Chapter 45: Oh Father of All Dryads

  In morning’s wane grew Father Tree;

  On winds of peace he scattered seeds.

  They grew into a forest gold,

  That swayed upon a breeze’s blow.

  The Father was a perfect Oak.

  He wore a white and cragged cloak.

  Each branch complete with crossway twin

  Sheltered saplings from storm and wind.

  The Father heard of Mountains strong.

  He envied their resilient song.

  He dug his roots into the ground.

  He would steal the mountain’s sound.

  He reached his leaves into the sky

  And touched the clouds up in their flight.

  He spread his branches proud over land;

  He made all to heed his Command.

  The wind waged war with bitter cry,

  ‘You’ve no claim to endless might!’

  She howled and ripped and bit and tore;

  The forest smashed into a flattened floor.

  The saplings rallied once again.

  They fought until the sap ran red.

  The Father Oak had wrapped their roots,

  And so they sought to tear him loose.

  Snap, Grind, Chop, Tear,

  The sweet little trees turned on him there.

  Wind roar, peaks quake!

  Trap that tree back in its place.

  They gnawed away the tangled roots

  And cut away his snaring shoots.

  Enclosed him in his forest ley,

  Let meakest willow take his place.

  In Morning’s Wane Grew Father Tree

  An Etnfrandian Song

  Following the enormous stag’s hoofprints was hatchling’s play. Krid had been outvoted on this decision, but he could understand why. Running across friendlier folk would solve all of their problems, from their book questions to their food shortages. Only, Krid couldn’t believe any natives would be friendly when none had been so far.

  Kilometers passed quickly without the tangled foliage and frequent dangers of Ferngal’s forest. As they marched on, the trees grew denser and taller, and the light darkened from gold to amber and eventually to copper. While Syrdin’s silence was typical, Mell and even Gale became quiet. When they did speak, it was in the hushed tones of reverence.

  Another wisp appeared on their path, beckoning them onward.

  “Fenn, have you noticed the wisps? Mell asked.

  “Do you mean the pattern, or that they are following us?”

  “I mean it feels like we’re following them,”she said.

  “We are.” Gale’s smile was too soft and wide at the same time. Something about it reminded Krid of pudding.

  “Didn’t you say that they lead to fates? Evil or good?” Krid clarified. “We were agreed to avoid them.”

  “That’s true,” Fenn said. He didn’t notice the hallowed whispers the others had taken. “But we agreed to that before we met the stag.”

  Krid was still glad it hadn’t been a more powerful or more aggressive creature. Large and magical, yes, but a few bruising thwacks had sent it running. Of course, he’d run from danger if he had D’Andre with him, too.

  Light broke through the trees up ahead, and Krid squinted.

  Gale’s quicker, elven vision adjusted sooner. “The Father Tree!” she gasped. In her excitement, she sped away on her toes without caution. As she burst into the light, she began to sing a tune he’d heard many times in her feud against Fenn.

  Krid followed Mell into the light. It was a clearing made without a single stump. Instead, the floor was a tangle of roots carpeted in wine-stained moss and yellow leaves. At the center stood a tree larger than Krid had ever dared to imagine. Sacred Fates. The branches must have spread a quarter kilometer over the forest. Light slanted between its lower branches and the tops of the trees surrounding, providing the golden light that seemed suddenly so bright.

  He gawped at the trunk. Only the larger Brikhvarnni dwellings were as broad as that, probably ten meters across.

  Fenn, who had also been gaping, came to himself with a shake. “While it’s no doubt a large tree of the same variety, Gale, the Father Tree is cut down and replaced by a willow. It can’t literally be the one from the song.” He followed her to the tree’s base. Krid walked at his heels, a hand on his sword and gaze on the clearing’s edge. A couple of those wisps floated on the fringes, but otherwise it was quiet.

  “My gods it’s enormous!” Mell stepped beside Fenn, head similarly tilted toward the canopy. “It’s hard to imagine anything overthrowing this tree.”

  Gale frowned, ceasing her song. “But it’s the perfect picture of this place. Listen, maybe it’s an allegory!”

  “Hold on, hold on.” Fenn interrupted her. “Krid, I’ve been working on fixing this for you so it could clip to your earhole. See if it works.” Fenn handed him a tiny horn-looking device affixed to a clip.

  He turned it over in his claws. “What does it do?”

  “It’s attuned to translate to Allspeach from any language in its banks. It should enable you to understand.”

  He nodded and clipped it over his ear. Sure enough, when Gale sang again, he understood the words–not that he then understood the point of it.

  “In morning’s wane grew Father Tree;

  On winds of peace he scattered seeds….”

  As she sang, a breeze that had been slight picked up around her, carrying the tune around the trunk of the tree. Syrdin tensed on the other side of him, throwing a wary glance to where Gale placed a hand against the tree’s cracked trunk.

  “The Father heard of Mountains strong.

  He pined for their resilient song.

  He dug his roots into the ground.

  He would steal the mountain’s sound…”

  At first it was the low branches that swayed. Then the trees around the clearing began to rock. He caught Syrdin’s eye, and zhe led him to glance at one edge of the clearing. Not two, but three–no four–wisps floated on the floor and boughs at the forest’s edge, gathering to surround them. There was strange magic afoot.

  “…She howled and ripped and bit and tore

  The forest smashed into a flattened floor.”

  “Stop that,” Syrdin hissed.

  Gale did not. The other two listened with eyes too large.

  “The saplings rallied once again;

  They fought until the sap ran red.

  The Father Oak had wrapped their roots,

  And so they sought to tear him loose.”

  Krid shifted uncomfortably as more wisps gathered along the edge of the clearing near the others–coppery, misty, silvered, and leafed. They were silent, not a chirp to be heard.

  “Gale, don’t. Magic is too thick here,” Syrdin insisted.

  Krid cocked his head.

  “What do you mean ‘the magic is thick’?” Fenn asked, equally confused.

  Mell readied her pen, a brow raised.

  “You can’t feel it?” Syrdin’s tone bore something between worry and unbelief.

  “Feel what?” Krid demanded.

  Mell, at least, had the sense to explain clearly. “Our current theory is that Fenn has no connection to Fae magic–he can’t resist bewitchments, he can’t cast innate magic, and now I think we can safely add that he has no awareness of latent magic–even fae–unless he casts his seeing spell. Whereas even I feel a bit of a strange… weight.”

  Syrdin gaped. Apparently, this was rare among them. “What? Is that true?” zhe turned to Fenn.

  “Yes, that is a valid assessment.” Fenn lowered his head in shame.

  The branches creaked now as Gale sang the punctuated verse.

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  “Snap, Grind, Chop, Tear,

  The sweet little trees turned on him there.

  Wind roar, peaks quake!

  Trap that tree back–”

  The song ceased abruptly as Gale caught what the others were saying. “You mean you–the pulse, the presence–you don’t sense it?”

  Krid glanced at the wisps, but they showed no sign of leaving.

  “No, but perhaps…” Fenn blinked, and his eyes held a faint glimmer when he next opened them. He pulled down his glasses. “Good gods!” He knelt, then, touching the ground. “The roots! It… It is pulsing!”

  “Watch this!” Gale started the verse where’d she’d left off.

  “...Trap that tree back in his place!

  “They gnawed away the tangled roots

  And cut away his snaring shoots.

  Enclose him in his forest ley.

  Let the meakest willow take his place.”

  “Don’t!” Syrdin insisted. We don’t know if that’s safe!”

  Fenn gasped, turning around the clearing, and finally watching the tree, too caught up in wonder to care about Syrdin’s protests.

  Krid kept himself ready, his claws never leaving his sword’s hilt. Gale hadn’t completed her last verse when, all at once, the wisps chirped in greeting. A huge shadow–or would it be called a light–split from the tree.

  “Quiet!” Syrdin hissed again.

  “Oh, let them experiment a li–” Mell began, but fell immediately silent in fear.

  Krid watched in horror the split grew. But it was no split. A monstrosity pulled itself away, head last, from the “Father Tree’s” trunk to stand free. The tree had no part missing. It… had simply stepped out as from a dwelling. It was as tall as Krid ten times over, the legs overly long with roots squirming at the feet. His face was bearded with red lichen, and a ruby red scar scabbed across what looked like a nose. Beady red eyes blinked with white-barked eyelids. Then it spoke, voice grinding and snapping like wood in a mill.

  “Who dares to malign my great name?” The earring voiced for him. “Who would grind me to splinters? No willow is worthy!”

  Gingerly, Krid unhooked his shield from his back with his off hand. He was not one to shy from a fight, but faced with a sixty-foot tree-man with living roots for toes and splintery clubs for hands, he was ready to retreat. He glanced at Fenn.

  “Great watcher!” Gale fell prostrate.

  “Get up!” Fenn clasped her forearm, tugging. “That’s no watcher.”

  Syrdin crouched, ready to spring away.

  “But he–” Gale insisted.

  “That’s a Dryad.” Fenn continued slowly. “A very ancient and powerful one.”

  “But I thought dryads were women–”

  “And you’ve made him very angry.” Fenn hauled her to her feet.

  Krid analyzed the monster. Its roots squirmed fast as it stomped forward. Its eyes were front-facing, so he could potentially hide behind it to trick or trap it. He bet it’s primary weapon would be the long arms with branches like claws for hands. With the dryad’s height, the strikes would be predictable. If he wasn’t too fast, they could avoid–

  The dryad swept an arm across the ground rather than smashing.

  Or he could do that.

  Syrdin was already in motion, tackling Fenn into the ground’s uneven roots where Gale fell with him. Krid flung himself to the ground. Mell’s back was pressed to the great trunk, out of the path of the giant arm.

  When he rose again, Krid wasted no time organizing them. “Gale, support fire. Mell, distance and magic. Fenn, makes sure she stays clear. Syrdin, blindside. The goal is a safe retreat.”

  Syrdin nodded.

  The creature bellowed in anger, then reformed his splintery hand into a club. Krid pulled both handaxes from his belt rather than his sword. He couldn’t kill this creature. He just had to keep it busy long enough to escape.

  A great, splintering arm rushed over top of her, splaying her hair and skirt in a wake of wind. She pressed further into the knots beneath her. The enormous dryad hissed a crackling noise of frustration that made terror dribble through every fiber of her being–and quite possibly down her leg as fluid.

  Syrdin’s shadow fell over her. The Night Elf crouched coiled like a snake ready to strike, zheir gaze locked on the dryad.

  That snapped Gale from her terror. She would not be outdone.

  “Gale, support fire. Mell, distance and magic. Fenn, make sure she stays clear. Syrdin, blindside. The goal is a safe retreat,” Krid bellowed his orders.

  Though it irked her to be cast aside, she would obey this time. If not because she agreed, then because Mell had explained–very angrily–the importance of standing aside to heal. She couldn’t step in if she was in the midst of the trouble.

  She spun to offer Fenn a hand up only to find he was already bolting toward the trunk of the Father Tree where Mell cowered.

  With a silent prayer for his survival, she sprinted the opposite direction toward the treeline. Her prayer was answered as the dryad was more interested in her. His other arm cracked and stretched. It swept the ground behind her, gaining. She risked a glance back and regretted it when her toe caught on a root.

  As she regained her footing, she could’ve sworn the root moved. She leapt onward. The limb closed in. Krid charged it in a blur of blue. His damaged shield cracked wide open as he bounced off the dryad’s elbow, but so did the creature’s joint. The whole limb reverberated with the impact, losing momentum. Gale, with only a stride to spare before getting pummelled, jumped onto the trunk of an outlying tree, then sprung toward the low-lying limb of its neighbor. She thanked her decades of running wild in the mountains with a spindly little Fenn for her grace in climbing.

  She clambered up to see Krid running between the dryad’s legs, hacking at roots that tried to deter him. Syrdin was–in plain sight for once. Zhe was halfway up one of its legs wedging a dagger into the knee.

  The joints? They were targeting them.

  The elbow, however, had already reformed its woody sinew, the bark closing. The renewed arm reached for Syrdin.

  Gale pulled the bow from her back and strung an arrow. It would do nothing to the joints, but—she raised her tip to the creature’s eye, then raised it higher. She took a breath.

  The dryad plucked up Syrdin like a tick from a dog and wrapped zhem in coarse fingers.

  A subtle breeze tugged at the end of Gale’s hair. She pointed a little left.

  A burst of magical fire exploded around one of the dryad’s feet. It groaned, raising the foot in a mass of writhing shoots. It moved to stomp—on Krid!

  The drakeman rolled away, apparently caught mid-breath as sparks clustered around him.

  Mell yelled something, probably a command, but nothing changed except his attention turned to Mell. Gale tracked the shift in the dryad’s eyes right until the moment its head turned away. Mell disappeared around the other side of the tree. When the dryad’s hand landed where she had been, Fenn popped out from some roots and sent scorching lines through the hand.

  Gale puffed out. They couldn’t afford for her to wait around and get a perfect shot. She drew the bow and landed a hit on the back of the creature’s head–a little further left than intended. Good that she hadn’t been hoping for an eye.

  A white pulse radiated through it. It groaned, turning in search of the source.

  The hand holding Syrdin exploded into splinters. It re-formed almost as soon into something entirely different–almost like… a sphere?

  It was enough to turn the creature’s head halfway with a horrible gargle of pain. Gale nocked another arrow.

  Syrdin hit the dirt hard but scrambling.

  Gale adjusted her point of aim.

  Fenn cried in alarm as tendrils wrapped his leg, growing from the charred hand.

  She let out a breath, and—the branch fell out from under her. She yelped but had the awareness to roll her momentum forward when she hit the ground. Her arrow, however, dropped from her hands. A glance up showed her a branch that groaned back into place. She ignored it, nocked another arrow, and shot. So much for hiding in the trees.

  The arrow split the socket and stuck. There was the pulse of light, a screech, and then the arrow was swallowed in an instant as the eye re-formed.

  Blights! Frosts! Gale lurched to her feet only to find them tangled. She was trapped on the edge of the clearing with her feet ensnared in roots. They squeezed tighter, slowly coiling up her leg.

  The dryad’s new eye fixed on her. She saw her death in it.

  “Gale!” she heard Fenn cry.

  She tugged again. Useless.

  A lengthening arm opened its palm in the air. She’d die by swatting, a mere pest.

  She tried to pull her foot out of her boot.

  Vaguely, a clomping sounded in the distance.

  One foot flew free, the other was circled up to her knee by a root. She reached in the air and hummed for an axe.

  The arm descended.

  There was a horrible burst of light as weight crashed into her.

  Into her side. She opened her eyes to find everything a blur, fast and confused. Heat prickled through her dress, an arm wrapped strongly around her. Bare skin pressed against her arm and ear. She was saved.

  But her savior did not lope in the run of a man. She looked up to see the chin like that of a man’s, his jaw squared and shadowed. Above that, his ear was long–very long–and from lobe to tip entirely narrow with a subtle curl on the upper helix–like hers. Hoofbeats galloped beneath his body. A wood elf on a horse? But she knew better.

  The Centaur.

  The same one from vision in the crystal.

  “Can you ride?” His was the deep voice that had called to her in her dream.

  “I’ve never tried.” Etnfrandians didn’t tame animals, though she’d heard Wood Elves befriended them.

  “Then hold tight.”

  Gale was swung toward the centaur’s back, and she cried out in surprise, grasping for what she could. That turned out to be his waist and the hair that grew down his back, blending with coarse horsehair over a second set of shoulders. She clung to him, one knee pressed to the place where his skin met fur and her other leg dangling down his other side. In the lurching gallop, she squeezed his human-like middle.

  She felt the muscles of his back ripple as his elbow stretched back. A lengthy spear formed in his hand, glowing like one of her own creations.

  She heard the grinding hiss of the dryad. The centaur’s rich voice answered in a language–ancient–that resonated with her, but she did not understand.

  Gale peered around his side to see he held out a hand to the white-barked beast. He repeated his words.

  The dryad bellowed once more–but this time more like a resigned groan as opposed to a fearsome cacophony. It gestured with a giant hand, reforming it to show scorched lines.

  The centaur answered again. He reached for the dryad. Gale clasped to his ribs tighter as the giant hand descended. His bronze finger met a giant, white, splintery one. Then, in a stream emanating from the centaur, the scorched lines disappeared. The dryad sighed, a sound hissing like wind on a dry branch. At last, step by earth-shaking step, the dryad returned to his home, obeying his Lord.

  Dala. Dora. Whatever his name may be, Gale knew him as if she’d always known him. This was her Lord. Her master. Her beginning.

  Dara. That was it. They had found a God at last.