The Forest Between

By M. Eugene Weiss

The Forest Between was a land of unchanging cycles. Predators stalked their prey; flowers bloomed and wilted; seasons turned. In the spring, the ten tribes would make war upon each other, and in the fall, they would make peace again. This was life for over a thousand years for the San Tokah, the most ancient tribe of this forest at the edge of the world. Protected by a remote geography, the ten tribes' way of life is suddenly threatened by a grotesque evil. Syllay is a hunter-warrior of the San Tokah, one of the few women chosen for that honor. She must learn to trust the three men that chance has brought to her land: Collum, a great warrior and soldier from a decrepit land long in decline who is looking for a new place in the world; Orin, a thief from the desert-canyon city of Gremselash, and a survivor of the tangled slums that hang beneath that suspended city; and Halldor, a young Channeler of magic of extraordinary power whose search for his stolen memories have brought him to the Forest Between. Together they must unravel the mystery of this strange invasion and face the evil purpose of the Green Ones.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M. Eugene Weiss
• Release date: Sep 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301479627

M. Eugene Weiss

M. Eugene Weiss is a teacher of English in a public school in the Bronx. He has an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. He lives in the hills of Connecticut with his brilliant and talented wife Betsy, and his three superlative children, Alden, Eowyn, and Athena.The Forest Between is his first novel and he is rapidly nearing completion of volume two of this series that may yet achieve that most hallowed status in fantasy fiction: “The Trilogy.”Please visit theforestbetween.com to read an excerpt from book two titled, The Rooftops of Lakortia.

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The Forest Between

By M. Eugene Weiss

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 M. Eugene Weiss

This book available in print at most online retailers.

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Dedicated to my wife, of course. I mean, honestly …

Contents

Prologue: The Day Before

Syllay: The Boulder in the Stream

Collum: The Fabric of Life

Orin: Orphan of the Cobweb

Halldor: The Color of Memories Lost

The Forest Between

Appendix 1: The Song of the San Tokah

Appendix 2: Map of the Eastlands

Prologue

The Day Before

On a rise of a low hill overlooking a tight bend in a small tributary of The Great River stood a tall thin man with a long black wool cloak. The figure’s face was mostly hidden by a black wide-brimmed, flat-topped hat that the water beaded and rolled off of despite the rain’s drenching tenacity. The man wore no armor and held no weapons. He needed neither, though below him armies prepared to meet with a diligence and speed that foretold much falling of blood, just as the coursing wind foretold the rain that fell upon both the man and tomorrow’s battlefield below.

Three others on horseback rode up the hill slowly and carefully for the mud was thick and treacherous, and the day, too old and close to evening for hostility, stole the urgency from the movements of at least those three. They understood another night would pass before the shrill clang of swords and shields and the moans of the dying would echo through the valley.

Ho, Halldor, what do you see? asked the largest of the three riders. He was a tall man, broad shouldered, with light leather armor under a sodden grey hooded cloak and a single sword strapped to his back.

Halldor turned to the riders, the wind suddenly cutting against his cheek with lacerating cold. It was a fell wind, he thought, the type an augurer might wait his life to interpret, or a prophet could shout through to the multitudes, for it carried portents and signs of a singular nature.

Their army is strong, orderly and eager, he said. They wait around the bend of that hill there. He pointed south of the bend in the river towards the last of the hills before the forest leveled out south and east towards the sea which they could not see in the dark and rain.

How many Grey Beasts do they have? asked a smaller man, who wore a similar cloak, though his hood was down, and the rain dripped off his dark brown face to the hilts of two long daggers that he wore at his waist. He wore no armor beneath the robe, for by nature his body was taut with anticipation.

Difficult to say. Ten, maybe twenty. There is much deception being worked, responded Halldor. He turned back towards the direction of the hill and closed his eyes. Odd, he continued, they hide their numbers, but not their intentions. They will come tonight to demoralize us. Collum, Halldor said, turning to the large man again who had spoken first, we must prepare for them.

Tembler guessed they might try something. He has made preparations but he needs the four of us, Collum said. Halldor nodded.

Are there any Green Ones? the third rider asked, a woman. Her voice was flat and hard, she wore a cloak as well, and her auburn hair looked black where it fell out of the protection of the hood. Her hands held the bridle with care. She wore gloves of which the leather fingers were too long for the hands within. The extra leather was folded inwards over the tips of her nails and fingers and tied around each second knuckle with thin leather straps.

Yes. Five. I will have my hands full, Halldor said quietly. Under the hood, Halldor could see her lips curl into a feral sneer for just a moment. Syllay, is there any word from your people? he asked her. We are still outnumbered at least four to one.

No. Nor sign neither. If they come, it may be too late. Her horse whinnied and jerked its head; she pulled tight on the bridle, dominating the animal. I fight with you, she said with easy conviction.

And the rain? asked Collum.

It will persist, said Halldor, smiling at the smaller dark skinned man. You still like the rain, Orin?

I still like the rain, Orin responded. None of you have been to the desert, I guess? Halldor smiled. Collum shook his head. Syllay said nothing. If you ever do, remember these days. Win or lose tomorrow, you will wish yourselves back here. He laughed and, turning his horse, he headed down the hill towards the thousand or so starving, desperate men building defenses for the morrow.

"Alereth tegath thal’ell Atheras," said Syllay to Halldor. Halldor nodded. Collum looked at her quizzically, then at Halldor.

‘May the Mother bless this task,’ he quoted.

Does the Mother have a thousand cavalry? For that would help, too, Collum asked lightly. Syllay laughed a little, turned her horse and rode away. Halldor chuckled.

That’s the first time I’ve heard her laugh since I’ve known her, Collum said, with sad tenderness in his voice.

It has only been five days, said Halldor.

Has it? Collum asked. Halldor said nothing. Collum turned his horse about and rode away. Halldor watched him go, then turned towards the enemy, and closed his eyes again.

Syllay: The Boulder in the Stream

Six days before.

Something was different, and Syllay had to keep focus lest she prove as cursed as the old men of her village always thought, as cursed as she felt after she first awoke. Those early moments, when she could still feel, still let herself feel, inward and outward. It did not last long.

As they came to her—one after another, clad in amour or naked, clanging swords and helmets, sweating, hitting, scratching and scraping her legs and arms—Syllay had stopped the pain. With it went her feelings, her eyes always shut, as she had been taught when, as a girl, she went through the trials of Fel’ashone. To close your eyes to pain is to throw a boulder in the stream, Mestreth had told her so many years ago. The other women taught her as well, and had helped her understand how pain was not real, but an illusion only the weak believe. Besides controlling the pain, she closed her eyes to deny her tormentors her ather'ah, her self; she would not let them see her deepest pain lest they enjoy themselves through it.

The elders had always claimed that Syllay’s eyes were a source of evil when, as an infant, her blue eyes turned hazel and then a shimmering emerald-green instead of brown. Her mother had told her not to believe them, and she obeyed. The eyes were a gift from her father, her mother had said, to be envied and revered. So, through the torments Syllay shut those eyes and counted the blotchy stars in the red and black nothing that was the inside of her eyelids. When they were on her, when they slapped and punched her, those eyelids were her world, and there, calmly counting, they could not touch her. She could block out the routine of pain and violation until the routine was broken. She was determined that they would never see her silver-streaked emerald-green eyes.

There was one who demanded she open her eyes, whispering in an accent she did not know that reminded her of a rock crushing corn slowly, coaxing her as he pressed her down. Open them, and I will not hurt you, he growled, his strange sticky-sweet breath making her sick. She did not comply, so he hit her in the stomach with a heavy weight in his hand, and jabbed her in the side with what she thought was a sheathed dagger. She did not cry out or open her eyes as she gasped for breath, though that time, her tears had trickled around the boulder in the stream and threatened to unseat it. It held. That was two days ago, she thought, maybe three.

They would leave her for a time, and she would examine the room, check for the light of the outside world; there wasn’t much coming from the smoldering torches on the walls. She could barely tell what time in the day it was from the dulled hue that managed to find its way through the mud and filth bloating out from the outside rot high above her head. Dead leaves and centipedes, spiders, and one putrid rodent corpse had fallen onto her from the clogged window since she had awakened there. She tried to count days. She examined the all-too-perfectly designed manacles on her hands. Straight, flat bars kept her hands open, and her fingers tightly packed together, rendering useless the claws of the trials of Fel’ashone, the trials where she had first pushed the boulder into the stream.

Her body lay on a bed. The footboard was missing, and there was no mattress on the boards that were poorly nailed together, tilted like a ramp, and that left splinters up and down the length of her body. Not that she could feel much anymore. She had found herself there stripped down, bruised, but not cut, her jewelry gone with her clothes. She had pulled and struggled before the first man entered the room, but only long enough to realize the futility. Then she went limp, trying to numb herself to what followed.

When she was alone she started thinking: somewhere back and to the right of herself was a calm, steady voice, thinking in a frozen tone. It said things like: Rotting stone. Rusted iron in each rock. One quarter day to chip away, two inches closer, one quarter day. Rusted iron will loosen the steel chains from the walls on the manacles. The chain attaches to the wall; two more inches. The stone is weak, and my claws could be free, yes, now that is clear…, The voice, that was her in only the most remote way, calculated, considered, planned, and continued on and on.

In the dark when the torches ran out, and there was nothing but the pain and her own breathing, she let panic work a little. A different voice of quick, slicing words, asking herself desperate questions: These manacles are ready made, how could they know us? We have no contact with them; we barely trade with the other tribes. How could the battle have gone so badly, so quickly? Where are my sisters, where is Shenneth, and Dennay, and the others? I saw one fall. No, two, but not Mestreth, as she led our charge against the tower. I hope Mestreth died well, and pray to Fa'aley that she is not here now. Please help me, Mestreth, can you find me from the next life? Can you hear your little sister Syllay? I need you now. They knew we were coming; they planned this, for us, for the Tokah'afel. How could they know …? She let these thoughts run over her in the dark, and she pictured herself behind the boulder in the stream, layers of filth being pulled off of her onto the boulder from the force of the water crashing against it. In the last few days the water had gotten stronger.

That day, however, something was different. She concentrated outwards as her mind cleared from the little sleep she had gotten. It was her hand. Her right hand was pushed against the wall, right under where the chain attached. She could move her hand back and forth, and scrape the stone with the tips of her claws. Why? Her left leg chain was broken from rust. She slid up a little and the restraints on her fingers lessened. Above and to the right of herself the voice examined the situation: the manacles are based on the pull of the leg chains, now the hand can move, fingers can bend and work against the stone in the wall, the rotting stone, filled with rusted iron, caked in decaying mortar. One quarter day. She began to work her fingers back and forth. The voice was in charge. Her nails scraped against the stone. Her mind, finally free, lifted somewhat into a place where she could think and remember back to before the cell, and the spots inside of her eyes, and the grunting men.

~~~~

i.

Most of the other tribes had legends of their own Tokah'afel, but only the San Tokah tribe still allowed women to fight, and those numbers had dwindled in recent generations. The other nine tribes would mock them, and scoff at them until, that is, the day of combat, when the continual feuding between the tribes boiled over into open conflict. Those who were injured by the women of the San Tokah and managed to live through it rarely mocked them again.

At the age of five, all girls were examined by the elder women of the tribe, and a few were honored to make the trip into the mountains where the secret rites were performed. Because of her eyes Syllay was almost sent at the age of four, but that her mother resisted. Some of the elders, particularly the chieftain, counseled that she should suffer the mysterious fate of the other cursed infants: the deformed, the small headed ones, and the Dwarvens. But elder women counseled against this, saying that Syllay's eyes made her an instant candidate for the Tokah’afel. Unique as her eyes were, they spoke of a unique path, and no one who knew her could help but remark at her petulance and willfulness. Her father was a warrior of some renown until he was killed in a raid on an outsider's encampment when she had just entered her second year. Just a few months after her father's death, Syllay's sister Hennah was born.

I will miss Hennah the most, said Syllay, looking up at Mestreth as they walked together in the forest.

Yes. I had two older brothers when I went away. For a sister … it will be worse for you.

Syllay looked up at Mestreth, who was a tall woman, especially to a girl of five. Syllay knew Mestreth was important; the scars on her arms, back and face would have made her stand out in any company, but the leather guards Syllay felt as she held the woman's hand demanded respect for reasons Syllay did not yet fully understand. One scar ran down her right eye, from forehead to cheek, and that eye was dim and milky. Syllay thought there was something beautiful about that eye that could not see. Reddish-black tattoos on Mestreth's wrists went up her forearm in the pattern of waves. Syllay's eyes followed the patterns over and over again, and then looked to the high-necked leather vest Mestreth wore. Her chin stuck out just a bit, and the wrinkles of her neck that were beginning to form reminded the little girl of the veins of an oak leaf. The skin of her face was a dark olive color, and yet Syllay noticed it did not match a small patch of skin that was revealed by a tear in the leather vest near the lower neck.

Why do you wear that vest so much?

Why do you think I do? asked Mestreth, revealing no surprise, and smiling. Syllay pointed at the tear.

Well, I have a large scar I am not proud of that I keep covered.

You have other scars.

From battle, yes, and I am very proud of them. This one scar, she indicated a thick line by drawing two fingers from her left shoulder to her right hip. This one I got from my eldest brother when I first returned to the village. You see, I wanted very badly to prove to him how strong I was, and while he resisted fighting me, I pushed him too far. Worse still, I underestimated him.

It was mean of him to hurt you, stated Syllay simply.

"I left some scars of my own, little sister, but I never should have tested him that way. I was foolish enough to challenge his manhood in front of others. It is very important for men to feel whole. Besides, it taught me an important lesson, now your second, that you must learn: You will be a very great warrior if you do not give up on Fa'aley during the trials, and you will best many men, but you will always lose to a man of equal skill, for they are always stronger."

They will not be stronger than I.

Will they not?

No, Jerrath is older and bigger than I am, and I beat him every time he teases me.

Is that so?

Yes.

Well, someday, you may find a stronger man than you. And for that day, remember the lesson. Never underestimate the man you face.

They walked on into the forest quietly. Syllay began to hum a song to herself. Mestreth stopped, and waited, so Syllay did the same. Out of the trees lumbered a giant beast in the shape of a man, except at first Syllay thought it had two heads one on top of the other. As she looked closer she noticed there was actually a little man riding the shoulders of the beast-man. The beast stood ten feet in the air at least, and its arms were almost as long and covered in thick hair. Its face was tusked, and, to the fearless little girl looking up, looked unintelligent. The little man, riding in an odd looking saddle on the giant’s shoulders, looked no larger than Syllay herself. He had a bushy black beard, and carried a small bow.

He glared down at Mestreth, who merely smiled up at him.

I have brought a new girl, she is ready for the trials, she said. He snorted.

She is not afraid, he said as he looked into Syllay's bright green eyes. Are you?

Syllay looked back up into his eyes.

ii.

They reached the caves, and the secret of the cursed children was revealed to the little girl. Strange looking people lived in the caves in the mountain side: smiling small headed ones, one of whom was washing clothes as they walked by a creek, as well as ones with overly large foreheads and small eyes who sang poorly as they played with each other. There were close to twenty of the giants living in some larger caves nearby; Syllay would learn they were called Hillmen, and that they were native to the mountains. They had been captured young and raised as beasts of burden. In charge of almost everything that involved the caves were the Dwarvens, like the one riding the Hillman who led them to the cave. Some looked very old, some young; a few were riding Hillmen out into the forest as Syllay and Mestreth walked up. A group of Dwarvens sat around one of the fires outside a large cave, sharing a smoking pipe together and laughing.

As Syllay walked up to the large cave, they became silent, looking much too serious to the little girl. She became hesitant, but almost immediately forced her chin up in mimic of Mestreth’s countenance.

A proud girl, a Dwarven remarked to the group.

Yes, and tough. Aren't yah little one? said another with an orange-red beard, a color she had never seen in hair.

You think she's a screamer? asked the first one.

She'll be fine, it looks to me, said a woman Dwarven, who snatched the pipe from her companion.

They walked on with Mestreth until they were at the mouth of the cave. When they were out of earshot of the Dwarvens, Syllay looked up at Mestreth as if to ask a question, but still said nothing.

We save them from all the tribes when we can—the Dwarvens, and the Touched, said Mestreth. The old men think they are cursed at birth, and so they leave them on the shore of the ocean to die. For many generations, we have been stealing them back from green waves and hungry crabs, in order to bring them here where they share our secrets and live their lives. Sometimes they marry, and their offspring are more like you and me. Those women always go through the trials you are about to begin, and the men almost always marry one of us. My husband was one; he was like you and me though his parents were Dwarvens. He died before you were born.

Did he die in battle as my father did?

No, she said. "Now go into the cave, and remember your first lesson of the boulder in the stream. It will hurt, but you can control it. Pain is something you must conquer, starting today. You must shut your eyes and hold back the pain like a boulder would the water. You will want it to stop, and they will let you go if you are weak, and I will take you home to your mother. But if you are strong, you will become one of us."

Syllay was about to speak but decided against it. She walked inside the cave.

iii.

Over the next few months, Syllay did not leave the cave. Day after day, her fingers were heated slowly, and the strange metal that was silver in color, streaked with reddish strands, and that was not steel, was injected with hollowed thorns under her fingernails, and into her nail-beds. It was excruciating, and though she whimpered and cried quietly, she never screamed. The chanting of the elder San Tokah shaman and the Dwarvens that assisted her helped with the pain. The prayers filled the large natural cavern that was a few chambers deep into the cave covered with crystal formations of many colors: blood red, cornflower purple, green like her eyes. On the cave walls where crystals were absent, there ran veins of the silver metal they used on her fingers. They smelted it in a large pit against one of the cave walls where, high above, a natural formation served as a smoke hole for a fire that was constantly lit. The walls shimmered in the light of the fire, and at times the chanters reached a confluent moment of synergy with the crystals, and together both rock and man created harmonic over-tones that hummed throughout the cave, and resonated down into Syllay’s bones. At those times, Syllay instinctively joined them in their chanting as her fingertips were alternatively burned and rubbed with a healing salve, and then burned again. But it was the image of the boulder in the stream holding back the flood of pain that truly got her through the process of many months during the summer.

The rest of the year she was trained in stealth and hunting by hand. Also, she practiced fighting with scarecrows dressed in a myriad of strange and foreign looking armors. Hillmen hoisted scarecrows up on ropes in the high branches of the trees and, at the Dwarvens instruction, flung them at her at varying speeds. The scarecrows grew as she grew, a little larger every year, and she was taught how to take them only by hand. She was taught the killing points, the spots where the armor was weakest, the anatomy of men and women, and how to slice and puncture them using her finger nails that were, with every passing summer, growing stronger, sharper, and more deadly. A few other girls of varying ages were there, but in the first two years Syllay saw nothing of Mestreth. Syllay held out hope that her little sister would be chosen in two years, and that was all she had to bolster herself with when humiliated by a crashing scarecrow, or knocked down by one of the older girls in practice.

When summer came again, she entered the cave, and the process was repeated. And when she left the cave as the leaves were falling, little veins of red appeared on her fingers, stretching up her hand like vines from the root of her nails that were slowly developing into claws. Her bright emerald-green eyes had become streaked with silver. It was said that this would happen to some girls. She returned to the rest of her training, and soon became the most adept warrior the other women had seen in many years. Though still skinny, she seemed surprisingly strong to the older women who visited the cave to aid in the training.

At the beginning of Syllay's third summer, Mestreth returned, complete with new scars on her arms and face. She took Syllay deep into the forest in silence, for they were to hunt. Syllay flushed out a large boar, and Mestreth made short work of it, as Syllay had timed the ambush at the perfect angle. They knelt by the boar's side and thanked him for his meat. Syllay built a fire for them, as Mestreth dressed the kill.

That was well conceived. It is not easy to fool a boar near his home.

I did not know he lived here, replied Syllay.

Right behind you, where you found the kindling was one of his nests, said Mestreth, pointing to a low bush. It is good to see you, little sister. They tell me you are much stronger than you look, as strong as a boy of twelve, and they tell me you are a warrior by instinct, and a hunter beyond your years.

I am waiting, and if I work hard, it makes the waiting easier.

And what are you waiting for?

Syllay paused, afraid to give voice to her wishes.

I am sorry my little one; your sister was not chosen.

Syllay could not respond to that. She just slumped a little, curled up in front of the fire, and held her right knee to her ear, hugging her skinny leg tightly, not moving. Mestreth moved towards her, knelt, and began brushing Syllay's hair back.

You knew, did you not?

Yes, she was so sweet—.

No, that was not it. She is sweet, and she has your courage and spirit. But she is her mother's daughter, and since you left, Hennah has taken care of your mother in her illness. That was proof enough that she could be one of us, but the choice is always more the child's than they realize.

My mother?

She struggles with the child in her belly. She may join with the Mother soon, or she may be well, but your sister cares for her every day. You know how difficult it would be for your mother to lose her husband and both daughters in just a few years?

After some time, Syllay said, I know. Hennah would know that too; she will never leave her. She began to cry aloud, for the first time since coming into the mountains.

iv

Syllay and Mestreth were tracking a group of men, outsiders who moved in an erratic, but mostly northerly, direction. It was a challenge, but only because Mestreth refused to track them herself. This was Syllay's first hunt of men, and Syllay found it more difficult than tracking any animal she had ever hunted. Not because these men were particularly good woodsmen—in fact, they were quite the opposite—but because they were foolish and unpredictable in their movements. It was confusing for Syllay, who was used to hunting the wiliest of creatures of the wood. Compared to a lynx, these men blundered through the forest like blind moose. Compared to a fox, they were as stupid as a new born child. At one point she could tell from the signs that they had missed a clean cold stream of fresh water on the other side of a ridge, and instead had filled their skins in a swampy pond that lay in their path. The young Syllay, in her fourteenth year, was shocked, and she asked Mestreth how they could miss the creek; after all, Syllay had smelled it immediately. Mestreth just laughed.

The Tokah'afel always had at least three experienced members keeping individual watch on the Forest Between's uninhabited outskirts. The fjords of the East required a presence, especially along the lower shores, where the tribes discarded their imperfect cursed infants. North of the deep woods, where the winter lasted ten months, they worked to survive the harshest conditions of their land. Mestreth told Syllay the experience in the frigid North kept them hard where it mattered most, and kept them connected to the wastes where the trees ended, a reminder that their land was precious to them. The third area that they watched was the foothills of the Kraymoors, southeast of the San Tokah lands. There is where danger from outsiders, what little there was, could be found. Most years there would be but one or two contacts with men not of the ten tribes. Most of those were half starved lost peddlers or spiritual wanderers with strange gods looking for isolation. Once in a long while though, perhaps every few years, there were dangerous men, and what few of them survived the Tokah'afel claimed to be running away from their homelands under some mortal threat.

Each member of the Tokah'afel did a turn on these ranges, and they often took a girl still in the Fel'ashone trials so the initiates might gain experience. Mestreth always took Syllay to the Southwest region. In the hills, they had picked up the trail of these men, five in all, who were not laden with a trade cart, but, according to their heavy tracks, were instead armored and armed. For two days the two women had been tracking them, and though Mestreth let her young charge lead, she seemed to Syllay somewhat quieter than usual. Mestreth under normal circumstances was not exactly a chattering village girl with a mouth full of hearth gossip, so to Syllay, the new level of silence her mentor exhibited implied the deep importance of their mission.

On the morning of the third day, Syllay read in the signs of their passing that the men had gained a prisoner. The new footprints were smaller and irregular in motion, and she noticed some drops of blood where they began. They tracked the men north, close to the territory of the caves where Syllay dwelt where the secrets of the Tokah’afel were kept and guarded most closely. Syllay also seemed to sense something irregular coming from the woods to the west of them. The group of outsiders were clearly headed north, so whatever her senses were telling her about what lay to the west she could not understand. They had no time to investigate what was just a nagging feeling, as they had gained significantly on their prey, and would that very evening bring the hunt to a confrontation. She didn’t mention her misgivings to Mestreth, assuming the elder warrior and hunter already sensed it herself.

All that day they gained, and if the men knew they were being hunted, they gave no indication of it. Their path took them subtly further away from the caves, as if they were guided, which brought to Syllay’s mind the prisoner the men had acquired. Perhaps the person, a small man or a large woman from its tracks, was being compelled to lead them. Perhaps the person knew of the caves and was leading them away, or did not know of the caves and was leading them east towards one of the smaller tribal villages of the San Tokah or the Tokso’on. Both circumstances were possible, Syllay thought, and neither was good.

Through the afternoon Syllay picked up their pace and Mestreth grew ever more quiet. By the time the sun dipped towards the mountains, Syllay could smell the group and no longer needed to look for signs. She followed her nose and let her mind think on the night before, and what Mestreth had said about the moon. She had called it Ahler Fa’aley in the old tongue. Mestreth told the story of the San Tokah to Syllay again, though she knew it well and could recite most of it. The moon had been almost full, the inner disk of light only just faintly revealing the dark edges of its concentric full body. It looked like a dark earthen bowl filled with light and hence the name of that phase: the bowl’s-edge. Small to large and back, in a thirty-one day cycle it pulsed, dilating from a thorn-prick dot, like to a star, though far brighter, to a round seed size disk, to half-bright, and thence on to the iris-moon for its resemblance to the eye, then larger to the bowl’s-edge, and finally the three day full-bright moon. The middle day of full-bright was brightest and sometimes, particularly in fall and winter, it grew so large and bright it was almost like unto a silver rainy day in the Forest Between. Then the cycle would reverse, waning to the thorn-prick again for that phase’s single night. The love of the father, Ahler Fa’aley meant in the new tongue, and Syllay loved it dearly and thanked the Father.

The sun had almost fallen behind the mountains when Syllay’s instincts woke her from her thoughts on the moon, and she came to a stop. Mestreth halted as well, and they crept forward carefully. The wind was moderate, not enough to cover the sound of a careless tread, but they were downwind, and that was fortuitous should any of the men be keener in nose than in woodcraft. Syllay, for just a moment, smelled something new and alien.