by Kim Wedlock
"What if," Garon began musingly from the back, drawing all eyes onto him, "you just kept an eye out?"
"What, like gouge them?"
"No!" Rathen bellowed. "What's wrong with you?"
"Keep a look out," the inquisitor elaborated. "You're both being targeted by the same people, and both for the same reason. This much, you do share, and it's more than just a 'minor inconvenience'. So rather than attacking each other, turn your aggression onto them. Work together to save yourselves. They won't expect it - in fact, they're almost certainly using your preoccupation to their advantage."
"You mean like, if one of us sees something, we holler and let the rest know? They'll just fly away and save their own feathers! What'll we get out of that?!"
"They won't raise the alarm," she hissed, "they'll leave us to their weapons if they don't lead them into our eyries themselves!"
"Then one side will be killed while the other watches. These people will take advantage of any opportunity they can find, and betrayal is one such opportunity. For both sides."
"How's that?"
"One side panics, the other gets complacent," he replied simply. "Both become easy targets. So it is in neither's interest to betray the other. Whereas if you work together, you only stand to gain."
"...We ain't really being inconvenienced by that, though."
"You would have to work together," Eyila noted. "That means coordinating efforts, setting up some kind of signalling system; you will have to live in the same forests, but you'll be safer."
Slowly, the eyes of every ditchling and every harpy turned onto their rivals, and again a tentative silence descended. But this one was charged, buzzing with a multitude of unspoken thoughts, concerns and suspicions betrayed by expressions in eyes, brows and curling lips. Quiet chirps began among the harpies while the ditchlings no doubt conferred in silence - perhaps even with numbers beyond those present - and those caught in the middle watched each side with tension.
Again it was the lead harpy who broke the silence, her tone this time considered, hypothetical. "The magic," she began slowly, "whomsoever's it is, is tearing the forests apart. The prey has been frightened off and the hunting truly is thin; safe, thick acres to make homes within are harder to find. Things - all things - would be easier if the magic was gone."
"We can do that," Rathen assured them. "But will you cooperate if we do?"
Again, the two factions considered one another.
"I can speak for my kin," she declared. "We will do them no harm for as long as they honour the pact."
But Nug wasn't so quick to agree. He and the rest remained quiet, their eyes moving as one over their feathered adversaries. It took a long while before he shifted his weight, cocked his head and narrowed his enormous eyes. "We don't trust them," he stated bluntly. "But...if we'll be safe - from hoomans and from them - then...rashunly speaking, we ain't really got a choice, have we?"
"Not really, no."
"For this to work," Eyila reminded them, "you'll have to stop attacking one another - right away."
"Then we have a problem, don't we?" A dirty finger stabbed towards the harpies. "We can get word to our friendlies right now, but what can they do? It'll take a month for them to let all their kind know!"
"How long will it take?" Rathen asked, turning towards them.
"Six days."
"Really? Across the whole of Turunda?"
"Yes. Wings are faster than feet."
He looked back towards the ditchlings, all of whom seemed only vaguely more satisfied. "Then it looks like it will be on you to show the first honour by refraining from retaliation in that time. Consider it practise."
"We don't need practise, we know how to live peaceful, thanks very much."
"Then prove it. And you," he looked back to the harpies, "will also have to keep your word and make every effort to inform your kind as soon as possible. This feud ends now."
"At the say-so of outsiders?"
"To be honest," he growled, "yes, because we've been caught up in this too, and for no damned good reason. And because you both know it's the right thing to do, even if it's just to save your own skins - and, in fact, because you're making it harder for us to save everyone's hides!" He seethed, but as Eyila's hand rested delicately on his shoulder, he snapped it back. He straightened and turned away, abandoning his part in the matter at last.
"He's right," Aria informed them as he turned and knelt beside her, checking she was all right, and he smiled a weak note of gratitude. Suddenly, his exertion at the foot of the Tree had returned to thump in his skull.
Eyila stepped forwards and motioned for Nug and the harpy to come close. Garon and Petra baulked, and Anthis joined them once his jealous glare had passed; the two in question merely stared at her reluctantly. But a soft, assuring smile remained on her lips, and she gestured patiently to them both again.
Nug straightened; he was the first to step forwards, Rathen's words no doubt ringing in his mind, at least for the moment, and even returned after a few steps to leave his spear behind in the hands of a girl whose hair had been presumably painted with berries to approach his counterpart unarmed.
The harpy's elegant head twitched at this, and she, too, dropped to the ground with surprising grace for a creature so large. It was only then that any of them noticed how ragged her outermost feathers were, aged and worn, and wondered for a moment at just how old this crowned individual was.
They stopped several paces apart, so she encouraged them the final few steps by grasping arm and wing and pulling them together to stand side by side in front of her.
Then, her smile changed; her companions at her back, it was meant only for these two. And it exuded peace. "Ayuia," she began, looking up towards the magnificent harpy, "Arkhamas," she looked down to the appeased ditchling. Her hands pressed together at her heart, then rose to her forehead; as her left moved away behind her back, the fingertips of her right touched her brow. "Oluya toakan Aya'u tse," she whispered, and a cool breeze billowed from the downward sweep of her hand.
Nug's eyes widened, the harpy's closed, and her companions looked on in curiosity.
"You are measured equally; both of you are capable of honour, and both of you are capable of treachery. But only with your combined integrity can you save your people. Any action that puts one ahead of the other will doom both sides to fail. Know this, heed this, and you will only succeed."
While Nug stared up at her in awe, the harpy stepped back and stooped her head, flaring her feathers as her kind had done at her own arrival. "Saya'a lo toa," she said with a reverence that only further confused the gathered humans. "We will commit. You have my word, and that of the other dronn'vaen." She straightened elegantly, then turned her head to look directly at the ditchling beside her. "As do you, little mice. For the sake of all of us."
He nodded slowly, dragging his eyes from the tribal to the harpy, and while he stared for a moment, it was not in hesitance. He nodded again, consciously this time, and the amazement in his silver-green eyes faded enough for his usual liveliness to peek back through. But there was a solemnity there, too, and he straightened not in defiance but in virtue. "And us. It ain't gonna be easy, but I know I don't wanna be killed by these sneaky buggers any more than you do. We got a common problem, all right, and if the only way to beat it is to team up, then that's just the way it is. 'Course it'll take some time to take down our traps." He smiled sheepishly beneath the harpy's glare. "Awh, don't look like that, neighbour. You got your own traps to disbandle, I'm sure."
She didn't seem inclined to dispute it, but neither did she agree. Instead, her sharp yellow eyes returned to the tribal then to the humans beyond, over whom she cast one final scrutinising gaze. "It seems you are even more complicated than we had imagined. But also more intelligent. It is a shame your convictions are not shared among the majority of your people. But it seems you have just managed to convince us. That is no small thing." She stepped forwards, ignoring the weapons that flinched at h
er approach, and came to a stop before Rathen. He looked up with tired eyes, but managed to return the bow of her head. "You are lucky to have this one among you. Do not take her skills for granted."
"We don't," Anthis assured her.
Then, at a cue neither seen nor heard, the surrounding harpies took flight and began to disappear back into the forest. Despite their abduction, no one argued at their departure.
Nug, on the other hand...
"Oi," he snatched her wing as she moved to follow. "We ain't done! Just when are you gonna send this message?"
"One hour past noon," she replied with clearly restrained irritation, snatching her feathers free.
"Noon? Tomorrow's noon?! Why not now?" His eyes narrowed, and the remaining harpies stopped and turned, watching him and his band closely. "What are you planning?"
"We plan nothing. That is when the air is at its swiftest."
"Sure it is. How conveenyent. We ain't doing nothing until you do; we ain't letting our friendlies get killed so you can have one last hurrah!"
"You are so infantile!" She hissed, and whipped back towards the others. "This is never going to--"
"It will have to." Eyila gave each of them a firm stare. "Only together. Remember?"
A venomous glance exchanged between the two of them, brief, but hot enough to melt steel. They both snapped their heads away a moment later with muttered curses and predictions. But they then each looked back to Eyila, nodded with tight lips and beaks, nodded even more brusquely to one another, then turned and departed without another word to anyone.
The humans watched them go with raised eyebrows. Eyila returned to them and smiled victoriously. "That went well."
Chapter 25
Drizzle pattered. It was soft and constant, as reassuring as the babbling of the stream that rolled lazily through the hollows of the scowles. He could reach that river in five minutes should he wish - the walk would be quiet and invigorating. But it was late, dark, and he had little desire to leave the warm and familiar fire-side chair. As old and patched as it was, it was soft, and perfectly conformed over the years to his shape and comfort.
He sank deeper into its folds as a cool breeze slipped in through the window. It tousled his hair and mixed the smell of the damp forest with the wood burning in the fireplace. Playful giggling nearby lightened his heart, and the strange voices of dolls chuckling in her enactment elicited one of his own.
A long, easy breath passed his lips.
Finally, the magic was gone. The job was done. And Aria would be safe forever.
A loud, muffled thump erupted in the centre of his head. His heart burst, the world slipped, and his eyes snapped open with a jolt.
To the dark forest, the campfire, and the four figures he knew and yet felt suddenly as though they were strangers.
His bearings were painfully slow to return. Each struck him like a hammer blow to the skull.
With a bitter murmur, Rathen cleared his throat and shifted against the tree trunk, sitting up from the slump he'd sank into, and smothered his choking disappointment. He would not be deceived like that a third time that night.
He looked hard about himself. It was growing dark and cool, the lengthy summer dusk stripped away at last, while the crescent moon hid beyond Wrenroot's treetops where the storm's last gasp was wheezing. The only light came from the small, flickering campfire, a sight that lately seemed to dominate half his life, and cast haphazard shapes across the tree trunks that only further confused his exhausted senses. And he still couldn't shake the scent of home.
Another wave of disorientation struck in his attempt to divide the two, and he quickly decided that the effort wasn't worth it. So he abandoned it, settled back against the bark, and let his eyes fall upon Aria who played with the ditchlings at the edge of the camp, gracious hosts who had led them back to their horses and permitted them to settle on the fringes of the forest. They were playing some strange game that involved throwing sticks upwards with a flick of the wrist to land inside a ring they'd drawn in the mud. At first he'd thought the point was to get the stick to land upright and stay that way, as he'd heard cackles of victory on every such occasion, but his understanding crumbled when the same outburst rose as one landed diagonally, dislodged another and fell on its side along with it.
But whichever rules eluded him, Aria seemed to grasp, and she laughed joyfully along with them, whooping in victory herself a number of times.
He smiled softly as he watched, and his eyelids grew heavy once again.
An instant later Aria was dashing past him, heading for the saddlebags. She snatched something, flashed him a grin, and hurried back to the ditchlings. He watched her give it to Nug. Even despite the low light, he knew what it was: a depiction of the Lady she'd whittled from the branch he'd given her. He'd seen her working on it over the past two nights, smoothing out the lines and rubbing down the splinters. It was a simple shape, and not at all unlike a ghost; it was quite a melancholy image, actually, but one that bore the grace of any entity of nature. As far as he would picture it, at least.
He smiled softly again. Nug seemed to like it.
Anthis watched Eyila smile at the mage's most recent crash back to his surroundings. His eyes narrowed past her bitterly.
So he hissed as she rubbed a salve of crushed leaves, sap and some kind of clay into the talon wounds on his wrist.
She snapped back to him in an instant, apology in her eyes while a smile persisted on her lips. But this, he could see, was for him. "Sorry - did that hurt?"
He smiled - genuinely - and shook his head. "No, I'm fine. It just surprised me." It hadn't in the slightest. But that didn't really matter.
Her smile broadened though the apology remained, and she returned her attention fully onto her task. Evidently, no one's wounds had been particularly severe, as she'd not once resorted to magic. She'd treated Petra, Rathen and now himself with herbal remedies, and it had to be said: her skill was adept. Not once had her touch stung or twinged; there had been a solution to numb, another to draw and weep out dirt, and now a paste to...well he wasn't sure, but it was sealing it, at any rate, and probably doing plenty more besides. And each had been applied with practised certainty and care.
His body tightened as she transferred his hand to her other, her fingers brushing his palm while she reached out to drag closer her mortars, and with an absent flick of her long, snow-white hair her scent drifted towards him. It was a scent he'd come to know as uniquely hers, strange but far from unpleasant: a mix of heat-dried leaves and something he'd finally come to place as damp sun-cured hide, which itself had taken on the essence of their trail through the forests.
He felt his palms turn clammy and his cheeks begin to burn as the aroma lingered and muddled his thoughts. Desperately, he sought any means to distract himself. "What did you call her?" He blurted the words so suddenly that he succeeded only in darkening his cheeks.
But Eyila's pale eyes were calm as they turned back up to him, composed and unaware of his blushing in the concealing light of the fire. She didn't seem to need any elaboration, either, as she answered his poorly delivered question before he could try, and with a smile so natural that his heart fluttered in spite of his efforts.
"Mayi'i. I suppose the closest would be 'matriarch', although that's not quite right."
Again, he fought the redness away. "She said dronn'vaen - it's elven, but there's not really a translation for that, either. How did you know how to address her?"
"It is the language of the Wind."
"Oh. I thought Rathen said your people spoke some kind of Ivaean..."
"Yes," she smiled, "but not exclusively. We speak Aya'u's voice when it's right to."
"I see..." Then the silence crept back in and she sank back into her work, tidying the salve and ensuring every break of the skin was covered. "Why did they think you were our slave?" He managed to prevent the words from tumbling out on their own this time.
"Because," she replied without any thought of of
fence, "my people are much more like them than you are, and they believe you think you're above them."
"That's ridiculous."
"Is it, though? Many of you hate non-humans - many of you hate tribals. And Salus is killing all the non-humans he can get his hands on. Their belief isn't unjustified."
"No," he shifted uncomfortably, "but it's a bit of a blanket assumption. We're not all the same."
"I know. Which is why I told them as much."
"...What did you say to them when we left?"
She smiled with amusement, entertained, as she often was, by his unending fascination. "It was a blessing."
"A blessing? Of Aya'u?" She nodded. "And you said they were measured equally..." He hesitated cautiously, and a moment further when she looked up in expectation. "Did She tell you that?"
Then her expression changed dramatically. Her bronze face screwed up almost comically as she regarded him as though he was mad, her eyes wide beneath a ridiculous frown and a slight puckering of her lips that looked like she'd either smelled something sour or was trying to hold back a hateful smile. She looked away, breathing either a laugh or a snort, and began covering the pasted wound with a broad leaf whose underside had been notched and scored. "Of course not. I'm not a priestess, why would Aya'u communicate with me?"
"No," he'd successfully embarrassed himself. "Of course not." He cleared his throat and straightened, attempting to cast it off as she released his wrapped hand. "Either way, it seemed to carry weight with the harpies. The ditchlings just looked...agog, I suppose."
"Aya'u is the Goddess of the Wind, and the harpies revere the winds as my people do." She faltered as she began gathering her mortars and pestles. "Did."
For the briefest moment, her face displayed an anguish so powerful it grasped his own heart and squeezed a lump of lead into his stomach. Then it was quickly locked away. Quite successfully. Too successfully. She turned him a smile, and though it was painfully close, he knew it wasn't real.
