“Burning shades,” Keevo hissed. “Do you think it could be Amuni’s Children-”
“No,” Ryne snapped. “Things are worrisome enough without you dredging them up. There’s enough fear in Carnas already. Besides, none of the wards I placed in the Rotted Forest have been disturbed. Even the Children aren’t strong enough to bypass those.”
“If not them, then what else?” Keevo’s face relaxed visibly, but he still glanced out toward the blockage to the east.
“I don’t know yet, but it’s best not to start any rumors. Extra scouts will need to be posted when we return,” Ryne said.
Footsteps behind them announced Sakari’s arrival with the other men in tow. The wounded hunters both chewed on kinai. Paste from the fruit dyed their bandages a brighter red, but the mixture appeared to be doing its work. Denton no longer gasped, although he did wince with each breath, and his color appeared close to its normal tan. Lenka, his leg now wrapped in bandages, moved with a less pronounced limp. For Ryne, his cuts had subsided to a dull ache.
“What about this person with golden hair?” Dren asked.
“None of you saw her?” Ryne asked in disbelief.
The hunters gave him blank looks.
“I did,” Sakari said. He tilted his head to the hunters. His green pupils expanded ever so slightly while the silver flecks crowding his eyeballs flickered.
The men looked away from Sakari’s stare. Ryne wasn’t surprised by his companion’s answer, but the villagers’ response troubled him. They were all experienced hunters. It would take a person with considerable skill to avoid detection from every one of them.
“Master Waldron, no offense, but you sure it wasn’t Mariel again? Maybe the light in the woods played tricks with her hair.” Lenka peered out into the woods.
“Or maybe an Alzari woman?” Dren added.
“No,” Ryne said, “this person is taller than Mariel with a more muscled build. And an Alzari with golden hair? Listen, you five head home. Lenka and especially Denton need to be seen by the menders. Me and Sakari will find Kahkon.”
The men protested, but Ryne shushed them with a wave. They gave in with curt nods.
After a few moments of preparation, they parted ways. Malka and Dren assisted the two wounded while Keevo scouted ahead. Ryne watched the men leave before he and Sakari headed south to follow Kahkon’s bloody trail.
“Why not send one of them to help Lenka and Denton and have the other two come with us?”
“Whoever was in the forest,” Ryne said, “She managed to elude their tracking ability. And she escaped me even after I read her aura. In the seventy years since I’ve woken, that’s never happened. One moment she was there, and the next she didn’t exist. My ability to see auras is unique among my people, how could someone-.” Ryne’s mouth dropped open at his last sentence.
Never before had I thought of any skill in reference to my people. Who are my people?
“Has a memory surfaced?” Sakari cocked his head sideways.
Ryne attempted to connect his words with an image of his people, but as usual his efforts were met by a thick fog. He pushed deep into the white mist clouding his mind until he encountered a red wall. There, he stopped. He wanted to will himself to go further, but his brief trips past the wall rose fresh in his mind. The excruciating pain and dread he experienced when he became lost within its glare became palpable. The faces of slaughtered innocents and him poised over them with his sword in hand swirled about him. Sakari’s touch had rescued him from insanity back then. He couldn’t afford such again, not now, maybe not ever. Ryne withdrew, his eyes focusing on Sakari.
“Well?”
“No, there were no memories, just a stray thought,” Ryne answered. “As for the stranger I saw, Keevo and the others would be no help if she proves to be an enemy.”
“Sometimes a distraction is needed to complete a task.”
Ryne scowled. “I won’t put them at any more risk than I already have. A person who can avoid my power? That’s unheard of. We need to move with care. My presence has already cost Carnas and its people too much. They’re as much a part of me as you are. I will not see them harmed.”
Sakari’s head dipped briefly. “As you wish.”
They continued their search in silence with Sakari gliding ahead. Occasionally, they discovered torn strips of cloth left along the wayside as the tracks changed course.
Ryne resisted the temptation to open his senses and gain a better awareness of what lay ahead. Luring another lapra or worse would only serve to hinder the boy’s chances at survival. Dear Ilumni, I beg of you, keep the boy safe. Dizziness swept through Ryne. His jaw grinding with the effort, he fought the feeling off and concentrated on their search.
Almost a mile farther, they found Kahkon. The boy lay curled between two large tree roots. His right leg was a jagged stump and his shirt no more than tattered cloth covered in dry blood. Hair that should have been a healthy dark color now contained several white streaks.
Ryne rushed to the boy’s side, resisting the urge to cry out. He removed the pouch of kinai paste and passed it to Sakari. “Here, the sisters had Taeria prepare this before I left Carnas. It should be potent enough to help.”
Sakari took the pouch and inspected the contents as Ryne bent and eased Kahkon over onto his back. Ryne sucked in a gasp at what he saw. A gash ran down the left side of Kahkon’s chest all the way to his stomach. How the boy had lived, much less dragged himself this far was beyond Ryne. Rage and grief warred within Ryne at the sight.
Kahkon’s chest heaved, each breath a gurgle, and his brown skin was a pale shadow of itself. His eyes snapped open and stared sightlessly before they focused for a moment then widened with terror.
“Ma…Master W…Waldron h-help me,” Kahkon said in a hoarse whisper. “Sh-shade”
The boy’s words, combined with the itch that often nagged at his mind whenever someone watched him, brought uneasiness creeping down Ryne’s back. A decayed odor wafted through the air as he took in his surroundings. It was the same stench as at Miss Corten’s but multiplied tenfold. His gaze immediately picked out an aura of shade among a nearby copse. It took him a moment to realize the aura emanated from the trees themselves. The branches and leaves were as black as a moonless night.
“Take care of him,” Ryne ordered Sakari as he lay Kahkon’s head down and stood.
Ryne eased his way through the undergrowth, his hand on his sword. The brush ended well short of the copse of rosewood and teak. Tangled vines, roots, leaves, and creepers spread across the forest floor in an advanced state of decomposition. He squelched through the decay, the brown of his boots becoming black.
Careful not to touch the trunks, he slipped through an open space between the trees. The putrid smell of decay and moldy fur as if he stood inside a mismanaged dog kennel grew to choking proportions. As he entered, a lapra howled from Sakari’s direction. Ryne turned to go back when the sight of what lay in the middle of the area caught his eye. His hands coiled into fists.
The eight missing villagers, their bodies black and purple, lay among festering roots and rotten kinai fruit. Fleshy tendrils connected them all together in a mass that vibrated with a beating heart’s rhythm. The men and women’s chests rose and fell slowly.
Beside them were four beasts joined in the same fashion.
The creatures appeared to have been lapras at one time, but their snouts were now more elongated like a wolf’s. Their mouths lolled, revealing rows of sharp teeth. The middle legs were almost fully withdrawn into their torsos. They were each at least seven feet in length. Muscles rippled beneath ebony skin and fur.