In the Shadow of Swords by Val Gunn Page A

unison, focusing on the faint path. The trees thickened around the stream, forcing them away from the water and down into a shallow depression blanketed with fallen leaves. Both stepped carefully. Kayal had keen ears, and they were especially on the alert when they knew something was closing in on them .
    The two trackers struggled up an incline to find the stream again. Here the banks were muddy and the channel deep. They bridged it with a fallen bough and began a steep climb. The trees thinned and the clouded sky seemed bright after the forest of shadows. The rain had stopped .
    Then Hiril froze—except for the hand creeping to his shoulder for his bow. Marin crouched and did the same. They crawled forward, keeping behind ancient brambles at the edge of the tree line. Before them was a meadow some hundred yards across. Hiril pointed at a pine tree standing alone in the center .
    The tree shimmered with a silver-white light, revealing several gaunt figures standing beneath its branches. At least two more stood guard with bows drawn at the opposite edge of the glade .
    “It is an úathir ritual: The black arcana of burning and binding a tree spirit,” Hiril whispered urgently. “We are too late to stop it.”
    Marin’s heart hammered, nearly drowning out his soft voice. She knew enough about dark things to comprehend what an úathir meant for her company—a forest demon of terrible power, huge and vicious, ready to kill everything in its path .
    “Look!” Hiril breathed in her ear. “They have already shaped it.”
    Marin’s scalp prickled as an eerie crackling swelled into a deep, sustained cry. Pale green fire ignited the pine in the clearing, magical flames licking high, throwing the kayal’s shapes into relief. The mournful wail pulsed against the clouds, echoing through the trees. A sweet-sick smell of burning wood and something else, something charnel, choked her breath and made her eyes tear .
    The sound faded, taking the light with it. The celadon inferno left the tallest branches and retreated, stopping on the trunk a few feet off the ground. In the darkness after the dazzle of light, Marin saw a gray shape approaching the tree. The kayal-witch intoned a hideous chant as it thrust two V-shaped pieces of metal—monstrous arrow points longer than a man’s leg—into the tree trunk where the green fire still burned. Amber sap poured out like blood from a wound, flowing down the arrow points into a stone basin nestled between the roots .
    Marin’s heart pounded. This demonic ritual must stop now. It was the only way to save her company. But even as the thought came to her, a hand fell on her shoulder. She looked at Hiril; he gestured for stillness. How dare he! But of course, he was right. Attacking now would accomplish nothing .
    The stench of scorched flesh hung in the air. The kayal-witch lifted white, mutilated fingers, the ones torn from Maeros’s hand, out of the stone basin as the sap-blood glowed and writhed. A fleshy shape emerged from the basin, points of bone ripping through it, sprouting into an immense crown of antlers. The kayal-witch leaped forward, slapping a mask of bark into place below the antlers, and two red embers sparked to life in the mask’s eye sockets .
    The other kayal took axes to the pine’s lower branches and set two of them in the rising column of molten amber, forming a pair of arms. The kayal wrenched the spears from the trunk and jammed them into the column to serve as legs. They attached the Prince’s severed half-feet to the ends so that the thing could stand. Then they threw animal hides, rags, and forest soil at the demon, covering it with sorcerous armor .
    Towering over the kayal, the úathir sprang to life with a growl of feral laughter. The kayal-witch embraced the demon and stepped back
    to shriek a command. The úathir turned and loped southward out of the clearing, branches snapping and smoldering in its wake .
    Marin knew the demon was racing toward the