Of Truth and Beasts

* * *

Sau’ilahk blinked through dormancy. It was a half-blind shift.

Uncertain where he would awaken on the plain, it would be enough to baffle the majay-hì. That beast had somehow sensed him. The instant Sau’ilahk reappeared, he heard the rapid pound of horses—two, perhaps three—and he whirled to find his bearings.

The road was far off to his right, so he must have shifted north, maybe a hundred yards more along the plain’s midline. He traced the road to where it met the forest’s edge and the nearby place where he had spotted Chane.

There were two shapes there now, but he was too far off to be certain who they were. The hoofbeats pulled his attention. The shapes of three riders were farther along the forest’s edge in a direct line toward those two waiting figures.

Sau’ilahk panicked. How much more downfall could come atop a missed opportunity? He had heard Wynn call out Chane’s name, so what had the undead been doing out here? He could not afford to have Wynn delayed—or arrested. Perhaps she and hers were finally prepared to move on, out of that cursed forest to where he could track her once again.

The very thought that he would have to save her burned Sau’ilahk within as he skimmed the grass and blinked once more through dormancy.

Wynn looked out across the night plain as Ore-Locks hefted Chane over his shoulder. The dwarf headed toward the tree line, but she didn’t follow him yet. Shade was still out there on the plain.

“The dog knows where to find you,” Ore-Locks whispered.

He was right, and she couldn’t afford to call out for Shade.

Another shriek broke the quiet, and Wynn stiffened.

Even Ore-Locks spun about, staring along the tree line, as the sound of something heavy hit the earth in the distance. The rhythm of hoofbeats broke amid the frightened whinny of horses. Thrashing in the grass followed as someone shouted and cursed in Elvish.

The riders had stalled, run afoul of something, but what? That thought had barely finished when Wynn heard Ore-Locks snarl under his breath.

“Be still!”

Chane was struggling, clawing at the dwarf’s back.

Wynn rushed toward them, but before she reached out, Ore-Locks dropped his staff again. He latched both hands on Chane’s torso and heaved. Chane hit the nearest tree trunk, and the impact twisted him midfall.

His shoulder struck the earth first, and his arms and legs whipped down across the base of large tree roots. Almost immediately, he began clawing the earth, as if he hadn’t felt the impact. He couldn’t seem to get up, and he started crawling toward Wynn.

Ore-Locks closed on Chane, cocking one clenched fist. Wynn threw herself onto the dwarf’s back, wrapping her small hands over his face to obscure his sight.

“Enough,” she said directly into his ear.

When Ore-Locks froze, Wynn slid off his back and ducked around him to drop beside Chane.

Chane wasn’t lying at the dwarf’s feet. He was still trying to crawl off and kept whispering something as Wynn grabbed him, trying to pin him down.

“Flowers ... my flowers.”

Wynn looked to the grass plain. Chane hadn’t been trying to crawl to her. A memory of white petals came to her.

“What have you done?” she breathed.

Magiere had once been seized by the an’Cróan while in their land and taken before their council of elders to be tried as an undead. Fréthfâre, who had acted as prosecutor, had pulled a vicious trick in front of everyone. She’d held up the white flowers and proclaimed ...

“Anasgiah—the Life Shield. Prepared by a healer in tea or food, it sustains the dying, so they might yet be saved from death. It is vibrant with life itself, and feeds the life of those who need it most.”

Wynn remembered every word like it was yesterday, for then Fréthfâre had slapped those flowers across Magiere’s face. Magiere was not an undead, but her father had been one, and she shared some of their nature through him. When the flowers struck her, their effect was so damaging that she’d nearly collapsed.

Chane was a true undead, and he’d touched the same white petals. Why?

His hand clamped down on Wynn’s thigh. She felt its icy chill through her pants, and though he tried to squeeze, his fingers convulsed too much.

“Flowers ... for you,” was all he said.

His eyes closed, and he stopped moving.

“Chane?” Wynn whispered as she shook him. “Chane!”

She looked wildly over his body lying facedown in the dirt. Was he gone? Had the anasgiah finished him? How was she to know with no way to check for ... someone who wasn’t alive?

“Move aside,” Ore-Locks said, stepping in over Chane. “I will bring him, but we must leave—now!”

Chane’s body flinched at the sound of Ore-Locks’s voice. Wynn gasped, not realizing she’d been holding her breath.

“Get him deeper into the trees,” she whispered to Ore-Locks. “I’ll come in a moment.”

“No, you will—”

“Go! Now!”