Of Truth and Beasts

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 released 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.

If the Fay had come for Wynn—if that elven woman had done this, then the tree of her worship was the last place they should flee.

Only two things kept Chane from picking Wynn up and running away.

He could not navigate under the forest’s influence, and only Ore-Locks’s effort to clear a path behind Shade gave Chane any sense of direction. And second, the pack might catch them, in part or whole, before Shade reached the place she sought.

The beast within Chane lunged to the limits of its bonds. It shrieked and howled, wanting him to turn ... to kill whatever hunted them ... to hunt it instead.

“Faster!” he urged Wynn as they ran.

Anything that tried to touch her would die—anything at all.

Wynn burst into the open behind Ore-Locks. Shade wheeled and began barking at her, as the dwarf turned and set himself facing the forest. One stolen memory-word kept echoing in Wynn’s head.

—Sanctuary ... Sanctuary ... Sanctuary—

And there it was, merely a stone’s throw away. The whole clearing was filled with the low shimmer of Chârmun’s barkless form, as its glowing wood spread light like the moon.

Why did Shade believe this place was safer than anywhere else? The Fay could invade anything growing in the forest. That tree, by its pervasive nature, was more akin to them than any other.

Ore-Locks glanced at her—then just beyond her. He suddenly dropped her staff to the ground and leveled his long iron one in both hands. He swung the thick bar back and up over his head.

“Get away from the trees!” he shouted.

Wynn was about to bolt when a rasping snarl rose behind her. Someone grabbed her, nearly throwing her out beyond Ore-Locks’s swing. When she regained her footing and turned, Chane stood between her and the trees with his back to her. Branches of an elm beyond him twisted in the air, reaching toward where she’d stood.

Chane raised his sword, but never got to swing, as Ore-Locks’s staff ripped downward.

Leaves exploded in its passing. Twisting branches broke into splinters. But a dark form shot out of the forest over the top of Ore-Locks’s downed staff. The mottled brown majay-hì went straight at Chane as Shade charged two more of the pack rushing from the underbrush.

Wynn grew frantic in trying to think of a way to end this before blood was spilled. At any moment, Vreuvillä would catch up, and she was the one who’d started all this chaos. Wynn whirled around, looking to the great tree glimmering in the clearing.

Why had Shade wanted them to come here?

Wynn looked back and spotted her staff lying behind Ore-Locks, who now whipped his long iron bar back and forth, warding off three majay-hì. She ducked in below his backswing and snatched the butt end of her staff.

One quick burst from the sun crystal might stun everyone without harming Chane too much. This was all she could think to do as she raised up the staff and backpedaled. But she stumbled as something lashed around her calf and jerked her leg straight.

A thick root sprouting from the moss-covered ground coiled around her knee.

Wynn reached behind her back for Magiere’s old dagger.

“Pull back!” Ore-Locks shouted.

The moss-covered earth split again at Wynn’s feet. A second earth-stained root shot upward over her chest.

“No!” was all Wynn got out as she toppled.

Sau’ilahk saw light ahead as the tâshgâlh raced through the forest’s heights. The farther the animal had gotten from the aspen clearing, the more the wind had subsided and was left behind. Yet the nearer his familiar closed upon the light, the more the surrounding trees wavered and shuddered under some other influence. Sau’ilahk could not make sense of this.

A slight break in the trees ahead gave him a filtered view. He thought he saw Wynn standing in the clearing. Chane and Shade and the dwarf stood before her. The rest was a wink as the first of the pack broke into the clearing.

Ore-Locks went at them, as did Shade. Chane rushed forward to the tree line, and Sau’ilahk lost sight of him, his familiar too high above. Then the earth broke at Wynn’s feet.

Something dark writhed up to coil around her leg.

The tâshgâlh leaped to a tree on the clearing’s edge—and the world went black.

The last thing Sau’ilahk saw was something glimmering, tawny, and pale in that space—a massive, ancient tree, bare of bark but still growing in the earth. In the darkness that swallowed everything from his senses, Sau’ilahk again heard a sound like splintering wood.

That crackling cascaded through him, as if he had flesh and bone—as if he were that green wood being ripped apart. All of his awareness went as blank as his sight through his familiar. But he did not fall into dormancy like the last time.

The plain beyond the forest slowly returned to his sight.

Sau’ilahk stood there, shuddering in the aftermath.

Another familiar had been severed from him by the one place he could not follow Wynn. Again, so close—again, so lost—but this time it brought panic instead of outrage. Something assaulted the sage—something in the forest itself. Had that barbaric woman summoned an influence he could not identify?

If Wynn died in there, what became of his hope to follow her to his one desire?

What became of Sau’ilahk’s dream of flesh?

Chane chopped downward with his sword as the mottled brown majay-hì tried to bite into his calf. The animal lunged away, and his blade gouged up moss and earth.

“Pull back!” Ore-Locks shouted.

Chane glanced over—and then a leafy branch slapped into his face. He lost sight of everything, and on instinct pulled the sword upward, trying to slash and clear his view.

A tan hand gripped that branch. Chane quickly tipped the blade down.

A sharp clang sent a slight shiver up his sword. He sidestepped as he thought he saw a long, white blade strike for his abdomen. Hunger flushed through him as his gaze snapped upward.

Chane stared into angry amber eyes among the tree’s leaves. He groped for the elven woman’s hand or blade, and leveled his sword to slam its edge into her head.

“No!”

Wynn’s cry made Chane falter. He twisted away with a wild slash to fend off the priestess and heard his cloak tear. A sharp pain filled the left side of his chest. Hunger ate away the agony as fear cleared his thoughts, and then he saw ...

Wynn was on the ground, and something dark coiled around her throat.

He ran straight toward her, as she gripped the dark tendril with one hand and slashed through it with her dagger. Another one coiled around her left calf and knee, squirming up her thigh.

Earth-stained roots were somehow moving on their own.

Chane slashed through the second root’s base as Wynn ripped away the piece she had severed from her throat. She groped for her staff as he reached down for her, but at the same time, he glanced over his shoulder.

Ore-Locks backed toward them, farther into the clearing, whipping his iron staff in a wide arc as he tried to keep the pack at bay. Shade darted around his circumference, harrying anything attempting to go around. But more of the pack poured from the forest as Vreuvillä stepped into the clear. The priestess held a long, curved white dagger in her hand.

“To the tree—now!” Wynn shouted.

Chane balked as he pulled her up. The crawling on his skin had grown worse since entering this place.

Another root erupted at Wynn’s feet. She lunged away, pulling from Chane’s grip. The root writhed and twisted toward her, growing thicker at its base as it extended.

Chane hacked down. The instant the root severed, another tore up through the moss and lashed at his face. He stumbled away, and it swerved toward Wynn.

How could it know where she was? Even though it moved, it could not so precisely target her. Either something directed it or its sense of its target was not natural.

The smallest notion broke through Chane’s faltering reason.

So long ago, he had crouched in hiding with Welstiel, as they were hunted by Magiere. That night, neither Magiere nor Chap had sensed or tracked Chane’s presence—not while Welstiel had a grip on him. And Welstiel had been wearing the ring.

Chane spun and rushed at Wynn. Twisting behind her, keeping everything in his sight, he wrapped his left arm across her front. Grabbing her far shoulder, he closed his left hand hard upon it, until the brass ring bit into his finger.

Chane dragged Wynn backward, hoping this would work, as rage-fed hunger washed over him again.

Wynn struggled to keep her feet as Chane dragged her. She kicked at the root, trying to fend it off as it reached for her ankle, but Chane’s grip crushed her shoulder so hard, she gasped.

“Still,” he snarled in her ear. “Quiet.”

Wynn did as she was told and watched the root.

It rolled and lashed the earth and whipped to the left. Mulch and moss tore at its base as it coiled and snaked about. Suddenly, it rolled over and lashed her way.

Wynn cringed, flattening her body up against Chane’s.

The root flipped and twisted to the right, snaking beneath old, decayed leaves.

Wynn swallowed hard, trying to breathe as quietly as possible. The root had lost track of her, though she stood only a staff’s length away. How was that possible?

More roots erupted all around the clearing’s edge. Majay-hì scampered away from those twisting tendrils. Vreuvillä quickly stepped clear, and then froze, staring at them.

Each thick, earth-darkened tendril felt about the ground, searching for something—for Wynn.

With their adversaries distracted, Ore-Locks and Shade retreated to a position just shy of those roots. Not one root sprouted farther in than the clearing’s edge. None emerged within reach of them, as if ...

Wynn struggled to twist her head around and look to Chârmun.

“Back up,” she whispered.

Chane didn’t move, until Wynn nudged him with her elbow. He retreated, hauling her along, but Wynn felt him shuddering harder and harder, his sternum pressed between her shoulder blades.

Skulker ... do you think you can hide from us forever?

Vreuvillä stiffened, and Wynn cringed at the scratching leaf-wing chorus of the Fay in her head.

Hide? How could she hide in plain sight?

Her shoulder throbbed, and she glanced at it. The brass ring on Chane’s left hand was biting into her shoulder through cloak and robe. She tapped his hand with her dagger’s butt, and he slackened his grip.

Every tree around the clearing began to crackle as wind grew among them. Branches shook and writhed, joining the search of the roots. Even the trunks began to creak and waver.

Vreuvillä watched the trees, horror twisting her face, smothering any other emotions.

“Cräjh-bana-ahâr!” she cried out, and Wynn barely caught the meaning of the rest. “You have told me what to do. Why ... why do you violate your own child to reach your enemy?”

Even a part of my child may be sacrificed ... to save it from the decimation that abomination will bring upon it!

Wynn couldn’t fathom what any of that meant, let alone Vreuvillä’s connection to the Fay. Tears rolled from the elven woman’s eyes, which were so filled with shock that the whites showed around her large amber irises. A breaking point had been reached, though Wynn wasn’t certain of what.

Some of the majay-hì eyed the humans and the dwarf as they spread around the clearing’s circumference. Only the silver-gray and mottled brown kept watching the forest, staying close to Vreuvillä. But the longer Vreuvillä was stalled by what she saw, the more her doubts might grow. That meant keeping the pack at bay as long as possible.

Wynn wasn’t about to give them another instant to recover. She dropped the dagger and grabbed Chane’s ring hand.

“Cover up!” she whispered to him.

Wynn twisted out of his arms but kept her own fingers on his and the ring. There was no time to wait for him or to dig out her glasses. She thrust the staff upward, its crystal held in her mind’s eye as she ducked her head. She envisioned the patterned shapes around the crystal, hoping she could ignite it without holding it in her sight line. This was something she’d never tried before.

Only the last line of il’Sänke’s instructed recitation raced through her thoughts, with no time to cross her lips.

Mênajil il’Núr’u mên’Hkâ’ä— “for the Light of Life.”

Nothing happened. Not one bit of sudden brightness filled the clearing.

Vreuvillä pivoted suddenly, as if something had caught her eye. She didn’t look at Wynn, but rather up. Wynn quickly followed that gaze.

Above her, the long sun crystal burned within, fully aglow. It was almost too painful to look upon. But not a single ray of light spread along Chârmun’s tawny branches above. The crystal had answered her intention, growing bright within, but its light of the sun hadn’t spread.

Cold astonishment knotted in Wynn’s throat, and her focus broke. The crystal’s imprisoned glare winked out. She was at a loss, and panic set in. When she lowered her head again, Vreuvillä had set herself, her strange white blade held at ready. The full pack of more than a dozen large majay-hì circled in from all sides.

Then Wynn spotted Shade.

Shade stood her ground, snapping and snarling just beyond Ore-Locks with his iron staff raised for a strike. Vreuvillä’s two guardians, the silver-gray female and the mottled brown male faced them. Strangely, though the male bared his teeth in weaving paces back and forth, the female remained poised in silence.

She was watching Shade and took one soft step forward.

“Look at her!” Wynn called to Vreuvillä, though she pointed at Shade and not the silver-gray majay-hì. “Think about her!”

Vreuvillä held her ground, only briefly turning her eyes upon Shade.

“Why would she defend me ... turn on her own kind?” Wynn demanded. “Why ... if what your ‘Pain Mother’ says is true?”

Vreuvillä scowled with disdain at that translated title.

Wynn wasn’t certain what it meant, but it gave the priestess further pause. She needed to stall a little longer for what she thought might happen.

The silver-gray female inched another step. Shade lunged partway and snapped at her, and then froze as the mottled brown male wheeled in, returning Shade’s threat.

“Shade, no!” Wynn called.

The silver-gray dog shouldered the mottled brown aside and took another step.

Do not listen to this spy! Truth and lies—she will use both to delude you!

Wynn tried not to shudder under the Fay’s denouncement. At least she’d turned their focus onto their own emissary, and this confirmed Wynn’s suspicion.

The Fay couldn’t enter First Glade. They were afraid now, and Wynn knew it was the truth they feared more than any lie.

“Look at them,” she told Vreuvillä, pointing to the silver-gray female, as even the brown male stood in tense watchfulness. “They want to know.... Don’t you?”

“Know what?”

“Ask them,” Wynn answered.

The female came nose to nose with Shade. Even as Shade snarled, the female thrust her head forward. Shade’s spittle spread across silver-gray fur as they slid muzzle against muzzle.

Shade instantly quieted.

Her hackles began to settle, though the mottled brown male stood a half length behind the female, ready to lunge. These two of the pack, or at least the female, wanted to know why one of their own, foreign and strange as Shade was, had turned against them for a human.

Shade would tell them, and Wynn could only imagine the flurry of memory-speak.

Whether it was her own remembrance or that of Shade’s mother, Lily, Shade among all majay-hì was more gifted at passing on the memories of others. The silver-gray female would see that one dark night, halfway across the world.

In a clearing within the an’Cróan’s forest, Chap had gone to commune with his kin and learn why they’d left Leesil’s mother to suffer in isolation. He learned something more, as well. When he’d chosen to be born into flesh as a majay-hì pup, he was fully aware of the task that lay ahead in his life. But he was not aware of everything he should’ve been.

His kin had stolen most of his memories from his time among them.

There were secrets the Fay kept from him in his newly taken form, his new life. Even now, like Chap, Wynn wondered what he was missing. When he had denounced them for this, they had caught Wynn unintentionally listening in.

If not for Chap, or more especially Lily, a true majay-hì, Wynn would’ve died that night.

Lily’s faith in Chap made her dive in to defend a human, and her pack had followed. But the Fay hadn’t relented. They turned upon the majay-hì who tried to help. The Fay invaded through a large downed tree, making its roots and branches lash at Lily’s pack.

They killed a majay-hì that night—without hesitation—in their attempt to kill Wynn.

All of this must’ve passed from Shade to the silver-gray female in less than three blinks. The female wheeled, rushing back around Vreuvillä’s legs. The mottled brown male joined them as Vreuvillä crouched down and lowered her head.

As both of the priestess’s companions nuzzled her face, Wynn heard the torrent in the trees whip to a frenzy. It was so suddenly violent that it pulled her attention from the trio.

“What is happening?” Ore-Locks called out, turning every which way.

Shade backed up until her rump hit Wynn’s legs. She was trembling as she looked about. As the wind shook the trees, Wynn thought she saw something move among them.

It was only a glimpse ... a large form that walked just beyond the closest thrashing trees at the clearing’s edge. Or, rather, Wynn thought she saw branches bend and spring back in something’s passing. What it was, she couldn’t tell, for it was little more than a darker shadow. Something made of whirling wind, swirling leaves, and mulch torn from the earth stalked through the forest.

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-Locks 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.