The vines loosened, but not enough for her to break free. Warmth began to spread down her forearm, a dark stain spreading down her sleeve.
“Ahh,” said Gleed, studying the blade. “Now this is a wonder. A real beauty.”
He waved the blade before her face.
“Can you read the steel’s riddle?” said Gleed.
Hweilan tried to move, but the vines only bit into her again.
“This particular knife,” said Gleed,” has quite a history. A lineage rivaling even your own—and that is saying something. Not ancient, no, but quite special. This particular tooth was forged in the depths of Ellestharn. Do you know of this place?”
“The palace of Kunin Gatar,” said Hweilan through teeth clenched in pain and anger.
“Very good, girl. Very, very good. Not a nice place. But one of great power. And powerful indeed were the hands that crafted this blade. Wise in the ways of wind and waves.”
“I didn’t care for the place much.”
Gleed laughed, low in his throat, croaking almost like a toad. “No, I don’t suppose you would. But then, the queen has always had a taste for pretty girls. Still … the power she wields is not without its uses.”
With that, he began an incantation. Not the usual spells in the speech that Hweilan knew—the tongue of her Vil Adanrath ancestors. This was something altogether different—long vowels and harsh consonants that rasped in the back of the throat. A speech of cold wind cutting over sharp rocks.
Her eyes were drawn to the steel that Gleed still held, only a handspan or so from her eyes. The green light from Gleed’s staff dimmed. But the etchings in the blade caught even that weak light, and Hweilan felt a breeze play over her skin.
Hweilan inhaled through her nose. Her head filled with the scent of everything around her—
—the green and all-too-alive scent of the vines and leaves around her—
—the coppery tang of blood leaking from her arm—
—the wet slate of the stone tower, so strong she could taste it in the back of her throat—
—the loamy, fish-tinged, muddy reek of the lake—
—the hundredfold, layer upon layer, smell of leaves, pines, and flowers—
—the rotting, years upon years stench of the bats and their droppings in the rooms of the tower below her—
—and nearest of all the underground, bordering-on-foul, yet tinged with spice scent of the old goblin—
Hweilan had always had a good sense of smell. More than anyone she knew, in fact. Scith himself for a while had taken to calling her his “little hound.” But this …
It was as if some sweet, spicy feastday cake had been sifted down to its individual ingredients, and each one presented to her senses for scrutiny. She could identify every one.
Gleed hummed, then mused aloud. “The things one with your … gifts can do. Eh?”
His words brought her attention back to the moment. Back to her captivity and the little toad lording it over her. She scowled down at him.
“Gifts …” Gleed said, almost to himself, as if tasting the word. “Gifts, gifts, gifts. Oh, that a lowly little bug such as I were to be blessed as you … eh?”
He brought the knife around in a wide, theatrical arc, worthy of the finest tavern bard, and stopped it with the point resting in the soft flesh underneath Hweilan’s chin. He pressed, trying to force her to raise her head.
She refused, instead clenching her jaw tight. She felt the cold steel pierce skin, then flesh. Felt the warm trickle of blood slide down the razor-sharp edge.
Many in this world are stronger than you, and those stronger may try to take from you. They may try to take your life, and they may succeed. But you must never give it to them. Make them pay, Hweilan. Make them pay.
Her mother’s words. Given to her on the day she took Hweilan to see her father’s dead body.
Hweilan clinched her jaw and forced her head down, driving the steel deeper so that she could look Gleed in the eye.
The slight widening of his eyes brought her great pleasure, despite the increased pain.
“You are a spiteful little nit, aren’t you?” said Gleed. “You’d walk barefoot over red hot coals just for half a chance to vex me. Wouldn’t you?”
Despite the almost half inch of steel lodged in her skin, Hweilan forced her lips to smile. In truth, she’d grown to respect the little goblin, if not to like him. But after what he’d said about her father, she’d gladly seize the opportunity to throw him off his own tower and feel guilty about it later.
Gleed pulled the knife out—one swift motion that sent a thin gout of blood splattering on her vine-wrapped feet.
“Fool,” said Gleed, and again he held the knife in front of her. Her blood, a thick, dark rivulet, ran down the blade. But a thin trickle, splintered as a lightning bolt, ran down the flat of the steel, caught in etched swirls, and ran down their path. “How long did you carry this, completely ignorant of its power? This little trick I’ve just showed you … I can teach you to do that. Anytime you want. And more. So much more. Would you like that?”
“Let me free.”
“If you were half as strong as you think you are, you could free yourself.”
Hweilan scowled, at a loss for words.
Gleed’s eyebrows shot up. “No? Well, then, perhaps you’d like to listen. Yes? Hm?”
She bared her teeth at him, but her gaze was pure malice. “Teach me, Master,” she said.
The old goblin smiled. “I sense a sincere lack of sincerity in your words.”
“Let me free.”
“You remember the first night we met?” The malicious glee melted from his countenance, and he took on the lecturing tone she knew all too well.
She did. He’d tried to call her Meyla, some demeaning name meant to put in her place. She’d defied him.
“You are not the first I’ve trained,” said Gleed. “I have instructed many in the Master’s service over the years. But you are the first to know who she is. To remember. And yet … you don’t really know, do you?”
“What?”
“Who you are. Only not so much who as what you are.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Liar,” said Gleed. “You may not know, little girl, but I think you at least suspect. Don’t you?”
Hweilan looked away before her eyes could betray her. Gleed was not the first to suggest such things to her. Menduarthis and Kunin Gatar had said something similar.
You’re Damaran, to be sure. If you say you’re kin to Lendri there … well, I have no reason to doubt you. But make no mistake. You’re something else, too. Something … more.
The queen had ravaged Hweilan’s mind, trying to find that something. But that something—whatever it was—had struck back, surprising and even hurting Kunin Gatar.
And the night she had first seen Nendawen, he had done something similar—and suffered much the same fate.
And even Kesh Naan, tasting her blood, saying—What are you?
That was the question. And yes, as Gleed said, she had suspected, had at the very least wondered. But to speak the truth—
“I don’t know,” she said.
Gleed lowered his staff. The vines around her did not loosen their grip, but the last of the light around Gleed’s staff faded, and the evening darkness closed in. Hweilan felt as if a shroud were closing in around them.
“You were called,” Gleed whispered. “You were chosen. By Nendawen himself. But you, dear girl … there’s something about you that even the Master had not planned on.”
He looked around, glancing quickly over each shoulder, and when he returned his gaze to her she saw the last thing she’d expected—sympathy. A softness that even bordered on … kindness.
Nothing he could have said or done could have caught her more by surprise.
Gleed came in close, the desperation in his gaze stilling her words. No. Not desperation. Fear. “The night has ears.”
“But �
�� but I saw … Jagun Ghen. What he’ll do. What he is. What he could become. If he isn’t stopped … if I don’t stop him—”
“And then?”
All at once, the vines slackened, and Hweilan fell to the stone rooftop.
Gleed crouched in front of her and leaned close, so that his whispered words were still loud in her ears.
“And then what, girl? When Jagun Ghen is beaten and his sickness purged from the worlds … what then? You think the Master will free you? Nendawen is the Hunter. He has always been the Hunter. He will always be the Hunter. It is his nature. His only … beingness. The Hunter does not free his prey. I should know.”
She looked up at him. “Why are you telling me this?”
“I can help you get away.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FOXES HAVE EARS.
Like many sayings, this one made its point by stating the obvious. An old saying in the Feywild, to understand it one needed to hear the whole thing: Bears have strength, wolves have the pack, and foxes have ears. The fox hunts by cunning, by studying its prey and using its surroundings.
One particular fox, the most cunning in this part of the Feywild, heard the words of the girl and the old goblin atop the tower. After listening, the hunter crept soundlessly away into the night-darkened woods. Before the girl and goblin had come down from their roost, the fox was already far away.
Well into the night, the fox came to the door between worlds and passed through, coming to a place of high, cold mountains. These lands had never been safe, but of late they had become particularly deadly as a new horror haunted them.
The fox could track this particular horror with senses that had long gone to sleep in the more “civilized” peoples of the world. The creature’s very presence was an affront to this world, and it radiated a wrongness into the fabric of existence. It set a vibration through the hunter. First, no more than a mild irritation. An itch on the lower part of her brain. But as she drew closer to her prey the itch spread to a tingle, then a pulse that began in her head and shot through her whole body. By the time she reached her destination, she could almost feel her teeth rattling in her skull.
The fox found the pile of bones and gore. So fresh that it was still steaming in the cold, and the thicker pools of blood had not yet had time to freeze. The fox shook off its form, becoming the hunter on two legs.
“I felt you coming,” said a voice from behind her.
The hunter turned. There in a well of darkness formed by a crack in the mountainside, she could just make out the dim, red glow of two eyes. The voice spoke in the ancient speech, but it sounded as if two voices were trying to speak through one mouth. The hunter could hear a great deal of ferocity in the more dominant tone, but it was weakening. The other sounded slightly off key, almost as if words themselves were not suited to a human tongue.
“The question,” said the voice from the dark, “is why.”
A shape emerged from the darkness and into the starlight. The hunter gasped.
The thing had probably been human once. The lean features and pale skin reminded her of the Frost Folk, who dwelled in the far northern regions of the world. She had hunted them before and knew their ways. But if that was indeed what the creature had once been, it had grown beyond that. The hunter knew that the true power was inside the creature, a being of insatiable hunger and fire, and that the body she saw was nothing more than a covering, like a gauntlet over a fist.
The monster had been hunting her own quarry for many, many days. She had taken to eating whatever she could kill in order to feed the thing inside her, and the body had begun to take on the traits of her food. Hair had become coarse and full, more like an animal’s than a human’s. Her hands ended in yellow claws. There were the beginnings of feathers sprouting along her limbs. Cracked and broken lips could no longer entirely cover the thick, pointed teeth filling her jaws.
“You are no match for me,” said the creature, stepping forward. “Here, in this world, I am the wolf, and you are the little lamb. Were the moon full and your Master beside you … then you might stand a chance. But the moon is only a sliver, and not yet risen.”
The hunter walked backward, matching the creature step for step. “Wolf that you are, you have not found the one lamb you seek. The one you need more than any other.” She let the thing dwell on that a moment only, then said, “Have you?”
The thing snarled, and in it there was nothing of the woman it had once been. Only the hunger within.
“I know what you’re looking for,” said the hunter, and she even managed to put a little tremble in her voice. “I know who you’re looking for.”
“And …?”
“And I can bring her to you.”
The creature stopped its advance. Its claws flexed, raking into the stone. “And what do you want in return?” it said.
Ashiin smiled. “I want you to kill her.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
YOU WERE CHOSEN. BY NENDAWEN HIMSELF. BUT you, dear girl … there’s something about you that even the Master had not planned on.
Hweilan rolled Gleed’s words over in her mind, again and again. She had come to the High Place where the old goblin had taught her to remove Jagun Ghen’s demons from a blessed weapon. Yesterday, when she had so needed to see distance, she’d thought Gleed’s tower was the best she could do. But she’d been too caught up in her own welling emotions to think clearly. There was a better place. This place.
The wind in her hair felt good. Soothing. Of all the places she’d been in the Feywild, this was the one place that most reminded her of home. A completely treeless height, covered in grass and lichen-encrusted rock. She could see sky all around. The seemingly impenetrable forest lay beneath her, and even Gleed’s lake was no more than a blue shard occasionally sparkling under the sun.
She had woken long before dawn, Gleed still snoring in his nest of blankets beside the hearth. Hweilan had no idea what lessons he had planned for her that day. But after what he’d told her, she didn’t much care. She’d dressed quietly and fled to this place. The ring where Gleed had sent Jagun Ghen’s minion back to … wherever, was no more than a windswept bit of ground. She sat on the edge of the height, looking down on the miles on miles of forest, though her eyes didn’t really see them.
In her blood … something other.
This voice came to her with such strength that she flinched. Not Gleed’s words. Spoken with a laugh. By Menduarthis.
How long had it been since she thought of him? Yet he’d risked his own life to save hers. Was he even still alive? The last time she’d seen him, he’d been unconscious on the ground, blood gushing from his scalp. But he had been the first to tell her—
Something other. What …?
… you’re one of us. Menduarthis’s voice again. A mortal nature? Yes. But also … something else. Something magical. The blood runs thin in you, perhaps, but it runs true. Someone from … well, somewhere else planted a seed in your family garden. You’re something else too. Something … more.
At first, she’d thought he simply meant her Vil Adanrath heritage. That was her connection to Nendawen, after all. But no. She’d been a fool, and she should have known all along he meant something else, something more, if she’d only taken the time to think.
That night, when she’d very first seen the Master, when Nendawen had saved her from Jagun Ghen’s minion, he had invaded her mind.
Hweilan chuckled at that, but there was no humor in it. Only bitterness.
Scith had once told Hweilan that if wolfpacks became too bold and dangerous in an area, some Nar tribes would leave a swifstag corpse out for them to find. Only they would imbed razor-sharp steel in the corpse. A hungry pack who found the frozen carcass would lick at the frozen flesh, the heat from their own body thawing it, but at the same time making their tongues numb. So numb that they didn’t feel the sharp steel slicing into them until it was too late.
But what Nendawen had found … it had been far worse than biting
down full force upon sharp steel. How he had …
Howled did not describe it. No word she knew described it. His pain had shattered their connection.
What had Nendawen found? Found inside her?
… there’s something about you that even the Master had not planned on.
What?
Did it matter? Did it really? What it all came down to was—
I can help you get away.
“Get away,” she said the words aloud, only half-aware she did so. To where?
Her family was dead. Her friends. Everyone she had ever loved. And the one responsible was sitting in her home.
And that, more than anything, made all her confusion, all her questions, burn away. Wealth, power, prestige, honor … none of it meant anything without family. And Jagun Ghen had taken hers away. Had taken away everything from her. That left her with only one thing—
Vengeance. Cloak it in “justice” if you like. Paint it with concepts like honor or even saving the world. True or not—didn’t matter. It all came down to one bare, burning truth: That thing had killed her family. She was going to kill him or die trying.
And then what, girl? Gleed had said. When Jagun Ghen is beaten and his sickness purged from the world … what then? You think the Master will free you? Nendawen is the Hunter. He has always been the Hunter. He will always be the Hunter. It is his nature. His only … beingness. The Hunter does not free his prey. I should know.
And then what …?
And then what …?
“Doesn’t matter,” said Hweilan. It didn’t. After that … she didn’t much care. Nendawen could finish the job and swallow her whole. Hweilan no longer cared. If he demanded years of service from her, if she was doomed to train other servants for eternity … well, she’d cross that bridge when she came to it.
Until then, only one thing mattered: killing Jagun Ghen.
Hweilan stood. She wasn’t yet ready to return to Gleed and listen to him prattle, but she was done moping. She turned her back on Gleed’s lake—
And there, no more than five paces away, stood Ashiin, leaning upon her staff.
Hand of the Hunter: Chosen of Nendawen, Book II Page 14
