Invasive Species
Part Two
They brought the tusk-hopper back to camp, and after studying its flesh at length, Melati pronounced it safe to eat. Sust and Coppersky butchered it, and roasted it over a roaring fire. The taste was sharp – too strong for some of the Sun Folk – but most ate heartily, ignoring their elders’ warnings to pace themselves. The elves gathered together in a great circle as they had the night before, and shared stories of the day’s expeditions.
“We scouted the lake’s shoreline to the north,” Feathersnake explained to Melati and Beast. “So many birds – most no bigger than my hand. Makes sense when you think about the stronger worldpull, I suppose – but when it’s so easy to float here, I keep forgetting about it.”
“Great schools of fish,” Saffron cut in. “There are so many, and the water is so clear you can see them from the air.”
“You’ll need to learn how to build boats and go fishing,” Savin remarked from her seat nearby.
“Who needs boats?” Feathersnake dismissed. “We’ll cast nets from the air and haul them all out! I swear I feel like I could float a zwoot without breaking a sweat!”
“And most of that is being air-drunk,” Melati said gently.
“You’re dressing me with your eyes again,” Beast muttered, feeling the intense gaze of the Red Snake at his right shoulder.
Vaeri dropped her eyes modestly. “I was just thinking, Lord Beast… if the Lady could teach you to float, I could sew you the best wings!”
“Like Cirrus’s?” Beast wrinkled his nose in disgust.
“A feathered Beast, I’d like to see that,” Feathersnake laughed, then saw Beast’s storm-cloud expression and hastily added. “At least she’s stopped daydreaming about making you feasting robes.”
“Just for that, you’re wearing those skins to rags!” Vaeri shot back.
“Have you gotten a look at those rocks all along the water’s edge – the ones that look like they’re covered in crystal-moss?” Greenflame asked Grayling. “They are crystal-moss – solid all the way through. Well, not solid exactly. More like a honeycomb. I think the moss forms lattices to grow upwards when it runs out of soil. That’s why there are so many of them around the water.”
“Do you think Ekuar and Jarrah will come live here with us?” Maize asked Cholla as mother and daughter sipped cider and watched the rings come alive in the sky.
“I’m not sure. Mother’s so proud of what she’s done with the fields in Oasis… and Father’s always saying he’s too old to be going on new adventures. Still… he might think differently after a breath of this air. It has magic in it. You know when I heard the call that you’d been hurt I ran all the way from the shore to the Ark? My legs ached after that, but my heart didn’t flutter even once…”
* * *
The last glow of dusk had faded in the west, and the sky was a deep blue, bisected by the milky bands of the rings, when the Sun Folk began to seek out their beds. Swift carried a small cut of roast, wrapped in flatbread, into the Ark for Rayek. She found him lying in bed, his face turned to the wall. The crystal walls’ light was kept at a minimum, imitating the gloom of a tree-den in the Holt.
“I brought you something to eat.”
“I am not hungry.”
“You will be,” Swift said simply. She walked around the bed and set the food down within Rayek’s reach. He closed his eyes and bent his head so his hair would fall across his face.
“For later,” she said, then crossed back to her own side of the bed and began to undress.
“What are you doing?” Rayek grumbled suspiciously as she slid under the furs.
“I’m tired. Don’t know about you, but tramping around under this stronger worldpull takes it out of me. This isn’t an easy world for tall elves.” She rolled over so that they lay back to back, and set her head down without another word. For untold moments, her soft breathing and Rayek’s shallower breaths were the only sound in the crystal room. Then Rayek spoke.
“I don’t know how you can bear to be in the same room with me.”
“It’s my room too,” Swift mumbled.
“I thought… you’d rather sleep outside, under the stars.”
“Those aren’t my stars. This is where I belong.”
Blindly, he reached behind him, until his hand brushed against her hip under the fur blanket. “Everything I once had is slipping through my fingers,” he whispered. “I cannot lose you too.”
“You won’t,” Swift promised, reaching up to cover his hand with hers. “You’ve been a bigger ass before, black-hair, and you haven’t lost me yet.”
“I will not be pitied,” Rayek insisted again, though his voice had lost its venom from earlier.
She squeezed his hand tight. “But will you let yourself be loved? That’s all I ask.”
Rayek did not answer in words, nor in sending. But he squeezed her hand back all the same.
It was enough.
* * *
The night air began to cool, but much more slowly than Grayling was used to in Oasis, where the temperature plummeted as soon as the sun set. He realized he had no need for his heavy wool wrap.
He and Littlefire sat just behind the southern wall, looking at the rings as they looped over the mountains on the horizon.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, after spending a few moments in companionable silence.
Littlefire tugged at his forelock introspectively. “Hmmm….” he hummed. “Kit is thinking how beautiful the rings are… how she’d love to spend the nights looking up at them. And Littlefire is thinking about how much the Wolfriders would hate this world.”
“Really? There is nothing here they would find appealing?” Grayling waited for a reply, and hearing none, went on. “I’ll admit, it’s not to my taste either. But then the desert can’t have been to my taste at first. Strange… I can barely remember living in the forest. The few times I’ve gone back to visit – be it the Evertree or the Great Holt – it just felt… wrong to me.”
“Then will you move here?”
“Not sure yet. I’m not such a dreamer that I’d abandon everything I know after two days of novelty. I’m not like Swift – I never went questing. And yet… I do feel the pull of this place – the magic in the air, the sense of… homecoming, tugging at the part of my blood that comes from the stars. The Firstcomers’ homeworld must have been much like this.”
Again the nervous tug on his hair. “We feel it too. Littlefire more so,” he added after a moment. “It’s peaceful here. Quiet. We feel safe here. Safer than we’ve felt since… before.”
“The Tree, you mean?”
“You know what happened?”
“I know enough. I don’t want to know more. Neither does Swift. She says she’ll never go back to the old forest now.”
“She’s afraid to find Joyleaf in the Tree?” Littlefire guessed.
Grayling shook his head. “Swift has nothing to fear from Joyleaf. She said she’s often felt her mother’s spirit following her.”
“Ah.” Littlefire nodded, hearing what was unsaid.
“We never found out what happened to Bearclaw’s spirit after Madcoil. We never wanted to find out. But he knew Swift’s soulname. For all I know he knew mine too. And if he went into the Tree–”
“Then you cannot go back,” Littlefire said vehemently. “And Swift…. High Ones, if the Tree got its roots into her…” He seized Grayling’s hand. “The things she knows, the souls she knows. It could reach Sunstream through her. It would undo us all!”
“It will never take her,” Grayling said gravely. “I’ll burn the Everwood to cinders before I let it have any of my kin!” He looked at Littlefire with new eyes. “That’s the real reason you want the Wolfriders to leave Abode, isn’t it? The Tree knows Kit’s soul.”
Littlefire nodded. “And still it calls to us through her. We haven’t have a peaceful sleep until we came here. It begs us to come home…” his face darkened, “and we long to return… with torch in hand. We made the Tree scream once before – and we want to hear it again. It… there are no words in our tongue for what it did to her. Violation does not begin to describe. It… paralyzed her soul. It tried to consume it. No one who hasn’t felt it can understand the depths of our pain. Our rage. The wolf in us still bleeds. And it wants vengeance!”
Littlefire shook his head and smacked his temple sharply. “We can’t. We dare not. Destroying the Evertree would unleash all those angry spirits, and they’d be a plague on the World of Two Moons. If they went to the Egg… or the Palace….” he shuddered. “But its sendings can’t reach here, not yet,” he continued, more hopeful. “It took over ten thousand years for the Tree to awaken. We have time yet to come to an accord… or find a new way to fight it. But we will not be caught unawares a second time.”
“This sounds heavy,” a cheerful voice remarked, and as Littlefire broke off, startled, Grayling heard the crunch of boots on crystal-moss. He looked up to see Sust approaching, his long fur cloak sweeping the ground behind him.
“Hey there, Turtle,” he said, ruffling Littlefire’s hair until the Glider swatted his hand away. Sust slapped back, and the two cuffed each other with increasing force until Grayling winced to watch it. But then Sust left off abruptly, and collapsed next to Littlefire with a grin. He saw Grayling’s confusion and shrugged. “Brothers, remember?”
Grayling blinked. He did forget sometimes, if he was honest. But he was not about to admit it.
“Where’s your other half?” he asked instead. Sust and Coppersky had been inseparable since the landing on Homestead, as if they were reliving the early days of their lifemating.
Sust chuckled. “At the pits, ridding himself of his meal – and his dignity. I told him that tuskhopper looked suspect.”
“But Melati said the meat was safe,” Littlefire protested.
“Not if you gorge on four helpings washed down with half a skin of honeywine.”
Grayling made a face. “I feel a little sick just thinking about it.”
“Serves him right for taking the cut I was eyeing,” Sust said with satisfaction. “My bowels owe him a thank-you, it seems. I didn’t tell you any of this, by the way,” he added belatedly.
“Of course not,” Grayling agreed. “We all know Coppersky’s much too pretty to have bowels.”
Sust grinned and winked.
Littlefire sat at attention, head cocked like a wolf listening to the wind. “Sending?” Sust asked.
“Father’s calling us.”
“What – how?” Grayling asked. “I thought you said sendings couldn’t reach from Abode.”
“We have to go,” Littlefire said, a moment before he crumpled forward, his head smacking against his knees. Sust tsked and rearranged the Glider’s dead weight on the ground in a supine position.
“You’re supposed to lie down first,” he chided. He smoothed Littlefire’s hair over the red mark his knee had left on his forehead. “You think their spirits are going all the way back to Abode?”
“Search me. I’ve never figured out how ‘going out’ works.” Grayling looked over his shoulder at the spires of the Ark. They were glowing rather brighter than he remembered. “They must be using the Ark… like… like a hunting horn. Littlefire shouts through the Ark so Aurek can hear, and Aurek shouts back using the Palace… or maybe the Egg itself.”
“Or all three,” Sust mused. “Heh – and Sunstream too. Like the string-and-shell game – remember that one? You string up the shells tight and talk, and watch the strings shiver from the sound.”
“Oh yes! Clever trollkin. You know Varek told me they do that with little copper wires now? To talk all over Blue Mountain? Wire-sending, they call it. They’re even trying to lay wires down to Sarazen.”
“Why? I though the whole point to sticking those trolls at Sarazen was so Blue Mountain wouldn’t have to talk to them?”
Grayling shrugged. He had long given up trying to understand the contradictions of Blue Mountain politics. Meanwhile, Sust considered his analogy a moment longer before asking, “So if they’re using Sunstream for this wire-sending… is Sunstream the shell or the string?”
“Guess we’ll have to wait for them to tell us.”
“Huh.” Sust looked over Littlefire’s unconscious form. “Hey, want to take his clothes off and put them back on inside-out? See how long it takes him to notice?”
“How are you an elder?”
“Some of us stay young at heart–”
Littlefire sat up with an explosive breath, the sudden noise and movement making Sust recoil in fright. Littlefire gasped for breath, eyes wild, his entire body shaking with tremors.
“Whoa, Littlefire?” Sust asked. “Kit? You all right in there?”
“Drukk!” Littlefire cursed at the top of his lungs. “Those pokin’ maggot-brains!”
Sust and Grayling exchanged bemused glances.
Littlefire wasn’t finished. “I’ll kill them! I’ll kill all of them. Drukk! The waste of meat! Rot-brained, scat-eating, corpse-rutting pigspawn!”
“Someone’s been learning words from Skot,” Sust quipped.
“Calm down, Waykeeper,” Grayling urged. “What pigspawn? Who are you talking about?”
“The Hunt! They’re gone! They took all the wolves – all the weapons – half the lifebearers – High Ones, they tried to take Rue!”
“Gone where? I don’t–”
“They’re gone!” Littlefire repeated. “They broke off on their own and took to the lowlands with the wolfpack. They’ve stolen from their own tribe – and left the Holtbound with nothing! Drukk! Foxglove warned us! She told us Eyetooth was plotting something! But we didn’t believe it – we didn’t think they’d really…” he hung his head. “We caused this. We left them with strangers and we trusted those mad wolves to follow packright… to keep to some shred of the Way! We told them we’d have a council when we returned. We told them to wait out the winter. We thought… but we were wrong. And now the tribe is broken.”
* * *
Littlefire was calmer by morning, when he related the details of his communion with Aurek on the astral plane. “Foxglove warned us. Burl had warned her – that’s why we insisted Rue come inside the Egg. We should have done the same with all the Holtbound. It happened yesterday – Eyetooth and Softdew waited until just before dawn, then they raided the dens inside First Shell and took off with their supporters… and the wolfpack.”
“Even the Holtbound’s wolves?” Swift asked. Littlefire laughed harshly.
“The Holtbound don’t have wolves anymore. Oh, sometimes the pack will let one climb on, but there’s no true bond. And even the few hunters who stayed… well, I suppose the bond doesn’t run as true as it did in our youth. Their wolves left too. They understand packright better than we do, it seems.”
“You said some of the hunters stayed,” Grayling prompted.
“Not without a fight. Burl hid in the caves rather than confront Eyetooth face-to-face. They nearly dragged Rue off with them. And they bloodied Sparkstone when he tried to reason with them. Cheipar tracked them into the woods some ten leagues west of the High Hope. But Sparkstone wouldn’t pursue them...” he shrugged. “Can’t say I blame him.”
“Sounds like you’re well rid of them,” Sust said with a sneer.
“But to lose almost all our hunters... eleven elves. And all our wolves! Our numbers are nearly halved overnight. We’ve never taken a blow this hard before!”
“Never?” Swift raised an eyebrow. “You’re a poor howlkeeper if you think so.”
Littlefire blinked, then scowled. “Oh. Good for us. So I’m to play the new Huntress Skyfire, am I? Why not, why not?” His gaze turned inward and his right eyelid twitched. “But I didn’t want this – not like this! We were going to reason with them, we can’t reason with foaming sickness, we’ll be the better for it, but how can we be better for being reduced?”
Hard on the heels of that anguished cry came a hysterical cackle. “But you want that!” Littlefire accused next. “You can’t fool me! When the pack gets too big, the wolf knows! Don’t you see? This is a sign!”
Swift and Grayling winced, uncomfortable to be parties to this inner dialogue. “Who’s saying what?” Swift whispered to her half-brother.
Sust overheard her, rolled his eyes, then gave Littlefire a brisk slap across the face.
“Oh!” Littlefire reeled, then blinked, and collected himself. “Thank you, Sust.”
“Wackroot? I always carry some.”
“Yes. Yes, we’d like that.”
Sust draped an arm over Littlefire’s shoulder and started to lead him away. Swift called after them,
“Waykeeper, wait. Where will the Hunt go? Will they try to get back to the Homeland?”
“And the Tree? No fear of that.”
“Are you sure? They must know of the Ice Bridge.”
“Must they? Half of them can’t grasp that we live on a sphere. They don’t know any howls that don’t involve wars and hunts. They left their only true elder behind at the Egg, and half of them swore they’d never beg a ride in the Palace again. They’re running blind through a new land, just as we are here. But they have no healer for when things go wrong, no magical ship to carry them to safety. And there are a dozen human nations between them and the Ice Bridge alone. Oh, they’ll probably hear the Tree’s call. But they’ll never live long enough to answer it. We shouldn’t expect most of them to last a year.”
Swift recoiled. “That’s a little harsh. They are Wolfriders. Surely they–”
“Not one of them has even seen a human before. They’ll try to raid the first sheep farm they find and get slaughtered for their trouble. Or they’ll eat poison berries by mistake, or they’ll range too far north before the thaw takes hold and starve to death on the Plainswaste.” He hung his head. “The Tree was right about one thing: we tried to preserve a way of life that should have been left to die long ago. We hid in our forest and ignored the greater world. Well, the greater world won’t ignore them!”
He considered it a moment, then softened and added, “Some of them might surprise us. They might find a way to bend with the wind. But don’t call them Wolfriders. They don’t deserve the name anymore. None of us do.”
* * *
To the northwest, the carpet of crystal-moss began to break up, revealing barren wine-colored earth. Unidentifiable fungal growths poked through the soil in places. A pair of carrion birds circled something in the distance, as a much larger winged creature leisurely rode the updrafts towards them.
“Are those the mushroom-hives the Master told us about?” Carrun asked, as she inspected a little cluster of cream-colored bulbs.
“I don’t think so,” Greenflame said. “He said they were green.”
“All the same, don’t touch anything,” Carrun ruled.
“What are we looking for?” Arlo asked.
“Anything – that’s what surveying means.”
Greenflame’s peace-hound left his side to investigate one of the mushrooms. Something very small scampered out across the ground, and Eight chased after it eagerly. The Red Snakes stood and watched, laughing as the little creature – a lizard? an insect? – continually darted out of reach of Eight’s snapping jaws. It disappeared into a crack in the earth, and Eight fell to digging furiously.
Saffron returned from her flyby of the birds. She dropped down from the sky and let her silk wings fall idle on the ground behind her. “They must be the scavenger hawks of this world. First birds I’ve seen here with what I’d call a proper beak. Still too many eyes, though.”
“Everything has too many eyes here,” Carrun said.
“Skywise has a theory on that,” Greenflame piped up helpfully.
“Skywise likes to hear himself talk,” Arlo sneered. “Thinks himself the equal of Lord Haken, the blowhard.”
“Don’t let the Master hear you talking like that,” Carrun warned. “What are they circling, Saffron?”
“Looks like some sort of carcass tangled up on a needle-mound,” Saffron said. “Already been picked fairly clean from the looks of it.”
Carrun looked north. The land rose in a little hump, concealing the carcass from view. “Something already feeding?” she asked.
“No, that’s the odd thing. I don’t see why they don’t just fly down and eat what’s left. Unless that needle-mound is one of those poison-spitters and the birds know better.”
Carrun shrugged. “Might as well go and see. If nothing else, Arlo can take one of the birds down with his arrow-whip. Give them a new specimen to study back at the Ark.”
The four Snakes approached the carcass: Saffron from the air, Carrun, Arlo and Greenflame on the ground. Eight remained behind, digging and sniffing for his lost prey, but the other peace-hounds followed eagerly enough.
“Eight! Here!” Greenflame called. He made a face. “He doesn’t listen like he used to.”
Carrun patted his arm consolingly. “They always come back a little different.”
“It’s not really Eight, is it? Just a copy.”
Carrun’s voice turned sharp. “Careful, now. Is the Master just a copy of the ‘real Yosha?’”
Arlo overhead them. “Well, if he is, we’d never know, would we?” he challenged. “The Master’s an improvement on Yosha, son of Maleen. And your new Eight’s an improvement on the old one.”
“He is less impulsive now,” Carrun added. “Perhaps he’s learned from his death.”
“He’s grown up,” Arlo smirked at Greenflame. “Maybe one day you will too.”
The carcass came into sight now: a tangle of greyish skin and exposed red flesh. Several bone-white shapes projected above the meat, but they looked like no bones the Snakes had ever seen before. As the breeze shifted, the smell of rotting meat washed over them, and the peace-hounds began to pant.
“Heel, Three,” Carrun ordered with a snap of her fingers. Reluctantly, the hound obeyed. But Six and Two raced forward, drawn by the smell of an easy meal… only to stop several paces shy of the carcass. They dug in their heels and began to growl, their shoulder-snakes cracking in the air over their heads.
“What’s wrong with them?” Arlo asked.
“Dunno…” Carrun floated over to the carcass, trying to get a better look at it. The stench suggested it had been dead for several days, as did the general state of the body. All that remained was one large slab of meat, flesh mottled, blood dried to a crust in the sun. She couldn’t even tell what sort of beast it had belonged to originally. If anything, it reminded her of a ragged cut of fleshvine.
Up close, the bony protusions did not look like bones at all, but some sort of white cactus bulbs: cholla-prickers bleached by the sun. Each bulb – Carrun counted nine in all – ended in a wrinkled knot, ringed by sharp needles.
Zwoot-pucker, Carrun thought crudely as she turned back to her friends.
Three had joined the other two peace-hounds, but they showed no desire to approach the carcass. Their hackles stood up on alert, and their muzzles were contorted in matching grimaces.
“Come on, it’s all right,” Greenflame said. He stepped over the invisible boundary the hounds were defending. “It’s just some meat.”
Carrun watched him take two more steps, before she caught a sudden movement in her peripheral vision. One of the puckers flexed open, tightening the ring of spines to attention. Carrun floated closer for a better look. It was a miniature gullet, lined with concentric circles of rough, grinding teeth.
“Huh. Sorry, wrong hole,” Carrun murmured with amusement.
Then the mouth lunged at her.
With a gasp, Carrun floated backward, and the grinding maw narrowly missed taking her hand. Behind her, Arlo let out a cry.
Carrun swung around, just as Saffron shouted “Get back!” from her vantagepoint overhead.
The earth surged upwards all around Arlo and Greenflame and the hounds. Arlo quickly rose above the ground as something white punched through the topsoil. But Greenflame couldn’t float.
The ground seemed to crumble underneath him and he dropped a handspan into a whirlpool of dust. Then came a hideous crunching sound, followed by a high-pitched shriek.
“No!” Carrun flew to his side and wrapped her arms about his ribs, trying to pull him up with her. But something held on fast. Greenflame screamed so loud her ears rang. His hands clutched at her arms desperately.
Another blur of movement: an eruption of purple dust and a white throat lunging out of the ground. Carrun didn’t see it strike, but she heard the aborted whine as a hound was swiftly silenced.
“Help me!” Carrun begged, as she continued to pull on Greenflame. Arlo joined her and together they hauled with all their muscles and magic. Greenflame slowly rose out of the swirling pit. He kicked one foot free and used it to batter the other.
“Get off get off get off!” he screamed.
Together, they floated him clear off the ground. But they were bringing something else with them. Sealed tight around Greenflame’s left calf was a writhing, convulsing white mouth.
Greenflame let out his loudest shriek yet. But it couldn’t quite hide the sound of crunching bone and squelching flesh. With a shudder, the mouth detached and fell away. The coiled neck retreated deep into the hole in the ground. Suddenly freed, the three Snakes soared high into the air before Arlo and Carrun could moderate their magic.
Greenflame hung limp in their arms. Heavy gouts of blood pumped from his mangled leg. His left trouser leg ended at the knee in a ragged tear. And below it, torn flesh and splintered bone protruded a bare three-fingerwidths before they, too, were gone.
* * *
Melati lifted her hand from the remains of Greenflame’s leg. Her magic had sealed the bloody stump and covered it with fresh, glossy scar tissue. Satisfied, she used a dagger to cut away the crude tourniquet Carrun and Saffron had bound just under his knee. She probed the sealed arteries and veins lightly as blood-flow was restored to the little stump below the knee. Dusky flesh slowly took on a healthy brown tone. Greenflame stirred slightly on the starstone pallet. His hand clenched tightly about Grayling’s, who had been at his side from the moment the Snakes had brought him in.
“He’s coming around again!” Grayling warned.
Melati tsked and touched his forehead to intensify his sleeping trance. “Stubborn child. There. He should sleep for a while longer. You did well,” she told Carrun and the others. “Had he lost much more blood, he might not have survived the journey back here.”
“How did this happen?” Grayling demanded.
“I told you,” Carrun began. “Those… maw-coils–”
“How did it happen?” Grayling roared. “How did the one Red Snake who can’t float get that close to a dangerous creature?”
“It used a lure,” Saffron said. “The bulk of its body mimics a dead animal – it puts out a stench like rot to bring in scavengers–”
“And you let your grandson approach it on foot while you stayed safely in the air?”
“We didn’t know what it was. I was trying to get a better look at it.”
“We had no idea it was so big!” Carrun added defensively. “Greenflame was still ten paces away from the… the center of that thing. Two was further back and that didn’t save him. We couldn’t even recover the body, that thing ate him so fast.”
“I saw it,” Arlo piped up. “Three mouths at ones. All tearing at him, all pulling him down under the sand. He didn’t stand a chance. The hounds knew. They could smell something was wrong.”
“Then they’ve got more sense than any of you!”
“Enough, Grayling!” Melati snapped. “They had sense enough to bind his wound and save his life. A little gratitude would not be amiss.”
“Gratitude? He’d still have both legs if not for your foolhardy Snakes!”
“He is one of my ‘foolhardy Snakes.’ He has been for over a hundred years. And he’s taken greater risks than the one today.”
“No, he hasn’t! None of you have! Haven’t you listened at all to Skywise and Savin? Haven’t you learned anything since we landed here? We are invaders in a unknown land! You cannot forsee what dangers lurk at every turn, and you’re all treating it like a summer retreat at the Cinder Pools!”
Saffron stepped forward challengingly. “I resent that. You think we are all foolish children, just because we haven’t the years you do? You’ve spent most of those years safely behind rock walls. Maybe you aren’t ready to face what’s out there – but don’t assume the rest of us aren’t.”
Lightning-fast, Grayling seized her by the scruff of the neck. Before Arlo and Carrun could draw their weapons, he dragged Saffron over to the bed and all but shoved her onto it.
“Are you ready for this? That’s your grandson! Lying there in his own blood! Your blood!”
Saffron slapped his hand off her. “I know that! I got it all over my hands when I bound his wounds. While you were in camp.”
Haken and Chani appeared in the doorway of the sickroom. “How is the child?” Haken asked.
“Stable,” Melati said. “I was able to salvage the knee.”
“Describe the creature that did this,” Haken commanded.
“I don’t know if it was one creature or a colony,” Carrun said. “White heads that look like needle-mounds, on long necks that hide under the ground. They seem all linked somehow to the center of the thing: a large mound of flesh that mimics the smell and appearance of a carcass. It couldn’t fool the native birds, and it couldn’t quite fool the peace-hounds, but it fooled us. As soon as Greenflame stepped close enough, the maw-coils struck.”
“Mawcoil,” Haken mused. “An apt name.”
“We only saw the one mound,” Saffron added. “But it had at least ten separate mouths.”
“I sent Cirrus and Feathersnake to scout the plains from the air,” Carrun said. “They’ll tell us if there are others.”
“Assuming the others use the same visible lure,” Haken said. “Assuming there aren’t breeds which live entirely underground, waiting for footfalls to spring their trap.”
“We’ve made too many assumptions,” Grayling said severely. “And it’s causing a new crisis every day.”
“You’re right. This cannot continue.”
Grayling stood a little taller. The worry lines began to ease from his brow. “Then we are returning to Oasis? I’ll start rounding up the–”
“Out of the question!” Haken barked. “I have no intention of slinking away like a beaten wolf. To endure the derision of those who always doubted us. No, this is our world now – we have laid claim to it and we will not be driven away.”
“Is your pride worth more than your children’s safety?” Grayling blurted out.
“Far from it. I’ll do what I should have done when the Palace first crashed on Abode – what I would have done, had I not been distracted by my quarrel with Timmain!”
Chani regarded him curiously. “Haken?”
“Even on Abode, with the Palace at my back, I had the power to deal with our enemies once and for all. Rayek proved it when he exterminated that loathsome hive at Howling Rock. It only requires the will to see the deed through.”
“Howling Rock…” Grayling repeated, his eyes slowly widening in dawning comprehension. “No…”
“We came to remake this world in our image, yet we have been letting ourselves be bested by it at every turn. Poison plants, vicious beasts – why should we endure this?” Haken flashed Chani a toothy grin. “The land must be cleared before it can be farmed. We will clear it down to cinders!”
“No!” Grayling cried.
“My lord, you cannot,” Melati protested. “Our studies–”
“No study is worth an elf’s life,” Haken dismissed. “We did not come here to study – we came here to conquer!”
“But such a drastic course…” Chani said gently. She touched Haken’s arm. “Let’s not be hasty. Of course we’ll have to exterminate the mawcoils and the fungus hives – but there may be much that could be salvaged.”
“Repurposed,” Melati agreed.
“Salvaged?” Grayling blurted. “You – you haven’t been listening, have you? Any of you. You still think this is some sort of… puzzle to solve! Treasure to be dug out of the ground. This is a living world, with its own path to follow. It doesn’t need us here – it doesn’t want us here! If you try to fight that, it will fight back.”
“Then I will vanquish it,” Haken said simply. “I am no Wolfrider. I have no obligation to honor the primitive threat-responses of lesser creatures. ”
“No, might is clearly right to you. Strange, you don’t approve when humans do it.”
Haken flinched as if struck. “Careful, Grayling. You’re starting to sound like one of the Fellowship.”
“If being one of the Vanguard means burning the land into submission, I’ll gladly join Arshel.”
“That’s your choice,” Haken said coldly. His gaze flickered briefly to Greenflame, unconscious on the starstone slab. “But I swear, I will make this world safe for your child.”
He swept from the sickroom. Chani called him back, her tone sharp. “Where are you going?”
“Has my lady not being listening? I have pests to eliminate.”
“We haven’t decided that,” she warned.
“Savah’s bones, lifemate! Are you going to stand with that frightened pup and say we should scamper back to our cage on Abode?”
Chani did not back down. “I’m going to suggest you do not act impulsively. You’re not at your best when you do.” She summoned a gentle smile, but her gaze was firm, unmoving. “I think we should all let Greenflame rest now. And we can discuss this more fully once tempers have cooled. Wouldn’t you agree, Melati?”
“Mother is right,” Melati said. “Many’s the time I’ve rushed ahead and regretted it afterwards.”
“Oh, there’ll be no regret,” Haken said. But some of the venom had ebbed from his words. He looked at Melati hopefully, a father eager for his child’s approval. “I’d not have your daughter born to anything less than the perfect home.”
“You haven’t the right,” Grayling insisted stubbornly.
Haken turned a scathing gaze his way. “Rights are taken! I am Lord of Oasis and Master of the Ark! I have claimed this world by right of the Ark, and by all the spirits of the Firstcomers, I mean to tame it!”
He stalked out of the room his long cloak cracking angrily behind him. The Red Snakes hastened to look anywhere but at Chani, as she and Melati both glared at Grayling.
“You just had to keep snapping your jaws, didn’t you?” Chani growled.
* * *
Haken would not be moved. As word spread of his threat, an emergency council was called, and nearly everyone pleaded with him to see reason.
Some spoke of the knowledge that would lost. Others feared for the sheer loss of largely innocent life. “The crystal-moss did nothing wrong,” Maize insisted. “The pug-scuttlers didn’t. We can’t wipe them out just because we don’t understand them yet.”
“The mawcoil did nothing wrong either,” Grayling insisted. “Don’t mistake me: it crippled my child and I’d sorely love vengeance. I’d dig the thing up and burn it to death myself if I gave in to anger. But that wouldn’t be right.”
Others took a more cynical approach. “Are we talking about wiping out the native lifeforms on the entire planet?” Coppersky asked. “Or just our own territory? Because I can’t say ‘clearing the land’ where we intend to live doesn’t make a lot of sense. We have our own animals to think of, after all.”
“I know all our animals,” Beast said. “We came here for something new!”
“We don’t even know if the plants and animals we bring over can survive here,” Klipspringer pointed out.
“We cannot do anything without more study,” Melati insisted. “Who is to say those mushroom-hives don’t produce something essential to the environment?”
“I don’t see why we can’t look for a gentler place to live,” Cholla argued. “We have an entire world to explore. If there are dangerous animals here, we can simply move. The mawcoils can’t be everywhere, after all.”
“The mawcoils might be one of the more benign creatures on this world,” Haken said darkly.
“I say let them come,” Sust scoffed. “You promised us danger and adventure!”
“No, I warned you of dangers. And I swore to do all in my power to smooth our path.”
“But if we make Homestead into a copy of Oasis… what was the point in leaving?” Sust asked, genuinely bewildered.
“No humans,” Coppersky began to tick off points on his fingers. “No Arshel. No Circle of Nine demanding a report every eight days. No Timmain dropping in uninvited.”
“I think we should hold on council until Greenflame is well enough to join us,” Saffron said.
“Why?” Carrun asked. “I can tell you what he’d say. I remember what he said when Huro killed Eight.”
“It’s not right,” Swift spoke up.
“You have no voice in this!” Haken snapped irritably. “You are my guest and an observer only.”
“And me?” Skywise asked. “Do I have no voice?”
“Only if you wish to challenge me for mastery of the Ark!”
“Mura save me,” Savin moaned into her palm. “For someone who hates wolves so much, you certainly act like one whenever anyone crosses you.”
“Haken, I thought the Firstcomers learned to adapt to the worlds they visited,” Skywise pressed, refusing to rise to the bait. “To mingle with the creatures you met, not to dominate them.”
“We tried that on Abode,” Haken snapped. “I did not come here to repeat the mistakes of the past.”
“Then why bring up Howling Rock?” Grayling challenged. “After what our kin went through there, you can’t claim any part of that was a good idea!”
“We can argue in circles for days, clearly,” Swift said. “The question is, Haken: will you actually listen to your children? If your ‘Vanguard’ stands against you, will you honor their choice? Or will you go ahead make the choice for them?”
Haken shot her a murderous glare. “And if I do? Do you think I fear your judgment, wolf-cub?”
With that ominous pronouncement, he stalked back inside the Ark, leaving his supporters and opponents equally restive.
“Our lord will consider every voice,” Chani insisted, the peacekeeper as always.
“Will he?” Swift asked under her breath.
**Well, not yours,** she locksent.
**Do I need to send for Sunstream and Venka?**
**Ah, so we’ve come to threats already? And after you’ve humiliated Haken in front of everyone, what then? Are you ready for the sort of enemy that would make you?**
**I didn’t say they’d stop him by force.**
**But they would. They would have to. The moment he saw them, it would be war.** Chani smiled humorlessly. **I know my lifemate.**
* * *
In the center chamber of the Ark, Haken stood at the starstone table that had once been the Little Palace. Painted in light, the now-familiar globe of Homestead slowly rotated over the table’s surface. Haken let his fingertips dance over the edge of the image, magnifying the continent where they had landed.
It would be so simple, he thought to himself. Why do they oppose me? What are these pitiful creatures to them? We have always shaped our surroundings to enforce our will!
His Vanguard was proving as shortsighted as Arshel’s Fellowship. He had thought better of them. They had accepted – they had welcomed! – the improvements their shapers had made to the plants and beasts of Oasis. Surely they would accept this! If not, they did not belong in his new nation.
It would be simplest if all the elves and their beasts were to come into the Ark, but he could already sense the more stubborn ones would insist on remaining outside, daring him to unleash the death-light and incinerate them too. Very well. He would not force a confrontation – he had no need. The life on Homestead had its own distinctive “flavor”, as Maize had put it: a recognizable cellular script. He could target his magic to affect only the native script. Indeed, if he could obtain a sample of that wretched mawcoil, he could target its specific matrix – exterminate it alone and leave all the other life unaffected.
He would have to do the same for the spore-spitting fungal hives. Despite Melati’s protests, one single species could not possibly be critical to the environment. Worldsongs were more robust melodies than that! Hadn’t they wiped out plenty of minor plant species during their expansions in Oasis – replacing useless weeds with valuable grains? Why was extinction by hoe and plow somehow more honorable than extinction by magic?
They would come to see his point of view. Everything he did, he did to protect them. He scowled at the globe in front of him. Truly, it was such a waste of precious time, to fiddle with the specificities of cellular scripting… and he had to admit – to himself at least – that he lacked Melati’s gift for it. Better to wipe out everything between the mountains and the closest inland sea. Survey parties could still study the wildlife in other lands – but following proper rules for safety. In time they could learn what was useful to their kind and what wasn’t.
They would be angry with him for taking matters into his own hand. Some might even curse him. But they would come to understand. They had to understand!
“Don’t do it.”
Haken started at the sudden interruption. Rayek stood in the doorway leading to the sleeping chambers, staring at Haken with haunted eyes.
“Oh. Are you still here? I keep forgetting.”
“Swift sent to me. Told me what you mean to do.”
“I rather thought you’d approve, considering your success at Howling Rock.”
“Oh, it was a great success. But it came at a great price.”
“I have already heard all the arguments–”
“You haven’t heard them from me.”
Rayek slowly crossed the distance between them. The millennia had added much height to his once-diminutive frame, yet he still stood a full head shorter than Haken. With their similar coloring, they looked much like brothers – and indeed Haken had often thought of Rayek as more a brother than the many-times-great-grandson he was. A peer of sorts – though not an equal by any means. But a respected fellow master.
Perhaps it was that respect that made Haken stop and listen. That, or the palpable grief weighing Rayek down.
“You think I cast the death-light at Howling Rock by design? I did not. I barely knew what I was doing, my mind was in such a fog of rage. I can scarcely remember the moment itself, other than burning with a white-hot anger. A desire to punish. To cause pain to escape pain. They had hurt elves – worse, they had made me hurt elves. They had made me choose between my granddaughter and two elves I’d never met. I chose my granddaughter–”
“Of course you did–”
“And the two strangers paid for it with their lives. And I blamed the humans for it. I wanted them all dead! I wanted them to burn!”
“Of course–”
“But I didn’t mean to burn the land down to ash. I didn’t mean to kill every living thing, and leave Howling Rock a corrupted wasteland.”
“That was an unfortunate side-effect.”
“Unfortunate? Have you felt barren soil? Held it in your hands, and felt the profound emptiness of it? Have you seen a land where no life can take root, even in the time whole forests rise from seedlings? Have you looked into the faces of those whose land you’ve destroyed? I had not. Not until last summer. I was quite content to forget Howling Rock – forget that moment of terror when I lost control of my magic, when I thought I was burning the whole world with my anger.”
Rayek chuckled humorlessly. “You thought I meant to cast the death-light? That I planned it as coldly as you plan it now? Of course you did. I let everyone believe that. I let myself believe that. Each night when doubts crept in on me – when I remembered that loss of control – I would simply tell myself the same thing. ‘They deserved it. I chose to do it. I was right to do it. I ought to be thanked. They were only humans… only horses, only wolves, only lesser beasts…’”
“And so they were!” Haken insisted.
Rayek ignored the outburst. “I found I had a talent for killing humans – and a talent for justifying myself. I needed only to channel my anger – my disgust at their pathetic attempts to defeat us. Sometimes I took pleasure in the killing. Sometimes I simply counted it a chore. Again and again, I pushed myself to the limits of control – again I felt that spark of terror that I would lose it forever, and again I told myself I was in the right. That I had always had control. I made myself as cold as brightmetal. I burned humans as they fled from me with no more thought than I would swat a fly. Had I thought it would have worked on her, I would have easily cast the death-light on Kahvi, and counted any other lives lost as the cost of war. My own lifemate began to fear what I might do. She tried to tell me, yet I would not listen.
“But when I returned to Howling Rock – what I saw, what I felt… I understood at last. And it changed me. Perhaps forever.”
Haken narrowed his eyes. “Your lost magic. Then it wasn’t some foolish gambit to stop Kahvi that cost you control of it?”
Rayek gave him a ghost of a smile. “I let everyone believe that too. We cannot admit weakness, can we? But I suspect everyone who was there has solved that riddle by now. Weatherbird thinks it is my deepest fear expressing itself. I saw what my magic could do unchecked, and I fear to use it again. I refused to believe her then. Now I wonder if she wasn’t right.”
Haken opened his mouth to protest. Rayek cut him off. “Do not mistake me, Haken. I do not come here to plead for this world. I come to plead for your soul. If you do this, it will change you. You may not notice it at first. You may work even harder than I did not to notice it. But it will show itself. You’ll become harder, less patient. Even more eager to take matters into your own hands. And one day you will look deep within and you will be afraid of what you have become.”
He began to turn, then added somberly, “At least, I hope so. Because if you can destroy so many lives without a single regret… then I am afraid. As I have never been before.”
He said the words without anger – almost without judgment. The only emotion Haken could identify was a deep weariness.
“And now I have said my piece,” Rayek finished, and withdrew without another word.
Haken turned back to the globe, but all he could see were Rayek’s haunted eyes, gold like his, gold like Chani’s. The chamber was quiet, but Haken could still hear the Palacemaster’s words ringing in his ears.
That moment of terror when I lost control…
My own lifemate began to fear what I might do...
If you do this, it will change you…
You will be afraid of what you have become. At least, I hope so.
“I’ve been losing control since I came here… since before then…” Haken whispered to himself.
Would his eyes one day take on that tortured emptiness? Worse, would Chani’s? Would all of his children look up at him one day with such a profound weariness of the soul?
Surely not. Yet did he dare take the chance?
He already knew the answer.
With a muttered curse he waved his hand, and the image of the globe disappeared.
* * *
“My children, never doubt that your father hears your words,” Haken told the assembled Vanguard the next morning. “And weighs them accordingly. After long thought, I have decided that your concerns are valid. We should not rush to remove the native wildlife. Yet this location has proven itself unsatisfactory. Therefore we shall leave this land, and recommence our survey elsewhere.
“I have spent the night studying the maps Skywise and I created. This lake empties into a river, which runs down towards an arm of the southern sea. The landscape is more varied there – perhaps more welcoming… perhaps not. But we have enough provisions to linger here on Homestead for another moon-dance. If you all agree, we will follow the river, and we will see if it can offer us a better home.”
The audience’s relief was palpable; warm smiles and vigorous nods accompanied Haken’s pronouncement. “A wise decision, my lord,” Chani beamed.
“After all, we did promise our grandson we would look for a promising mountain range,” Haken added off-hand. “I hardly think these mushroom-infested hills are worthy of King Smith.”
Klipspringer sat up taller. “Will our family at Blue Mountain really join us?”
“They are seriously considering it,” Haken admitted. “But they are counting on us to present them with many options.” He raised his voice again to address them all. “We will leave tomorrow morning. But we will not forget this place.” He gestured to the rocky needle he had raised. “We will leave the needle and the walls as a monument, and in the ages to come, our children’s children may risk the dangers to return here, to our first foothold on this world!”
* * *
“I can still feel it,” Greenflame fretted, as he inspected the stump below his knee. “Faintly, like it’s fallen asleep. My eyes are telling me one thing, and my head another…”
“Phantom pain,” Melati explained. “It can happen after extensive fleshshaping… or amputation.”
“It doesn’t hurt, exactly. But it is… strange.”
“I can try to dull it. But I’d advice you to bear it, if you can. The deep memory of your limb will help you master your replacement faster.”
“You can really grow me a whole leg from that little drop of blood?” Greenflame asked dubiously, before quickly adding, “M’lady. I… I only thought you’d have to tease new growth out of my stump, the way you grew the Master’s tail.”
Melati waved a hand dismissively. “Once that would be true. But it’s a vastly inferior method. No, I am already repurposing Maize’s old Cradle to grow you a new leg directly from your base matrix.”
“How long?”
“A month or two.” She hesitated, then added sheepishly, “I’ve grown limbs in isolation, of course, but never one for transplant.”
Beast grinned and slapped Greenflame’s shoulder. “You get to be the first!” he said cheerfully.
“It’s an honor,” Greenflame said earnestly. But then he looked down at his stump and sighed forlornly.
“In the meantime…” Grayling held up a piece of carved wood, bound with leather thongs. “Your frends have made you a little something.”
“Rekyen carved it,” Beast explained. “And Vaeri swears to the measurements.”
“You’ll be out of bed in no time,” Grayling said. “Although if magic flows as easily here as Lord Haken says, you might want to get started on floating lessons sooner rather than later.”
Greenflame looked up at him warily. “You… you’re not going to order me back to Oasis, Father?”
“Savah’s crown! You’re not a cub anymore. If you want to see this madness through, I’m not going to try to stop you.”
“Did you… send to Mother and Papa?”
“Didn’t see the need. You can tell them yourself.” Grayling glanced at Melati. “Though it might be best if he already has the new leg in place by the time we face Hansha. For my sake.”
Melati smiled dryly. “I’ll do what I can.”
“Your leg doesn’t have to be just like the old one,” Beast was murmuring to Greenflame. “You can ask Mel to make it any way you’d like – you could even get claws…”
“Beast!” Grayling snapped.
* * *
“I don’t think we need to worry about Haken doing anything rash,” Skywise told Swift as they walked around the rock wall, taking one last look at the soon-to-be-abandoned camp.
“This time,” Swift muttered.
“Oh, he’s off on another trail already – all excited about the seedrock deposits I found downriver. Like a pup with a fresh bone between his teeth. Give him a new puzzle to figure out – a new land to ‘conquer’ – and he’ll forget about the old one.”
“Just the same, I’m glad we’re not the ones who have to keep him entertained.”
“Have you figured out what changed his mind?”
Swift looked over at the pair of figures sitting on the crystal-moss just beyond the wall’s bounds. Cholla nibbled on a piece of bread as she watched her brother staring intently at a large purplish stone. A stack of similar flat stones sat next to Rayek, waiting.
Swift smiled. “I have an inkling.”
Rayek raised his hand, holding it outstretched over the rock. His face was slick with perspiration. He closed his eyes and furrowed his brow with effort.
The stone began to shiver, then shake. One side tipped up, then the other, and it rocked back and forth until it seemed to heave itself into the air by momentum. As Rayek raised his hand and crooked his fingers, the rock slowly levitated clear of the mossy ground, then floated over and gently settled atop the stone stack.
Elfquest copyright 2016 Warp Graphics, Inc. Elfquest, its logos, characters, situations, all related indicia, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Some dialogue taken from Elfquest comics. All such dialogue copyright 2016 Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2016 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts