by Barb Hendee
Osha finally flew into motion, running after Wynn.
Leesil sidled around Brot'an, trying to reach Magiere, but he backed into someone else.
He pivoted, cutting upward with a fist at whichever Anmaglâhk was behind him. He saw a flash of shimmering white before his wrist was snatched.
His mother twisted his swing aside, throwing him off balance. Leesil righted himself in panic at what he'd almost done.
Nein'a glared at him. "What have you brought among us?"
Leesil floundered in confusion until his mother raised her head. Her gaze fixed upon Magiere.
Most Aged Father's awareness flitted around the clearing from one tree to the next. Watching from within an elm, all he perceived left him overwhelmed, including the strange majay-hì assaulting his treasured Fréthfâre. Then his awareness fell upon Magiere.
Far from the glade and deep within his massive oak, Most Aged Father curled into a twitching ball. No one heard his whimper.
He saw the pale woman with her bestial face slap a hand against one tree. He felt the forest's life shudder under that touch. It hurt, as if a piece of him had been bitten away.
Ancient memory writhed in the back of his mind. In sickening fear, he slipped his awareness around the clearing toward the pale monster.
All of Magiere's rage turned on Sgäile.
"Undead!" he hissed, and a blade appeared in his hand.
She saw only one more obstacle to reaching Leesil. Her jaws widened but no words came out. A rustle of movement sounded in the brush behind her at the clearing's edge.
Sgäile held up his hand, but not at her, and he snapped some command in Elvish. He never took his eyes off her, and his horror fed Magiere's hunger.
"Stop! All of you. Stop this now!"
Brot'an's deep voice carried through the glade. Magiere twisted her head around, tensing at the threat. Behind the tall elf stood Leesil, his wrist gripped tightly in his mother's hand.
Osha had Wynn pinned in his arms.
"Magiere… enough," the sage shouted. "Please… get control of yourself."
Fréth knelt nearby, mouth ajar at the white majay-hì blocking her off. Just short of them, Chap crouched in the way of the larger dark dog. The rest of the pack began to circle in.
Magiere's head began to ache as the hunger shrank into the pit of her stomach. The more it receded, the more she started to shake. As if she'd swallowed too much drink… too much of Wynn's tea… or too much food, too much… life.
She stumbled back, and her heel caught in a bush. She toppled, falling against a tree trunk, and slapped her hand against its bark to steady herself.
Another shock ran deep into Magiere.
The world went black before her eyes. In that sudden darkness, strange sounds and sights erupted in Magiere's head.
Chapter Thirteen
C urled in his tree's bower, Most Aged Father gaped in pain. The pale-skinned monster touched the birch the instant his awareness slipped into it.
He felt the tree's life slipping away into her flesh. He felt it as if she touched his skin, feeding upon him, and memory welled up to wrap him in suffering.
Another like her had come for him in the dark… long, long ago…
Sorhkafâré—Light upon the Grass. That was his true name back then.
He had dropped weary and beaten upon a stained wool blanket, filthy from moons of forced marches. He did not even care to have his wounds tended and lay in the darkness of his tent.
Only two of his commanders had survived the day. He had lost more officers upon that field than during all of the last moon. Someone called to him from outside his tent but he did not answer. Hesitantly, the voice came again.
"The human and dwarven ranks are too depleted for another engagement. They must fall back."
The enemy's condition was unknown. With his eyes closed, Sorhkafâré saw nothing but the sea of dead he had left on the rolling plains. The fragile alliance had been outnumbered nearly five to one on this day.
Again he did not answer. He could not look at the faces of the living, and even if he opened his eyes, he couldn't stop seeing those of the dead.
The enemy's horde had pressed north along the eastern coast of the central continent. At dawn, he had received word that Bâalâle Seatt had fallen to an unknown catastrophe. The dwarven mother-city in the mountains bordering the Suman Desert had long been under siege. Scattered reports hinted that neither side had survived whatever had happened there.
The enemy's numbers seemed endless. And all that remained in the west to stop them were Sorhkafâré's forces, the last to keep the enemy from turning inland toward Aonnis Lhoin'n—First Glade—the refuge and home of his people.
He heard the footsteps outside fade away. Finally they left him alone.
Sleep would not come, and he did not want it. He still saw thousands slaughtering each other under the hot sun. He had lost all reckoning of whose cries were those of his enemies or his allies. He lost fury and even fear this day upon the plain.
Countless furred, scaled, or dark- to light-skinned faces fell before his spear and arrows, and yet they kept coming. One mutilated body blurred into another… except for the last rabid goblin, dead at his feet when it all ended. Its long tongue dangled from its canine mouth into the blood-soaked mud.
Sorhkafâré heard a shout and then a moan somewhere outside in the camp, and then another.
The wounded and dying were given what aid could be rendered, but they only suffered the more for it. Who would want to live another day like this one?
More shouts. Running feet. A brief clatter of steel.
Someone fumbled at the canvas flap of his tent.
"Leave me," he said tiredly and did not get up.
The tent ripped open.
Camp bonfires outside cast an orange glow around the shadowed figure of a human male. Sorhkafâré could not make out the man's face. The light glinted dully upon the edges of his steel-scaled carapace. His skin seemed dark, like that of a Suman.
Sorhkafâré's senses sharpened.
By proportions, there had been as many humans among the enemy's horde as among his alliance forces. Most with the enemy had been Suman. Had one slipped into camp unseen? He sat up quickly.
The man's arm holding aside the tent flap was severed off above the wrist. His other hand was empty.
No one walked about with such a wound. Sorhkafâré heard another cry somewhere out in the camp.
The crippled skulker rushed in with a grating hiss, guttural and full of madness.
Sorhkafâré rolled to the tent's far side and pulled his war knife. His attacker fell upon the empty bedroll. As the man turned upon the blanket, Sorhkafâré drove his blade down.
It sank through the man's dark-skinned neck above the armor's collar, and he slumped, limp.
Sorhkafâré rushed from the tent. He searched the night camp for any officer to chastise over the failure of the perimeter watch. The few remaining cries died away one by one.
The nearest fire had been doused, and only smoking embers remained. Many of the torches were gone, and darkness had thickened in the camp. The moon was not yet high enough for his elven eyes, but he thought he saw figures moving quickly from tent to tent. Now and then came strange muffled sounds or a short cry.
"Sorhkafâré… where were you?"
A figure approached, slow and purposeful, between the rows of tents. He knew that voice. It grated upon his nerves every time the man spoke.
Kædmon, commander of the humans among Sorhkafâré's forces—or what were left of them.
Sorhkafâré had no strength for another argument. It was always Kædmon who challenged him. He pushed his men too hard and kept demanding night strikes after his people had marched all day.
Kædmon drew closer, and Sorhkafâré saw the dark rents in the tall man's chain armor. He had not bothered to remove it, but Sorhkafâré could not blame him. There was no point in doing so, as they would only ride hard with the dawn, either in flight
or to face an endless enemy once more.
Someone stepped from a tent beyond Kædmon, dragging a body.
Sorhkafâré had no more sorrow to spare for those who succumbed to wounds. But the shadowed figure dropped the body in the dirt and turned away to the next tent.
"Didn't you see them come?" Kædmon said. "Did you not hear us cry for help as the sun dropped below the hills? Or was it only your own kind… your wounded that you culled from the dead today?"
Sorhkafâré turned his eyes back to Ksedmon. He barely made out the man's long face and square jaw below a wide mouth.
"What venom do you spit now?" he answered. "We left no one who had even a single breath in them! All were carried in, even those with no hope to see tomorrow."
The man's ugly square jaw was covered in a few days' growth of beard. Stubble on his neck looked darker still. His steel coif and its chain drape were gone, exposing lank black hair hanging around his light-skinned face. His bloodthirsty human eyes glittered.
"You didn't bring me," Kædmon hissed back and his words grew awkward as if he had difficulty speaking. "I still breathed when they crept across the dead, looking for those you forgot… when the sun vanished from sight."
A dark patch at Kædmon's throat glistened as he stepped to within a spear's reach.
Sorhkafâré stepped back.
A gaping wound in the side of Kædmon's neck had covered his throat in blood mixed with some black viscous fluid. His lips and teeth looked stained as well.
Kædmon's eyes were as colorless as his pallid skin.
"I can't stop myself… they won't let me stop."
Kædmon shook with clenched muscles as his crystal eyes scrunched closed for an instant. He took a jerking step. All tense resistance vanished, and he charged with open hands.
Sorhkafâré set himself but did not raise his knife.
Kædmon had seen too much in these long years of battle. They all had. The man's mind finally broke under the strain. No matter their differences, he was an ally who had fought hard beside Sorhkafâré's own people. Kædmon had lost his own father when their settlement was overrun before alliance forces arrived to defend it. But still the man fought on, and his loyalty had never wavered.
Sorhkafâré sidestepped, ready to slap away Kædmon's grasp. He barely drew back his hand before Kædmon's grip latched around his throat. Too sudden and too quick for a wounded man.
Kædmon closed his fingers.
Sorhkafâré could not breathe. He tried to break the man's grip. Kædmon's features twisted in agony as his mouth opened.
"Don't fight," he whispered. "Please don't make me… make you suffer."
Sorhkafâré almost stopped fighting for air.
Within Kædmon's mouth he saw malformed teeth stained with blood. A human mouth with sharpened fangs like a dog or short-snouted goblin. He slashed the knife across the back of Kædmon's forearm, but the man did not even flinch.
Sorhkafâré's chest convulsed, trying to get air, and his sight began to dim. He rammed the blade into the side of Kædmon's neck.
Kædmon's head snapped sideways under the blow. He gagged once before his face turned back, now little more than a blurred oval of white in Sorhkafâré's waning sight.
"It won't help," Kædmon sobbed. "I'm sorry… it never does."
Air seeped in through Sorhkafâré's nose.
He heaved, filling up his lungs, then gagged and coughed as he tried to suck more air. He lay on his side upon the ground, not even knowing he had fallen. A blurred form appeared above him and reached down. Sorhkafâré twisted away in panic.
"Get up, sir!" it said, and the words were in his own Elvish tongue. "The horses have been slaughtered… we must run!"
Vision cleared, and Sorhkafâré saw one of his commanders. Snähacróe reached down for him, but Sorhkafâré only looked about for Kædmon.
The man lay crumpled on his side, off to the left. The shaft of an elven spear rose from his torso. Its silvery tip protruded from Kædmon's rib cage, and black fluids ran from the bright metal to the ground.
Sorhkafâré stared at the gaping wound, not truly aware of Snähacróe until his kinsman pulled at him, trying to make him follow.
Kædmon rolled onto his face and braced his hands upon the ground. He pushed up and lifted his head. Snähacróe halted in shock to look at the human.
Ksedmon began to shake. Once more his whole body seemed to clench. His fingers bit into the earth as if he sought to hold on to it and keep from rising.
"Run," he whimpered.
Sorhkafâré still hesitated. The man could not be alive. The spear point dripped more black fluid from his body and the same ran from the knife wound in his neck. The broken stream of fluid vanished as it struck the earth, but Sorhkafâré heard the slow patter continue.
"Run… while you can!" Kædmon shouted.
Snähacróe wrenched Sorhkafâré around and they fled.
Grim silhouettes closed in behind them with pounding feet. The more that came, the more Sorhkafâré saw one here and there from the ranks of both sides that day in battle. Their faces seemed too pallid in the dark.
All around were figures with glittering eyes.
* * * *
Sorhkafâré…
The name clung to Magiere's thoughts like her own, as she came slowly back to consciousness.
"Sgäilsheilleache, hold off!"
It was Brot'an's voice, but Magiere only saw moving blurs around her. She felt and smelled moss against her face.
She began panting hard.
"She is unnatural," Sgäile snapped. "Undead… in our forest!"
"No," Brot'an barked. "She is something else. Now do as I say!"
Magiere took three rapid breaths before her thoughts cleared in realization.
Brot'an had never told the others about what he had seen of her in Dar-mouth's crypt. He had kept her secret.
It didn't matter anymore. She'd lost all control, and they'd all seen her.
Magiere's sight cleared slowly. She lay on her side, one hand limp upon the moss before her face. There was blood on her fingernails.
But her hand was not long-boned and tan as it had been in the dream… the vision… whatever she should call the sights and sounds that had taken her. She saw only her own pale hand, not that of the elven man she had become… Sorhkafâré.
Why? She hadn't touched the remains of any victim, trying to see through the eyes of its undead killer at the moment of death.
Magiere flopped onto her back, trying to find the faces of those around her. She looked at the birch that she'd backed into and touched before the world turned black. She began to tremble.
The tree's trunk bore the mark of her hands. Where she'd touched it, the bark had darkened and dried dead. Brittle pieces had already fallen away.
"Leesil!" she cried out.
"Here… I'm here!" he answered; and then, "Get out of my way!"
A wet nose grazed her neck, and Chap's head pressed into her face.
She dug her fingers in his fur and hung on. Leesil dropped to his knees beside her.
Magiere latched on to him, thrashing around to bury her face in the chest of his hauberk and hide from all eyes.
"It's all right," he whispered.
She still felt the lingering shock in her body and saw in her mind the marks of her hands upon the birch. Nothing was all right anymore.
Magiere closed her fingers on Leesil's hauberk until its leather creaked in her hands and its rings bit into her palms. The name she'd been called still echoed in her head. Her… his allies came in the dark with colorless eyes and teeth stained with the blood of their own.
Sorhkafâré.
"I said keep back!" Leesil growled, and pulled Magiere closer. "It's over."
He knew better than to touch Magiere until she recognized him. But when she fell and cried out for him, he knew her dhampir nature had already retreated.
Brot'an stepped around to wave Sgäile off. Osha finally released Wynn.
&nb
sp; Én'nish was on her feet but still hunkered from Brot'an's strike. Her one remaining companion aided the other that Magiere had thrown into the trees. They both emerged, but the latter man was limping badly and the front of his tunic was shredded.
Nein'a glared at Leesil in shock. Any hint of fearful and angry denials she'd cast at him were gone. There was only wary revulsion as her gaze drifted from him down to Magiere hiding in his arms.
"It is not over," Fréth said coldly, and the white majay-hì shifted silently in her way. "You have brought an undead into our midst. I do not understand how this is possible, but this thing you coddle will not remain."
Leesil's anger rose again, but he couldn't leave Magiere.
"Chap," he said quietly, "kill anyone who takes a step."
Chap didn't answer in any fashion. He simply paced around Leesil to stand before Magiere and glanced once at the white majay-hì blocking Fréth.
"Enough," Brot'an insisted. "If she were undead, the forest never would have allowed her to enter. There is nothing Léshil could have done to change that."
Leesil wasn't certain about the shift in authority taking place. Both Sgäile and Fréth were reluctant, but it seemed Brot'an took charge. For the moment, it served to protect Magiere from the others—but still, Leesil didn't like it.
Brot'an's pale scars stood out like white slashes on his lined face. "We are all fatigued from a night of running with no food. We will rest part of the day in the outer forest."
He gestured toward the fern-curtained passage.
"Fréthfâre, please report to Most Aged Father. Tell him all is settled, that we have found the human woman and will return soon. Sgailsheilleache, you and Osha find food, and Én'nish…"
Brot'an spun toward her, and now Leesil couldn't see his expression.
"You and those serving your purpose will keep well apart from Sgäile and his charges. Or you will have more to answer for upon our return."
Én'nish picked up her fallen blade as she hobbled past Brot'an. Her face dark with malice, she joined her two companions and headed out through the woods' passage.
Leesil tried to get Magiere on her feet. When Brot'an approached, Chap lunged, and his teeth clacked shut on air as Brot'an leaped away.
