CHAPTER ONE

Innocence Lost

Myndril Forest lay folded into the foothills of the Emsré Mountains, beneath peaks that kept their snow through high summer, and the cold streams that came down off the crags fed a wood that had stood since before time was counted. Above the canopy rose the Silverwoods, giants with light gray bark that went silver under a full moon, and legend held that the Goddess Kathele had planted the first sapling with her own hands, so that every Silverwood was sacred to the woodland elves who lived beneath them. They named their settlement Kelómé.

At the heart of the settlement, in a glade the first settlers had cleared an age ago, grew vines older than most human kingdoms, their grapes ripened by warm sun and the cool night air off the peaks, and every autumn the glade filled with ladders and baskets and the smell of crushed fruit. When a cask was sealed, an elder knelt beside it with a heated iron and pressed the mark of a Silverwood tree into the oak. One tree to a cask. No cask without it.

Twelve days’ ride beyond the mountains, in the human outpost town of Dailion, they called the wine Frostwine and paid dearly for the little they saw. Mhelekävin, the elves called it. No wagon could cross the rough country between, and each spring the snowmelt turned the gentle mountain streams into rivers that could pull a loaded mule under, so the casks went out few and late or not at all, and in the far human cities the wine became a prize of the richest nobles, displayed more often than drunk.

Every season the merchants pressed for more. One year a factor from Dailion counted out five hundred gold pieces onto a barrelhead, more than a year’s wage for a laboring man, for a single cask. The elder of the vineyard thanked him, tipped the coins back into their sack, and asked whether he had eaten. The vineyard gave what it chose to give. The elves took no more. They had a love of nature, not a love of gold.

The sun was low on the horizon, and the fireflies were beginning to fill the forest with their yellow, otherworldly glow. Lauriel hurried to finish her chores. Elven children were assigned community chores by age, and because she was still very young, Lauriel had been given vineyard duty. She hated it. She did not understand why she could not be out learning to track and hunt like her older brother, instead of being stuck at the vine trellis, tending grapes.

Her father often took her and her brother on hikes through the forest, hunting for some new cave to explore or counting how many forest animals they could encounter.

Her mother would shake her head and laugh when Lauriel came back covered from head to toe in mud, or carrying some new “pet” she had befriended.

The vines hung heavy with clusters of grapes and needed to be tied back so they would not break or bend to the ground. It was late in the season, and the grapes would soon be harvested. The long summer nights were drawing in earlier, and the slightest chill hung in the air.

Higher up the mountain, the trees were showing their first sprinkling of canary yellow, the first of many colors, and it would not be long before the whole mountainside blazed with the autumn splendor. Ordinary grapes would have been harvested weeks ago, but these would stay on the vine until the first frost, sweetening into the aptly named “Frostwine.”

Lauriel worked until the last rays of sun dipped below the horizon and the distant mountains faded into deep purple. It was her favorite time of the day, a “magical time” as she called it, just after dusk, when the wind in the trees died down and everything went still. The silvery moon would soon rise and bathe the forest in its glow. She sat down beside the trellis and closed her eyes, enjoying the quiet solitude of her own pleasant thoughts.

She sat longer than she intended, and only her mother’s voice calling in the distance brought her back from her daydreams.

She peered up through the vines at the soft glow of starlight, and found the moon already high above her.

I must have been daydreaming for hours. I’m going to be in so much trouble.

She stood, but the sight of the bright moon glowing through the grape leaves held her.

It looks so close!

As she refocused, she realized she was not looking at the moon at all. Something was glowing in the vines. She had to investigate.

She crawled up on the trellis and inched closer to the light, and as she did, a faint buzzing reached her.

As stealthily as she could, she moved closer, the buzzing growing louder, until she came within a few feet of it, a glowing ball of light about the size of an apple.

If I can just get this one vine out of the way, I can grab it.

As carefully and quietly as she could, she eased the large leaves out of the way.

There it is!

The buzzing, brightly glowing object floated just an arm’s length above her.

She lunged for it, grabbing at it wildly.

Bzzzzzzing! The glow nimbly bolted away from her grasping hands and out from under the leaves, zooming right past her head, and Lauriel, normally sure-footed, tumbled off the trellis, taking several bunches of the valuable grapes with her.

Bzzzzzzing!

Bzzzzzzing!

The glow darted around her head in rapid, concentric circles, staying just out of her reach.

“A Will-o’ Wisp!” Lauriel gasped.

She had never seen one before, but she had read enough to know they were exceedingly rare.

Then it darted deeper into the woods, and Lauriel gave chase, laughing as she ran after the light.

It played its game for many minutes, drawing her deeper and deeper into the woods as she pursued it with singular focus. Then the Will-o’ Wisp came to a hover high above her head.

A prickle lifted the fine hairs on her arms. As she stared at it, she felt it doing the very same, and she understood that it was no mindless creature. It was sentient, and purposeful.

Bzzzzzzing! The Will-o’ Wisp was gone.

What was that all about? Did it just want to play? What was it doing here?

She did not notice how far she had come into the deep woods. Even in the elven realm, the evening woods were no place for a child.

Strange noises in the distance drew her back to the present. Her keen eyes readjusted from the bright ball to the darker woods beyond, and she saw no immediate danger, only unfamiliar territory. She held her breath and listened.

Faint and far off came the sound of many large animals crashing through the woods. The noises were coming from the direction of her village.

Her father had taught her to move through the woods unheard and unseen, and she started quietly for home, her footfalls sure and silent on the forest floor.

She made her way quickly back into familiar territory. None of the familiar noises of the evening forest reached her. No chirping crickets. No hooting owls. Even the fireflies had hidden their beacons. It was as if the entire forest held its breath.

She pressed on until a sound halted her mid-stride, one foot still raised above the leaves. Screams echoed through the woods, followed by the wail of the elven warning horn.

She ran then, as fast as she could, forgoing her silent movement. “Ammé!” she called out to her mother in elvish. “Ammé!” Smoke reached her, and beneath it some other unnatural smell she could not place.

As she neared, the glow of fire showed through the trees, and the screams grew. “Ammé!” she yelled, the firelight breaking into streaks through her tears. “Fadwé! Nolthien!” she yelled for her father and brother. She reached the vineyard and it was almost unrecognizable, the carefully built trellises and well-tended vines torn to shreds as if a pack of wild boars had lived in them for weeks. Not a single trellis remained standing.

The cold started in her stomach and spread as she caught a glimpse of one of the terrible creatures that had descended upon her village, and she could not move. The creature stopped to find another prey, and the light of the fires partially lit it. It stood upright, easily twice the size of the largest human.

A thick white mane began at the top of its head and ran down its broad back onto its powerful shoulders. Its body was dark gray, its eyes glowed a steady red, like embers pressed into the sockets of a skull, and two sets of arms rippled with powerful muscle.

The top set was massive, ending in giant fingerlike appendages that resembled razor-sharp claws. The lower set bore the same features, only smaller.

Among the four-armed creatures ran dog-like monstrosities, frenzied things. None of them were natural.

Then the four-armed beast found another mark. Ornthalas, flour still on his hands, ran from his burning home.

Lauriel recognized him at once, and saw that he did not see the creature lying in wait. She tried to yell to him and could not find her voice. “Reh Ornthalas, abacas da! (Mister Ornthalas, behind you!)” came out in a dry, barely audible whisper. “Abacas da,” she whispered. The creature ran him down with a speed nothing that size should have possessed, seized him with its smaller, lower arms, raised its powerful upper arms overhead, and came down on him with enough force to split open a tree. The razor-sharp claws rent his frail body nearly in two, and the second strike, following almost at once, disemboweled him. His blood splattered into the air, and his lifeless body crumpled to the ground as the creature released him and moved on to find another.

Lauriel’s legs failed her and she crashed down into the tangled heap of vines, unable to move. She could not bring herself to look at the many other horrors taking place.

She tried to cover herself in the vines just as a child covers herself with a blanket against the monsters in the night.

She lay silent and unmoving while the screams lessened, and it was only the distinct sound of something moving in her direction that made her peek through the twisted clump of vines covering her. She regretted it at once.

It was one of the dog-like aberrations that had come with the dark creatures. Her crash into the vines had drawn its attention away from its frenzied killing and toward the noise.

It carried something bloody in its mouth, and Lauriel did not want to know what it was. The “dog” had no fur. Its skin was a deathly pale gray, and its bulging yellow eyes stuck out like the eyes of a dragonfly beneath leathery, bat-like ears far too big for it.

It walked like a dog, but its hunched back and huge front shoulders dwarfed its smaller hindquarters, so that the whole animal looked deformed, and its front legs ended in large, bloody paws with claws to match. Both sets of fangs, also dripping blood, were far too big for its mouth, protruding past its snarled lips, and where a snout should have been there was only a flat nose above the teeth. Frost curled from its mouth as it exhaled.

The vile creature dropped the thing in its mouth and stared straight in her direction, its breath hanging white in the air between them. A deep, hollow rumble echoed from its unnaturally large chest, unlike any dog growl she had ever heard. The hollow of it went straight through her soul.

Lauriel held her breath and tried to blend into the vines and shadows. Her hand had come to rest on a cluster of grapes not yet destroyed, and she squeezed them slowly against her leg, crushing them on herself, praying to the Gods that the smell of the grapes would cover her own. The creature sniffed with its flat nose.

It sniffed again at the dark. Smelling nothing but grapes, it turned and ran back toward the village.

She could not have said how long it went on. The screams ended and the creatures drifted back into the shadows. A deathly silence fell upon the ruined village.

She could not make her body leave the vines. Long hours passed with no sound and no movement before she pulled herself from her hiding place and walked on unsteady legs back into her village.

The creatures had not even taken anything. They had only killed, and destroyed.

In a daze she walked from house to house, trying to find someone still alive, but the vile creatures had exterminated their prey with ruthless efficiency.

Scene after scene of carnage waited in each house she checked. Finally she looked up and found herself standing in front of her own home.

The creatures had carried no weapons. They had needed none, only the claws that had sliced and ripped apart their prey. Lauriel walked quietly back out and sat down on her front porch. The beautiful trees, the silvery trees she had come to love, now reflected a new color in the light of the moon. Blood red.