Morn came sooner than any of the company wanted. The sound of gentle rain overtook them. Everyone had gone to the front room of the inn. They seemed anxious to go. Kyne came through the door, bringing in a large reed-woven basket. He set it on the bar.

“Here, the bounty of the morning. Go ahead.” Looking around at them. “Well you’re all ready ripe early.”

The basket looked like forage, pretty good forage at that. Kova got a nice ripe starmelon and took a firm grip on both sides and twisted. It crunched open. She set one piece aside and broke the other in half again. She bit in and tasted the sour-sweet nectar.

“So quick to ride to doom?” Kyne worked a towel over the countertop as he spoke. He had asked the question idly, but his eyes looked over the company. Judging them. “You go to put vensari into the earth. Perhaps it will be yourself. You do not know. For a city you’ve never been to, never will. Kurasanto.”

He spat out the word.

Yaharos held up an open hand to Kyne. He was not a tall man, but he was stout of bone. “Enough. I answer the call of Kuras. I will bear no further reproach, keeper.”

Kyne inclined his head, resuming his task.

When they finished, the company found the orsids outside cold and curled against the inn and the cobbler’s dwelling. They had mucked about a bit but it was hard for much to stay on the eld road for long. The cobbler, a green-scaled kher, lithe and bipedal, leaned in his doorway.

“You are followed by lorgen,” the cobbler called out to them. It was not so much as a question as a statement.

“We’ve noticed as much,” Ryfkha snipped.

“It is no laughing matter. I do not know all the things of Sen’tael. But I know some. More than I should, ha. Your party has something they want. Perhaps a taroe…or an esper.”

His eyes, wetlooking yellow slits, flipped to her as he said the last part. He waited for just a moment, perhaps to see if someone would speak up. But no one did.

“You don’t have to tell me. Maybe you know what it is. If you don’t you should know you must be careful. Things go all the way down in the moonforest.”

Yaharos thanked the cobbler for the use of the trough, and then they all saddled up. Everyone cloaked, gloved and booted as best as they could, prepared for a long cold ride. When would it end? Would it end?

They rode by the giant effigy of sticks onto a shabby rootpath that extended beyond Fireshrine, sort of like a writhing natural continuation of the eld road, back down into the moonforest. This path wide with a dedicated downward slant. She rode again with her father. She sensed Ryfkha wished her to properly say goodbye. She wasn’t sure how to do it. Her father sung to her some of the old songs she might remember. The rain fading as they descended, passing over slick streams of water sluicing downward.

Shadows seeped through the rootpaths. Soon the riders bore their lanterns again. They canted slowly along in the long wet dark this way. Everbloom flourishing here in bursts. She kept hearing things further out and was sure the lorgen were still keeping pace. When finally they took an upward turn it seemed to be slanting toward the afternoon.

They came out into water meadows, formed in flat basins in the root structure, lit by pale strings of light, overgrown with sporegrass and museflowers. The orsids puffing a little from the ascent. They were all damp and cold and the sun felt like a warm fire. The air balmy and moist here. Rolled sheets of mist clung to roots in tucked away places. Kova felt a rush of emotion within her. It reminded her of home. The loneliness of a memory. She scooted forward and took her father’s hand. He squeezed hers back.

Above, an outcrop of starmelons glistened, some half eaten. A blueish dracari with hocked forelimbs climbed around the fruits, feeding.

When they grew hungry they supped on pemmican. Their saddlebags still laden with supplies enough for months of sufficiency. Riding in and on through the gnarl and curl. Once it tipped into the evening night fell rapidly. Yaharos called everyone together and they slowed.

“The lorgen are gathering. There are many already. They will be many more than us tonight. Be on your guard.”

Kova could see at least a dozen lorgen more or less visible, all pretty close by. But as it darkened and especially as their path continued to dip into the depths of the moonforest, she could not tell anymore how many lorgen there were. She yawned, and settled back in the saddle, pulling a woven blanket about herself.

She slept, disturbed and restless, for how long? When she sat up it was pitch black but she could see them cleanly through the night like they were made of illuminated vapor. There were…many, teeming, tenebrous, of varying sizes, rippling along. She only saw Ryfkha nearby, nearly a shadow. Not a trace of the others.

“Go away!” she shouted to the lorgen. “Leave me alone!”

Their strange faces flicked toward her. The closest lorgen shook itself. You call, I am hungry. Where else would I go?

“There is plenty of food for you in the moonforest. Why won’t you leave me alone?”

Duty. Thrill. Taste-of-wind. How would you not walk the line that has been drawn for you? We speak of such things in the howlings.

Then it lit up and began keening, the three-hinged jaw undulating and modulating the long scream. Other lorgen adding their calls. Keeping pace behind them. Their cold eyes flashing in the dark like moons on water.

“Go!” she screamed, but it was power, she keened it right back at them. “GO!” They shook back.

Strange, vast dracari. Burning in ether. Miraculous thief. One day we may yet weave through the dapples.

They were keening again. Its name was Zhuzah. Shadowfang. She heard it in its song. It ran off, the speaker, hacking and laughing in its way.

V’nanth rested in the stillness of time. The husk of his body around his slumberling heart as the tide gradually rose about him. And abundance. With a dark groan he fell into the water, muffled, pneumatophores quivering. He floated, looking down into the silt. The remnants of a cloak sinking around him like a lost standard. What color had it been?

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He had never been much of a seer. But a listener, yes. V’nanth could listen. A dracari had perched upon his back and then took flight. Salt-worms churning the water in the dark. He heard the draying of a lorgen somewhere in the distance. And less perceptible things….

On the brim of the sky he felt it coming: a wave riding eternity, an isotropic nimbus calling mercy, calling love. V’nanth rose suddenly and creaking, brine streaming from his hollows, looking northwest toward the epicenter as the weyr beneath peeled back, receding like the surf before a great wave. It broke over him in fragmented song. A striped vensari, brown and red, challenging the lorgen in their own wildsong.

Ebullient, lofted by the wave, he felt quickenings beyond countings and pieces of people and plants and little furtive gestures made in the heart of forgetfulness, then it passed. Silence now.

Before long he heard something else, a soft and subtle keening like a thousand sounder bugs shaking through the ether. It was…sadness. And it rose. And he stretched out his willowy arms and called out in an uneven, unbroken hymn, and added his voice to the melody of the foam.

When he was done he submerged himself again into the salt water until his trunk was fully bloated. He thought about the fragment he had been given. Unwrapped it or opened it like a musebud. There was always more twisted into the messages. He saw imprints of wilderness and desolation and love, and a curving story that brought a vensari to a fateful communion. There was a coda to the last bit, the forceful voice. Time would be now like a blade upon it.

In another falling petal he saw the night sky and the position of the crystal moon and the Path of the Ancestors with the shadow of Sen’tael marking time upon its breadth. Sometimes the world shines on its children. He would soon begin to flower.

Turns spent in restless, dreaming reverie. Cairn-calls fading away. She dreamed she awoke and, coated in a cool sweat, lay, still as stone, listening to her heart. The rest of the world quiet. There was no song. There was no voice. Then she opened her eyes. The Sibling was out and casting light that carried a pale and hazy gleam in the dampness. Parts of the sky suffused with rainbow fire.

She very carefully looked out over the saddle and was startled to not see any lorgen. Soon after, she slept again, and this time the sleep was deep and nearly endless. When she woke it felt like it had been a thousand years. Little vines and leaf-growth had crept from the orsid over the saddle near her. She shucked them off.

She stretched her sore muscles. It was not comfortable sleeping on an orsid, though the saddle was wicker and lined with fabric and pliable. A little like sleeping in a tree, but a lot squirmier. Shafts of sun pierced the canopy and fell far down among the roots and rootpaths into the depths. They were heading into the gloam. The men spoke among themselves.

Kova peeled and ate a moonfruit, listening. The lorgen had not returned. Their pace slowed, everyone feeling more at ease. Her father sent Jhoir and B’renki trotting ahead into the dark. Though it was daylight, the dark moldered like miasma all about them. Many of the warriors ignited their lanterns.

“You druan did not feel it,” Ryfkha was saying. “The lorgen—they are still gone.” He inclined his head back toward Kovaleska.

“What of it?” Yaharos said.

“They will not be gone forever. And, worse things have now seen her in the dream.”

“I told them to leave.” Everyone turned their eyes upon Kova. “They howled to me. I could hear them last night. They spoke—like the little dreamy.”

Ryfkha’s face was cold and dark, and he spoke again but not to her. “Do not think we are safe. They will come back, ere others will.”

“We rest,” Yaharos declared. “While they are gone. We will ride hard afterward. Three turns.”

They were at a wide turn in the rootpath, and Kova supposed it was as good of a place as any to camp. He took from his satchel a water clock, hung it from a root, tipped it. The warriors began to dismount, stretching and sighing, and she quickly jumped down and went to her father. His orsid knelt beside him. He was sitting leaning against it. She sat next to him.

“Kova.” He took her shoulder and hugged her, pulled her close. “How are you littleling?”

She tried to answer, but everything rushed back. Her face wrinkled up. What was there? Everything lost. She sobbed, soundlessly, shaking against him. Soon Ryfkha would be the only thing she knew. New places and people. It was not fair.

She could not deny the flowersong of maea fuming within her. She could not deny the little dreamy. Or Shadowfang really. She was riding into myth. Eventually the tears were gone. She rested close with her father for a time. Quiet breathing. When the third turn was running out, Ryfkha approached and cleared his throat. They sat up, and he knelt down close. They talked like this.

“Yaharos, I know you mean well. To escort your daughter from the moonforest. But there are deeper listeners than the lorgen. Some, surely, have heard her, and may be coming. I would leave the moonforest with all haste. That means Nasos, and the deep paths. Kovaleska and I can take them out. You could see if there are enough sember for the warriors as well.” Ryfkha hesitated. “There likely won’t be.”

Her father’s brow furrowed. “You would part now? And we go on to Shadow Falls?”

“She cannot stay.” Ryfkha opened his hands helplessly.

Yaharos looked at the suspended glass. Breaths passed. “You have the right of it.” He kissed Kova on the forehead, and she knew it would be Nasos. She felt duty and regret.

When the water ran down the riders saddled up again and were on their way. Kovaleska rode with her father, a last ride through as they canted down further into the gloam. They began to hear drippling, trickling echoes floating up the superstructure. The scouts came back once to report they heard skittering ahead, and to be on their guards, but Kova didn’t hear anything.

Winding through the underforest. Above them shadow mesas and continents of root twisting up into distant light. Everbloom scintillating. Little ponds near the rootpath glistened like obsidian. Within them placid bulbous amphibians glowed faintly. There were a few dracari here, but they were strangeling, chromatic and wingless, with sticklike legs.

They paths they took descended steeply. The riders picked their way along, lanterns aloft. They reached a place where, Kova imagined, the gloam began, or would soon. Instead of rootpath alone, the bones of the world were joined by movements and tangled whorls of soil and stone.

Ryfkha rode up beside them. “Not many could speak to the lorgen so soon. I imagine. Have you ever been to Nasos?”

Kovaleska shook her head.

“An astonishing place. Nightruby, it means in the old tongue of Ghom. Stranger things than you or I will be there. They will notice you.” His face softened. “Kovaleska, this may be something I say to you wherever we go until you can learn to be silent.”

“Kovaleska, you must learn this from Ryfkha,” her father said. “You are…”—he lowered his voice—“you are a dreamer, an esper. This is your life now. Do you understand?”

Kova nodded. She was composed right now. She would walk into the myths.

“It’s not much instruction. Are you ready?”

She crossed over to the backsaddle of the drelnai. Ryfkha turned around, sitting crosslegged, surprisingly spry, and spoke to her in hushed tones in the dreaming dark.

“There is nothing formal about what I know of the gift. I only dabble in truth. I will try to tell it. The teachers that are to come for you, in Kurasant, will know more. It is like hunger. Or breathing. Difficult to stop…but you must regulate it. Have you ever swam in clear water? Or is it all ael in the moonforest?”

“The ael pools atop the clear water.”

“Is that so? So you’ve held your breath to swim.”

“One time Rakatl dove right through the ael to a break of clear water.”

“It’s like eating or breathing.” Ryfkha gestured toward his lungs, and breathed in, held his breath, then released. “You will have to work on it. It’s a bit difficult to explain.”

“All right.” Kova tried to work on it, but it was difficult at best. The flowersong swam through her. Not she through it. She sensed he was frustrated. He didn’t think his explanation had gotten through to her, and maybe it hadn’t. But when she listened to the foaming melody, it changed, and changed again, weaving and modulating with alien purpose.

She stayed with Ryfkha for a turn or so, then she went back to her father and they supped together on pemmican and the last of the fresh moonfruit they’d found at the onset of the journey.