9 or 10 of March 2373

  A yschege, as the Etnfrandian she-elf mentioned, is a horse-like water-spirit said to stampede in a Clactyrnach battle. Galendria, by mentioning them, was suggesting that what we experienced was actually a supernatural phenomenon caused by the battle of rock giants. Fenn offered the point that we are not currently traversing the appropriate terrain: mountains. Still, the storm blew in from the opposite direction we are heading with a ferocity like I’ve never known. I can’t help but wonder if the mountains, and therefore the Sun god’s temple, are behind us.

  Until next we rest,

  Mellark

  From The Truth and the Fae: A Memoir

  By Mellark Brandybeard

  Legs and lungs aching, Mell sloshed beside Fenn through the receding water. At last, the fallen tree returned to view. The leaves had not yet fully opened, so they splashed a while longer before she could finally heave herself onto it and rest. They had been chasing the sound of thunder. Fenn had said it meant Krid was in trouble–which in turn meant he must be Thunderkin.

  Mell added that to her mental list of wonders to witness while adventuring in the Fae. Assuming they would survive the day.

  Fenn jumped up beside her and clambered to a higher vantage on the fallen tree. “Krid!” he called, desperation pushing his voice louder than Mell had ever heard him manage. “Gale! Syrdin!” No response came.

  Fenn slipped to a seat, throwing his head into his hands. “We’ll never find them. Once the foliage opens again, we won’t see the forest ahead of us, much less the others. We don’t even know if they’re still alive.” His voice warbled, strained with the effort of holding back his emotions.

  With effort, she restrained her own tremor of dread. They weren’t out of options yet. Mell gave his shoulder a reassuring pat before reaching into her pack. “That last part, I can help with.” She pulled out the box with the scrying artifact and freed the crystal from within. “And there’s a chance it could help us find them. Here.” She proffered it to him, knowing it would ease him more to see them for himself. If they were alive.

  His lit with hope. “H-how do I make it work?”

  “What do you mean? You’re the one who told me how it works.”

  “But how do I channel magic into it?”

  Mell squinted, not understanding. “The same way you channel magic into anything.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, then sighed out, his head hanging. “I organize what’s already there. I… I’m not sure I channel anything.”

  “But surely–”

  “–If I were to do that to this artifact, I may just break it.”

  “At least try,” she prompted.

  He stared at the crystal, holding it out from his face. His brow wrinkled with the effort and she assumed he was trying, but as the minutes passed, nothing happened. She tried not to assume that it meant they were dead.

  For a distraction, she pulled out her memoir and found it soggy. “Damn,” she sighed.

  “Eh? Let me see.” Fenn traded her the crystal for her pen and journal. With a few scribbled runes, a word, and a flash, the book was dry.

  “See, you have no trouble channeling magic,” she said. She pinned down the spike of worry the thought produced. He just doesn’t know how to do it. But Gale had known how to do it almost innately.

  “The runes act like a conduit–much like your circlet. When I hold the crystal, I have no conduit.”

  “I see.” She tried to hide her relief, too.

  Fenn had mentioned a few times before, and with much regret, that he possessed no magic himself. At last, Mell understood what he meant. Gale could pour magic into the crystal from her own being using her fae soul as the conduit. Fenn could not. Implications jumped to mind: this was why he couldn’t cast charms, like other elves; why he couldn’t practice any innate magic such as healing; and perhaps–the pixies leapt to mind–perhaps he couldn’t as easily resist charms either.

  “Here.” Hiding her trepidation, she held the crystal out at an angle toward him. “Put a hand on it so you can hear. Which one of them should I look for?”

  “Gale.”

  Mell raised a knowing brow and, with a slight flush, he added, “I heard her near here in the storm. Which makes me think Krid and Gale will still be together.”

  “Mhm.” His concern was obvious. Mell concentrated, shifting energy toward the crystal. She pictured the girl’s big eyes and broad smile, the pure quality of her voice. Fog swirled in the crystal, and then it flashed to action.

  “Fenn!” Gale’s voice wailed inside Mell’s head. Fenn flinched, and he leaned toward the crystal, his grasp tightening. But inside the picture, she was safe and unharmed, if not extremely soggy. Fenn’s grip loosened, his shoulders slumping until Syrdin reprimanded Gale for her thoughtlessness. Krid offered the girl some comfort, albeit awkwardly, and the picture disappeared as she gathered herself to leave a trail for them. They were left with the sounds of rustling brush, trickling water, and re-emerging insects.

  Mell left the crystal in Fenn’s hands, leaning back with a deep, relaxing breath. “All safe and together–and thinking of us.”

  Fenn nodded, thumbing the crystal as he stared where the picture had faded. He wiped a flood-dampened sleeve across his cheek, but not quickly enough to hide a tear that snuck down it.

  She put a hand on Fenn’s arm. She wasn’t sure what prompted the tear: relief, sympathy, or… “That girl really loves you,” she said softly.

  “Yes, I believe she does.” Fenn’s solemn expression was unmoved as he stared into the color refracting among the crystal’s planes.

  “That’s it?” Even from him, that was little.

  “What else is there to say?” He handed Mell the artifact and her freshly dried notebook, preparing to slide from the tree.

  Mell sighed. Hopeless. “Your feelings on the matter would be one typical addition.”

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  His face hardened, his prominent brow wrinkling. “I feel she has poor taste and would’ve been better off to have loved any other. And–” he slid from the tree, splashing into the receding waters, “–that if we are ever going to find them, we’d better start moving.”

  Mell frowned–both at his stubbornness and the thought of walking more. His words described an opinion, sure, but not an emotion. A poor opinion, too. Bad taste? Sure, Mell could have no interest in someone so… Fenn, but there were plenty of gals and guys with a special affection for the scholarly type, among whom Fenn was a bright and good soul. “You should be kinder to yourself.”

  “I could write essays on why she would be better off with a proper Etnfrandian. The very foremost point would be that she wouldn’t be here, where she has nothing to collect but near-death experiences instead of songs. Or children for that matter.” He mumbled the last part, and Mell recalled childbearing was the primary purpose of a matroniage contract, the kind they were betrothed for.

  As she studied his expression, Fenn’s jaw tightened–not only with worry, but a heavy guilt. So that’s it. He still believed he was responsible for Gale.

  “She isn’t crying because she wishes she were home. She’s crying for you. Something I suspect she’d be doing right now anyway if you’d disappeared without a word to her.”

  Fenn looked away. “A very unfortunate choice. I should’ve avoided her from the beginning. Then there would have been no choice, and she could be playing with hazel-eyed babes in the cherry blossoms. Or would be soon enough.” There was a vexation in the way he spoke of children that made her want to press further.

  “Love rarely relates to things like ‘better off’ and ‘choice,’ Fenn. I’d know. Besides, if she only wanted children, she would’ve found somebody else, like you say.” She watched him for a reaction, but he’d gone stoic, shutting down. Mell stretched her aching muscles in preparation to shimmy off the tree. Around them, the shoth had begun to squabble among the opening leaves, and sunshine poked through the canopy once more. Life resumed, even after a disaster.

  She wished she could relax and enjoy it a moment longer. But they had a crew to find, and monsters to avoid.

  A glum Fenn offered her a hand down, and taking it, she clambered over the debris washed against the tree. On top, she spotted exactly what she needed. “Aha!” She scooped up the long, thick stick and swung it. “Lorthen has provided!”

  Fenn cocked his head. “I doubt Lorthen had much to do with a stick in a flood, especially on top of a pile of sticks.”

  “A staff-worthy stick. And all the same, I’m grateful.” She tested the stick with a few sharp raps against the fallen tree. It thudded with heft. In a pinch, she could use it as a club. Lorthen knew they might need it. The storm had left Fenn’s hand crossbow battered and broken, meaning he only had a belt knife and defensive dagger. “What do you think? A good walking stick?”

  He nodded. “I might try affixing the grip to it–if we ever retrieve it from Syrdin.”

  A thrill of excitement energized her. “I look forward to knowing what it does.”

  Fenn turned, putting his back to the sun. “Let’s go find them, then.” There was a determination to his words that she hadn’t heard from him before. Perhaps it was the lack of security from Krid that made him step up. Or perhaps something was beginning to change.

  “How do we go about that? Circle in widening patterns?” She suggested through a question.

  “No, Krid has a special regard for authority. He’ll force the others to keep moving in the direction Ferngal told us. And he’ll assume that we’ll do the same.”

  “How sure are you of this?”

  “Completely.” His answer resounded with confidence.

  Mell nodded. Fenn knew his friend. Even more, his shoulders were squared and his gaze was placed strictly forward. He had a mission, and he wasn’t backing away.

  A trace of pride swelled in Mell. She’d not have guessed that Fenn would rise in a crisis, but there he stood, brave and doggedly loyal.

  “Well, are you coming?” He turned around to check on her. “Did you need help?”

  Mell stuck her staff into the mud and moved forward after him. “Right behind you.”

  Gale tied a ribbon to another gnarled tree and stepped on. She tread hard, leaving deep depressions in the fresh mud for Fenn or Mell to discover. She need not have. Krid’s steps squished in deeply. On Krid’s other side, Syrdin was quiet, tense. Zhe didn’t zip in and out of the trees like usual. Gale wished zhe would; zhe might find the others.

  At a fluttering in the canopy, all three of them spun. They were being followed by some–well, Gale didn’t know what to call them, but they were definitely playing the part of birds-of-prey. And the three of them were the prey.

  Syrdin sighed, turning from the not-birds. “Etnfrandian, can you shoot?”

  Gale started, not understanding. “Can I what?”

  “Shoot a bow.” Zheir voice growled with impatience.

  Actually, she had enjoyed the sport and had, by her final years of conscription, become the champion archer in her company. Not that Syrdin would care about competitive archery. “Yes, why?”

  Without a word, Syrdin pulled out the shining, silvery bow that they’d stolen from the Center of Culture. Anruwan’s Bow, Fenn had called it. Zhe held it out. “Take this.”

  Gale wrapped her fingers around it. Immediately, a strange feeling overcame her. Not the vague familiarity or even sense of nostalgia she expected, but a zing of power. This was no ordinary bow. She held it in her hands, admiring the detail and the foreign energy it held.

  “It’s beautiful.” Gale felt a slight urge to thank Syrdin.

  “Yeah, so’s surviving.” A quiver of arrows rattled in zheir hands.

  Gale accepted these also, though they didn’t match the bow at all. The arrows were wood rods tipped with iron and fletched with goose feathers, while the quiver itself was made of a foreign, semi-pliable material which was roughly stitched into a conical quiver. Curious, she pulled on it and sniffed. The scent was musty, but not unpleasant.

  “What? Never seen leather?” Syrdin snorted. “And here I expect you to kill with that.”

  Leather. Kill. Animal skin! she realized with a jolt, almost dropping the quiver. The memory of the beach strewn with bleeding panthrae rose to mind, chased closely by the gurgling noise that’d risen from the throat of the beast she’d stabbed. It’d been pinning Fenn. She’d had too. She braced against the shudder that rattled through her.

  Krid huffed in a way she couldn’t interpret. “Smart choice, Syrdin. Gale, if we run into trouble on the ground, you should climb a tree. You’ll be safer, and have a better vantage.”

  She nodded. Such strange creatures–people. She would learn to think of Syrdin and Krid as people, the same as her, if for Fenn’s sake. They were more like elves and humans than animals anyways. Fenn. At the thought of him, she fought off a wave of worry that threatened to crush her into a wallowing mess. Please be alive.

  When they at last stopped to rest, Gale didn’t sleep at all, though she attempted it. The birds and bugs screamed and squalled as they had every night, unchanged by the flood. Its only remaining mark was an increase in the strangulating humidity. But that was not why she didn’t sleep.

  For the first time, as she curled on her bedroll and clutched her Truth’s Eye trinket to her chest–that tiny spyglass she and Fenn had found so long ago–she could think of nothing good. When she thought of Fenn, she thought of a mangled body being eaten. When she thought of her parents, she thought of their fears for her and how she’d never see them again. No matter how many times she spun the Truth’s Eye between her fingers; no matter what tune she hummed to cover the unfamiliar screams of fae beasts and the foreign accents of Krid and Syrdin’s chatter, she could find no happiness. The one hope she held was that somewhere, beyond the veil of the trees, Fenn might also be listening to the same racket as she, hoping the same hope that she too was alive.