Sgaile was at a loss. He could not allow anyone near Cuirin'nen'a, though he understood why Brot'an'duive had told Leshil where the pack headed.
He hoped they could catch the human woman before she and Chap reached Cuirin'nen'a.
It would be hard to turn Leshil aside, and harder still if he were in reach of his mother.
At least Brot'an'duive was with them-and that was some comfort. Sgaile would need his wisdom and calm counsel.
en'nish tried to step around and head up the trail. Before Sgaile intercepted her, Brot'an'duive cut her off.
"You may follow," he said, "but do not forget that guardianship belongs to Sgailsheilleache. Do not interfere."
Urhkarasiferin, about to head onward, cast only a passing glance at the woman. But Sgaile had another concern. He reached out to stop Urhkarasiferin, touching the elder's shoulder.
"I left Leanalham alone," Sgaile said. "Please stay with her, and tell her I will return when able."
Urhkarasiferin gave only the slightest cock of his head to betray his surprise. He was the elder of the two of them, yet only involved at Sgaile's request. The elder anmaglahk nodded and headed back toward Crijheaiche.
Sgaile turned to catch up with Osha close behind him. He heard en'nish and the other two following. For the first few steps, it struck him as odd that Frethfare or even Most Aged Father would send another trio of the caste to follow him in tracking down one small human.
He pushed the thought away and ran on.
Chap loped beside Lily, growing tired and sensing the same in her. At times, thickened brush between the trees made passage difficult. Wynn clung to the deer's back with nothing to grasp but the animal's coat of long hair. She bent forward against its shoulders and neck, trying to hang on.
The ink-shaded elder slowed without warning, and all of the pack pulled up around him. They dispersed among the undergrowth, and a few dropped to the ground panting, pink tongues lolling out of their mouths.
A rest had been called, and Chap was no less grateful than the others. Lily lay down on the forest floor, but Chap trotted over to Wynn and barked once. She still clung to the deer as it shifted from hoof to hoof.
Wynn looked so small upon the animal's back, no larger than a child might appear upon a full-grown horse. Her hair was tangled and her oval face smeared by clumps of kicked-up earth. She had no cloak and shivered in her light elven clothing.
Chap barked again, and Wynn lifted her head. She slid her far leg over the deer's haunches and tried to slide off its back. She ended up dropping to her rump when her feet hit the ground. Chap whined and pressed his head against her shoulder.
She was too weary and stiff to even put a hand on his head. Instead she crawled on hands and knees behind him as he returned to where Lily lay panting.
The pack lay in groups of two and three to share warmth. Wynn settled next to Lily, and Chap stretched out before both of them. Wynn reached out slowly and stroked Lily's back. Lily raised her ears once but did not object.
"She is beautiful," Wynn finally said. "All your kind are beautiful."
Chap looked into her weary face. He hoped for her sake-and his-they would not travel much farther in this manner.
"I thought that all of them would be like you-born-Fay," Wynn added as she closed her eyes and lay back. "I did not know they would be so far removed-yet still like you."
He belly-crawled over to press his body against her. Winters here were far milder than beyond the mountains, yet the nights could be cool.
Chap found a strange moment of peace, considering what was at stake in this swift journey. With Wynn nestled between Lily and himself, it was good to lie on the earth of his birthplace. His eyes began to droop.
The first long baying rang through the night.
Several majay-h stirred and got up as Chap opened his eyes. The sound rang out again, and he recognized it. The deer that had carried Wynn was still among the pack, yet this bellow came from farther off.
The deer lifted its head and issued an answering call. It turned and stalked toward the pack elder as Lily climbed to her feet. She joined them as the deer bent down to touch heads with the elder. Chap was too tired to try dipping into the exchange of memory. But when Lily returned to press her head to his, she whined in agitation. The flash of memory snapped Chap fully awake.
Gray-green-clad elves ran through the forest.
He could not see their faces clearly, for the image Lily gave him was not specific. Just anmaglahk running in a line with purpose.
Why would she show him this? The answer came quickly to him. The Anmaglahk were coming after them.
Wynn was still curled on the ground beside him. She had barely stirred at the deer's bellow. Chap ground his paws into the earth.
We are pursued.
Wynn thrashed over, grabbing her head. "Do not do that! Not unless I know it is coming!"
She sat up with a grimace and put a hand over her mouth. She looked at him as if he had poured a foul liquid in her mouth while she slept.
"What... what did you say?"
Chap repeated himself, and Wynn flinched slightly this time.
She looked back the way they had come. "How far?"
He barked three times rather than send more words to assault her. He had no idea how close the Anmaglahk were.
He ran to the gray deer and barked once. Several of the majay-h dashed on ahead, and if nothing else, Wynn knew they were on the move again. The deer stepped near a downed tree, and Wynn did not wait. She climbed onto its back and clutched its neck, and their race renewed. Chap took off beside Lily as the deer lunged ahead through the forest. The pace was now driven by urgency more than hope.
Chapter Eleven.
W ynn clung to the deer's neck, gripping its coarse hair until her fingers ached. The majay-h were relentless, and the pack ran all night. Wynn did her best to endure, but her legs cramped from gripping the deer's too-wide body. ynn clung to the deer's neck, gripping its coarse hair until her fingers ached. The majay-h were relentless, and the pack ran all night. Wynn did her best to endure, but her legs cramped from gripping the deer's too-wide body.
She hoped dawn was not far off and kept her eyes down as much as possible. Each time she looked up, something ahead seemed as if she had just seen it behind, or to the side, or as if she'd never seen it before. Everything appeared foreign and unfamiliar in the night.
The dark forest pressed confusion into Wynn's mind. Trees flashed by like shadows. The only constants were the deer beneath her and the pack around and ahead of her. She clung to the sight of them against being overwhelmed and lost.
Wynn had no idea what they would find at the journey's end. If she and Chap came upon some elven prison, how would they gain entrance? But if-when-they reached Nein'a, Chap would definitely need her. As far as Wynn knew, Leesil's mother was unaware of Chap's true nature. Wynn would be needed to speak with her. How else could Chap relate that Leesil was among the elves and intended to free her?
She tried to shift her aching legs, but they were spread too far across the deer's wide back. Her backside was growing numb.
The black-gray pack leader slowed and the others with him. The deer's gait decreased to a steady clomp, and Chap circled back to walk below Wynn.
"Are we close?" she asked. "We must be close. It has been so long..."
When she looked ahead, the forest had thickened across their path. As the deer carried her closer, the pack spread out to the sides.
Birches of ever-peeling bark grew close together. Their branches intertwined one into the next beneath thousands of leaves. Through their tangling masses, elm and ash trees rose, exposing their tops above. Below, brambles and blackberry vines glistened with thorns and filled the spaces between the trees' trunks.
Everything was silent, without even a breeze or the vibrant creak of a cricket.
Wynn looked off to her left. The tangled woods stretched out into the darkness. When she turned the other way, the trees ahead appeared to have shifted to different positions among the strangling underbrush. When she turned left again, a clump of saw grass had sprouted through the thorny tendrils of a blackberry bush.
Had it been there, or had it appeared when she was not looking? The top of a cedar spread above the birches, dark and still, and she did not remember seeing it before. Was the forest toying with her again?
Wynn looked hopelessly about but saw no way through. Why had the pack or even the deer come this way, if this old growth barred the path? The way this wall of vegetation climbed and burrowed through itself was not natural.
The pack elder paced before the dense growth, and the other dogs trotted aimlessly about, arching necks and raising ears as they peered into it. The deer rolled its shoulders and shifted nervously beneath Wynn's thighs. It snorted and shook its antlered head.
These animals were as puzzled and disturbed as Wynn was. They had not seen this before.
The elder paced left along the wood's border and then suddenly lunged into it.
Wynn heard the rustle of leaves and bending vines from within the dense woods. The sound grew to a thunder of creaking branches and thrashing leaves. She grabbed the deer's coarse hair tightly as it back-stepped from the raucous sound.
A chokeberry bush ripped apart as the dark elder leaped out. Berries scattered in his wake like small black pellets. He stumbled, favoring one foreleg, and turned to stare back at the barrier. The rest of the pack circled hesitantly.
Lily turned right and darted for a birch of peeling bark, its lowest branches tangled in climbing blackberry vines.
"No!" Wynn cried out.
Chap went after Lily, but not before she tried thrashing her way into the thorny vines. She quickly retreated, never getting deeper than her shoulders.
Wynn shivered anxiously.
Chap remained on the barrier's edge as Lily arced around behind him. He rumbled softly in frustration. They could go back but not forward.
Wynn wondered if these woods were a safeguard, blocking trespassers from reaching Nein'a. But then how could a prisoner be fed and cared for? Or had Nein'a been left here to die, long ago? Had the elves lied to Leesil just to bring him within reach?
Chap's growl rose to a snarl and startled Wynn as nausea hit her. Soft buzzing grew like a birch leaf skittering about within her skull.
Fay... my kin... now they choose to return.
Wynn slipped from the deer's back. Nausea became vertigo, and she dropped to her knees, struggling under the chorus of leaf-wings.
The last time she had heard this was at the northern gate of Soladran as Chap communed with his kin, the Fay.
Chap quickly brushed heads with Lily and then bolted into the open forest behind them. Wynn tried to get up, hand over her mouth, to stumble after him, but Lily raced around to block her way.
Before Wynn cried out to Chap, his single leaf-winged voice crackled in her mind.
I am here... show yourselves, my kin... I demand it!
Chap ran blindly through the trees, searching. But not with eyes and ears and nose.
His spirit expanded in rage, reaching in all directions, until he felt them as he had upon staring into the dense barrier woods.
That warped growth should not be there. He had seen this in Lily's memory flash. No majay-h had ever encountered such a tangled mesh and it was coated with the tingle of Chap's kin.
They tried to stop the majay-h-stop him-from reaching Nein'a.
Show yourselves! Answer me... now!
His coat rippled under a breeze whirling downward from the night sky. It increased to a strong wind, encircling him as it ripped up mulch. He pulled up short amid a hushed chatter of branches and turned a tight circle with a low rumble. The wind settled to a breeze once more.
Chap stood in a small clearing loosely walled by sycamores and beeches grown tall from roots sunk deep into the earth. Their branches interlaced like the limbs of sentinels holding hands, and movement within them made those limbs sway slightly.
He would not cower before them.
Why interfere now, when you have been silent... so useless? Why return after abandoning me for so long?
Branches behind him shook softly, and he wheeled about. Leaves rustling in the low whirling breeze shaped to a chorus of voices in his mind.
Further and further you stray from your path... your purpose... to keep the sister of the dead in ignorance and away from the Enemy.
Chap rumbled at one birch. A bend in its trunk looked too much like a figure seated in judgment. His shoulders tightened as he half-crouched to lunge.
Leesil is necessary to my task... our need. But his suffering serves no purpose. So why bar my way? Why can he not free his mother?
A long vine of red hyacinth rustled.
Return to your task... Return to the sister of the dead... Leave this land and keep her far from her makers reach.
That was no answer. In what other place could Magiere be farther from the Enemy's reach?
The hyacinth rustled more softly.
You have told your mortal charges far too much. So much that they might well turn upon a path that would end this world. Tell them no more, and take them from this place.
Chap's rumble grew. All Leesil wanted was freedom for his last remaining family. To be with his mother once again. Yet Chap's kin became obsessed with inaction.
And why could he not remember... more?
Bits and pieces learned in his mortal life still did not fit together. He did not retain enough awareness from existence among his kin to bind those pieces and fill in the gaps; The branches shuddered around him.
You have taken flesh and lost our full awareness. Trust the path... trust in us. In flesh, you cannot understand all things.
Chap wavered in silence. He had relinquished eternity to follow the will of his kin. Once he must have known and agreed with their purpose, but now he could not remember why.
There must have been a reason... one that he had forgotten.
Wynn controlled her vertigo and tried to rush around Lily. Each time, the dog shifted or barked in warning and would not let her pass.
A chorus of a thousand shuddering and crackling leaves erupted within Wynn's head.