Барб Хенди - Of Truth and Beasts

Sau’ilahk watched the forest floor rush past through the eyes of his servitor. The experience was disorienting.

He had caught only glimpses of tree-bound settlements in his creation’s furious racing. It caught up to Wynn somewhere northeast of where he waited on the grassy plain. When thickening forest forced his servitor out of the trees and onto the path, Sau’ilahk caught only a glimpse of Wynn between Ore-Locks’s thick legs at the rear of their procession. Worse, his creation’s resistance grew the farther it went.

It began struggling to turn back.

Continue , he commanded, and he drew upon more of his consumed life and forced it onward.

Ahead, light rose beyond Ore-Locks’s broad, tromping boots. It filtered through the surrounding low underbrush, and Sau’ilahk had one clear glimpse of Wynn leading Chane into that lighted place.

Where was she headed, and why at this time of night?

The servitor began to writhe.

Sau’ilahk’s awareness spun with shattered sights and sound. Vertigo sickened him as he seized the servitor with all his will. A strange pressure built on him, as if he had suddenly become corporeal. He felt submerged as in mud, and forced down as it began to shift and push him back.

A sound—a feeling—like wood splitting apart stunned all thoughts in his mind.

Sau’ilahk lost all awareness as his world went pitch-black.

“ Vanâkstí Bäynœ ,” Ore-Locks whispered from behind Wynn, as she gazed across the broad clearing at the faint glow of a tree too large to be real. An unnerving sensation spread through her, almost as if Chârmun watched her in turn.

She had heard some an’Cróan refer to its offspring in the Elven Territories as an ash tree, but it didn’t look anything like an ash. Massive roots split the turf in mounds nearly as tall as she where they emerged from the trunk to burrow deep into the earth. Its great bulk, the size of a small tower, twisted and turned like a slow, serene dancing giant frozen in time. Though it was completely bare of bark, it hadn’t grayed like dead wood. The soft glow emanating from its glistening and pale tawny form lit up everything in the clearing with shimmers.

It was alive, as impossible as that seemed, and Wynn looked up into its huge branches above.

They spread and mingled into the forest’s canopy. These were the origins of the “vines” she had seen. She understood what Shade had meant by “follow the tree.” Shade had been following the limbs of Chârmun, as if the dog knew what they were. Now that Wynn looked upon Sanctuary, that tree, she questioned that overwhelming drive to see it this night.

What had she expected to find here? She only knew of this place from ancient memories Chap had stolen from Most Aged Father.

Once called Sorhkafâré—the Light Upon the Grass—as leader of the westernmost allied forces in the great war, he had taken a cutting from Chârmun and left with any of his own people who would follow him. Some of the first Fay born into wolves, whose descendants would become the majay-hì, joined him, as well. He led them across the world, all the way beyond what were now called the Farlands, to establish the Elven Territories. There he had planted that cutting to become Roise Chârmune—the Seed of Sanctuary—at the heart of what would become their ancestors’ burial ground.

Unlike here, that land barred anyone not descended from those first settlers. Whether it was because of the Seed of Sanctuary or the will of decrepit and undying Most Aged Father, or both, Wynn never learned. But only elven blood, or perhaps only an’Cróan—Those of the Blood—could enter that land unimpeded.

First Glade was—had been—sacred, a haven and sanctuary against the undead. In a time to come, this place where she stood might need to be so again, should she and very few others fail to stop another war from enveloping their world. Perhaps she’d simply needed to know that Sanctuary was real. It was like seeking to look upon a promise of hope, and she needed that so badly.

Shade padded slowly across the clearing, pausing beside one long mound in the forest floor where a great root pushed up moss-blanketed earth. The mound was almost the height of Shade’s pricked-up ears as she stared up into the tree’s branches.

Wynn was caught breathless by the sight, and she slipped her cold lamp crystal into her pocket.

“Wait here,” she whispered, lifting Chane’s hand from her shoulder. “Don’t try to come closer.”

She took only one step before Chane latched on to her shoulder again.

“No!” he rasped. “This is not right.... This place ...”

Wynn pried at his fingers but was unable to move them.

“Let go and stay here,” she told him. “I’m in no danger. Don’t give in to what you feel. I won’t be long.”

Ore-Locks stepped closer, but never turned his back on Chane.

“What are you doing now?” he asked.

“What I have to,” she returned, and then Shade huffed once.

Shade stood directly at the base of Chârmun—Sanctuary—and glanced expectantly toward Wynn. With hesitant steps, Wynn headed toward Shade, but looked only at the tree. With every step, Chârmun grew in her sight, until it filled her entire view at arm’s reach.

—Wynn ... stay here—

Shade’s memory-words were soft but emphatic in Wynn’s head. It was a comforting notion, though impossible. Wynn slowly reached out, eyeing the trunk’s golden grain, and blinked against its close glow. In the last instant, she hesitated.

It suddenly seemed so wrong to touch it.

“Go on. It is all right.”

Wynn twisted toward that lilting voice, just shy of a laugh, as Shade began to growl. She thrust out her staff in warning, seeing only a cowl at first. The shoulder of a long robe followed, its cloth pure white.

“Truly, you can touch it ... if you like,” the figure said.

Wynn heard a sword jerked from a sheath.

“No!” Chane rasped. “Wynn, get back.”

Shade snarled and flattened her ears.

The figure leaned its shoulder lazily against the tree, as if lounging in a private garden. Long-fingered tan hands reached up to pull back the cowl. Golden brown hair streaked with gray curtained the figure’s face. A tauntingly slow turn of head exposed creases at the corners of large, slanted amber eyes, and he smiled.

“Chuillyon,” Wynn whispered in disbelief.

Night stars, tall grass, and white flowers, and the darker shapes of the forest trees faded back into Sau’ilahk’s view. He hung there on the plain, clinging to returning self-awareness. For an instant, he had fallen into dormancy.

He reached out through his connection, the fragment of his will embedded inside his servitor. It was not there, not anywhere. This was impossible. He should have felt his creation at even a greater distance. How could it be gone, and why at the instant he was about to see where Wynn had gone?

Something in that clearing had not allowed the servitor to enter. Something had too easily taken it apart, banishing it into nothingness.

Sau’ilahk wanted to shriek, and, indeed, any living creature near enough would have fled from the wind of his conjured voice. Slowly, he reclaimed his self-control.

He needed a servant to be his eyes and ears, one capable of invading in the elves’ forest. It now seemed he needed something more natural to that place. There had been that pressure he had felt, even without willing himself to a physical state. As if something in there tried to force him out.

Sau’ilahk had felt this before, though not with such force. And the last, too recent time had been ...

“Chuillyon?” Wynn whispered again.

Anger drove the numbness of shock out of her, but she still couldn’t believe her eyes. She’d seen him head off for the royal castle of Calm Seatt barely seven days before her journey began. No one could have reached the forest before her, let alone known where she would go first upon arrival.