Барб Хенди - Of Truth and Beasts

And what was Chuillyon doing here? How had he arrived first?

Vreuvillä pivoted, heading off toward the glade’s far side from where she had entered.

“You should all leave,” she said, walking away. “Disturb this place no further.”

All of the majay-hì turned likewise. One paced right past Chane, and he tensed. But the mottled brown male with the woman lingered, and then stepped toward Shade, stretching out its nose.

Shade leaned away with a quiver of her jowls. The male wheeled and was the last to hop into the brush, though the wild elven woman was already gone.

The glade was silent, and Wynn pushed down on Chane’s sword arm.

“Let’s go,” she whispered.

“Back to the guild?” Chuillyon asked. “It would be my honor to escort you and assist in—”

“No, thank you ,” Wynn said, without looking back, brushing her fingers between Shade’s tall ears. “Come, girl.”

Shade whined again and reluctantly slunk along beside her.

Chane backed away as Wynn led him, keeping his eyes on Chuillyon. He waited until he heard Wynn’s boots step onto stone and knew she had reached the path. Only then did he turn his eyes from Chuillyon.

The trees appeared to block Wynn’s way, to catch and trap her, though she never faltered in a step. Chane sucked air into his dead lungs as she miraculously passed through. She reached up and briefly touched his hand upon her shoulder, and then retrieved her cold lamp crystal from her pocket.

“Close your eyes and hang on,” she told him.

Wynn drew relief in seeing Chane improve once they returned to a’Ghràihlôn’na. Still edgy and twitchy, he no longer shook visibly, and his eyes had regained their semitranslucent brown.

They stopped at the stable for their travel chest, which Ore-Locks hauled over his shoulder, along with his sack. He was quiet and withdrawn, asking no questions. Perhaps he had his own concerns after encountering Chuillyon. It seemed Ore-Locks had abandoned his sect and duties without a word to anyone. Like Wynn, he would face consequences upon his return, if he returned.

Wynn led them south through the city, with Shade close at her side. She had some sense of where to go, having looked up as much about the place as she could before leaving home. The city’s narrow paths were quiet at night, but the trees’ heights were still marked by the glimmer of lanterns, like mist-shrouded stars that settled among the branches. Some dark, ground-level buildings were constructed from stone as well as timber, and Ore-Locks slowed now and then to study them. One in particular baffled Wynn.

Each higher tier of pyrite-spattered granite was slightly narrower than the one below as it swept upward to seven levels, all terraced. The peaked front door with a tooled arch—shaped like an aspen leaf—was made from white wood to match its stone. Wynn had no idea what purpose the place served.

They passed gardens overladen with sleeping flower buds, but here and there Wynn spotted night-blooming jasmine. She’d never seen so many carefully nurtured enclaves that stood out only from the natural landscape by the density of crafted yet natural design. Even in darkness, it was all foreign, beautiful, and intimidating, and left her with a stab of regret.

Wynn finally looked upon a’Ghràihlôn’na—Blessed of the Woods—but not as a journeyor come to study or just as a visitor. She came as a nearly outcast sage at best, and a spy at the worst, hunting secrets to steal.

Then the buildings around her became immense.

Wynn halted and turned slowly. These giant trees, so much larger than any an’Cróan dwelling, were the buildings.

At any moment, she expected to see an an’Cróan round one of those living structures, or even one of the Anmaglâhk, those assassins clad in gray. No one had ever mentioned the Lhoin’na living within trees, aside from these ancient, great structures. If they could do so, why did so many live in constructed domiciles, even ones up in the forest’s heights?

The street she stood upon ended before a broad park. Wide granite stairways rose gradually through terraces of green lawns and gardens around a small, placid lake. Every building—every ancient tree—surrounding that space dwarfed those she’d seen across the grassy plain. Great doors of white oak, scroll-carved brass, or colored with stain were set into shaped openings of living bark.

“What are those?” Ore-Locks said, pointing up and ahead.

Between the highest leafy branches of two buildings across the park, another structure loomed in the night. Barely visible by the lights upon or within it, where those lights shone, this structure had a strange, reddish tinge. It was only the hint of its shape that Wynn truly recognized.

“The Lhoin’na guild branch,” she answered, a guess from what she’d seen in sketches of its exterior.

They rounded the park and the trees of what they thought must be the city’s civic center. When they turned down a packed-earth lane at the far side, Wynn looked up ... and up.

Sketches hadn’t done justice to this place.

Perhaps as old as the Forgotten History, a ring of giant redwoods had melded into one massive form, one life. Hints of once-separate trunks bulged from its mass. Over a thousand years, the redwoods had grown so vast that they were now one great circle encompassing whatever lay within.

Wynn rose on her tiptoes, trying to peer over the surrounding hedge fence in both directions. She couldn’t make out either side of the gargantuan structure’s base through the surrounding trees.

High above, elongated teardrop windows dotted the guild’s side, some lit up from within. At its top, barely within sight in the dark, parts of the structure rose higher than the rest, like lofty pinnacles upon a royal fortification. In place of pennants, their tops were likely graced with high branches. It had no battlements, for it was a place of contemplation and learning. Rather than a stand against enemy forces, this was a fortress against another loss of the world’s knowledge.

Wynn led her companions to an iron archway and a gate through the high hedge fence. Beyond it, a wide shale-cobbled path wound through low shrubberies to a deep divide in the citadel’s bark. Shaped like a teardrop’s top half, it was four yards tall. In that dark entryway’s back was a like-shaped lighter color amid night shadows.

It might be a door, but Wynn couldn’t see it clearly. She grabbed the gate’s handle and twisted. It wouldn’t budge. In a place like this, she hadn’t expected to be locked out.

“Here,” Chane said, and a clanking tone sounded.

Wynn watched him pull the cord again, and a bell atop the gate’s frame clanged. She looked toward the dark alcove and waited.

Her first task was to deliver the sealed message from her branch’s council to the high premin here. But it was the middle of the night, and everyone was probably asleep.

“Perhaps we should have found rooms elsewhere?” Ore-Locks commented. “Then come here tomorrow?”

A heavy clack carried from beyond the gate, and light spilled from the guild’s entryway. A silhouette appeared amid the glare, so tiny at first. But it was only the size of the doors that made it appear so. The figure wobbled out, paused where the path met the melded ring of ancient redwoods, and raised a hand.

A light grew there, where a tall, sleepy-eyed elf in a brown robe held up a cold lamp crystal. He squinted at the new arrivals as his feathery eyebrows cinched together.

If he carried a crystal, he had to be at least a journeyor, though likely not a master or domin if he tended the doors late at night.

Wynn raised a hand in greeting, calling out in Elvish, “Forgive us for ringing so late.”