Barb Hendee - Rebel Fay

The forest would not allow the horde in. And if one got through, these wolves sensed it and came.

He climbed to his feet, still breathing hard, and crept back to the forest's edge to look out upon the rolling plain.

Dark forms rolled, ran, leaped, and crawled in the grass. Others barely moved, little more than quivering masses choking in the dark. Pale figures chased each other-slaughtered each other.

Sorhkafare stood watching, unable to look away. Every figure that came close enough for his night eyes to see was human.

He saw not one elf. Not one dwarf. Not even a goblin, or the hulking scaled body of a reptilian locathan, or any of the other monstrosities the enemy had sent against him.

Only humans.

He turned and stumbled back toward First Glade. The wolves paced him all the way to his people.

He found Snahacroe kneeling behind an injured human youth, bracing the boy up while Leshiara worked upon the boy's leg. In the past days, these two shared company more and more.

Leshiara closed her eyes, and a low thrum rose from her throat. She lightly traced her fingertips around the boy's deeply bruised calf, over and over, and then went silent. She opened her eyes and rebandaged the boy's leg.

When she stood up and found Sorhkafare watching her, she frowned.

"Come with me," he said.

Snahacroe looked worried and followed as well.

They walked into the center of the glade.

In the open space stood an immense tree like no other in this world.Its trunk was the size of a small citadel tower, and high overhead its branches reached out into the forest.

Sorhkafare saw where those limbs stretched into the green leaves and needles of the surrounding trees and beyond. A soft glow emanated from the tree's tawny body and branches,bare of bark but still thriving with life. Massive roots like hill ridges split the clearing's turf where they emerged from the trunk to burrow deep and far into the earth.

Sorhkafare laid a hand upon the glistening trunk of Charmun, a name that humans would translate as "Sanctuary."

"We must take a cutting from Charmun," he said to Leshiara. "Can you keep it alive over a long journey?"

She grew pale and did not answer.

"What are you planning?" Snahacroe asked, moving closer to Leshiara.

Sorhkafare looked at his one remaining commander. "The horde turns upon itself. They have nothing else left within reach to feed upon-but it does them no good. In perhaps days, there may be few enough left for us to slip away."

"No!" someone snapped sharply.

Sorhkafare knew the voice before he turned his head.

Hoil'lhan stood at the clearing's edge, and around her paced three of the strange tall wolves. All four were spattered and dripping in black fluids. All four watched him with equal intensity. Hoil'lhan stabbed the long, broad head of her spear into the earth, and Sorhkafare watched more black fluid run from its sharp edges to the grass.

"Where have you been?" he demanded.

"Where do you think?" Hoil'lhan spit out at him. "The enemy's minions range upon our very borders… and you wish to run?"

"We cannot stay here in hiding within this blighted land," Sorhkafare returned.

"I said no!" Hoil'lhan shouted, running a hand through her white, sweat-matted hair. "I will not let the enemy take what is ours! I will not leave any more that I cherish… fleeing with their screams at my back!"

"Enough," Snahacroe warned.

"It was not a request," Sorhkafare said firmly. "I am still your commander."

Hoil'lhan breathed hard, twisting her hand around the upright shaft of her spear.

"And since when do you alone speak for our people?" Leshiara said quietly, stepping toward Sorhkafare. "You do not sit in the council of First Glade, and we no longer follow the old ways of divided clans. Such decisions are the province ofmyself and the others of the council."

"There is no council left!" Sorhkafare shouted at her. "You are the only one that remains… so do you alone choose for our people, like some human monarch?"

"That is not my meaning," she snapped back. "There are too many here who need us."

Sorhkafare shook his head. "What if they are the very ones by which the Enemy can still reach us? Out beyond our forest… those dead things that move and feast… they were once humans, like those still among us."

"You do not know how this was done to them," Hoil'lhan growled. "Or if the Enemy's reach could find any who shelter here!"

Snahacroe turned, staring off through the trees, as if trying to see the forest's edge. Leshiara fell silent and closed her eyes, seeming to grow older and wearier before Sorhkafare's eyes.

But he could not relent.

"We will take our own people. Perhaps the wolves will join us as well. We will get as far from here as we can reach. We will plant our cutting from Charmun and create a haven for our people far from the Enemy's reach."

"Our people?" Snahacroe asked.

"Not the humans," Sorhkafare answered.

"The outsiders are dismissed!"

Chap didn't know who spoke those words, but they jerked him to awareness. His legs trembled as he pulled free of Most Aged Father's memories.

Leesil dropped to one knee beside him, but Chap regained his own footing.

Several anmaglahk came in around Most Aged Father. Under their threatening encouragement, Chap turned away with Leesil and Wynn. Magiere joined them as they were all ushered out of the council clearing.

Chap struggled to follow but could not stop trembling. He looked up at Magiere's black braid swinging as she leaned against Leesil while they walked.

He knew why Most Aged Father feared Magiere so deeply, though the old man did not fully understand what she was. He saw only some new shape of those among the pale horde of his memory. She was far worse than even the old man could imagine.

Magiere was human, born of the undead. Yet she walked freely and unfettered into this land. Chap's mind raced back to his fear-spawned delusion in the Pudurlatsat forest-of Magiere as the general at the head of an army…

No, a horde-one that could not enter a shielded land without her.

If only he could tell Magiere alone, without the need of Wynn to speak for him. Magiere deserved at least that much privacy, but there was no way to achieve such.

Chap blinked but could not keep the old elf's memories from casting ghost images across all things around him. A war had devoured the living at the end of a time known only as the Forgotten… the Forgotten History of the world. On the plain beyond the elven forest surrounding First Glade, Most Aged Father had watched the waves of undead sent by the Enemy.

All of them-every last one-had been human.

Once Leesil had delivered the ancestors' message to Most Aged Father, they were all escorted back to quarters. Most Aged Father's claim had been dismissed, and thereby Magiere was cleared by council vote, but the elders remained to debate as they left. Leesil had no idea what would come next. The look on the old elf's face still lingered in his mind, but he felt no sympathy for the fear and festering pain he'd seen there. His mother was still imprisoned, and he'd had no chance to plead for, or demand, her freedom.

Magiere huddled on the dirt floor at the elm chamber's center, as far from the tree's inner walls as she could get. Wynn sat lost in thought upon one bed ledge with Chap sprawled at her feet. The day wore on in a lingering crawl as Leesil paced around with Magiere watching him.

She no longer visibly trembled, but her face was still weary and drawn. He finally fetched her some water, along with a few nuts and berries left for them. He reached out and stroked her black hair.

"Please," he insisted. "Try a little."

What relief he'd gained from the dismissal of Most Aged Father's claims wasn't enough. He had to get to his mother. He had to get Magiere out of this land and away from the elven forest.