Of Truth and Beasts

Chapter 10

Staff in one hand and a glowing cold lamp crystal held high in the other, Wynn tried to illuminate their way. Shade was out in front, leading them down a narrow path of flat stones set in the earth. But the walk to First Glade took longer than expected, as the forest grew more and more dense around her.

Endless masses of twisting ferns and vines meshed tightly between the trees on both sides. The intertwined canopy overhead blocked out the moon and stars.

“This is foolish,” Ore-Locks said from the rear. “We should have gone to the guild and taken rooms until morning.”

“You’re welcome to turn back and wait,” Wynn answered.

A sharp intake of breath came from behind. No answer followed it.

In part, Wynn knew he was right, but she’d been too eager, and Chane couldn’t come with her in daylight. Then she glanced back and realized that the sharp sucking of breath hadn’t come from Ore-Locks.

Chane’s face was so pale in the crystal’s light that it bordered on gray. A mere ghost of brown remained in his irises. His eyes shifted rapidly as he peered into the dense foliage.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered.

He jerked out the new sword in one swift movement and stiffened to a sudden halt.

“They’re moving,” he said. “Can you not see? The trees ... are shifting when we are not looking!”

Wynn grew frightened, though not because of what he saw. She suspected this might happen the closer they came to First Glade—to Chârmun, the great tree called Sanctuary. Chane was succumbing partially to its influence flowing out through the Lhoin’na forest, even while wearing the brass ring.

Ore-Locks turned his head, following Chane’s fixed gaze. “What is wrong with you?”

“There is nothing wrong with me!” Chane rasped, and pointed back the way they’d come. “That vine over the path ... it was not there before. I would have had to push it aside if it had been.”

Ore-Locks looked behind them, hefting his iron staff and perhaps expecting to see whatever had unsettled Chane. Wynn held the cold crystal with only her thumb and tugged on Chane’s sleeve with her fingers.

“I promise you, the trees are not moving,” she said. “Focus on me—only me—and you’ll be fine.”

Ore-Locks shook his head. “It looks the same as before.”

“Let’s move on,” Wynn insisted, still trying to pull Chane around before ...

Shade circled back and began snarling, her full attention locked on Chane.

Ore-Locks started at the dog’s behavior, and then retreated two steps back from Chane and leveled his iron staff.

Chane ignored both of them and twisted about.

“I know what I saw!” he whispered to Wynn.

The light of her crystal showed his irises as colorless. His pale face was coated in a sheen, as if he perspired.

“What is happening to him?” Ore-Locks asked. “What is ... he?”

This was all Wynn needed. Chane was succumbing to the elves’ forest, and Ore-Locks was openly demanding answers.

The undead, especially anything akin to a Noble Dead, were almost unknown on this continent but for veiled references in forgotten folktales. Ore-Locks had probably never heard the word “vampire,” let alone understood what it meant. But he certainly knew of the undead, as any stonewalker did; he’d helped destroy Sau’ilahk.

There was no knowing how a corrupt stonewalker might react to Chane’s true nature. A rational guess led to the worst of conclusions. Anyone who thought a mere explanation would settle this was a fool. Chane had done horrible things without remorse that Wynn didn’t like thinking about, but the situation wasn’t that simple.

“Answer me,” Ore-Locks said.

“When nothing else needs my attention,” she returned. “And, Shade ... be quiet.”

Shade fell silent, though her jowls still quivered as she watched Chane.

Wynn didn’t know if this place heightened the dog’s natural instincts, or if Shade simply didn’t like the idea of Chane going to First Glade. Or perhaps it was just Chane’s obviously decaying state. Wynn could do no more than put off dealing with any of this.

“Lead ... now,” she said.

Shade reluctantly turned and slunk ahead.

“We are not going any farther,” Ore-Locks stated, “until you answer me.”

“Then leave,” Wynn replied.

His threat was a bluff. Ore-Locks would never get what he wanted without her, and they both knew it. He’d never let her go on without him, nor would he challenge Shade and Chane just to stop her here.

He said nothing more, and Wynn took up Chane’s free hand, placing it on her shoulder.

“Hold on, and you won’t feel so lost,” she assured him. “Chap did the same for me in the forest of the an’Cróan.”

She’d been affected by that far elven land, for that place not only abhorred the undead, but anyone not of full elven blood. Even Leesil, with his mixed heritage, had fought to keep his wits there. Almost everywhere Wynn had gone in those wild lands, she’d kept her fingers clenched in Chap’s scruff.

Chane’s fingers gripped down, but Wynn didn’t wince. He slid his sword back into its sheath. A bit of soft brown stained his irises once more, but Wynn felt him shuddering.

“Do you want to go back and wait for me?” she asked quietly.

“No,” he answered between clenched teeth.

Wynn considered arguing, but turned and waved Shade onward. She was ambivalent at the sound of Ore-Locks’s heavy footfalls following along. Then the path split in three directions.

Shade sniffed the air and craned her head, looking up into the branches. Wynn waited in silence, for in this place, she put her trust in Shade’s senses. The dog finally trotted along the center path, but Chane made another harsh sucking sound.

“Close your eyes,” Wynn told him.

Her crystal cast eerie shadows in the wild underbrush, but something more stood out in the darkness overhead. She gazed upward, raising the crystal, and its light caught on tawny vines as thick as her arm. They wove their way through the high canopy, some of them paralleling the path ahead.

Wynn slowed, looking closer. The vines were smooth, perhaps glistening from moisture, and utterly unlike anything else in sight. She thought she saw grain in them, like polished wood.

—follow ... tree—

At those broken memory-words, Wynn looked down at Shade. How could she follow a tree? Which tree? But Shade pressed on, and Wynn stepped after her.

The farther they went, the more Wynn noticed those strange, tawny vines—and they grew broader, thicker. Smaller ones appeared here and there, perhaps branching off from the larger ones. All were woven into the upper reaches of the trees, and now ...

They didn’t glisten as much as they appeared to faintly glow, as if catching the radiance of the moon hidden from sight.

Wynn traced onward by their faint radiance as she followed Shade, until another light appeared ahead, beyond the forest’s tangle. Vines and branches, trunks and bearded moss were like black silhouettes between her and the nearing illumination.

Shade lunged ahead through a break at the path’s end.

Wynn couldn’t keep up without leaving Chane behind—which she would not do.

“Shade!” she called.

Within a few paces, Wynn stepped through the break and stopped.

She stood in a broad clearing wholly roofed by the forest and touched Chane’s hand upon her shoulder, looking up at him. His eyes opened before she turned back.

Wynn looked across the moss-covered earth to the immense glowing tree in the heart of First Glade.

Sau’ilahk watched the forest floor rush past through the eyes of his servitor. The experience was disorienting.

He had caught only glimpses of tree-bound settlements in his creation’s furious racing. It caught up to Wynn somewhere northeast of where he waited on the grassy plain. When thickening forest forced his servitor out of the trees and onto the path, Sau’ilahk caught only a glimpse of Wynn between Ore-Locks’s thick legs at the rear of their procession. Worse, his creation’s resistance grew the farther it went.

It began struggling to turn back.

Continue, he commanded, and he drew upon more of his consumed life and forced it onward.

Ahead, light rose beyond Ore-Locks’s broad, tromping boots. It filtered through the surrounding low underbrush, and Sau’ilahk had one clear glimpse of Wynn leading Chane into that lighted place.

Where was she headed, and why at this time of night?

The servitor began to writhe.

Sau’ilahk’s awareness spun with shattered sights and sound. Vertigo sickened him as he seized the servitor with all his will. A strange pressure built on him, as if he had suddenly become corporeal. He felt submerged as in mud, and forced down as it began to shift and push him back.

A sound—a feeling—like wood splitting apart stunned all thoughts in his mind.

Sau’ilahk lost all awareness as his world went pitch-black.

“Vanâkstí Bäynœ,” Ore-Locks whispered from behind Wynn, as she gazed across the broad clearing at the faint glow of a tree too large to be real. An unnerving sensation spread through her, almost as if Chârmun watched her in turn.

She had heard some an’Cróan refer to its offspring in the Elven Territories as an ash tree, but it didn’t look anything like an ash. Massive roots split the turf in mounds nearly as tall as she where they emerged from the trunk to burrow deep into the earth. Its great bulk, the size of a small tower, twisted and turned like a slow, serene dancing giant frozen in time. Though it was completely bare of bark, it hadn’t grayed like dead wood. The soft glow emanating from its glistening and pale tawny form lit up everything in the clearing with shimmers.

It was alive, as impossible as that seemed, and Wynn looked up into its huge branches above.

They spread and mingled into the forest’s canopy. These were the origins of the “vines” she had seen. She understood what Shade had meant by “follow the tree.” Shade had been following the limbs of Chârmun, as if the dog knew what they were. Now that Wynn looked upon Sanctuary, that tree, she questioned that overwhelming drive to see it this night.

What had she expected to find here? She only knew of this place from ancient memories Chap had stolen from Most Aged Father.

Once called Sorhkafâré—the Light Upon the Grass—as leader of the westernmost allied forces in the great war, he had taken a cutting from Chârmun and left with any of his own people who would follow him. Some of the first Fay born into wolves, whose descendants would become the majay-hì, joined him, as well. He led them across the world, all the way beyond what were now called the Farlands, to establish the Elven Territories. There he had planted that cutting to become Roise Chârmune—the Seed of Sanctuary—at the heart of what would become their ancestors’ burial ground.

Unlike here, that land barred anyone not descended from those first settlers. Whether it was because of the Seed of Sanctuary or the will of decrepit and undying Most Aged Father, or both, Wynn never learned. But only elven blood, or perhaps only an’Cróan—Those of the Blood—could enter that land unimpeded.

First Glade was—had been—sacred, a haven and sanctuary against the undead. In a time to come, this place where she stood might need to be so again, should she and very few others fail to stop another war from enveloping their world. Perhaps she’d simply needed to know that Sanctuary was real. It was like seeking to look upon a promise of hope, and she needed that so badly.

Shade padded slowly across the clearing, pausing beside one long mound in the forest floor where a great root pushed up moss-blanketed earth. The mound was almost the height of Shade’s pricked-up ears as she stared up into the tree’s branches.

Wynn was caught breathless by the sight, and she slipped her cold lamp crystal into her pocket.

“Wait here,” she whispered, lifting Chane’s hand from her shoulder. “Don’t try to come closer.”

She took only one step before Chane latched on to her shoulder again.

“No!” he rasped. “This is not right.... This place ...”

Wynn pried at his fingers but was unable to move them.

“Let go and stay here,” she told him. “I’m in no danger. Don’t give in to what you feel. I won’t be long.”

Ore-Locks stepped closer, but never turned his back on Chane.

“What are you doing now?” he asked.

“What I have to,” she returned, and then Shade huffed once.

Shade stood directly at the base of Chârmun—Sanctuary—and glanced expectantly toward Wynn. With hesitant steps, Wynn headed toward Shade, but looked only at the tree. With every step, Chârmun grew in her sight, until it filled her entire view at arm’s reach.

—Wynn ... stay here—

Shade’s memory-words were soft but emphatic in Wynn’s head. It was a comforting notion, though impossible. Wynn slowly reached out, eyeing the trunk’s golden grain, and blinked against its close glow. In the last instant, she hesitated.

It suddenly seemed so wrong to touch it.

“Go on. It is all right.”

Wynn twisted toward that lilting voice, just shy of a laugh, as Shade began to growl. She thrust out her staff in warning, seeing only a cowl at first. The shoulder of a long robe followed, its cloth pure white.

“Truly, you can touch it ... if you like,” the figure said.

Wynn heard a sword jerked from a sheath.

“No!” Chane rasped. “Wynn, get back.”

Shade snarled and flattened her ears.

The figure leaned its shoulder lazily against the tree, as if lounging in a private garden. Long-fingered tan hands reached up to pull back the cowl. Golden brown hair streaked with gray curtained the figure’s face. A tauntingly slow turn of head exposed creases at the corners of large, slanted amber eyes, and he smiled.

“Chuillyon,” Wynn whispered in disbelief.

Night stars, tall grass, and white flowers, and the darker shapes of the forest trees faded back into Sau’ilahk’s view. He hung there on the plain, clinging to returning self-awareness. For an instant, he had fallen into dormancy.

He reached out through his connection, the fragment of his will embedded inside his servitor. It was not there, not anywhere. This was impossible. He should have felt his creation at even a greater distance. How could it be gone, and why at the instant he was about to see where Wynn had gone?

Something in that clearing had not allowed the servitor to enter. Something had too easily taken it apart, banishing it into nothingness.

Sau’ilahk wanted to shriek, and, indeed, any living creature near enough would have fled from the wind of his conjured voice. Slowly, he reclaimed his self-control.

He needed a servant to be his eyes and ears, one capable of invading in the elves’ forest. It now seemed he needed something more natural to that place. There had been that pressure he had felt, even without willing himself to a physical state. As if something in there tried to force him out.

Sau’ilahk had felt this before, though not with such force. And the last, too recent time had been ...

“Chuillyon?” Wynn whispered again.

Anger drove the numbness of shock out of her, but she still couldn’t believe her eyes. She’d seen him head off for the royal castle of Calm Seatt barely seven days before her journey began. No one could have reached the forest before her, let alone known where she would go first upon arrival.

All he did was nod, a curt bow of acknowledgment. And he was still smiling softly at her.

“What are you doing here?” Chane asked.

At a glance, Wynn saw the sword in his grip. Chane stood well away from Chârmun, as if hesitant to approach, but worse was the sheen on his face. She’d never seen him perspire, didn’t even think it was possible for the undead. His eyes were utterly colorless again.

When Wynn looked back at Chuillyon, he wasn’t smiling anymore.

“You are a never-ending source of perplexity, Wynn Hygeorht,” he said, but his gaze was fixed on Chane.

No one could know what Chane was while he wore the ring ... could they?

Ore-Locks stepped wide around Chane, but as he looked to Chuillyon, he grew visibly uncomfortable. He swallowed hard and lowered his eyes in a respectful bow. Clearly, Ore-Locks hadn’t expected to see his master’s comrade here, either.

Chuillyon clicked his tongue.

“Your sudden absence has been a great concern, stonewalker,” he said in a parentlike tone. “Master Cinder-Shard would be quite shocked to learn of the company you keep.”

Ore-Locks continued to look at the ground.

Wynn studied him. Hadn’t he told Cinder-Shard or any of the Stonewalkers where he’d gone?

“Your penchant for unusual companionship continues,” Chuillyon added.

Now he was studying Shade—and smiling again—leaving Wynn uncertain to whom he’d been speaking.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Me? Just a brief retreat of rest,” he answered, with obvious mock surprise. “It is my homeland, after all.”

She examined his hair, free of tangles, as if freshly groomed. His pristine white robe and even the toes of his soft boots showed no sign of travel. He looked as if he’d just stepped from the royal grounds for a leisurely walk in the woods.

“Turnabout is certainly fair,” he continued. “Why are you here, journeyor, other than for the peaceful welcome of Chârmun?”

“None of your affair. You have no authority over me.”

“Chârmun’s blessings!” Chuillyon said with a soft laugh.

What did he want? Had he followed her, or was his reason for rushing home a coincidence? She had long stopped believing in coincidence.

“Wynn, we should leave this place,” Chane rasped.

He sounded manic, but he was right. She’d seen First Glade for herself, but the appearance of this false sage had ruined that one moment of unblemished assurance.

Ore-Locks barely glanced up at Chuillyon. The dwarf’s broad face was a mask of urgency fighting reluctance, as if caught between explaining himself and simply leaving as quickly as possible.

Wynn decided upon the latter. She backed toward Chane, and Shade wheeled to follow.

“You came all this way,” Chuillyon called after her, “but you leave without even one touch? Come, now, have you lost all of your curiosity?”

She wasn’t about to let him bait her, and placed Chane’s hand on her shoulder, turning to lead him out. Then Shade stiffened beside her and spun sharply, making Wynn stall.

Shade hadn’t turned toward Chuillyon or Chârmun. She began twitching ever so slightly as she stared toward the clearing’s far side.

A long, almost mournful howl rose out of the forest.

“What was that?” Ore-Locks asked.

Chuillyon released a long, exhausted breath. “Oh, not now.”

That unguarded slip was like an annoyed boy’s mischief interrupted—or another snide utterance from an aging deceiver hiding beneath tranquillity.

A single form burst from the trees at the clearing’s rear side. Shade stood at full attention, but she didn’t snarl.

Tall and leggy, a silver-gray majay-hì loped purposefully forward. Another dog leaped out of the brush, and then another.

By Chârmun’s glow, Wynn watched a majay-hì pack appear one by one out of the forest, until nine paced and padded around the glade. They looked so much like the ones Wynn had seen in the Elven Territories of the Farlands ... silver and gray, or dull brown to charcoal, though none were as near to black as Shade. And they were all silent. Crystal blue eyes shone clearly as they closed in, circling watchfully around the intruders.

Then something more upright pushed through the trees where the last two dogs stood waiting.

Wynn stared in surprise at the newcomer.

She was small for an elf, shorter than an average human male. By her deeply tanned complexion, she could have passed for an an’Cróan, if not for her darker hair. It was so dark that it could’ve been brown rather than the sandy blonds of the Lhoin’na, let alone the brighter tones of an an’Cróan. Still, those locks were lined with vivid silver streaks. Her hair was bound by a circlet of green cloth, perhaps raw shéot’a by its dull shimmer.

At a distance, Wynn couldn’t see any lines in the woman’s face, though her presence gave the impression of long years. Flanked by the pair of majay-hì—a female of steel gray and a mottled brown male—she moved smoothly in a felt skirt bound in pleats by leather thongs wrapped about her narrow waist. Her firm steps were purposeful, as if soft earth and moss, or even the fragrant air itself, would move to her aide if she wished.

She glanced once at the intruders, and then her eyes narrowed as they turned upon Chuillyon.

He offered her a half bow of his head. “Always a pleasure ... Vreuvillä.”

Wynn caught the veiled, put-upon annoyance in his voice as he addressed the woman called “Leaf’s Heart.”

“I felt something twisted within the forest,” she returned pointedly. “I knew it must be you tampering with Chârmun ... again.”

Chuillyon raised one feathery eyebrow. “Then hardly a need to come and see.”

“Unless something more vile followed you.”

“Unlikely.”

“Chârmun is not your tool! Go back to your guild of ranks and orders. The glade is not—and has never been—a place for your kind.”

Wynn caught every implication. This woman thought Chuillyon was part of an official guild order, but that wasn’t possible. There were only five orders, and none of them wore white.

“What are they saying?” Chane whispered.

There wasn’t time for Wynn to translate, as Vreuvillä turned their way. The woman settled a hand upon the head of the steel gray female majay-hì.

Shade pressed into Wynn’s thigh, her tall body trembling, and a barrage of images, sounds, and smells assaulted Wynn. All of them related to Shade’s homeland; her mother, Lily; and her siblings. Shade was too young to be thrown into this foray.

—Wynn ... safe ... here....Wynn ... stay here—

Vreuvillä focused her large amber eyes on Shade, and then raised them to Wynn.

“Who are you?” she asked bluntly, and her tone implied no choice but to answer.

Chane’s grip tightened on Wynn’s shoulder, and he pulled her back. She saw his sword tip at her side. He didn’t need a translation to catch the challenge in the woman’s voice.

“My companions do not speak Elvish,” Wynn said.

“How careless of them,” Vreuvillä answered in Numanese.

Chane felt worse than on his longest day aboard the ship, testing his concoctions. Disoriented and sick from this place, from that unnatural tree, even the woman—all felt wrong to him. He was desperate to leave but could not show this to anyone but Wynn.

The elven woman was still studying him. Then she pointed back at Chuillyon.

“You are not with this self-righteous ... priest?”

Chuillyon sighed caustically. “Vreuvillä, really—”

“Certainly not,” Wynn cut in.

But the woman’s last sharp word stuck in Chane’s head. She spoke it with such derision that it might have meant “heretic” instead. So what was she? Regardless that she spoke a language he understood, he was too ill to clear his mind. He could not tell if either this woman or Chuillyon uttered any deceits.

And what was Chuillyon doing here? How had he arrived first?

Vreuvillä pivoted, heading off toward the glade’s far side from where she had entered.

“You should all leave,” she said, walking away. “Disturb this place no further.”

All of the majay-hì turned likewise. One paced right past Chane, and he tensed. But the mottled brown male with the woman lingered, and then stepped toward Shade, stretching out its nose.

Shade leaned away with a quiver of her jowls. The male wheeled and was the last to hop into the brush, though the wild elven woman was already gone.

The glade was silent, and Wynn pushed down on Chane’s sword arm.

“Let’s go,” she whispered.

“Back to the guild?” Chuillyon asked. “It would be my honor to escort you and assist in—”

“No, thank you,” Wynn said, without looking back, brushing her fingers between Shade’s tall ears. “Come, girl.”

Shade whined again and reluctantly slunk along beside her.

Chane backed away as Wynn led him, keeping his eyes on Chuillyon. He waited until he heard Wynn’s boots step onto stone and knew she had reached the path. Only then did he turn his eyes from Chuillyon.

The trees appeared to block Wynn’s way, to catch and trap her, though she never faltered in a step. Chane sucked air into his dead lungs as she miraculously passed through. She reached up and briefly touched his hand upon her shoulder, and then retrieved her cold lamp crystal from her pocket.

“Close your eyes and hang on,” she told him.