See Prologue (A) for Disclaimers

It took a few minutes from the Elneseyrna's little house to reach the true "heart of the Wood," but it was unmistakable once they found it.  It was also protected by yet a third shield, Sharak realized as they passed an invisible checkpoint and a village of sorts suddenly appeared before their startled eyes.

Nestled between towering trees and a rocky-edged hill were at least fifty dwellings, everything from stone houses like Ricenne's cottage to the wood, mud, and thrush huts with which Dar, Tao, and Miren were more familiar.  The strange village was bordered by a sweetly gurgling brook that came down over the hill in numerous cataracts and had been spanned by small bridges, along which dangled ribbons and lanterns.

Some of the dwellings looked ancient, while some had the sense of only a few decades of use, and some looked as if they had been put up only in the last season.  Torches were set up on clearly-marked paths, ready to be lit when the sun set in a few hours; the paths themselves were simple dirt tracks that had been bordered with stones, but they were neat and carefully maintained.  They wound between the houses and curved up to the forest, where they once again became half-hidden forest paths.

People wandered about outside, some clearly on errands, some apparently simply gathered to watch their approach.  Very few of them looked alike, and a number of them didn't look entirely human.  Dar saw faces with eyes that were one solid color, faces that had the look of scales, or were lined with fur.  There was hair made of feathers, of long porcupine-like spines, or no hair at all.  At least half of the people, if not more, looked perfectly human, but many of them seemed to have been drawn from legend.

"This place is a sanctuary," Sharak had told them on the way to the village, surprising Pasha, who had expected to need to explain.  "Not just humans, but those who have been cursed out of malice by Sorcerers, creatures put together by magick for the sole purpose of seeing if it could be done or to serve as slaves.  In this place alone are they safe from those who would pursue them, destroy them, enslave them.  Some have traveled for years to reach this safe place.  None take it lightly."

Dar smiled and tried to look as harmless as possible.  It was not an easy task, all things considered, but the effort was appreciated by those who sensed its good intention.  The person who came forward to greet the newcomers was a man.  Tall and muscular, with raven's-wing hair and clear blue eyes, and a strong, sculpted face that smiled cautiously at them.

"I am Ordan," the man told them.  "You have been greeted by the Elneseyrna, and so you are now greeted by us.  Be welcome in the Wood."

Dar nodded and grasped the hand extended towards him in greeting.  The introductions were returned, extending to Ruh, Kodo and Podo, whom the denizens of the village seemed to take completely in stride.

From the crowd emerged another welcomer, a woman this time.  She was tall, softly curved, and heartbreakingly beautiful.  Pale gold hair cascaded almost to her waist in soft waves, caught back from her fine-boned face with ribbon-meshed braids.  The soft radiance of the locks matched her fair skin and large, sky-blue eyes.  She smiled at the group as she advanced.

"My name is Rhianna.  You must all be hungry," she said merrily.  She spoke as if she had known them for ages, her tone and smile almost maternal, putting them at ease.  "And tired," she added with a glance at Miren.  "Come.  You are most welcome to join us for our supper."

"We appreciate your hospitality," Tao said automatically.  "But we wouldn't want to impose."

"Your belly disagrees," Pasha said from beside him.  Tao, who had not heard her come so close, nearly jumped in surprise.  She grinned at him.  "I can hear it rumblin'.  An' th' rest o' ye aren't much better.  Hell, you're makin'  me hungry."  She looked at Tao, her eyes traveling the length of his body in appreciation and something more primal; she confirmed it by repeating the same look at Dar and then, daringly, at Sharak.  "An' mayhap not for food," she murmured, and wet her lips unconsciously.

Tao and Dar looked somewhat stunned.  Sharak raised an eyebrow, having forgotten the reaction of women to his own form.  Miren cleared her throat and aimed a light glare at the other girl.  The blonde woman looked amused, Ordan exasperated.  From the outskirts of the crowd, a man and woman scowled at Pasha.  "Daughter, enough," the man rumbled softly.

The woman's reproof was a bit more light-hearted.  "Ye'll frighten th' poor boys," she told her child.  She glanced at Tao and added, "An' I believe at least one o' them is . . . otherwise engaged."

Pasha grinned, mischief very clearly in her eyes, but took a few steps away from Tao.  She kept her eyes on Dar and Sharak for a moment, winked, and then slinked towards her parents with a purposeful sway to her hips.  The men exchanged stunned looks.  Dar hadn't felt that openly . . . appraised . . . since his encounter with the Amazon's "Seductress."  Tao was blushing.  Sharak surprised himself by doing the same -- and following the girl with his eyes without realizing it.

Rhianna chuckled.  "In answer to your concern," she said, as if nothing had happened, "it is no imposition.  You are welcome to the Wood's Heart, and you are welcome to our home."

As if that settled everything, the large number of people began to drift away, leaving only a palpable sense of polite curiosity behind.  Dar and the others turned to Ordan and Rhianna.  "We are grateful for your invitation," Dar said politely.

Rhianna smiled.  "Good," she said, and turned towards the center of the village.

The house that Ordan and Rhianna shared was made of stone and wood, with a small garden and a child's swing hanging from a tree a short distance away.  As they neared, two children, a girl about thirteen years old and a boy about five, came towards them from the forest's edge.  The girl carried a fishing line that held five good-sized fish, while the boy carried a fishing pole, net and what looked like a ragged blanket.  Cries of "Papa!" came from the boy, who, upon spotting them, went from a walk to a run.

Ordan turned towards the children with a broad grin.  The boy was clearly his son, sharing his dark hair and clear eyes, while the girl seemed to favor neither one parent nor the other.  Her hair was almost copper-colored, her features sharp and angular.  She shook her head fondly and quickened her pace slightly, but seemed in no rush to join the group.  The boy, however, nearly barreled into Ordan.  The tall man caught the pole and net in one hand with a practiced move, holding them a safe distance away as he picked up the boy.

"Papa!  You shoulda seen it!" the boy exclaimed, completely oblivious to the strangers.  "There was this great  big fish, and ole Nefern fought us for it, and it got away, and Nefern was  sooo angry!  He said he'd have us for dinner instead and chased us and--"

Ordan laughed and swung the boy on his hip.  "I see you escaped his wrath, Jorek," he said, smiling.

Jorek shrugged, but he was still almost bouncing with excitement.  "Well, yeah -- but he chased us and chased us and chased us!  But we were faster, and Niirin turned herself into a fox and then he chased her, but she was too fast and smart for that big ole bear."

The boy didn't notice the startled looks on the faces of the newcomers.  The girl did; the chuckle that emerged from her lips was uncannily adult.  Ruh let out a low rumble that could be either a purr or a growl.  Dar realized with a start that the irises of the girl's eyes were solid black, no pupil showing at all.   Not Ordan's child, Ruh's thought came to him.

The girl looked at him, those strange eyes meeting his, and for a moment Dar felt as if he were facing Curupira.  A new voice spoke in his mind suddenly, brushing across his thoughts like the quick tap of a fox's tail.   Neither Ordan's child nor any other's am I, it said, distinctly female.

Dar blinked in shock; no one in "human" form had ever been able to touch his mind.  Not even Curupira.

The girl's gaze left him and went to Jorek.  Her fondness for him was clear in her expression and voice as she said, "Old and fat Nefern is, but fast still.  Likes a good chase and likes to tease, but to harm is not his nature."  She tapped the boy's arm with the knuckles of her free hand.  "Brat knows that, but  his nature it is to make much of what is nothing."

Ordan laughed.  "It would not make so good a story without the danger, eh?"

Jorek gave a dramatic sigh that brought laughter from all the adults.  Rhianna reached out a hand to ruffle the boy's hair, then turned to Niirin.  "Thank you for watching him.  Will you join us in our meal?"

"Delighted would I be," Niirin answered cordially.  "A gift of three of these fish was I to make, at any case.  Ordan's son a good fisherman is, caught by himself with no help from me."  She looked back at the newcomers, her gaze resting on Sharak for a moment.  She smiled, revealing teeth that looked just a little too sharp to be human.  "And to be knowing what new manner of magick the Elneseyrna has allowed into the forest would I like."

"Nothing that will either harm you or tolerate harm from you,  elshan," Sharak answered evenly.

Niirin blinked and her smile abruptly widened, somehow seeming friendly now.  "My shape only one old as I -- or older -- would know.  A most interesting meal will this be."

"You're . . . not Ordan and Rhianna's child," Tao said cautiously.

Niirin's gaze turned to him, impenetrable and unblinking.  "No child at all to one such as you," she answered.

"Niirin is the oldest of anyone in Wood's Heart or around it," Ordan put it, watching the "girl" with eyes that were suddenly wary.

But the  elshan chuckled.  "No fighting will I cause, Ordan," she assured him.  "This meal most peaceful will be."  She looked at Sharak and then at Ruh, and asked sibilantly, "Yesss?"

Sharak smiled and motioned gracefully towards the entry of the house.  "As you say," he said.  It didn't sound entirely like an agreement.

~*~*~*~

Ordan provided Sharak with clothing, most of which had to be taken in only slightly.  Miren took that task while Rhianna enlisted Tao's aid in preparing dinner.  As the hours progressed, it was revealed to the newcomers that, although they lived in the same house, there was no physical aspect to the relationship between Ordan and Rhianna.

Jorek was Ordan's son alone; his mother died birthing him and Ordan had fled with the babe soon afterwards.  They had spent three years evading the Sorcerer whose vengeance on the woman who had chosen a farmer over him was not sated by her death.  On the last leg of their journey they had met Rhianna, whose shape at the time had been a horse -- another Sorcerer's idea of revenge for much the same trespass as Ordan's wife had committed.  It had been pure chance that threw them together, and Ordan had only become aware of her altered state when they entered the forest.

Dar had looked at Sharak at hearing that part.  Dryly, he commented, "That seems to happen a lot around here."

Sharak had had the good grace (and perhaps, sense) to blush.

Dinner was a meal made up primarily of the fish Jorek had caught and some vegetables from the garden.  Conversation buzzed, broken up occasionally by laughter as Jorek was distracted by Kodo and Podo, whose presence he had reacted to with delight.  He spent the majority of the meal busily feeding them anything their little hearts desired.  Dar surprised himself with how easily he slipped into a social setting.  He compared forest-lore with Ordan while Rhianna and Miren discussed plans about where the girl and her child could live after the baby was born.  Tao listened to both conversations, his gaze switching from one to the other as he shifted his attention.

Sharak was the only silent one, his attention divided between Niirin, who had been watching him with a mix of curiosity and wariness, and thoughts of Ricenne.  Niirin was of a race of creatures known as the  elshan.  They were wood-sprites, spirits whose physical form changed at their will between human and fox.  Like that mortal animal, they were clever but mischievous, and not a little bit known as thieves.  Impetuous, rash at times, but loyal to those they called friend or family.  Sharak had not seen an  elshan for a very long time, so her presence in the Wood had taken him by surprise.  Her wariness had not, for  elshan were sensitive to the presence of magick -- they always knew a Sorcerer when they were near one, and Sorcerers were not known for their kindnesses.

Sharak was even less accustomed to the noise of a group than Dar: eventually it grew to be too much.  He excused himself politely and went outside.  Night was descending, turning everything that odd shade of purple-blue that only dusk could accomplish.  Someone had lit the torches and the lanterns on the bridges, creating circles of flickering light.  He looked at the bridges and decided to find quiet there.

The air was cool, not yet the crispness that he remembered from this forest.  It was odd -- but right, in a dark way -- that his memories could have such crystalline clarity after so many millennia.  But it was a trait of his people that had been augmented by Sorcery, and later by the Ancient One's curse.  He remembered nearly every experience, every face, every laugh, every pain.  He remembered more than he ever wished to have occupy his brain.

The water rushed beneath him, under the wood of the bridge, laughing as it tumbled over moss covered stones on its way down the incline.  Sharak leaned against the rail and looked out into the orderliness of village-life that was apparent even in this magickal environs.  He could feel Ricenne's enchantment everywhere, warm and gentle as she herself was, cradling the forest like a safety net.  Her energy signature was clear in every strand of magick, as if it was tied to her very soul.  He closed his mind to that Sense resolutely.  He took a deep breath that was full of scents that had been dulled by his eagle-form, and searched for that center of stillness that had kept him sane for all these long years.  It was not nearly as easy as he would have liked.

"Far from your home are you," Niirin's voice said from the entrance of the bridge.

You have no idea, Ruh commented dryly.  Sharak and Niirin both looked with surprise at where the tiger sprawled quite comfortably over some rocks a short distance away.  Sharak blinked for a moment, until he remembered that it was part of a shapeshifter's natural gift to hear and even communicate with non-magickal beasts.

"Not polite is it to listen to the conversations of others," Niirin chided him, lips drawing back over her teeth in a snarl.  "Go away, tiger."

Bite me, Ruh answered.

Sharak snorted.  "I'd be careful, were I you, my friend," he advised, chuckling.  "She just might."  Ruh looked at him and blinked slowly; the singularly feline expression informed them that he was unimpressed by the threat.  Niirin growled deep in her throat.  Sharak chuckled but said soothingly, "We are no threat to you or yours,  elshan.  Even if you were not under the protection of a friend."

"Mean you the Elneseyrna."  Sharak nodded.  Niirin cocked her head slightly.  "A hundred years have I lived in the Wood.  Her name not even I know, nor why dreaming she is.  How know it you?"

Sharak looked away, grief overwhelming him as he remembered the brush of Ricenne's mind in the cottage.  Dreaming, the  elshan called it; that was close enough to describe the chaos he had sensed.  Past, present and future no longer existed for Ricenne: visions, senses, dreams and reality were hopelessly mixed.  "I knew her before the dreaming.  It must have come on her more than a hundred years past . . . but less than a thousand, surely. . ."

Niirin looked at him, her shoulders twitching slightly.  "And how know you of my kind?" she asked.  "Many years has it been since existed the  elshan outside this Wood."

Sharak frowned.  "I had noticed that.  Why?"

Niirin looked away, out over the rushing water.  Darkness had fallen completely now, leaving only the distant glimmer of stars and the light of the lanterns to illuminate the area around them.  They might have been suspended in time.  "Why else?" she asked bitterly.  "A Sorcerer's wish.  One of us displeased him, so all of our fox-skins he did demand."  Her coppery eyebrows drew down sharply.  "One of the last am I.  Hunted have we been.  Chased the world over.  If caught, magick is used and taken are our changed skins."

Sharak looked away from her pain and sighed.  "I am sorry."  He could feel Ruh's own sympathy, a silent apology to the fox-spirit.

Niirin looked at him for a long time, then nodded.  "So you are.  Why is this?"  She cocked her head when he looked back at her.  "Not like other Sorcerers are you.  Compassion you show."

Sharak chuckled.  "I have not been a sorcerer for a very long time.  Nor even a shapeshifter, and that I was born."

"Another something you decided against mentioning?" Dar's voice asked from the darkness.

Sharak froze, mentally cursing his luck.  This was not something he had planned on revealing so soon.  He forced himself to turn and face the BeastMaster as he came into the light of the torches.  Dar's face was set in a still mask, the way it always was when he was hurt or angry.  He seemed so terribly, impossibly young, and yet he was one of Sharak's best -- only -- friends.  Sharak sighed.  "There never seemed to be a right time," he said, attempting humor.

"Try now."

Dar stepped onto the bridge, standing beside Niirin, who looked from one to the other with humor.  "Going will I be," she said, her voice quivering with laughter.  Oh yes, she was definitely the embodiment of mischief now.  "Meal of a tiger is to be preferred than being between the two of you."

She left the bridge and vanished into the night; Sharak didn't think it was simply the effect of the torchlight.  Ruh's reaction was a mix of amusement and resignation; he would talk to Sharak about these secrets later, but right now it was the BeastMaster's turn.   I'm going to go . . . scouting, he said.  

The joke in that statement was not lost on either BeastMaster or shapeshifter, but neither one really acknowledged it.  Ruh gave a little  harrumph at their lack of reaction to his wit.  Then he got up, stretched casually as if to imply that this change of position had nothing whatsoever to do with them but had been planned all along, and glided off into the forest.

The shapeshifter sighed again and turned to face the wrath of the BeastMaster.  It didn't make him feel particularly better when Dar remained silent, waiting for him to speak first.  "What was I supposed to say?  And why should there have been any need?"

"I'm your friend."

"Yes, you are.  And that is precisely the point.  I--"  Sharak shook his head and forced himself to admit the truth.  "I was afraid of what you might think, feel, if you knew.  The only thing you know of Sorcerers is the one who served the Terrons.  The one you hate."

Dar shook his head.  "You think me so shallow as that?"  He stepped up onto the bridge, the hurt clear in his eyes.  "You were my friend, my teacher . . . Nothing would have changed that."

Sharak's eyes met his, held Dar's gaze as he asked quietly, "Not even knowing that once I could do this?"  He held up a hand and power flared across his fingertips, leaping in electric arcs to form a ball of energy.  It hovered for a moment at his fingers, then it flew towards Dar.

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