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The Past Comes for Desora ~ The Wyrded Forest ~ Available Now

 

Here's an excerpt from Chapter 6, after Desora has met Captain Braxton and realizes that he knew her before she lost her memory.

From Chapter 6

Silence had fallen, and Desora used it. “Whatever you want matters not. We’ve trouble. Up at the High Meadow, the shepherd and his entire flock were killed. Ripped open and left in tatters. I don’t know what killed them. And we have wyre in our forest.”

“Wyre?” a villager questioned.

“Shapeshifting wolfen,” a guard muttered for answer.

“Not possible,” Skellig said. Desora knew little of the stout man, only that he had more wealth than his fellows.

“I have spoken with one,” she countered. “He threatened me.”

“How did you escape?” That was the blacksmith, brawny as the armored men though he worn a leather apron over his chambray shirt with its rolled sleeves.

“She’s a wizard,” said a bearded guard, his gauntlets removed yet his armored plate still worn.

She frowned at the smile he gave her. Who is he to smile at a stranger? Who is he to answer for me? Yet the blankness in her mind echoed with recognition. He wasn’t familiar to her, and she dared not smile in return. Did he not know wizardry rolled off the enchanted wyre without causing any damage? The Wizard Enclave concealed that knowledge, but warriors with the Fae should know it.

“Lady’s Moon is over two weeks away,” a third villager said. “How can the wyre shift?”

“Because a sorcerer came with the pack,” Desora said. She kept her voice flat, emotionless. The villagers knew her as little as she knew them. Indeed, they knew more of her than she did of them. Granny would have talked to Teyja, and that girl was known for her chatter.

The villagers exclaimed and looked frightened. The guards and the rangers frowned but didn’t scare easily. “Granny,” the blacksmith asked, “is this true? A wyre pack and a sorcerer are in our valley?”

“Merketh—,” Desora started, but Granny gripped her wrist, so she fell silent.

“Desora has never lied to me,” the wise woman said.

“The wyre killed our shepherd?”

“And his flock,” Elder Skellig said. “Newly sheared, thank the Great Laoffe. We didn’t lose that wool. We’ll need to pool our funds to replace the flock.”

As the village men murmured about financial loss, Desora lost patience. “Stop. Stop! Deal with your losses later.”

“Listen to the wizard Adalse,” the captain snapped. “You have greater trouble than coins lost.” He turned to her. “Lady Adalse, what must be done?”

She appreciated his support, but she must correct his delusion that she was a great wizard. Later was the time for that, much later, when she confronted the reason they sought her. “We must bury the boy and burn the animals’ carcasses and discover what monster did this.”

 In the High Meadow

 They buried the boy and his dogs with him, off to the verge of the High Meadow, where the slope began its plunge down the mountain.

Granny had remained in the village, choosing to work with the wolfsbane Desora had gathered to make charms for the villagers.

The village men decried the waste of sheep, no doubt thinking of the mutton that fed no one. Skellig muttered, but the blacksmith said the flock could be built around the handful of sheep still sheltered in the village.

Desora gaped at their lack of grief for the boy. Even the rangers who dug the grave had sorrowed over that young life. Skellig had proposed the burial here, rather than in Mulgrum, and gave as his reason that the boy was orphaned, his family lost two winters ago. Someone in the village had taken him in and given him work, but benevolence hadn’t motivated that unknown person.

All of the villagers argued to recover the mutton.

“Looks like the sheep died last night,” the captain said, refusing the plan. None of these incomers had magic to recognize the spell on the meadow or the wards that Desora had set. “Nor do we know what killed them. They could be infected with disease. Or poison.”

“Lady, can you tell us that the meat is good? So much mutton. We could smoke several portions of meat. It could make the difference between a hale winter or a starving one for many families. We’d take nothing near those wounds. Lady, can we use it?” a villager pleaded.

Before Desora answered, the captain stepped between her and the villagers. “Don’t question the wizard. Best that the whole village doesn’t sicken and die because you didn’t wish to waste meat.”

Arms crossed, the blacksmith stood stalwart even as some of the men muttered disagreement. “Then what should we do with it?”

“Burn it,” she advised.

Two rangers were appointed to build the pyre while others were set to the task of drawing the carcasses to it. Two guards took small axes and chopped at the scrubby trees on the meadow’s edge to provide fuel. The third guard and a ranger watered the horses at the spring pool. With the sun on its descent down the clouds laddering the horizon, Skellig demanded that he and his fellows return before twilight fell. Without waiting for any approval, they hustled through the meadow’s boulder-bounded portal and down the trail. Desora watched them leave. Other than comments and mutters, they hadn’t lifted a hand to bury the boy or deal with the dead flock. At the pace they set, they should pass Granny’s cottage before full dark.

They did not ask her if she was willing to remain with the rangers and guards.

As long as she’d lived at Mulgrum, the villagers still considered her an incomer. They’d never had a chance to question her coming to this last village in the northern reaches of Elsmere. Mulgrum tucked itself in the shelter between the Faeron sept of Bermarck to the west and the Wilding to the east, both heavily forested. A single road from the south entered Mulgrum, and all travel came and left by that narrow road.

As for Weorth, not even mountain goats climbed those rocky heights.

Desora watched the men drag the sheep by their hind legs to the pyre. With most of the sheep hauled close, a couple of men now searched the sweet clover and grass for areas with no blood. When the captain approached her, she caught her breath then half-turned, placing the setting sun behind her. No mundane soldier would intimidate her. Whatever their mission, these men should place no reliance on her wizardry, burnt out six years ago. She had only the Citadel healers’ account that she had wielded great magic against the sorcerers of Frost Clime. Except for the elemental power of Earth, she had nothing that could be construed magic.

Brax

This captain had the look of command, serious, burdened. The wounds on the corpses had increased his frown. His brown hair had started to thin though he seemed near her age. She thought their ages much the same. The sun glinted on reddish strands, and he sported a trimmed beard that covered the lower half of his face. He appeared solid, built to wield a broadsword or a battle axe. Unlike the rangers, with the wiry frames of archers, he and three of the men wore armor with a hauberk under a leather jerkin. How long had this captain and his three men ridden with the rangers?

Their horses were also different, big destriers rather than the long-legged steeds ridden by the rangers, who moved swiftly and rode constantly.

These were soldiers, joined into the ranger troop.

To find her.

She shivered.

“Adalse.” When she frowned, he swept a courtier’s bow, though he wore armor and leathers rather than fine court silks and embroideries. “Lady Adalse de Sora.”

“When you speak with me, you should call me Desora. How did you find me, captain?”

“You hid yourself well. We found no mention of you among the mundane. A Fae trader gave us your direction. No, I’ll use his words. He said a Fae-featured wielder calling herself de Sora had an audience years ago with the Maorn Regnant de Thettis ze Bermarck.”

Fire crackled as the rangers kindled the pyre.

Courtesy had revealed her. Desora had not dared to omit the unwritten protocol to introduce herself to greater users of magic when she entered their territory. She wanted solitude, not a cadre of Fae sentinels at her hermit’s hut. That visit would not have been congenial. The knights of the Kyrgy lord Horst would have menaced her for years had she neglected that simplest courtesy.

“The Bermarck Maorn told you how to find me.”

“After he confirmed our mission, aye, Lady. We stayed longer at his court than I anticipated.” He grinned suddenly, open and friendly with camaradie. “My men had their eyes opened in our days at the Fae court.”

Desora ignored that distracting aside. “Tell me who you are. Are you from Iscleft Citadel?”

“You know us, Lady.”

“I do not,” but she examined him more closely. In the sunless twilight, her blank memory offered that faint echo. Maybe she had known this man, but that past had vanished. Her voice stony, she added, “I do not know the reason you track me. You are from Iscleft Citadel. You claim that I know you. Is this some past acquaintance that we have? You, your men, none of you are in my memory.”

His expression lost its friendliness and became flat, somber. “They said you might not remember.”

“Who are they?”

“The healers. Your fellow wizards who remain at the Citadel, your friends there. One healer, though, he said you might never remember. The rest expected you to have recovered. They’ve expected you for the past five years. They gave me hope.”

“Recovered?” Her laugh was short, a bark of sound with no humor. “I am not ‘recovered,’ captain. I never will be. I have no wizardry. That magic is gone, entirely gone.”

That shocked him. “But they announced you—.”

“Your men, with Granny Riding’s help. Hindrance to me. I have no magic. I have a little power, elemental power. Only of the Earth. Growing things. Sparking life when it’s seeded in the soil.” When he remained bemazed by her words, she said, “You still have not told me who you are. Are these rangers at the Citadel, too?”

“Me, my guards, we were there, but no longer.”

“Are you with Baron Elsmere?”

“We are detached, temporarily. To find you.” His words had the bitter irony of foiled expectations. “The rangers are bound to the Thettis Harte, allied with us by his will. They roan the vale because of the incursions this spring.” When she didn’t respond, he grimaced. “You’ve heard nothing, have you? Of course not. You’ve become a recluse.”

“All Mulgrum is reclusive, captain. What should I have heard? Trolls and ogres attacking as they leave the Wilding? I cannot help you with that. You must address the Kyrgy lord. He rules the Northern Reaches of the Wilding.”

“Trolls, ogres, gobbers. Creatures who’ve never before left any Wilding. The villages and farms have no defense against them.”

“Lord Horst rules the Wilding,” she repeated.

“He is elusive. He has not answered the Thettis Harte’s messenger.”

That shocked her. Did the Fae have difficulty in locating the Kyrgy lord? When she’d sought him to introduce herself, she’d entered the Wilding, played with elemental Earth, and knights had appeared, folding out of the veil to confront her. They’d transported her by the same method to Horst’s forest palace, a vaulted structure that dwarfed its surrounding one-story buildings.

This captain wanted her to enter trouble she could do nothing to help, and they already had a mission before them, to stop the sorcerer and his wyre. Now they also needed to find whatever had killed the shepherd and his flock. If this captain wanted her to introduce him to Lord Horst, she could guarantee nothing. Does he want me to fight magical creatures with power that grows plants and a few healing spells?

“You still have not told me who you are.”

“You do not remember me from the Citadel?”

“No. My apologies. Did we know each other? Were we friends?”

With effort, he wiped away his frown. “Not friends but close. You have indeed forgotten?”

“My wounds were of magic. They tell me that I was unconscious for a week. My recovery took more than a month. You must have been gone during that time.”

“I was gone that entire season. Commander Ferro sent my troop on a mission to the Shining Lands. Only we four returned. By then, you had left, and the commander gave us new orders.” His eyes searched hers. “I am Braxton. Brax. I had the rank of sergeant then. Does my name ring no bell of memory?”

“A sergeant named Braxton. Brax. At Iscleft Citadel. I have no memory from that time, only after I awakened in the Healers’ Hall. You are a stranger telling me this. You could be a liar. How would I know?”

“Gods.” He swiped a hand down his face. Then he looked at the pyre growing with heaped carcasses, smelling of roasted mutton and musty wool. Sparks danced upward in the smoke that boiled off the fire. Twilight had darkened, but the pyre cast enough light to see his consternation. “They didn’t tell me your injury was so serious.”

“If you were at the Citadel—.”

“I was. My men also were, Klemt and Mannon and Challach.”

“When did you leave? How did you leave? The Citadel does not loose its hold so easily.” She remembered that from her petition to leave. The commander had stubbornly refused. Only the healers’ support won her the right to leave … as long as she returned when her magic was restored.

As it never had.

He hefted a broad shoulder in a shrug, and that did toll a memory. “We left three years ago. Took us two years to track word of you. You didn’t leave an easy trail to follow. That Fae trader gave us a direction to pursue. We entered at Skree. That’s south of Bermarck. We took work with the Ysagrael Tiraz. He allowed us to transfer to the Thettis Harte when spring came. We’ve ridden with his rangers since, looking for you.”

“Thettis Harte? He is Maorn Harte.”

“Aye, when you’re outside Faeron judgment, it’s Maorn.”

Outside Fae judgment? Desora didn’t understand, and her head ached as she tried to recall a map of Faeron and the septs and their rulers, the Maorketh and three Maores and three Maorns.

Knowledge she no longer needed or wanted. She didn’t intend to linger at any Fae court. She wanted her isolated hut, simple salves and balms as her work, her concerns with gathering enough wood and preserving enough food to last the brutal winters.

“Why do you seek me now, captain?”

“I wanted to follow you as soon as I returned to the Citadel, but the commander refused. I hoped, every day for three years, that you would come back. When you didn’t, I determined to follow you, no matter how cold the trail. I had to finish my term of service. Klemt and Mannon and Challach agreed to come with me. We got lucky a few times, really lucky with that Fae trader, lucky with the Ysagrael Tiraz endorsing us for the Thettis Harte. I wouldn’t call the trolls and ogres luck, but they enabled our transfer to Thettis Harte. We rode with the rangers for two months with never a word of you. Not until you came into the tavern with that wise woman.”

He’d waited for her. He’d hoped for her return. Then he’d doggedly tracked her. He must have despaired of finding her.

No matter that his search tugged at her heartstrings. Brax had now found her. Yet his search was futile. Desora had no memory of him.

She had no wizardry to help him.

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Mysterious Danger ~ ch.3 of *The Wyrded Forest*

The Wyrded Forest is available now! 

This excerpt is chapter 3 of The Wyrded Forest, book 1 in Spells of Earth, part of the Fae Mark'd World series of fantasy novellas.

~ 3 ~ End of the Road

 Desora waited a long time before she lifted the illusion. Leaves fell from the beech’s canopy, drifting onto her, tangling in her curls, whispering past her face, gracing her shoulders before slipping down her body and dropping to the ground. Even in the Horn Moon’s faint light, she saw the brown edges of the green leaves, the life leeched away when she’d drawn power to work the illusion. She hoped her draw upon the beech hadn’t weakened it.

She waited longer, until the Horn Moon had crossed the sky. Then she left the clearing and returned to the animal trails, veering away from the one that the wyre had taken. She chose a thin path that meandered as it worked into the ridges that rippled before the great uplift that had raised the Claws of Weorth to the sky. Caution walked with her. She dared not believe she had completely escaped the Prime. Impatient by nature, yet would the wyre post a guard to capture her or kill her? They intended to remove her from the Wilding.

Yet why had the Prime not killed her where she stood, wrapped in illusion, drawing elemental Earth to work the spell? Defenseless unless she jerked all life from the trees and bushes and grasses of the clearing. As much as she shuddered against wresting such power from living plants, she would. No wyre would kill her, that she vowed. She’d seen wyres kill. She’d watched as men tended by healers died by wyre bite. To kill wyre, she would kill everything around her.

Even herself.

She increased her pace as she left the beech forest of the Weorth foothills and entered the oak-dominated forest of the vale. Her hut was near, backed against the ridge that bordered the Wilding. The snatch of a sleep, then she must venture to Granny Riding with the news that a wyre pack and a sorcerer had entered the Wilding.

A Wilding ruled by Lord Horst. How would that Dark Fae react to the news? Or did he already know? Had he allied with Frost Clime?

Word must also fly to Maorn Harte, Regnant de Thettis, who ruled Bermarck in Faeron, and to Baron Elsmere who controlled the whole vale, including the isolated north with its sole village of Mulgrum.

The Horn Moon had cast itself behind the mountains of the Wilding when she reached her hut.

She crouched in cover, watching the high grasses of the meadow and the wattle fence that separated her gardens from the forest. Any ambush would come from those places. The Prime had said an attack would come after tonight. Not mercy, that delay that Merketh had spoken against, but to keep—what were his words?—“out of the environs we are warned against.” Places that, on this night, the sorcerer did not want them to enter.

Odd words. She twisted them about as she waited.

Why had the sorcerer restricted his servant wyre? To protect them? What chanced then, that he must so confine them?

Not magic. As enchanted beings, the wyre remained unaffected by any spells of wizardry. Sorcery had power over them only because the wyre bound themselves to sorcerers. Rescind that binding, and both wizardry and sorcery rolled off the wyre.

Only the elemental powers of Earth and Fire, Air and Water—wielded by Fae and Rhoghieri and a few wizards—could attack wyre. When wielders joined the alliance against Frost Clime’s sorcerers and wyre, the Citadel forces began to win.

Burnt-Out Magic

Desora had lost her place in that struggle. She came to understand that only gradually. When she woke in the Healers’ Hall, her magic burnt out, her soul hollowed, and her life still a tenuous thread, she grieved for the wizardry she had lost and couldn’t remember. She clutched to her the futile hope that it would return. It had not. Wielding the elements had replaced the hopelessness and given her direction. Yet her first tries to wield Earth fumbled. She had lost more than wizardry; she lost her understanding of how magic and power worked. The wizard that she was had burnt away to ash. The wielder she became, was still becoming, slowly seeded and unfurled tendrils of power.

The sorcerer didn’t know that. His wyre thought she was still a wizard who also wielded the elements. Her death was intended to be quick, her blood spilled onto the thirsty soil before the Horn Moon set.

Those three wolfen would return to their lair, safe from whatever the sorcerer had loosed into the night. Like Chaos.

Had the sorcerer loosed Chaos?

Chaos was a magical tenet. Wild, devious, capricious, eager to wreak havoc. Controlled by wizardry to intensify spells, loosed by sorcery to any mischief it wanted.

Desora didn’t remember her formal training in wizardry. The Enclave taught nothing of the elements. Her clan, the D’Aulnois, wielded Earth and Air with their magic. Any knowledge they imparted about elemental power would have been an after-thought.

Her time in the Enclave was lost to her, forgotten when the backlash of a spell incinerated magic and mind. Useless to dwell on the Enclave and wizardry and the magic burnt out, the wound cauterized into a scar she’d learned not to rub.

Friends who came to her bedside exclaimed over her great victory, killing several sorcerers in a magical blast.

How could she celebrate what she didn’t remember?

As her body recovered, she understood the burden she’d become. Gathering the meager possessions she’d accumulated at her pallet in Healers’ Hall, she’d crept out of the Citadel and hurried into the Lowlands as if hellhounds pursued her.

She found no place in the larger towns. Traveling continually, she stayed with merchant caravans or families uprooting themselves. A merchanter’s whim found her on the North Road, and she followed it even though he turned back at the last town. Villages became hamlets. Farms grew sparser while the forest grew larger, darker, mysterious. Her old learning remained sparse and lean, mere snippets cut off from main branches, but her understanding of the Earth power grew deeper, richer.

The element responded to her. Desora found profound satisfaction in reaching into the soil and prompting seeds to sprout, increasing a garden’s yield, causing buds to bloom and plants to thrive.

Simple wielding, not great magic that blasted the enemy.

At Mulgrum, the North Road ended. By then, she’d accepted that she had no healing art. Earth responded to her. Since she asked for seclusion, Granny Riding, led her to the hermit’s hut, abandoned when a monk gave it up, the north winters too harsh for his old bones.

Old courtesies, faint yet insistent, demanded that she inform other wielders of her presence. Granny Riding she’d met when she entered Mulgrum. Two great wielders of elements, Fae lucent and dark, ruled the borders with Mulgrum, east and west.

West came first, sunset and the ending of who she once was, so she traveled to Faeron and waited to be met. A Fae sentinel took her to the forest court of Maorn Harte, Regnant de Thettis, ruler of Bermarck and his sept. He greeted her stiffly, unwelcoming after she described the reason for her journey to his court. Ever wary, they both spoke with care, ensuring no vows or obligations passed their lips and bound them.

East and dawning was the Wilding, ruled by Lord Horst, Dark Fae and mysterious. She ventured over the ridge behind her hut and tempted discover by playing with her elemental power. That brought a knight who escorted her to the Kyrgy’s forest palace. With a deep clenching of her elemental power, she stood before the terrifying Kyrgy lord. He stared at her His black eyes were deep as an abyss in his marble-white face. His teeth looked sharp as fangs. He’d braided his silver hair with golden threads, and Fire sparked along the wires. Only his slashed eyebrows, angled cheekbones, and sharp nose and chin betrayed any inherent connection to Lucent Fae.

He looked at Desora’s own sharply angled features and laughed. “Kin! Fae or Kyrgy? Which one, Lady Wizard?”

She didn’t know. She dared not assume or deny. Her skin never took the sun, almost as pale as his. Her black hair rioted with curls, more like a Lucent Fae than a Kyrgy with his straight fall of silver hair.

Desora didn’t breathe freely until she left his forest palace and walked again in the sunlight shafting through oak leaves.

Fae or Kyrgy, they left her alone, and she left them alone, never again venturing into their realms unless she collected special herbs for Granny Riding. She’d spent her years of isolation delving into the depths of Earth. It had no limits, even in winter when the land slept. Burrowed underneath the snow to touch the frozen ground, she could still draw power from it.

Dawn had crept into the sky as those memories caught her.

Desora saw no wyre stirring in the greeny verge of the clearing. She wanted to link with her wards, but the grounds around her wattle fence were barren of life. She hadn’t intended that drained void when she built the wards, but she maintained its protection. Any seekers through the forest missed her.

Merketh hadn’t, but he knew her. Woodsman, he’d worked these trees when first she came to Mulgrum. Only in the past two years had he gone across the vale to the forest bordering Bermarck. He had known how to find her by mundane means rather than magical scent. In that way he served his Prime and the sorcerer.

No one had disturbed the hermit’s hut. She glanced around and sighed with weariness. Yet she had to reach the village. Not knowing how long she would be away, she released her hens to scratch in the gardens. She checked her scrip and stuffed it with foodstuffs that wouldn’t preserve and healing simples that Granny Riding had requested. She brewed tea and scrambled eggs.

Her hike to Mulgrum would take a few hours. She weighed sleep against her need to spread word about the wolfen and their master sorcerer. Then she packed her last necessities and set off, renewing the wards once she passed the twig gate.

The journey would cross the undulating slopes of the long ridge that deterred casual visitors. She would break her trek at the High Meadow. At the meadow’s lower end, a spring formed a crystal-clear pool, the overflow of icy water cascading over rocks to drop like a bridal veil to another pool far below. There would be a young shepherd with his recently shorn flock. She would break bread with him. He might share recent news of the village.

Desora saw nothing worrisome as she climbed the ridge. Brave squirrels chittered at her. Birds sang in the canopy. Deer grazed along the trail and moved off slowly as she neared.

The crest with its radiant sunshine heralded summer heat, so she did not pause but began her descent, steeper this side and working downward in switchbacks, irritating but necessary.

An old rockfall marked the High Meadow’s entrance. One boulder canted steeply across two, its edges weathered by time and rain to softness. The two uprights on which it rested were sharp-edged, as if cut, and formed a narrow passage. Rocks too large to move had packed around the old fall, and tinier hand-sized rocks and pebbles had filled the crevices. Riders must lean far forward to pass through singly.

The air cooled as she passed through the portal. The large capstone blocked the hot sunlight.

Lack of sound struck her first. No birds sang, and the birds loved the High Meadow.

Then she saw white mounds scattered in the sweet clover and grass. Unmoving white mounds. Fleecy.

Only they were no longer solely white. Red stained the fleeces.

Something had attacked the sheep.

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Wolfen Danger ~ free glimpse of ch. 2 in *The Wyrded Forest*

 

Available Now!

The Wyrded Forest is bk. 1 of Spells of Earth, part of the Fae Mark'd World series of fantasy novellas.

This excerpt is chapter 2: the wolfen danger that our protagonist Desora faces unexpectedly.

~ 2 ~ Threat ~

 The wolf’s howl broke the night’s peace.

Desora froze like a hunted rabbit then hastened to harvest the remaining growth of wolfsbane.

Had Merketh returned and tracked her from the hermit’s hut? Or did another of his pack track her?

Or was it a mundane wolf, just as perilous to her survival but for a different reason?

She dropped the last leaves and stems onto her gathering cloth then folded in the corners before rolling it loosely to fit into her scrip. She could not outrun any wolfen. Confuse the trail, that she could do. She didn’t want a battle.

That howl had to be a mundane wolf, not wyre shifted out of Moon-Turn. Only the magic of the Turn, whether the bright and full moons of the three Lady’s Nights or the three dark and eerie Dragon Nights, those six nights in each month powered the shift for the wyre.

Yet two more howls lifted, coming from two different directions. Wyre on her trail, not mere wolves. No matter what she wanted to believe.

Wyre shifted out of Moon-Turn means a sorcerer magicked their change.

A sorcerer, in the Lowlands, not pent up at Iscleft Citadel.

Desora cast aside that worry to focus on staying alive. Why did Merketh come to my hut? The only answer was to remove her as a threat to the pack. The Bite of transformation only worked at a Lady’s Moon, not even a Dragon’s Moon. He couldn’t want to convert her to his cause and his kind. He came to kill. Only the wards saved me.

The patch of wolfsbane, shorn but not uprooted, would serve a second time.

The magical herb grew thickly here among the old-growth beeches here at the base of the Claws of Weorth. Those stony spires reached high, higher, as if they tore at the very heavens. The rocky spires dwarfed the stand of ancient trees. Wolfsbane crawled over the exposed roots of the central beech. It clustered deepest and greenest in the embrace of its roots, seeming to sprout from the giant tree.

She heard snuffling, a few chuffed barks. No time, no time, her heart pounded. Desora planted herself in that thick patch of wolfsbane, kneeling on the ground, braced on her toes and heels, her fingers threaded through the shorn growth as she chanted wards. When she felt the links snap together, she drew on Earth again, to work an illusion of leaves and twigs, appearing as a growing laurel at the base of the old beech.

In her mind she saw the illusion. She had only to maintain it.

And one more enchantment.

The wyre tracked her by smell. She asked the woodbine to bloom, asked the brambles to overripen the berries, called on every green plant in the clearing to emit an odor. In this little spot, even the greatest of wolf noses wouldn’t smell her.

Then she buried her fingers in the soil and pushed those mingled odors into her backtrail, far along the ground, through the rolling foothills, to the rushing creek beyond the first ridge, the border between the forest and from the tended fields around Mulgrum. The power stopped at the creek.

Sweat beaded her brow. Her limbs trembled. Her heart raced. Water created a dangerous limit for the Earth power. The element ran along the water’s edge, strong as the rocks, deep as the soil, rich with the potential that nurtured plants. She’d never pushed Earth to access its endurance of rocks, the deepness of its soil, and its sustaining power of life. Desora kept her fingers buried in the soil, but she ceased the spell of confusion. She focused on the illusion. Laurel. Deep green leaves. Waxy leaves. Burgeoning to flower. Shaded by the surrounding beeches that mothered the lone bush.

A wolf bounded into the open circle, not large enough to be called a glade. His fur glistened, catching the faint light of the Horn Moon and the countless stars. He circled the open space.

Another wolf rushed in. It saw the first and crept low to the ground, whining as the first wolf neared. As the second passed, Desora saw its eyes, rimmed with green. Unnatural. Bespelled. Sorcery.

She studied the first but saw no eldritch green. Alpha then, Prime as the wyre called their leader. Prime drew on the pack’s collective magic and could shift anytime.

How do I know that? What is this memory? It seemed to have no connection, out of place and barren of time, floating unanchored in her mind.

A pack in Elsmere, with a sorcerer.

A third wolf leaped in and dashed to greet the Prime, bowing a little. That was not natural wolf behavior. His eyes glowed with sorcered green.

She had heard three howls from three directions. Here were three wyre. Was that all in this pack? Or had only three tracked her?

Menace

The Prime’s fur rippled. His frame shifted. Her head ached as she watched the shift. She closed her eyes, counted ten, then opened them to the third wyre shifting. The second remained on the ground, unchanged, head up now but ears back, fangs bared. Eldritch green tinged those sharp teeth.

The Prime knelt on the ground, his naked frame powerful even in man-shape. His hair was dark, cropped close to his skull, like a warrior who wore a helm. His eyes looked like tempered steel, unrimmed by eldritch sorcery.

The third wyre struggled with his shift. His body wavered between fur and skin. His size stretched then scrunched, twisted and contorted.

“Shift, Merketh,” the Prime ordered. On the command the wyre completed the transition to man. He did not kneel on one knee as the Prime did but rested on both knees, bowed forward as if his gut ached. Merketh’s frame was slighter than the Prime. The nudity of the two shifted wyre embarrassed Desora, but she dared not look away.

Merketh had returned from the west border to which she’d sent him. He must be recently changed, adding to the pack’s numbers at the last Lady’s Moon. Did anyone in Mulgrum know what had happened to him?

The second wyre remained unshifted. The Prime had only called for Merketh to shift.

“Where is she?”

“I do not know, Prime. The trail led here until I lost it.”

They had tracked her. Desora had worked the confusion spell just in time.

“Where is here?”

“That I also do not know. She knows I am wyre now, Prime. The wizard cast a spell on me. Sent me to the border with Bermarck.”

The Prime snarled, baring his teeth as if he were still wolf. “Wizard spell doesn’t work on us. She must have used elemental power. How did the spell affect you?”

“It hit like a gale storm. Compelled me to run to the border. I’m lucky that no Fae sentinels saw me.”

“What were you doing before she laid the spell upon you?”

The Prime spoke well for a wyre. From her last days at Iscleft Citadel, after she woke from her injury, Desora knew that wyre had been captured. Many were limited in words, a bare few able to speak beyond orders and pack roles, understanding more than they could say. Among the captured were larger wyre, more silver in fur, more robust in man-shape. Still assigned to a cot in the Healers’ Hall, Desora heard the healers marvel at these wyre, larger in frame, trickier to keep imprisoned, more learned than the lesser wyre.

This Prime belonged to those larger wyre, called the Greater by the healers. They fought longest against the iron bars of their prison cell. More than one healer gossiped that those wolfen came from the Northern Waste, only recently allied to Frost Clime. The majority, limited in speech, were said to be sorcerers’ slaves.

Fighting her private battle with magic that no longer came to her, as if iron bars kept her from freely accessing it, Desora had sympathized with the captive wyre.

Then all of the wyre broke free of the dungeons and attacked the Citadel defenders. The Greater wyre had shown mercy to the women and children lodged there. The lesser ones attacked blindly until driven off by the Greater. A few had broken into the Healers’ Hall and attacked, tearing into wounded soldiers who could not defend themselves. An elemental-wielding Rhoghieri drove them out.

Bloody sheets were drawn up to cover the faces of the men who died. Fae came later, to tend those bitten, easing their deaths.

She shuddered, remembering that attack.

This Prime must be from the Northern Wastes, allied rather than enslave to the sorcerers. He would be ruthless but not merciless, a devious enemy but not a ravening horror.

Safety? Or the Illusion of Safety?

“What were you doing?” the Prime asked again. Caught in the nightmarish memory, Desora hadn’t heard Merketh’s response. Whatever he’d said, he’d frustrated the Prime. “Tell me exactly. Standing where? Doing what?”

“I was standing outside her gate. Doing nothing, really. I couldn’t open the gate.”

“The gate wouldn’t open?”

“I couldn’t even lift that leather loop she uses to close it. The wood felt like iron, Prime Serron. I could shake it, but I couldn’t open it or break it.”

“Wards, strong ones. Were you touching the gate when the compulsion struck you?”

“I was still trying to shake it open.”

“Ah. Her spell struck through the wards. I have sniffed those wards. Not magic, not wizardry. Elemental wrought, powered by the trees and bushes that are a part of the fence. You are wick,” he smiled at Merketh before he turned to the other wolfen, silently watching, “which you must learn, Herlig. Elemental Earth, since the power of growing things rooted in the soil gives energy to her enchantments.” Then the Prime turned about, peering around the clearing then scanning the moon-silvered rock towers that ripped the sky vault. “Why did this Desora come here, to this place?”

“We cannot be certain that she did, Prime. She confused her trail.”

The alpha walked to the limits of the clearing and began a slow circuit, examining the ground before each step. “No. Here she came. I tracked her very close to this clearing before she wrought her spell. She left the deer trail when she climbed the first ridge. Her way came straight here, by an inward guide rather than a path.”

“Maybe the Claws guided her, Prime. We are beneath the center claw of the east arc.”

The Prime walked along the trees backed against the sheer rocky face of the Claws of Weorth. As he passed from one beech to the next, Desora pressed against the tree trunk. She wished to melt into it, like a nymph of legend. The bark roughed her hands. She imagined it closing over her, the bark adhering to her back, catching in her curly hair. The heart of the beech opened and welcomed her ….

No. She must maintain the illusion. She was a laurel, growing against the trunk, surrounding its front. Her many branches twined closely together, creating an impenetrable mass. This Prime had to believe the illusion. If he did, he would step away from the beech, around the entangled laurel. Then he would step back to the clearing’s edge, ringed by the towering beech giants. She dared not breathe. Would the illusion hold for scent as well as eye?

He smelled of wet fur and sweaty man. If she lifted a hand, she could brush his bare skin—but that meant a laurel would move, and this night there was no vagrant breeze to stir the trees.

Then he passed, and she breathed out and in.

“I see nothing to draw her here. Could she have thought to climb up and enter the Claws?”

“No one can scale them. They are impassable. Look you, how would we enter? The base towers like the beeches. The spires cleave apart far above us. Not even the rock trolls attempt it. The whole north of the valley butts against this cliff face.”

“Why did she come here?”

“There’s no reason.”

“No wielder acts without reason.” He had completed his circuit and returned to the clearing’s center. Stopping beside the unshifted wyre, he crouched and ran fingers through the grey wyre’s fur. “We waste time here. Whatever she came to retrieve, she has gone now. That spell hid her departure from us.”

“What next, Prime Serron?”

“We rejoin the pack and wait in our lair for Master’s orders. He was not well pleased that we explored beyond his limits on this night.”

“And Desora? We need to be rid of her. I will run to her hut and wait for her. I’ll kill her, as the sorcerer ordered.”

“Her hut is inside the environs we are warned against.”

“What is the sorcerer doing, that he needs us so far away?”

“Merketh,” the Prime snapped, “we do not question our master sorcerer. He orders us to do or not to do, and we obey.”

“And leave Desora untouched? I wanted me some magic to drink. Aigneis says it’s a rich and heady drink, better than man, much better than deer. Aignais says wizard is better than wine.”

“You will have your taste of powered blood, but not tonight.” He sounded indulgent, a leader granting a longed-for boon. “You will discover that elemental wielders taste just as rich as wizards. We leave now. Back to the Wilding.”

“I can take her tomorrow.”

The indulgence flashed into severity. “Soon. Do not act without my specific order. You answer to me, Merketh. And you, Herlig.” He straightened and bared his teeth, man snarling like wolf. “When I say this Desora is to die, only then will she die. Hear me and obey.”

The young man and the unshifted wolf whined at that command. Even Desora, hidden against the sheltering tree, felt the air’s heavy oppression.

Merketh gasped then panted, the Prime’s coercion making the simplest breath difficult. He sank to his knees then bent forward, hands to the ground, head to his hands.”As you will, I obey.”

“Return to wolf.”

Again the Prime’s transition was faster than Merketh’s. His wolf dwarfed the other two. Even in the Horn Moon’s faint light, Desora marked the silver slash off-center of his muzzle. He paced as Merketh struggled through his shift. Was the young man’s newness as a wyre the reason for his difficulties?

Then three wolves stood in the clearing, the largest looking around, sniffing the air with the sensitive wolf nose. When Merketh straightened from the ground, rubbing muzzles with Herlig, the Prime stalked past them, toward the trail into the clearing. As they turned to him, he leaped onto the trail and began running. They hastened to follow.

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Free Glimpse ~ ch. 1 of *The Wyrded Forest*

 

On Preorder for September 30!

Meet the protagonist Desora in chapter 1 of The Wyrded Forest, 

book 1 of Spells of Earth, part of the Fae Mark'd World series.

~ 1 ~ Wolfsbane ~

 She dreamt of wolfsbane. She dreamt of slavering fangs, green-tinged with sorcery. She dreamt of claws dripping blood and bodies changed into the wolfen. Into the shape-shifting wyre.

As wizard, possessed of the magic that powered wrought spells, Desora would have ignored the dream. Reduced to elemental power, she dared not ignore it.

On waking, Desora set about her normal day for Midsummer. Preserved fruit to store in her root cellar, smoked meat to remove from the rock stack, balms and salves to make from dried herbs, those tasks consumed the morning and well into the afternoon. She didn’t rush. The best time to collect wolfsbane was the light of the Horn Moon, the sliver of silver that rode high in the starry night. To dream of wolfsbane at gathering time, that also appeared to be a sign. Tasks done, she began preparing for the journey. The closest patch of wolfsbane that she’d found grew thickly at the forested base of the Claws of Weorth, the abrupt uplift of the steep northern mountains.

Early afternoon, Desora readied her scrip and her pack before going to work in the pottager area of her garden. The beans wanted to run themselves up and over to the wattle fence that surrounded her hut and its gardens. She had to tease them out of their tangle and onto a trellis, slow work in the heat of the day. Hidden behind the plants, she heard someone shake the twig gate of her fence. She peeked through the leaves.

Visitors came rarely this far into the forest between the Lowlands and the Wilding. The only person who deliberately sought Desora’s company was Granny Riding, healer for the village of Mulgrum. Her visitors numbered less than a hand over a year. Her hut was far off the main trail that ventured into the Wilding, and only foresters and hunters dared there. They treated her with respect, for she had the undeserved name of healer and used it.

Six years ago, Granny Riding had led her to this hut. It served her well with the isolation she craved. To have a visitor, come so rarely, was a sign as significant as the dream of wolfsbane with the Horn Moon rising in the sky.

“Ho the hut!” a man shouted.

Desora straightened from behind the bushy beans and picked up her trug, partly filled with the day’s harvest. She hadn’t heard his approach. She did not know when the birds, her usual sentinels, had fallen quiet. She stepped onto the path along the row of trellised beans. “Greetings, good sir.”

The young man flashed a grin. He was healthy and handsome. Dark hair fell across his brow and curled at his shoulders. His eyes were bright and clear as the sky overhead. She recognized him as a forester. Woodwork had built his muscles and trimmed his frame. No doubt the women panted after him. With his shock of brown hair and sparkling eyes, Desora found him impressive but not alluring.

“Lady Desora, greetings.” He shook her gate. “Well met.”

She came onto the path between her gardens. “You are from Mulgrum.”

“I am, indeed.”

She wondered at his purpose here. “Has Granny Riding a need?” for the granny was wise woman, healer and dame of magic, not great enough for wizardry but more than enough to heal most ills that came to remote villages and farms. Desora kept the wise woman supplied with curatives and wound-heal.

A frown crossed his face at her mention of the healer, but it left as quickly as it had come. “Not a need she mentioned.”

That frown—did he not like Granny Riding? Desora would visit her on a market day, to stock her needs while Granny’s apprentice ran her errands into the village. Most of Mulgrum had likely forgotten her existence.

“My apologies,” she said now. “I do not remember your name.”

“Merketh.” He gave another hard shake to her twig gate, action she found troubling.

For she’d warded the wattle fence and its gate, warded against magical creatures with the Earth power that was left to her after her magic had burnt out. Six years renewing her wards at every moon change had given them the strength of stone against the magical. Gobbers had tested it, a rock troll once, but not an ogre. And now a wyre tried to cross her wards … and failed.

For all his mundane appearance, he must be magical.

“The Merketh that I have heard of is a woodcutter on the Bermarck side of Mulgrum.”

“You know me,” and he flashed that grin of good humor.

“I have heard of you,” she said slowly, watching her words with caution. “You are far from your work,” for the Wilding that backed her hut was on the opposite side of the valley from the border with Bermarck, a sept of Faeron. The magical could not work near that border, for Fae sentinels would come to discover any power that neared their border.

Magical, for he could not cross her wards. Magical now but not before, for he had worked a border of Faeron. Magical and no longer mundane meant changed.

Transformed.

She knew now the reason that she’d dreamed of wolfsbane.

Threat

When had he received the Bite that transformed him from man to wyre? The three Lady Moons and the three Dragon Moons were the only time she knew that wyre could change the mundane. Wyvern Moon was ten days past. Maiden Moon was more than twice as many days ahead.

How long would Merketh have attempted to disguise what he was?

Where was the rest of his pack?

Merketh placed both hands on the gate. He leaned his weight backwards. The gate ungiving, he leaned his weight into it. “Lady, will you grant me entrance?”

“My wards guard against the magical.”

His charming smile died. He leaned farther over the gate. “Desora, Desora, Desora.”

How long would he remain, unable to cross her wards, unable to tempt her to him or to release the magical barrier? “You cannot enchant me with that name, Merketh. Desora is not my true name. When were you changed?”

He growled. Had it been a Moon-Turn, he would have changed, ripped her to shreds, and feasted on her blood. “You should fear me,” he snarled. “Fear what I now am.”

“I do, for the man you were is lost in the wyre you are.”

“I am better now. Stronger.”

“Controlled by the Moons,” she retorted.

“Not so,” he countered.

She didn’t understand what he meant. Instead, she knelt and reached to the vegetables in the garden trug. She palmed the onions and potatoes intended for tomorrow’s stew, splaying her fingers to touch the carrots. Then she drew the Earth out of them. “Merketh, Merketh, Merketh,” she chanted, using his attempted spell on him. The true-name spell should work on a man born as a mundane villager. “Go away, far from here, miles and miles from here. Run until the wind rasps in your throat, and drink from the river flowing out of Bermarck.”

The power burst out of the vegetables, withering them under her hands as the enchantment drank their life force. Desora flung the power into her wards. It surged along the wattle fence to the twig gate and into Merketh’s hands, still gripping the gate.

The enchantment shuddered into him. She saw it wrack his body. When his eyes unfocused, she knew the spell gripped him.

He released the gate and fell back. Without looking at her, he turned and walked away. In three strides his pace increased. At the edge of the clearing that fronted her hut, he began running.

He would not stop until he reached the river. Desora no longer wielded magic, but elemental Earth ran strongly, and she’d had six years to practice with that power.

Defense

She stared after Merketh, long after he’d disappeared into the forest.

Here this isolated valley of the Northern Reaches, stopped by the Claws of Weorth, was long and narrow. The lower vale had a string of lakes down its center, but the upper water courses were shallow and easily forded. Running at a steady pace for a couple of hours—which a hale wyre could maintain for twice as long as a hale man—Merketh would leave this forest and cross the valley to reach the Faer River out of Bermarck. The enchantment would hold him there until sunset.

And then what?

Desora did not want to fight him. Fighting meant killing. No longer wizard, only a wielder of elemental power, she could kill wyre as wizardry could not. She hadn’t killed, though, since she’d left Iscleft Citadel.

Were she not to kill him, he would seek to kill her.

A mundane might give up the battle, having lost, having faced the humiliation of an enchantment that controlled him.

A wyre would not.

Her use of enchantment would motivate him even more. He’d expected a wizard, and wizards had not magic against the wyre. He encountered a wielder of elemental power.

Would he bring his pack into this battle between them?

Two, three wyre she might successfully fight. Not a pack of thirteen.

What was a pack doing this far into Elsmere? How had the pack gotten past the narrow passage guarded by Iscleft Citadel?

She worried over those questions as she added a longer knife to the sheath on the belt slung about her hips, then she traded her garden clogs for sturdy walking boots. Reaching the patch of wolfsbane would take the same time as Merketh’s run to the river. She would harvest the entire patch as soon as the Horn Moon cleared the horizon. Leaves and flowers, but not the roots.

With wyre come to the valley, every household of Mulgrum would need wolfsbane and a warding charm.

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