Declan caught on, and a great weight fell into his stomach.

  Ryn, apparently noticing the change in countenance, nodded in stiff condolence. Declan has the bearing of it already, I think. There’s only one spellcaster I’ve ever known who wielded enough power to achieve such a thing.

  The weight grew heavier.

  “Time for you to voice those questions of yours again, lad,” Bonner told him with a grim, morbid grin. “If the Endless Queen lives, you’ll be needing every answer we can give you…”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Despite Bonner’s statement, Declan had very little opportunity to voice any of the dozens of queries that looped in a blur across his thoughts for the remainder of the morning. He and Ester packed quickly, as instructed, gathering their paltry assortment of weapons and seeing to it the traveling pack was tightly clasped, protecting what meager rations they had and the flask that had become their sole watering can. To Declan’s relief, Bonner had not thrown away the tattered remains of his shirt and hunting vest after removing them to tend to his wounds the night before, and promptly procured them on request from a patch of nearby grass where they’d been hurriedly cast aside. Regrettably, after a quick examination, Declan judged the cotton threading of the underlay to be beyond saving, and he tossed the shirt into the still-smoking pit to burn beside the drey’s bones. His vest had faired only marginally better, sizable holes having been eaten here and there through the leather like some rodent treating itself to the hide, but it held together for the moment. With his only other option being to hike half-naked in the shade of the woods in the relative coolness of an approaching fall, Declan patted the vest free of dry mud with a stiff arm and pulled it on without complaint. He had a harder time buckling his belt about his waist, the new skin of his scars making the fingers of his left hand particularly ungainly. By the time the sheathed knife and empty scabbard hung at his sides, he’d vowed thrice over with profanity-laden grunts to do as Bonner had suggested. Ester would take up their daily training with him again as soon as they were able, even if he had to beg her on his hand and knees.

  After all were ready, they took a minute for the yr’Essel’s to look over their ruined glen one final time, giving Ryn the opportunity to shift into his familiar—but significantly smaller—form of the warped stallion.

  Then, at last, the four of them were on the move.

  They were quiet as they managed the woods, making north by east, Declan imitating the other three’s relative silence with some effort. He understood they had to be careful, for the moment. His comprehension didn’t extend much past the fact that something was out there, very clearly hunting them, but this alone was enough to help him hold his tongue, at least until he was given liberty to speak by Ryn and Bonner. For the length of the morning that pair led them, seemingly without any true direction, deeper into the trees. They ate as they traveled, saving the apples in the bag by breaking their fast on edible mushrooms the mage pointed out along their path, a bland meal that no one in particular found more than passably filling. Ryn tried twice to gallop down a hare, but his usual agility was largely absent, stolen by his still-healing injuries, and by the time Ester took pity on the dragon and wordlessly downed him a pair of squirrels with masterful shots, Declan made his decision. The moment Ryn was done with the bloody meal, he offered him a rest with a quiet word, and the dragon only managed a murmur of thanks before transforming yet again, this time into the great black hawk. Hopping up onto his shoulder, Ryn promptly fell asleep once more.

  After that, Bonner thankfully didn’t keep them going long.

  “This way,” he said about an hour later, the first full words Declan had heard since they’d abandoned the clearing. His mind had wandered, chasing itself around as it tried to make sense of what few deductions he’d been able to make of their predicament on his own. He looked up to find the old man shifting them further east, along the ever-so-faint outline of a deer trail.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” he asked, taking Bonner’s volume as leave to speak a little more freely. He was growing impatient with the silence, as companionable as it was, and the sun was breaking its high arc in the sky they could just see through the branches of the trees. They’d been walking for some five, maybe six hours, and he was equal parts hungry, tired, and thirsty.

  Bonner nodded, ducking under the belly of a fallen oak that had been caught in the low branches of its siblings. “I’ve a friend not too far from here. His home should be spacious enough to accommodate the four of us in the short term, though I don’t think it would be wise to linger long.”

  “A friend?” Declan asked dubiously, eyeing Ester askance.

  She gave a weak grin, her delicate features sheened with sweat from the day’s march. Deftest of them all in the undergrowth, she’d been scouting their flanks back and forth ever since Ryn had returned to his slumber. “I’d rather let you be surprised,” she said with her best attempt at a laugh, grabbing his arm and tugging him sideways so he didn’t catch his head on the very trunk Bonner had just avoided. “Father would be disappointed if I ruined it, anyway.”

  This answer being as far from satisfying as Declan could have imagined, he considered waking Ryn to ask him about it, but the dragon’s horned head was tucked under one wing, taloned feet instinctively righting himself as they moved, clearly in need of the rest.

  With a discontented shrug, Declan continued to trail behind the yr’Essels, considering that nothing—truly nothing, at this point—could be half-so-strange as the company he already found himself keeping.

  A quarter-hour later, they deviated off the trail, true east now, and back into the thickness of the woods. Soon after, the sound of rushing water reached Declan’s ears, and he identified the passing of a river not far off. Sure enough, they reached the flow’s edge within minutes, and Bonner led them upstream at once, moving along the stony bank with confidence.

  Taking a bend, Declan groaned as he made out the narrow mouth of a cave, dug out from the root of a massive, centuries-old pine, set high enough up the bank that even a heavy flood likely wouldn’t drown out its inhabitants.

  He thought he could guess what kind of “friend” Bonner had been referring to.

  The old man reached the cave first, motioning for Declan and Ester to stay behind. When they stopped a respectable distance from the opening, Bonner hopped down like a rabbit into its hole, the sounds of slipping earth and rock vanishing as he disappeared into the earth. Exchanging a look, Ester motioned towards the river.

  “He’ll be a moment,” she said, already moving down the embankment. “Care for a drink?”

  Declan almost groaned in anticipation at the suggestion, sliding after her carefully, trying not to jostle Ryn more than he had to. The half-elf had taken the traveling bag from him when he’d accepted the dragon’s weight, and she was already kneeling on a flat stone at the edge of the water, pulling the flask from within to dump its warmed contents into the flow. By the time he reached her she’d filled the container up again, offering it back to him first. He took it with a word of thanks, bringing the flask to his mouth hungrily.

  “How’s he doing?” Ester asked after taking the flask back and downing her own fill. She was watching Ryn with concern while bending down to sink the container into the water again.

  “As best as can be expected, I think.” Declan moved to join her, stepping onto another flat length of stone just to her left and squatting to dip his hands into the river. It felt cool and nice against his skin, and he made a mental note to take advantage and bathe later, if they had the chance. “He’s been sleeping since he changed. I think the fight took everything he had.”

  Ester nodded. She hadn't yet heard all the details, and he thought to offer them, but before he could get the words out there was a hail from behind, and they turned to see Bonner’s head peeking down at them from over the edge of the cave.

  “All’s well!” he shouted down at them over the rush of the flow. “I think we’re welcome, for the time being!”

  “He ‘thinks’ we’re welcome?” Declan asked nervously, standing up and taking the broad step back to land before turning to present his hand to the woman. “And what’s he mean, ‘for the time being’?”

  Ester laughed at that, gaining her own feet and accepting his offered assistance despite the fact he knew she could have managed just as well without.

  “I’m surprised,” she teased, hitching the pack up higher onto her shoulders before leading the way back up the hill. “I would have thought this sort of thing hardly more than an adventure for a man who’d so recently killed a drey.”

  Declan rolled his eyes, appreciating the opportunity to look anywhere but directly in front of him as Ester managed the incline at exactly the wrong height for his discretion. “I’m still not sure what that thing was, so the joke falls flat. Not to mention that to say it was half-dead by the time I got to take a swing might very well be the understatement of the year.”

  He caught her smile when she crested the embankment and twisted to offer her own hand, which he accepted gratefully. “Learn to take a compliment, Declan.”

  “That—” his sardonic exclamation was interrupted by the grunt-worthy strain of his stiff arm as together they got him over the edge “—was a compliment?” He looked at her ruefully, dusting his hands off on his pants. “On the contrary, I’m fairly sure you just very craftily attempted to call me a coward, if anything.”

  “Did I?” Ester asked with an exaggerated gasp, batting her eyes at him and covering her mouth in mock horror. Then she daintily took two steps in retreat and leapt backwards into the cave, grinning as she vanished, her voice coming out muffled from within. “I suppose you’ll just have to prove me wrong then, won’t you?”

  Grumbling to himself, Declan followed, holding tight to his empty scabbard as he followed the woman down into the dark.

  He didn’t have far to go, but the loose earth of the entry gave under his feet, nearly sending him and Ryn both toppling to the flatter floor at the bottom of the hole. From there, he had to squat awkwardly to keep the dragon steady, crouching through a low, rough tunnel that had been dug straight between the heavy roots of the pine above, their rough lattice as struts in a mine. Ester was nowhere to be seen, the nimble half-elf having scampered off with nothing more than a lingering titter, and he found himself muttering again about cowards and drey and where she could put her “compliments”, though he was smiling on the inside.

  Not ten feet into the low space, Declan was forced to turn and follow the tunnel around a wide bend, the end coming into sight not a yard ahead of him. A surprising amount of light outlined the far mouth, and he found himself popping out into a wider, higher space, one in which he might have been able to safely stand had he been but two or three inches shorter. A second, much smaller tree looked to form the dense skeleton of the cave’s ceiling, the spidering of narrower roots more delicate, but heavily entwined, allowing sunlight to stream through a dozen holes of varying widths in shifting rays that glimmered and shined with dust. The floor beneath his feet was hard-packed, almost as firm as stone, and the walls were concave, providing ample dry shelter for the days the pleasantness of the perforations overhead might have betrayed its occupant to rain or snow.

  Not that said occupant looked as though a little precipitation would have done much to ruffle it…

  Declan had been somewhat expecting the presence, but all the same he very nearly yelped when he caught sight of the bear, lounging on its back in a particularly thick patch of sunlight, off to one side of the cave. It wasn’t the largest specimen he’d ever seen—the er’enthyl had trained red bears as border guardians along the edge of the Vyr’en that would have put this one to shame—but all the same it was a sizable creature, one that might have been of a height with him when it stood on its hind paws. He ogled it, and started yet again when he saw the animal’s small, dark eyes on him, upside down as it warmed its stomach, studying him with lazy interest.

  “Oh, stop staring and sit down,” Ester’s low, amused voice spoke up from his right, and he felt her slim fingers take him by the wrist and pull him earthward.

  He complied without much resistance, finding himself seated on the woman’s left along the wall perpendicular to the cave’s mouth, her father on her other side. The mage appeared to be working on something in the air in front of him, and Declan leaned around Ester to watch, astounded, as Bonner drew rapid runes in the air with one hand over the outstretched palm of the other. With twisting fingers the man spun the rapidly building shape of a sphere this way and that, the hollow form comprised of the twisted symbols that flared into existence, deftly filling each space with what was obviously practiced order and deliberate care. Not long after, Bonner was done, and with a motion like he meant to pull on opposite ends of the orb it grew rapidly outward. The small runes kept their size while they moved, expanding away from each other in a rush, faint, gleaming tethers all that looked to bind them together. They reached the extent of the confined space, passing through their bodies and then the bear’s harmlessly, until the symbols burned blue-green into the dirt and roots of the walls that surrounded them.

  Then they vanished, leaving the cave as it had been, with no palpable change to be felt in the air.

  “It’s not much, but it will do for the moment,” Bonner said with an expelling breath of ease, reaching up to pull his hood over his head with both hands before leaning back against the wall behind him. “It will make the job of anyone trying to track us that much harder, at the very least.”

  “You think that’s probable?” Ester asked in a worried voice, looking to her father. “That we’re being followed?”

  Bonner shrugged not looking around. “Impossible to say. If Ryn and Declan have caught Sehranya’s eye, I can hardly imagine she’d just give up on them because we took out a single specimen of her accursed pets. Where there’s one such beast, there are undoubtedly more.”

  Sehranya. The Endless Queen. The very subject Declan had spent most of his morning mulling over. He found that he could not fear her the way Ester and Bonner and—to an extent—even Ryn seemed to. He knew next to nothing of whatever legend it was that she seemed to have sprung from, save for the small part of the conversation she’d dominated the first morning he’d woken up in the yr’Essel’s home.

  “Is she that much of a threat?” he asked, keeping his voice quiet as he glanced at the loafing bear not ten feet from them.

  “Oh, ignore Talo,” Bonner said with a snort and a wave at the beast. “He’s agreed to let us stay, so long as we bring him a few fish from the stream before night’s end. He won’t cause us any trouble if we keep to our side of the cave.”

  Declan raised his eyes to the ceiling, shaking his head both at the name, and at the fact that Bonner could apparently communicate with the animal as he might a man.

  He was kept from commenting on this by the old man’s grave answer, which followed promptly.

  “And yes, Declan. She is such a threat, and more. In all my days I’ve not heard of a fouler soul, much less come across one. She was dangerous on her own, even without her armies.” He grimaced, correcting himself with a muttered: “Is dangerous…”

  “Who is she?” It was as simple a deliberation as Declan could form from the maelstrom of suspicions he’d churned up in his head throughout their trek. “Or… what is she?”

  Fair questions both, in their own way.

  Ryn’s voice was like a wash of warm water down Declan’s back, easing a tension in his shoulders he hadn't even realized he’d been carrying. Ester made an abrupt, pleased sound at his elbow, and he looked around to find the dragon blinking himself awake.

  “How are you feeling?” Bonner asked first, eyeing his companion’s hawkish form.

  Hungry, Ryn answered honestly, hopping down to Declan’s knee, then the cave floor before eyeing the bear, who was watching him with almost genuine interest. Will he be startled if I change? I’ve never liked this form much. It’s always felt a poor replacement for my natural state.

  Ah, Declan thought with a flash of satisfaction. One mystery resolved at last.

  Bonner, meanwhile, snorted. “Hardly. I saved his life after some drunken country knight tried to skewer him with a tourney lance. Had to transport him back to the cottage all my own. He’s seen stranger magics, believe me.”

  Ryn offered the old man a blank look, but then gave his wings a brief shrug, and began to change. A few seconds later the dragonling sat before them, the shape Declan was starting to think was the dragon’s preferred form when the functions of his others weren’t needed.

  I can tell you only so much of Sehranya’s history before our encounter with her, Declan, he said, returning to the conversation at hand while settling his long tail about his crossed legs. Her own people guarded the details of her past from us when we asked, or possibly knew no more of her history themselves. She presented herself in the guise of a young elven woman, but to think of her as anything other than ancient even seven hundred years ago would have obviously been underestimating the witch.

  “An elf?” Declan asked, surprised by this. For some reason, he had trouble justifying the image of a woman who looked a bit like Ester, with solid gold or silver hair, reigning over ranks of thousands of risen dead. “She came from the Vyr’en? Have the er’enthyl ever held that kind of power? If they were that strong I can’t imagine them not pressing our borders more fervently…”

  There was a short, almost awkward pause, in which Ryn and Bonner looked at each other.

  There’s more than one reason the wood elves don’t push into Viridian, but… When it comes to Sehranya… The dragon looked to be having trouble finding the right words to explain. She’s not of the Vyr’en. She was—or is, it would rather seem—an elf, yes, but… He broke off, chewing on his thoughts a moment. Declan, have you ever heard of the ‘er’endehn’?