound and clear beneath the fear.

  “Are you all right?” Wynn whispered.

  “Yes . . . I am fine.”

  Wynn pulled out a cold lamp crystal, rubbing it brusquely on her thigh until it brightened, and handed it off to Ore-Locks.

  She’d been so eager to get here that she’d been careless and forgotten good sense. She hadn’t thought of what Shade’s presence might evoke from the Lhoin’na, let alone about running into any of them before reaching her destination. Now traveling with this armed escort, she couldn’t shake all she’d learned in her time among the an’Cróan concerning the undead and their forest.

  To complicate things, she’d just rolled Chane right into such a place.

  There’d been no chance to let him test it cautiously. They’d both known this was coming, but reality was a far cry from anticipation. Bringing him here had been a blind gamble, for her as well as him, all the while hoping that tiny ring would protect him.

  He seemed all right, though his eyes were wide and watchful. Then she noticed his left hand trembled as he fidgeted with the ring.

  Ore-Locks remained silent, studying their surroundings, and Wynn turned her attention ahead.

  Above them, the lowest branches of the largest trees were thicker than her body. Higher still, they had long since twisted and intertwined. Not a single night star showed through the canopy. It was all too quiet.

  “What is that up ahead?”

  Wynn flinched at Chane’s rasp right behind her head. At first, she couldn’t see anything beyond Althahk and his horse. A slight flicker appeared, followed by more. As they drew closer, those glimmers took shape as distinct lights. Some of them were too high above the ground.

  “Dwellings . . . in the trees,” Chane whispered.

  Wynn couldn’t quite make out what he saw. His vision at night was far better than hers. Shade huffed once, and Wynn twisted her head. The dog stared back and huffed once more—one single utterance, too startlingly familiar.

  Wynn remembered Chap’s system used with Leesil and Magiere. He’d used one bark for “yes,” two for “no,” and three for “unknown” or “uncertain.” Had Shade seen this in some memory of Wynn’s, and then added it to her own reluctant vocabulary?

  Shade huffed once more.

  Wynn frowned, turning forward again. Perhaps it was a good thing, but right now it was just unsettling.

  “Not only domiciles,” Chane added, and pointed upward over Wynn’s shoulder. “That is a shop of some kind.”

  There was no sign of a city or any such large settlement ahead, but they must have reached its outskirts. Even Ore-Locks craned his head back in astonishment.

  Wynn’s eyes adjusted to those glowing points of light spread upward into the great trees’ heights. The thickest branches were the size of normal tree trunks. A complex system of walkways stretched between various levels.

  People went about their ways in early nightfall. Tall elves stood on or walked the paths, stairs, and landings, circumventing structures mounted around the trunks or perched out on the more massive branches. Of those few that Wynn could make out passing near glimmering lanterns of glass and pale metals, everyone moved without a care for the heights.

  “Lunacy,” Ore-Locks said. “One’s feet should remain upon the solid earth, as intended.”

  Wynn wrinkled her small nose, remembering what he’d called the patroller during the confrontation.

  “Don’t you ever again call one of them yiannû-billê—‘bush baby’ again,” she told him softly.

  “Heat of the moment,” he replied under his breath.

  Dwarves were a curious and accepting people. Wynn had never expected to travel with one who might be a bigot. It was one more thing that separated him from his kind—and all the more offensive considering his disguise. He was still attired like a shirvêsh of Feather-Tongue, who was a wise and worldly traveler spoken of in dwarven sacred myths and legends.

  Chane leaned past Wynn’s side. She watched his gaze roam the heights in fascination. While he sometimes expressed arrogant attitudes and he could be coldly judgmental, new experiences always riveted him. If Chane hadn’t been forced into death and beyond it, he would’ve become a true scholar, no doubt.

  Homes and small-to-medium structures blended into the leafy upper reaches, making it difficult to distinguish where one ended and another began. All were made of plank wood, though Wynn thought some roofs might be covered in cultivated moss. The branches of these huge spruces and oaks and gargantuan maples dwarfed the trees she’d seen along the journey.

  One wavering light, low to the ground, caught Wynn’s eye. Not all of the settlement was built above.

  Those lower structures were all dark but for a few lanterns somehow suspended along the paths between them. Perhaps these were for the
more trade-and craft-related pursuits. How had all this come to be? Why did Lhoin’na choose these strange, high settlements, as opposed to the an’Cróans’ wilder enclaves upon the earth and their homes inside of living trees?

  Shade whined, nosing into Wynn’s side. Wynn reached back, stroking the dog’s cheek.

  Sudden memories of the an’Cróans’ wild Elven Territories rose in Wynn’s head—but they were not her own memories. The Lhoin’na forest must seem different to Shade, and Wynn hoped it didn’t make the young majay-hì too homesick.

  “Althahk . . . veasg’âr-äilleach!”

  The patrol leader slowed his horse at the call of his name. Wynn drew in the reins as she searched the heights for the greeting’s source. A tall elf stood at a walkway railing ornamented with swirls and ovals of trained, leafy vines. It was hard to make him out, but a nearby lantern sent white and silver shimmers through his long, unbound hair.

  “And fair evening to you, Counselor,” Althahk returned in their tongue.

  “What brings you in so late, Commander?” the counselor asked. “And why do the Shé’ ith escort visitors to . . .”

  Wynn was too busy with that one unfathomable word to wonder about the long pause. That term wasn’t in the Elvish she knew or the older dialect of the an’Cróan. The root shéth meant “quietude” or “tranquillity,” sometimes “serenity.” Perhaps what she’d heard was something older still.

  “The old one is looking at us,” Chane whispered from behind.

  “It is odd, indeed,” Althahk answered back, and turned a stern eye on Wynn.

  No, not at her, but at Shade.

  “I will speak with you tomorrow,” the elder answered back.

  By the time Wynn looked up, he was gone. Althahk clicked his tongue, and his horse moved on. Flicking the reins, Wynn guided the wagon onward.

  In breaks between settlements, the forest’s guardian trees overwhelmed any hint of civilization. Glimpses of dwellings soon came more often, to the point where long, extended walkways began joining one to the next. Buildings among the massive trunks multiplied upon the forest floor, until Wynn couldn’t follow the pattern of them in the darkness, even by the wispy lantern lights along paths above or below.