The Counter Measure – Chapter 19

*Scene 01* 11:27 – (The Under Way)

Maeven motioned to all of us, “Go ahead. Dismount.  This is where we go down.”

Begglar ambled his horse around the perimeter of the clearing and glanced over the edge of the narrow gorge.  There was no bridge that he could see across the deep channel, and no slope through the game trail ahead that appeared to descend.  On the contrary, the game trail appeared to progress upward but it was too narrow to allow a full-sized horse to pass.  The trunks thickened and tangles of vines woven a foliage curtain overhead that seem to hang lower and lower.  He considered that a doe, fawn, raccoon, opossum or a rabbit might pass with no trouble, but a rutting stag would get its antlers caught up in that tangle.  Begglar turned back to Maeven, “I don’t understand. That’s about a forty to fifty foot drop, just to the high cut stream.  And those stone channels drop into steep falls.  How do you propose we get down there?  And what of these horses?”

Maeven reached up and untangled what had looked to be twisted vines running up into the course of the large trees on either side of her and the slightly shifted edge.  “Maybe this will help,” she said sweeping her foot across the leaf strewn area where she stood.  I had notice the shift in the floor when she moved her horse closer to the edge of the bend but I had not noticed the why until then.

She and her horse stood upon a hidden platform, with cleverly concealed lowering ropes entwined in the vines of the adjoining trees.  This was a counterweighted-lift that could be raised and lowered into the narrow steephead ravine below.

Ingenious.

Soon we all could see that her horse stood upon a leave strewn platform made to look like part of the ground along the ledge.  Maeven drew her horse further into the center of the platform and secured its tether to a post that appeared to be a broken stump of a small tree.  She unwrapped a vine wound from the overhead limb revealing a lock release and a pulley and counterweight system strung overhead and fastened to a formidable-looking tree with a large bole and strong root system.  One could pass the place in either daylight or dark and never see it unless they knew it was there, but even then, they might miss it.

One by one, each of our team’s horse and rider were lowered down to a hidden trail way, as Maeven had previously alluded to, dug out and cut into a hidden rockshelf in the ravine’s edge.

Maeven supervised the lowering and steadying of the horses, calming them gently, whenever they became nervous sensing the instability of the slightly swaying platform.  It was not a fast way to move, but it was effective.  From the ledge to the lower cut pathway below the wooden gantry the drop was about 50 feet by my estimate.

Once down, the company mounted our horses again, preparing to ride under the rocky overhang of the cliff, the gurgling river just below and to the left of us, laughing at their pleased bewilderment.  Portions of the carved path extended outward so that a wooden planked pathway was built where the turn or cliff-side did not quite allow for a deeper carved half-tunnel.

A series of half-tubes, chambers, and grottos formerly cut and channeled by the corrasion of waterflow conduits and fluvial action through rifts in the karst land.  Pressure in underground aquifers, and rimstone pools had formed a series of natural and carved descent paths that workers for the underground had secretly connected, cleared and fortified, making a backway means of ascent and descent from the highlands to the lower valley and forests.

It was not lost on me that these clandestine routes and passages allowed Storm Hawk and her Lehi to move imperviously and stealthily between the highlands and the lowland valleys without the fear of being apprehended along the main descent road to the northwest or up from the lowland steppes and montane shrublands running along the coastal slopes which ran through Crowe and other townships closer to the coastal ridges.

The uplands were comprised of magnesite, limestone and dolomite, all carbonate rock formations with the strange emerging basalt (ruthenium) Marker Stone penetrating those mixed mineral rock substratas with a transcending column extruding from the buried heart of the Mid-World’s hydrographic zones.  It was unclear whether The Marker Stone was the source of the land’s freshwaters or the catalyst Rock which cut through the Mid-World’s buried oceans from the saturated phreatic zone, up through the saturated epiphreatic (floodwater) zone, into the concavities of the upper unsaturated zones webbing the Mid-World’s lands surfaces.  The resulting waters gave the Mid-World’s land surfaces its vegetation, filling the upper atmosphere with rising mists that collesced into flowing canopies of cloud cover, cycling between evaporation and condensations that fed and replenished the land.  The Mid-World’s “Land Stone” was thought by some to be the source of its ‘Living Water’, unpolluted by the salts of the outer seas.  The belief was that pure water flowed into the buried and hidden aquifers from the lower, unrevealed parts of the mystical “Marker Stone” from somewhere beyond the limits of this metaphysical world.

It struck me that, for those holding to this faith and belief, the tainting of the freshwater streams and rivers of The Mid-World, was not only a threat to all life living in these lands, but also a sign of desecration and a sacrilege.  It made sense then why one such as the mysterious Hanokh, known as “The Walker”, would press into this outrage and embark on a trek to discover what was happening upstream in the springs that converged where The Marker Stone stood in the uplands.  Whatever was tainting the freshwaters, causing illness, strange behaviors and psychotropic effect, I was certain, was not flowing from The Marker Stone, but from somewhere lower and hidden downstream.   A location that would find its way down through the natural watercourses to pollute the drinking water of villages dependent upon these waters for survival.  If those downstream waters were being polluted, the toxicity of such pollutants must be severe enough and of such a volume that dillution and the natural filters of moving over rocks, through sands, and distillation would not entirely remove its strange and dire potency.  The effects described by Maeven by way of talking to Hanokh, with the corroboration of both Begglar and Nell’s story of the affected traveler, raised serious questions.  Who would be evil enough to pollute the land’s drinking water?  Was the pollutant natural or something far worse?  From what Maeven said, Hanokh believed the contaminant was ‘something ephemeral’, even a ‘supernatural invader’.  The thought sent chills through me.  There were enough physical dangers here and arguably metaphysical with our encounter with the impersonating gollum of Becca, but other ‘supernatural invaders’ manifesting in the waters were startling and unsettling.  I wondered how one might guard against such a threat, if a malevolent entity might be surrepetitiously injested by one of us through the drinking water.  I bit my tongue just contemplating that possibility.  How long could anyone of us survive if we feared drinking the water?  I felt touches of fear seeming to crawl through me.  My spirit within me began to feel claustrophobic, almost as it a crushing weight had gripped me and was squeezing the air out of my lungs.  It was a feeling I had felt before, within the cavernous passages under the escarpment, as I frantically searched for Miray.  The overhead of the tight woods around us, began to feel oppressive as well.

Both Yasha and I had opted to be the last ones to make the descent down into what both he and Maeven had called ‘The Under Way’.   We waited until the last of our party had been lowered to the half-tube pathway about fifty feet below the outcropped shelf where we stood.  Our job would be to recover the platform with dirt, leaves and forest detritus to again conceal its presence.  We were then to make our individual descent to ‘The Under Way’ using the vine covered ropes, leaving no evidence of our exit or apparent means of the way down.  The Storm Hawk and Lehi were taking quite the risk letting us in our their secret escape route, and I felt a sense of gratitude towards Maeven upon that realization.  Helping us, they were risking both their lives and future means to successfully evade capture, if this ingenious ‘Under Way’ were ever to be discovered by the Xarmnians.  My job was to keep a back watch down the arboreal tunnel, while Yasha masked the rigging.

I held the Honor Sword in my right hand, my grip was too tight, and I could feel my hands sweating, anxious to get going and leave the area.  I was not sure how long the broken wagon might delay or thwart our pursuers.  If the Xarmnian’s had axes, it might no be long before they caught up to us, having cleared the broken wagon.  If they pursued us on foot, they may still be upon us soon.  We had ridden ahead quickly, but the narrowing forest trail and the darkness had made our forward movement cautious and tentative.  Even if the pursuing company had, by necessary, split up, how many would they send in pursuit of us, as opposed to those sent after the Lehi would had taken the other wagons?  And the demon dogs…?  What of them?  Would they get past the broken wagon?  The Xarmnians would not be stopped by the obstacle.  We could only, at best, hope for slowing them, but they would be intent, and enraged that we had run, with even the remotest hope that we could somehow evade them.  They would want to see us lose hope.  They would want to be present, to see our faces as they moved in on us.  But would they want that so much that they would choose to restrain their monster dogs from getting to us first?  My answer came almost within the very moment that I had conceived of the thought.

From the darkness, came a rush of growls and crunching leaves.  The beasts were upon us, and my own weapon was the Honor Sword I held tenuously within sweaty palms.  There was no time to get to the descending ropes.  Yasha moved swiftly to my left, his sword readied, his forearms corded and tense.  We would have to make our stand alone, having no way to tell what or who all or how many might be coming.

“We can’t let them find this,” Yasha whispered urgently. “Whatever it takes, me must stop them, if we can.”

“I know,” I huffed, my pent up breath siphoning between my gritted teeth.  “I know.  Whatever it takes,” I agreed, knowing full well, what it may take would be giving my life just to keep that secret.

*Scene 02* 14:28 – (Living Water)

Back on the banks of the creek, near Shimri’s shed, the captured Xarmnian cowered away from even the cast shadow of the giant Hanokh.  Ryden had drawn his sword and angled its blade at the captive, yet the Xarmnian seemed to take no notice of the threat of the blade. But rather shied fearfully away from the presence of the ancient Walker.  The man rocked from side to side, covering his ears as if the unperceived sounds coming from within him caused him physical pain.

“What is wrong with him?” Shimri, who stood nearby, asked.

Hanokh reached within his outer garment into a pocket of his inner garment, fishing out something from deep within its recesses.  His large hand concealed an object within his palm that neither Shimri nor Ryden could yet see.  He moved closer to the cowering Xarmnian, holding his palm high, but looking down at his open hand and then extended it toward the figure, now making animalistic sounds, growling with his face contorting between phases of extreme anger and terror, his body trembling.  The low light in the shadowy shed made clearly seeing the shrinking figure difficult.

Hanokh slowly turned back moving away from the cowering figure, passed Ryden’s extended blade, and emerged back through the broken hole in the shed, into the filtered light coming through the canopy of cottonwood and cypress trees.  Hanokh held out his open palm, finally revealing what he had pulled from his inner pocket.

Ryden had followed, retreating with his sword still pointed towards the Xarmnian’s confinement.  Both Shimri and Ryden stared at the object in Hanokh’s large hand.  It was a stoppered glass tube filled with clear liquid, but within was a twisting, writhing, pulsing mass of black threads weaving and sprouting into an amorphous glob.  The gutteral sounds coming from the Xarmnian captive within the corner of the shed pulsed in rythmic syncronization with the throbbing mass contained within the glass tube.

“It is the pairing of the darkness within him,” Hanokh rumbled.

“What is that?” Shimri asked, recoiling from the sight, tensing.

“It is, as I suspected,” Hanokh answered, “the connection of this and the darkness within your captive. They are sympathetic to each other.  This is what was drawn from the wells of Skorlith.  The town’s drinking water.  The wells are fed by the underground streams and rivers that flow from the uplands and eventually empty into the fjord lake chains of Cascale.  The connection between this and your captive is supernatural.  It responds to the darkness within this man.  I suspect it is also what is used to make the trolls.”

Ryden almost dropped his sword, so stunned he was.  Shimri drew in a stuttering breath.  “This is causing his cruelty?” Ryden gasped, incredulous.

“No.  Darkness lives within each of us.  It is the staining dark of man’s sin, coming from our ancient line.  It is the death in our hearts, that separated us from The One.  Only The Light of The One can drive that darkness out. But it is a process:  A battle of our will versus The Will of The One.  The more we surrender to The Will of The One, the more the darkness is driven out of whatever is yielded to Him.  There is much darkness in your prisoner.  He serves that darkness and operates according to its rhythm.  The degree is even greater within a troll. Such that it transforms their image and reduces it down into a squat, bulbous, apelike creature, draining its body of its natural red blood and replacing it with black blood.  The contamination resonates with the pulse of this living darkness that is polluting the waters of The Mid-World.  Take this vial and see what happens when it bring it close to your prisoner.”

With a tentative hand, Shimri cautiously reached for the glass tube.  The black mass swirled and writhed within, and Shimri’s hand froze.

“Go ahead,” Hanokh assured him, “It is physically contained, but does respond to the darkness that remains in all of us.  Holding it in your hand will not let it into you, but it will respond to what we still carry and must contend with in our present becoming.”

Lightly, Shimri’s fingers curled around the tube, and the black mass thickened.  His eye’s widened and he gasped, causing Ryden to flinch and raise the point of his sword, as he flexed with tensed readiness.

Shimri’s breath came in ragged gasps.  “I can feel the darkness.”  He turned to Hanokh.  “Please take it back.  Show us what you must, but I cannot hold this.”

Hanokh extended his large palm, and Shimri uncurled his fingers from around the tube with visible difficulty, his arm shaking with the strain.  When the vial dropped into Hanokh’s hand the black coiling mass tightened and shriveled within.  With wide-eyed wonder, he stared at Hanokh, rubbing a kind of coldness out of his fingers and palm.  “How do you hold that?  Carry it?”

Hanokh extended it out toward Ryden and Ryden recoiled, shaken.  “No! No, I don’t want to touch it,” Ryden objected, raising his sword to ward off the offer.

“You need to know,” Hanokh said, gently, “that the darkness is in all of us, to some degree, and that it is in you too.”

Ryden sword was raised in a defensive stance, his face tightened with disgust.  “Why?  Why is that necessary?!  I can see it well enough from here without touching it!”

Hanokh sighed, knowing the struggle.  “Ryden,” he said calmly, “The reason why you won’t touch it, is fear.  Fear is part of the darkness.  But the reason I want you both to touch it, is not to fear its presence, but to be sobered to its effect on you, when you see its effect on the Xarmnian in there.  There is a danger in being ignorant of what still resides within yourself, when you see its presence in one of these afflicted and imprisoned.  This man was a captive of this darkness long before he was ever made a captive in this shed.  I want you to understand this too, as Shimri now does.  It will balance you in your contentions with the evil forces of this land.  There may come a day when being able to see those you perceive only as enemies now, should be seen as they really are: captives.  Also reserve room in your perceptions of others, for the possibility of showing mercy and compassion.  To be able to do this, you will need to understand that the darkness that dominates them, also holds them captive.  They cannot be other than they are. Because without the yielding to The Light of The One, they can never find freedom from being a captive of their darkness.”

Ryden adjusted his grip on the hilt of his sword, an internal struggle causing him to waver.

“Only your yielding to The Light of The One, will enable you to do what you know your spirit is telling you is True,” Hanokh rumbled gently, still holding out his hand with the liquid and its black threading resident.

Finally, Ryden lowered his sword, letting out a heavy breath as he did so.  His head lowered, but his jawline tightened, as he whispered, confessing, “I don’t know if I can…”

“It is not about your ability…” Hanokh said gently, “It is about your surrender.  The Light of The One, does not hold you in captivity, but operates in liberty.  Its effect does not compel you, or force its power over you, but operates in your yieldedness.  Your ability to choose was given as part of our imaging reflection.  Your will is free.  If you will not learn this lesson now, the lesson will come another way, for you are not abandoned in the conforming.  But make no mistake.  The future testing may be made more difficult by the choice you make in this moment.”

Finally, Ryden raised the hilt, and reinserted his blade into the scabbard sheath at his side.  He closed his eyes, as he flexed his fingers and finally extended his hand, lightly closing around the glass vial in Hanokh’s open palm.

He tensed, as his fingers curled around the tube, lifting it from the giant’s palm.  His knees almost buckled, but Hanokh reached out a hand and steadied him, gripping his shoulder.  Ryden exhaled and shuddered, his eye’s popping open, his mouth agape.  “Uuugh!” an involuntary sound escaped from his open mouth, as his body trembled, and his jaws tightened and then clamped shut.  Through clenched teeth, he pleaded, “Take it!  Take it back!  Please!”

Hanokh’s hand scooped under Ryden’s trembling fist, Ryden’s arm extended and stretched as far away from his body as he could.

“Release it.” Hanokh rumbled.

Ryden’s arm trembled, as his fingers tightened. “I c-can’t.  I can’t seem to…”

“The things we dread, we too often hold on to,” Hanokh spoke quietly, moving his open hand under Ryden’s, allowing his hand to touch Ryden’s rigid, and clench fist.  Ryden felt a warmth coming from the giant’s palm as it came in contact with his own hand, frozen in it present, struggling grip.  Finally, his warming fingers sprung open and the glass vial fell back into the giant’s open palm.  Ryden retracted his hand, rubbing its coldness with his other hand.

“Now,” Hanokh stood up to his full height, seeming to grow taller than he had been before, “you both understand that we are not without aspects of this man’s darkness.  We are only separate from it by degrees and shielded from its full power by our Hope placed in The Word of The One’s Marker Stone.  This one is prisoner and in the thrall of this darkness.  He is dangerous, because darkness extends its presence outward through his willful choices and his actions.  Follow me and look at what happens to the darkness in the glass when I bring it near him.”

Shimri signaled one of his men to hand him a firebrand torch burning in a pit near the shed and the stacked rockwall that bordered his property.  Shimri took up the torch and re-entered the dark shed casting flickering light upon the Xarmnian now pressed against the wall in the corner, huddled and hunched down, still favoring his injuries from the his fight with the troll.  With suspicion, he glared at Ryden, Shimri and Hanokh as they entered from the breech.

Hanokh opened his hand, again revealing the glass stoppered vial, he held as he slowly moved towards the Xarmnian.  Ryden and Shimri watched as the black twisting blob in the vial formed spikes and bristled, frenetically bristling and throbbing as Hanokh approached the man.  The prisoner hissed and spat against Hanokh’s approach, a foamy spittle dribbling down his lips.  The Xarmnian’s eyes appeared to darken, as Hanokh moved the glass vial near him, until suddenly the blob in the glass filled the glass with black opaqueness, the water it had floated in seemed to be sucked within the glass blob, even though it was stoppered and prevented from escaping.  Inside the tube was only the blackness.

Ryden let out a breath that he did not know he had been holding.  Shimri’s firelight danced in a sheen of golden light in the palm of Hanokh’s open hand, but its light did not reflect on the smoothness of the glass.  The tube remained in a thickening shadow, returning no reflection of the burning light.

Quietly, Shimri spoke, what both he and Ryden now saw as obvious, “I think we’ve seen enough.”  And with that Hanokh closed his hand and tucked the glass vial back into the folds and pocket of his inner garment.  The three stepped out into the open air, realizing that the air inside of the shed in the presence of the prisioner had seemed stale and thick, making it difficult to breathe.

Hanokh turned to the two men and spoke, “It is for this, that I have journeyed from the valleys and villages.  This blackness is coming down through the rivers and streams in the highlands.  I have been looking for its source, carefully tracking it up through the rivers.  I have stepped through and somehow have passed its location of contamination.  The local streams in this higher vicinity appear to be clear, so now I must go to The Marker Stone, for I know that is the source of pure, life-giving water.  I will progress downward from there, where I should have started in the first place.  Eventually I know I will come down to the source of contamination.  When I find it, I suspect there will be creatures there that are not part of the natural orders, nor are they creatures of this Mid-World.  They will be supernatural things from the Other that have somehow crossed over into this world.  And they will need to be destroyed.”

*Scene 03* 08:39 – (Hitching the Rides)

Further up the road, among the brambles and brushy ground cover, beneath the canopy of the woods, the two Half-Men creatures, (part donkey-part human), huddled in their hideaway, nervously watching the small farmhouse below.

“We’ve been waiting here for so long, and still no sign of Corg, Brem.  Let’s go.  There is nothing to be gained, waitin’ here.  The Pan will expect us back soon.”

“P’haps you’re right, Bray.  If the other trolls were coming back, they’d be here by now.  Not that I’m anxious to have them return, mind you, but The Pan did warn us what would happen if we shirked our duty.  ‘Listen to them,’ he said.  Don’t let know you are my spies.  Find out what they are really up to and report back to me.’  If we come back to him now with nothing more to report to him, other than the trolls left us to go scout the Inn, we’ll really be in for it. We still don’t know what the Xarmnians’ interests are with the innkeeper and his brood. If we return with only that, he may not think ‘that‘ is enough.  Remember what he said?”

“How can I forget?  He threatened to rip us in half.  Asked if we would like to have our ‘asses’ handed to us,” Bray shuddered.

“He could do it too,” Brem added, soberly.  “I saw him do so with an insolent mermaid once.  Left her tail fluttering on the shore, and threw her shrieking top half into the woods for the satyrs to ‘enjoy’.  Bloody mess, that was.  Stuff of nightmares.”

Bray pondered a moment, then finally said, “I’m okay waiting a little more.”

“Good choice,” Brem concurred, “Me too.”

Suddenly, both Bray and Brem felt something snatch hold of their tails, gripping them in a vise hold.  Startled, they both twisted and kicked, trying to get free, certain that what may have hold of them was The Pan himself.  A haunch and a hoof from Bray slammed into a hard, squat body, evoking a loud grunt and bark of pain from his captor.  Brem threw his hind into the hard branches of the bushes they’d concealed themselves in, squeezing his own detainer against the knuckles of the bushes, causing them to snap and break against his holder’s body.  A shout and a growl revealed to both the who of what had taken hold of each of them.  “I’ll dig out the eyes of both of you, if’n youse don’t stop a squirmin’!” an angry voice threatened, from one of the two who had seized them.  The two froze, knowing that the voice of the speaker held no idle threat.  They had seen their captor’s knife before.  Unpolished, and wicked sharp, still bespeckled with the blackstain residue of a prior use drawing blood.

“Still got your hold, Shelly?” the gruff speaker barked to his fellow.

“Barely,” the other whined back.  “Limbs broken, but I’ve still got hold of ‘im, Grum!”

“Come outta there, you two barebacks, or we’ll break these ends off and leave them bleedy!”

The two odonocentaurs dutifully backed out of the brush, as both Shelberd and Grum-Blud released their tails.  The upper torsos of the two creatures were abraded and scratched from the rough branches that had jabbed into them while evading capture and hiding in their present concealment.

“So it’s you, is it?!” Brem spat, facing the two squat trolls, glaring down at them.

“It’s us!” Grum-Blud barked, still gripping a bulbous bag in one of his large knuckles, and brandishing his sharp “poke” at them.  “Thinkin’ of leaving us afoot, were you?!” he snarled.  “I wonder what The Pan would say to that, you pig-headed humpers?!”

Brem and Bray visibly cowed, the thought chilling any further bravado that they might show to their two charges.  “Now there’s no need to bring him into this.  We’ve not abandoned our duty.  You and your kind left us to go scouting, remember?”

Grum-Blud eyed Shelberd with an off glance, knowing he still had that as leverage over these two beasts of burden.  “We’ll see about that.  I seem to remember leaving you both with full packs of supplies and Corg to keep you, numb-skulls from conveniently wandering off.” He raised his dirty blade pointing it at Brem with a threatening, and twisting motion,  forcing him to back up. “Where are those packs, and where is Corg?!”

Bray interjected, stuttering, “We-we-we had to shuck them.  The men were coming.  We c-couldn’t get through the low brush fast enough to hide.”

Brem took up the lead, “B-but we know where they are.  We can get them again.  Corg, he took them off and put them in the bushes.”

“Where is Corg?!” Grum-Blud swung the blade threateningly, at both of the two donkey-men, pushing them partially back into the brush to evade his blade.

“T-the, The men below. In that farmhouse,” Brem gestured.  “They captured him last night and locked in in that smaller structure.  There was fighting, but l-last we heard, he…he was down there.  We’ve k-kept watch.  They didn’t catch us, but they almost did.  We stayed.  You must let The Pan know that we stayed.  We could’ve run, but we didn’t.  You’ve gotta believe us!”

Grum-Blud glared at them, but slowly lowered his blade.

Shelberd broke in, “It’s worth checking out, Grum.  One of us could sneak down there and find out.”

“And it would have to be me, Shel.  You ain’t good at sneaking.  You’d best watch these two, whilst I go check it out.  Give’em a poke if they get any flighty thoughts.  Take this sack and wait for me here.”

“Whatever you say, Grum,” Shelberd mumbled, taking the smelly sack from him, but careful no to let it’s wet-stained underside brush the seepage of gore onto him.  “I’ll watch ’em, close-like.  You just head off…” realizing mid-sentence what he’d just said, he winced sheepishly at Grum, wondering if he’d receive another blow for his unwitting insensitivity.

Grum-Blud glared, but said nothing, sheathing his knife and turning down the path that led to the small clearing and farmhouse that stood next to the creek below.  He moved quickly, gathering his short legs up, gamboling into the woods on his knuckles, moving with relative stealth and speed, working his way down behind the low rock wall, edging his way closer to the lone shed that ostensibly held the only remaining troll in their small party.

With Pogsly dead, they were one short of the troop they had set out with.  He resented his brother’s foolishness, getting caught and burned up by mere humans.  A party of women, children and bewildered men, all wet behind the ears, and unknowing in the ways of The Mid-World.  Pogsly should have beaten them all.  He was more than capable of doing so.  A single troll possessed the strength of five men.  A rampaging troll had the potential violence of ten.  How had these mere men, captured Corg?  It was a puzzle that boggled his mind and made him all the more angry the closer he got to the shed.  He would have a word or two to say to Corg for being so foolish enough to allow himself to be captured.  A few choice words indeed, and a few blows to make sure those words punctuated his points of concern and throroughly hit home.

After that, they would ride to take their proposal to The Pan.  Provided Shelberd had the sense enough to keep their two rides hitched until he returned with a more contrite and bruised Corg in tow.

*Scene 04* 26:00 – (Dog Fight: [11:39]-Jaws & Bladed, [14:51]-Lone Wolf)

The narrow corridor between the densely packed trees of the deeper backwoods, and the jagged edge of the tree-lined lip of the chasm, seemed to press against us on either side.  The leaves hissed overhead like a nest of coiling serpents, and the ominous sounds of the rushing cerberi, growling and chuffing as they charged closer, echoed through the heaving and constricting throat of the forest.  Though the evening’s chill still remained in the shadow of the trail, sweat poured down my neck and coverlet tunic, I had procured from the weapons cache in the granary.  Yasha stood with his feet spread wide and his blade hand loose and ready.  He must have noted my uneasiness for he probed, “Have you ever fought a Cerberi before?”

My chest felt constricted and I could scarely answer him in no more than a whisper, “Only once, but not successfully, I’m afraid.”

“Successful enough to still be able to tell of the loss.  That’s enough.”

“How do we do this?” I queried.

Yasha shifted his sword blade from hand to hand, a practiced transfer that I could not tell whether was due to his eagerness or just a nervous motion.  “The trick is to be careful not to fall into the temptation to think they are dogs.  They are bloodthirsty monsters.  Don’t forget that.  Strike them as hard and as fast as you can.  Look for their weaknesses and take advantage of them.”

“Weakenesses? And what would those be?”

“Watch their eyes. They are not like any dog’s you’ve ever seen. They are reptilian in shape, with a yellowish gleam and spiked pupils. They are creatures suited to deep darkness. Night hunters. You will see their eyes first, or their slackened jaws, but watch their eyes.  The center head particularly.  Their peripheral vision is hampered by having three heads on a single body.  They have short necks and cannot easily turn those heads for biting.  They do have three sets of wicked teeth, but one heart and one set of lungs to supply their singular body.  Remember it is better to attack the areas where they have one organ or limb as opposed to many.  Their paws and claws are large and hard but blunt from distance traveling over rough ground.  Look for a forepaw that they may be favoring.  An injury that may have gone unnoticed by their keepers.  If they’ve run this far, they may be winded by now.  Their three heads cannot be as clear if they are short of breath.  Their reactions may be slower than usual.  They are sprinters, not long runners, but they compete with the horses carrying their masters for speed.  If the horses run, they run behind, trying to keep up. They prefer a frontal attack, but their front bulk and shoulders holding their heads make them top heavy, so if they throw their weight forward, pivot and lift with a low arc using your blade and you will flip them over, and hack at their soft underbelly.  Their backs are matted with thick fur, and with quick movements they may turn a lightly held blade, so be sure-handed and strike hard and quick, but balanced. Use a two-handed grip on the hilt, if need be, otherwise you will tire quickly.  Dodge and step aside when they rush you.  Slice the hind quarters if you get the chance.”

“Step aside?!”

“Yes.  There is an incline beyond, but they are too big to get more than a few feet in and they will not turn easily.  Stike their back quarters, before they get their heads around.  They are murderous in a frontal assault, but limited in the flanks.  Hold your blade low.  Don’t let them get under it.  Only raise it if they leap, but these are tight quarters.  Use the woods and thickets to your advantage.  They will not relent, even it you injure them, unless it is a grievous wound, so try and make each slash count.  Let your blade bite, but not too deep, or they will twist a stuck blade out of your hand and leave you defenseless.”

I nodded quickly, trying to follow Yasha’s instructions, visualize them, and commit them to memory, but there was no further time to contemplate for Yasha’s chilling words came next.  “Here they come!”

Six baleful eyes piered the darkness ahead, bounding toward us at incredible speed.  Only slightly behind was a second set of sextuplet orbs, undulating above huffing open jaws, clouded with mists over three sets of large yellowed teeth, canine incisors scissoring through the throaty growls.

There were only two of the black, shaggy monsters, but they were as large as grizzly bears, charging at us with savage intent.  A quick glance at Yasha, and I realized why he was shifting his blade from hand to hand, as he focused on the gleaming eyes of the onrushing monsters.  He was trying to determine from which side they might break.  Would they slow and circle, or just run us down?  I had no idea, and no chance to ask.  With a shuddery intake of breath, I realized I had not options, for I was right-handed and had the bloodline sash wrapped around my right wrist.  It the initial strike was hard enough, the bloodline might spare me from loosing my blade, but I would have to bring it back to hand swiftly.

On large black paws, the charging beasts’ footfalls hit the leaf-strewn ground with a crackling punchs.  I side-stepped closer to the chasm ledge to my left and the thinning fencing of the trees there.  I would have to fight right-handed only, and that meant at least one of these dogbeasts must pass between us.  But if one chose to charge Yasha to his right, it would put a pivoting Yasha right in the attack lane of my own animal.  I gasped, suddenly uncertain, as the slavering creatures raced towards us, now neck and neck, their throaty growls rising into a terrible crescendo.

Cross body!  The thought slammed into me, as my heart thrummed.  I cursed myself for being such an idiot.  As a right-handed fighter, I would have to slash at my attacker in a cross body strike.  Meaning my slash would come down to my left.  Yasha and I would serve best moving into the center, forcing the beasts into the trunks and walls of the narrow trail.  He would have to strike across his body to the right, and I would have to strike to the right.  We would have to pivot back to back.

Shhhhh!  CRUNCH!  The monsters were upon us.  Yasha met me in a swift move back to the center, his blade pairing and combing through the thick hair of his assailant.  I kept my sword’s tip down, raising it only seconds before my own monster ploughed into me.

Stunned, I wheeled and pivoted, almost becoming tangled in the twist of my own feet.  My left arm flailed, and I felt the heat of snapping jaws nearly taking off one of my fingers.  The leftward head, barely missed taking a chunk of flesh out of my side torso, but still it struck me with the force of a professional linebacker.  My body followed the motion of the passing beast, and I could smell the stink of its mangey hide, cloying and reeking in the close trail.  My blade had raked through a shagged carpet of thick black hair and evidently skipped pointedly along the beast’s rib cage in passing, wetting the blade with a shallow cut, but wrenching my hand free of the stuttering sword, my finger spattered with a gout of the beast’s hot blood.

Yasha had laid into his attacker with a more sure stroke, cleaving the outer lip of his monster, and it spat bloody froth from its superficial wounding, as it brushed past, forcing both Yasha and I into one another.

“Turn!” Yasha yelled, as we pivoted, folding back towards the monstrous mongrels.  In the forward charge, the two cerberi jostled one another, shouldering into the rising incline, trying to get turned to charge us again.

“Hit their flanks! Hurry!” Yasha commanded, but I hestitated, fearful that another set of attackers might charge our backs if we turned away from the long hollow.  “What about the others?!” I yelled.  “These are enough!  Don’t lose the chance of seconds!  If others come, we will be done.  We cannot fight more.”

A split-second passed, fear threatening me against Yasha’s guidance, but I pushed it aside.  Together, Yasha and I leapt after the back’s of the creatures, slashing savagely.  Our blades met bone and gristle, muscles and hair resisting our feeble attempts.  The monsters lunged against the thick brush, hampered by their fierce desire to turn together, while shoulder pressed into the thickets on either side.  My blade bounced off the creature’s spine, raking hair and bone again, but find a sudden carved purchase into one of the creature’s hind quarters.  A throaty grow and bark belched out of the beast, coming with the seeming punch of a physical blow to my own ears, leaving a ringing noise in them, that I could not shake.  The beast lowered into a crouch, favoring it’s freshly wounded flank, allowing the other beast that Yasha had fought to turn over its lowered body and lunge at me, its flabby ears turned back, its feral, serpentine eyes fixing me with savage hatred.  The crouched beast that I had struck, moved almost as swiftly below the other beast, turning on Yasha, our enemies now changing sides.

My attacker came in higher than I had expected, and I fainted downward, bringing my blade up, in hopes of stabbing into its thick brisket as it charged.  The lower beast, suddenly thrust upward, lifting its partner up into a higher lunge while it came in low.

Quick as a flash, I saw Yasha flick up his blade, catching my higher attacker under the jaw of its center head.  The angle was off, but the blade drove into against the force of the springing monster, driving its length through its throat and through the monster’s think mane.  The force of the lunge and the bulk of the animal in motion, wrenched the now fixed spear, out of Yasha’s hands, leaving him unguarded against the jaws of the beast’s right most head.

The monster’s jaws clamped down hard on Yasha’s warding forearm, sinking its canine incisors deep into his banded flesh, tearing through the thick leather of his forearm vambrace, crushing bone.  Yasha folded to the ground in pain, the monster’s bulk pinning him down to the leafy floor.  The central head gurgled against the blade that had run it through and suddenly went slack.  Mortified, I slashed across my body, carving the cranial brow of the beast’s leftmost head, flicking through a glassy yellow eye, and closing that wicked lamp in a spray of gore.  The lower beast, thrust upward, seeking vengeance, but tumbled it companion over itself, its large black paws raking the air like swiping bear claws, talons extended.

I arced my blade, out of the feral fur, raising it high for a downward blow on the underbeast, forgetting Yasha’s warning to not let the creatures get at my unprotected body.  The jostling and striking, had pumped adrenaline through me, but it effect was waning and I was beginning to tire.

Six feral eyes gleamed up at me, three sets of wicked jaws snapped and slackened with rythmic clacks and wet gurgling noises.  The monster whined in hunger, its deadly glared freezing my blade mid-air.  Its front legs were coiled and tense, ready to spring up like vipers, its monstrous jaws ready to tear out my innerds, and uncoil my intestines in a grisly feast.  The black-spiked irises held me mesmerized, their Medusa gazing turning my arms to stone.

The beast pinning Yasha quaked visibly, its hide moving in pulsing motion, like a blacked field of rustling wheat, pushed against a frenetic turning wind.  It’s jaw had slackened around Yasha’s forearm, leaving its bloody mess revealed in twilight glare.  Yasha’s sword must have grazed the beast’s singular heart, finally quelling the beast, taking it down.

My own nemesis was soon to put me in that dire position, if I did not strike, but fear and uncertainty were dealing me their own treacherous blows.

Zing! Ssssst!  I heard the noise, before seeing the bristling arrow come through my legs and drive deep into the coiled beast coming up under me.  A sharp belch, came from one of the beast’s throats, and I could hear a shout behind me.

“Move out of the way, fool!  I need a clean shot at it!”

Stunned, I back peddled almost falling on my rump.  The beast jerked upward, pitching the remaining weight of its now slack companion off to its side, freeing itself from the restriction of being under it.  The feral creature wagged its ponderous neck, trying to rid itself of the arrow that I could now see had lodged itself between two of its three heads, pinning one of its lips into a sinister sneer.  How deep did it go, I wondered in half a thought, before raising my blade again, only to find it dangled below my wrist from the secured bloodline.  I had not realized it had slipped from my hand, and my grip was still poised as if I still held the hilt.  My fingers were oily with blood.

Between the growls, I heard Yasha moan in pain, gasping as he clenched his lacerated arm with his other hand, trying to keep the broken bones together.  He had rolled free of the slumped mound of cerberi, trying once again to gain his feet.

I swung the loose blade back up into my hand, attempting a better hold, as the remaining creature teetered on its wounded hind leg, but righted itself on its three remaining shanks.  Its middle head glared at me through dull, almost sleepy eyes, still reptilian, but strangely hypnotic.

My legs felt like lead.  The lunging beast had bruised me in passing, and I could feel the tenderness of abraded ribs as I slowly staggered forward.

“I’ll need a clean shot, Brian! Get out of the way.” a voice, low and commanding spoke to my back, but I waved it away.

“This one is mine.  Put your bow away, Maeven!” I groused.

I heard the distinct sound of a bow being pulled taut, but I did not move.

“Put it away!” I said louder.

Silence.

The beast had regained it’s feet.  It sniffed at its dead companion, nipping at it with a sharp bite into its thick fur, attempting to rouse it.

I turned for only a half a second, looking back at Maeven.

She hung from the abseiling rope, her leg wrapped in a j-hook loop, belaying her position for a bow shot, but also readied to rappel with the same.  Her forearm held the grip, an arrow point readied around her hanging thumb, her drawing arm freed by a cross-body wrap of the same belaying rope she hung from.  Shocked, I was amazed that she had made the shot she had into my attacking cerberi.  A second later, my momentary distraction proved nearly fatal.

The cerberus lunged, hitting me hard, driving me backward into a stumble.  I slipped on the loose leaves covering the trail floor, as the beast slammed me down with a monstrous paw, pushing my wind from me.  Yasha’s sword was still held fast in the impaled beast he had managed to kill.  He could provide no aid, and my prone position offered me little chance to manuever my sword.  A dead head dangled over me, its mahoghany tongue lolling from its slackened jaw, slimy drool strings poised to web and wet my strikened upturned face.  The head with the sliced eye, wriggled, puzzled at its in ability to see the periphery of my terror.  The only unscathed head, was intent, however.  Its yellow, bloodstained jaws champing eagerly as they attempted to turn aside the other head from getting a first bite of me.

Sssst!  Sssst!  The sound of two rushing arrows signaled my only chance for hope.

I heard movement through the leaves as Maeven transfered swiftly from the descent rope to the edge of the rock rim.  Zing!  Her nocked arrows fed darts into the bearish hunch on the back of the cerberus that held me pinned.  Feathered shafts bristled from the beast’s thick shoulder, but they did not seem to dissuade the monster from making me its last meal.

Panicked, I flexed the Honor Sword, raising its pointed tip enough to rake into the creature’s softer underbelly.  Mustering what little strength I had left, I thrust the tip into the creature’s inner haunch, driving it through the monster’s muscle and into its inner groin.  The attempt met hard gristle, taut muscle, but the thrust was aided, unwittingly by the monster’s own eagerness to get its third head’s jaws around my throat, as it turned its body into a better biting position.  The restriction of its own bulky neck, and its inability to manuever a clear sideward bite proved useful.  The searing pain, felt by the cerberus as it thrust itself on my angled blade, suddenly flooded through its murderous need, and the beast thrust itself upward, attempting to free itself from the pointed bite into its nether regions.  The backward thrust pushed its heavy paw downward into my chest, emptying my lungs of whatever air remained in them.

Zzzzzat!  Another arrow from Maeven, now poised and closer, drove itself deep into the beast’s throat, causing it to mewl and back away from atop of me.  I choked on musty air as the pressure relented, my vision seeming to almost blacken around the edges.  Dried leaves cast a stale powder into the air.  I could scarcely intake the grit and the stench of the two beasts that reeked of their gluttony for death and carnage.

“Get up!” Maeven ordered, coming behind me and helping lift me to a sitting position.  “We’ve got to get these beasts off the trail.  Drop them into the chasm.”

Yasha struggled to his feet, moving toward the beast he had managed to slay, swaying with each step.

The cerberus that had almost taken me into the hereafter, was fading.  It slumped on the ground, unable to muster any additional strength as its lifeblood ebbed from around the shaft of Maeven’s arrows.  Its reptilian eyes held hatred from me, glaring with a yellowish scintillation.

“You really are a piece of work, Brian,” Maeven growled.  “Jeremiah sure had you pegged years ago.  You are determined to be a lone wolf.  Unable to accept help from anyone.  Especially a woman!”

I sighed, trying to find some strength to respond. “What do you know of it?” I grumbled.

“What has set you against allowing a female to help you?”

I closed my eyes, not wanting to have this conversation.  Especially now.

“I don’t know.  Perhaps because they’ve offered my too many apples in the past.”

“Apples?!” Maeven was startled, as I turned to look up at her.  Suddenly, she seemed so pale and small.  A stricken look of fright seemed to pass over her as she backed up a pace.  Something was happening to her, and I did not know what, but came to my feet turning towards her, unsure if she might collapse or strike out at me.  Her eyes seemed distant and had a far away look in them.

“What is it?” I moved toward her, reaching out a hand.  She started at me for a brief moment, not seeming to recognizing me, and then her clarity returned.

“I saw…a memory from my past,” she looked at me wide-eyed, “A repressed memory…from my once life…in the Surface World.”

“What did you see?” I asked gently.

“A glowing white apple…turning, ” her eyes seemed to see it again.  “Turning…end over end.  There were floating stars all around, sparkling in the air.  A shadow behind it.  A glimpse of a hand…a gold band on its finger…reaching…”  Her hands came to her face and she covered it, her dark raven hair forming a think black veil on either side of them.

Quietly she said, “There was a man in the darkness beside me.  Someone I should know.  Someone I felt strongly about, but I cannot see him.  His face is in shadow.  I can’t see him.  Remember what he looks like.  It is lost behind the sparkling stars, fluttering all around.  Behind the glowing white apple that turns there, behind a silver sheet.  It makes no sense.”

She lowered her hands and pushed her heels into her eyes, and lowered them again, then looked up at me.  “What did you mean by saying that? Too many apples,” she added for clarity.

“I don’t know, exactly.  I guess…”

Before I could finished, she finished for me. “Eve.  That is what you meant, isn’t it?” An accusing tone returning to her voice.

I sighed, offering no further answer.

Maeven moved over to check Yasha.  “Are you alright?  Hurt bad?”

Yasha straightened, holding his forearm, trying to mask the blood seeping between his fingers.  “It is just a scratch, my lady,” he said, attempting to downplay it.

“Let me see it,” she said, holding out her hand to take his arm.

He glanced up and me and then back at Maeven, unclasping his fingers from the wound.  Maeven studied him quietly.  “Move further into the light,” she commanded, brooking no argument.

He obeyed, coming with her to the edge of the ravine, the sunlight now twinkling and weaving its beams through the branches overhead.

It was a bad wound.  The cerberus’s teeth had lacerated his arm, blood pooled and spilled from the deep gashes, where the fangs had sunk through the hard leather into the skin.  A portion of his armbrace hung loosely, from what remained of its tieback laces.

“What were you both thinking,” Maeven asked shaking her head, asking more rhetorically than as a question.  “If you had not been wearing the bracer, you would have lost this hand.  You do realize that, don’t you?”

Yasha winced, as Maeven turned his forearm, giving it a sharp tug to allow the radius and ulna bones to realign.  She eyed him, “We will need to wrap that, and splint it.  Perhaps there is still enough muscle left there to heal.  Perhaps not.  Time will tell.”

“Yes, my lady,” Yasha responded, taking his forearm back into his other hand.

“Never do this again,” she fixed him with a hard stare, a look of contrition shadowing Yasha’s countenance at her chastisement.  “Cerberi are too dangerous to face alone.  You need five warriors to be sure to bring down one.  If that narrow funneled game trail had not held these two together, you both would be dead by now.  This was irresponsible.  I cannot afford to lose Lehi.  We are too few as it is, now.”

“We thought to cover the backtrail.  They were upon us before we could finish.”

“We can afford to lose a secret route, but we cannot afford to lose you two.  Never again, do you understand me?”

“Yes, my lady” Yasha bowed in assent.

She turned, looking at me again.  “Now for you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you,” she fixed me with a hard stare.  “I did not ask to lead these Lehi.  I was pressed into this service.  But as it is now mine to lead, I figure I have a duty to lead them to the best of my ability and understanding, and to do so responsibly as unto service to The One.  Do you understand me?”

“I think so. Yes.” I answered.

“There can be no ‘lone wolfs’ in our company.  We do things together.  As a team. As a unit, watching each others’ backs.”

I nodded quietly.

“As long as you are in our charge, you will do things with us, allowing us to help each other, regardless of our gender.  You were once a great swordsman.  You demonstrated a skill I have never seen matched or equaled in all of my training.  I could never equal you in such with a blade.  But I have become a proficient archer, and I can compete with you in that.  I have honed this skill.  Trained with some of the best these lands have to offer.  My skill is at your service, as I would reasonably expect yours to be at mine, if we are to remain friends.”

I nodded again.

“I don’t know why it is that you seem to have lost the proficiency you once had.  Perhaps you are out of practice.  This is something we hope to rectify once we all get to Azragoth…provided we can still get there.”

I moved towards her, coming further into the filtered light.  “Azragoth.  What is so important about a dead city?”

“Azragoth still holds many secrets.  Some of which are important to the Stone Quests.  Some I am not allowed to speak of.  There is another, who may choose to tell you more, or may not.  It is up to him.  I know the part I was charged to play in keeping one of those secrets, but I am not presently given leave to say more about that.  You will learn in time.  Provided, you stay alive long enough to do so…’lone wolf.'”

*Scene 05* 12:24 (Trailing Tears)

Shimri and his wife Aida looked forlornly at their small log-and-stone cottage farmhouse, realizing that it was time for them to leave it as well.  Ryden held the reins of his horse, and assisted with loading packs of supplies on the mounts both Shimri and Aida would ride and follow him through the hidden path in the forest and find their way to the adjoining backtrail that led to the ghost city of Azragoth.

Hanokh, now gone, had departed as mysteriously as he and Shimri had arrived, traveling through the unseen fabric of space and time that folded around them.  Shimri, terrified by the mystical means of passage, did not relish the thought of ever traveling that way again.  He had kept his eyes closed, as Hanokh had warned him to do, but even in so doing, had sense a frenzy of movement around him, as he felt the ground drop out from under his feet in those few seconds it had taken to regain the familiar feel of terra firma.  Through clenched eyes, he had perceived flashes of white-hot light, that he was sure would have blinded him had he dared opened his eyes in the brief process of transference.

Ryden had asked Hanokh if he could go anywhere in the Mid-World like that, and Hanokh had told him ‘No’.  When asked, ‘Why not?’, Hanokh had only said, “I can only go to a place I have seen, and no further than what I can envision of it.  The Marker has revealed what I believe to be the ‘why’ of it, saying “Plans fail for lack of a vision.*” [*Proverbs 29:18]  “Every movement through the interspaces, for mortals, is an act and response of faith.  Traveling otherwise is dangerous and could result in one getting seized by those rebellious ‘others’ whose time is still yet to come at the end of days.”

Both Ryden and Shimri looked stricken by that cryptic answer, and finally Shimri choked out the words, “If its all the same to you, I’d prefer to travel by foot, horse or wagon from now on.  Once was enough for me.”  Hanokh had nodded sagely, and responded, “Just as you please.”

Now, thinking back, Shimri realized that Hanokh’s way of “walking” was not something he envied.  For now, it served as a caution, to learn to appreciate the time spent on any journey to or from a place, no matter how long it might take getting there.  He put his arm around Aida and squeezed her shoulder gently.

“Do you think we will ever be able to come back here?” she asked, a tremor in her voice.

“I hope so,” he answered, “but one can never be sure.”

“My sister is buried here…” Aida put a hand to her mouth, repressing a sob that threatened to escape her lips.  “The Xarmnians will…”

“Now, now.” Shimri cautioned, “Don’t let’s think about what may be.  Trust that to Providence.  The One knows what is to come, and has promised to be with us in all that is ahead.  Justice will come for what was done to Atayma.  The One holds all records in His keeping and will most assuredly settle accounts for any and all that have suffered at the hands of evildoers.”

“Then why do we resist at all!” Aida said, bitterly.  “If The One brings justice, where is it?!  Why must it come so late, when so many suffer?  Does He not hear us?  Does He really care so much, if all we see are delays?!  What good is justice that comes only after we rot in our graves?!”

Shimri held his wife close as she cried into his shoulder, holding her in a steady embrace.  There were no easy answers to the questions Aida had posed.  Nothing he could say to provide salve to her wounded heart.  The pain was one they and too many others shared.  A feeling that tempted them to despair of all hope.  Sensing the promised, abiding presence of The One and the assurances from the mysterious words of His Marker Stone, seemed all the more difficult in the face of atrocity and the mounting evidence of evil’s pervasive rule, subduing the lands of The Mid-World.  The Stone quests seemed like mere folly.  A faint hope dangled over those doing all of the dying and suffering, wishing for better days.

Was there really a valid promise in a higher realm called Excavatia?  What might that mysterious, undiscovered country offer those who needed relief from their present oppression?  Shimri bowed his head, his lower face burrowing into the sweet fragrance of Aida’s soft hair, as she clung to him still sobbing.  It was so tempting to surrender to the bleakness, and despair any aid to come.  To cling solely to the respite of the moment, as if only it offered a measure of quiet before the coming of the next storm, the next brutal assault, the next time of grieving for another innocent fallen.  The need to do something, anything to resist those who proudly decreed miserly and dealt out death stirred within.  There was, within him, and in Aida, that same need.  A refusal to surrender meekly to tyrants and thugs, seeking to establish their power through erecting a kingdom of fear.

A kingdom of fear… Shimri reflected on those words, sobering to them.  Therein was a choice.  Into which kingdom would they put their trust and be subjected to?  Long ago, both he and Aida had made their choice, when Begglar and Nell had come to Crowe.  They had agreed that Xarmnian rule must be put into check, by any and all means, however small or large the effects of their resistance might be.  Surrendering to evil was evil itself.

To know and percieve love is all its forms, was a sign that mankind was not meant to be ruled by tormentors.  The words of The Ancient Text rose to his thoughts:

“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.“ [1 John 4:18]

Shimri realized, to be channels of that love, it must therefore require its recipients to be enjoined in the “casting out” process.  There was but One capable of empowering those trusting in Him to be used for that purpose, and so surrending to part of those who resist ‘evil’ was service to The One and operating in commitment to ‘Love‘.

“Aida, my Love,” Shimri spoke quietly, gently combing his fingers through her hair, holding her close.  “Do you still love me?”  A barely perceptible nod issued in response as Aida’s sobs began to subside.  “You know I do,” she whispered.  “Did you love your sister?” he asked softly.  She sniffled and nodded again, whispering, “You know I did.  Why do you ask me this?”  Aida lifted her head looking up into her husband’s face through tearful eyes.  With a gentle hand he brushed her forehead, and caressed a falling tear away from her cheek.

“Then you remember why we chose to resist.  Because we have love.  It was our choice to serve its ends.  Love is worth the risks we are taking.”

Additional tears spilled from Aida’s eyes as she looked into the eyes of her husband.  His hand gently brushed the long scar that ran from her forehead and down her cheek, as Aida studied him.  There was no sign of revulsion or hesitancy from him, as his fingers traced the vestigial mark of Xarmnian violence from the terrible night so long ago when she had intervened on behalf of her sister.  Gazing up into the loving man who had become her husband, she had come to understand that the “Love” he spoke of, was, in fact, worthy of whatever they had yet to lose to keep it.  Resolved, and galvanized once again by her husband, she wiped away the tears from her eyes and sniffled, leaning once again into him as she had done for the past thirty-four turnings of years.

“So, it’s to Azragoth, then?” she queried.

“Yes,” he whispered,”For the time being.  Until we can return.”

Ryden had been quiet, allowing both Shimri and Aida to have a moment, but the sun was climbing higher above the trees and time was running short.

“Let’s ride.  We have a ways to go yet, before making Azragoth.”

Shimri helped Aida mount her horse, and he had soon sat astride his own.  They looked wistfully back at their home one last time, then waved to the few men staying behind to guard the shed bound prisoner, before they forded the shallow stream between the tall cypress trees, crossed a hay pasture and headed off into the woods.

Ryden wove a winding trail along no discernable path, through trees and pressing through undergrowth brush, guided by some internal compass that neither he nor Aida had ever sensed.

“Are you sure this is the way?” Aida lamented as brush scratched at her legs and thighs, raking her packs and the flanks of her animal.

Ryden, if he had heard her, did not answer, and she assumed he must be trying to save himself some embarrassment by avoiding the question.

Shimri was none too certain either that Ryden did know where he was going and he wondered how long it might take before the man would finally admit to them if he had gotten them lost.  Ryden seemed to be scanning the area, looking for something.  The forest floor was covered in ferns and matted vines of kudzu that had not fully choked out the ferns from its dapple lighted kingdom.  His horse stepped high, trying to keep its hooves and fetlocks from becoming entangled in the ground foliage.  Suddenly, Ryden’s horse balked and reared, stuttering backward, and shying away from some soft patch under the cover of the ferns.  Aida’s horse turned, avoiding the former horse’s flank, giving it room to turn parallel to them, stopping further movement.

The ferns were brown and wilting, along a wide swath ahead, and Ryden noted that the ground underneath was too soft, and appeared to slope away from where his horse had reared and turned.  He carefully rode parallel to the browning edge of the fern cover, noting that the plants seemed to follow a band of rot and decay that pointed in a northwestward direction.  He looked above and noted that some of the taller trees appeared to be canted towards the deadening foliage, as if the softened earth that fed their root structure had been compromised.  Some of the tall trees leaned across the wilting path, as if in some kind of slow fall that would take a little more time to land horizontally on the other side.  Across the lowering depression, the trees along either side canted inward, as if something below ground had compromised their long standing root system.

“Something is very wrong here,” Ryden muttered aloud, a sense of rising alarm edging his voice.

“I suspected as much!” Aida huffed. “We’re lost!  You’ve forgotten the way.”

Ryden turned back and looked at her and Shimri, shaking his head.

“No.  We’re not lost.  I’ve just found something here that may delay us in getting to Azragoth by nightfall.”

*Scene 06* 17:50 (A Will to Live)

Begglar and Dominic held their horses next to the four ascending ropes, running loose along the sides of the lifting platform they had used to descend to the lower rock shelf under the edge of the upper trail above.  Storm Hawk had ascended the two ropes, armed with her bow and quiver, to see what was causing O’Brian and Yasha to delay their descent.  Shortly after, they all heard the sounds of an attack, and realized that the cerberi had, at last caught up to them, and that the Xarmnian Protectorate would not be that far behind.

The noises from above were vicious and terrible.  The group shrank back from the edge above, ready to mount their horses and run from the loading area, but Maeven/Storm Hawk had not returned to guide them down the underway passages.  Miray wailed and sobbed, crying out for O’Brian, for someone to go help him, and Lindsay and Christie and some of the other girls tried to calm her and keep her quiet.  Begglar and Dominic moved towards swaying ropes uncertain, but determined to climb up after Maeven and offer any assistance that they could.  Four of the other young men offered to join them, their newly held weapons readied and drawn.  Begglar had signaled quiet as he leaned towards the edge peering up along the swaying and shifting ropeline.

“Can you see anything?” the tall blonde named Cheryl asked, still favoring her injured leg as she limped forward.

By then, the noises from above had become muted and dull, lost admid the sounds of the rushing water in the narrow channel chasm below the second edge.

“Dead!  They’re all dead!” a young teenage boy  mewled, trembling and covering his head with his arms, pressing his hands over his ears, his face cast in a grayish palor in the shadow of the overhang. “It’s like before!  They’re killers. Bloody killers!  They ate him!  They ATE him!  And I… I could do nothing about it! NOTHING!”  It was the boy that both Nell and Begglar had had to coax forward on the upper trail, when the distant sounds of the approaching dog beasts had echoed through the narrowing trail above.  Some prior trauma had caused the young man to strongly react to the sounds of the animals, a fear beyond that of what would have been expected, had the beasts been much closer.  Nell had tried to comfort him and encourage him to keep moving forward, but the young lad had merely froze in his terror and gripped the reins of his mount so firmly, that the horse was unable to move forward against the bit, holding him back.  Begglar had had to prise the boy’s fists open and rid him of his terror hold on the reins to get the boy’s horse to move forward to join the others in the group when they had reached the impasse on the trail.

Now the boy sank to the floor of the shelf rocking back and forth, muttering remonstrances to himself, bewailing something no one could understand, occasionally striking his own head with his fists.  His breathes coming heavy and heaving, his brows furrowed as if experiencing an inner physical pain.  Nell knelt beside the lad, a comforting hand on the boy’s shoulder that he did not seem to notice.  Nell’s eyes were closed, but she seemed to sense and feel something coming from the boy that caused her own expression to blanche and then crease with an empathetic grief of her own.  She looked up at Begglar and their eyes met and held each other.  There were tears streaming down Nell’s face for a grief, not coming from her, but for him.  Softly she muttered to Begglar, “It’s back.”  Begglar almost turned away and came toward Nell and the boy, but Nell raised her hand, and shook her head emphatically.  “No!” she said firmly.  “You and Dom go ahead.  See if you can help above.  I’ll see to him.  Get him to where he needs.  Go on, you and the others.”  Some of the girls and women gathered around Nell and the boy, looking fearfully to him and to Begglar and the other men moving towards the ropes.

The dangling ropes were swaying now, and Dominic pointed upward.  “Dah!  Somethin’s comin’ down!”  Suddenly, a dark bulky shadow extended just on the edge of the lower trail, and a rain of grit and gravel peppered the rocky ground.

The men jumped back as a large. black mound of fur and flesh, claws and clacking teeth, thudded to the rock ledge facing them.  The group recoiled, shrieking, shrinking back from the monstrous bulk.  The men with their swords and blades drawn, stuttered back in shock, but to their credit, held their ground.  For a few tense seconds no one moved.  Their breaths coming hard, but their weapons held at the ready await the monsters next move.

“Cerberus!” Begglar announced, noting its lolling tongue, and the glassy, hard look in the unblinking eyes of its three heads.  “This one is dead.”

Unbelieving, the four young men held their battle axes, harberds, and swords warily, looking for any sign of further movement from the wicked looking beast.  A voice from above hailed a warning, causing the men to flinching, thinking that the noise had come from the slouching beast.  A rain of gravel, dust and loose rock, crashed down as the men jumped back and Dominic and Begglar shifted away from the edge.   Another black mass of grizzly fur, muscle and massive talons, slid down the edge of the upper ledge, slumping with a fwump noise, down atop the former beast, causing the three heads below its bulk to rise and huff out whatever residual air remained in the beast’s lungs, causing those yellowed jaws to clack once more in a final, if ineffectual bite.  The weight of the second cerberus, dislodge the first beast from its precarious perch on the edge of the lower ledge and it began to slide backwards over the edge towards the narrow chasm below.  The second beast’s heads were towards the ledge, dangling over the edge.  Its muscled flanks seemed to tighten, and twitch as a final shudder evoked a delayed spasmotic kick that dug into the rock with black claws and tilted its own body downward.  The two beasts disappeared together, falling down over the edge, striking the rock walls as they fell, finally concluding their descent with a loud splash as they hit the rushing stream pouring through the chasm below.

From the overhead ropes, three figures descended, sliding down the absailing ropes with a belaying twist slowing their descent.  It was Maeven, Yasha and O’Brian.  Yasha favored an arm and it was bound in a makeshift splint, wound temporarily with vines.  They swung down, and twisted to the ledge, shifting from the ropes and onto the deck of the rock shelf.

“What are you all waiting for?!” Maeven/Storm Hawk ordered.  “Don’t just stand there gawking. Let’s get going!  The Xarmnian scouts are not far behind, and I expect none of us are anxious to meet them when they arrive.”

⋘ↂↂ⋙

Right away, I noticed the young lad huddled in the back of the carved-out lane, with Nell kneeling by his side.  The boy’s knees were drawn up to his chest with his arms crossed defensively over his ducked head.  He was rocking from side to side, muttering and almost catatonic with terror.

As I approached, I could hear him urgently whispering to himself saying, “They’re dead. They’re dead.  All dead. Dead, dead, dead.”  Nell looked up at me tearfully, her eyes pleading for me to help him somehow.

I knelt down, and stretched out my hand to him, resting it lightly on his shoulders.

“He has been through a lot,” Nell whispered.  “He’s been progressively reacting to the sounds of the dogs.  A terrible memory torments him, and he seems to be back there, reliving it again.”

I placed another hand on his other shoulder attempting to ease him and get him to stop rocking.  “Dead.  Dead. Dead,” he whispered, his head tucked away from seeing me, but I could see his brow furrowed and his eye clenched shut.

“I don’t know his name,” I said to Nell.   She commisserated, adding, “Nor do I.  But I have seen into him, and what he is experiencing again, he cannot hold onto for long, or it will do him great harm.”

“Young man,” I spoke directly to him, trying to break through.  “We are not dead.  We are here with you.  I am alive.  The beasts are dead.  How can I help you?”  The young man was breathing heavily, seeming to hyperventilate, but his rocking seemed to slightly slow at the sound of my voice.

Over my shoulder, I heard Maeven.  “We don’t have time for this!  We’ve got to get moving.  There may be other Cerberi coming, and The Protectorate with them.”  Her voice was urgent, though not unfeeling.  “Can you get him up?  On his feet and into a saddle?  We’ve got to go now!”

“Maeven,” I spoke calmly but authoritatively.  “He is my responsibility, like your Lehi are yours.  If you and the others want to go ahead, do so.  I’m not leaving this one behind.  I’ll not lose another.”

The others moved in gathering around us, and Maeven pursed her lips, wanting to say something, but seemed to restrain herself and then muttered, “Perhaps, I was wrong about you.  Perhaps, your not such a lone wolf afterall.”

I looked back at her briefly, and our eyes met.  I saw a sofening of her countenance, as she nodded a tacit approval.

I turned back to the boy, seeing Begglar move behind Nell, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder.  “Show him,” Begglar said calmly, not to me but to his wife.

I looked questioningly at Begglar then at Nell, her eyes still brimming with empathetic tears.  She sniffed and seemed to gain some degree of courage against her own inner struggle.  Tentatively, she reached out a hand towards me, with her other arm still in a comforting touch on the boy.  “A moment only,” she said to me, “brace yourself.  This is his secret.”

When Nell’s hand touched mine, I was jolted.  The sounds of the river and streams in the chasm below faded and suddenly I was in another place far away, in my mind.  My sights and sensory organs temporarily taken captive, by thoughts and feelings rushing through me that were not mine and not some past experience.  I had the image of a snowy wood.  I saw deep foot tracks in drifts of snow: one larger, one of a much smaller person being partially dragged across the deeper drifts.  I felt the cold bite of winds and the stippling of my flesh as bits of blown ice chips abraded my arms.  I felt myself in a position of being able to look downward, as if I was some bird…  No, I realized.  Not a bird.  A child in a frosted tree, clinging desparately to the trunk, and below…

I gasped–Suddenly, jerked back out of the memory.  My pulse pounding in my ears, stifling my own cry of panic.  Nell had released my hand, but both of us hovered over the terrified boy, a new understanding shocking our hearts in such a way that neither of us could help tears from falling, as we move protectively over the boy.

I realized that what had just happened to me, had happened before.  That same ineffable experience that we had termed: koinonia.  The intense feeling of an empathetic connection so strong that one might share experientially in another’s memory.  The same experience that my group of travelers had encountered when we had approach the window of my old cabin in Basia–where they had experienced my…drowning.

Somehow, Nell had afforded me this insight with this youth, by an intentional touch.  Begglar had said she had the ‘gift’; that she was a…’seer’.  I had not then know what he had meant by that, but I was beginning to, and I knew, time permitting, I would need to unpack this more and talk with her privately.  But, what Maeven had cautioned, was true.  We had to get moving, and we might not be able to mask our leaving down the ‘Under Way’, enough not to go unheard by anyone standing on the ledge and upper forest below.  The sound of the waters would provide some cover, but not enough if the others and this boy had been able to hear our struggles felling the two attacking Cerberi above.  Sounds of hooves on stone, or the neighing and nickering of our horses might carry above to the ears of our hunters.

I looked down and saw that the young boy had stopped rocking and lifted his head, gazing up at me through red-rimmed eyes, blinking in disbelief.  My hand was on his shoulder, my grip having tightened as I ‘sensed’ his terror.  He looked so vulnerable at that moment, and I wanted to hug him, but sensed that there was also a strong guardedness in him that would cause him to be embarrassed by the gesture.  “Are you alright?” I asked foolishly, unable to think of a more appropriate question.  He stared at me for a moment in brief uncomprehension, before his eyes shifted and looked beyond me to the group of others that had encircled us.  I saw his jaw tightened and his face flush crimson, realizing that he had lost himself in those vulnerable moments, and was now the one everyone behind me was looking at.

His eyes shifted back to me and he whispered, “I’m fine now.”  A guarded shield raising up again over his countenance.  He cast me a brief glance of gratitude, before his shield set firmly in its place.  I offered him my right hand and he studied it a moment.  “I can get up by myself,” he muttered.

“I know you can.  But I am here to help you…I want to be your friend…if you’ll permit me.”  Tentatively, he lifted his hand, looking at me unsure, but somehow wanting to be able to trust me.  At last, he gripped my hand and together we rose to a standing position.

Seeing he had an audience now, he set his jaw and turned to me saying, “I’m gonna do what these other jerks have been too afraid to do for some stupid reason.  Alright, Mister O’Brian.  You asked, I’ll tell ya.  My name is Will.  And I’m on board.  I’m done being afraid.”

Begglar chimed in, “We’ve got to be thorough about this, lad.  No nicknames or affectations.  Do you go by William or Bill?”

“No, just Will.”

“What if we just call you Willie?” one of the boys about his age or slightly older laughed and others guffawed.

I had oft seen him and a few of the other boys joking and congregating together before, but this one had never betrayed himself to show any vulnerability…until now.  I suspected that, as we so often do, that weakness might cause him to reinforce that guardedness, and risk isolating himself from any offer of help we might extend to him.  The lad, owning to his moniker of ‘Will’ turned on the boy that had smirked and laughed.  His eyes narrowed and he stepped towards the boy, speaking low and challenging, “It depends.”

“On what?” the other responded, recognizing that the object of his jest wasn’t appreciating his ill attempt at untimely humor.

“On how bad you would like a black eye?!”

Nell broke in, coming to Will’s defense.

“Boys, did you enjoy the breakfast pasties I baked for breakfast at our Inn, t’other morn?”

The young men voiced enthusiastic agreement and a postive consensus.

“Well, if your expectin’ to ‘enjoy’ those again, I suggest you just call him ‘Will’.  Are we clear on that point?”

Contrite, the others nodded assent.

Maeven mounted her horse and turned in the saddle, “If you’re all quite through, may we go now?”

As Nell passed me, on her way to climbing into her own saddle I whispered to her.  “That was quite brilliant the way you handled that, Nell.  I’ve very impressed.”

Nell shrugged and winked at me, “I’ve raised both boy and man,” she inclined her head towards Begglar in a loving jest.  “I’ve long ago learned that the way to a male’s change of attitude and heart runs primarily through his appetites and his stomach.”

We chuckled together as we both swung from stirrup to saddle, following Maeven and the others as we rode under the cut shelf winding our way downward toward the hidden backtrails to Azragoth.

*Scene 07* 17:34 (The Siren)

The Xarmnian Protectorate scout, Bayek, and his five warriors followed the Cerberi from a lagging distance on foot, unable to keep up with the running creatures.  They had heard the commotion of a fierce struggle, down the narrow-forest corridor as the Cerberi attacked the fleeing party ahead.  But Bayek realized there is something strangely missing in the distant struggle–the absence of the sounds of frightened and fighting horses.

When they finally arrive at the spot where the trail seems to have ended, the area is not what they had anticipated.  There was no sign of their beasts.  There was only a game trail that extends upward through a forested slope along the edge.  No signs of the ravaged company.  No severed body parts, nor significant evidence of bloodshed shed.  All that remained of the savage conflict seemed to have been erased, with their quarry nowhere in sight.

“Where are they?!  Where are their horses?!” Bayek demanded of no one in particular, his sword drawn, ready to slash and hack at anything made of flesh.

His men looked from one to the other, unable to answer their chief’s questions.

Behind them, there was a slight rustling noise as something stirred the leaves and forest detritus strewn along the trail.

As one, they turned and fanned out defensively as a lithe and slender figure came into view under the dappled shadows.

“It’s a woman!” one of the men shouted.

It was, in fact, a remarkably beautiful woman.  Her hair was of a golden flax, worn long and to her lower waist.  She was dressed in what seemed a delicate green lace, as if cloaked in an arboreal bower of translucent petals of emerald hue.  Her form was lithe and pliant, yet strong and muscled, unflinching.  Her skin was as fair as alabaster with a scent of balsam and resin about her–an earthy fecundity and an exuding sense of a powerful fertility.  Her presence seemed both out of place and in place within the lonely wood—an incongruent contradiction, not easily explained.

Three of the Xarmnian warriors moved out to the edges, flanking her, one moving passed to slip behind her, while another of Bayek’s men moved towards her.

“Ahhh!  It IS a woman!  And don’t she look sweet and juicy, now?” he grinned.  Turning to her, he began to circle her, his eyes tasting.  Looking her over, up and down.  The woman’s bright green eyes followed his movements around her, barely seeming to turn her head, but still fixed on him when he re-entered her periphery.

“Hello, pretty-pretty,” he leaned in towards her, “Get left behind, did you?  How lucky for us!  I ain’t had a taste in a fortnight, and you look like you’d serve up very well!”

“I only service kings…” her voice was quiet, but seemed resonant, authoritative.  “Are you a king?”

The warrior laughed, and the others chuckled at that.

“We are all of us, kings to you, missy.  Let me introduce ourselves.  I am king Raganor, the one to your left and side is king Chewnek.  ‘Cause he does…chew necks, I mean.  He loves ‘neck meats’.  That one over there, just behind is king Lerk.  He’s a breast man.  Likes his tarts turkey fat.  He’s missing his front teeth, that one. Rotted clean to the gums. Needs his meat softened, but like all of us, we ain’t had but skin-and-bone ones lately.  Village girlies.  Starvin’ ‘em ain’t doin’ ‘em no good for using ‘em.  Wastrels, eh?..But look at you, now.  You’re fed up nice and proper.  Shapes is where they should be.  Flanks as tight as a drum now.”

The woman looked beyond her interrogator, calling himself Raganor, to the one who stood silent and watchful, beyond them.  “Kings these are not.  Does this fool always speak so boldly to those who would easily cut his thinning life cord?”

The one called Raganor drew his blade, waving it beneath the woman’s green eyes.

“When we get done with you, missy.  You’ll not be so pretty as you are now, I think.  You will feel what kings we all are by then, when you feel the hot steel of our scepters.  Let’s bring this impertinent, spritely mare to heel, boys!”

The other Xarmnian warriors began to crowd in, a lascivious gleam in their eyes, licking their mouths nervously, anxiously.  A sneer of cruelty, peeling their bearded lips.

The proud and defiant woman showed no sign of fear, causing them all to hesitate in their coming.  Her confidence in her superiority and ability to defend her chaste posture did not comport with their custom, for she did not avert her eyes from them or shrink away from their reaching hands.  Nor did she shriek or lift an arm to ward them off.

“Wait!” Bayek finally spoke up sharply, staying his warriors from making any further move.

The woman’s eyes shifted to Bayek, and she smiled at him, but the grin carried no gratitude.

“Are you a king too?” she said quietly, “Or do you only desire to be among the ones to get my first kiss?”

With those words spoken, she parted her lips mockingly, and lightly extended her tongue, which suddenly sprouted with tiny thorns and twisting green shoots of curling vines.

“Wood Siren!” Raganor gasped, bolting away from her, backpedaling in fright, almost falling over himself, raising his blade to ward her off any move she might make toward him.  The other men froze and then edged back toward the framing of the narrow corridor, ready to run for their lives should Bayek give the word.

The one whom Raganor had identified as Lerk, spoke up with a slurping slur to his quavering voice, for the unfortunate fact of having no front teeth to curb the spittle out of his words.  “Cheefs Bayekss!  Sirenszz shouldz not beez here!  Zunn uv Xarmz had an arrangement with their Mazzzter.”

Bayek stood tall at the head of the clearing, his own sword drawn and ready, but kept low, so as not to provoke the ‘siren’ until he had a few more answers from her, about her presence here and what she might know of the mysterious disappearance of their quarry.

“My man is correct.  This is Rim Wood.  You were not given rights to the uplands.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed, and, in a few strides, she had moved in an effortless glide to stand before Bayek.

“Our rights extend according to the bargaining conditions.  Violations forfeit those limits!”

“Violations?! What violations?!  Kilrane was granted to The Pan, but no further.  Men still hold to the lands of full-men!  We will not easily relinquish our hard-won holdings to the halves.  We will fight for what is ours!”

“My chief, she is dangerous!  Do not let her come any nearer to you.”

In spite of this warning, the women moved even closer, her eyes daring Bayek to lift his sword to her.

“Be careful, bold talker!  Our eyes see much.  We know by what means you have taken what you now hold.  Do not think that The Pan is truly without sight, though clouds have stricken him.  The former guardians of the woods have abandoned your lands.  They do not serve men such as you.  Your sword is as impotent as you stand helpless before me!”

Bayek pondered her words for a moment, realizing this creature would not be cowed, or impressed upon by either the brute threat of blade or brawn.  Though initially he may have thought this nubile and provocative woman was vulnerable and alone at the moment, he now knew better than to believe the illusion.  There was danger in her direct glare, a hypnotic and alluring sense that there was more of her not yet revealed.  He swallowed and tempered his tone, trying to even it down into a reasoning query.

“You said there was a violation of the land treaty.  What is the nature of this violation, so that I may report it back.  We are unaware of any, that we are party to.”

The woman spoke evenly and calmly, but there was an implicit warning in her tone.

“Are you not aware that there is a digger below this wood?  A root shredder?”

“I was not,” Bayek said, attempting to stifle a rising threat that he did in fact suspect the truth of it.

“There is duplicity in your words.  What else are you hiding from us?”

“A suspicion only, my lady.  Nothing more.  No direct knowledge that I can account for.”

She studied him, her eyes seeming to flense away any veneer of pretense that he might muster to evade her sharp probing.

“And this suspicion?  What can you tell us about it?”

“Our Protectorate has been tracking a deserter and his family from the stone city.  A traitor to the crown and its authority.  A word twister, bending what is our approved dictates and messaging.  A company was sent out ahead of our troop in pursuit.  We have not heard back from them, and we were to join them near the upland village of Crowe.  We discovered a connection to one of our field houses, and one of our troll spies tracked the traitor seeking refuge in an Inn that leads to the old sea road and joins the crossing to the valley of a Xarmnian stables and an old granary upon an escarpment.  The road up the escarpment showed evidence of some large digging creature that may have burrowed into the caves within the granary works.  The road was impassable, so we rode around it to the far stables to exchange our wearied mounts for fresh horses.  We saw no further evidence of the digging beast, but if what you say is true, that underground monster may be pursuing a similar path following the party we are presently hunting.  We suspect that the traitor is now in the company of the innkeeper and his wife, but there is evidence also that others are among their group.  Out Worlders, to be more precise.  We took one of them.  Killed two of their kind.  The presence of outworlders may be what has drawn this ‘digging beast’ here.  They are interlopers.  Their kind let others in, as they once did in days of old.  You well know of what I speak.”

“Then it is true,” the woman looked thoughtful, “The portals have opened once again.  The eyes of the dreaded Stone have awakened.”

“Some say they have never closed,” Bayek offered.

“The mound that man has raised over The Stone, may have only delayed its influence for a time, but Its Presence is felt always.  The ground trembles with Its power.  Rumblings that evade the senses of man, but we have felt them since our beginning.  We know the threat It still holds over us.”

Her bright green eyes again turned to Bayek, fixing him with an unblinking gaze, “Still, the return of outworlders offers us some possibilities.  Ones which I cannot tell.  You have acquitted yourself…for now…full-man, for you have spoken true.  This information is useful.  We will defer and withdraw from the shelf woods, back into Kilrane below.  The winter frost is retreating.  It is almost time for our feedlings.  The digger poses a threat to us, if it is allowed to move down into the valley and into Kilrane, but it appears this is not your doing, but is accounted for by the arrival of outworlders.  You may continue your pursuit of them.  Perhaps if you kill the outworlders, the digger will turn back.  If not, its underground destruction threatens our survival, and we are but few in number.  We will need the breeding time allotted to us by the warming season.  And we would have you deliver a message for us.  As this greening season comes, it is now more urgent for Sonnezum to come and collect his annual golden harvest. …and with that coming, bring us forth his expected offerings, in thrice measure of what he has provided before.  Our seedlings no longer have milk and must rely on his offerings if they are to thrive.”

“Who is this Sonnezum, she is speaking of?” one of the warriors asked.

“Son of Xarm, our king,” Bayek answered in a whisper.

“What gold is offered, Lady of the Wood?”

The woman’s eyes stared fixedly at Bayek, glowing luminous flashes of green flecked and circling her emerald irises as she spoke, “He knows.  He knows.”

“And what price must he pay to obtain this…gold?” Bayek queried.

“Your veins carry it, little man.”

“Deliver our message to Sonnezum, and your present offering will be spared.  But from these others…”

Vines sprouted from the tree canopy above, snaking downward with such speed, the men had no time to react or bring their weapons up to ward off the sudden seizure.  Thick green curling vines with twisting stalks wrapped around the necks of the Bayek’s warriors, jerking them aloft.  Weapons fell and clattered to the forest floor, as the seized grabbed at their chokeholds struggling and frantically wriggling to get free.  With a rush and a concussion of rustling branches clacking and leaves rattling like field-dried husks in a windstorm, the men were jerked up into the treetops, gagging and wheezing.  A spritz of wet cast down from the canopy left Bayek standing alone, feeling the fear of his predicament, standing now in a hot spattering of blood rain.

“I give you leave to pass, messenger.  But you will be watched.  Do not deviate from the path and do not delay.”

Terrified, Bayek trembling asked, “Who am I to s-say you are to him?”

“I am called Briar.  My words are sharp and driven thorns.  He will know me, for I have provided him a service before.  He will remember…what he owes me.”

The woman raised her arms above her head, her fingers sprouting out fibrous tendrils that twisted into cables, extending into the canopy.  Her lithe body rose up dangling from her fibrous arms, now turning in patches of deep, dark green, her sensuous body webbed in coverlet of leaves and curling vines, as she disappeared into the canopy and tree cover.

An ominous voice came from overhead in parting, echoing down the hollow.  “We will meet again in Kilrane, now that it is relinquished to The Pan.  Sonnezum will be expected when the forest is in its greening and our golden spores again rise upon the winds.  Tell him.”