“How did he seem to you?” I said to him.
“He’s a tough old bugger,” replied Fyorn. “I’ll give him that, but he never looked so… grave.” A poor choice of words, I thought. There was more. “Your papa insisted we keep up the search…”
I closed my eyes and let my chest heave, and then relax.
The woodsman’s gaze never left the wraith’s fire. “I’ll send him word that you and the Stout have been found alive and well,” he said. “Your papa will hear the words tonight. That will put his mind at ease and lift his spirits. He never gave up hope.”
I unraveled the scroll slowly, near enough to the fire to read by its unsteady light. The leather was soft and worn. I recognized it fully by then; Paplov traveled everywhere with it. To open the scroll, he would hold one roller and let the other drop – let gravity do the work. On official business, Paplov showed it to gain entry at town gates or guarded meeting halls. He kept it in a double bone tube, corked at both ends.
“When I spoke with your dear old papa last, he insisted you keep that safe for him,” offered the woodsman.
I held in my hand one of Paplov’s personal belongings, something he had never before parted with.
“He still needs his colors!” I said, stopping short of blurting out “He’s not dead yet!” I took a deep breath, held it for a moment as I briefly closed my eyes, then let the air out slowly.
Fyorn sighed heavily. By the way he paused and by his blank stare, it was obvious he chose the words that followed carefully. And he should have, he was walking on thin ice as far as I was concerned.
“Until then, you’d better take them, Nud. Your papa wanted you to know that you are ready for this. You know the issues, you know the processes, you know the people, and you know how to negotiate. You can always return the colors to him yourself… when he’s better. Until then…” He trailed off.
I nodded. Whatever came to pass, I should be the one to hold onto it.
The first section proudly laid out Paplov’s diplomatic colors and those of Webfoot. Further down were the emblems: stamped in the usual reserved corner was the tree frog – upper right. The tree frog was the family emblem on my mother’s side, a source of unbounded teasing from my Stout friends. The town emblem on the upper left corner was a bog scene, skillfully embroidered. Deep red circles for bog berries dangled from slender brown stems with tiny, oval leaves. The branches crept along cushions of moss and wound their way down the left margin. A silhouetted hill with huts on the horizon marked Webfoot. Other sections of the document recorded Paplov’s responsibilities, authorities and jurisdiction. Near the very bottom was an embroidered version of his personal seal and that of the mayor in the name of the Council, complete with signatures.
I don’t know why, but I blurted out an idea that popped into my head; the only sure way I knew to beat death at the time. “The Mark!” I said, and wondered why I hadn’t thought of it beforehand. “Janhurl can just give him the Mark and—” Fyorn was shaking his head.
“Hurlorns choose their own,” he said. “It is not for us to dictate. I do not know what drives their ways. They just do what they do.” He stood up stiffly and walked off to the edge of the grove, alone. He had that look about him – nothing more would be said of the matter and something important demanded his attention. Where he stood, the Hurlorns parted again, as though to avoid his burning stare. His field of view unobstructed, the woodsman surveyed the wide expanse of lowland forest below, little more than shadows in the faded light of a starry horizon.
Soon enough, Fyorn was on to other business and it was high time that I did likewise. I kept busy to take my mind off things, tending to a fire that needed no tending and organizing things that didn’t need organizing. All the while, Holly had been making herself useful. Finally, she grabbed my wrist.
“Just relax,” she said. “Maybe tomorrow talk it through, once you’ve cleared your head. And I’m sure Bobbin and Gariff are just in some cozy inn, ya’ think?”
I nodded. “Yep. I wonder if they serve barkwood ale.”
She smiled. “Hope not, or we won’t see either of them until noon if they get to arguing like last time.”
“I never heard Gariff talk so much,” I said.
“Or so loud,” said Holly.
Relaxation was not an option for me, but Holly did set me on a task that actually did require immediate attention. It was time to lick our wounds, so to speak. I joined the woodsman, already one step ahead on that aspect. He had pulled his pack out from a stash under some thick bushes. It lay open beside the fire, contents spilling out onto the trampled grass. A small iron pot, filled with wine, hung over the flames from a makeshift tripod.
Holly went off to check on Kabor. The Stout was trembling and white as a ghost. He sat leaning against the monument on the fringes of the fire’s warmth. Holly was made for the job of keeping a conversation lively, and only had to remind herself to let Kabor get a word in edgewise every so often, to make sure he was still lucid. Whenever his eyes fluttered or his head nodded, she had no problem delivering a polite shake or a cuff to startle him awake.
When the contents of the pot were good and hot, Fyorn bathed my scratches and scrapes in the hot wine. He mulled over one gash in particular, on my thigh. Eventually he decided it needed stitches.
The steel burned red hot alongside the flame, but was quick to regain its gentle hue. A quick prick followed by a gentle tug. The thread glided through my skin, almost softly. It was not painful, not really. I watched as the needle zigzagged across the gash, each stitch measuring a careful finger’s width distance from the last to leave room for the wound to drain. The stitching took only a few minutes. When the deed was done, the woodsman applied a waxy healing salve and wrapped the area in a sticky, shimmering fabric. It luminesced with a patchy green glow.
“Spiderweave,” he said while rolling up what was left. He must have caught me eyeing the fabric.
Fyorn also checked the injuries that I had sustained underground. When he seemed satisfied that every wound was set to heal as it should, he told me that I would end up with scars on the back of my head and my lower back, plus the gash he just stitched. Nothing serious though.
The woodsman spooned some hot wine over his own wounds next, separating the skin to help it seep in underneath. He would finish dressing them later. Kabor needed tending to. The Stout showed only minor scrapes and puncture wounds, but Fyorn whispered his concerns to Holly about him. Kabor had endured an injury of a kind I did not quite understand at the time. I overheard my uncle say that the deep touch of the wraith might yet cause serious harm in days to come.
After finishing with Kabor, the woodsman made his way back to the fire and continued our conversation where it had left off, long after I thought it had fallen off a cliff. By then the fire actually did need tending, and I had just honed in on a small stash of cut wood and put an armful down against the rock.
“Wild Elderkin are the sole producers of the weave – even Gan is not privy to its manufacture. We trade with them, but they sure as hell can’t produce it and they don’t use this stuff much. There are only so many ways you can get a paper cut or jab yourself with a pen, or bump yourself when you nod off and your head hits the desk.” He was referring to the High Elderkin that lived there and their academic obsession. The woodsman had always portrayed them as less than practical.
Fyorn passed a strip of the weave over to me, and then went on to clean and dress the scratches on his chin and neck. A small metallic mirror helped him to guide his actions. The fabric was a mesh, and one side was sticky.
“A spider made this?” I said, holding the strip by the edges and stroking the non-stick side. I tried to pull it apart, tear it and push my nail through. It would not damage that easily. The fibers were strong and tightly woven. I wondered if the spider was anything like the one I found in my uncle’s attic.
“Not exactly… more like a silkworm actually; it’s an old art from days long forgotten.” A warm, famil
iar smile came across his face. “I carry the pads for their healing properties, but some weaves will turn an arrow.” Fyorn winked at me as he lifted the bottom of his chainmail vest, revealing a thin suit of shimmering silk underneath.
“Even arrows coated with the same stuff?” I said.
“Sure,” he replied. “It’s the give in the fabric that does the trick, not the hardness. It can’t even defeat itself.”
I chuckled.
Once again, Fyorn and Holly checked Kabor over thoroughly to see how he was fairing; particularly with regard to the puncture wounds he received on the back of his neck. The Stout’s breaths were short and shallow. The wraiths had done something to him, but as far as the woodsman could tell, it was safe for Kabor to sleep, so long as someone kept an eye on him. The Stout rested his eyes.
Holly returned from her watch on Kabor with regularity to check up on me, offering her caring blend of polite consolation and advice. We seemed an unlucky bunch, the four of us together: Holly dealt with more than her share of tragedy before the Numbits had taken her in. And then there was Kabor, taken in by his aunt and uncle after his parents were murdered. Fyorn was no stranger to hardship and loss, having fought against the Jhinyari slavers. And then there was me. The world is a messed up place when you piece it all together. All the more reason to make the most of what little of it is good, I thought.
Those final minutes of solace flew by; we all had tasks to attend to, save Kabor. Sorrow tugged down at my gut like a heavy weight in my stomach, but I would deal with the bulk of it later. Holly had passed Fyorn’s news to the Stout. It hadn’t really fazed him in his state.
Despite all that had happened, at the first opportunity Holly stole some time from Fyorn to feed her curiosity. There always seemed to be some puzzle that required immediate resolution – the questing mind of a know-it-all. “What is this place?” She sounded sweetly naive. Holly played that card often with adults when vying for attention or trying to pry information out of them. It never failed her.
If talk of the spiderweave had awakened the woodsman’s pride, describing the grove made him downright boastful. “You are standing in a most hallowed place,” he began. “Important ceremonies are held here.” He pointed. “That rune stone in the centre is more than it appears. It is a symbol of our connection to nature.”
“Who do you mean by our?” she returned.
An innocent question, but it proved less than easy for the woodsman to answer. His eyes dropped as he searched for the right words. He looked up and met Holly’s eager gaze.
“Those who take and hold the oath,” said Fyorn – a vague answer at best. I settled in to eavesdrop on a long-winded explanation, carefully worded, but without pause my uncle was up and away again, busy with a new task that I could only guess at. It was almost rude. Surprisingly, Holly didn’t push for more at the time. Somewhat contrary to what Fyorn had told me at his cabin, I learned later that members of the woodsman’s order had been chosen not only from the ranks of heroes and sages, but also scoundrels and even villains; some were relics from the distant past and others came from far away lands or were taken from the here and now. More in line with what he had said though, each member was chosen for what that individual could contribute to the whole. Most were Hurlorns by the time they joined. Some were Wild Elderkin. None were anything else.
Kabor jolted awake, still shivering and visibly annoyed at something. He stood up and steadied himself against the monument, dropped Holly’s cloak, then shakily scuttled off to a more secluded location. He found comfort within the confines of the gnarled roots of the grove’s tallest tree. Once settled, Kabor wrapped himself tight in a heavy blanket that Holly brought over to him from Fyorn’s stash. The Stout nodded off almost immediately. Fyorn, who had returned to the task of making sure every last bit of the wraith was charred, kept a watchful eye on the Stout as he worked. Every now and again, he went over to Kabor, smeared the back of his hand with a few drops of water from his canteen, and held the hand under Kabor’s mouth or nose to feel the Stout’s breath.
After a small, shared meal of dried meat and warm wine, cooked over a new and separate fire from the one disposing of wraiths, the three of us that were mobile made preparations for the night. Holly tried waking Kabor up to eat, but he would have none of it. I had dug a small pit for the new fire and lined it with stones, locating it purposely close to the tree Kabor had chosen, but not so close as to scare it off. Then I gathered enough wood to fuel a blaze through ‘til morning. It was a compact fire, but deep and hot burning. Fyorn, with weary, heavy eyes, asked me to keep the first watch for as long as I could stay awake, and then to wake him. He reminded me not to let the fire burn too low and called upon Holly to keep a close eye on Kabor. “Let him sleep through the night if he can. He may gain some strength by morning, but monitor his breathing and keep him bundled up,” he advised.
Holly and I chatted late into the night. Kabor received less attention than he ought to have, but no harm came of it. We wondered openly how the watch for Bobbin and Gariff was going. With Fyorn asleep, there was no one to receive any whispers. Holly insisted he would wake up anyway if one came, but kept her ears pricked just in case she heard something. Wishful thinking, I thought.
“So… how did you escape the bog queens?” I asked her.
Holly’s eyes lit up as she recanted the ordeal in superb pippish detail, mimicking the motions and imitating the hags’ voices a little too well for comfort.
“…that witch screamed and cursed and spat something terrible at him the whole time,” she finished.
“So Bobbin saved the day. Hmm… go figure.” I could not help but to smile at that.
“As much as could be saved. There’s still Jory…” She looked away.
“You screamed,” I said. “It was the last thing I heard.”
“There was a lot of screaming,” she said. “Me and Gariff thought you were both as good as dead, so we ran back to town for help. Gariff and his ‘Pops’ had half of Webfoot out looking in no time. They were great at getting everyone riled up in a hurry.”
Holly caught the look on my face. She nodded. “Ya, I was impressed too,” she said. “And your uncle must have caught wind of what happened, the way he always seems to. He met the search party on the Mire Trail and tried to get some answers too, but I’d say the whispers were silent on the matter. He said we might have to look where no one would ever think to look – I guess he was right.”
“How did you know I was coming to the grove?” I asked.
Holly shrugged her rounded shoulders. “You’ll have to ask your uncle about that,” she said. “He sent Gariff and Bobbin to Harrow to find out if anyone at the local inns had seen or heard anything. Your uncle and I searched along the edge of the forest thinking that you might have broken free and ran for the tree line, then got lost or had injuries to contend with. He didn’t know you’d just pop up the way you did, out of nowhere with wraiths on your tail.” Holly was quiet for a moment, peering up through the dark stand of Hurlorns to a piece of the night sky beyond.
“It was weird,” she continued. “At one point he just tilted his head in a funny way and said you two were coming. He told me to get back to the cabin with my cloak on until he returned, and then he just took off. The armor he wore in battle and his big sword were just hanging on a tree nearby, in the middle of nowhere. I spied him through the trees, putting them on. Then off he went, bee-lining it for the grove. It was bizarre – I could hardly believe my eyes.”
“Maybe it was another whisper,” I said.
“I suppose,” said Holly, “but I didn’t hear anything and I have especially sharp ears.”
Apart from a few suspicious branches cracking somewhere in the dark perimeter, nothing of concern interrupted our watch over one another. Holly sat close by, gripping my arm or thigh at every snap, which I did not mind one bit. She quizzed me in her usual manner, until her eyes went heavy and her speech became choppy. I kept the fire burning steady until the
Flipside girl finally nodded off on my shoulder. Dreadfully tired myself, I tucked her in and gently shook my uncle awake, then took my place by the fire, wrapped securely in my trusty cloak. It was a cool night. The soft earth was far more comfortable than what I had become accustomed to, and the fresh air cleansed my lungs. A sense of relief filled me. And with it, openness. All in all, I had no qualms about being exactly where I was, protected and with the whole of the underground ordeal behind me, and the bit about the wraiths settled. I was happy to be on the other side of things. I drifted off without another thought.
Chapter XIV
Interlude - The Hurlorns’ stride
For the most part Hurlorns appear to be regular trees, at least at first glance. But to a discerning eye, a certain simplicity in form might be noticed. They tend to have fewer, thicker branches than their fully natural counterparts, and the leaves or needles tend to grow in rich clusters rather than spread out evenly. As long as a Hurlorn lives, it carries no dead wood on its limbs, and rarely have Hurlorns been observed to look sickly in any way. The noblest of the great Hurlorns – those with spirits instilled in them – have burl wood features somewhere up high in the trunk that, with a little imagination, resemble a face. Burls might be found in other areas of the tree as well, giving the appearance of shoulders or elbows or other vaguely man-like features. A precious few – one in a generation – from among the Spirit Hurlorns forgo even their tree-like forms, to become a lumbering colossus such as myself, with scales of bark, a long, whipping tail like a giant vine, and a neck that stretches high above the treetops. They become what I am now, the Green Dragon of Deepweald.
Either way, Hurlorn roots must be contended with. In stride, they are long and whip-like, and do more than simply flail about during locomotion – they feel out the ground. And so, a Hurlorn has intimate knowledge of the terrain trodden upon. In particular, a former Pip transmuted to a Spirit Hurlorn would recall every detail.
SPARX Incarnation: Order of the Undying (SPARX Series I Book 2) Page 13
