“Off hunting. Except for the lead male. He’s going to guide us to the werewolves’ lair.”
Andri climbed slowly to his feet, ignoring the steadying hand Irulan offered. He took a few experimental steps. When he was satisfied that the world was not going to tilt and send him reeling to the ground, he reached out for the reins that Greddark was offering him. Swinging himself up into the saddle, he looked down on his two compatriots.
“Well, then,” he said, rubbing his still-aching jaw. “What are we waiting for?”
At Irulan’s command, the dire wolf stayed downwind from them, and out of sight as much as possible, to avoid spooking the horses. The wolf led them along the creek, in some spots having to wade through the shallow water because the brush on either side was too high to traverse. As they moved deeper into the forest, the canopy thickened, screening out the sunlight and enfolding them in an unnatural twilight. The air became thick and humid, making Andri sweat beneath his armor, even though it was cooler here than it had been on the road.
“How do we know the wolf isn’t leading us into a trap?” Greddark asked.
Irulan, who was riding ahead of him and Andri, didn’t even bother to turn. “Because we’re part of the pack now. We’re family.”
The dwarf grunted. “That only increases the likelihood of treachery,” he muttered, but he didn’t press the issue. Though Andri did notice that the inquisitive started riding with his sword half out of its sheath after that.
They traveled that way for several hours, their journey silent save for twittering birdsong, the occasional splash of a frog in running water, or the rustle of a small animal darting through the undergrowth as it caught the wolf’s scent.
As the gloom deepened from a twilit green-gray to the bluer shades of dusk, the trio found another small clearing to make camp in. Greddark started a fire and Irulan scouted for food, taking the dire wolf with her. Andri tended to the horses, as he did most evenings. He removed their tack and rubbed them down, then let them graze a bit before brushing each of them until their coats shone. He didn’t want to risk washing them this late. It was still cool enough at night that leaving them unstabled and wet was just inviting illness. But they could certainly have used a good bath, and they weren’t the only ones. Catching a whiff of himself, he wondered if Irulan was taking so long to return with food because game was that scarce, or because she needed the fresh air.
The shifter still had not returned by the time he finished with the horses, so Andri joined Greddark by the fire.
“You’re good with horses. Why don’t you have one of your own? Don’t most paladins?”
Andri blinked at the question. “Most paladins aren’t guilty of parricide.”
Though his superiors in the Order and even the Keeper had told him that was not why he had yet to receive a holy mount, Andri knew in his heart they were wrong. Why would the Silver Flame grace him with such a gift, and what celestial steed would deign to serve a murderer?
The dwarf grunted. “I suppose that’s true,” he said, then went back to throwing tiny twigs on to the fire as he watched the woods with a suspicious eye. Greddark was clearly uncomfortable in the forest, a fact that perplexed Andri. He imagined the omnipresent press of greenery was not so different from the rocky caverns of the Mror Holds-or even from the marble walls of Flamekeep, for that matter. They all cut you off from the sky, bearing down on you with a weight so much greater than that of mere wood and stone, carrying the burden of age, tradition, expectation. It was a wonder neither one of them had run off to join the halflings and the Valenar elves on the open plains.
Andri’s stomach rumbled, and he was tempted to dig into their dwindling store of dried meat, but he knew they had to make it last. There was no telling when they would get to a city again to restock. A few days? A few weeks? The thought only made his stomach protest more loudly.
“That you or the wolf?” Greddark asked, his eyes darting nervously from tree to tree.
“Me,” Andri replied, but then he wondered. His stomach was no longer gurgling, but he could still hear a faint growl. Greddark heard it at the same time, and both men jumped up, swords in hand, expecting to see the dire wolf.
Something dove at them from the high branches of the canopy overhead, and Andri’s blade arced up to meet it, blazing a trail of argent fire in the settling darkness. As his sword clanged against their foe, Greddark cried out, “No! Wait!”
But it was too late. Andri’s magical blade met little resistance, cleaving the airborne assailant neatly in two. As both halves of what Andri now realized was some sort of mechanical construct fell to the ground with twin thumps, Greddark let out a low groan.
“Wonderful. You just broke my messenger bird. Do you have any idea how much that thing cost to make?”
Andri extinguished his blade and sheathed it as Greddark hurried over to the remains of his metal bird, fussing over it as if it had been a real pet. When Andri got closer, he saw it wasn’t the construct itself the dwarf was worrying about, but what it had been carrying-a piece of parchment that was miraculously still intact, and the shattered remnants of a glass vial that had contained what looked like silverburn.
“What is it?” Andri asked.
Greddark scanned the parchment before responding. “Remember that bit of paper found at one of the crime scenes, with what looked like a partial list of spell components? My wizard friend in Sigilstar thinks it’s a sort of nondetection spell, one customized specifically for lycanthropes.”
That would explain why even Flamekeep’s top wizards had been unable to locate the source of the fur Irulan had found.
“But this is odd,” the dwarf continued, rubbing some of the silver dust thoughtfully between his fingers.
“What is?”
“The smudge on the paper was from silverburn, as you suggested, but with a rather unique composition. It seems it’s not made of silver at all, but of plat-”
The inquisitive was interrupted by a noise from the underbrush. They turned to see a shifter step into the clearing. It was Irulan, returning from her hunt at last.
And though the dire wolf was not with her, she was not alone.
“Well met, Sir Paladin, Master Dwarf,” Ostra Farsight said, nodding to each of them in turn. As the shifter leader shoved Irulan to the ground before him, belying his polite greeting, Andri could just make out the chain that led from her bound wrists to the older shifter’s belt. Andri reached for his sword, but several other shifters moved out of the trees, long bows and crossbows trained on him and Greddark.
They were surrounded.
Ostra smiled unpleasantly, his teeth flashing white in the gloom.
“On behalf of Pater and the Silver Circle, I bid you welcome.”
They traveled for another day and a half into the heart of the Burnt Wood. Ostra and his shifters led them through the dense forest, chained to one another like prisoners in the iron mines, their horses-loaded with their equipment, including their weapons-being pulled along behind. They weren’t allowed to speak to one another. Irulan had gotten cuffed across the mouth when she tried to tell them how the shifters had ambushed her. But Andri was able to piece together some of what had happened from snatches of conversation between their captors that he caught along the way. Apparently, Ostra had sent another reachrunner to Shadukar ahead of them. He had just been meant to observe and report, but after they had confronted Quillion, he’d followed them and watched long enough to see they were heading into the woods. When he had returned to pay his respects to Quillion, he’d found the old werewolf’s body defiled-the fingers on both hands were missing, cut off cleanly with a sharp blade. The teleportation ring was still there, however, and the shifter had used it to travel to Ostra. The camp leader and his men-the so-called “Silver Circle”-had not been at Aruldusk, as the shifter had expected, but at the werewolves’ lair. Once Ostra’s men knew they were coming, it was a simple matter for the shifters to find them in the forest, and to overpower both Irulan and their dire wolf guide. Now they were taking the trio back to the lair where Pater, the leader of the werewolves, would “deal” with them.