Барб Хенди - Of Truth and Beasts

Frustration made Sau’ilahk’s hands solidify as he crushed them into fists. He could still feel his familiar, though its awareness was strangled by terror. Through its large ears he barely heard nearby rustling beneath the tearing wind, but there were no voices.

The tâshgâlh just lay quivering where it had fallen.

Fear was all Sau’ilahk had to make it respond to his will. He fed that fear with those scant sounds heard through its ears. Tearing brush, low pants and growls of the pack—all of these he sharpened within the tâshgâlh’s awareness....

It began to twitch with returning awareness.

Move ... or die.

It could not have truly understood him, but the intention behind the words made the little beast thrash in terror on the ground. It opened its eyes, and its ears stiffened, and then it saw the sprinting legs and paws of majay-hì racing past.

The tâshgâlh scrambled around behind the tree’s wide base.

Climb ... you cowardly little thief!

So it did with its small, handlike paws. From its perch above, Sau’ilahk watched wolflike dogs race through the underbrush. That barbaric elven woman came after them. He did not spot Wynn, but all those he did see headed in one direction.

Sau’ilahk drove the tâshgâlh, leaping from tree to tree, until he gained on those below struggling in the forest’s lower thickness.

Chane’s mental focus dulled under the forest’s prodding, but fear for Wynn’s safety cleared any lingering effects of his last draught of the violet concoction. In its place, rage-driven hunger began awakening the feral beast inside him, so that it mingled with the one purpose in his clouded mind.

He forced Wynn on ahead of himself, so that nothing could reach her. Somewhere out front, Shade led them. But they ran toward a place his instincts told him not to go. Shade’s insistence that they reach that horrid tree made no sense.

If the Fay had come for Wynn—if that elven woman had done this, then the tree of her worship was the last place they should flee.

Only two things kept Chane from picking Wynn up and running away.

He could not navigate under the forest’s influence, and only Ore-Locks’s effort to clear a path behind Shade gave Chane any sense of direction. And second, the pack might catch them, in part or whole, before Shade reached the place she sought.

The beast within Chane lunged to the limits of its bonds. It shrieked and howled, wanting him to turn ... to kill whatever hunted them ... to hunt it instead.

“Faster!” he urged Wynn as they ran.

Anything that tried to touch her would die—anything at all.

Wynn burst into the open behind Ore-Locks. Shade wheeled and began barking at her, as the dwarf turned and set himself facing the forest. One stolen memory-word kept echoing in Wynn’s head.

—Sanctuary ... Sanctuary ... Sanctuary—

And there it was, merely a stone’s throw away. The whole clearing was filled with the low shimmer of Chârmun’s barkless form, as its glowing wood spread light like the moon.

Why did Shade believe this place was safer than anywhere else? The Fay could invade anything growing in the forest. That tree, by its pervasive nature, was more akin to them than any other.

Ore-Locks glanced at her—then just beyond her. He suddenly dropped her staff to the ground and leveled his long iron one in both hands. He swung the thick bar back and up over his head.

“Get away from the trees!” he shouted.

Wynn was about to bolt when a rasping snarl rose behind her. Someone grabbed her, nearly throwing her out beyond Ore-Locks’s swing. When she regained her footing and turned, Chane stood between her and the trees with his back to her. Branches of an elm beyond him twisted in the air, reaching toward where she’d stood.

Chane raised his sword, but never got to swing, as Ore-Locks’s staff ripped downward.

Leaves exploded in its passing. Twisting branches broke into splinters. But a dark form shot out of the forest over the top of Ore-Locks’s downed staff. The mottled brown majay-hì went straight at Chane as Shade charged two more of the pack rushing from the underbrush.

Wynn grew frantic in trying to think of a way to end this before blood was spilled. At any moment, Vreuvillä would catch up, and she was the one who’d started all this chaos. Wynn whirled around, looking to the great tree glimmering in the clearing.

Why had Shade wanted them to come here?

Wynn looked back and spotted her staff lying behind Ore-Locks, who now whipped his long iron bar back and forth, warding off three majay-hì. She ducked in below his backswing and snatched the butt end of her staff.

One quick burst from the sun crystal might stun everyone without harming Chane too much. This was all she could think to do as she raised up the staff and backpedaled. But she stumbled as something lashed around her calf and jerked her leg straight.

A thick root sprouting from the moss-covered ground coiled around her knee.

Wynn reached behind her back for Magiere’s old dagger.

“Pull back!” Ore-Locks shouted.

The moss-covered earth split again at Wynn’s feet. A second earth-stained root shot upward over her chest.

“No!” was all Wynn got out as she toppled.

Sau’ilahk saw light ahead as the tâshgâlh raced through the forest’s heights. The farther the animal had gotten from the aspen clearing, the more the wind had subsided and was left behind. Yet the nearer his familiar closed upon the light, the more the surrounding trees wavered and shuddered under some other influence. Sau’ilahk could not make sense of this.

A slight break in the trees ahead gave him a filtered view. He thought he saw Wynn standing in the clearing. Chane and Shade and the dwarf stood before her. The rest was a wink as the first of the pack broke into the clearing.

Ore-Locks went at them, as did Shade. Chane rushed forward to the tree line, and Sau’ilahk lost sight of him, his familiar too high above. Then the earth broke at Wynn’s feet.

Something dark writhed up to coil around her leg.

The tâshgâlh leaped to a tree on the clearing’s edge—and the world went black.

The last thing Sau’ilahk saw was something glimmering, tawny, and pale in that space—a massive, ancient tree, bare of bark but still growing in the earth. In the darkness that swallowed everything from his senses, Sau’ilahk again heard a sound like splintering wood.

That crackling cascaded through him, as if he had flesh and bone—as if he were that green wood being ripped apart. All of his awareness went as blank as his sight through his familiar. But he did not fall into dormancy like the last time.

The plain beyond the forest slowly returned to his sight.

Sau’ilahk stood there, shuddering in the aftermath.

Another familiar had been severed from him by the one place he could not follow Wynn. Again, so close—again, so lost—but this time it brought panic instead of outrage. Something assaulted the sage—something in the forest itself. Had that barbaric woman summoned an influence he could not identify?

If Wynn died in there, what became of his hope to follow her to his one desire?

What became of Sau’ilahk’s dream of flesh?

Chane chopped downward with his sword as the mottled brown majay-hì tried to bite into his calf. The animal lunged away, and his blade gouged up moss and earth.

“Pull back!” Ore-Locks shouted.

Chane glanced over—and then a leafy branch slapped into his face. He lost sight of everything, and on instinct pulled the sword upward, trying to slash and clear his view.

A tan hand gripped that branch. Chane quickly tipped the blade down.