Барб Хенди - Of Truth and Beasts

A sharp clang sent a slight shiver up his sword. He sidestepped as he thought he saw a long, white blade strike for his abdomen. Hunger flushed through him as his gaze snapped upward.

Chane stared into angry amber eyes among the tree’s leaves. He groped for the elven woman’s hand or blade, and leveled his sword to slam its edge into her head.

“No!”

Wynn’s cry made Chane falter. He twisted away with a wild slash to fend off the priestess and heard his cloak tear. A sharp pain filled the left side of his chest. Hunger ate away the agony as fear cleared his thoughts, and then he saw ...

Wynn was on the ground, and something dark coiled around her throat.

He ran straight toward her, as she gripped the dark tendril with one hand and slashed through it with her dagger. Another one coiled around her left calf and knee, squirming up her thigh.

Earth-stained roots were somehow moving on their own.

Chane slashed through the second root’s base as Wynn ripped away the piece she had severed from her throat. She groped for her staff as he reached down for her, but at the same time, he glanced over his shoulder.

Ore-Locks backed toward them, farther into the clearing, whipping his iron staff in a wide arc as he tried to keep the pack at bay. Shade darted around his circumference, harrying anything attempting to go around. But more of the pack poured from the forest as Vreuvillä stepped into the clear. The priestess held a long, curved white dagger in her hand.

“To the tree—now!” Wynn shouted.

Chane balked as he pulled her up. The crawling on his skin had grown worse since entering this place.

Another root erupted at Wynn’s feet. She lunged away, pulling from Chane’s grip. The root writhed and twisted toward her, growing thicker at its base as it extended.

Chane hacked down. The instant the root severed, another tore up through the moss and lashed at his face. He stumbled away, and it swerved toward Wynn.

How could it know where she was? Even though it moved, it could not so precisely target her. Either something directed it or its sense of its target was not natural.

The smallest notion broke through Chane’s faltering reason.

So long ago, he had crouched in hiding with Welstiel, as they were hunted by Magiere. That night, neither Magiere nor Chap had sensed or tracked Chane’s presence—not while Welstiel had a grip on him. And Welstiel had been wearing the ring.

Chane spun and rushed at Wynn. Twisting behind her, keeping everything in his sight, he wrapped his left arm across her front. Grabbing her far shoulder, he closed his left hand hard upon it, until the brass ring bit into his finger.

Chane dragged Wynn backward, hoping this would work, as rage-fed hunger washed over him again.

Wynn struggled to keep her feet as Chane dragged her. She kicked at the root, trying to fend it off as it reached for her ankle, but Chane’s grip crushed her shoulder so hard, she gasped.

“Still,” he snarled in her ear. “Quiet.”

Wynn did as she was told and watched the root.

It rolled and lashed the earth and whipped to the left. Mulch and moss tore at its base as it coiled and snaked about. Suddenly, it rolled over and lashed her way.

Wynn cringed, flattening her body up against Chane’s.

The root flipped and twisted to the right, snaking beneath old, decayed leaves.

Wynn swallowed hard, trying to breathe as quietly as possible. The root had lost track of her, though she stood only a staff’s length away. How was that possible?

More roots erupted all around the clearing’s edge. Majay-hì scampered away from those twisting tendrils. Vreuvillä quickly stepped clear, and then froze, staring at them.

Each thick, earth-darkened tendril felt about the ground, searching for something—for Wynn.

With their adversaries distracted, Ore-Locks and Shade retreated to a position just shy of those roots. Not one root sprouted farther in than the clearing’s edge. None emerged within reach of them, as if ...

Wynn struggled to twist her head around and look to Chârmun.

“Back up,” she whispered.

Chane didn’t move, until Wynn nudged him with her elbow. He retreated, hauling her along, but Wynn felt him shuddering harder and harder, his sternum pressed between her shoulder blades.

Skulker ... do you think you can hide from us forever?

Vreuvillä stiffened, and Wynn cringed at the scratching leaf-wing chorus of the Fay in her head.

Hide? How could she hide in plain sight?

Her shoulder throbbed, and she glanced at it. The brass ring on Chane’s left hand was biting into her shoulder through cloak and robe. She tapped his hand with her dagger’s butt, and he slackened his grip.

Every tree around the clearing began to crackle as wind grew among them. Branches shook and writhed, joining the search of the roots. Even the trunks began to creak and waver.

Vreuvillä watched the trees, horror twisting her face, smothering any other emotions.

“ Cräjh-bana-ahâr !” she cried out, and Wynn barely caught the meaning of the rest. “You have told me what to do. Why ... why do you violate your own child to reach your enemy?”

Even a part of my child may be sacrificed ... to save it from the decimation that abomination will bring upon it!

Wynn couldn’t fathom what any of that meant, let alone Vreuvillä’s connection to the Fay. Tears rolled from the elven woman’s eyes, which were so filled with shock that the whites showed around her large amber irises. A breaking point had been reached, though Wynn wasn’t certain of what.

Some of the majay-hì eyed the humans and the dwarf as they spread around the clearing’s circumference. Only the silver-gray and mottled brown kept watching the forest, staying close to Vreuvillä. But the longer Vreuvillä was stalled by what she saw, the more her doubts might grow. That meant keeping the pack at bay as long as possible.

Wynn wasn’t about to give them another instant to recover. She dropped the dagger and grabbed Chane’s ring hand.

“Cover up!” she whispered to him.

Wynn twisted out of his arms but kept her own fingers on his and the ring. There was no time to wait for him or to dig out her glasses. She thrust the staff upward, its crystal held in her mind’s eye as she ducked her head. She envisioned the patterned shapes around the crystal, hoping she could ignite it without holding it in her sight line. This was something she’d never tried before.

Only the last line of il’Sänke’s instructed recitation raced through her thoughts, with no time to cross her lips.

Mênajil il’Núr’u mên’Hkâ’ä— “for the Light of Life.”

Nothing happened. Not one bit of sudden brightness filled the clearing.

Vreuvillä pivoted suddenly, as if something had caught her eye. She didn’t look at Wynn, but rather up . Wynn quickly followed that gaze.

Above her, the long sun crystal burned within, fully aglow. It was almost too painful to look upon. But not a single ray of light spread along Chârmun’s tawny branches above. The crystal had answered her intention, growing bright within, but its light of the sun hadn’t spread.

Cold astonishment knotted in Wynn’s throat, and her focus broke. The crystal’s imprisoned glare winked out. She was at a loss, and panic set in. When she lowered her head again, Vreuvillä had set herself, her strange white blade held at ready. The full pack of more than a dozen large majay-hì circled in from all sides.

Then Wynn spotted Shade.

Shade stood her ground, snapping and snarling just beyond Ore-Locks with his iron staff raised for a strike. Vreuvillä’s two guardians, the silver-gray female and the mottled brown male faced them. Strangely, though the male bared his teeth in weaving paces back and forth, the female remained poised in silence.