Hand of the Hunter: Chosen of Nendawen, Book II by Mark Sehestedt Read Free Book Online Page B

next …
    “That little toad put something in the drink,” she said to herself.
    She looked down and saw that she was dressed only in a strange sort of cloak. More like a knee-length blanket with a hole in the middle for her head. Compared to frigid Narfell, the air seemed balmy, but it was still cool enough that her breath steamed, and the thought of the old goblin taking her clothes gave her a sick feeling in her stomach.
    She sat in a bed of old leaves, made sodden from last night’s rain, surrounded by the roots of a massive oak. At least she thought it was an oak. The leaves were the right shape, but just one of them was larger than both her outstretched hands.And though the bark was the right texture—even encrusted in lichen as an old oak ought to be—the color was just a wisp lighter than black.
    Hweilan had grown up in a land nestled between mountains and steppe, where most of the moisture fell as snow and clung as ice for six months out of the year. What few woods there were clung to the foothills and mountain valleys—mostly pine and spruce, trees that could survive the harsh cold. The forest she’d seen in the realms of Kunin Gatar had been dense. But nothing like what surrounded her.
    Nothing but trees and brush in every direction. Trunks and branches turned and twisted, almost as if they’d been dancing and had frozen in place at the sight of the strange girl blinking at them. Never had she seen such monsters as these trees. Some of the leaves were big as shields. The sky lay hid beneath the ceiling of the leaves, and Hweilan could only guess at the trees’ height. A hundred feet? More? No way to know. They might climb all the way to tickle the moon for all she could tell.
    But the faces …
    As a child enjoying Narfell’s brief summers, she had often lain in the tall grass of the steppe and seen shapes in the clouds or the profile of a face on some crag. But the knots and holes in the trees around her …
    The trunks had knots that looked much too much like eyes, and they seemed to watch her. A broken branch looked very much like a nose. And the cracked and split bark in the trunks stretched like mouths. Some seemed almost sad, or frozen in a scream. But far too many held a malicious glee.
    Hweilan stood. She had no idea where she was, had no idea what time of day it was—the wood seemed caught in a perpetual twilight; enough light to see, but plenty of shadows in which anything could be hiding. She knew she wanted to be anywhere but there.
    Leaves rustled far overhead as the upper boughs caught a slight breeze, but down below the air was still. She could hear the chirps of birds, but they stayed hidden in the upperbranches. There was no sound of the waterfall. She was obviously far away from Gleed’s tower but had no memory of how she’d come here. What had that little beast put in her drink?
    Hweilan started walking. She had no idea where she was or where she was going, so she simply went down the slope. Other than her bath and bed, Hweilan had never gone shoeless in her life. To do so in Narfell would be folly. But here, the floor of wet leaves was soft and easy on her feet. Still, it was cool, and even after walking briskly for what seemed a mile or more, she couldn’t stop shivering.
    Once, she thought she heard singing in the distance—childlike voices, though raucous. But when she stopped and held her breath to listen, there was only the sound of the breeze in the highest boughs. Down here, the air was deathly still. Black moths and dark blue butterflies flitted around her now and then, and once a dragonfly shot past her so fast that her first thought was that someone had loosed an arrow at her.
    Which brought Gleed’s words from the night before fresh to her mind.
    There are far crueler things in these woods than me
.
    Almost as if summoned by the thought, she heard something approaching from her right, crashing through the brush.
    Hweilan stopped and held her breath. A few of the