by Kim Wedlock
"What exactly do you want us to do?" Anthis asked crisply. "We have demands for help coming at us from all sides - ditchlings, harpies, and now Hlífrún, though she's not come right out and said it. The difference this time is that she has us trapped here until we do what she wants."
"Well it's not going to happen. We're not here to serve this 'queen', we're here for Turunda's people."
"She and her wildlings are Turunda's people."
He sent him a measured look. "You understand full well what I mean."
"Garon," Rathen sighed wearily, "you said all of this last night."
"And the bad feeling I had then hasn't died at all."
"I have a question," Petra began carefully, "why hasn't Kienza come to get us out?"
All eyes turned onto Rathen with the same sudden expectation, and he straightened defensively. "Because I suspect she knows more than we do about Hlífrún and that's enough for her not to get involved - which also means we're not in danger."
"Yet."
"...Yet."
"Well we need to get out before we are."
Petra frowned as Garon's hand rose to his forehead for what must have been the eighth time that day. "Is that another headache?"
"No. It's nothing."
She rolled her eyes. "Well, he's right on the first count, at least: we do need to leave, and soon."
"And you've concocted a plan in the last day, I presume?" Rathen challenged impatiently. "Because otherwise there's no point to this at...all..." He noticed that all eyes had fixed onto him again, and they were no less expectant than the last time. More, perhaps. He shifted uncomfortably. Then an unpleasant understanding dawned. His shoulders sagged in sufferance. "Why?"
"Because she's taken with you."
"All the more reason I should stay away from her."
"She'll listen to you."
"No, she really won't."
"Explain what we're doing, make her understand that this magic isn't the only threat, that time is of the essence."
"I'm pretty sure she already knows that. Look, she has her reasons for keeping us here, and until we know what they are, all of our 'explanations' are going to fall on deaf ears."
"So we should wait until she sees fit to tell us?" Petra countered. "Call me crazy, but she doesn't strike me as all that direct."
Garon nodded in agreement. "Fear and uncertainty have us on edge, and she knows that. She's not going to clear the matter up and lose one of her advantages, she's going to keep them all in play for as long as she can and string us up like puppets. We need to manipulate her. And you are how we do it."
Rathen was shaking his head in disbelief, but they continued to watch him with that same pressure and expectancy until, finally, he found himself just beginning to agree. He caught himself and shook it away. "And just how would you presume I even find her? She's not back yet - unless she's decided to ignore us."
"Like I said: she's taken with you. Wander out of camp alone. The best the rest of us would get is a vakah to turn us about. Hlífrún will come to you herself."
"None of them need to come for us, Garon, there's a barrier."
"Yes, I haven't forgotten that, thank you - my point is that she wouldn't pass up the opportunity even if she has decided to ignore us."
"Just what I wanted to hear." He looked to Petra as she placed a hand on his shoulder, but he found little comfort in her strange smile.
"Rathen," she began with an encouragement and support that also struck him as just a little too sweet, "just tell her what we're doing - tell her about Salus and his mad ideas. She knows about us from creatures in the forest, as I understand it, but all she knows about Salus is what those creatures have overheard us saying about him. Assuming there were any around at those points to hear it. It's a gap in her knowledge. And if the cracks are cutting off her link to the other forests and Salus is out there making them deeper, she'll see that he's the real threat."
"That's a really good idea, Petra, you seem to have a very solid grasp on the matter - perhaps you should go instead."
"No," she grinned playfully, slapping him a little too firmly on the back, "I came up with it for you. Don't insult me by rejecting it."
He looked helplessly to the others. "That is exactly how Hlífrún is going to be. Sweet and venomous at the same time."
"And I daresay you'll spot her deception just as quickly." Garon gestured towards the trees. "Go on. No time like the present."
He stumbled backwards at Petra's gentle shove, and studied the two suspiciously while Anthis grinned openly beside them. He shook his head in defeat as the trap closed around him and trudged off into the woods, muttering under his breath.
Darkness slipped in around him. The camp fell away, and his breath began to shake. He was painfully aware of what he was walking into. Even if all the books he'd read to Aria were riddled with misinformation, everything Kienza had told him was true to a word, and those words were ringing in his head like a chorus of bells. He could only hope that what he'd said in her defence was just as true. Otherwise, why hadn't she come to their rescue?
He shook the useless thought away. It wasn't the time to worry about that. He needed his wits about him.
Cautiously he walked on, doing his best not to stare around himself in alarm, straining his ears over the crashing rain as he wove around trees and rocks until he was finally swallowed by absolute darkness. His eyes took far too long to adjust. By the time the shape of trees returned to the abyssal landscape, his heart was beating a thousand times a minute, his palms were hot and clammy, and his breath was sharp. How he managed to prevent his anxiety from bursting forth as a yelp at the sound of the throbbing voice close behind him, he didn't know.
"Looking for me?"
He spun around and watched fireflies coalesce from the blackness, illuminating tree bark in their painfully weak glow as he struggled to find the face the voice belonged to. But of course he knew, even before he spotted the two chestnut ovals that burned as intense as fire.
Her face emerged from the tree, bark-skin smoothing as her lips curved into a succulent smile. Her hair rolled free, her crown rose from beneath it like sprouting saplings, and her shoulders, breasts and arms followed, breaking free from the trunk as her perfect and powerful torso took shape. Roots retracted into toes, and she stepped as a being towards him, naked, brazen and formidable.
His eyes finally darted away and his lips bowed into an embarrassed smile. "Oh-uh-um...looking? No just...going for a walk. Stretching my legs before bed."
"Mhm. Like you do every night, you mean?" She stopped close enough for her wildflower breath to brush his chin, and she stared at him with hungry eyes, calling his own back to meet them. "I'm sorry I didn't announce my return. I was...troubled."
"Troubled?" He stumbled backwards over a root, eradicating his casual attempt to find distance. "The-the kvistdjur? Was that what we 'needed to see'?"
"Ish."
He looked at her very carefully, but still she gave nothing away. She just continued to smile with that all-knowing look. A look that rattled him to his core. A look that, if not for its distinct element of danger, could have belonged to Kienza. Or to Taliel.
He laughed nervously again, turning away to escape her suffocating stare, and tempered his voice into humility with the greatest of effort. "Look, Your Majesty, please don't think us rude--"
"Never."
He swallowed hard as she closed the distance in a single, feather-light step. He forced himself to stand taller. "But, uhh...we need to move on. In the morning."
"I know." Her hand slipped gently up his arm, across his collar bone and back down his chest. He didn't move, focusing all his might on ignoring it.
"You know?"
Her hand rose again and stroked softly across his cheek. Her lips parted in a sensual smile. "Of course. You have things to do."
"...Then...you'll let us go?"
Her flaming eyes grew hotter, her smile even more voracious, and his throat tight
ened as a confused hope began to roil in his gut.
But then her hand suddenly trailed away, and she wandered back towards the tree to investigate a knot. A resentful pit opened in his stomach at his own foolish disappointment, and stability reasserted itself as he focused on the sight of her hollow bark back and gently swaying cow tail, making a point of avoiding everything around it. "Sure," she said offhandedly, "I don't see why not. I have things to do, too."
"You do?"
"Of course. Plenty. More than I care to think of, actually - but such is life. You may leave in the morning. I'll provide you with food - I'd rather that than have you kill my creatures." She finally looked back and smiled mischievously at the bare-faced panic fuelling his surging thoughts. "Oh relax, you've not killed anything I couldn't stand to let go. Just leave my wood-grouse alone and all will be well."
"W-wood-grouse?"
"Yes," she grinned. "Adorable, aren't they?" She puffed out her bare chest, pressed her wrists back into her rump, fanned out her fingers, and made strange, hollow, rattling and clicking noises as she raised her face skyward.
Rathen found himself so confused as she straightened and grinned that he didn't dare react in case he offended her. He was unaware of the bemused smile already curving his lips. "Wood-grouse. Yes. We'll leave them alone - you have my word."
"Good." She nodded with satisfaction and turned back to the tree she'd emerged from, gesturing off vaguely towards the camp hidden somewhere in the swirling darkness. "Well, on your way, then. The others will want to know how this went. Oh, but..."
He looked up from the path he found his feet already tracking along and faltered as he discovered her suddenly standing before him once again, close enough for her breath to stir him. And stir him she did. Her lips pressed softly against his, and though he knew he should be startled, his mind drummed emptily, as though she'd removed all capacity for thought in their contact. It was...blissful.
Slowly, much too soon, she stepped away, her hand slipping reluctantly from his neck, and retreated once again towards her tree, flashing him a devilish smile. "Don't tell them about this. We wouldn't want them to get jealous." Her long fingers curled into an alluring wave, growing longer still as she stepped back into the wood. "Nighty night..."
She vanished.
Chilled and confused, panic rushed at him from all directions. He all but ran back to camp.
Chapter 35
For the first few hazy seconds of the day, everyone awoke feeling perfectly calm and rested. Cool dew had gathered on their sagina moss sheets, there was a subtle chill on the air, and the whispering breeze drew a lazy rustle from the highest boughs.
But even before the blood-curdling squawking could correct that feeling of serenity, agitation came stampeding in. Again they had slept too well - unnaturally well - and the absence of any trace of the past night's storm cast the morning into an even deeper shade of doubt. As did the lack of anyone to greet them, rudely or otherwise.
They rose quietly, keenly attentive to their surroundings, and quickly discovered a basket of food set at the usual spot between the roots. Two full sacks sat beside it. It seemed that even the vakehn had lost interest in them.
"You're sure you didn't offend her?" Petra asked dubiously, but when Rathen reiterated for a third time the entire meeting - but for a few very minor, quite needless details - they were left with an even fouler taste in their mouths.
They ate what had been left for breakfast, which of course included even more of the off-white, knobbly, burnt caramel mushrooms, and began gathering their things. But still no one came. Even when they'd shouldered the bags and made cautiously into the trees, no one appeared to intercept them. They began to wonder if they'd actually been permitted to leave after all, if the barrier wasn't still rigidly in place and no one had bothered to come and see them off because they weren't, in fact, going anywhere at all. That doubt faded with every step after the three minutes it should have taken to reach it. It seemed they had the Root Mother's blessing after all, she just hadn't deigned to inform them.
No one was sorry to put the whole perturbing encounter behind them. Though neither did their abrupt return to shambling through the forest with one eye glued behind them fill anyone with a giddy sense of excitement.
Routine came crashing back around them and every shadow was once again thick with hidden threats. They hadn't trusted Hlífrún, nor the vakehn, but at least beasts and wildlings would be discouraged from attacking in their presence. Now, though, they were exposed to every element of the savage and perilous forest, and group tensions were stretched dangerously thin.
But though they spent that whole day walking blind, as Rathen hadn't thought to ask for even vague directions in his haste to escape, they encountered nothing at all along their clumsy path. No shapes, no sounds, no movement beyond the usual unsettling ambience.
Which meant they must have missed something.
They rested only briefly, ate on the move, and stopped for the night's camp only when they had to, making do in patches where the trees were spaced only slightly further apart when no suitable sites presented themselves. Guarded, they lay above their blankets, and sleep evaded them no matter how desperately they hunted it through the darkness. Whatever cost their recent restful nights had come at, every one of them would have gladly paid it if just for a single hour's reprieve. Instead, they watched between glancing dreams as night thickened, reigned, then slowly gave way to leaking indigo light. Familiar birdsong announced the arrival of another day of tense and doubtful progress. They rose and met it with resignation.
The mood remained unchanged until the evening of the following day, when the forest was permeated by a captivating beauty. But as their guard rose yet higher against the magic and they searched even harder through the suddenly enchanting trees, they found nothing otherwise unusual.
Surveying the mediocrity, Petra's eyebrows drew into a slow knot. "...That's it?"
"I guess so...unless it's inside the trees..."
But Anthis's jest was met by halting silence. It was a possibility no one had considered. They looked to Rathen but he provided no insight, and Anthis alone saw the clouding of his eyes. It seemed that their freedom had come with the collapse of all the vakehn' spells.
The ruin they found themselves ambling into was beneath even the description of 'meagre'. Little more stood among the overgrown woods than a strangled and crumbling structure of stone. It appeared at first like a table without its middle, but the two furthest legs overshot the hollow surface which itself was set at a slight incline, and rose half their height again. There was evidence of thinner stone rods once running between them. But that, truly, was all.
Rathen immediately took up position in front of it, Zi'veyn in hand, Aria at his side, and the wary patrol began. Carefully, Anthis peered around him at the construct, his green eyes alight with intrigue.
"Nara," he said very quietly after only a moment, and with more than a touch of surprise, "the God of Hands..." He shifted to get a clearer look. "A verein - kind of like a loom, but made of stone. Immobile. It would have served as the framework for their pieces...which..." again he shuffled around, careful not to distract the mage nor earn a hush from the child beside him, though she was watching him in measured interest, and looked around at the base of the structure before the land around it. They offered him nothing.
He frowned and looked instead to the stones themselves. They were thick - thicker than a typical verein - and sturdy. Needlessly sturdy for cloth threads or even hide strips. And...out here? With so much to Feira, to nature, he hadn't expected to find anything related to handiwork or manipulation...
The idea came in carefully, but it was all that seemed to make sense. "Vines and roots. Not even wicker would need a station this strong. They wove vines and roots here, into tapestries, dream catchers, baskets...no, no, more likely just tapestries. This place is soaked in magic; all the pieces made here would have been blessed...and no one needs a blessed basket..."
He observed the stone for another quiet, pensive moment before shaking his head in awe. "I can't believe this is here. Standing or not, workshops were never made in places like this. The kiln in Wrenroot was there before the trees were... This forest really is remarkable... I...wonder..."
Finally, his thoughts straying even as they tumbled from his tongue, he caught himself. He sent a quick look down to Eyila, sitting entranced upon the ground, but one glance at those distant eyes told him she couldn't possibly be listening.
And yet her repetition of the words he'd foolishly blathered in that same assumption a few days ago had shaken him. They were things he could easily have mentioned in passing before and just forgotten he'd said them...he didn't pay attention to everything that came out of his mouth, especially in the presence of history...but...if she had been listening after all...what else had he said?
The return of that question, one that had pealed through his skull at least once an hour since the fact, sent that familiar chill of panic down his spine.
His lips pressed tightly shut. He reached into his satchel, retrieved his notebook and a pencil and sat down in the dirt to sketch the verein in silence. To his knowledge, he said nothing again until a sigh, 'daddy' and light clatter of metal came from the structure, and a sharp intake of breath from beside him. His studies were forgotten in an instant.
"Eyila," he began slowly, lowering his book as scorn flared across her face, and reached openly towards her despite the alarming instinct to recoil, "Eyila, it's fine. You agree with this, remember?"
But her unblinking eyes were chained with malice to the back of Rathen's head. He sighed in conflict, but he acted anyway. Seizing her arms, he pinned them to her sides and held her body firmly in place. She struggled immediately, and he discovered just how powerful her deceptively slender frame was. He couldn't help wondering if magic had enhanced it while muddying her mind, or if it was all hers, brought to the surface by rage. He knew he preferred the latter, but restraining her and being in her line of violence suddenly put the young woman in a very strange light. One he couldn't decide upon. But, if nothing else, its strange, discordant familiarity intrigued him.
