Of Truth and Beasts

by Barb Hendee

  Rustlings rose in the brush all around the clearing.

  “Watch your backs,” Ore-Locks warned.

  Wynn looked about frantically. Noise in the underbrush sounded as if an entire pack had surrounded the clearing, but only two dogs had shown themselves. She spun back at a clack of teeth.

  Both newcomers froze. The mottled one held a forepaw up in midstep, as Shade snarled at it with her ears flattened.

  Wynn had placed her trust in Shade. The last time she’d encountered a majay-hì pack had been in the Farlands’ Elven Territories. Only the presence of Chap and his mate, Lily, had made them tolerate her. She hoped the same would work here with Shade.

  The silver majay-hì turned and lowered its head. Shade snapped the air before it.

  Chane’s hand slipped out of Wynn’s and latched onto her wrist. Before she even turned, she heard his sword sliding from its sheath.

  “Chane, no!” she said, grabbing his sword arm.

  Another snarl erupted, pulling her attention. The sound hadn’t come from Shade.

  The mottled one’s jowls quivered around bared teeth as it raised its head and sniffed the air in Wynn’s direction. It snorted, as if expelling a foul smell caught in its nose.

  Wynn wondered why it needed to smell her at all. It should’ve picked up her scent without such effort. Then the reason dawned on her—perhaps it wasn’t her that the newcomer smelled.

  Chane was the one who didn’t smell right. The brass ring could do nothing about that.

  Ore-Locks pushed past Wynn into the clearing, his long iron staff at the ready but his blade still sheathed. The silver majay-hì swung its head toward him.

  “Everyone be still,” Wynn said. “They aren’t animals. They’re as intelligent as you are.”

  Shade still rumbled, and the silver one eyed her as if puzzled by Shade’s actions. It stretched out its muzzle toward her, and Shade bared her teeth.

  “Easy, Shade,” Wynn whispered.

  Shade was caught between two opponents and swung her head back and forth to keep track of them. When the silver majay-hì was a head’s length away, Shade turned fully to it.

  There came the briefest touch of noses.

  Shade flinched back and fell completely silent. The silver-gray dog turned and dashed back into the brush the way it had entered. The mottled brown one wheeled and followed. Shade, still frozen in place, looked to Wynn.

  “Go,” Wynn told her.

  Thrashing onward, Wynn could hear the pack on all sides in the forest. Their hidden potential threat made the way seem longer, so that when she finally broke into the open, she bent over, panting behind Shade. She was light-headed, and her breath still caught when she looked ahead.

  Strange, bulging lanterns of opaque amber glass hung in the lower branches of maples, oaks, and startlingly immense firs. The trees loosely framed a broad gully with gently sloping sides that stretched ahead. Decades of leaf fall had hampered undergrowth, leaving the gully clear of underbrush. But ivy climbed over exposed boulders and around and up evergreens. Bushy ferns grew here and there, but these were all that broke the mulch, aside from the crackle of paws on fallen autumn leaves.

  A dozen or more majay-hì paced in the view before Wynn.

  They dashed past each other, rubbing heads, cheeks, or shoulders. Wynn could only imagine the memory-speak passing rapidly through the pack. She wished she could’ve listened in, as she did with Shade. All of them paused intermittently, looking at the black majay-hì, before wheeling toward another of their own in whatever they shared so rapidly.

  Shade’s presence had caused trepidation or excitement or both.

  “What is this place?” Ore-Locks asked. “It is not overgrown, like the rest of the forest. But the trunks . . . they are too large for these kinds of trees.”

  “Ahead . . . slightly left,” Chane whispered. “Look to that fir.”

  Wynn looked down the gully.

  The fir tree’s trunk was almost as wide as a guild keep tower in Calm Seatt. The barest hint of a dark opening showed in its base. Some kind of hanging, perhaps aged hide or dyed wool, filled that entrance and made it seem part of the bark until Wynn looked right at it.

  After the structures in a’Ghràihlôn’na, she would’ve never imagined that tree. But there it was, a living tree home, like those in the an’Cróan’s wild enclaves. It looked almost out of place in this forest.

  “What are you doing here?”

  The warning in that lilting voice made Wynn turn quickly, shifting her gaze. And then there she was, coming from the trees, down the slope, walking right through the pack of majay-hì.

  Vreuvillä stopped, tensely poised like some wild spirit manifested in elven form. A circlet of braided raw shéot’a strips held back her silver-streaked hair. In place of the skirt draped to her feet, she now wore pants; high, soft boots; and a thong-belted jerkin, all made of darkened rawhide.

  “I told you,” she said, “your presence disturbs Chârmun.”

  Her Numanese was too perfect for someone who lived an isolated life so far from foreigners, let alone her own people.

  Ore-Locks watched her closely but held back. Releasing Chane, Wynn took a step up behind Shade.

  “We need to speak with you,” she said.

  Vreuvillä moved toward them, barely disturbing the fallen leaves beneath her narrow feet. The mottled bark brown majay-hì paced her.

  “Where is your friend, that white-robed heretic?” she demanded.

  “He’s no friend or anything else to us,” Wynn answered. “We came all the way from Calm Seatt, and I have no idea how he beat us here.”

  “No, I am sure you do not.”

  Wynn was too tired of being played at every turn to care what that meant. But she didn’t care for the taunt itself. Then the silver majay-hì from the first small clearing circled into Vreuvillä’s path and passed close along the woman’s side.

  Long, tan fingers combed between the dog’s tall ears.

  Vreuvillä slowed for an instant. Only her large amber eyes lifted to gaze beyond Wynn. And her nostrils flared.

  A chill spread through Wynn. Not because it looked like Vreuvillä could smell what the majay-hì had. Not because the woman might suspect what Chane was. It was that touch that left Wynn shocked in disbelief.

  The only reason Wynn could memory-speak with Shade through a touch was because of the taint left by a mistake with a thaumaturgical ritual. Even the an’Cróan and their Anmaglâhk couldn’t do this with majay-hì.

  But had Vreuvillä just done so?

  “From Calm Seatt?” the woman repeated, and glanced at Shade. “With a majay-hì? I do not think so.”

  Wynn tried to recover. “Shade came for me. She’s from what is called the Elven Territories on the eastern continent. Its people are called the an’Cróan—Those of the Blood.”

  Vreuvillä closed within reach of Shade. Shade remained quietly watchful, though the woman of the woods didn’t looked down again.

  “So, you have met our wayward kin of old?” Vreuvillä said.

  “Yes. Several of them are . . . my good friends.”

  Vreuvillä’s large eyes narrowed. Little enough was known throughout the Farlands of the xenophobic an’Cróan. But almost no one on this continent had ever heard of them until Wynn had returned. Yet Vreuvillä knew of them and their ancient link to her own people.

  What else might this woman know of older ways and times? Perhaps things the guild could never uncover from lost scraps of the Forgotten History.

  Vreuvillä took a long breath and instantly turned up the broad gully. “Come with me.”

  Wynn was still shaken, but she grabbed Chane’s arm. His whole body was trembling.

  “Can I help?” Ore-Locks asked, though his offer sounded forced.

  This entire venture had been his suggestion, but he now appeared to regret it.

  “No, I’ve got him,” Wynn answered.

  Chane might be sick and disoriented, but he was still aware enoug
h to act. Wynn didn’t know what he might do in this state if Ore-Locks touched him.

  The pack parted as Shade led the way, but majay-hì paced them on all sides. Ahead, the paired silver and mottled bark brown ones flanked Vreuvillä all the way to the great fir’s draped entrance. The woman slipped inside without even glancing back.

  When Shade reached the entrance, she hesitated, eyeing Vreuvillä’s escort at guard on either side. Wynn pushed past, pulling Chane inside the tree. She grabbed a stool she spotted nearby.

  “Sit and rest,” she said, guiding him to the seat. Perhaps with the forest out of sight, he might calm down.

  Ore-Locks stepped in, followed by Shade. When the hide flap closed over the entrance, Wynn looked about.

  Vreuvillä crouched before the flickering embers of a freestanding clay hearth at the rear. With a stick, she lifted a char-stained kettle out of the flameless coals.

  The interior was bark covered, like the guild’s redwood structure, but the walls here were lined with living protrusions at all possible levels. Those shelves were filled with ceramic pots and jars. The chamber wasn’t as big as the tree from the outside, and Wynn saw another opening at the back draped with a wool cloth.

  Someone had guided this tree’s growth, like the Shapers of the an’Cróan. But it was not as old as the greater trees in the city. Wynn turned back as Vreuvillä reached up to retrieve a gray porcelain jar with a wooden stopper.

  As before, Ore-Locks remained silent, and Chane seemed beyond speech.

  Vreuvillä crouched before the hearth, pulling a bit of yellow root from the vessel and dropping it in a rough wooden cup. She immediately doused it with the kettle’s scalding water. She rose and came at Wynn, but thrust the mug out at Chane.

  “Drink it,” she ordered. “Some humans are too human for the forest . . . though I have never seen one so affected.”

  If Vreuvillä thought Chane was a mortal, Wynn had no intention of altering that assumption. But she doubted the root tea could do anything for an undead.

  “He’s my guard . . . and companion,” she explained. “He would not stay behind.”

  “At least he is not another white-robed schemer.”

  Wynn hadn’t come to discuss Chuillyon, but she couldn’t help asking, “Why do you dislike him?”

  “Dislike?” Vreuvillä hissed.

  Her head dropped forward but her narrow gaze remained on Wynn. Strands of silver-laced hair shifted across her left eye and exposed the tip of one tall ear.

  “Sages and their orders!” she said; it seemed to rise from her throat like one of Shade’s rumbles. “They title themselves masters, domins, and premins to seek stipends from their kind, for their own purpose. The whites, so-called order of Chârmun, are a consumption in their midst . . . as if they bear any love or reverence for the one tree in all things. But do they teach? Do they bring the people back to what is sacred? No. They hide and manipulate among . . .”

  Vreuvillä’s voice caught as she looked Wynn up and down, studying the gray robe.

  “Even among your kind,” she finished. “That heretic and his sycophants are deviants, fallen from the true way of the Foirfeahkan. They serve themselves, with Chârmun and its children as their tools.”

  “That’s not why I’m here,” Wynn said. “There are greater concerns to me.”

  Vreuvillä raised her head slightly and cocked it aside. Her one exposed eye glanced toward the draped entrance. Shade sat vigil there, as if she could see through the hide drape, and watched the entrance with no apparent concern over Vreuvillä.

  “Perhaps so,” the wild woman answered.

  Chane caught Wynn’s wrist. She looked down as he set aside the emptied mug. Wynn watched in astonishment as his irises began regaining their lost hint of brown. He nodded to her, looking suddenly fatigued in his relief.

  Whatever Vreuvillä had given him had helped, but Wynn reflected on that one strange term—“Foirfeahkan.”

  She knew it only from histories learned in early education, though she couldn’t remember how to translate it. It was from some lost dialect of Elvish even more obscure than that of the an’Cróan. The Foirfeahkan were—had been—a spiritual sect, though their origins and their supposed end couldn’t be traced. Wynn had never heard there were any left.

  Animistic in ideology, they believed in the spiritual—ethereal and sacred rather than theistic—that existed within this world and not in a separate realm. Not quite like the dwarves, and they considered the center or nexus of it all was in one tree.

  Wynn had never considered that that tree had to be Chârmun.

  If Chuillyon was some pretender priest in the guise of a sage, then Vreuvillä’s disdain made perfect sense. But Wynn was uncertain concerning the reference to using the tree known as Sanctuary as a “tool.” And what had the woman meant about its “children,” as in more than one? Did that include Roise Chârmune, Seed of Sanctuary, in the an’Cróan’s hidden ancestral burial ground?

  No wonder Vreuvillä despised Chuillyon’s order as heretics and traitors. They had potentially turned an ancient belief system into an organized profession.

  “What does bring you here . . . sage?” Vreuvillä asked.

  Wynn ignored the thin disdain in that final word. She wondered how to gracefully lead into her request. But there was no polite way to broach the subject, and she was tired of subtleties. It seemed this unknown Foirfeahkan preferred directness.

  “I believe an enemy from forgotten times is returning,” she said bluntly.

  “And?”

  Wynn faltered. That should’ve been enough to pique concern or at least interest from anyone who knew even the scant myths. Obviously, Vreuvillä did know.

  “I’ve learned it had powerful devices,” Wynn went on. “It used them in the mythical war some speak of. And the devices still exist. They may be the first hint of how—”

  “Not the first,” Vreuvillä cut in. “Devices are not how things begin . . . but sometimes the means by which they end.”

  Wynn fell silent. Did Vreuvillä know more clues—signs—of what was coming? More questions nagged at Wynn, but further hints of what she already knew wouldn’t help with what she sought. Wynn neither wished to tax Vreuvillä’s patience that much nor give Ore-Locks anything more to serve his own hidden desires.

  “One device may lie hidden at a place once called Bäalâle Seatt,” Wynn continued. “I need to find that place before the device falls into the wrong hands. If it was a tool of this enemy, it cannot be used again for whatever purpose it served.”

  Vreuvillä frowned.

  “We’re trying to stop a war,” Wynn went on, all the frustration of recent seasons rising within her. “No one will help! My superiors and others seem obsessed with hindering us.” She drew in a long breath. “Please, if you know anything of Bäalâle Seatt . . . then tell me.”

  Wynn could feel Ore-Locks’s eyes upon her.

  Vreuvillä stood silent, as if waiting for more, but then her expression softened slightly. “And what makes a child like you believe the Enemy is returning?”

  “Because I saw the beginning of the end a thousand years ago.”

  Wynn began with what she’d learned through Chap and Magiere’s experiences within the memories of Most Aged Father, leader of the Anmaglâhk. Speaking so in front of Ore-Locks was the last thing she wanted, but she kept to only events in general.

  Wynn recounted the flight of Sorhkafâré—Light upon the Grass—with the last remnants of his allied forces at the war’s end. Once they reached First Glade’s safety, he and some of his people took a cutting from Chârmun and left this continent. Some of the first Fay-born, those born into varied animals, including wolves who would become the majay-hì, had followed him, as well.

  “Sorhkafâré still lives,” Wynn said. “He is now called Aoishenis-Ahâre—Most Aged Father—and I have stood as close to him as I now stand to you. He believes absolutely that the Enemy is returning. I wouldn’t trust him for an instant, but I tru
st his fear of that.”

  Vreuvillä’s voice was strangely calm. “Sorhkafâré, like the great war, is a legend . . . a myth among my people. If he truly lived, he would have died long ago.”

  Was that some sort of challenge?

  “He lives,” Wynn said plainly. “And for his unnaturally long years, he remains convinced the Enemy will return. There are others who’ve come to believe this, as well . . . even when they’ve denied so to my face!”

  She stepped forward.

  “We have to reach Bäalâle Seatt before anyone else learns what we’re after. If you can’t help us, I won’t waste your time anymore.”

  Wynn turned away. About to step past Shade and out of the tree, a soft chuckle halted her and she turned.

  Vreuvillä smiled at her and sighed tiredly.

  “Child, you speak of things too openly, as if . . .” and she trailed off, looking about her chamber. “But if nothing else, obviously you do not follow in that heretic’s footsteps.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “There are proper ways . . . for speaking of such matters.”

  Vreuvillä reached for a bowl and pitcher on a shelf, and then began gathering pinches from varied jars. The chamber’s air filled with a cacophony of herbal scents.

  “You will wait here while I go for more water,” she instructed. “Do not utter another word about this purpose until I return.”

  She slipped past Shade and outside. As the entrance drape settled, Chane struggled to his feet.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered. “We know nothing about this woman. Why did you tell her so much?”

  His face was still covered in a sheen, and the fingers of his right hand flexed over his left forearm, as if just barely refraining from peeling off his skin. Whatever Vreuvillä had given him hadn’t lasted long.

  “She already knows,” Wynn answered. “Weren’t you watching her? She knows of the an’Cróan. Even when she challenged me about Most Aged Father . . . she already knew about him.”

  “A guess,” he snarled. “And now what? We wait in some unknown place for some unknown woman to do . . . what? Make us an herbal tea before giving us any information at all, let alone something of use?”