Authors: Murray J. D. Leeder
Snorting, Gan twisted the axe sideways. The blade caught the light and flashed directly into the werebat’s eyes. Halzoon’s hands went up instinctively to cover his eyes, and Gan delivered a quick blow to Halzoon’s knee. With a yelp of pain, Halzoon fell forward. Gan sank the axe into his back. The werebat twitched a moment then expired, lying face down on the rock.
“Gan?” demanded Royce. “Why did you do that?”
“He was disloyal,” the hobgoblin said calmly as he pulled the axe free and began cleaning the blade.
“It’s the axe.” Royce turned to Ardeth, while casting a nervous glance at Gan. “It has a strange effect on him. Its influence is probably getting stronger as we approach the Sanctuary. Ardeth, did you mean to do this?”
“What do you mean?” Ardeth demanded.
“You deprived us of a fighter. I think you know the effect that axe has on Gan. Even if Halzoon didn’t want to fight with us, he certainly did not deserve death,” said Royce. “Only the vaguest suggestion of disloyalty, and Gan killed our guide.”
“Then we’d best get there quickly, lest Gan hack the two of you into little pieces,” said Ardeth with a self-satisfied smile. “Wouldn’t you agree?” Hopping over the dead werebat, she led them down the mountain path.
There was no mistaking the phandar trees that they sought. The group could see their destination long before they reached it. Each tree was taller than a temple spire, far larger than phandars usually grew, with huge masses of tangled branches and green leaves paling to golden. The lonely phandar trees were indeed growing in a triangle straddling the deep blue Heartblood River, two on one side and another opposite. They delineated a large area, perhaps not the size of Llorkh, but certainly equal to a smaller town. No trees or features of any kind lay within their boundary. Between them, the Heartblood flowed down from the mountains and into the forest. Somewhere on its path, it entered the Dire Wood and emerged with a red tint. But here, it was pure, cold, and fresh.
“In Vision’s shadow,” Ardeth muttered as they looked down on it from their high pass. The sun was setting on the opposite side of the mountain, covering the whole valley in darkness. “Just as Geildarr’s divination said. We have found the Sanctuary.”
“Something is here,” said Gan. “I can feel it. We are very near now.”
The light was beginning to fade as they reached the foot of the mountain. Gan’s hands clenched the axe so tightly that his knuckles were pale. A steely single-mindedness shone in his eyes. He did not shift his focus off the triangle of land below them.
“What do you feel, Gan?” asked Gunton. “What’s it like?”
“Like I’m going home,” Gan answered. Without warning he stood up straight and spoke in a voice not his own. Clutching the axe to his breast, he rattled off several sentences.
“What was that?” asked Royce. “Gan, did you understand that?”
The hobgoblin dropped the axe, which clanked to the ground before him. He was white as a ghost, and he could only shake his head in the negative.
“I think I recognize some of the words,” said Gunton. “I think it was the Netherese tongue. My spoken Netherese isn’t as strong as…”
“What did it mean?” demanded Ardeth.
“Like I said, I only know a few words,” Gunton answered. “But I’m fairly sure it was some sort of warning. I wonder if it is an automated ward, or if there’s someone or something alive in there.” He pointed down at the area between the phandars.
Ardeth put her hand on Gan’s side. “Gan,” she asked. “Can you continue?”
The hobgoblin snorted and bent over to pick up the axe. He raised it high and bolted down the mountainside in the direction of the Sanctuary, so fast that the others could barely keep up.
Like an arrow from on high, an image struck Vell’s brain and split it open. Amid the peacefully swaying trees, the Star Mounts closer than ever, Vell dropped to his knees and let out an agonized scream.
The others rushed to him, but they could do nothing to console him.
“What are you feeling?” asked Kellin, kneeling before him.
“There are so many of us,” he said, staring right through her face as if she weren’t there. “So many in one place, and so close. We are afraid. They are coming close. We will try to trample them when they arrive. The Shepherds have willed it.”
“What do you see, Vell?” asked Thluna.
“A marsh. Trees. And a red light.” He spoke quickly, fervently. “So many perspectives at once. Too many!” he cried, clasping his temples. He blinked the vision away, and his eyes locked with Kellin’s. “Make it go away,” he whispered. “Help me.”
“He must be seeing through the eyes of the behemoths,” Thanar said. “He said ‘we’he thinks he’s one of them.”
“We should be moving,” said Thluna. “If it’s so close he can feel them, it can’t be far. We need to get there ahead of this threat.”
“Vell,” said Kellin. “What else can you tell us? Where is it?”
Vell pointed in the distance, directly at one of the Star Mounts. “There. On the other side of that mountain.”
“It will take us days to reach it,” said Rask.
“Vell,” said Thluna. “Can you go back into the vision? Can you tell us more about it?”
Vell shook his head furiously. “Too many minds,” he said. “Lanaal spoke of thishow she can sense the feelings and thoughts of birds.”
“Can you focus on one of them?” asked Kellin, placing her hands on his shoulders. “Maybe you’re having trouble because you’re taking in all of their thoughts at once.”
Vell’s face was a mask of fear, but Kellin’s touch helped steady him.
“Let me try,” he said, and he went back inside his mind. He found himself wading through the marsh amid the massive behemoths, perhaps two dozen in all, grazing from the treesall except three tall phandar trees that they never touched. They knew never to go beyond the phandars. It was not safe there. They had no reason to go there, anyway.
Vell’s fear left him, and he pressed on with a sense of wonder and curiosity, pushing more and more of his human mind aside. He bathed in the sensations of the behemoths insteadthe taste of the leaves they plucked from the treetops, the warmth of the water around their legs. What treeslike none he had ever seen, thin and tall, swaying in the breeze.
But he also felt a different kind of fearfear of an approaching enemy.
He loved the behemoths. They were his kind. Part of him was amazed to see these animals that he had never laid eyes on before. But part of him saw them every moment of every day.
In the center of the hidden Sanctuary stood a small menhir marked with ancient runes, rising from the marsh water. Atop it, a bright light gleamed, dabbing the whole Sanctuary in streaks of red. The runes, too, glowed faintly. The behemoths ignored it, but Vell could not.
Magic. The magic that sustained this place.
They mean to steal it.
That’s the reason for all of this.
But the Shepherds? Where were they? How would they protect their flock?
Figures were coming down from the mountain. He couldn’t see them, but he knew they were there. He’d seen them before, some of them, in the pool.
They carried the axe. The axe would bring it all down. It would expose them and make them vulnerable. It would tear down the magic on the menhirthe magic that concealed them.
He knew it because the Shepherds knew it. .
“Who are the Shepherds?” Vell said aloud. His companions in the High Forest heard it and had no answer. He was not asking them, but his true fellows in the hidden marsh of the Sanctuary.
You are, came the answer. He didn’t know where the reply came from.
The behemoths arrayed themselves in lines, ready to attack the intruders. He did the same. He wondered if he could control the behemoth whose perspective he shared, but he didn’t want to try. The animals grunted and paced.
Why did the Shepherds not protect them?
Vell knew: because they expect me to.
“I’ve failed them,” Vell said. This time, he addressed the humans around him. “They gave me the power so I would protect them.”
He heard voices ask many questions, but he pulled away from them, deeper and deeper into his vision. Four outsiders stood at the very rim of the Sanctuary.
“They died to get us here,” said Royce as they stood near the northernmost phandar. “Vonelh, Nithinial, Bessick, the werebat… this expedition even claimed Mythkar Leng.” To Ardeth, he added, “This had better be worthwhile.”
“I’ll try not to disappoint,” said Ardeth, her tone somewhere between haughty and flirtatious. She cast a spell to reveal emanations of magic, then narrowed her eyes in concentration. “There,” she said, pointing in the direction of the phandar trees. Gan, Royce, and Gunton stared without seeing anything different.
Ardeth drew a number of crossbow bolts from her leathers and slowly loaded one into her crossbow. “Geildarr’s gifts,” she explained, and held the crossbow at the ready.
“Illusion magic,” guessed Royce. “We came all this way to pilfer illusion magic?”
“Don’t underestimate the power of illusion, or its value,” said Ardeth. “I’ve recently been reminded of what it’s capable of. Anything that can create an illusion this size could conceal a marching army. And that’s assuming that it’s the only…”
A voice not his own suddenly rolled out of Gan’s throat. “Please reconsider this,” it said. This time the language was Illuskan, if an oddly accented and archaic version of it. “Turn away, travelers,” it continued. “We warn you again. Our secrets are ours. We keep them with our might.”
“And we shall take them with ours,” Ardeth promised. “Gan…”
The hobgoblin needed no instructions. He was seething with anger at the idea of something controlling his body again, and he charged the area sectioned off by the phandar trees, the axe held high over his head. The instant it touched the invisible field, a reddish energy flowed out of the axe; it trembled in his hands, nodding toward the center of the triangle. Shocked, Gan slowed and took a few steps backward just as the axe’s energy punched a hole through the illusion. A red pulse burst away and traveled halfway across the field before colliding with another source of magic. The rest of the illusion crumbled around him.
“Vell,” said Thluna. “What’s happening?”
“They have arrived,” Vell answered, though his eyes were still staring into another place. Then he added, “We have failed.”
More than a dozen giant lizards ran through the thinly forested marsh of the revealed Sanctuary, toward the four intruders. Their long, snakelike necks leaned forward, and the ground trembled as they charged. Each was larger than several cottages, weighing more than twin dragons. Each step threw up huge sprays of water from the marsh and covered the charging behemoths in a shower of mist. Royce, Gunton, and Gan could only stare, just as they had at Elaacrimalicros. Scaly mountains bore down on them, and they could do nothing but watch.
Ardeth’s crossbow sang. Each bolt zipped across the marsh and met its mark. No behemoth would be deterred by so minor a blow, but these bolts were fashioned with powerful magic at no little expense. When they struck behemoth scales, the beast disappeared, as if it had never been.
Ardeth giggled as she watched the magic work. The charging behemoths quickly noticed their disappearing companions and slowed their onrush, turning sideways and exposing more of their flanks to Ardeth’s deadly aim.
As the behemoths began to thin out, Ardeth could see a strange standing stone at the Sanctuary’s center, the top of which glowed with a beacon of unearthly red.
“Royce,” she said. She passed the crossbow to the Antiquarian. “Cover me.”
With no further explanation, she sprang forward into the marsh, running like a black streak through the knee-deep water.
Vell’s mind cried out as he abandoned perspective after perspective. The behemoths were not dying, he knew, but were being sent somewhere far away where his mind could not follow. He watched the strange girl run through the swamp. He knew her well by now; she had abducted Sungar, astride the hippogriff he had chased through Rauvin Vale. She was also the enemy he had seen in the Fountains of Memory.
He bade one of the behemoths to break away from the others and cut her off before she could reach the menhir. To his surprise, the behemoth willingly, almost deferentially, turned its form over to him. Vell gasped as he found that he directed the creature. His human mind remained in control, yet he felt a strange familiarity with the behemoth’s body.
Controlling this animal as if he walked in its skin, Vell rushed to intercept the woman in black, sending great sprays of water up from the marsh. The water slowed her, and Vell had no trouble getting ahead of her. He let out a reptilian cry from his behemoth throat. Her pale oval face wore a determined look.
A crossbow bolt zipped past Vell’s head but missed and flew off into the marsh. Fired from a great distance, its aim had gone wildly astray.
Then the woman opened an outstretched hand. A number of black bolts zipped forth and pelted Vell all along his lizard form. He braced himself and let out a tremendous moan. His mind was unaffected, for it was many miles away, but his body succumbed to tremendous inertia. Vell strained to move his torpid legs. He was all but rooted to the spot.
Springing across the water, the woman in black unsheathed her sword and ran close to Vell, using the weapon to rake his behemoth form as she ran, drawing blood from both front legs. Not caring to make a kill, she ran past him, bound for the menhir.
Vell focused harder, pushing away the pain and the paralysis from her magic, and managed to turn and pursue her. He leaped into the air, his forelegs leaving the marsh and sending a cascade of water down on the woman. She lost her footing and tumbled into the swamp face first, losing her sword in the muck, not more than a dozen feet from the menhir with its glowing red light. With a silent scream of success, Vell pushed his massive form onto her, landing a foot on her body, pressing her into the water and pinning her there. She squirmed and struggled against him