Jean Rabe: The Lake of Death

“Fine!” The draconian tossed the light globe up and let it hover just below the ceiling. Its glow paled just a bit, and Ragh knew that away from his hand it would go out within minutes. “Fine. Fine. Fine.” He ground the ball of his foot against the stone. “Let’s go exploring tomorrow—maybe find ways to expand your territory, add to your hoard, whatever you want. Fight all of Sable’s armies. Why not…?”

A rumble raced through the cavern floor and sent everything to jangling.

“Aw, Dhamon, there must be some place that interests you…”

The dragon stared at the crystal ball. “Some place? No. But there is someone.”

She wore tattoos on her face not terribly long ago—a lightning bolt and a jay feather, the latter symbolic of her favorite bird, the former declaring that she once claimed a pack of wolves as her family. Fast as lightning the pack used to race along Southern Ergoth’s sea cliffs—sometimes in pursuit of prey, but most often just for the sheer exhilaration. It was, perhaps, the best time in her life. There was beauty in the simplicity of those wild days. Now when she thought of that blissful time, she swore she could once again feel the soft, thick-bladed grass beneath her feet and the cool of the woods’ afternoon shadows. She could still imagine the sweet, salt-tinged breeze blowing east from the Sirrion Sea and the pleasing sounds of the gulls and blue herons. All of that was several years ago and many, many miles from here.

She hadn’t run with wolves since the overlords arrived. The white dragon Frost had descended on the island continent of the Kagonesti elves and turned nearly all of it into a frigid wasteland. Not many of the wolves survived the dragon’s coming. Not many of the Kagonesti chose to stay and struggle against the harsh conditions. They left for other lands. Feril left too, though not with any of the nomadic bands of her kinsmen. She struck out on her own, roaming, backtracking, circling, never staying in one spot for more than a few days…until she crossed paths with Dhamon Grimwulf and his rag-tag crew—all champions of the legendary mystic healer Goldmoon. For a reason still unknown to her, Feril defied her solitary nature and joined them. She fought at their side, grew close to them, to Dhamon in particular. She gave every ounce of her nature-magic and physical strength at the Window to the Stars, an ancient portal where the dragon overlords gathered one night. She and her companions couldn’t best even a single dragon there, but they experienced some measure of victory and gained hope that mortals might someday triumph.

After the Window they had parted company.

The leaving was hard for her, but fated to be, she thought at the time. Necessary, she told Dhamon, when he tried to persuade her to stay. She then went to the isle of Cristyne and aided refugees who had fled there from her homeland and elsewhere. The work was hard and rewarding and distracting—she rarely thought of Dhamon. After a year she moved on again—to Witdel, then Portsmith, Gwyntarr, and Caergoth, where at a shop near the docks she paid an old sailor to remove the tattoos that so easily branded her as a Kagonesti. She wasn’t trying to hide her elven heritage, as she still wore the fringed leather clothing favored by her people and made no effort to conceal her pointed ears, but she was trying to put distance between herself and her past, and the tattoos were a symbol of the past.

She cut her hair a month ago. Once it had been a gorgeous, unruly mass of curls that cascaded past her shoulders like a lion’s mane. Now she was keeping it cropped short, too short to festoon with hawk and jay feathers and painted wooden beads like she used to do. She told herself it was a practical measure, as she was living in the forest now, and long tresses would only become tangled in the lowest branches. In truth, it was one more step in creating a new identity.

Another new start, another new home—this time the Qualinesti forest of Wayreth. There were wolves here— she’d seen their tracks and spoor several times—and right now she was watching one that sat a dozen yards away, across the creek she was bending over to slake her thirst. The gray was a young female, large and well fed, and her eyes met the Kagonesti’s, making Feril remember those days of racing along the sea cliffs.

Run with me, the wolf teased with her eyes. There was no misreading the invitation, as Feril understood animals far better than people. Run with me along this stream. Discover where the water takes us. Run with me, sister.

A part of Feril wanted to shout yes. Let’s fly like lightning! This new identity came with new responsibilities, albeit self-imposed ones. She sadly shook her head. Later, my wolf-sister, her eyes replied.

“There are men I must find this day,” she said aloud. “I have serious work to do.”

The wolf tipped her muzzle back and howled softly. Other wolves concealed in the trees to the north answered the cry. A last look at Feril, and she ran toward a copse of river birch to join the hidden pack.

Feril dipped her hands in the creek and splashed water on her face and the back of her neck, cutting the heat of this late summer day. She drank her fill and stood, looking to the trees for some last sign of the wolf, then reluctantly turned in the opposite direction. Keeping after the tracks she’d been so diligently following for the past day and a half, she loped through the high grass and cherry laurel.

There were four or five men, she thought, though she couldn’t be entirely certain. It had rained briefly last night, which, though making the forest smell fresh and wonderful, made following the tracks challenging. Fortunately the men were armored and were wearing hard-soled boots. There were other signs she relied on, too—fallen twigs that had been snapped by heavy footsteps, crushed beetles, broken branches on a crowberry shrub, a scraped piece of bark. The men hadn’t been building a fire at night, though she could tell where they camped yesterday because of the tamped-down grass and a few discarded apple cores.

“How far ahead are you?” she mused. She knelt beneath a gnarled, striped maple and thrust her fingers into the moist earth. Closing her eyes, she reached out with her senses, her mind touching the husks of long-dead insects, brushing up against the tree’s spreading roots. She envisioned herself as the earth, felt low-spreading evergreens and chamomile herbs growing, worms and earwigs gently and tenaciously burrowing. She sensed a doe treading lightly a mile or so away, a rabbit near the doe, two ground squirrels cavorting, a young wolf running. At the edge of her senses was a wild boar in rut. There was no trace of the men. She wasn’t near enough yet.

“I will find you,” she vowed. “I must.” Her new life, in this new place, her self-imposed responsibilities, her pledge to keep the people in these woods safe all depended upon it.

For the better part of the day she continued to track them, stopping from time to time to converse with animals—a family of woodpeckers making its home in a yellow walnut tree, a large starling paralleling her path, and an elderly fox that proved most helpful. The fox had watched the men come this way after dawn. He couldn’t tell Feril how many there were, as numbers were unknown to him. As many or more than the woodpeckers in that tree, he tried after she persisted.

Four or five, Feril translated, which was already her guess.

The trail led her through an idyllic glade—weeping birch and thin, graceful larches, the bases of which were ringed by hostas, creeping dogwood, and spreading ferns. She slowed her pace for a few minutes so she could better appreciate her surroundings, then, when she passed through the glade and the foliage drastically changed, she started to run.