The Sah'niir

by Kim Wedlock

  The mural of trees spread across the wall before him was awash in a weak yellow glow, and the stale, dusty air was silent in the lull of laughter but for a gentle rustle just behind him. Rathen turned, steadying himself against the wall as the chamber shifted sideways beneath a wave of exhaustion, and he found Garon staring out into the tunnel with his back turned and Anthis sitting quietly upon the floor, surrounded by papers and the glow of hovering fireflies. He was looking up at him expectantly.

  "Well done," the historian smiled. "You seem calm."

  "As do you."

  Anthis nodded, subdued. "I think I've worked it out. This place is locked behind light - which means that, once closed, it can only be opened at a certain time the following day, at the earliest."

  "And what does that mean?" Rathen asked, sitting down before another spell of dizziness toppled him over, grateful for the unimportant subject. "It's a safe?"

  "Not so much for keeping things in, as people."

  "So it's a prison?"

  "No - a place of contemplation and penance."

  Rathen frowned speculatively. "How do you know that?"

  "The stories on the wall."

  "What stories?"

  "Well," Anthis smiled, rising to his feet and stepping excitedly over the dry old papers, further exhausting the mage, "well actually the story itself is...a discovery, of sorts. It's rather familiar..."

  "If it's familiar, how can--"

  He raised that lordly informed finger. "Source." Rathen watched drowsily as he gestured right the way around the room. "All of this is about the importance of nature, of preservation, relayed by a story of someone who ignored Feira's rules. Look here: a woman had been on a pilgrimage through the wilds for weeks when she grew tired and stopped to rest mid-way up the tallest hill. When she turned around she found herself looking out over a landscape so beautiful that she stayed right there for three days until the full moon. She was enchanted, convinced that it was the greatest example in the world of Feira's power, and she wanted to share it, but there was little room for more than a few people to catch the view at any one time without the trees below getting in the way. She believed her intention was noble, so she went ahead and uprooted a number of those trees to open up the viewing site and replanted them somewhere else. And people did come, and the sight was beautiful - but it all came at a price. Wildlife was driven out, their homes removed, food sources from the sparser trees lost. And then, after a summer so wet it had been hailed - and I remember reading mention of it from a few different sources already - as 'Feira's Tears', the world fell."

  Rathen's weary brow creased. "The world fell?"

  "So far as I can see, it was a landslide. No trees, no roots, nothing to bind the soil. People were killed."

  "And that's a discovery?"

  "No, but its nature is. This story is one that survived even into long post-magic times."

  "I thought the elves had rejected all their gods and nature and balance by then."

  "They had. The surviving version: they removed the trees to open up the view and draw people in to see it. But, rather than replant the trees, they built an inn with the wood. People flocked to see that view and stay in that inn, just as they knew they would; it became popular, prices rose, the inn expanded, and they became rich."

  "And the landslide?"

  "Conveniently omitted. Happily ever after."

  "Right. And all that means that this is a place of contemplation and penance?"

  "The isolation, the depth, roots everywhere you turn, and the story itself serves as a more direct reminder of Feira's importance. As well as the very fact that it's right here, where the veil between us and the gods is at its thinnest if the magic is any indication. So yes," he declared, returning to his spot inside the ring of papers, "it does."

  "...Fair enough. What have you got there?"

  "Ah - just bits and pieces I found in the crates. Otherwise it's just common spiritual things, pots, incense burners...herbs..."

  "Nothing to fit the key?"

  "Not a thing. And all that I did find is just more information on things we already knew - 'we' as in...my 'we'."

  "I'm with you." He watched him glance back over the papers while a grimace of disappointment slipped in. "We have the Zi'veyn, remember, Anthis - we don't need anything else."

  "I know that but...surely we can't have gotten all the pieces of the puzzle..."

  "Probably not, but we've managed just fine with the ones we cut out and scribbled in ourselves."

  Anthis gave him a sideways look. "You did that, too?"

  "Of course - but, I'll tell you: Aria's a master. Sometimes I hide pieces just to see what she'll come up with. Half the puzzle once. It was a horse originally, standing in that typical proud-horse stance, front hoof raised - in fact I actually left the hooves in there, they were part of the border and if the border's not complete, she won't touch it."

  "Reasonable."

  "Absolutely. Anyway, rather than a horse, she wound up with two fauns, one running away from the other because the one at the back was trying to tickle him."

  Anthis burst out laughing, at which point Aria herself came running in, barrelling past the smiling inquisitor, and leapt upon her father with a look of faux indignation. "How dare you have fun without me!"

  "From what I heard, little one," he grinned as he returned her tight squeeze, "I think you're just as guilty as I am."

  "It's done?"

  Garon straightened and stepped aside to let the huldra pass, and their merriment crashed to a halt. Rathen rose to his feet, wary against dizziness, and gave her a nod. She smiled beautifully, but just as her lips pursed to form words of gratitude, a withering look took over.

  A hollow voice rose above the thrum of water in the distance. A crushingly mournful song reached into the chamber like the claw of a cold, helpless spirit, stroking skin to gooseflesh in its unending search for eternal rest.

  A sigh no less forlorn slipped from the Root Mother, and she turned and fled the room. Rathen saw the foolish wonder spark in Aria's eyes, and was immediately on her heels as she chased after her. The rest had no choice but to follow.

  Squinting against the onslaught of dazzling light beyond the falls, the harrowing dirge was at its peak. A canticle, tempered and patient, it wrenched the heart even in its horror.

  Rathen caught Aria by the wrist just as her foot hit the water and scolded her firmly, and at the huldra's curt gesture, the rest stopped short just behind him. They tightened together. Slowly, Garon drew his sword, and they watched closely as the huldra crossed the pool.

  The song drifted from the furthest bank. Straining against the light, their keenly attentive eyes began to discern a figure standing in the shade. Tall and slender, with arms outstretched as if about to embrace the whole forest, and legs that seemed half a length too long. There was motion about its feet. But it was not earth. It was air. It wasn't standing at all, they realised, but floating, raised a foot or so from the grass by a miniature vortex of leaves and twigs.

  The same perilous mixture of fear and intrigue that had shadowed them through the forest bade each of them to stare harder, and while the creature's details came slowly to most, Rathen and Aria were each acutely aware of what they were seeing. And where that recognition filled one with joy, it burdened the other with alarm.

  Roots and twigs bent into a cadaverous humanoid shape, eyes glowing like fireflies from within a woven head shaped like the skull of a bear, and a foxfire heart visible through the ribs of gnarled branches. Her voice echoed within that chest, seeping out between the weaves as it rose up through her wooden throat, head and horns of sprigs and sprays thrown back in full devotion to her song.

  "What is it?" Petra asked, appearing beside them, sword drawn and ready.

  Rathen held Aria even tighter as the word shaped on his lips. "A kvistdjur."

  The song rose in a hopeless crescendo, and dozens of trees began to wash from verdant green to sickly yellow right in front of
their eyes, leaves fading from tip to centre across a great stretch of the bank.

  "It's lamenting, isn't it?" Anthis asked, torn between horror and fascination. "It sounds so...heartbroken..."

  "To us," said Aria. "To trees, it's a lullaby."

  The creature made no reaction to the footsteps that came to stop behind her, nor the grey arms that enveloped her body or the untamed mane that slipped between the gaps in her weave. She remained as still as the tree she appeared to be, her aching voice flowing freely in ardour. But that lullaby began to wane, diminishing on the air like a closing music box until the lid was shut.

  Her head and arms lowered, the vortex evaporated, and twig-like toes touched the grass leaving her standing subdued in her queen's embrace.

  "Aria, no--" but she'd already pulled herself free. Rathen muttered an oath and rushed after her once more, restarting the chase. She made it to the far bank before he managed to catch her again, but as he seized her shoulders at last and pulled her backwards with a scolding, she'd already come to a stop just a handful of paces behind Hlífrún. She stood staring openly at the wooden creature in her arms. And they both noticed immediately that she wasn't well.

  "Rotten..." Rathen straightened and cast the queen a sober look. "How many...?"

  "Too many." She released the kvistdjur, whose bark had chipped and peeled away to reveal dark and gritty hollows, and watched her shamble, entranced, back into the woods. "She, at least, is still among her senses. There are others who are much worse off. But...they don't sing anymore."

  "Why are they singing?"

  She turned and smiled sadly. "Because they're afraid."

  "Is there not something you can--"

  "If there was, Anthis, I'd have done it." She turned away testily and looked back into the forest, tracing the kvistdjur's path with her eyes as she wrapped her arms about herself. "It's happening everywhere. They're delicate. I can only soothe them in person, but I've found no way to halt the rot. But it is no disease. It's the magic - it's always the magic." Then the injury faded from her voice, and she returned to them with the air of regality that had vanished in the chamber. "The Wildlands is riddled with this taint. My Wildlands. If it isn't stopped, my influence will fade away and nothing in here will be safe. There will be little to stop enterprising humans from coming in and felling it all, and my creatures will wander out of bounds and into human land.

  "But it goes beyond the simple yet ceaseless threat of your kind. The soils themselves are already sterilising, streams and rivers diverting, carrying away their water and sediment - trees are falling, the earth is opening. The organic network between every living thing is disintegrating. Unless something is done, and done soon, this forest and all others are doomed. And your own hunting grounds will go with them."

  "We understand that," Rathen assured her, sensing the demands that were coming, "there are a lot of areas affected all across the country--"

  "And well beyond. My reach has been completely cut off from Hin'ua, Duakhul, Ithen - too many others. Dolunokh only survives because the magic ravaging everything else is holding it together."

  "I assure you, Your Majesty: we are working on it."

  Slowly she regarded him with another of her disconcerting scrutinies, until something beyond the clearing stole her attention away. Her eyes became razor-sharp, and she whipped around to stare deep into the woods beyond the falls as another distant, gloomy melody rose over the thrum. Her lips formed a hard line, and she looked back at them fleetingly with that same hard edge. "Go with Birk. I'll return soon."

  "Wait," Rathen cried, "go where?" But she'd already dashed off into the trees. They exchanged helpless looks while the three vakehn joined them.

  Chapter 34

  Rathen's teeth grated at the crack of thunder that threatened to finally obliterate his patience. He dug his fingers deeper into his ears and stared even harder at the scribblings in his notebook, blocking out the forest and trying to focus himself onto something useful. But his eyes only continued to sink right through the pages, and his tightly-wound thoughts worked assiduously against any effort at progress.

  They'd followed Birk as commanded, whichever of the shepherding vakehn that was, and were led to a new sleeping tree to rest against the heat of the day while they waited for the huldra to return. But even once the distant lamentation had ceased - and they'd been listening intently - Hlífrún was nowhere to be seen. And neither, they'd finally realised, were the vakehn.

  Finding themselves suddenly abandoned in an unfamiliar encampment, their anxiety plunged deeper, and their eyes drifted ever more frequently towards the small rocky pond that sat unassumingly just within the edge of the clearing. More than once they'd roused from fretful daydreams to find themselves staring towards its depths in search of anything that could be lurking within.

  Garon's patrol about the trees became more urgent, and Aria, though wary, was bold enough to sit at the edge of the water and guard over it to 'do her bit for the group'. No one had missed it. Her contribution of the arty-fact no one needed was still firmly under her skin.

  But even while Petra kept watch over her in turn, stating when challenged that she had merely chosen that spot to rest, no one saw anything beneath the water but marimo, perfect balls of algae spinning peacefully at the bottom. No horses, no 'näcken', no sprites of any description. Nothing at all otherworldly. And so they'd continued to watch the water until whatever certainly called it home finally reared its head.

  Their restlessness only grew. But while they knew that leaving without Hlífrún's say-so would most likely incur her wrath, the strength and reach of which they didn't dare to guess, they entertained the notion with increasing consideration with every passing minute. And as clouds began to gather and the light began to fade, Garon finally took matters into his own hands.

  But, while the vakehn were indeed absent, it appeared they were still steadfast in their charge. He'd tested their reactions by walking as far as he could, but where they'd expected the woodland nymphs to reappear and turn him around - peacefully, guessed some; aggressively, warned others - he found only a barrier. And he hadn't gotten far. They were indeed prisoners, abandoned, forgotten, and completely trapped.

  Night was slipping in, and a storm had coalesced from nowhere. The odds were stacking against them. Now, there truly was no option but to stay.

  And Hlífrún had still not returned.

  Rathen growled in tension and shook his ceaseless thoughts away. Then another burst of light erupted through the trees and another crack set his teeth on edge. His notebook snapped shut and he slouched against the tree trunk in seething defeat.

  He looked up at footsteps a moment later and smiled as best he could. "Is she all right?" He asked quietly, looking past Petra to see Aria staring vigilantly over the water and Garon leaning surreptitiously against a tree beside her.

  "She's just fine," she replied, sitting down beside him. "Her patience is remarkable. I don't think she's blinked more than three times in ten minutes."

  "I'd swear she doesn't blink at all while she's whittling." He glanced about the trees. "All clear?"

  "Seems to be. Which is as good as we're going to get." She considered him warily. "I hesitate to ask, but...why were you so worried about kvistdjur? That one back there seemed fine..."

  "Because it was preoccupied," he grunted. "Make no mistake, they're vicious. Hlífrún is the queen, but kvistdjur are the forest guardians. She watches, thinks and commands; they act."

  "Not the vakehn?"

  "Kvistdjur are the primal guardians. They're more in tune with the forests, but they're closer to animals than humans."

  She bit her lip as she wrestled with the decision to voice her next question. Finally, senseless curiosity got the better of her. "...What could it have done?"

  "Did you see its fingers?"

  Long, tapered, sharp - at least those that hadn't been claimed by the rot. She shuddered. "Yes."

  "Now imagine them ripping--"

/>   "Yes, thank you." She leaned back sullenly against the tree. "Did you get all of this from books like she said?"

  "Some of it, I admit, but most came from Kienza. The rest...experience." She sat up with a jolt but he waved her questions away. "I live in a forest. What do you expect?"

  "But Aria was acting as though she'd never seen one--"

  "And may this remain her only encounter."

  A gentle rustle among the trees set an urgent fire beneath the camp, but it was only Eyila returning from meditation. There was no puffiness to her eyes, he noticed. But there never was when she returned. His expression softened in pity. "How is she?"

  "She's fine..."

  He watched Petra's expression twist sadly, then drift briefly onto Anthis. The young man appeared not to be paying the tribal any attention, but though his eyes were pointed towards the key he was turning over in his hands, they weren't looking at it in the slightest. Petra shook her head to herself.

  "She seemed better this time. After the magic." His eyes drifted back to her. "What did you do?"

  "Garon suggested a way to subdue her. I tried it. It worked."

  "Subdue her how?" He noticed that she was deliberately avoiding his gaze.

  "The same way he does you."

  "...Which is?" She said nothing, but he didn't miss the speed with which her hand rose instinctively to the side of her neck. He stared open-mouthed in disbelief and no small touch of insult. Not even the flash of lightning and near-immediate crash of thunder rattled it out of him. "You knocked her out?"

  "Look, I didn't want to do it," she snapped defensively, "but it didn't hurt her and she was only stunned, and for seconds. It did the trick. Don't look at me like that. If she doesn't hurt you, she's liable to hurt herself. And you know it."

  He sighed heavily. "Needs must? Sounds like Garon."

  "What did Hlífrún mean when she said 'you could do it'?"

  "I don't know."