Chap closed his eyes. His spirit screamed like a wail that shook his body.
Betrayers… deceivers… you took this from me!
His own kin.They had cut his memories like a blade severing flesh and bone. They had ripped out pieces of him, tearing away any awareness they did not want him to have.
All in the moment he had chosen to be born.
Chap opened his eyes and cast his gaze about the clearing, looking for something to rend and tear.
He froze at the sight of Wynn clinging to a tree beside Lily.
The sage's olive-toned face was a mask of horror, and streams of tears ran down her cheeks as she stared at him.
Wynn heard the entire exchange. In communion with his kin, even some of Chap's inner words to himself had chattered softly in her head.
He was supposed to be one of them-a Fay.
Through him, Wynn had come to believe that whatever they truly were, they worked for a worthy purpose. Chap had been sent to save Magiere-and Leesil as well, in some way.
But the Fay had used Chap. They had left him and all those with him to die. Even her, as she dangled over that gorge, half frozen in a blizzard, while the others tried to save her.
The wind died instantly into chilling silence.
Chap's voice rose like a shout in Wynn's thoughts.
Run!
Chap bolted straight at Wynn as the air churned with growing force.
She had been listening-a mortal eavesdropping upon the Fay.
Mulch and twigs swept up to join leaves torn from above in a growing, spinning circle of wind. Debris pelted Chap from all sides, obscuring his sight. He fought to stay on his feet and keep Wynn and Lily in sight.
She is an innocent!
No answer came.
Lily snatched the leg of Wynn's breeches and pulled on the sage. Wynn toppled to the ground, shielding her face as sheared-off branches battered against her.
Chap heard an aching creak of wood and the tearing of earth. Within the crackle of snapping branches, his kin shouted in outrage.
Abomination!
He shook off their malice and then realized it was not aimed at him. A birch tree at the clearing's edge teetered toward Wynn.
Earth around its trunk heaved upward. Deep roots tore free, slinging sod and mulch in the air. The birch tipped and arced downward, ripping through the branches of other trees as it fell directly toward Wynn.
As Chap tried to run toward her, something dark and long whipped at him in the corner of his vision. He swerved and ducked.
Wynn grabbed Lily's neck and scrambled with kicking legs. Dog and sage rolled away in a tangle as the birch's trunk slammed to the earth. The impact sent a shudder through the ground. Lily yelped and Wynn cried out as both vanished beneath the tree's leaves and flailing limbs.
He charged for the downed tree with the wind's roar filling his ears.
Something heavy and hard lashed the whole side of his body. The world flashed in a painful white… and then black.
Chap's vision cleared, and he lay slumped on the ground. Leaves, stripped from the birch's branches in the wind, churned in a vortex that filled the clearing.
Around the downed tree's base, dark forms writhed.
Its roots moved. Wide and sluggish where they joined the huge knot at the tree's trunk, their tapering bulk bent and curled like earth-stained serpents upon the ground. Two wormed their way along the trunk and into the bulk to the birch's leaves.
Chap had so fully focused on the toppling birch that he had not seen its roots come alive. One of them must have struck him down. He squirmed on the ground, trying to get up.
Wynn screamed from somewhere beneath the birch's remaining leaves.
Wynn heard Lily struggling to escape, but she could not see the dog among the cloud of leaves and branches pinning her to the ground. She tried to roll off her back and crawl out.
Her left leg snapped straight, and her back flattened against the ground.
Something curled and twisted up Wynn's leg, and her breath began to race. It crushed inward around her calf. Wynn screamed out in pain under its grinding pressure.
Leaves dangling against her face turned blue-white as her mantic sight surged up.
Lily's howl pierced Wynn's ears, and a chorus of leaf-wings roared in her skull.
Abomination! Sick thing that spies on us. Your taint rises in your flesh.
The grip on her leg jerked hard, and Wynn slid across the ground. Leaves and branches lashed her face and arms. The near-blue mist of Spirit permeating the leaves turned to a blur. She clutched desperately at branches only to have them bend and snap in her hands.
Wynn hooked her arm around the base of one branch and held on. The ache in her knee spiked into her hip as her whole body was pulled straight. A snarling and thrashing rose among the leaves above her.
Before Wynn's eyes, the mist of Spirit moved within the tree's bark.
It burned with a brilliance she had seen before, but only when she had looked upon Chap with her mantic sight.
Flowing blue-white wormed back and forth through the wood, as if alive and willful.
You hear us… listen to what is not for a mortal to know. Now you see us, yes? And you should not!
Leaves above Wynn's head split apart. A head glowing with blue-white mist shoved through at her face. Wynn almost lost her grip in fright, until she saw crystalline eyes.
One of the majay-hi snatched her tunic's shoulder with its teeth.
Chap heard Lily howl and then saw Wynn's legs emerge from the branches near the tree's base. A root was wrapped tightly around her shin and knee. Chap righted himself and staggered toward her as the pack bolted out of the forest from all sides.
Three dogs dove into the tree's bulk as the dark elder spun out in the clearing. He wove back and forth before the thrashing roots. Chap called to his kin.
Stop! You are discovered, but harming a mortal will change nothing.
Clinging dirt scattered from the roots as they rose in the air. One came down hard, rolling along the ground toward Chap.
He scuttled aside as the root lashed the earth, and mulch sprayed across his body.
The dark elder rushed in. His jaws snapped sharply over the root's narrow end and severed through it.
Chap's panic washed away in growing rage. His kin would not listen to him, and they tried to take Wynn. All because she had heard them and caught their deception, as he had. Lily hopped free from the birch's leaves, andtwo majay-hi followed after her.
One root rose high into the night. It lashed over backward into the mass of the downed tree. Leaves exploded upward under a clatter of snapping branches and a screeching yelp.
The root gripping Wynn coiled and jerked, and the sage spun out across the clearing. The shoulder of her tunic was torn open.
Three of the pack had gone in after Lily and Wynn, but only two had come out.
Chap rushed toward Wynn as his anger burst forth at his kin.
Now you injure your own children who took flesh long ago? It is you who have lost your way!
Wynn lay stunned as the root coiled up her leg, reaching for her torso. Its tip passed her chest, reaching for her throat, and Chap seized it, biting deep.
He ripped hard, shredding it with his teeth. Another root arched upward from the tree's base, and he whirled to grip Wynn's tunic.
The root arced downward as Lily appeared beside him. She took hold of Wynn beside him, and they both lunged backward, jerking the sage away. The root cracked down on bare earth, sending a shudder up Chap's legs.
He rushed into the open clearing before the tree's exposed base. He ground his paws through the scattered leaves and rooted himself amid the whirling wind.
No more will suffer for your hidden schemes.
He felt the elemental surge of Earth and Air, the moisture of Water within them, and even Fire from the heat of his own flesh. They mingled with Spirit from his own body as he closed on his kin.