“What’s she want?” scowled the woman.
Hemish moved a step closer to the bedraggled animal. Mausa was not a particularly kind master, and the draft steed was obviously sick. If Ash wanted to feel the horse’s mane, he saw no harm in it.
As the child’s hands combed through the equine’s tangled mane, a brilliant blue spark jumped between her fingers and horse. The horse raised its head suddenly, neighing! Its clouded eyes cleared then sparked with vitality. The matted hair in its mane smoothed. The creature nearly danced, as if restraining itself from rearing.
“By all the gods of hearth and home,” Hemish mumbled, “what happened?”
He knew what had happened. The girl had the hands of a healer.
“Ash,” she crooned in his arms.
Mausa’s expression, too, changed. Scorn made way for fear. The woman pulled her horse quickly away.
Spring, 1373 DR
Yhe air was too warm for Marrec.
The link chain of his armor hung heavily on the padding he wore between the silver mail and his skin, causing sweat to bead and run. He removed a gauntlet, stuffed it into his belt, and mopped his brow. He felt the old scars beneath his fingers, scars hidden by his hairline. He hardly gave them a thought. After a lifetime of repressing those memories, recollections of his past rarely caught him off guard.
Marrec looked over at his companion who walked with him down the tree-lined road. He felt a little envious of Gunggari, who didn’t wear much of anything, save for a collection of strange tattoos, thick-soled leather shoes, and a breech-clout. Earlier, the noon-day sun’s glare had been tempered by a breeze, but the road had passed into a forested acreage. The trees stood tall on either side but failed to reach their branches across the gap of the road. The sun beat down through the gap, but the trees blocked the cooling breeze.
“Hot enough for you, Gunny?” Marrec asked his friend.
Gunggari shrugged and smiled. “Good weather for walking.”
“Maybe, if you’re not wearing fifty pounds of armor,” snorted Marrec.
Gunggari Ulmarra was a strange one. Though he’d traveled with the southerner for over two years, Marrec was still unused to the man’s disdain for the trappings of civilization, especially clothing. All Gunggari cared about was the long, stout wooden tube he carried, which he was currently using as a walking staff. Marrec had seen Gunggari use the thing as a warclub and a musical instrument with equal facility. Colorful designs dotted the tube’s exterior. It was called a dizheri and was an object peculiar to Gunggari’s home. Gunggari didn’t talk much about the nation of his origin, other than to say he hailed from the far south “beyond the girdle of the world” in a place called Osse. There Gunggari was known as a tattooed soldier. Marrec wasn’t sure if the name was a designation or a title, as in The Tattooed Soldier. The Oslander had never deigned to explain, and Marrec didn’t push him on the topic, especially because so much time had passed since they took up traveling together.
“Ask Lurue a boonperhaps a cooling breeze?” joked Gunggari.
Lurue was Marrec’s patron goddess, to whom he owed fealty and from which he drew much of his strength. Because he was already annoyed by the heat, Marrec chose to interpret the statement seriously.
“Gunny, you know I can’t waste her time for personal indulgences. Besides, it’s getting worse.” He admitted the last almost under his breath.
He sighed. Contact with his patron goddess, Lurue the Unicorn Queen, was growing ever more difficult. Just to see if he could, he mentally probed for the connection that used to form as easily as shafts of sunlight find the forest floor…
Marrec nearly stumbled for lack of concentrating on the uneven path.
“Watch your step,” grunted Gunggari. “The stones will catch your feet if you let them.” The Oslander pointed ahead, where the path ascended quickly to the crown of a hill. The west flank of the hill was hidden in crowding pines and firs that cast long shadows over the rocky way. Gunggari gave him a sidelong glance, “Are you tired? We could stop for a rest, if you like, oris something else bothering you?”
Marrec sighted. “Lurue’s silences have grown, Gunny. Last night, I almost felt as if she were absent completely. When it came time for my nightly prayer of renewal…”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That ever happened before?” quizzed Gunggari.
“No, at least not so completely. My connection has been deteriorating these last few years, like I said before, but this is the worst it’s been.”
“And… your vision?”
The Oslander referred to a dreamlike visitation Marrec had received several months earlier.
Gunggari continued, “Are we close enough that you can go without guidance?”
Marrec answered, “We’re very close. I know that much.”
The Oslander offered, “Perhaps her attention is being drawn elsewhere.”
Maybe so. Where before the cleric had felt the presence of Lurue in every prayer, observance, and divine ritual, the presence had become uncertain, spotty, and sometimes altogether absent. Marrec shrugged. The cleric had met other servants of the Unicorn Queen, and while most seemed unaffected, a few reported feeling similarly to Marrec. Those worst afflicted could no longer trust that the divine spells they cast in Lurue’s name would return anew each day. Marrec suffered the same humiliation.
“Gunny, the vision was real. I didn’t dream it, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
The tattooed soldier raised both hands in a conciliatory gesture, said “I know, the ‘Child of Light in Flemish’s charge.’” My feet grow wearyI hope we find this Hemish in Fullpoint.”
A vision had come to Marrec. From within the brilliance of a crescent moon, the silhouette of a unicorn spoke to him. The enchanting voice instructed him to seek the Child of Light and the child’s guardian, Hemish. The voice indicated that finding the child would help both Marrec and one other in similar straits.
“I hope so, too,” Marrec answered his friend.
Gunggari continued, “Even if it comes to nothing, I enjoyed our trip across the Sea of Fallen Stars. It nearly rivaled my trip across the Great Sea. I trust your last divination, the most recent one.”
Marrec realized the Oslander was not needling him. Gunggari merely said what was on his mind, nothing more or less. As his friend said, his last pure divinatory contact with neglectful Larue pointed unerringly to the village of Fullpoint. Fullpoint lay several leagues west and somewhat south of a large city called Two Stars. They’d traveled along the trade road known as the Golden Way since debarking from their ship in Telf lamm. They had turned off southeast before reaching Two Stars, to Gunggari’s disappointment. The visitors had been told that Two Stars was a city where Trade was coddled as if a favorite son, and nothing was forbidden.
Marrec said, “The closer we come to finding Hemish, and hopefully this mysterious Child of Light, the spottier becomes my contact. I doubt that Lurue does not want me to answer this riddle, and I don’t think she is becoming neglectful… I think that she is somehow being prevented from making contact…”
Marrec stopped speaking and cocked his head.
“Did you hear that?”
Faint cries and the ring of metal on metal echoed from over the hill. A thick stream of smoke tumbled up from behind the rise ahead. Something was burning, and it didn’t look like a chimney.
“Let’s go!” shouted Marrec.
Racing to the top of the hill, Marrec and Gunggari saw the source of the cries and smoke: a small village in the forest clearing was’under attack. Creatures swarmed around the buildings, smiting villagers and setting fire to buildings. At first glance, the attackers seemed to be small animate trees.
“By the Ancestor,” muttered Gunggari. The Oslander swept up his walking staff, ready for trouble, brandishing it like the warclub it actually was. He waited for Marrec’s cue.
Marrec took a second to take stock.
The attacking creatures were not trees after all. In fact, they somewhat resembled humans, though their skin was the deep olive-green of a pine needle. Their flesh was woody and tough, but they all sported oozing sores from which a putrid slime seeped, as if they were slowly rotting. Their hair grew out in long, thick locks scaled like the bark of a young tree. Their eyes gleamed black with hatred. The creatures seemed somewhat familiar to Marrec, something he’d learned about in his training: they were similar to creatures called volodnis, but he didn’t think true volodnis had such a sense of rot or decay about them as these oozing creatures had, but he was no expert.
