The Hunt (Tallys, Halek, Shery's Story)

[Content warning: implied animal death, non-explicit and non-gory discussions of animal sacrifice]

Part I: Tracks in the Forest 

Part II: In the Crosshairs 

The Elves introduced themselves as the Sae Becha tribe, yet another foreign name that didn’t strike a bell in Tallys’s long memory. She and Halek followed them back to their camp, Tallys feeling deeply puzzled but not uneasy: whoever these foreigners were, they were still her kinsmen, and the faces that greeted her were courteous, interested, and welcoming. They were just… different. Many of them sported dark bronze skin with daubs of silver or white paint along their cheekbones and brows, with bright blue eyes and broad shoulders: not the coloring, build, or markings of Thielwood or Frostwood Elves. And their garments were strange, too, sporting shaggy, hairy cloaks or plain, skin-baring vests and loose, wide-legged trousers, their hair bound with tiny braids or feathers. Nothing like the supple, form-fitting hunter’s armor her clan had favored, or the ornate, extravagant formal robes that had been popular among city Elves like Ashaniel’ir for the last six hundred years or so.

Well, wherever they’d come from, their makeshift settlement still had all the makings of a typical Elvish encampment, at least. Tallys had to throttle a heartsick feeling of longing in her chest as they followed their guides into the heart of the camp, passing by the familiar cook station, the circle of covered pelenath caravans, the temporary pens where the tribe kept their chickens and their sheep with their watchful ahfuri standing guard over them from several yards away, a few lazing in the sun while their handlers brushed their coats. The air smelled of woodsmoke and damp earth and roasting nuts, and suddenly her tongue felt too thick and swollen for her mouth. She swallowed, hard, and averted her eyes from the sight of an older woman keeping a small circle of Elvish children entertained by teaching them how to tie knots with bits of rope.

The man who had first addressed them seemed to have taken it upon himself to act as spokesman for the clan: he gestured for them to sit with him by a private fire while tea and honey-sticky peya wrapped in fragrant leaves were brought for them to snack on. He introduced himself as Hetwar, the clan’s Huntmaster, and Tallys wondered why they were speaking with him instead of the Speaker. Still, she could think of no polite way to ask this without violating Formal Manners, so they went through the usual rituals of sipping tea and marveling at its composition and remarking on the weather while Halek frowned into his teacup (which looked far too small and delicate for his big hands) and shifted with concealed impatience. They had shared a few friendly arguments on the road about this very protocol, following the incident with Quel-Qanaeon.

“I do not understand why you would chafe under such conditions,” Tallys had pointed out humorously. “You are hardly the most—energetic Shepherd. You are always trying to find a way to sneak naps. I would think the opportunity to break your fast with some refreshment and have a moment of peace and repose would be welcome to you.”

“I think you forget, Tal, that my people are the shortest-lived of the lot,” Halek had retorted in a drawl. “I’m going to die at, what, fifty or sixty, while you get to go on forever. Your folk have time to sit around and demurely talk about tea all day. Meanwhile, I can feel all my cells dying just from waiting to get to the point of it all.”

Thankfully, they did not force him to wait for long, for eventually Hetwar said, in very polite tones, “I think it would be more efficient—and easier on your friend—if we were to use War Manners now, sister.”

Tallys nodded and set down her cup. Hetwar—who seemed young for his position, only about her age or perhaps even a little younger—immediately brightened and said more expressively, “Ah, it is well. I wasn’t sure if such a proposal would cause you offense.”

So he considered her to be foreign, too. “You do not seem—where are you from, Huntmaster?”

His expression turned rueful, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Please, let us there be no formalities between us. I am only Hetwar, or Hetwar’an, if you like.” The suffix for friends and equals sounded warmer on his tongue as well as smoother, almost blurred together. “As for where we are from… Originally, our clan hails from Carnbarad.”

Coastal Elves, Tallys thought, a little dryly. That explained part of it. She had met only a few of the folk from Carnbarad in her lifetime, primarily during summits that involved clans from all over the Continent, and those were held only once every twenty-five years or so. The only one she had attended with her clan had taken place when she was a preteen. But Carnbarad Elves were famously different from the sylvan Elves of the ancient forests: they were merrier in disposition, more carefree and open with their emotions, though privately her grandmother had always regarded them as a bit silly. Hetwar continued, “But during the Discovery Era, our Speaker gave into the”—he said a word that didn’t quite exist in her Elvish, but which translated in her head vaguely as sea-longing—“desire to sail across the sea and explore the lands beyond our shore. So our clan left this realm and voyaged all the way to the Ivory Isles. We have been settled there for the last nine hundred years.”

Halek’s eyebrows rose, and Tallys was sure her face was blank with astonishment. “Your entire clan sailed across the sea and settled in the Ivory Isles?” she echoed. To voluntarily leave the Continent, the birthplace of their people, with its sheltering forests and the cradle of its familiar sky and the reassuring green thrum of their sovereign earth below… it was unthinkable! “Why?”

Hetwar shrugged. “Our Speaker received visions from the gods directing him thus,” he said, half cheerfully. “It was a time when the Elementals and the Drakes were entering their age of decline, when the Asteriae had disappeared and the Changelings had withdrawn into their marshes. Speaker Sabrae felt the change in the winds, felt the mystery and power and magic of the world leaving these shores—or so I’m told—and so he felt there was nothing left for us here any longer. He did not want for us to remain and wait for our own inevitable decay, or perhaps he even sensed some looming disaster in the signs of that time and sought to preempt it. Our Keeper Mihris could tell you more, if you are interested.” He shook his head, thick gold-brown braids swinging gently. “So. He led us across the sea to explore unknown lands, and once we landed on the Fair Isle, we have been residents of that kingdom ever since.”

Which explained the altered Elvish dialect, Tallys thought, and their strange raiment and some of their mannerisms. She rubbed her suddenly-damp palms against the thighs of her leggings, trying to calm her racing heart. If there was one thing she believed about her culture, it was that it was glacial and unchanging. Elvish traditions and rituals that had been observed a thousand years ago were still practiced today with the same exacting precision and adherence as when they’d first been invented. To encounter a… a branch of her people who had been allowed to develop their own independent culture, entirely separate from the conventions of the rest of the Continent for the last nine hundred years, was a discovery most Keepers would kill for. And to think she had stumbled across them in some random wood by accident…

“Nine hundred years ago.” Halek echoed the words slowly, as if rolling them on his tongue to get a taste for them before releasing them into the open air. “That means your people… avoided the Castigation?”

Hetwar sobered. “Indeed, we did. Although the Ivory Isles are wild and troubled by trade wars and piracy, the Autarch’s influence does not reach us there.”

“Then why are you… here?” Tallys asked, more stiffly than she would have liked. “Why has your tribe come back?”

The other Elf frowned, his eyes dropping to the low, sleepy flames of the campfire at their feet. After a long moment, he said heavily, “This is not our entire tribe, Tallys’an, but it is—in fact—a scouting party. We are an expedition, of sorts.”

Tallys and Halek stared at him. By Tallys’s estimation, there had to be some fifty Elves in this encampment, and that was only the ones she could see. That put them on par with a mid-sized clan—a good, healthy number, according to post-Castigation standards. But this was a mere scouting party? A military company, despite the fact that it sported families and children?

I suppose that explains the lack of a Speaker, she thought, but before she could say more, Halek asked, “And what exactly are you scouting for?”

Hetwar still did not meet their eyes, opting instead to stare pensively into the fire. “When the war broke out,” he said slowly—presumably meaning the Castigation—“there was talk of returning to the Continent and rendering our aid to our allies. It was, after all, still our homeland. But there were many who believed such an attempt to be futile—what could we contribute that would not end in our own enslavement?—and by the time a decision could be reached, the war was already over. So we remained on our isle and resolved to monitor things from afar.”

He shrugged. “Before we knew it, centuries had passed. And then the Endarkened returned… or at least, we received news of them returning. It is only lately that they have begun to reach our shores as well. And then we began to hear of many other strange things—that the Faceless Lords might have resurfaced, that the Autarch created an order of Diminished knights to stave off the Endarkened threat, that they are led by an assassin and a gods-touched Mage. That the Elementals are returning, and a little more Gift has crept back into the land, and the world stirs anew, roused by something unseen.” He snapped a twig decisively and tossed it into the fire. “Hearing all of this, and not knowing how to separate fact from fiction, I and the others decided that we could no longer stay isolated within the safe haven of the Ivory Isles, cut off from all news and any understanding of what’s happening in the wider world. And, more than that—if even a fifth of what we’d heard was true, it meant we could no longer ignore the old alliances. We had to come here to see what was happening for ourselves, and to lend our arrows where they were needed, if the demand was as great as it seemed to be back home. We formed our expedition and agreed to scout the lay of the land, sending news back to the clan all the while. —Clans, as it were. We are not the only tribe to live on the Fair Isle.” He shook his head. “We landed in the South a few months ago, and have seen our share of strange and wondrous things ever since.”

That made Tallys’s lips curve upwards a little. Did Hetwar know with whom he spoke? “What have you gathered about the Shepherds—the group of soldiers who defend the land from the demon invasion?”

Hetwar’s expression turned earnest. “They are part of the reason why we left the Ivory Isles,” he said fervently, “for they remind me of the Elven knighthoods of old. I would like very much to meet them—and, in fact, we have been making our way slowly northward with that very hope. But we have found ourselves—lately diverted.”

It felt deceptive to let him go on, then: Tallys and Halek exchanged looks, the Hunter’s lips twitching knowingly, before Tallys interrupted Hetwar to inform him of exactly who they were. The Huntmaster’s expression was so blankly agog that Tallys actually burst out laughing, earning the interested glances of several of the Elves around the camp.

“But what are you doing here, in this little wood?” Hetwar cried. “We were told your base was in Magus!”

“Haven,” Tallys told him, and she launched into the problem with Holytree and its werewolf. As she spoke, however, she was aware of how Hetwar’s face sobered into stillness—and so too did the faces of his kinsmen.

“Ah, so we are united in common purpose,” he said. “Thatis why our paths crossed here. The gods are foresighted in their arrangements.”

Halek and Tallys both sat up at that. “You seek the werewolf as well?” Halek asked.

But Hetwar seemed to think that another person was better suited to telling that part of the tale: the clan’s Keeper, a tall, hard-jawed woman named Clarin Sae Becha, who looked more like a warrior than a record-keeper—an image that was only supported by the broadsword clasped against her back. Her steel-grey eyes, when they caught Tallys’s, glinted with frank interest, though whether that was mere attraction or an intuitive recognition of what Tallys had once been, she couldn’t be sure. She looked away and listened as the Keeper began, in a buttery-smooth, lyrical voice that her looks belied: “It’s a long tale, and the shadows of the day grow longer, so I’ll try and keep it brief. We heard tales of this creature from passing merchants, and we do not believe it is a werewolf, but a botched weald-kinath—a Spiritrider.”

Tallys cocked her head. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“But it sounds bad,” Halek finished. “Demons ride spirits, don’t they?”

Both Hetwar and Clarin chuckled. “In our lands, a weald-kinathis inherently no more ‘bad’ than one of your Mages,” Clarin said with a dry smile, glancing once again at Tallys. “You see, in the Ivory Isles—and indeed, in most of the lands beyond the Continent—magic is practiced quite differently than it is here. I understand from my studies that your Mages practice arts that are divided, very generally, into nine different schools: battle-magic, wild magic, conjuration, divination, and so on. But these are fairly recent distinctions, at least in our memory; and the Mages of old used their powers in ways that would have seemed quite alien to the wielders of today’s world. So it is in the Ivory Isles. There, one kind of magic is that of the weald-kinath. It’s…” She trailed off for a moment, evidently trying to find the most succinct way to order and deliver the information, before apparently deciding to simply forge ahead. “In your Mages’ understanding, there are spirits that are summoned from some other place, from an ethereal world that touches the border of ours. These spirits are mostly formless, and need an anchor to exist in our world, be it sustenance or energy or some kind of host or vessel to house it. ‘A being of spirit cannot exist in the world of matter without something of matter to support it,’ or so goes a famous philosopher’s rule.”

Tallys and Halek both murmured something along the lines of, You evidently know better than we. Clarin continued, “The weald-kinathhave no interest in these servant spirits, as useful and varied as they may be. Instead, they focus on harvesting and channeling the spirits of ourworld—the spirits of beasts and animals, more to the point. With theirmagic, a Spiritrider—usually a warrior—could take in and house the spirit of a compatible kin-beast. Unlike the spirits of the Spirit Realm, which may crowd out the native soul or even take possession of the body that houses both, these lesser animal spirits are typically more subservient to their human master, whose intellect and humanity usually overrides them: there is less danger of their taking control. Hence the name Spiritrider. Through ancient rituals and shamanic arts, the Spiritrider breathes in the wolf spirit or the leopard spirit or the hawk spirit, houses it within their own, and in so doing, they become… enhanced. Greater than the sum of their parts. You have heard of the leopard-warriors of our Royal Guard, I think, who fight with the strength and alacrity of wildcats?”

Halek shook his head; Tallys nodded faintly. She said, “So these Spiritriders, upon taking on the spirit of their… kin-beast… gain the powers of the beast as well?”

Clarin nodded. “Their powers are magnified tenfold,” she said. “Their reflexes become like those of a cat, their vision and senses, their strength and ferocity. It is not that they become the animal; more that the combining of the souls heightens and augments all their powers in ways that are miraculous to behold.” She paused. “If they win the battle for domination and tame the beast, rather than the other way around.”

“Can anyone become a Spiritrider?” Tallys asked then. “Where does the animal spirit come from?”

“And where does it go when the host warrior dies?” Halek added. “Regular—arcane—spirits dissipate back to the Spirit Realm when their summoner dies, unless they’re already bound to a separate vessel or an object that they can anchor to. What happens to the soul of the beast?”

Here, Clarin grimaced. “Ah, that is the ugly aspect of weald-kinathmagic,” she said, “for to harvest the soul of a kin-beast also requires its sacrifice and death. Which I think is why the art has not been so eagerly-sought here on the Continent. Sometimes it can be accomplished when the beast is naturally dying, but those cases are rare, for most warriors seek the strongest beasts at the height of their vitality and power, not those already weakened and wearied by sickness or old age.” She shook her head. “Anyone can become a Spiritrider—that is, house the spirit of a kin-beast within their bodies and learn to fight with it: the reason why I have so much knowledge of the practice is due to the fact that some of our own kinsmen have volunteered and joined those ranks themselves. But only someone who practices weald-kinath magic—a Mage who knows the craft—can harvest the soul and place it in their bodies to begin with (or call it back out and dispel it, in the cases that proves necessary). And when the Spiritrider dies, most oftentimes, their kin-beast spirit is released to the winds. Though there are times when… if the warrior can be reached before expiration… some weald-kinath can beckon the kin-beast out of them and transfer it to yet another waiting Spiritrider, who is sometimes even a child or a brother or a descendant of the original host. I am not a practitioner of their arts, but from what I have heard, such a process greatly deepens and strengthens the power and wisdom of the kin-beast itself. If you transfer a kin-beast from rider to rider over three generations, or ten, its value far surpasses that of one that was caught and taken in afresh. Some say that, by the time it reaches the twelfth iteration, the power of the animal spirit is so great that it has become akin to godhood, or perhaps demigodhood, for it has absorbed all the knowledge and experience and potency of its previous riders, and it should be worshipped as a minor hawk god or a badger god or what have you. To take in such a spirit would make one nigh-invincible, it is thought—but it is also true that such a powerful entity is far more difficult to control, and may become ascendant. In other words, it may dominate the rider’s human spirit and become the one that takes the reins.”

Tallys shook her head. Compared to all the strange and dizzying things they had encountered as Shepherds, this should not have surprised her; and yet it only served as a reminder of how little they truly knew about the world outside of the Autarchy’s ironbound borders. It all seemed even more outlandish than what Shery had described of her glimpse into Archmage Tangriel’s time.

“So you think this thing terrorizing Holytree is a weald-kinathwhose… kin-beast spirit… has become ascendant?” Halek asked pragmatically. Hedid not seem so fazed—but, having grown up in the isolated Reach, perhaps he had accepted long ago that there were many things about the world that he had no knowledge of. “Botched, you said. But what would such a foreign magic be doing here, in the middle of the Continent?”

“Let me be clear,” Clarin said then, in that perhaps-maddening Elvish way of not answering his question immediately; “when an ancient kin-beast spirit becomes ascendant, the results are not like what you see here. The beast is too powerful for its rider to control, yes, but centuries of being housed within human minds and souls generally turns it benevolent and domesticated: there are few times where it intentionally seeks to harm its rider or its allies, unless the long process has driven it mad. But there are also times—many times—when a new kin-beast, freshly killed, is still wild, panicked, and hostile, and, when given to a weak or inexperienced rider, it will rebel, become ascendant, and—”

“Become werewolf-like,” Tallys and Halek said simultaneously.

“Yes, exactly. That behavior is very close to what we’ve heard of the creature in Holytree: violence, madness, bizarre conduct, even shifting forms or features. In a contest like this, the kin-beast and its rider struggle for dominance, and the poor beast, outraged and bewildered by the manner it has been trapped, does all it can to return to the ways and life it once knew, even if it means forcing the rider to submit to its animal nature and hunt rabbits or gnaw on bones once again…”

Still a bit skeptical, Tallys said, “But as for how a Spiritrider got here at all…”

“Our fault,” Hetwar said then, far more bluntly than his companion might have preferred. She glanced at him with an admonishing frown (Lovers?Tallys thought for some reason. Or relatives? In tight-knit clans, it could sometimes be hard to tell…), but continued, wearily, “Yes, our fault. Some weeks ago, we encountered a Mage in our wanderings south of Holytree. We broke bread with her, and exchanged stories, and because she studied animals, I told her of the weald-kinath. I thought nothing of it—we exchanged many myths and tales of folklore that night, and she seemed fascinated, but only in the way that you do now. She spent the night in our camp, and all seemed well. It was only a few days ago that we passed through this area and heard tell of what was going on… and that was when I thought to check my pelenath.” She waved towards the angular covered wagon, very similar to the one Tallys and her grandmother had once used to store their Keeper records, the thousands of tightly-bound, water-proofed scrolls filled with their histories, myths, journals, and all the miscellanea gathered by members of their clan over the long years… (All gone now. No, don’t think about that.)

Tallys, feeling a telltale chill creeping over her heart, said dully, “And you found your records of weald-kinath rituals gone.” Why had they so openly welcomed an outsider into their camp? It was unheard of—she had never heard of a clan meeting a non-Elf on the road and inviting them back to their camp for a meal, to spend the night—but then she thought, The Castigation never happened to them. They have no reason to feel mistrust. Wasn’t my clan like that, before the war? She couldn’t remember; she’d been too young. But there were stories of how friendly and generous the Elves had once been, to be sure, welcoming any passing stranger into their hearth and home. The hospitality of their people had once been legendary, and a matter of course.

Clarin’s eyes lit with a frustrated, blue-gray fire. (Tallys knew all too well the violative sting of having one’s records tampered with.) “Yes, but I cannot understand how! We were friendly, to be sure, but we are not—stupid. Several people kept a watch on the Mage while she slept, and she never rose from her bedroll, nor did she go near my pelenath in all the time she was with us.” She shook her head, lips tight with anger. “And yet it musthave been her. We have broken bread with several travelers since arriving in these lands, but we told none of the weald-kinath except that Mage.”

“What was the Mage’s name?” Halek asked alertly, just as Tallys said, “You said she studied animals…”

“She gave her name as Elizora,” Hetwar said slowly, attentive to their altered expressions, “though her true name was Theria. Something about misliking the alliteration…”

As one, Elf and Hunter both stood abruptly; suddenly Tallys felt as if her pulse was rabbiting against her chest, only a flicker of motion, barely there. Oh, gods, she thought. Shery.

Halek caught her eye, and it was clear he was thinking the same thing.

“We need to go,” he said grimly. “Now.”

#

They fled back to Holytree as if the very armies of Hael were chasing after them. Hetwar and Clarin and the others promised to follow as soon as they could—they needed to gather their fighters, and with the sun steadily dropping towards the horizon, Tallys and Halek could not afford to wait. Besides, Tallys thought, the Sae Becha clan might think nothing of it, but the Norm mayor or residents of Holytree might not take kindly to dozens of armed Elves descending suddenly on their town. And weald-kinath or not, this was a Shepherd’s duty, a Shepherd’s assignment. She had taken a vow to serve on the frontlines before asking others to fight. Now was the time to put that oath to the test.

“I do not think that Elizora Thackery is dangerous,” she said to Halek as they rode, “or that she means Shery any particular harm. She did not seem like a cunning liar or devious mastermind when we met this morning.”

“They never do,” was his droll response. “Take it from someone who hunts Thralls for a living: it’s always the sweet, innocent ones you have to look out for. And besides, it may not matter what she wants—the wolf or kin-beast or whatever is inside of her is the one that lashes out. It’s ascendant, or whatever they said, or it is sometimes. It doesn’t sound like she has any control over it, and that’s the part that’s dangerous.”

“She took on something she had no business dabbling with,” Tallys said pensively.

The Hunter’s expression didn’t change. “That’s how you wound up possessed, with a demon or otherwise.”

Tallys couldn’t help but feel a pinprick of sympathy, at that. They had seen a lot of Mages who fell into an Endarkened’s clutches out of sheer desperation: the sad case that Briony, Red, and Chase had encountered in Theydon-Prum came to mind. Would Elizora have been driven to such lengths if she’d been allowed to practice her natural magic openly and freely? Or would she still have been drawn to this—arcane and primal art? She had stolen from the Sae Becha clan, certainly, so she was no innocent, but…

Halek seemingly read her thoughts, because he said, “She’s already killed two people, Tal.”

“The wolf did,” Tallys answered, but she let the matter drop there. They spent the rest of the hard ride back in silence.

Night had fallen by the time they burst back into the inn, and the main tavern was crowded with chattering blue-cloaked merchants and warier, anxious townfolk. Shery wasn’t anywhere to be found, and Tallys felt as if a hand was pressing lightly against the column of her throat. She nearly dragged the barkeeper over the counter by his shirtfront and spat, “Where is your barmaid right now? Elizora Thackery?”

The man’s eyes bugged, and he tried to twist out of her grip, no doubt startled by the iron strength of it. “Here, now—gerroff me—”

Halek pounded his fist so hard on the wooden counter that everyone in the tavern fell dead silent. “Where is Elizora Thackery?” The barkeeper drew his lips back from his teeth in a frightened snarl.

“Tallys? Halek?”

A small, delicate voice drifted through the sudden quiet. There was Shery, standing at the top of the stairs leading to the inn’s guest rooms—of course, she was in her room, she’s safe—her pale blue eyes wide and beginning to look alarmed at the tension in their expressions.

In that moment, the barkeeper grunted out, “She’s off her shift now, is Elly. Lives out back in the cottage at the end of the yard. Behind the stables.”

Halek and Tallys took off, leaving behind a tide of excited sound as the room’s onlookers recovered their wits and began to talk all at once. Tallys thought she heard the sounds of Shery’s sensible shoes click-clackingurgently down the stairs, but in the span of a few instants, they had left the warm, cheery lights of the main building behind and were splashing through the muck of the yard, where the well and the stables and the pigpens and chicken coops resided. There was a stone hovel here, little better than a large shed for keeping tools in, and there was a strange, wavering candlelight flickering in its lone window. Tallys drew and nocked her bow while Halek hefted his spear. He nodded to her, then shouldered the door open, barking, “Lay down any weapons you have, and—”

Tallys was right on his heels, meaning to slip around his tall frame and aim her bolt at Elizora. She had the distinct sensation of something snapping, some tension in the air releasing, and there were ghostly-pale lights hovering in the corners of the room, almost indiscernible, and then she caught sight of Elizora kneeling in the room’s center, gaping at them open-mouthed with a scroll spread across her lap. And then she saw the bloody sigils scrawled all over the walls, then the floor, spreading out in a great spiral with Elizora as the centerpoint. Little red symbols nudged their feet like stones resting at the bottom of a riverbed. She heard the Mage wail something like, “NOOOOOOOOOOOO,” and then there was a great heaving motion, as if her foot had been caught in a snare and she was being flung upwards towards the ceiling with great violence—Tallys cried out, expecting her body to slam into the roof and break every bone in her skeleton—

And then everything went black.