Of Truth And Beasts Part 31

The pack parted as Shade led the way, but majay-h paced them on all sides. Ahead, the paired silver and mottled bark brown ones flanked Vreuvill all the way to the great fir's draped entrance. The woman slipped inside without even glancing back.

When Shade reached the entrance, she hesitated, eyeing Vreuvill's escort at guard on either side. Wynn pushed past, pulling Chane inside the tree. She grabbed a stool she spotted nearby.

"Sit and rest," she said, guiding him to the seat. Perhaps with the forest out of sight, he might calm down.

Ore-Locks stepped in, followed by Shade. When the hide flap closed over the entrance, Wynn looked about.

Vreuvill crouched before the flickering embers of a freestanding clay hearth at the rear. With a stick, she lifted a char-stained kettle out of the flameless coals.

The interior was bark covered, like the guild's redwood structure, but the walls here were lined with living protrusions at all possible levels. Those shelves were filled with ceramic pots and jars. The chamber wasn't as big as the tree from the outside, and Wynn saw another opening at the back draped with a wool cloth.

Someone had guided this tree's growth, like the Shapers of the an'Cran. But it was not as old as the greater trees in the city. Wynn turned back as Vreuvill reached up to retrieve a gray porcelain jar with a wooden stopper.

As before, Ore-Locks remained silent, and Chane seemed beyond speech.

Vreuvill crouched before the hearth, pulling a bit of yellow root from the vessel and dropping it in a rough wooden cup. She immediately doused it with the kettle's scalding water. She rose and came at Wynn, but thrust the mug out at Chane.

"Drink it," she ordered. "Some humans are too human for the forest . . . though I have never seen one so affected."

If Vreuvill thought Chane was a mortal, Wynn had no intention of altering that a.s.sumption. But she doubted the root tea could do anything for an undead.

"He's my guard . . . and companion," she explained. "He would not stay behind."

"At least he is not another white-robed schemer."

Wynn hadn't come to discuss Chuillyon, but she couldn't help asking, "Why do you dislike him?"

"Dislike?" Vreuvill hissed.

Her head dropped forward but her narrow gaze remained on Wynn. Strands of silver-laced hair shifted across her left eye and exposed the tip of one tall ear.

"Sages and their orders!" she said; it seemed to rise from her throat like one of Shade's rumbles. "They t.i.tle themselves masters, domins, and premins to seek stipends from their kind, for their own purpose. The whites, so-called order of Chrmun, are a consumption in their midst . . . as if they bear any love or reverence for the one tree in all things. But do they teach? Do they bring the people back to what is sacred? No. They hide and manipulate among . . ."

Vreuvill's voice caught as she looked Wynn up and down, studying the gray robe.

"Even among your kind," she finished. "That heretic and his sycophants are deviants, fallen from the true way of the Foirfeahkan. They serve themselves, with Chrmun and its children as their tools."

"That's not why I'm here," Wynn said. "There are greater concerns to me."

Vreuvill raised her head slightly and c.o.c.ked it aside. Her one exposed eye glanced toward the draped entrance. Shade sat vigil there, as if she could see through the hide drape, and watched the entrance with no apparent concern over Vreuvill.

"Perhaps so," the wild woman answered.

Chane caught Wynn's wrist. She looked down as he set aside the emptied mug. Wynn watched in astonishment as his irises began regaining their lost hint of brown. He nodded to her, looking suddenly fatigued in his relief.

Whatever Vreuvill had given him had helped, but Wynn reflected on that one strange term-"Foirfeahkan."

She knew it only from histories learned in early education, though she couldn't remember how to translate it. It was from some lost dialect of Elvish even more obscure than that of the an'Cran. The Foirfeahkan were-had been-a spiritual sect, though their origins and their supposed end couldn't be traced. Wynn had never heard there were any left.

Animistic in ideology, they believed in the spiritual-ethereal and sacred rather than theistic-that existed within this world and not in a separate realm. Not quite like the dwarves, and they considered the center or nexus of it all was in one tree.

Wynn had never considered that that tree had to be Chrmun.

If Chuillyon was some pretender priest in the guise of a sage, then Vreuvill's disdain made perfect sense. But Wynn was uncertain concerning the reference to using the tree known as Sanctuary as a "tool." And what had the woman meant about its "children," as in more than one? Did that include Roise Chrmune, Seed of Sanctuary, in the an'Cran's hidden ancestral burial ground?

No wonder Vreuvill despised Chuillyon's order as heretics and traitors. They had potentially turned an ancient belief system into an organized profession.

"What does bring you here . . . sage?" Vreuvill asked.

Wynn ignored the thin disdain in that final word. She wondered how to gracefully lead into her request. But there was no polite way to broach the subject, and she was tired of subtleties. It seemed this unknown Foirfeahkan preferred directness.

"I believe an enemy from forgotten times is returning," she said bluntly.

"And?"

Wynn faltered. That should've been enough to pique concern or at least interest from anyone who knew even the scant myths. Obviously, Vreuvill did know.

"I've learned it had powerful devices," Wynn went on. "It used them in the mythical war some speak of. And the devices still exist. They may be the first hint of how-"

"Not the first," Vreuvill cut in. "Devices are not how things begin . . . but sometimes the means by which they end."

Wynn fell silent. Did Vreuvill know more clues-signs-of what was coming? More questions nagged at Wynn, but further hints of what she already knew wouldn't help with what she sought. Wynn neither wished to tax Vreuvill's patience that much nor give Ore-Locks anything more to serve his own hidden desires.

"One device may lie hidden at a place once called Balle Seatt," Wynn continued. "I need to find that place before the device falls into the wrong hands. If it was a tool of this enemy, it cannot be used again for whatever purpose it served."

Vreuvill frowned.

"We're trying to stop a war," Wynn went on, all the frustration of recent seasons rising within her. "No one will help! My superiors and others seem obsessed with hindering us." She drew in a long breath. "Please, if you know anything of Balle Seatt . . . then tell me."

Wynn could feel Ore-Locks's eyes upon her.

Vreuvill stood silent, as if waiting for more, but then her expression softened slightly. "And what makes a child like you believe the Enemy is returning?"

"Because I saw the beginning of the end a thousand years ago."

Wynn began with what she'd learned through Chap and Magiere's experiences within the memories of Most Aged Father, leader of the Anmaglhk. Speaking so in front of Ore-Locks was the last thing she wanted, but she kept to only events in general.

Wynn recounted the flight of Sorhkafre-Light upon the Gra.s.s-with the last remnants of his allied forces at the war's end. Once they reached First Glade's safety, he and some of his people took a cutting from Chrmun and left this continent. Some of the first Fay-born, those born into varied animals, including wolves who would become the majay-h, had followed him, as well.

"Sorhkafre still lives," Wynn said. "He is now called Aoishenis-Ahre-Most Aged Father-and I have stood as close to him as I now stand to you. He believes absolutely that the Enemy is returning. I wouldn't trust him for an instant, but I trust his fear of that."

Vreuvill's voice was strangely calm. "Sorhkafre, like the great war, is a legend . . . a myth among my people. If he truly lived, he would have died long ago."

Was that some sort of challenge?

"He lives," Wynn said plainly. "And for his unnaturally long years, he remains convinced the Enemy will return. There are others who've come to believe this, as well . . . even when they've denied so to my face!"

She stepped forward.

"We have to reach Balle Seatt before anyone else learns what we're after. If you can't help us, I won't waste your time anymore."

Wynn turned away. About to step past Shade and out of the tree, a soft chuckle halted her and she turned.

Vreuvill smiled at her and sighed tiredly.

"Child, you speak of things too openly, as if . . ." and she trailed off, looking about her chamber. "But if nothing else, obviously you do not follow in that heretic's footsteps."

"No, I don't."

"There are proper ways . . . for speaking of such matters."

Vreuvill reached for a bowl and pitcher on a shelf, and then began gathering pinches from varied jars. The chamber's air filled with a cacophony of herbal scents.

"You will wait here while I go for more water," she instructed. "Do not utter another word about this purpose until I return."

She slipped past Shade and outside. As the entrance drape settled, Chane struggled to his feet.

"What are you doing?" he whispered. "We know nothing about this woman. Why did you tell her so much?"

His face was still covered in a sheen, and the fingers of his right hand flexed over his left forearm, as if just barely refraining from peeling off his skin. Whatever Vreuvill had given him hadn't lasted long.

"She already knows," Wynn answered. "Weren't you watching her? She knows of the an'Cran. Even when she challenged me about Most Aged Father . . . she already knew about him."

"A guess," he snarled. "And now what? We wait in some unknown place for some unknown woman to do . . . what? Make us an herbal tea before giving us any information at all, let alone something of use?"

"Sit down and be silent," Ore-Locks told him.

Chane spun on the dwarf, but Wynn grabbed his arm.

"This forgotten priestess might well have what we need," Ore-Locks continued. "If she serves us a feast of stones, you will swallow every pebble and thank her. We have nowhere else to turn."

Wynn hesitated. "He's right, Chane."

This was all they had. And now that they were alone, she needed to know if Shade had picked up anything from . . .

"Oh, not again!" she breathed.

Shade was gone. She must have followed Vreuvill, though why was another unanswered question.

"Stay here," Wynn ordered Chane. "I'll bring Shade in and-"

"No," Ore-Locks and Chane said in unison.

Chane took hold of Wynn's belt, adding, "Not without me."

She jerked around, trying to break his grip, and failing. "Shade has figured out . . . certain things for us. What makes you think the pack couldn't do the same for that woman? You're not going anywhere, and I am going after Shade."

She looked to Ore-Locks and pointed her finger at Chane. "You stay in here and watch him. Sit on him if you have to."

Before Chane could react, Wynn pulled the cinch on her belt, and it slipped in Chane's grip. She slapped the entrance drape aside, but as she ran into the gully, she stalled.

Not a single majay-h remained in sight.

The place was completely abandoned. Then Wynn spotted Shade's charcoal black tail disappearing through a shuddering bush at the gulley's far end. She thought she heard other rustlings out there, as well.

If Shade had left to go after the pack, then was Vreuvill up to more than just preparing herbal tea?

Wynn glanced back once at the tree dwelling, and then ran down the gully and thrashed into the underbrush.

The tshglh hung upside down from the lowest branch of the great fir tree-right above its draped entrance. And Sau'ilahk watched, as well, through its inverted perspective.

Wynn bolted into the forest's undergrowth.

He had heard every word the little sage had recklessly expelled. All his scantest hopes had been revealed, spilling from her lips like the sweetest pomegranate wine of his lost, living days. She was convinced that an anchor-an "orb" as she called it-lay hidden in a place called Balle Seatt. She had actually found someone who might point the way.

For all Wynn's tight-lipped secrecy, even with her own companions, she had told this pagan priestess of false ways more than any of Sau'ilahk's servitors had ever acquired. How astonishing were the things this one troublesome little sage knew? Still, there was more waiting.

Once he learned the location of what he desired, a pause would come. He would linger long enough in the plain beyond the forest to greet Wynn Hygeorht properly. She would pay with her life for all of her interference. That joyful appetizer would initiate the greater sustenance for his long-held desire-the key to reclaiming flesh.

Chane Andraso would pay as well, by watching her die.

But that hidden undead and the wayward stonewalker were still within the tree.

For an instant, Sau'ilahk was uncertain of losing track of all those involved. Then the tshglh shot along the forest branches, as it raced after Wynn.

CHAPTER 15.

Out in the forest, Wynn pushed through thick brush with both hands. The farther she got from the open gulley's strange lanterns, the darker it became. She didn't dare take out a cold lamp crystal, for fear of being discovered, and she couldn't call out to Shade for the same reason. There was no telling how Vreuvill or the pack would respond to being followed.

Shade was one thing, but an interloping human was another.

Wynn clambered over a toppled tree trunk blanketed in moss and then halted. Stifling her panting, she listened for sounds ahead and glanced upward. Scant moonlight showed beyond the black silhouettes of needles and leaves.

A sharp rustle rose from somewhere nearby.

Wynn froze, wishing for that sound to come again. When it did, she stumbled on, tired, damp, and cold as she navigated by those brief sounds. That closer noise had to be Shade, and Wynn certainly didn't wish to encounter other majay-h instead. Even being disoriented by the night forest, she guessed they weren't headed toward First Glade. Her direction seemed more southeast.

Droplets upon vine leaves glittered in the darkness. And then, somewhere ahead, she spotted more illumination than just errant moonlight. Quieting her breaths, she slowly advanced, worming far to the left until she gained a clearer view.

A dozen paces off, a low light exposed a clearing's edge. That light didn't seem to come from a torch or fire or even a lantern, as in the gulley. She'd barely taken three more careful steps when . . .