Of Truth And Beasts Part 19

A long pause followed.

"You mean anamgiah?" he asked. "It is a healing and cleansing herb that grows wild, suitable to this plain's tranquillity."

Chane was already trying to get his mask and gla.s.ses back on. Premin Hawes had corrected him the same way when shown translated notes from the Seven Leaves of Life. If he had heard right, one of those seven was here, all around him.

"Yes, um, that's what I meant," Wynn answered.

Chane heard Ore-Locks cluck and then flick the reins. As the wagon lurched, Chane peeked out from beneath the canvas's edge.

The sun had not fully set, and he ground his teeth as the gla.s.ses darkened. He waited for them to adjust, hoping he would not miss what Wynn had seen. As the wagon moved onward, a small bit of white appeared in the tall gra.s.s beyond the road's edge.

Chane's gaze locked as it slipped slowly by.

The dome of tiny, pearl-colored flowers was almost phosph.o.r.escent in the fading light. Their leaflike blossoms grew in cl.u.s.ters that s.h.i.+mmered like white velvet. The stems appeared so dark green, they were nearly black.

All Chane wanted was to climb out and s.n.a.t.c.h them up. Then they were gone. As the wagon rocked down the road, he searched the gra.s.s, though his view was far too limited. He caught only two more glimpses of white too far out in the deep gra.s.s to see clearly.

"Hand me the reins," Wynn said.

"Why?" Ore-Locks returned.

"We'll be entering the forest shortly, and I should drive."

This was not an adequate answer to Ore-Locks's question, but it said much to Chane. Wynn had told him of her experiences within the Elven Territories of the an'Cran, and of what Chap had learned concerning the Ancient Enemy's hordes of long ago.

No undead could enter an elven forest. Or, specifically, by Wynn's reasoning, no forest protected by an ancient tree called Sanctuary, or its like offspring on Chane's own continent.

The forest itself would sense any undead and confuse it with madness and fright. Then the majay-h would come to pull it down and slaughter it. In Chane's time with Welstiel, that cold madman had also mentioned this.

As an undead, how could Welstiel have known and survived to speak of it?

Chane stroked his thumb over the ring of nothing, fitted snuggly on his left third finger. Perhaps the forest had not known Welstiel was there. Chane braced himself, waiting.

He did not know what to expect, and Wynn had also worried about this moment. He lay there so long in hiding, wondering how close they were. He began feeling exhausted by tension, and at last his grogginess began to wane.

Had the sun finally set?

"Chane, you can come out," Wynn said softly. "We're there!"

Chane flipped the canvas aside and heard Shade, who was also in back, growl as its corner flopped over her rump. Darkness filled his view, and he pulled off the gla.s.ses and mask, immediately pivoting onto one knee. They were surrounded by the trees.

Wynn glanced over her shoulder, first at him and then beyond. He followed her gaze to the two elven patrollers still behind the wagon. They both took note of his sudden appearance and frowned slightly in silence.

Likely Althahk was out in front. This was not good. If Chane was wrong about the ring, the last thing Wynn needed was to be caught bringing an undead into their land.

Chane began to feel . . . something.

A nervous twitch squirmed through his body. Perhaps it was only some effect of the violet concoction amplified by his anxiety. He peered into the trees all around. They were everywhere. One pa.s.sed by right next to the wagon, and he leaned away on instinct.

The trunk was as large as a small fortification tower, and at least so wide that the wagon did not reach its far side before the trailing riders drew parallel with it.

A tingling, annoying itch began swarming erratically over Chane's skin. There was no breeze in the forest, but the sensation was like streams of dust blown over his exposed face and hands.

The p.r.i.c.kling grew.

It brought a memory of toying with an anthill as a child. Chane remembered speck-sized insects crawling over his s.h.i.+rtsleeve, looking for a way to get in . . . to find out what he was. He pivoted slowly, beginning to shake, until he faced Shade sitting on the wagon's far side.

She watched him silently, her large, crystalline irises too bright in the dark.

Chane turned away. He knew the forest's wards, or whatever guarded it, were no superst.i.tion. But even that told him more as his thumb rubbed nervously over the ring he wore.

His thoughts were still sound and clear beneath the fear.

"Are you all right?" Wynn whispered.

"Yes . . . I am fine."

Wynn pulled out a cold lamp crystal, rubbing it brusquely on her thigh until it brightened, and handed it off to Ore-Locks.

She'd been so eager to get here that she'd been careless and forgotten good sense. She hadn't thought of what Shade's presence might evoke from the Lhoin'na, let alone about running into any of them before reaching her destination. Now traveling with this armed escort, she couldn't shake all she'd learned in her time among the an'Cran concerning the undead and their forest.

To complicate things, she'd just rolled Chane right into such a place.

There'd been no chance to let him test it cautiously. They'd both known this was coming, but reality was a far cry from antic.i.p.ation. Bringing him here had been a blind gamble, for her as well as him, all the while hoping that tiny ring would protect him.

He seemed all right, though his eyes were wide and watchful. Then she noticed his left hand trembled as he fidgeted with the ring.

Ore-Locks remained silent, studying their surroundings, and Wynn turned her attention ahead.

Above them, the lowest branches of the largest trees were thicker than her body. Higher still, they had long since twisted and intertwined. Not a single night star showed through the canopy. It was all too quiet.

"What is that up ahead?"

Wynn flinched at Chane's rasp right behind her head. At first, she couldn't see anything beyond Althahk and his horse. A slight flicker appeared, followed by more. As they drew closer, those glimmers took shape as distinct lights. Some of them were too high above the ground.

"Dwellings . . . in the trees," Chane whispered.

Wynn couldn't quite make out what he saw. His vision at night was far better than hers. Shade huffed once, and Wynn twisted her head. The dog stared back and huffed once more-one single utterance, too startlingly familiar.

Wynn remembered Chap's system used with Leesil and Magiere. He'd used one bark for "yes," two for "no," and three for "unknown" or "uncertain." Had Shade seen this in some memory of Wynn's, and then added it to her own reluctant vocabulary?

Shade huffed once more.

Wynn frowned, turning forward again. Perhaps it was a good thing, but right now it was just unsettling.

"Not only domiciles," Chane added, and pointed upward over Wynn's shoulder. "That is a shop of some kind."

There was no sign of a city or any such large settlement ahead, but they must have reached its outskirts. Even Ore-Locks craned his head back in astonishment.

Wynn's eyes adjusted to those glowing points of light spread upward into the great trees' heights. The thickest branches were the size of normal tree trunks. A complex system of walkways stretched between various levels.

People went about their ways in early nightfall. Tall elves stood on or walked the paths, stairs, and landings, circ.u.mventing structures mounted around the trunks or perched out on the more ma.s.sive branches. Of those few that Wynn could make out pa.s.sing near glimmering lanterns of gla.s.s and pale metals, everyone moved without a care for the heights.

"Lunacy," Ore-Locks said. "One's feet should remain upon the solid earth, as intended."

Wynn wrinkled her small nose, remembering what he'd called the patroller during the confrontation.

"Don't you ever again call one of them yiann-bill-'bush baby' again," she told him softly.

"Heat of the moment," he replied under his breath.

Dwarves were a curious and accepting people. Wynn had never expected to travel with one who might be a bigot. It was one more thing that separated him from his kind-and all the more offensive considering his disguise. He was still attired like a s.h.i.+rvsh of Feather-Tongue, who was a wise and worldly traveler spoken of in dwarven sacred myths and legends.

Chane leaned past Wynn's side. She watched his gaze roam the heights in fascination. While he sometimes expressed arrogant att.i.tudes and he could be coldly judgmental, new experiences always riveted him. If Chane hadn't been forced into death and beyond it, he would've become a true scholar, no doubt.

Homes and small-to-medium structures blended into the leafy upper reaches, making it difficult to distinguish where one ended and another began. All were made of plank wood, though Wynn thought some roofs might be covered in cultivated moss. The branches of these huge spruces and oaks and gargantuan maples dwarfed the trees she'd seen along the journey.

One wavering light, low to the ground, caught Wynn's eye. Not all of the settlement was built above.

Those lower structures were all dark but for a few lanterns somehow suspended along the paths between them. Perhaps these were for the more trade-and craft-related pursuits. How had all this come to be? Why did Lhoin'na choose these strange, high settlements, as opposed to the an'Crans' wilder enclaves upon the earth and their homes inside of living trees?

Shade whined, nosing into Wynn's side. Wynn reached back, stroking the dog's cheek.

Sudden memories of the an'Crans' wild Elven Territories rose in Wynn's head-but they were not her own memories. The Lhoin'na forest must seem different to Shade, and Wynn hoped it didn't make the young majay-h too homesick.

"Althahk . . . veasg'r-illeach!"

The patrol leader slowed his horse at the call of his name. Wynn drew in the reins as she searched the heights for the greeting's source. A tall elf stood at a walkway railing ornamented with swirls and ovals of trained, leafy vines. It was hard to make him out, but a nearby lantern sent white and silver s.h.i.+mmers through his long, unbound hair.

"And fair evening to you, Counselor," Althahk returned in their tongue.

"What brings you in so late, Commander?" the counselor asked. "And why do the She' ith escort visitors to . . ."

Wynn was too busy with that one unfathomable word to wonder about the long pause. That term wasn't in the Elvish she knew or the older dialect of the an'Cran. The root sheth meant "quietude" or "tranquillity," sometimes "serenity." Perhaps what she'd heard was something older still.

"The old one is looking at us," Chane whispered from behind.

"It is odd, indeed," Althahk answered back, and turned a stern eye on Wynn.

No, not at her, but at Shade.

"I will speak with you tomorrow," the elder answered back.

By the time Wynn looked up, he was gone. Althahk clicked his tongue, and his horse moved on. Flicking the reins, Wynn guided the wagon onward.

In breaks between settlements, the forest's guardian trees overwhelmed any hint of civilization. Glimpses of dwellings soon came more often, to the point where long, extended walkways began joining one to the next. Buildings among the ma.s.sive trunks multiplied upon the forest floor, until Wynn couldn't follow the pattern of them in the darkness, even by the wispy lantern lights along paths above or below.

The wagon rounded a gradual bend where the darkness appeared to break beyond the trees.

A sea of light struck Wynn as Althahk turned a final sharp bend. Her eyes popped as the group rolled through a living arch of two trees grown together high above.

Wynn was still blinking at spots of glare when a'Ghrihln'na-Blessed of the Woods-filled her whole view.

Sau'ilahk materialized upon the road a stone's throw from the ma.s.sive forest's edge. He had already backtracked to find the caravan along another route; Wynn was no longer with it. Alone in the full night, he knew that she had crossed into those ancient trees and was on her way to the Lhoin'na sages.

Sau'ilahk could not follow, but what of Chane?

The road was the only way the wagon could have pa.s.sed. If Chane had been left behind, he would be waiting here. Or had he gone with her somehow?

Impossible-unless there was more to that strange little ring.

Sau'ilahk wavered, staring about the gra.s.sy plain. It was a bitter place he had heard of only in his living days. So much had begun and ended here. An age ago, a line had been drawn, marked by where autumn's dead gra.s.s met the ever-living green of that forest. The war's waves of victory had broken here. But that wasn't what had ended the war.

It had been as if Beloved had simply given in.

The time of victory would come again, and next time, the Children would not lead. Sau'ilahk would regain youth and beauty, awe and glory. He alone would dominate Beloved's forces. Their wors.h.i.+p would feed him more than all of the life he had consumed in his altered existence.

But what of Wynn Hygeorht? What did she seek in this place? Where was an orb that would free him? Where was lost Balle Seatt?

That he depended on this whelp of a sage, an immature infidel, ate at him. He was not foolish enough to pa.s.s the tree line and would have to follow her from afar once more. A servitor of Air or Earth would not serve his needs this time. He needed an emissary of consciousness connected to his own.

He needed eyes as well as ears, and perhaps more.

Again, Sau'ilahk blocked out the world, focusing inward, and then looked down. Within his thoughts, he stroked a glowing circle for Spirit upon the road's packed dirt. Within that came the square for Earth. Smaller still came another circle for Spirit's physical Aspect as Tree. Between the lines of these shapes, he stroked the glowing sigils with his thoughts.

Spirit to the Aspect of Tree, Tree to the essence of Spirit, and born of the Earth.

His energies bled into the pattern on the road that only he saw.

Sau'ilahk's form thinned to transparent in weariness, and then a shaft of wood cracked the dirt at the pattern's center.

It jutted upward as if an overly thickened branch suddenly sprouted there. That short, bark-covered limb bent over, far suppler than it appeared. Along its length, six tinier limbs sprouted to lift its body and rip itself from the road. Turning around, a small knot of ochre root tendrils twitched around its base.

Sau'ilahk bled even more energy into his creation.

Bark peeled back around the root knot. Those tendrils coiled tighter and tighter into a ball. And that sphere took on an inner limelight, growing severe, until it blinked at him.

Flexing lids of wooden root tendrils clicked over one glowing orb like an eye. The servitor spun and rushed toward gra.s.s at the roadside.

No! Sau'ilahk commanded.

He reached for his fragment of consciousness embedded within his conjured creation. It halted in its tracks. He held it there as it struggled in resistance, until it finally submitted.

Remain unseen. Follow the trio of human, dwarf, and wolf.

As he released it, the servitor skittered away and shot into the tall gra.s.s. Only a ripple among those blades marked its pa.s.sing. When the trail reached the tree line, that legged branch with one eye in a root knot skittered up a ma.s.sive tree trunk and vanished into the forest's canopy.

Sau'ilahk watched foliage s.h.i.+ver briefly and heard the faint click of its legs upon bark. His consciousness rode the servitor into a land where the dead could not walk....