Of Truth and Beasts

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.

She was watching Shade and took one soft step forward.

“Look at her!” Wynn called to Vreuvillä, though she pointed at Shade and not the silver-gray majay-hì. “Think about her!”

Vreuvillä held her ground, only briefly turning her eyes upon Shade.

“Why would she defend me ... turn on her own kind?” Wynn demanded. “Why ... if what your ‘Pain Mother’ says is true?”

Vreuvillä scowled with disdain at that translated title.

Wynn wasn’t certain what it meant, but it gave the priestess further pause. She needed to stall a little longer for what she thought might happen.

The silver-gray female inched another step. Shade lunged partway and snapped at her, and then froze as the mottled brown male wheeled in, returning Shade’s threat.

“Shade, no!” Wynn called.

The silver-gray dog shouldered the mottled brown aside and took another step.

Do not listen to this spy! Truth and lies—she will use both to delude you!

Wynn tried not to shudder under the Fay’s denouncement. At least she’d turned their focus onto their own emissary, and this confirmed Wynn’s suspicion.