by Barb Hendee
Again, Wynn wanted to look to Chârmun, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the forest.
“Aovar?”
Vreuvillä cried out that one root word in her tongue. It meant “reason,” or even “cause” or “impetus,” but her anguished inflection made it something else.
“Why?” the priestess shouted again.
Standing upright between her companions, she glared into the trees. Her tan cheeks glistened with smeared tears. The silver-gray female and mottled brown male raced out among their pack. Brief touches of heads and muzzles passed quickly among them.
Because that thing listens! She steals . . . our hope, our knowing . . . that which no mortal should have, more so a tainted one!
Again, Wynn heard those words in her mind.
“Answer me,” Vreuvillä returned, her voice growing raw. “Why did you kill one of your children?”
The wind quieted only a little and a long pause followed.
Regretful . . . tragic . . . necessary.
Wynn had no pity for their regret.
With tears flooding, Vreuvillä shrieked at the immense shadow beyond the trees like some animal too enraged for the power of speech. When she regained her voice, Wynn followed her strange dialect more easily.
“Your descendant of flesh, a majay-hì, guards this Numan woman . . . even against its own kind! You killed one of them to get to her? Would you do so again, here and now?”
She is a tainted piece of Existence, too twisted and dangerous.
“You gave birth to Existence, no matter the form of its parts!” Vreuvillä snarled back. “Is this now what you make of the bond that I serve . . . that all Foirfeahkan have nurtured for ages?”
Wynn glanced aside. The pack circled chaotically, but mostly toward Vreuvillä. What they’d learned had left them confused and wary.
“How can I,” Vreuvillä went on, “or any others left of my way, serve to maintain the bond of parent to child . . . if this is the price?”
No answer came.
Every root around the clearing went limp upon the earth. The wind died in the trees in all but one place. Wynn thought she saw a form hidden partly beyond the branches. Larger than any living being she could imagine, it was not as tall as the trees themselves. That shadow of whirling air and leaves beyond the branches was the only spot Vreuvillä focused on.
Necessary . . . mournfully necessary.
That answer made Wynn long to shout her own denial at the Fay. They were insanely set on a course of enforced inaction, deterring anyone’s efforts against what might come. That included Magiere and Leesil and Chap, even more than Wynn herself. But Chap hadn’t agreed with his own kin, even in ignorance of what they truly hoped to accomplish at any cost.
Neither did Wynn.
She kept her tongue, letting the priestess’s tension mount. The Fay were sacred to this woman in some way, and this conflict was costing her. Wynn had to shape that outcome to her need, even to creating a crisis of faith for Vreuvillä.
“Whatever would be gained is not worth this,” Vreuvillä said. “Whatever would be made by it will never replace what is lost. I see no price or loss in what this woman seeks . . . not for what you have done.”
The wind died instantly.
Wynn heard a disquieting sound in her head. The leaf-wing chorus made it hard to be certain. It could’ve been a shriek of either rage or suffering.
Leave the fallen dead of the Earth where they lie.
Wynn tensed. Was this a reference to Bäalâle Seatt? Did the “dead of the Earth” mean the dwarves who had perished there?
Leave that of the Earth in hiding . . . that of ours, no longer a slave to a slave.
Wynn turned sick with revulsion at more insistence for inaction. But there was something that didn’t match up. What was this nonsense about a “slave to a slave”?
The dwarves were slaves to no one. Their people would rather die than submit. But she glanced sidelong at Ore-Locks, wondering about the descendant of Thallûhearag, that so-titled “Lord of Slaughter”—Lord of Genocide.
Vreuvillä’s brow creased, but she uttered no reply to the Fay’s last demand. In the clearing’s silence, Wynn saw nothing more hidden beyond the trees as their branches settled.
Chane had remained silent, though Wynn could feel his shudders through his hand, as he was still gripping hers. Ore-Locks was watching Vreuvillä in confusion, and then he looked to Wynn.
“Whom was she speaking to?” he whispered.
No one answered him. Wynn didn’t even know how.
The Fay were gone. All that was left were limp roots among the branch fragments on broken earth as scattered leaves settled to the clearing’s floor.
Shade whined loudly, and Wynn looked down. The dog was still trembling against her leg.
Vreuvillä turned her head, one eye peering around her dangling, wind-whipped hair. “Who are you?”
Her voiced was strained with suspicion.
“Just a sage,” Wynn answered, “thrown into the middle of all this . . . who does what her conscience tells her.”
She released Chane’s hand and took a step. Shade growled in warning and tried to cut her off. Ore-Locks lowered his staff in front of her. Wynn stepped around Shade and pushed aside the iron bar.
“What are you to them?” Vreuvillä whispered, an edge of anger returning to her voice. “They tried to take your life, to have me do so . . . and they have tried before.”
“So have many others, and I’m still here.”
Shade remained tight at Wynn’s side, eyeing the pair of majay-hì framing the priestess.
“My purpose isn’t as far from theirs as you might think,” Wynn added. “Though they want you to believe otherwise.”
Vreuvillä studied her. Strong as the priestess was, it was not an easy thing to have what one believed suddenly transformed into something else.
“I’ve nowhere left to turn,” Wynn suddenly begged, and the fear and reality of the last few moments sank in. “Do you know anything of a place called Bäalâle Seatt, a forgotten dwarven city or stronghold in the mountains bordering the desert?”
Several of the pack tentatively closed around Shade, sniffing at her from a safe distance. Wynn ignored this, focusing only on Vreuvillä.
“There are some writings left by my forebears,” the priestess finally answered, taking a long, haggard breath. “Mentions of dwarves who once mingled freely among the people . . . my people. They came from the south. If these are true, the surest path would have been what is now called the Slip-Tooth Pass.”
Something—perhaps hope—began growing in Wynn. “Yes, I’ve seen it on a map.”
Vreuvillä looked away, glancing toward the trees before she dropped her head.
“Where?” Ore-Locks asked, his voice too eager. “Where, exactly, did they come from?”
“I do not know,” Vreuvillä answered. “But if it was a seatt that fell in the war . . .”
She trailed off.
“Anything might help,” Wynn urged.
“There is a place one of my forebears found in wandering and labeled it ‘the fallen mountain’,” Vreuvillä said quietly. “It was too odd to be called anything else, as if a peak amid the range had been sheared off, crushed, or collapsed. A flat, sunken plain one would never find amid such mountains. I have not seen it for myself. I cannot direct you more than this.”
Wynn’s mind was racing. She had a crude map of the region already in her possession. If they were to trust in Vreuvillä, they simply had to follow the Slip-Tooth Pass between the smaller, northbound ridges all the way to the Sky-Cutter Range. After that, finding this so-called “fallen mountain” was another matter, but it might be closer than she had ever hoped.
A thousand years had passed, even for mountains that ran across an entire continent. Who knew what changes to the landscape had come and gone since the time of war? But at least this was something to go on.
“Thank you,” Wynn said.
“Do not
thank me. Chârmun gives me no guidance in this . . . as I had wanted in calling up those who birthed it.”
Wynn had little guidance, either. But mention of the tree called Sanctuary raised so many questions as to what had happened here.
“What was that out there?” she asked. “What is this Pain Mother you spoke of?”
“Not pain.” Vreuvillä corrected, scowling again. “The Pained Mother . . . though it is a weak meaning in your tongue. It is the manifestation of them—what your kind calls Fay—that represents what first made all of this.”
Vreuvillä swept her arm wide as she turned to the stilled trees all around her. At first Wynn wondered if the priestess meant the clearing or the whole forest surrounding it.
“It is all from them, from ‘she who suffers and mourns,’” the priestess went on. “Like a parent whose child grows, goes its own way, and forgets what birthed it. I am . . . the Foirfeahkan were . . . all that remain to hold that ever-thinning bond, reminding ‘mother’ and ‘child’ of each other.”
Wynn knew varied creation myths of some cultures, both living and dead. These, in turn, had contributed to the notion of the Fay and the Elements of Existence used metaphorically by her guild. Some sages had even taken on a foundationist’s perspective, combining the core pieces of long forgotten belief systems, believing there was some primary force that had initiated everything, Existence itself. It didn’t often sit well with current formal religions or the guild itself.
Wynn had her doubts about such things, preferring what could be reasoned. Of course, she had no doubt that the Fay were real, whatever they—it, the one and the many—ultimately were. Beyond all this, whatever the Fay or Vreuvillä thought or believed, the core of Wynn’s being told her that what she did was right. It had to be right, no matter the cost, because she couldn’t face the alternative.
She’d turned against the guild, deceived and lied, and even stolen revered cold lamp crystals and used them like currency. She had done—would continue to do—all these wrong things for the right reason.
“I do thank you,” she told Vreuvillä.
But she turned away to find Chane fixated upon Vreuvillä. He was shuddering, and his eyes seemed dead, their irises like circles of crystallized ice upon white marble orbs. He looked nothing like himself . . . or perhaps as if there was nothing left of himself inside.
“Chane?”
Only then did Wynn realize something. Whenever questions had been asked of someone unknown or untrustworthy, Chane had stood right behind her. By a whisper or a squeeze upon her shoulder, he’d guided her through the truths or deceptions of those who gave answers.
Wynn had heard nothing from Chane through the entire exchange with Vreuvillä.
Now the priestess watched him alone, her grip tightening on the white, curved blade.
“Chane?” Wynn whispered.
Fear-fed hunger, the screeching beast within, the prodding forest upon him like an army of insects . . .
This was all that Chane felt, all that filled his head, until he could do nothing but hold himself in as he stood behind Wynn.
The barkless tree behind him felt like a cold fire on his back, its suspicious chill penetrating his dead flesh. It might not know what he was, but it wanted him gone—not just from this place, but forever. Amid this, all Chane could cling to was what he wanted: Wynn, safe and always within reach.
This was the only clear desire left in place of his reason.
Fear of any threat to him—to her—grew too much. It wrapped around that one desire as the forest prodded him without mercy, trying to uncover what he was. And that wild woman now eyed him, as if some living beast within her sensed the unliving one within him.
He saw her hand clenched on her white blade’s hilt. The beast inside him howled to face this threat. But Chane saw only the threat to Wynn.
Chane lunged around Wynn, and she sucked air so fast, her throat turned dry. Snarls erupted from the pack and even Shade, as well. Wynn instinctively grabbed for a hold on any dog she might get.
Shade swerved in and rammed Chane’s knee with her shoulder. His sword jabbed and stuck in the earth as he toppled over the dog.
Wynn was still confused as to what had gone wrong with Chane. She was about to rush in before he and Shade turned on each other.
He pushed up with his hands to all fours, and Wynn saw his face. He looked like some pale beast gone mad.
Vreuvillä’s eyes seemed to glow in shock. She raised her blade and took a step toward Chane as the mottled brown male bolted around her legs, trying to come at Chane from the far side.
Shade spun, charging at Chane.
“No!” Wynn shouted.
But Shade pushed off with her hind legs, and Wynn had to duck away.
Shade went straight over the top of Chane. She landed and threw herself straight at the mottled brown male.
A horrendous thump hit the earth. Wynn felt the impact through her feet and spun toward the sound.
Vreuvillä landed in a backward hop as earth, mulch, and moss splashed up around where Ore-Locks’s staff had struck. Ore-Locks jerked the iron staff back up, lashing its end when Vreuvillä tried to advance.
Stunned that Shade had tried to both stop and defend Chane, Wynn didn’t know to do. She didn’t understand what had driven Chane into this sudden assault. But Shade was being harried by two more of the majay-hì. Ore-Locks spun his staff, the butt end swinging out at a third dog. They were all outnumbered, and the pack would be on them far quicker than the last time.
Chane came up on one knee and reached for his upright sword. Ore-Locks whirled the staff around overhead and took a thundering step toward Vreuvillä. Wynn looked at only Chane.
His eyes were on the priestess, and his face twisted into the mask of a monster. When his lips curled back, she saw his teeth had changed.
Wynn could see only one choice.
“No—at Chane!” she shouted to Ore-Locks. “Put him down!”
Ore-Locks blinked once, slack-faced. In a second blink, fierce determination tightened his broad features. Wynn had an instant of frightful doubt when the iron staff changed directions midswing.
The iron bar struck Chane’s head off-center, glancing downward with full force on his shoulder.
The crack and ringing sound wrenched the breath out of Wynn.
Chane wobbled like one of those wind-whipped branches. He dropped onto both knees but didn’t go down, and the staff’s end struck the ground. Wynn again heard—felt—thunder in the earth.
Ore-Locks turned the staff over, stomped forward one step, and brought the staff’s other end down with his full weight. Wynn whimpered as she thought she heard bones break, and Chane crumpled to the ground like a sack of stones.
The whole clearing went silent except for Shade’s threatening snarls and ragged breaths. All the other majay-hì held their positions. Ore-Locks stepped in, his eyes on Chane, the long iron staff poised in his large, tight fists.
“Enough,” Wynn gasped, trying to push him off.
Vreuvillä was watching them all, and Wynn feared if the priestess got closer, she might see Chane bleeding something other than red blood.
“What is this?” Vreuvillä demanded.
Wynn needed to get Chane away from here. “I’m sorry. It’s the forest. You know it can affect some humans.”
It was a feeble lie, as Wynn well knew. The Lhoin’na forest would not turn any human into a mad beast.
“He’s ill,” she added. “We should get him back to the city.”
“Clearly,” Vreuvillä returned.
“I won’t forget your help tonight,” Wynn said.
“I will not forget you.”
It was a sharp ending, as the priestess turned away. The pack was slower in following her. The last to pause at the clearing’s edge were the silver-gray female and mottled brown male. The female lingered an instant longer, watching Wynn as her mate dove into the underbrush.
“Did you learn anything else?” Ore-L
ocks demanded.
He hadn’t heard everything that she had. Only she—and for some reason Vreuvillä—could feel and hear the Fay speak. All he cared about, still flushed from battle and hovering over Chane, was whether she could better serve his own ends.
“Pick him up,” she said shortly, looking in panic at Chane’s limp form. “We’re leaving.”
Sau’ilahk still hung on the plain, pushed so far through rage and fear that he had grown ignorant of what might have happened with Wynn. He would not allow himself to sink fully into dormancy’s comfort. Only just so far that the night around him appeared darker than it should.
Sau’ilahk . . .
At that thundering hiss in his mind, he answered.
Yes . . . my Beloved.
Why do you leave the sage beyond your sight? Dog her, drive her, at any cost. Serve—if only to serve your one desire.
Sau’ilahk grew so very still in that half slumber upon the edge of his god’s dreams. He could only do as commanded if Wynn still lived. And being so ordered, did his Beloved know so? It brought him thin relief, though he wondered how, even for a god, Beloved knew this. Wynn’s life was still for his taking, when the time came.
But there and then, he was so weary and depleted. He doubted that he could conjure another servitor or even summon some beast to bind as another familiar. Certainly not—not unless he fed yet again.
Sau’ilahk wondered at his god’s determination, but he dared not argue nor reveal doubt or suspicion.
Yes, my Beloved.
CHAPTER 16
Wynn reached her room at the guild and opened the door, and Shade trotted in. She held it while Ore-Locks carried Chane inside, and then breathed a short sigh of relief at having completed their rush through the redwood ring.
Even late at night, there had been too many sages about. Wynn had urgently clanged the outer gate’s bell and then hurried in when the attendant came. She’d quickly dismissed his offer of aid or to fetch a physician when he saw Chane hanging limply over Ore-Locks’s shoulder.
At least now they were behind a closed door.