Барб Хенди - Of Truth and Beasts

Sau’ilahk bled even more energy into his creation.

Bark peeled back around the root knot. Those tendrils coiled tighter and tighter into a ball. And that sphere took on an inner limelight, growing severe, until it blinked at him.

Flexing lids of wooden root tendrils clicked over one glowing orb like an eye. The servitor spun and rushed toward grass at the roadside.

No! Sau’ilahk commanded.

He reached for his fragment of consciousness embedded within his conjured creation. It halted in its tracks. He held it there as it struggled in resistance, until it finally submitted.

Remain unseen. Follow the trio of human, dwarf, and wolf.

As he released it, the servitor skittered away and shot into the tall grass. Only a ripple among those blades marked its passing. When the trail reached the tree line, that legged branch with one eye in a root knot skittered up a massive tree trunk and vanished into the forest’s canopy.

Sau’ilahk watched foliage shiver briefly and heard the faint click of its legs upon bark. His consciousness rode the servitor into a land where the dead could not walk....

At least none but perhaps Chane Andraso.

Passing through the city’s archway, Wynn wasn’t given time for awe. Althahk pulled his horse sideways before the wagon, forcing its horses to stop. He pointed off to the right.

“In there,” he commanded.

A large barn, perhaps a stable, was built on the ground. With the exception of smooth, rounded corners, it looked much like any barn in Wynn’s homeland. She didn’t care to be ordered about, but turned the wagon aside. Before the horses had stopped at the wide, closed doors, Althahk gave a shrill, trilling whistle.

One wide stable door slid aside. A bleary-eyed elven male of advanced years stepped out. Only a brief nod of acknowledgment passed between him and the commander. Then he turned to nod a greeting to Wynn—and he froze.

Unlike the commander’s stern suspicion or the counselor’s cold parting words, the stable master just blinked twice, eyes clearing at some wondrous, rare sight.

“Can you stable our horses and store our wagon?” she asked in Elvish, and climbed down.

The stable master almost couldn’t turn his eyes from Shade at first. When he did, he looked Wynn up and down with a friendly smile.

“Most certainly, sage,” he answered.

Everyone else disembarked as Wynn headed around back to retrieve her staff and begin dragging their packs out. But she paused at reaching for the chest.

“Will the rest of our things be safe here?” she asked.

“Certainly, sage,” the elder elf said again.

“How much?” Chane asked, reaching for his money pouch.

Both Chane and Ore-Locks would have difficulty communicating here. Ore-Locks spoke only a smattering of Elvish, and Chane spoke none at all.

“No need,” Althahk interrupted in Numanese, and both his men dismounted. “The guild will be notified and handle payment. Now, if you will follow—”

“I’m not going to the guild just yet,” Wynn said, and even Chane froze at this.

“Where else would you go at this time of night?” the commander challenged.

“There’s something I need to see for myself,” Wynn answered. “Unless you have further doubts or reason for interference, I won’t keep you from your duties.”

Althahk raised an eyebrow.

Wynn started off before even Ore-Locks or Chane could ask where they were headed. Shade fell into step, and at the last instant pulled ahead, pacing a dead line straight at the commander.

Althahk hesitated, stepping aside at the last instant. Wynn never looked back, though she heard Chane and Ore-Locks’s footfalls as they hurried to catch up.

All four of them headed down the wide lane into the brighter night lights. The stable might have seemed recognizable, but any semblance of familiarity ended as they walked into the “city” of trees.

Cleared stretches of paths slightly narrower than a common street were paved with packed gravel and natural stone slabs. Gardens and alcoves of flora flowed around made structures and up the tree trunks in tendril vines of glistening green leaves and night-closed flower buds. More earthbound buildings surrounded them than in the outer settlements. Their abundance was matched by tiers of higher structures above, all the way beyond sight in the canopy. In the street, there was a break in the trees above, like a matching road in the sky, where stars shone brightly beyond the haze of a nearly full moon.

Wynn slowed to barely a shuffle as she looked about. She had a sense of where to go from references on this city she’d found in the guild library. Somewhere on its northern side was another arch like the one through which they’d entered, but this exit would lead deeper into the forest.

“Where are you taking us?” Chane asked. “I thought we ... Wait!”

He grabbed her arm, pulling her aside beneath the shadow of a hanging building wrapped around one great tree. Its underfloor spread out above, shadowing them. The few people about were all on foot, but Wynn spotted what had startled Chane.

More patrollers—the Shé’ith —approached along the narrow street in a line of tall horses. They carried lances, but these had long and narrow steel tips. Their attire was the same as that of Althahk’s trio, and each bore another slightly curved sword in a shouldered sheath. A few had bows and quivers. There were many more of them—more than a dozen at quick count. Unlike the commander, the one in the lead bore a pearl white leaf brooch upon his sash.

“They’re all cavalry,” Chane noted. “Do you not find that strange ... for a tree-born race?”

“Yes,” Ore-Locks agreed quietly.

“Domin High-Tower once told me they value speed,” Wynn said, “being able to quickly traverse their forest or, rather, its surrounding lands.”

At mention of his brother, Ore-Locks’s expression darkened in silence.

Once the riders passed, Wynn took to the street again. She renewed her trek through this strange and beautiful forest-city, wondering how it would look by daylight. Some trees held multiple small structures up and around their trunks, like steps of giant, moss-roofed, shelf fungus with lantern light glowing through curtained windows.

What must it be like to live in a world that moved vertically as opposed to horizontally?

“Why do they live this way?” Chane asked, looking up.

Wynn shook her head. “Domin Tilswith couldn’t trace its history back far enough to learn how it began, let alone why. Just another ancient practice that became a way of life.”

But she still wondered. Even for elves, it seemed odd to her.

The an’Cróan’s founders had originally come from this land; thereby they shared the same forebears as the Lhoin’na. But those founders of the far-off Elven Territories had left amid the great war’s end. This way of life couldn’t have started until after that.

Shade crept out ahead, though she remained within Wynn’s reach. Again, although her home was a wild elven forest, these people were nothing like the more clan-based an’Cróan. And more than one passerby stumbled and froze, stunned as they watched a black majay-hì leading two humans and a dwarf. Wynn wondered if the majay-hì of this land remained barely more than living legend, even among the Lhoin’na.

A cluster of human merchants ambled out of a side path, all Numan, and one of them eyed Shade too long and almost tripped on the heels of his companions. Though he probably just wondered how a wolf—but too tall and lanky-legged—ended up as someone’s pet.

“Where are we going?” Chane asked.

“Out of the city,” Wynn answered, “and back into the forest.”