The Forest King

CHAPTER 12

Mathi, Treskan, and Lofotan walked parallel a while, wading through knee-high scrub toward the fire-lit hill. The old warrior moved like a cloud, hardly stirring the leaves as he passed. Mathi slipped along, trying to match the elf’s deftness. Treskan had a harder time. If Mathi hadn’t already known he was a human in disguise, she would have figured it out. His progress was labored and noisy.

The route wasn’t easy. Roots tripped their toes, thorny branches ripped their elbows, and insects swarmed around their faces. The ground was a hazard covered with fallen tree limbs. She avoided them all, but Treskan stepped down on an unseen burrow. The turf broke loudly, and the scribe sprawled on his hands and knees. By the time he got up, Lofotan was standing over him.

“Give our position away once more, scribbler, and I’ll take you back and chain you to our lord!” he hissed. Treskan swallowed hard and swore he would be more careful.

They began to hear voices. Without warning, Lofotan angled toward some good-sized trees off to the left. They were dogwoods, very old and gnarled. He climbed the twisted trunk. Casting around, Mathi and Treskan saw others and hauled themselves up as well.

Two nomads appeared, laughing and talking loudly. Each carried a large canvas bucket. They passed right under Mathi.

“-he said he could do it, so I said try. He strung his bow and zzup! Put an arrow in the buck’s brisket. The crazy thing kept boundin’, and we ended up chasing it another mile!”

“Daxas never was a good bowman,” said the other.

They stopped on either side of a freshly dug hole in the turf. Dumping out the buckets, they retraced their path and disappeared in the cleft between the hills.

They swung down. Treskan clamped a hand over his nose. “What was in the hole?” he asked through gritted teeth.

“Offal,” Mathi whispered. The humans had butchered a deer and disposed of the parts they didn’t want. The smell of blood made Mathi tingle in ways she had not experienced in a very long time. She found herself staring at the noisome pit until Lofotan called her away.

Rather than follow the two nomads, Lofotan went up the dark side of the hill to the summit. With great care, Mathi and Treskan shadowed him, trying to step in the same spots as their leader. They arrived at the top soundlessly. They found the old warrior crouched by a boulder. Below, a broad hollow lay spread out before them. Lofotan pointed down at the fire-lit expanse.

The camp was large indeed. It filled the hollow from end to end. Surrounding the sprawl of rude tents was a palisade of spears driven butt-first into the ground. Nomad spears had metal or stone end caps that allowed them to be driven in like stakes. Inside that fence lay tents, pens, and corrals, laid out in disorganized fashion. Lofotan said nomads shared their tents with up to five comrades. Counting the shelters, he reckoned they were looking at a camp of more than one thousand. They could not see any children or elders. That meant one thing: it was a war party.

Lofotan spotted odd pens in the camp. Tied to stakes inside one pen were eight centaurs, heads bowed and legs folded. Beside them was another pen with a top made of lashed saplings. Something stirred within the dark confines of the makeshift cage: more captives, obviously smaller than centaurs.

Lofotan signed for them to follow. He had seen enough. Sliding backward on his belly, he eased back into the darkness. Mathi was about to join him when she heard a sound that made her blood turn cold.

Dogs were baying inside the camp. Mathi froze. They hadn’t counted on dogs. Sure enough, a pack of ten hounds came springing through the lanes between the tents, each one baying to be first after their prey. Nomads left their bowls and cups when they heard the animals’ commotion.

“No time for stealth,” Lofotan said, rising to his feet. “Run!”

Mathi and Treskan tried. She fled down the hill, kicking high to avoid branches and burrows. In an instant she lost sight of her companions. She didn’t have any time to wonder where they had gone before the pack was at her heels. More than a dozen deerhounds with long, thin legs; white teeth; and tails like whips came bounding after her. They spilled right and left, seeking to cut her off. Running downhill helped, but Mathi soon saw flashes of gray and brown ahead of her. The dogs had her ringed in. She dragged at the sword Lofotan had foisted on her, trying to draw it as she ran. Heavy tramping in the grass to her left turned out to be Treskan, running for his life.

The animals in front of her halted with fangs bared. She ran right at the closest one, sword upraised. It was a brave beast and stood its ground. Mathi sent its head flying with a single swing. A dog behind her bit at her leg but got only the hem of her gown. Mathi shortened it by a head as well. Treskan swung wildly at the hounds swarming around him. They darted in after each swing, got between his legs, and brought him down in the high grass.

The pack was closing in on Mathi too. Where was Lofotan? Torches appeared at the top of the hill. The nomads were coming. Where was Lofotan?

She waited for the comforting snap of a bowstring and the flicker of deadly arrows foiling her pursuit. None came. With horror Mathi remembered it was Artyrith who was the superb archer.

A lean, muscular hound leaped at her, catching her sword hand in its jaws. The dog’s weight spun her around, and two more jumped on her, catching hold of her cloak. She staggered as they tugged hard in all directions. Mathi couldn’t raise her sword with the dog on her arm. The hand guard saved her hand from being mangled, but it also gave the hound something to hold on to. A fourth animal clamped on to her dress. With a cry, Mathi went down.

She expected to be savaged. Deep in her soul she had flashes of such a fight-hounds surrounding her, yellow teeth snapping, the baying of the pack as it closed in. It was night then too, and Mathi had drowned the lead dogs one by one when they tried to seize her in the midst of a swift-running stream. There was no water there, only stars and bloodthirsty hounds and the smell of smoke.

Whistles split the night air, and the dogs kept tight hold of her, but they didn’t tear her flesh. The torches grew brighter. She smelled pine burning. A band of nomads, their faces black against the sky, stood around her.

“What is it? A brace of rabbits?”

“A couple of those little thieves, damn them!”

Fire was thrust in her face.

“No! The elder kind! And female!”

“This one too!”

More whistles in short, sharp blasts made the dog pack back off. Hard hands took hold of Treskan and Mathi and dragged them to their feet.

“Who is you?” asked one of the nomads in poor Elvish. “Why you here is?”

“My name is Mathani Arborelinex,” she replied in their own tongue. One of the benefits of living on the fringes of elf society was that she had come into contact with many races. Mathi understood a good part of eight tongues, including Ogrish.

“Hey, Vollman, two of your dogs are dead,” called out another human.

One of the nomads holding Treskan’s arms gave the limb a wrench. The scribe yelped. “Kill my boys, will you? Maybe I’ll take an eye or a finger for each one you slew!” The one called Vollman jerked a long-bladed dagger from his belt.

Treskan struggled in the grip of two brawny nomads. Mathi fought hard until a similar weapon was pressed against her throat. She felt her heart contract to a small, hard knot.

“Be still or be dead!”

“Stop it, Vollman. They will answer questions for the chief first. Then we’ll decide what to do with them.”

With buffets to the head and kicks in the backside, Mathi and Treskan were marched to the nomads’ camp. Glancing left and right, she saw that her captors were fiercely tattooed men with light-colored hair worn in tight braids. They wore deerskins beaded with bold designs. Metal was a mark of status, she guessed. The leader of the party that caught her wore a crescent-shaped strip of brass around his neck and had yellow metal plugs through his earlobes.

In camp, a crowd of nomads had gathered to see the night’s catch. A few were women, warriors too, but most of them were men of fighting age. Mathi and the scribe were driven like wild stags to the door of a large, dome-shaped tent.

The gorget-wearer called out, “Chief! Come out! We caught us something!”

The chief came out. He was the tallest man Mathi had ever seen, nearly seven feet tall. He was darkly tanned, but in the torchlight his eyes were slate gray. His head was shaved except for a single long lock on the back of his head, which he wore thickly braided and pulled forward over his shoulder.

“What’s this?” His voice was as big as his frame.

“We found these elder kind hiding in the bushes,” said the man called Vollman. “She speaks our tongue good.”

“Oh?” said the giant, advancing a step until he towered over Mathi. “I never met a big-ears who could speak our language well. Maybe you’ve spent some time around people, yes?”

Mathi didn’t answer. She wasn’t being sullen or stalwart; she was just scared. The chief took her silence for resistance. He backhanded Mathi so hard that she fell backward into the arms of the surrounding nomads. Laughing, they boosted her back on her feet. Mathi tasted blood.

“Where do you come from?” the chief bellowed at Treskan. His mumbled “Silvanost” was the wrong answer.

“Spying on us, yes? How many elder kind have we seen on our journey, Nurna?”

A muscular young nomad said, “Three, four, chief. Always on hilltops far away, watching us.”

“Collecting news for their king, yes?” To the men holding the captives, he barked, “Search them!”

They did with brutal thoroughness. Her gown was torn in several places. She did not scream, and the violation did not go any further. They found the secret mark of the brethren under her right arm. The blue tattoo surprised the nomads. They had never seen an elf with marks before. There was some excitement when they found Treskan’s stylus-it was metal and nicely turned-and the talisman Rufe had taken and Mathi had returned. The jeweled gold ornament got everyone’s attention.

Vollman claimed the talisman against the loss of his two deerhounds. There were a few protests, but the lofty chief awarded the trinket to Vollman. Mathi had nothing of the tiniest value on her: a few scraps of parchment purloined from Treskan, some charred wood to write with, a few beads, and a wooden amulet carved in the image of Quenesti Pah, part of her disguise as a former resident of the Haven of the Lost.

The chief examined the small harvest taken from the prisoners. Aside from Treskan’s talisman, there was nothing very rich or revealing about any of it.

To Mathi he said in passable Elvish, “Is this all you got?”

“I am just a poor traveler,” Mathi replied in the same language.

The chief threw the trinkets on the ground. “They know more than they’re telling. Tie them to the cage.”

They dragged them to the roofed-in box in the center of the camp they’d seen earlier, the one made of lashed-together saplings. Mathi was shoved face-first against the rails. Her wrists and ankles were tied with thongs. Treskan was slammed into place beside her.

From within the dark cage, a pair of eyes met hers. Mathi could not tell whom she was seeing, but she heard a whisper say, “Tell them what they want to know. They’ll lash you to death if you don’t.”

Nurna appeared with a rawhide whip. Mathi felt her knees give way. She had not bargained for such treatment. Where was Lofotan? How could he leave her to the savages?

Nurna nodded and two nomads tore the cloth from Mathi’s and Treskan’s backs. She clenched her eyes shut and braced herself for the sting of the lash. It didn’t come. Trembling, she opened her eyes. Twisting her head around, she saw Nurna and others speaking together with hushed urgency. One nomad ran off. Nurna came closer, coiling the whip in his hand.

“Too bad,” he said. “May the great gods pity you.”

Before she had the slightest understanding of what was happening, Mathi and Treskan were cut loose and thrown into the cage. They crouched on their knees-the roof was too low to allow her to stand-and watched in amazement as the nomads dispersed.

“Merciful gods,” he muttered. What stayed their hand? Mathi had no idea.

“You heard the man,” said their unseen companion. “They pity you.”

“Who’s there?” Mathi said sharply, drawing closer to Treskan.

“A brother.”

Their fellow prisoner crawled out of the shadows on his hands and knees. Treskan drew in a loud breath. The stranger’s hands and forearms were covered in short, stiff fur. Where a man or elf had nails, their companion had curving, yellow claws. His face emerged from the deeper darkness. Mathi must have stared too hard, for the creature halted his advance.

“Forgive me. As another mistake, I thought you one of us,” he said. His Elvish was excellent, and his accent urban. If an elf closed his eyes, he would think he was speaking to an articulate resident of Silvanost.

“I am one of you-one of us! Who are you?”

“Taius.” The name rhymed with bias.

“I am Mathani Arborelinex. This is Treskan.”

Taius laughed or coughed. It was hard to tell through the fangs and fur. “He’s not what he seems either, is he?” Neither of them answered. Taius said, “You still use a Silvanesti name?”

“Why not? You do,” Mathi replied.

Taius withdrew into the shadows again. “I no longer claim Silvanesti as my race.” He chuckled, an unnervingly beastly sound. “Do you know your mother and father?”

“No, but I know my creator.”

Taius’s eyes glittered in the dark. “Say not the name.”

She tried to remember if they had ever met. The children of Vedvedsica’s art had been scattered, by design, all over the kingdom. Mathi lived in the western woodland, not far from the provincial town of Woodbec. Judging by his accent, Taius had dwelt in the city.

“But why did they spare us the lash?” Treskan said.

“When they tore open your clothes, they saw the truth.”

“Truth?”

It struck Mathi like a thunderbolt. Her elf form was her greatest advantage. Among all her brethren, she was chosen for the mission because her appearance was the most perfect. One by one, the others had begun reverting to their original beastly shapes. When she left the brethren’s hidden camp for Silvanost, she was outwardly as elflike as Balif or Artyrith. But the change was affecting her too. Her characteristic fur was slowly returning. The nomads saw she had elf features but with body hair. Treskan was in the same condition but for different reasons. His elf image was wearing thin in the wilderness. The nomads assumed the two of them were-

“Half-breeds,” said the voice.

Mathi was so relieved to escape the flogging that she didn’t care about her degeneration beginning. Being mistaken by the nomads for a half-elf was an unforeseen benefit. Hating and distrusting elves themselves, they had a certain sympathy for half-elves, who were despised by the Silvanesti and officially persecuted by them.

“What about him?” Taius said.

Treskan replied, “I am a scholar, trying to broaden my knowledge of the elves.”

“You’re a long way from a library.”

“You must help us escape!” she said urgently. “I am on an urgent mission for our brethren!”

Taius sprang at her, alighting scant inches from the crouching Mathi. Long teeth bared in a fierce snarl, his hot breath played on her face like flame.

“To the abyss with the brethren and all our kind!”

Mathi pushed her face closer until their noses almost touched. “I thought we are all kindred.”

“The brethren abandoned us in the city. So did the Creator. He gave us, his children, to the Silvanesti. They hunted us down like-” Had he intended to say animals? Whatever his intent, Taius thought better of it. “They hunted us, killing all who resisted. The rest were spirited away to oblivion.”

“So too our creator,” Mathi said.

“You lie! For his betrayal of his children, the Nameless One was spared!”

Mathi told Taius what she had been able to glean from Balif about Vedvedsica’s trial and condemnation. She went so far as to tell him about Balif’s voluntary exile from Silvanost on the pretext of scouting the eastern province for information about nonelf invaders. Though he had no knowledge of what Vedvedsica was doing, Balif had provided help to the magician. After Vedvedsica’s fall, Balif offered to take full blame for the scandal, but Silvanos would not allow it. How could he tarnish the name of Silvanesti’s greatest hero with such horrible pollution?

“Balif? The general is here?”

“He is near.” Because Taius was so unstable, Mathi decided to not disclose her mission to him. At that time the fewer who knew, the better.

“I bless the name Balif,” he said, despairing, to Mathi’s astonishment.

“What is your story, Taius?” Treskan asked. “I am in General Balif’s employ, but I did not join him until after the trial of-of the Nameless. Who are you, and how came you to be here?”

The beast-elf relaxed his threatening posture. He had actually served in Balif’s guard during the Forest War. In those days his beastly traits were hidden by Vedvedsica’s magic. He thought he was an ordinary elf until the transformation spell worked by the magus began to fail. He tried to hide his condition as long as he could, but it soon became impossible to conceal. Dozens of others like him had mixed in Silvanesti society, serving as soldiers, scribes, artisans, and performers. Some had even married full-blooded elves and had offspring.

Mathi was shocked. Offspring of the brethren and elves? She had not heard that before. Did Silvanos know? Did the Sinthal-Elish, the assembly of great nobles, know?

“They know. And they will never speak of it. It is their greatest shame,” Taius said.

There was a dimension Mathi had not suspected. What great families were mingled with the blood of the beast-elves?

Treskan said, “How did the nomads take you?”

Taius’s eyes glittered in the dark. “I had just brought down a kill, a yearling doe, when their dogs caught my scent. I couldn’t shake them off, so I turned to fight. I was netted like a partridge. When the humans saw what they had caught, they put me in here.”

With sudden violence, Taius leaped upward, grabbing the cage roof with his hands and feet. He shook the willow lattice and roared. The bars held. From a distance, they heard laughter and taunts from their captors.

He dropped lightly to the ground and retreated to the darkest corner of the cage.

“I wonder why they put us together?” Mathi wondered aloud.

“The centaurs they’ve taken are tied in an open pen. The freaks they cage.”

Taius would not speak anymore. Wary of their mercurial fellow prisoner, Mathi and Treskan moved to the opposite end of the cage, where firelight made a dim haven from the darkness.

She dozed. She could not rest. Every sound teased her awake. Passing nomads coughed, hacked up phlegm, or talked loudly, and each disturbance jolted Mathi awake. Treskan sat slumped against the bars, asleep or brooding. Taius was absolutely silent.

Time passed. She didn’t know how much. In the small hours, something hard thumped against the back of her head. She thought a nomad was amusing himself, flinging stones at the half-breed. When the blow was repeated, she turned angrily to insult her abuser.

No one was there.

Daybreak was closer than sunset. Most of the nomads were asleep in their tents. She could see random hands or feet poking out of open tent flaps. The campfires had burned down to embers. Now and then an alert human loped into view with a polearm on his shoulder.

After a watchman passed, another stone came whirling out of the night. Mathi saw it come from the deep shadows between two tents. It was a round, water-washed pebble tumbling end over end, and it struck her square on the forehead.

Like a ghost, a lean figure bereft of color slowly emerged from the tents. It took Mathi a moment to realize it was Lofotan, wearing a long, gray cloak that reached his knees. He moved with all the grace of his race, sidling up to the cage with such calm that not even his breath could be heard.

Starlight gleamed on a length of sharp bronze. Two strokes, and the hide lacing holding the cage closed was gone. Then, without a word or gesture, Lofotan wafted back to the black gap he came from.

Mathi shook Treskan. He started, fists clenched, ready to fight. Mathi hissed at him to be quiet. She stood, head and shoulders bent down by the low top.

“Up,” she whispered. Treskan obeyed.

They braced their shoulders against the bars and pushed. The green wood lattice shifted. Treskan got his arm out and used it to push against the cage frame. They heaved again, shifting the cage top far enough to one side to allow them to climb out.

In a flash Taius was beside them. Treskan almost cried out in alarm when he felt his furry flanks brush against him. In one fluid movement, Taius was out and on the ground, crouched on all fours. He looked back at Mathi and the scribe, staring with amazement from inside the cage. Fangs flashed in a grimace-or smile? — and the beast melted into the night.

With far greater deliberation, Treskan and Mathi climbed out. They tugged the cage top back into place and hurried away, making for the spot where Mathi saw Lofotan vanish. Not two steps into the shadows, she felt a slim, hard hand clamp over her mouth.

“You took your time!” he murmured in the girl’s ear.

After he removed his hand, Mathi hissed back, “My thought exactly!”

“It was not my plan to attack thousands by myself. Come.”

Lofotan led them through a maze of tents populated by snoring, snorting nomads. They hid once or twice from prowling sentries then slipped through the palisade to freedom. On open ground, Lofotan broke into a run. Mathi and Treskan were not fleet enough to keep up with an elf of Lofotan’s size. Stumbling, Treskan pleaded to Lofotan to slacken his pace.

“Do you want to linger near their camp? Their dogs may pick up our scent again.”

With Taius free she doubted that. He smelled too strongly of beast. Given a choice, the hounds would chase him and not a human or a near-elf such as Mathi. Still, Lofotan’s point was well made. Speed would put more safe ground between them and the nomads. She jogged after the spry warrior.

Back in the myrtle thicket, they found Balif awake, still chained to the tree. Rufe slept soundly a few feet away.

The general greeted him courteously.

“My lord, you seem … yourself.”

“So I am. I cannot explain it.” Even shackled, the elf was extraordinarily poised. “You’ve had quite an adventure tonight.”

Ruefully Mathi agreed. She related her experiences in the nomad camp, leaving out their exposure as half-breeds. Treskan let her do all the talking.

“They didn’t question any more closely than that?” said Balif.

“No, my lord.”

She described the cage and her fellow captive. “This Taius claimed he had served under you in the Forest War,” Mathi said.

“I remember a warrior named Taius. A very brave soldier of noble countenance.” His countenance was no longer so noble, but he was civilized enough not to attack Mathi on sight.

Then, not knowing exactly why she did so, she related to Balif the story of Taius’s true nature. The general listened calmly.

“He’s not as far along as some others,” Balif said. Sooner or later the transformed beasts always reverted to their animal origins, Balif said. Vedvedsica’s spell, though powerful, could not overcome nature forever.

Taius retained a fading veneer of civilization, the general continued. If he lived long enough, he would forget everything and be nothing but a beast. The worst creatures were the ones who had almost forgotten their elf lives. They were beasts in every way, but their minds still held memories of their former lives. Because of that they were filled with rage over their situation.

Vedvedsica had exploited that rage, Mathi knew, by urging them to find and kill Balif.

Lofotan appeared. He looked haggard but alert. “We should move,” he said. “By daylight we shall be too exposed here.”

Balif agreed. Lofotan had packed the baggage onto the horses while Mathi and Treskan were captive. All they had to do was release Balif, rouse the kender, and go.

Lofotan unwired the links and removed Balif’s chains. Rubbing his wrists, the general stood. Mathi stooped to pick up the costly bronze links.

“Mathani.”

She straightened, coiling the chain in her hands.

“Mathani, your gown.”

She realized that her garment was still torn open. Mathi waited for the questions and the denunciations that would follow. She looked at Balif blankly, leaving to him the final challenge.

Lofotan returned. “We must hurry!”

Balif gazed intently at her. Without a word, he took the cloak he’d been sitting on and draped it around Mathi’s exposed back. He walked on and swung into the saddle. Lofotan kicked Rufe awake. Yawning, the kender scratched his ribs, got up, and walked off alone in the predawn darkness.

Why didn’t Balif, general of the Speaker’s army, denounce her as an impostor? Did he take Mathi for a half-breed, as the nomads had? The existence of half-humans was officially denied in Silvanost on the grounds that such pairings could not be fruitful. Secretly, half-humans were subject to summary arrest, exile, or imprisonment without trial. Balif was known to be a tolerant elf. Perhaps his own condition made him more sensitive to the question of who was an elf and who wasn’t.

Puzzling over it, Mathi got on her pony. She had just settled in the saddle when Treskan came furtively to her side.

“My talisman. I must have it back,” he said in a low voice.

“Forget it.”

“One of the nomads-Vollman? — must still have it. I have to have it back, or I am lost!”

Mathi looked around. Rufe-where was he? He was the perfect one to steal back a trinket, but where could one find a kender when the kender was on the loose, not wanting to be found?