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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 ~
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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