The Dreaming Hunt (11 page)

The jann stared down at her, his dark eyes turbulent with rage and despair. “They are my only remaining family. I
must
go after them now.”

She stared up at him for a long moment. If her childhood sweetheart, Justin, were kidnapped and missing, she would not wait patiently for her companions to complete a course of training, either. “Please, Eben. Tarry but an hour. Eat supper and think on your decision a bit. If you still wish to leave, I will do anything in my power to help you.”

He scowled down at her, but a note of indecision had entered his voice as he rasped, “For you, I will stay for supper. Then I go.”

As reprieves went, it was not much to work with. But it would give the others a little time to talk sense into the jann. While they waited for the meal to be served, she noticed Aurelius had moved into the adjoining office and seated himself at Leland's desk. Through the open door, she spied him intently studying something spread across it.

She followed him into the room. “Why did you not intervene in our argument?”

“All of you must believe in what you do and be totally committed to it, or you will fail and Sha'Li will be correct. All of you
will
die. I can make persuasive arguments or even order you to stay or to go. But that would serve no good purpose. Not only do
I
need you to succeed, but you are correct—
everyone
needs you to succeed. You have to work this out for yourselves.”

She supposed she could see his point, but that didn't mean she had to like it overmuch.

“I suppose someone ought to sort through Leland's papers,” Aurelius said heavily. “And better I than someone who might take Leland's private opinions amiss.”

Which was to say, someone who would expose Leland posthumously for working against the Empire. She joined Aurelius at Leland's desk and saw a map spread wide upon it. Dupree plus a bit beyond the borders of the Lochlands were depicted. Notes in Leland's hand were scattered across the map, mostly along roads and traders' routes. “What did Leland track so meticulously?”

“It appears he mapped the routes upon which he sent scouts in search of his son,” Aurelius replied.

She exhaled a painful breath. Stars, to have lost both father and son one right after the other, it was hard to bear. How Eben stood the agony was beyond her. Aurelius opened desk drawers and rummaged in them until he came up with a big leather-bound journal. He opened it across the map and commenced reading Leland's entries. His expression grew steadily grimmer as he read. Finally, he cursed under his breath.

“What have you found?” Raina asked.

He turned the journal to face her. “Look at this.”

She glanced down the page, and gasped. Report after report from Hyland's scouts spoke of unusual greenskin activity. Groups of goblins, hobgoblins, ogres, troglodytes, and a variety of other creatures were apparently leaving their traditional homelands and stealthily converging upon Dupree. More to the point, Leland's spies reported seeing Anton Constantine meeting up with several of the groups.

“He's really doing it, isn't he?” she breathed. “Anton Constantine is organizing a massive greenskin insurrection. There will be a second Night of Green Fires, won't there?”

Aurelius nodded tightly. “It looks that way.”

Stars above. The first Night of Green Fires had nearly destroyed Dupree, and it had been battle ready with strong leadership. They were now led by a single, elderly landsgrave who was no warrior and a completely untested governess not to mention decimated ranks within the Haelan legion itself as Anton's loyalists had deserted to follow him into exile.

Raina asked, “Will the new governess believe us if we warn her?”

Aurelius exhaled heavily. “If only I knew her better, I might be able to answer that. As it is, she is an unknown. Stars know, the people of Dupree need her to believe us.”

Although it was not as if the recently deposed governor, Anton Constantine, had left much behind by way of resources for the new governess to defend the colony with.

“Do not speak of this to the others. We cannot afford for any rumors to get started through a careless remark.” He added soberly, “I will speak with the governess in the morning.”

“Look here.” Raina turned the book to face Aurelius. “This scout, the one Landsgrave Hyland sent northwest, has not reported back in a while.”

The solinari referenced the map, drawing his finger north across the map, skirting the western edge of the Forest of Thorns and Boki territory. “She last reported from this outpost. The scout's name is Tarryn.”

“Tarryn?” Eben exclaimed from the doorway. “She searches for Kendrick?”

“You know her?” Aurelius asked.

“Aye. She's kindari. Clan Lion. A scout for Hyland, and a good one, too. Old friend of Kendrick's. Had quite the crush on him.”

“Leland's notes show her searching west of the Forest of Thorns for him.”

“And you say she has missed reporting in?” Eben asked sharply. “Something is wrong, then, or else she has found a trail and follows it too quickly to send word back to her liege.”

“You cannot know that—” Raina started.

Eben cut her off. “I know Tarryn. She would be tireless searching for Kendrick. She has found something.”

She could just as easily be dead, but Raina was loath to point out that possibility. Eben needed some shred of hope, no matter how slim, to cling to.

A simple dinner was served, and Raina watched the jann furtively throughout the meal. As she'd feared, the tight set of his jaw did not ease one bit. The somber meal concluded, and Eben pushed back his chair impatiently.

Raina rose from her seat with him. “I understand. You do what you must. At least let me cast some protective spells on you before you go. They will last a few days and see you safely on your way.”

“Thanks be,” he muttered.

She really ought to warn him of the natives on the move toward Dupree. But Aurelius had ordered her to say nothing. Instead, she took both of Eben's hands in her own and stared intently into his eyes. “Listen to me, my friend. There are dangers abroad you do not know of and which I cannot speak of. Promise me you will be more cautious than seems necessary.”

He stared back at her intently, obviously hearing a hidden message in her words but just as obviously missing its exact meaning. “I will exercise utmost caution.”

“As if we were still in the Forest of Thorns caught between two armies,” she murmured.

“Even so?” he asked in surprise.

Selea moved past, and Raina painted on a false smile as she murmured, “Even so.”

Aurelius approached, carrying a beautifully worked suit of armor bearing the Hyland crest, and Eben groaned. The elf spoke implacably. “He would want you to have it. And where you are going, you will need it.”

“No!” Eben burst out, his voice breaking. “I cannot wear that. It is his.”

Aurelius momentarily looked as shattered as Eben sounded. None of them could quite believe Hyland was gone.

Tears clogging her throat, Raina hugged Eben and then stepped back. “Safe travels to you. Don't make me have to come after you, too.”

He rolled his eyes at her.

Raina frowned. “Eben. Should ill befall you, you would be sorely missed. We are your friends. We would come for you.”

“Exactly. And that is why I must go after Kendrick.”

“There is a wise way to go about these things.” She made no attempt to disguise the implication that there was also a foolish way to go about it.

Eben didn't look swayed, and his expression remained bleak. Raina knew what it was like to feel utterly alone in the world, and her heart went out to him.

“If go you do, so go I,” Sha'Li declared stoutly. “Leave me behind to rot you will not.”

Eben gave her a look of deep gratitude. They were an unlikely pair but had become good friends over the past months of shared danger.

“What's this?” Selea exclaimed from over by the fireplace. “Who goes where?”

“Don't try to stop me,” Eben warned the nulvari. “I would hate to have to draw blood under Leland's roof.” He flipped aside the chain he always wore around his neck to fasten his cloak.

“Stop me not, either,” Sha'Li warned, her claws slithering partway out of their sheaths.

“At least provision yourselves properly,” Selea exhorted. “And send back reports as you—”

The nulvari broke off, stepping forward abruptly to lift the blazon on the chain Eben wore. “Where did you get this?” Selea demanded angrily, brandishing the medal.

Aurelius stared at the campaign medal, as well. “It could be a replica.”

“Check it,” Selea snapped at the solinari.

Aurelius cast a spell upon the enameled metal disk that Raina thought to be a Pan Ordan campaign insignia, although she was no expert on such things. A thunderstruck expression crossed the guildmaster's face. “Where did you get this?” It was his turn to demand.

Eben frowned. “It was said to belong to my father.”

Aurelius's jaw actually fell open. He and Selea exchanged a long, wordless look fraught with dismay and disbelief. Raina wished she knew what silent conversation they were having with one another. The blazon would have been given to officers who led the military campaign by the Kothite Empire to conquer Pan Orda, or to regular soldiers who performed heroically in the attack upon the elemental continent. What was so significant about that?

“Where will you go first?” Aurelius asked as his hand fell away from the medal.

So. The elves were not going to stop Eben and Sha'Li, were they? Fond as she was of Kendrick, she could not understand why Aurelius and Selea would split the party being trained to seek the Sleeping King's all-important regalia. The pieces they knew of—his sword and shield, bow, signet ring, and crown—supposedly contained magics that would help rejoin Gawaine's spirit to his body. By sending Eben and Sha'Li away, were they abandoning the quest to wake the Sleeping King? Her gut clenched in panic.

“We go north,” Eben declared, tucking the blazon into his shirt. “To the Forest of Thorns where Kendrick and the madman who kidnapped him were last seen. And then west to discover whatever trail Tarryn follows.”

“Kerryl Moonrunner his name is,” Sha'Li disagreed. “And mad he is not. His reasons I know not, but intelligent and cunning is he.”

“Friend of yours or not,” Eben warned her, “I will kill him if he has harmed Kendrick.”

Sha'Li showed the whites of her eyes in what Raina surmised was distress, but the lizardman girl made no verbal reply. The pair swept out of the room, and silence fell over the remaining party.

And now they were three. Where they had once been seven strong and confident in their teamwork, now it was just Will, Rosana, and her, and the strange link between them that kept Will alive. How were they to finish their all-important quest to wake the Sleeping King with only the three of them to continue on?

 

CHAPTER

8

Tarryn crouched behind a thick clump of sharp-leaved holly bushes, peering stealthily through the greenery at the fire in the distance through the trees. Four men sat around its meager light. But more to the point, one visage among them she knew as well as her own. It belonged to Kendrick Hyland.
Finally
. She'd found him. And no easy task it had been. Greenskins had been
everywhere,
and she had spent nearly as much time dodging them as she had tracking Kendrick.

She eased forward, her doeskin moccasins soundless upon the detritus of the forest floor. A long pause. Another step. Another pause brimming with the predatory patience of her kind.

According to the reports, Kendrick had been kidnapped by some sort of nature guardian. Was one of the men at the fire that man? Who were the other two? And who was the female? At a glance she did not seem human. Was Kendrick restrained in some way? Chained or shackled? Had he, stars forbid, been slave marked? The wild rage of her race that always simmered in her gut heated up considerably at the notion.

Her patience nearly failed her as she crept step by painfully slow step closer to the ring of light illuminating the dark shadows of the forest. She had moved well beyond the margins of the Forest of Thorns toward the west. These trees were nowhere near as ancient as the mighty bloodwoods of the Forest of Thorns. The thin branches overhead let in sufficient light for thick underbrush to thrive among the tree trunks, which worked to her benefit by providing her ample cover, but worked against her as brambles and vines caught at her clothing.

She got her first good look at the two slender men sitting side by side on a fallen log. They were exact mirrors of one another. Twins, then. Kendrick sat in profile to her. His cheeks were leaner than before, his features more mature. Gads, he was handsomer than ever.

Mentally shaking herself, she turned her attention to the last man. He appeared to be of middle age but looked as powerful as an ox. He had the thick chest and muscular forearms of a woodsman. Surely, that must have been Kerryl Moonrunner, the nature guardian. Beside him sat a woman with distinctly green-toned skin, scantily clad in clothing that appeared to be made of … leaves? Was that a
dryad
? Tarryn frowned. Where was this one's tree? No tree in this clearing had the size and perfection of form associated with dryad-inhabited trees.

Kendrick's familiar voice drifted to her sharp ears on the chilly night air. “Tell me more of this threat you sense coming toward us.”

Tarryn's heart jolted. Was Kendrick trying to warn her that Kerryl Moonrunner would be able to detect her coming? She'd heard stories of nature guardians talking to animals and trees and drawing magic from the forests themselves, but she had always dismissed them as silly hearth tales.

Kerryl was speaking. “—as great a danger as you can imagine in your worst nightmares—the threat gathering to attack this land is worse. I do my best to prepare for it. That is why I took you and made you into who you are. Your talents are needed for the fight, boy.”