Of Truth and Beasts

Those words formed within from the crackle of a thousand leaf-wings in Wynn’s mind.

Vreuvillä’s lips hadn’t moved, although she shuddered, as if she’d heard the words, as well. Something had come to this place through the priestess.

Wynn began shaking as Shade’s broken memory-words screamed in her head.

—run ... Fay ... run ... Fay ... run—

Chane grew anxious in waiting and glanced toward the tree’s draped entrance.

Ore-Locks immediately blocked the way, gripping his iron staff. “She will be back when she finds the dog.”

Chane fought the urge to charge. “Too long!” he hissed back through clenched teeth.

Ore-Locks did not move, but his eyes widened a fraction.

Chane knew what the dwarf saw.

No doubt his irises had lost all color. He fought to control his shudders under the crawling of his skin. The longer he stood within this tree, the worse he felt. This living domicile, like the rest of the forest, probed him, trying to uncover his true nature.

The forest knew he did not belong here, and Wynn should have found Shade and returned by now.

“Sit down,” Ore-Locks ordered.

The dwarf always seemed ready to protect Wynn in his search for whatever he hoped to find at Bäalâle. But now that she was close to answers, he had let her go alone into this forest. The situation had gone too far.

Without a flicker of warning, Chane snapped out his right fist with full force. To his dull surprise, Ore-Locks’s chin twisted aside under the blow.

Chane might not be as strong as a dwarf, but he was faster. Grabbing the entrance’s edge, he pushed through the drape and rushed out before Ore-Locks regained his wits. He stopped after only three steps.

The gully was empty. Nothing moved in his sight, and then something snagged his cloak between his shoulders. Chane lashed back with a fist as he spun.

His forearm smacked painfully against the iron staff that blocked it. Before he could strike again, he saw the dwarf’s face. Ore-Locks was slack-jawed in alarm as he too stared into the empty gully.

“What did I tell you?” Chane rasped. “That woman did not go after any—”

“Enough! Can you find Wynn, locate where she is?”

At the very least, the stonewalker had guessed Chane possessed some unnatural abilities. Chane looked about the clearing, the amber glow of lanterns nearly blinding in his night sight.

“Can you?” Ore-Locks demanded.

“Quiet. Go and get Wynn’s staff.”

Ore-Locks hesitated, but he appeared willing to try anything as he turned back into the priestess’s home.

Chane closed his eyes. What he could not see, he might hear or smell. Wynn could not have gotten far. A mix of panic and suffering raised his hunger, and his senses widened. He did not hear one rustle of a bush, yip or bark of a dog, or even someone struggling in the underbrush. He heard nothing but ...

Wind in the trees rustled branches ... somewhere.

He opened his eyes and saw none of the lanterns was swaying. Not one leaf fell to the mulch-covered gully floor. The crackling wind blew farther off, but it seemed impossible such a noise would not show any effects here.

Chane bolted down the gully as Ore-Locks’s pounding footfalls closed on his heels.

* * *

Sau’ilahk could not clearly see what was happening. Though his familiar had perched high above Wynn on a branch, he had barely glimpsed the barbaric elven woman sweep her arms through the air. The woman should have told Wynn something by now. The whirling breeze raised a column of leaves around the priestess as the wind began ripping through the forest.

And the tâshgâlh went mad with fright.

It spun and tried to bolt back along the branch. With the pack so nearby, whatever was happening was too much for it.

Sau’ilahk’s sight blurred through his familiar. He heard growling below, the breaking of branches and brush, and all was drowned out by the wind. A throaty, terrified trilling erupted from the small beast carrying his awareness. Rage and frustration took him.

He tried to subdue the tâshgâlh, to crush its will to nothing, but the small beast only clamped its limbs around the branch and froze. The forest grew darker before its eyes—and in Sau’ilahk’s sight. He thought he heard thrashing in the forest’s underbrush. It seemed to come from farther off, back the way Wynn had entered.

The branch beneath the tâshgâlh began to waver. The last thing Sau’ilahk heard was Wynn’s weak shout, but he never caught her words.

A rapid series of snarls and snaps erupted from below, followed by a yelp, and darkness surged over the tâshgâlh’s senses. Sau’ilahk felt its fear peak and its body go limp.

He flinched each time the beast hit a branch as it tumbled down through the tree in a sudden faint.

Out upon the plain beyond the forest, a black-robed form shrieked in a rage that rose in yet another wind. Truth had been within Sau’ilahk’s grasp, only to be blotted away yet again.