Of Truth and Beasts

Wynn tried to clear the cacophony of leaf-wings inside her skull. The pack was closing in, and there was nothing to stop the Fay from reaching her. Even the forest’s trees could soon come at her under their influence.

Her cloak jerked hard again, but not toward Shade this time.

The sudden tension pulled Wynn toward the clearing. She twisted and fell facedown through the vines. Lifting her head, she began trying to crawl backward when Shade suddenly leaped over her.

Shade landed on a dark gray majay-hì that still gripped Wynn’s cloak’s edge in its teeth. The majay-hì yelped, releasing its grip, as both dogs tumbled in a snarling mass toward the clearing’s edge.

Wynn scurried back to claw up the young redwood.

Shade rolled up in the torn brush, snapping with her jowls pulled back.

Her opponent frantically wheeled and darted away into the clearing. A handful of majay-hì beyond veered off, pacing uncertainly beyond the tree line. Even Vreuvillä pulled up short, eyes wide as she looked at Shade. The sight of a black majay-hì attacking its own stunned them all.

Wynn’s stomach lurched under leaf-wing words in her head.

You atrocity ... you end here!

She saw Vreuvillä stiffen.

Pull her down ... remove this thing from our presence.

The priestess looked up and around the clearing through the whirlwind of leaves. A flash of confusion swept across her dark features.

Wynn heard the sound of breaking brush beneath the wind’s racket. In despair, she thought the rest of the pack must be surrounding her. Even shock over Shade’s actions wouldn’t hold them off much longer. A branch crackled and snapped behind her.

She turned, reaching behind her back for Magiere’s old battle dagger.

Chane burst out from the forest’s depths, his colorless eyes glistening. Branches and leaves shredded under his reckless charge. Ore-Locks surged through behind him and swerved away before Wynn could call out.

The dwarf had her staff in one hand, and his own iron staff in the other. With that long bar cradled under his armpit, he swung its free end into a bush between two tree trunks. Leaves ripped away until it jerked suddenly. A peeling yelp erupted from something hiding in there.

Chane reached Wynn, his sword drawn, but his gaze was locked beyond her, on the clearing. Bloodshed would only make things worse.

Wynn lunged into his way, shouting, “No! No killing!”

A set of jaws clamped on to her right hand. She tried to jerk her trapped hand free as she grabbed Chane’s shirtfront. Her skin began to tear, but those teeth didn’t bite down any harder.

A memory filled Wynn’s head.

She saw a great, barkless tree of tawny, glistening wood in an open, moss-covered clearing. It looked more gargantuan than she remembered, as if she were crouched between the mounds of its large roots.

The teeth released her hand and memory-words filled her head.

—Sanctuary ... Chârmun ... run—

Shade raced out into the forest’s underbrush.

“Follow Shade. Now!” Wynn called to Ore-Locks as she heaved on Chane. 

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.