frightened her. With a moan, she pointed toward the bole of a tree, sinking to her knees in shock.
As Iydahoe followed her pointing finger, he felt a chill descend into the very pit of his stomach. The bark of the tree trunk had split apart like some kind of festering wound, and from the opening dripped glistening, crimson blood! Streaming onto the ground in a thick, congealing flood, the liquid gushed as if it poured from a fresh, deep cut.
The elves stared in dull disbelief. Vanisia and Bakali recoiled a step, while Iydahoe's fists clenched in impotent rage. What kind of horror was it that could rend the very trees of the forest? He saw the pool of blood expand, pouring over the dike formed by a gnarled root, starting a small trickle along the forest trail.
The bark tore on another tree, nearby, and more scarlet liquid flooded out. All around them trunks ripped, and soon the stench of spilled blood overpowered everything else in the forest. Fueled by steadily growing panic, Iydahoe led the pair through the woods, racing as fast as their feet could carry them. They leapt splashing rivulets of gore, desperately skirted growing pools of the horrid stuff. The warrior ran as if he fled a nightmare, no longer certain of what they would find in the grotto. He no longer felt certain about anything!
When they slipped through the narrow, twisting gorge that led to the concealed village, Iydahoe tried unsuccessfully to calm his pounding heart. Finally they reached the clear pool of water, and he saw the small lodges of the makeshift tribe. The young Kagonesti, all the survivors of the Istarian massacre of fourteen years earlier, came run- i ning toward them, shouting in relief.
But only the younger elves were here. He saw the fragments of the Ram's Horn, sitting as always on the smooth, mossy blanket before his father's lodge. The coals of Hawkan's fire were out, and there was no sign of movement within the shadowed interior of the little hut.
'Hawkan? Where's my father?' demanded Iydahoe. The boy Kagwallas, who was almost as old as Bakall, stepped forward, his eyes filled with tears. 'A person came last night, a House Elf,' he explained. 'He took your father by the hand. Together they went away.' 'They just disappeared! It was magic!' wailed little Faylai. Iydahoe staggered under the onslaught of monstrous fear, sinking to the ground from unbearable weight, knowing that Vanisia had spoken the truth. The end of the world had begun.
Chapter 29
The terrified Kagonesti huddled around a small fire, watching the woods. At sunset, they divided themselves into the three largest lodges to spend the long, ghostly night. At dawn, they emerged again, rebuilding the fire and watching their wilderness perish before their eyes. The trees continued to bleed, fouling the streams, polluting the crystal pool in the center of the village. Fortunately, Kagwallas had had the presence of mind to order all the waterskins filled when the trees had first split open, and the tribe did not suffer for water. Keeping his bow and arrows in his hands, Iydahoe often rose to his feet and paced around the periphery of the village. He felt as though the forest itself was planning an attack, and he despaired that his own vigilance would not be enough to prevent or deflect it.
Kagwallas and Bakall, too, kept watch on the woods, while Dallatar tried amuse the younger elves by making funny faces and performing inept juggling acts. Ambra held little Faylai on her lap, while Vanisia sat among all the wild elves, offering a comforting word whenever she could.
Iydahoe heard a stirring in the woods-the first such noise since the trees had begun to bleed. Carefully raising an arrow, he peered among the gory trunks, certain that something large moved out there. A bulky form crashed heavily through the decaying brush.
A stag lumbered into view, shaking its antlered head from side to side, groggy and confused. Snorting, it fixed bloodshot eyes on one of the lodges. Lowering its rack, the great deer charged, smashing through the bark-and- leather wall of the small hut.
Oddly, Iydahoe's first fear was a concern that the heavy hooves would further smash the pieces of the Ram's Horn, which still lay on the mossy blanket nearby. Overcoming his surprise, the elf raised his bow and shot-a perfect hit, sending the arrowhead deep into the creature's heart. Yet the deer only stumbled, raising its head and snorting as it looked around for the source of the attack. Iydahoe shot again, followed with a third arrow before the animal sank to its knees, then toppled, dead.
Regretfully, the warrior and the older boys dragged the meat into the woods, reluctant to eat a creature that had been touched by such visible and profound madness. That night, Iydahoe trembled on his sleeping pallet, hearing the surreal moaning of the wind, the sighing of the trees, as if each limb, each trunk, felt terrible grief over the wounds that so unnaturally drained them. His nightmares came while he was awake, and his fear blocked him from seeking the only available refuge-sleep.
'Is it true that you have killed many hundred men?' asked Vanisia suddenly, her voice emerging from the darkness on the other side of the hut. For a moment, Iydahoe didn't even comprehend her question, and when he did he thought that her curiosity seemed no more bizarre than the natural chaos around them.
'That's what the human said. I have not kept count of lives, though I've shot many hundreds of arrows at the Istarians. And I rarely missed,' he added, wanting to be truthful.
'Why did you kill so many?'
He told her of the day, fourteen years before, when his- and the tribe's-life had changed forever. It was not until he finished speaking that he realized he wept, that sometime during his speaking Vanisia had come to his side. Now she, too, wept as she held him. In the strength of her embrace he found the only goodness he knew in the world, profoundly relieved that there was, at least, that much comfort amid the chaos and despair.
'Why must you do this avenging, this killing?' she probed gently, after a long silence.
'I–I don't know. Since that day, the tribe has had no Pathfinder-'
'They have you,' Vanisia said firmly, and her words brought him up short. 'You will show them the way. And perhaps that way is not always by killing.'
'I am beginning to think you speak the truth,' he admitted. With this thought on his mind, he finally slept.
The next day, the maddened intruders were wild boars-three of them. The creatures stampeded into the camp, heads lowered, and charged at the first Kagonesti they saw. This was Dallatar, who ducked out of the way. But one of the young girls, trying to run, was tossed high by a tusked snout and suffered a broken arm. She cried shrilly as Iydahoe and the older youths finally slew the maddened animals with spears and arrows.
Once more the wild elves dragged the meat away from the village and left it to rot. Vanisia showed her clerical gift as a healer in mending and splinting the broken bone, but when she prayed to her goddess for aid in healing, those beseechments went unanswered. All her concentration and effort could not bring a response from the angered deities of Krynn-there would be no miraculous recovery.
On successive days, wolves, hawks, even rabbits and squirrels, dashed into the village in berserk frenzy. The youngest Kagonesti wielded clubs and threw stones, joining the rest to battle the unnatural onslaught. On the seventh night, the wild elves moved from their lodges into a large, dry cave that stood in one of the grotto's walls. There they slept fitfully, always with several sentries posted to keep their eyes on the night's exceptionally deep darkness.
Late in the morning of the ninth day, a bear lurched into the village. The brute drooled, snapping foaming jaws as it peered around with dim, bloodshot eyes. Iydahoe ordered the rest of the tribe into the cave and faced the monster alone. He shot many arrows into the bear before it charged, roaring. Then he chopped with his axe as the bear mauled the elf. The two combatants rolled across the ground, the elf snarling as fiercely as the bear. Claws raked Iydahoe's ribs as the steel axe bit again and again into the crazed animal's side.
It was that keen blade that ultimately saved him, slashing through the arteries in the monster's neck. Iydahoe's tribemates dragged the corpse off the bleeding, ravaged warrior, but the wild elf would not lie still and let Vanisia tend his wounds. Instead, he stumbled to his feet, shaking his bleeding fists at the equally gruesome forest.
'Why do you turn on us?' Iydahoe cried. The pain from his wounds was nothing compared to the spiritual betrayal he felt. His rage was mindless, directed at the woods and mountains themselves. The corruption of tree
