The Sah'niir

by Kim Wedlock

  And it was not friendly.

  From the moment the sun crept up over the forbidding canopy, no one could shake the nagging sense of eyes watching them through the mist. They saw nothing, heard nothing, but there was no doubt that they were not alone, nor that they were unwelcome. And though there were no natural trails to be found, no evidence at all of any forest denizens, they were not eased in the slightest. In a region so virile, something had to live there. It just didn't leave the usual traces.

  Somehow, the forest had become bleaker and more horrifying than the first time they'd ventured in - perhaps because, this time, they'd not followed a road. There was no hint of civilisation behind or ahead of them; they had entered from the wild and intruded on a whole other world.

  Eyila's reaction to the restless paranoia was the worst of them. Spinning at the slightest provocation, jerking and jolting over noises, shapes and movements while muttering what could only have been curses in her native tongue - some of which Rathen was horrified to recognise - and she stuck as close to her companions as a midday shadow.

  But they were no better.

  Throughout the day choruses of strange hooting and trilling pervaded the air, changing with every shift of the sun as new creatures rose to hunt; otherworldly roars, growls and bellows rumbled through the ground without warning, shaking branches and snapping the company to a halt. When the limited light began to abandon them, their blood froze at sudden, piercing, nocturnal shrieks. At the screams; at the laughing and singing. The trees too creaked mournfully in the wake of every apparent breeze, though not one graced them with its touch. Instead the air became even more stifling, the same boughs that had offered them shade during the day tried to flatten them at dusk. The scent, too, had grown wilder.

  "This forest is nothing like home," Aria whispered carefully as her saucer-sized eyes flicked feverishly through the darkness that walled in their camp. "It's wild, it's dangerous...and in some places, it's angry. At us."

  Rathen felt neither the need nor desire to enquire further.

  That first night in the Wildlands' grasp the atmosphere became so suffocating, so ominous, that individual tensions were forgotten. The need to study, to meditate, to theorise and create - all were lost to the overwhelming compulsion to scrutinise the roiling shadows. They were out of reach of the Arana at last, but they'd wandered willingly into a hunting ground of a whole other breed.

  When their unflinching guard finally burned them down to their blankets, they tossed and turned in a plague of sweat-drenched nightmares and disorientation; hazy and uncertain, never sure if they were awake or sleeping, if their imaginations weren't trying to sabotage them with the creatures they'd feared since childhood, dredging out the worst from the stories that had terrified them as toddlers. The tales that even now remained chillingly close despite all the years that had passed. The hours were endless.

  Then, when helplessness began closing its clammy grip, the morning light finally arrived to chase away the stupefaction. Led by ghostly wisps of fog, and hoots, trills and strangled cawing, it was the most glorious thing any of them had ever seen.

  But it was over too soon. And then it all began again.

  By the fall of the second long and wretched evening, when they at long last reached the open carpet of treetops and took a single, sweeping look through the waning light from the exposed cliff top, each of them felt that same petrifying desperation creeping back up their throats. It was only in that moment of benumbed majesty that they noticed the pockets of autumnal trees, the swathes of orange, red and brown scarring the vibrant green, but they were too exhausted to entertain it.

  They peered instead over the edge of the precipice that dropped away inches from their feet, stretching off in either direction before being swallowed by the forest.

  The desolate sight was identical to the one they'd faced on their last reluctant visit, but it became slowly evident that it was not the same spot. There were no roots for hand-holds, and no sign of the ruin. That sole landmark could have been anywhere. Minutes away, or days. Searching for it wasn't a risk they could take.

  "How are we going to get down?" Petra asked tentatively, but no one replied beyond Eyila's stammer of protest. A rope soon appeared in Rathen's hands, gingerly conjured from thin air, at which everyone shifted.

  "We have no choice," he reminded them, and moved to tie it resignedly around a thick tree trunk. He returned to the edge, loosening the length as he went, and gave it a sturdy tug. There was no give. His heart shot into his mouth as Aria peered much too far over the edge and warned her back immediately. Then he looked over for himself. "I'll go first," he said with deceptive confidence, and, against Garon's objection, began his descent. And despite the protests of them both, Aria was close behind him.

  She wasn't as adept as her father at creeping down the rope while walking her feet across the sheer, dusty cliff, and dangled a few times before managing with stifled panic to wriggle her way back into position. But Rathen was keeping a very close eye, and in due time, they both passed through the tops of the trees and clambered back into the sinister tangle.

  To their surprise, Petra was the first to join them, and moments later Garon appeared through the branches while Anthis's voice floated through the lull of wildlife cries, reassuring Eyila as she presumably began her own descent.

  "It feels even worse down here," Petra was beginning to say as she stepped down and moved to stare cautiously through the trees, but a sudden startled yelp, crack of branches and quick lash of air behind her cut her off. She spun in time to watch Garon bounce to an abrupt stop, the rope coiled tightly around his body like a snake while his eyes bulged in alarm. She surged forwards while the rope lowered him safely to the ground and immediately began turning over his hands. He sharply snatched them away. She promptly snatched them back. "Rope burns. What a time to stop wearing gloves."

  A billow of air and Eyila was suddenly beside them. "What happened?" She asked hurriedly, taking his hands despite his efforts to pull them away again, but her healer's grip was much firmer.

  "Three guesses." Petra turned the defeated officer a disapproving glower. "You have to be more careful."

  "Yes, yes, I know, thank you for your input, helpful as ever."

  Rathen rolled his eyes while Garon hissed at the vinegary fluid Eyila rubbed into his pink palms, but he noticed as he passed that Petra, for the fourth time in half as many days, seemed strangely untouched by the tiresome hostility. She didn't even twitch.

  "You do, though," Eyila reiterated.

  Rathen frowned at the pair's commotion over the barely injured man. "What's the fuss? He just slipped. Accidents happen, you know."

  "Don't they just?"

  He frowned again, and watched absently as the officer's hand half-curled with a start and a wince.

  "Where are we?" Anthis asked as he joined them.

  "No idea. I can't feel the magic of the ruin."

  "That doesn't matter," Garon said as the tribal continued to fuss. "We have no point of bearing in this place, especially in the dark. We're not going looking for it. Our immediate priority is camp."

  "Camp? Here?"

  "So close to the ledge, we're probably safe. There's nowhere to hunt, nowhere for anything to hide or run."

  "And you can be so sure that that kind of logic will work in here?" Petra asked doubtfully.

  "Do we have a choice?"

  They didn't. So, as the unnatural shadow swelled, Rathen dismissed the conjured rope and they went out in search of a suitable site. It didn't come easily. Bones, faeces and unfamiliar tracks somewhat executed Garon's assurances, but following some unwilling examination, the bones were found to be free of gnaw marks, the faeces were dried out, and the tracks belonged, most likely, to some form of large goat. Even so, they continued on until the condensing darkness forced them to make do with a tight and shallow alcove in the cliff face.

  That night, Anthis sat at the shielded fire, his back to the cave, eyes transfixed to an
object in his hands. The glint caught Rathen's eye as he turned it monotonously over and over.

  "The key?"

  Anthis flinched in fright, and again as Aria leapt from a tree to the ground beside him. He shook his head in defeat as the mage sat down beside her. "Yeah, I found it in the cache the last time we were here. Never did work out what it was for... I'd thought perhaps we'd need it for the Zi'veyn - not that I was in any state to think about it at the time," he chuckled ruefully. He rotated it again. "But why else would it have been put away with the rest of it?"

  "Maybe," Aria began lightly, leering at the ornate, black key, "it's for something out here. Why would a key be kept so far from its lock?"

  "To avoid strangers unlocking it?"

  She blinked.

  "Though she's not wrong," her father continued. "It wouldn't be a stretch to presume it was for something nearby. If not in that very same ruin..."

  "Yeah!" She almost cried. "You should have a look! We are trying to fix the magic, so we'll have to go back there sooner or later!"

  He smiled meekly at her enthusiasm. "Believe me, I'd love to, but we have no idea where 'there' is. And fixing the magic or not, there are other--"

  A sharp scream pierced the air, so abrupt and brief that it rendered them as lead while their blood turned to ice. Terror seeped in. But it seeped from the cry. There was nothing otherworldly about it.

  Anthis flew from the camp only an instant behind Rathen, while Aria hurried back into the alcove on her father's command. Moments later they burst through the trees, knife and magic ready, and scoured the area around the frozen tribal in a frenzy. But they found nothing beyond the husk of an ancient tree.

  "What happened?" Anthis whispered, backing up towards her while Rathen continued to hunt, but she didn't reply through the hand she'd clamped over her mouth. Instead she opened her eyes, stared sharply ahead, and pointed. They followed nervously towards the base of the tree which appeared suddenly bone-like in the arrival of the weak, thin shafts of moonlight.

  Slowly, they stepped away, edging around the thick, knotted trunk, scrutinising further than their eyes could manage. On light feet they negotiated its grand and sprawling roots, weapons at the ready, until an aberrant shape in the depths of its shadow brought them to a stop. Anthis managed to stifle a curse.

  Nestled within the roots, curled up in a dark hollow, a small form lay sleeping. The size of a child, but gangly - fully grown, whatever it was - its face hidden behind a mat of moss and spider silk, its skin covered in a layer of pallid lichen. It didn't move in the slightest, still in a slumber which didn't thin in their presence. It hadn't noticed their arrival at all.

  And neither had it stirred at Eyila's scream.

  Frowning, Rathen dared a step closer. Still it didn't move. It didn't appear to be breathing by any conventional means, either. Slowly he crouched, and began to notice that what he'd thought was lichen was in fact its skin, and it was as pale as the tree beside it.

  He sighed in pity as Petra and Garon arrived from opposite directions, their blades equally in hand and each demanding in a whisper what had happened the moment they found them.

  "It's dead," Rathen announced solemnly, rising to his feet.

  "What is it?" Petra asked, looking closer.

  "An askafroa."

  "Askafroa - but they're a myth..."

  "I'm afraid that kind of rationality is going to be turned upside down in here."

  All looked around to Aria, who was suddenly standing beside Anthis and staring down at the nymph's corpse with eyes wide in a strange, keening sorrow.

  "Is this what's been shrieking?"

  "No. Askafroa are silent."

  Rathen stepped forwards and turned her away, squeezing her shoulder consolingly. "It's all right."

  "Is it?" Petra asked, careful to avoid upsetting the child further while thoroughly unsettled herself. "The last time we were in here, we saw nothing at all."

  "We heard it all, though," Garon reminded her. "Just because we've seen something doesn't mean we're in any more danger now than we were then. It's dead, whatever it is; it couldn't have hidden from us."

  Eyila looked searchingly around them while Anthis returned to her side. "Do we move on?"

  "No." Garon sheathed his sword and started back towards the camp. "There's always a watch."

  Even so, no one slept that night, either.

  After another early start with breakfast eaten in blunt silence, they moved right along, keeping east to their best guess. They had all agreed: the mountains were their goal. They would do what they could for any afflicted place they found along their way, but they weren't about to go looking for them. Duty didn't assert itself to object. After the discovery of the askafroa, everyone was resolved to reach the other side of the forest just as soon as they could.

  It must surely have been almost noon by the time Anthis's exhausted mind wandered onto the scattered orange leaves they trekked over so carefully. He looked up at the surrounding trees and considered the autumnal colours, and noticed at last that a few were completely bare. "Magic did this?" He asked, glancing towards the two mages, though neither appeared touched by any such evidence.

  "No," Rathen replied bleakly. "Kienza said kvistdjur are lamenting." He pulled Aria closer as she grew a little too excited by the mention of the woodland sprites.

  "What does that mean?"

  "Stubborn trees," the child almost burst. "Kvistdjur sing to them! Their song encourages autumn by soothing any stubborn trees to sleep. Their leaves change colour as they get sleepy, and they fall with the rest, and that gives the bugs and creepy crawlies and mushrooms things to eat. Then the trees eat them while they sleep."

  Anthis's eyebrows rose, and he nodded in much the same way she did when he taught her something - though everyone but she could see that he wasn't entirely convinced.

  "It's true," Rathen assured him as his eyes dragged habitually into the trees.

  "But it's not even midsummer. Why would they sing now?"

  "The magic is probably upsetting them," Eyila replied. Her voice was distant. "It's upsetting everything else. Perhaps they want to put the trees out of their misery..."

  Rathen noticed Aria nod sadly to herself. But his own attention was suddenly consumed by something Eyila must have already sensed coming. He didn't notice himself immediately stumble, nor Anthis hurry to catch him, nor the fact that the historian lingered close to his side. His mind had fallen under a violent assault; his focus was shredded to pieces, his blood surged and the band around his arm grew warm. Time, distance, the trudging of his feet, it all fell away. There was only the desperate struggle.

  "You're muttering," Anthis warned in a whisper, but Rathen didn't hear this, either. The young man's lips formed a hard line, and curved into a far from believable smile when he noticed Aria looking up at him in worry. He realised in that moment what the young girl must have been thinking, for the thought had occurred to him a few times already. But if her father was succumbing to the lure of magic - for that's all it could have been, given how Eyila, too, was now heavily supported by Petra while her eyes surveyed a whole other realm - there was nothing she, he, or any of the rest of them could do. Anyone, perhaps, but Kienza. And she had tasked him with keeping an eye on the weathered old mage for a reason.

  He made another attempt at a smile, more successfully this time, but though he managed to provoke one from her in response, it was just as feeble.

  Rathen's steps soon grew urgent. Anthis struggled to hold him back, maintaining a grip on his arms as they contracted even tighter against his body. But he didn't relent.

  "We should hurry up," Anthis said lightly to the others, letting go of him though remaining near, and gave Aria the faintest glance. She understood it in a heartbeat and attempted to take over the subtle restraint herself. "Kvistdjur could still be close."

  No one needed encouragement. In a moment, the mage's pace was matched, and they all but ran ahead and into a sudden pocket of rain - o
r, rather, a heavy deluge they'd neither seen nor heard in their haste.

  "Ugh!" Petra spluttered as she and Eyila stumbled into the luke-warm downpour only a step behind Garon. "Where did this come from?!"

  "Rain does that," Anthis grumbled, shielding his eyes and peering carefully through his fingers, but he found only a peek of the sky between the towering ancient trees and it appeared to be completely blue. "Apparently..."

  "No. It's too isolated to be rain..."

  "Isolated? What makes you think--" She stopped as she stepped out into dry air. She cast a bewildered look behind her as a soaked Aria emerged, leading Rathen and tailed by Anthis, the latter of whom appeared just as confused. Aria, on the other hand, only beamed. "It's like a waterfall!"

  "Isolated," Garon grunted. "As I said." He resumed his lead before Rathen could overtake him, and everyone fell in behind, their dripping clothes now clinging to already sticky skin. There were more than a few murmurs of discomfort, but their aggravation was forgotten when they happened quite suddenly upon what could only have been the source of the displaced magic.

  Rooted amongst the thick, looming, time-worn trees, just as silent and careless, stood another wooden form, one intricate, compelling, but somehow absolutely untouched by the surrounding menace. The form - giant, fair and unnatural - exuded serenity, a sensation that washed over each of them as they stared, as readily as a breeze over plains. Even the trees were pacified, neither bending away nor attempting to smother. They stood as if the figure was one of them, and she as tall and regal as any ash, oak or checker tree. And it was a 'she'; with a form so ripely feminine, it couldn't be cast into doubt - even despite the aurochs horns that protruded from the top of her head.

  From the roots of those battle-ready features, luxuriant hair spilled like water, washing over shapely shoulders and billowing clear of her neck and chest, baring the feathers that sheathed them like a gorget. Her breasts, however, were boldly exposed, perfectly shaped and quite human, so much so that a few of them blushed at the sight.

  Framing her magnificent torso, her hair continued to roll and flow, draping over slender arms and gathering at last in her out-held hands. Long, thick strands of algae trailed from her cupped tresses, concealing the rest of her form while moss grew modestly across the hip and crotch which, no doubt, was equally as bare and attentively carved beneath.