The Story Hunter

by Lindsay A. Franklin

  Creator help us. We had found a mountainbeast.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  TANWEN

  I used to tease Brac about being slow to react, slow to respond. Just a little slow in general.

  And yet, for all my teasing, it was me who now stood frozen while everyone else around me seemed to know to move.

  Diggy scaled the stone wall at the tallest part of the cavern, out of the beast’s reach, within the space of a few seconds. And I knew Father could do the same but wouldn’t.

  All around me, swords sang from their scabbards. And still, I stood there openmouthed. For though my mind knew the danger and my heart was seized with fear, I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t control my wonder.

  I had always wanted to see one.

  “Tanwen!”

  Mor’s shout brought me back to myself, and I saw one of the swords belonged to him, the other four to Warmil, Father, Zel, and Aeron. Dylun held a stream of fire in his hand, and I vaguely recalled my first day in the Corsyth when his temper had exploded because I had thought there were only two songs.

  Dray and Karlith stood behind a web of watery colormastery strands. No surprise that Dray would duck behind the safety of Karlith’s protective artistry. He was quite the coward when it came down to it.

  “Tannie, move!” That was Diggy, high above us all, clinging to the wall like a night-trapper.

  I tried to shake off my shock because that terrifying creature I’d always wanted to see was now thundering across the cavern on all fours.

  Straight toward me.

  I stumbled backward. Then regained my footing and ran.

  But where? Back into the passageway?

  I scrambled toward the tunnel, then turned and tossed a strand back at the beast.

  There had been no time to take a breath and put any sort of intention behind the strand. I’d just sent whatever had come out.

  I glanced back in time to see a sunshine-bright rainbow smack the mountainbeast right in its eyes. Not what I would have picked, no mistake, but it did cause the beast to stumble. The creature tripped, then stood a moment, blinking.

  The problem with shooting rainbows into the eyes of angry mountainbeasts is that they recover their wits and their sight shockingly fast, and then they’re twice as livid as they were before the rainbow.

  The beast loosed another roar.

  Surely it would catch me in another breath or two, then tear me limb from limb.

  Did mountainbeasts actually eat people? The fairy stories said so, but fairy stories could embellish. Storytellers do that sometimes, you know. We have to keep it lively for the crowd.

  “Hey!” Father’s yell didn’t seem to faze the beast. But the rock he threw with his next shout did. “Hey!”

  The stone bounced off the mountainbeast’s head, and the massive paws slid to a halt. Then the animal changed direction to face the offending rock-hurler. It reared up on its hind legs.

  “Captain, now!” Father hollered.

  Warmil appeared from nowhere, so near the beast, my breath caught. But before the monster had a chance to notice the new presence, Warmil dragged his sword across its side. It seemed he was aiming higher—for the armpit, perhaps. But the blasted creature was so tall.

  The ground shook with the beast’s bellow of pain. Its head whipped toward Warmil.

  But Father had drawn his bow and nocked an arrow. He loosed it, hitting the creature in the shoulder just as Warmil ducked beneath a swipe of a front paw the size of a dinner plate.

  Father nocked another, but I grasped the truth with a sinking heart. It would take a great many arrows, a great many strikes, to bring this thing down.

  We would all have to work together to make it happen.

  An idea struck. “Dylun, together!”

  He let his ribbon of fire go, and I created a stream of oil to meet it in midair. The two strands collided, and a ring of fire exploded like a halo around the head of the creature.

  Its paws slapped at the burning fur on its face and shoulders.

  “Diggy!” I called out, wondering if she would catch on quickly enough. I hoped so, because if I hit her with this strand. . . well, best not to think of it.

  I thought the word blade as I created a strand and launched it toward her perch high on the wall. She kept her grip with one hand and reached out with the other. As she caught the strand, she turned it into a wicked sword and hurled it toward the beast.

  The creature twisted, putting out the last of the fire in its fur, and the blade missed by inches. Diggy cursed.

  The beast pivoted back to me as if it knew I was to blame for its singed eyebrows and smoking face fur.

  “Stars.” I froze again, struck by panic as it thundered toward me once more, angrier than ever.

  Father loosed two more arrows that found their marks, and still it kept coming.

  I tried to think of something I could turn into a strand, but nothing would come. My mind was a blank slate of panic. In a moment, it would be over. I closed my eyes, ready as I’d ever be.

  The beast slammed into me, and we rolled together across the cavern floor. And then—it stayed huddled over my body like a shell.

  I peeked up and found two wide, very concerned, very blue, decidedly human eyes staring back at me. “Mor?”

  But he didn’t take time to respond. He turned and thrust his sword into the chest of the creature that had just about overtaken us.

  The mountainbeast roared and reared up. It drew back one of its forepaws to slash at Mor, and Mor pulled out his sword and took another strike.

  Both Mor and the beast found their marks.

  Mor buried his sword in the creature’s chest, but the animal slashed its dagger-like claws across Mor’s shoulder and up his neck.

  “No!” I pushed off the ground and lunged for Mor.

  A strand like a shield flew from my hand and filled the space between Mor and the beast. I pulled Mor back, out of range.

  That horrible war cry I had heard more than once sounded nearby. I turned back toward the chaos to see Aeron thrust her sword in the spot beneath the armpit where Warmil had aimed before. The beast was doubled over this time, and Aeron stabbed true.

  It was enough. Praise the Creator, it was enough.

  The beast, Mor’s sword still buried in its chest, stumbled back and fell. A river of purplish blood spilled from its many wounds. Some small piece of me pitied the creature. It had only been napping in its own cave, after all.

  But then I turned to Mor and saw the gashes stretching from the top of his shoulder, up his neck, and onto one side of his face—that precious face I rather adored.

  “Oh stars.” I pressed my hands over the wounds in his neck. “Karlith! Warmil!”

  They appeared beside me in a flash.

  Warmil knelt beside us. “Oh, lad.” He started pulling things from a pouch at his hip.

  Mor seemed to have finally recovered his voice. He winced. “How bad?”

  I watched his blood ooze between my fingers, and a sob escaped my throat.

  “That bad, huh?”

  “We’ll fix you up.” Warmil pulled his curved needle and fine thread from his pouch, and my stomach roiled.

  A pair of tattooed hands appeared next to mine over Mor’s wounds. I glanced up at Diggy. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen so much fear on her face, so much panic in her eyes.

  “He’ll be all right,” she announced to Warmil, almost like a threat. “You’ll make him all right, won’t you?”

  Warmil threaded his needle and didn’t answer.

  “Won’t you?” she nearly shouted.

  “Lass, please.” Warmil tied off a knot. “If you want to help, get me some better light.”

  Karlith crouched beside me and wrapped her arm around my shoulders. “I have a gethweed tincture here. You put it on.” She handed me a tiny glass bottle.

  My hands shook as I tried to remove the miniature cork. “Blast. Was this made by wood fairies, or something?”

&n
bsp; Karlith helped me pull the cork from the bottle. “Just a few drops where the bleeding is the worst.”

  I remembered watching her and Warmil work on Brac when he had been injured in the battle in Gareth’s throne room. Karlith had shoved the untreated gethweed plant into Brac’s stab wound to stem the flow. Surely this would work even better.

  I carefully allowed one drop from the bottle onto Mor’s neck.

  He jumped. “That stings.”

  “Don’t be such a baby.”

  He shot me a look.

  My response was somewhere between a laugh and a sob as I dripped a little more over his neck, face, and shoulder. I’ll be blazed if the bleeding didn’t slow to a faint trickle.

  “Good, Tannie,” Karlith said. “See how it’s helped?”

  I knew she was coddling me. Calming me by making me feel like I had some sort of control over what happened to Mor—like I could make sure he didn’t die right in front of me. As if it wouldn’t have worked just the same to have had anyone else drizzle gethweed tincture onto his wounds.

  But I loved her for it.

  “Aye, Karlith.” I rested my head on her shoulder for a moment.

  Then I turned back to Mor. Warmil had already stitched part of one of the scratches on Mor’s neck. I forced my gaze away from that, so as to hold on to my breakfast, and focused on Mor’s face.

  “Does it hurt much?”

  “Nah. Feels lovely.” He gritted his teeth as Warmil’s needle pricked in again. “The gethweed helps.”

  “I thought it stung.”

  “After the sting, it numbs it a little.”

  “I’m so sorry. I just . . . I was so scared, I couldn’t seem to move.”

  “You know that saying on the peninsula?”

  I gave a shaky laugh, despite my tears, because I knew exactly which one he meant. “I’d fight a mountainbeast for you?”

  “Now you know I mean it plainly.”

  “It is well and truly dead now,” Father proclaimed as he strode toward us, wiping purplish blood from his hands with a rag.

  I decided not to ask for particulars.

  Warmil was nearly halfway done with Mor’s stitches, and I replaced the tiny cork and turned to hand the bottle of gethweed to Karlith.

  But she wasn’t there.

  “Karlith?”

  I scanned the cavern and found her in the corner where the mountainbeast had been sleeping. She knelt and placed her hands on the cave wall near the floor. She glanced up, and our eyes met.

  “There?” I asked.

  “Aye. I think so.” She smiled sadly. “The beast was lying right by it.”

  “To guard it?” I swallowed hard. Did that mean there would be a mountainbeast by each strand?

  “I don’t think so. I think . . .” She trailed off and pressed her hands against the wall a little harder. “I think it liked the warmth.”

  She beckoned me closer. I glanced back at Mor. Warmil and the others had him well in hand. Besides, I couldn’t bear to watch Warmil stitch him up. Not that I didn’t like a good scar as much as the next lass. But heavens. We had come that close to a mountainbeast tearing off Mor’s face.

  Why had I always wanted to see one? Some things were better left in fairy stories.

  I made my way over to Karlith, and she took one of my hands. “Feel here.”

  She pressed my palm against the wall. Warmth met my fingertips. And the wall . . . pulsed somehow. Very slightly. Not anything you would see, even if you were looking for it. But something you could feel. And now that I thought about it, ever since we’d entered the cavern, there had been something. Like a slight humming in my spirit. That must be what Karlith felt when she sensed the strands.

  I glanced back at her. “How do we pull it up?”

  Dylun appeared behind us, sighing. “I rather wish we had a map and plan for these.”

  “Any guesses for this one, Dylun?” If Dylun didn’t have an idea, we were all but sunk.

  He studied the wall. “We know the Master has one strand—that it must have been brought up some time ago. I suspect if she has waited this long to seek out the others, the first was not collected through much study.”

  “You’re saying she stumbled on it by accident.”

  “That seems reasonable, given the circumstances.”

  “Then maybe . . .” I ran my hands along the wall, trying to will the strand to speak to me. “Maybe it’s not as complicated as all that.”

  A tremor quivered beneath my palm. Without thinking about it, I pushed as hard as I could into the stone.

  I half expected a broken wrist for my trouble—and distantly wondered if Karlith had a tincture for it.

  Instead, the rock swallowed up my arm to the elbow.

  “Ack!”

  I almost yanked my arm back, even though this was what I had been hoping for, somewhere in the back of my mind. But I took a breath and forced myself to calm. To remember the sort of power that these strands held and that the rock must not be truly solid—or else the strand had somehow changed the nature of rock in its resting spot.

  Who knew?

  I ran my fingers along the stone until I felt a change. A subtle zing along my fingertips, and I knew I had found it—one of the ancient strands we were searching for.

  “I . . . I found it.” I glanced up at Dylun, my arm still pinned in the wall. “Now what? I’m not Diggy. I can’t just grab a strand and force it to come with me.”

  “Can you coax it out?” he asked. “Draw it toward the surface of the rock?”

  I could try.

  I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate. Tried to send my thoughts toward the strand as if it could hear me.

  Please, come with us. We need to keep you safe.

  My heart hitched. Was I lying to it? We did want to keep it safe—to keep it from landing in the hands of the Master and to protect it from all the ways she would abuse whatever power lay inside this ancient creation.

  But would we have to use the strand as leverage to rescue Braith? Would we have to turn it over to that madwoman anyway?

  Best to sail that strait when we came to it.

  After a moment, the strand responded. I could sense it wriggling closer to me, fighting its way through the stone.

  My hand withdrew slowly, beckoning the strand to follow, and before long, I had pulled free of the wall.

  Then the tip of the strand emerged.

  “Oh my.” Karlith exhaled. “Look at that.”

  Bright white and shining, like lightning. Like the white fire whose flames flickered around the outside of the cure we had built.

  Definitely an ancient strand. Definitely created from the same Source as our cure that broke the weavers’ curse.

  I used my hand to direct the strand out of the cave wall until it was completely free. It lit up the entire cavern. I knew the others must be watching by now, but I tried to block out all other sounds until the strand waved before me, turning lazy, brilliant circles in midair.

  Then I nodded at Dylun and repeated the phrase that seemed always to be on the tip of my tongue. “Now what?”

  But he was ready for me. He opened his traveling pack and pulled out a medium-sized jar. He removed the lid and held it out to the strand. “If you please.”

  The strand continued to twirl in front of me.

  I had a thought. “Karlith, let’s try something. See if you can get it inside.”

  Karlith waved her hand toward the jar. “It’s all right. You’ll be safe in there.”

  The strand shuddered in response as if her words tickled it somehow. But it didn’t obey.

  I looked toward the others across the cavern. Mor was sitting up now, a patchwork of stitches across his body.

  “Zel?” I called. “Can you try?”

  He cleared his throat, looking awkward. “Er—that jar there looks right nice. Maybe try it out?” He moved his hands toward the jar.

  The strand paused as if unsure, then slithered into Dylun’s jar and cur
led up.

  Only storytellers. The Master had gotten that part right, anyway.

  I watched as Dylun tucked the jar into his pack.

  And silently I prayed I had not just sealed the fate of this beautiful, terrifying ancient tendril of lightning. If the Master got hold of it, it would be worse off than the departed mountainbeast whose carcass lay on the floor behind us.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  TANWEN

  I was none too pleased to leave the hulking mountainbeast carcass as we squeezed our way back through the passageway and onto the main path.

  Or what seemed to be the main path. We had only Dray to guide us, and I still wasn’t convinced he wouldn’t lead us right off the edge of a cliff.

  “Does it hurt?” I asked Mor for the fortieth time as we followed Dray and Father, who seemed to be bickering about something. Again.

  Father had lit one of the lanterns to give us storytellers a break from making light strands, and I’d spent all of my free energy fussing over Mor.

  “Aye, it hurts,” he acknowledged with a half smile.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Stop apologizing.”

  “It’s all my fault,” I said, also for the fortieth time.

  “Not unless you planted the mountainbeast in the cavern.”

  “I should have moved faster.”

  “I’m not having this conversation again.”

  “Or not shot rainbows into its eyes.”

  “I agree with you there.”

  “What was that, anyway? Of all things!”

  “Maybe you were thinking about the Corsyth.”

  I looked at him. “Aye. Because that’s what I think about when anything beastly and hairy is moving toward me—kissing you.”

  Diggy pushed past us, her nose wrinkled. “Akē. Everyone can hear you, you know.”

  My cheeks warmed, but I found myself not caring. Mor’s stitches were a solemn reminder of how close the mountainbeast’s claws had come to the veins in his neck.

  A shudder skittered down my spine. Had I truly almost lost him? An inch to the left, a little deeper, a little more force and Mor’s throat might have been slit.