Brian Kittrell - The Immortals of Myrdwyer

“Just do it,” Valyrie said, pressing her hand against Laedron’s shoulder. “Now’s not the time to argue. Maybe he can find something of use.”

Nodding, Marac led them to the spot where he’d found the tracks.

Brice crept along parallel to the marks. After studying the grass and brush for a while, he picked up something small. “A thread of string.”

“Did you go this far, Marac?” Laedron asked, moving closer to see.

“No, I stopped back there, near the horses.” Marac crouched next to Brice. “I doubt it’s one of ours.”

“Impossible to tell, but it’s out of place here in the middle of a field.” Brice eyed the brush leading away from the camp. “We’d better pack up our belongings before going any farther. We can’t afford to get lost without our supplies or our horses.”

They returned to the camp, bundled up their sleeping packs and possessions, then put their gear back on their horses. Afterward, Laedron followed Brice back to the suspicious patch of grass.

“You see how the weeds lay like this?” Brice gestured with the palm of his hand, motioning toward the trees. “It tends to be pressed in the direction someone walks. Follow them in that direction, and you should be able to find more tracks.” Crouching, Brice waddled toward the tree line. “Like this one.”

“You think that it was a some one and not a some thing ?” Marac asked.

“Difficult to tell by these. I’ll have to see a few more; these don’t have the best definition.”

Laedron looked at the track, then turned to see the presumed path. “Down that way?”

Brice nodded. “Should be easy to follow. Weeds and pine straw are easily displaced when you walk through them, so we can go for a while to see where this path leads. It looks like whoever made them didn’t care if he-or she, or it-disturbed the ground.”

Bending down beside Brice, Marac squinted at the ground. “Any ideas yet as to what made them?”

“I’m leaning toward a human.”

“And you’re sure they’re human tracks? Animals couldn’t make tracks like these?”

“They’re fresh, and we haven’t seen anything big enough to make prints this size pass through here. A man, on the other hand… plenty big enough.”

“What about recent enough? We have no proof that anyone other than the four of us are out here.” The image of the crystal beast flashing through his mind, Laedron asked, “Could it be anything other than a man? Something bigger maybe?”

“Possibly, but few tracks in nature could be mistaken for a human, especially when you have a print with this distinct shape.” Brice drew the outline of the track with his finger.

“We have nothing else to go on, Lae.” Valyrie nocked an arrow. “We must, for now, assume that it’s a man and follow.”

“Keep the horses back a ways so they don’t destroy any tracks we may yet need.” Laedron took his rod in hand and hoped that it would work if needed. “Lead the way, Brice. And keep an eye out for… well, anything.”

* * *

“We’ve been walking for nearly an hour,” Laedron whispered, stopping when Brice crouched again.

“I never said it’d be a quick process,” Brice said, sorting through some pine straw. “Besides, what better things have you to do? At least we’re making progress. Here, he made a turn.” Looking up, Brice pointed. “Between those two… Creator! Those trees are huge.”

“The forest has many of them, it would seem. Ancient trees shooting up into the heavens.” The haze of the dawn filtered through the pines. Laedron followed the tree’s trunk with his eyes, but the canopy above made it impossible to see the top. “They’ve been here since before the city was built, if I had to guess.”

Brice jogged ahead, and every once in a while, he glanced at the ground. Reaching the two trees, he put his hand on one of them. “He-she, whoever-walked through here and stopped just past them.”

“Just say ‘he’ for now, Thimble; your stuttering is getting on my nerves. We’ll know for sure if we ever find him,” Marac said.

Stepping between the mighty trunks, both as thick as the one he’d seen near their camp, Laedron figured that the trees were significant because they stood at the entrance of what seemed to have been a huge structure. The ruins of a temple, perhaps? The High King’s palace? It was clearly a spectacle to behold, whatever it was. “Where from here, Brice?”

Brice searched the ground. “Wait.” Squinting, he crouched and pointed at several disturbed patches of brush.

“What is it?”

“Two sets… and drag marks.” He gestured to their right. “Someone dragged something that way. These tracks are much bigger, though. A bear?”

Laedron took a deep breath. “It could be that monster. Any blood?”

“No. Wait. Yes, here.” Holding up some pine needles, Brice twisted them between his fingertips. “A few drops. Look.”

When he turned to examine the pine straw, Laedron caught a glimpse of something beneath a shrub. He bent and pulled out a dense, heavy bone almost two feet long. “What do you make of this?”

“It’s a bone,” Brice said.

“I can see that, Thimble.” Laedron tugged at his collar, then tossed the bone over to Brice. “Sorry. Can you tell anything about it?”

“I’ve never been a student of anatomy, I’m afraid.”

Valyrie took the bone and examined it from every angle. “Looks like a femur, the big bone behind the thigh. Human.”

He felt uneasy. Do they dissect corpses in the university? Pulling the shrub from side to side, Laedron said, “Here’s the rest of him. A skull and several other pieces, but no clothes, no weapons. Must’ve been here for quite some time.”

“The blood didn’t come from this body. What is going on here?” Marac kicked a stone, sending it flying into one of the big pines. “What else do you see, Thimble?”

“Just the drag marks leading off that way.”

“Keep going, then. It didn’t end here.”

Following Brice as if he were a bloodhound, Laedron tried to block the sinister thoughts racing through his mind, but he couldn’t. What had killed that man? And the blood in the straw? Whose blood is it? Who drew it? What lurks in this wood, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce?

Every attempt to preclude his imagination met with another vibrant vision of their torture, their pain merely a means to an end, a small part in the machinations of some dark sorcerer hidden amongst the pines. And if we encounter an evil mage, will this scepter be of any use? Even with Ismerelda’s rod, he had been unable to defeat Andolis Drakkar in a duel of magic, and the fact that it had failed during his last spell worried him. How powerful could a Zyvdredi master become if allowed to sit and brood in this wilderness for centuries?

Laedron nearly tripped over Brice, not noticing when his friend squatted to examine the earth. “Sorry.”

Seemingly unfazed by the knee in his back, Brice stared at the ground, touching it with his palm several times. “It stops here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said.” Standing, Brice dusted off his knees. “No more trail. No more tracks.”

“Impossible.” Marac turned in a circle. “It can’t just stop here.”

“Well, it does.”

Laedron shook his head and threw up his hands. “Where are they, then? If they stopped here and went nowhere else, they would still be standing right here.”

“I’m simply telling you what I see. The prints go no farther from this place, Lae.”

Valyrie held her hair back and bent forward. “Any wheel tracks? Hoof prints? A cart or horses, perhaps?”