by Barb Hendee
“Sit down and be silent,” Ore-Locks told him.
Chane spun on the dwarf, but Wynn grabbed his arm.
“This forgotten priestess might well have what we need,” Ore-Locks continued. “If she serves us a feast of stones, you will swallow every pebble and thank her. We have nowhere else to turn.”
Wynn hesitated. “He’s right, Chane.”
This was all they had. And now that they were alone, she needed to know if Shade had picked up anything from . . .
“Oh, not again!” she breathed.
Shade was gone. She must have followed Vreuvillä, though why was another unanswered question.
“Stay here,” Wynn ordered Chane. “I’ll bring Shade in and—”
“No,” Ore-Locks and Chane said in unison.
Chane took hold of Wynn’s belt, adding, “Not without me.”
She jerked around, trying to break his grip, and failing. “Shade has figured out . . . certain things for us. What makes you think the pack couldn’t do the same for that woman? You’re not going anywhere, and I am going after Shade.”
She looked to Ore-Locks and pointed her finger at Chane. “You stay in here and watch him. Sit on him if you have to.”
Before Chane could react, Wynn pulled the cinch on her belt, and it slipped in Chane’s grip. She slapped the entrance drape aside, but as she ran into the gully, she stalled.
Not a single majay-hì remained in sight.
The place was completely abandoned. Then Wynn spotted Shade’s charcoal black tail disappearing through a shuddering bush at the gulley’s far end. She thought she heard other rustlings out there, as well.
If Shade had left to go after the pack, then was Vreuvillä up to more than just preparing herbal tea?
Wynn glanced back once at the tree dwelling, and then ran down the gully and thrashed into the underbrush.
The tâshgâlh hung upside down from the lowest branch of the great fir tree—right above its draped entrance. And Sau’ilahk watched, as well, through its inverted perspective.
Wynn bolted into the forest’s undergrowth.
He had heard every word the little sage had recklessly expelled. All his scantest hopes had been revealed, spilling from her lips like the sweetest pomegranate wine of his lost, living days. She was convinced that an anchor—an “orb” as she called it—lay hidden in a place called Bäalâle Seatt. She had actually found someone who might point the way.
For all Wynn’s tight-lipped secrecy, even with her own companions, she had told this pagan priestess of false ways more than any of Sau’ilahk’s servitors had ever acquired. How astonishing were the things this one troublesome little sage knew? Still, there was more waiting.
Once he learned the location of what he desired, a pause would come. He would linger long enough in the plain beyond the forest to greet Wynn Hygeorht properly. She would pay with her life for all of her interference. That joyful appetizer would initiate the greater sustenance for his long-held desire—the key to reclaiming flesh.
Chane Andraso would pay as well, by watching her die.
But that hidden undead and the wayward stonewalker were still within the tree.
For an instant, Sau’ilahk was uncertain of losing track of all those involved. Then the tâshgâlh shot along the forest branches, as it raced after Wynn.
CHAPTER 15
Out in the forest, Wynn pushed through thick brush with both hands. The farther she got from the open gulley’s strange lanterns, the darker it became. She didn’t dare take out a cold lamp crystal, for fear of being discovered, and she couldn’t call out to Shade for the same reason. There was no telling how Vreuvillä or the pack would respond to being followed.
Shade was one thing, but an interloping human was another.
Wynn clambered over a toppled tree trunk blanketed in moss and then halted. Stifling her panting, she listened for sounds ahead and glanced upward. Scant moonlight showed beyond the black silhouettes of needles and leaves.
A sharp rustle rose from somewhere nearby.
Wynn froze, wishing for that sound to come again. When it did, she stumbled on, tired, damp, and cold as she navigated by those brief sounds. That closer noise had to be Shade, and Wynn certainly didn’t wish to encounter other majay-hì instead. Even being disoriented by the night forest, she guessed they weren’t headed toward First Glade. Her direction seemed more southeast.
Droplets upon vine leaves glittered in the darkness. And then, somewhere ahead, she spotted more illumination than just errant moonlight. Quieting her breaths, she slowly advanced, worming far to the left until she gained a clearer view.
A dozen paces off, a low light exposed a clearing’s edge. That light didn’t seem to come from a torch or fire or even a lantern, as in the gulley. She’d barely taken three more careful steps when . . .
Vreuvillä passed into sight within the clearing and headed straight toward a broad circle of slender aspens at the far side. The trees looked perfectly normal, if perhaps too pristine for a wild place. When Vreuvillä breached their circle, her hair began to glisten as if she’d stepped into a spring dawn. Silver streaks in her locks turned almost white, and her amber eyes sparked as she raised her face upward, for the light seemed strongest within the aspen circle.
Majay-hì hopped out of the forest to pace softly around the aspens. When one of them passed the clearing’s right side, Wynn noticed a shadow shift suddenly in the underbrush beyond it.
Shade hid there, silently watching the clearing.
Within the aspens’ circle, the priestess spread her arms low to the sides, palms forward, and spoke a stream of Elvish difficult to follow. Wynn was hard-pressed to decipher the words. In her time among the an’Cróan, she’d grown accustomed to dialects long forgotten, but this was older still.
Vreuvillä spoke again, and this time, Wynn made out the beginning of the utterance, but not the end: “Heed me, guide me, here and now . . . cräjh-bana-ahâr.”
It sounded like a prayer or invocation, but seemed composed of pure root words. Wynn didn’t catch any conjugations or declinations into verbs and nouns, and the structure scrambled in her head. She struggled to translate all that she’d just heard.
I am at the end where you are at the beginning . . . to speak between this moment and Existence. Heed me, guide me . . . here and now . . . Pain Mother.
The last of it turned Wynn cold. To what or whom had Vreuvillä called out?
A breeze began to build in the forest. Mulch on the clearing’s floor churned around the priestess’s boots. She curled her arms forward and inward, one after the other, as if pulling the air in upon herself. Fallen leaves between the aspens began rising in a column that turned around Vreuvillä.
Wynn braced against a young redwood as the forest shuddered under a growing wind. She swiped strands of hair from her eyes and stood mesmerized by what she saw. Then the back of her cloak jerked hard. The force nearly pulled her off her feet, and she twisted in panic.
Shade half crouched behind Wynn, biting down on her cloak’s hem. But an abrupt scratching, fluttering sound in Wynn’s head made everything grow dim.
Her stomach clenched as her mind filled with the sound of a thousand chattering leaves. Or was it more like swarming insect wings beating about in her skull?
The dark forest spun before Wynn’s eyes. She toppled forward, and her shoulder struck the young redwood.
—run . . . run . . . run—
Those memory-words erupted inside her head as Shade jerked her cloak again. But Shade’s effort only made Wynn crumple, sliding down the redwood to her knees. She barely raised her head, her fingers biting into the tree’s bark.
Amid the whirlwind in the aspen ring, Vreuvillä stared back at her.
Majay-hì wheeled and charged across the open space, but Wynn couldn’t take her eyes off the priestess. The last time she’d heard—felt—that torrent of buzzing in her head had been with Chap. This time wasn’t the same as when he spoke into her head in every language she
knew. Nor was it like the memory-speak she shared with Shade.
Still, you spy upon us . . . abomination!
Those words formed within from the crackle of a thousand leaf-wings in Wynn’s mind.
Vreuvillä’s lips hadn’t moved, although she shuddered, as if she’d heard the words, as well. Something had come to this place through the priestess.
Wynn began shaking as Shade’s broken memory-words screamed in her head.
—run . . . Fay . . . run . . . Fay . . . run—
Chane grew anxious in waiting and glanced toward the tree’s draped entrance.
Ore-Locks immediately blocked the way, gripping his iron staff. “She will be back when she finds the dog.”
Chane fought the urge to charge. “Too long!” he hissed back through clenched teeth.
Ore-Locks did not move, but his eyes widened a fraction.
Chane knew what the dwarf saw.
No doubt his irises had lost all color. He fought to control his shudders under the crawling of his skin. The longer he stood within this tree, the worse he felt. This living domicile, like the rest of the forest, probed him, trying to uncover his true nature.
The forest knew he did not belong here, and Wynn should have found Shade and returned by now.
“Sit down,” Ore-Locks ordered.
The dwarf always seemed ready to protect Wynn in his search for whatever he hoped to find at Bäalâle. But now that she was close to answers, he had let her go alone into this forest. The situation had gone too far.
Without a flicker of warning, Chane snapped out his right fist with full force. To his dull surprise, Ore-Locks’s chin twisted aside under the blow.
Chane might not be as strong as a dwarf, but he was faster. Grabbing the entrance’s edge, he pushed through the drape and rushed out before Ore-Locks regained his wits. He stopped after only three steps.
The gully was empty. Nothing moved in his sight, and then something snagged his cloak between his shoulders. Chane lashed back with a fist as he spun.
His forearm smacked painfully against the iron staff that blocked it. Before he could strike again, he saw the dwarf’s face. Ore-Locks was slack-jawed in alarm as he too stared into the empty gully.
“What did I tell you?” Chane rasped. “That woman did not go after any—”
“Enough! Can you find Wynn, locate where she is?”
At the very least, the stonewalker had guessed Chane possessed some unnatural abilities. Chane looked about the clearing, the amber glow of lanterns nearly blinding in his night sight.
“Can you?” Ore-Locks demanded.
“Quiet. Go and get Wynn’s staff.”
Ore-Locks hesitated, but he appeared willing to try anything as he turned back into the priestess’s home.
Chane closed his eyes. What he could not see, he might hear or smell. Wynn could not have gotten far. A mix of panic and suffering raised his hunger, and his senses widened. He did not hear one rustle of a bush, yip or bark of a dog, or even someone struggling in the underbrush. He heard nothing but . . .
Wind in the trees rustled branches . . . somewhere.
He opened his eyes and saw none of the lanterns was swaying. Not one leaf fell to the mulch-covered gully floor. The crackling wind blew farther off, but it seemed impossible such a noise would not show any effects here.
Chane bolted down the gully as Ore-Locks’s pounding footfalls closed on his heels.
Sau’ilahk could not clearly see what was happening. Though his familiar had perched high above Wynn on a branch, he had barely glimpsed the barbaric elven woman sweep her arms through the air. The woman should have told Wynn something by now. The whirling breeze raised a column of leaves around the priestess as the wind began ripping through the forest.
And the tâshgâlh went mad with fright.
It spun and tried to bolt back along the branch. With the pack so nearby, whatever was happening was too much for it.
Sau’ilahk’s sight blurred through his familiar. He heard growling below, the breaking of branches and brush, and all was drowned out by the wind. A throaty, terrified trilling erupted from the small beast carrying his awareness. Rage and frustration took him.
He tried to subdue the tâshgâlh, to crush its will to nothing, but the small beast only clamped its limbs around the branch and froze. The forest grew darker before its eyes—and in Sau’ilahk’s sight. He thought he heard thrashing in the forest’s underbrush. It seemed to come from farther off, back the way Wynn had entered.
The branch beneath the tâshgâlh began to waver. The last thing Sau’ilahk heard was Wynn’s weak shout, but he never caught her words.
A rapid series of snarls and snaps erupted from below, followed by a yelp, and darkness surged over the tâshgâlh’s senses. Sau’ilahk felt its fear peak and its body go limp.
He flinched each time the beast hit a branch as it tumbled down through the tree in a sudden faint.
Out upon the plain beyond the forest, a black-robed form shrieked in a rage that rose in yet another wind. Truth had been within Sau’ilahk’s grasp, only to be blotted away yet again.
Wynn tried to clear the cacophony of leaf-wings inside her skull. The pack was closing in, and there was nothing to stop the Fay from reaching her. Even the forest’s trees could soon come at her under their influence.
Her cloak jerked hard again, but not toward Shade this time.
The sudden tension pulled Wynn toward the clearing. She twisted and fell facedown through the vines. Lifting her head, she began trying to crawl backward when Shade suddenly leaped over her.
Shade landed on a dark gray majay-hì that still gripped Wynn’s cloak’s edge in its teeth. The majay-hì yelped, releasing its grip, as both dogs tumbled in a snarling mass toward the clearing’s edge.
Wynn scurried back to claw up the young redwood.
Shade rolled up in the torn brush, snapping with her jowls pulled back.
Her opponent frantically wheeled and darted away into the clearing. A handful of majay-hì beyond veered off, pacing uncertainly beyond the tree line. Even Vreuvillä pulled up short, eyes wide as she looked at Shade. The sight of a black majay-hì attacking its own stunned them all.
Wynn’s stomach lurched under leaf-wing words in her head.
You atrocity . . . you end here!
She saw Vreuvillä stiffen.
Pull her down . . . remove this thing from our presence.
The priestess looked up and around the clearing through the whirlwind of leaves. A flash of confusion swept across her dark features.
Wynn heard the sound of breaking brush beneath the wind’s racket. In despair, she thought the rest of the pack must be surrounding her. Even shock over Shade’s actions wouldn’t hold them off much longer. A branch crackled and snapped behind her.
She turned, reaching behind her back for Magiere’s old battle dagger.
Chane burst out from the forest’s depths, his colorless eyes glistening. Branches and leaves shredded under his reckless charge. Ore-Locks surged through behind him and swerved away before Wynn could call out.
The dwarf had her staff in one hand, and his own iron staff in the other. With that long bar cradled under his armpit, he swung its free end into a bush between two tree trunks. Leaves ripped away until it jerked suddenly. A peeling yelp erupted from something hiding in there.
Chane reached Wynn, his sword drawn, but his gaze was locked beyond her, on the clearing. Bloodshed would only make things worse.
Wynn lunged into his way, shouting, “No! No killing!”
A set of jaws clamped on to her right hand. She tried to jerk her trapped hand free as she grabbed Chane’s shirtfront. Her skin began to tear, but those teeth didn’t bite down any harder.
A memory filled Wynn’s head.
She saw a great, barkless tree of tawny, glistening wood in an open, moss-covered clearing. It looked more gargantuan than she remembered, as if she were crouched between the mounds of its large roots.
The teeth re
leased her hand and memory-words filled her head.
—Sanctuary . . . Chârmun . . . run—
Shade raced out into the forest’s underbrush.
“Follow Shade. Now!” Wynn called to Ore-Locks as she heaved on Chane.
Frustration made Sau’ilahk’s hands solidify as he crushed them into fists. He could still feel his familiar, though its awareness was strangled by terror. Through its large ears he barely heard nearby rustling beneath the tearing wind, but there were no voices.
The tâshgâlh just lay quivering where it had fallen.
Fear was all Sau’ilahk had to make it respond to his will. He fed that fear with those scant sounds heard through its ears. Tearing brush, low pants and growls of the pack—all of these he sharpened within the tâshgâlh’s awareness....
It began to twitch with returning awareness.
Move . . . or die.
It could not have truly understood him, but the intention behind the words made the little beast thrash in terror on the ground. It opened its eyes, and its ears stiffened, and then it saw the sprinting legs and paws of majay-hì racing past.
The tâshgâlh scrambled around behind the tree’s wide base.
Climb . . . you cowardly little thief!
So it did with its small, handlike paws. From its perch above, Sau’ilahk watched wolflike dogs race through the underbrush. That barbaric elven woman came after them. He did not spot Wynn, but all those he did see headed in one direction.
Sau’ilahk drove the tâshgâlh, leaping from tree to tree, until he gained on those below struggling in the forest’s lower thickness.
Chane’s mental focus dulled under the forest’s prodding, but fear for Wynn’s safety cleared any lingering effects of his last draught of the violet concoction. In its place, rage-driven hunger began awakening the feral beast inside him, so that it mingled with the one purpose in his clouded mind.
He forced Wynn on ahead of himself, so that nothing could reach her. Somewhere out front, Shade led them. But they ran toward a place his instincts told him not to go. Shade’s insistence that they reach that horrid tree made no sense.