CHAPTER 1

The sky above me roiled with the coming storm, flecks of lightning flickering from one bulbous knob of gray to another just before the small, distant rumble of thunder grumbled through the air carried to me by the breeze.

“Saemus!” Mother’s voice carried well enough to the clearing I haunted in my often-lonely bouts of self reflection and observance of the world around us. Mother called it laziness, but I preferred to keep my breadth from the others in our village. Lest they find out my secret. “Time for dinner, come and get the table ready!”

I loosed a sigh, the inevitable voice that droned through my mind after any request stating, Quest received: Go to your home and set the table for the evening meal. Reward: 10 EXP.

I didn’t bother listening to the rest, just muttering, “I accept,” under my breath as I sat up to comply.

Long as I could remember, the voice had been there inside my head offering me something I didn’t understand and likely never would. I walked through the small grove of twenty-five Cindry trees we tended for the courts and then to the larger tree that my mother and father sang from the ground more than forty years before I was born.

It stood taller than most of the trees in the village, the both of them having been exceptionally strong voiced. People could see our tree from dozens of miles away, and even used it as a land mark while traveling the Middling Forest. As such, the majority of the village sought out mother and father for their skills and paid them handsomely to improve the way of life for the others.

Flowing vines grew up the side of the thick tree, their leaves a silver and gold hue in the light that made the whole area sparkle on bright days. I knew from experience that while they were truly beautiful and looked fragile, they could hold the weight of just about anything. There was a particularly long vine that mother sang away from the trunk of the tree to a tall pole on the other side of the yard that she used to hang our drying laundry.

I had actually hung the bundle that was out there already to let it dry. I made my way to the line and pulled the most-dry clothing and linens from it to pile into a woven basket made of bark that was still warm to the touch thanks to the magic of our trees.

Cindry trees not only bore fruit of the same name, but their bark could be harvested to make items of power and greater strength than that of normal wood in the Middling Forest.

I carried the laundry into our house, the door already open to let out the heat of the hearth that mother worked over. She leaned back and stared at me critically, “Leaves in your hair, Saemus? Again?”

“They were on the ground when I invaded, mother.” I smiled at her and it crinkled her nose a bit, her long, pointed ears twitching at my humor. She nodded her head at the floor next to the hearth after snorting and I just put the laundry there to continue drying before I headed to the table to put out the plates and cups full of spring water.

“You were careful to keep your voice down, right?” She asked me softly as she carried the pot of bubbling soup over to the table. “Get the pot holder, Saemus, quickly.”

“Accepted.” I muttered under my breath again as the voice began to give me yet another quest. I answered my mother, “Yes.”

She set the pot onto the table and regarded me stoically before putting her hand on my cheek, long fingers managing to reach all the way to the base of my ears where she knew I was ticklish. I stiffened because I never could tell when she was going to start in on me, but she just clicked her tongue and spoke in a low tone, “I know that it’s confusing. But there’s nothing we can do about it for now. Finish setting the table before your father gets back from this latest job over the Clefernans’ and I’m sure that he will continue trying to teach you the song.”

I nodded and went to the basket where we kept our good wooden spoons made of Cindry bark. Father loved these spoons.

As soon as the last spoon was on the table, the voice returned, Quest complete, 10 EXP earned. Error. No catalyst.

At least that has been consistent. My wry thoughts threatened to go sour with the weather, but the forest needed this rain from the dry spring we’d had already so I couldn’t blame the rain for my morose behavior.

Father had been trying to teach me the song for weeks and I just couldn’t get it down. My voice wavered too much and it seemed like the plants didn’t care for my attention more than what I gave them with my hands and the tools that my parents didn’t need to use.

Granted, I was only fourteen summers to their ninety or so, and father kept implying it had taken him a while to learn the song as well. What he didn’t know was that I heard the conversations they had in Sylvan when they thought I wasn’t in earshot. They didn’t know that I had been teaching it to myself with the help of the books they had in their library.

Father’s words echoed into my mind unbidden, “Maybe his mind is broken, Laretha. He says he hears voices and that they say things that he doesn’t understand, if we can’t take him to the healers for fear of them sending him to the courts, what good are we to him?”

Mother shook her head and crossed her arms over herself as if to ward off the chill that had been slowly leaving in the thaw of spring, We are his sheep, Sterlo, and as such it is our honor to guide him into being the best elf we know how to raise. Just because he didn’t take to the song as easily as we did doesn’t mean he can’t learn it. Or that he’s broken. We need only be patient.

I still didn’t think she had meant to call them both sheep, but my Sylvan was still a work in progress and the dryads were less than enthusiastic about me trying to speak to them when they would rather be frolicking and playing.

Other children my age were already singing and assisting their parents with their duties around the village to keep the courts away from us. Our peace was tenuous at best, but we provided a valuable service and material so they usually opted to leave us alone until they needed something. It also helped that there hadn’t been rumors of war in centuries.

Father returned, his smile firmly in place as he kissed mother, then came to me and patted my cheek as he usually did. He raised a brow at me and smiled, “I see you’ve spent time amongst the trees, tell me—were you chasing dryads?”

Mother scoffed and smacked his arm, his light reddish hair bobbing in the pony tail he wore it in after working all day. “You know he knows better than you did when you were a boy!”

I couldn’t help laughing along with my father and shook my head, “I was watching the storm build. We need it.”

Father grunted, “Aye, we do.” He sipped his soup and groaned as mother handed him a freshly-buttered roll. “Great soup, my heart.”

“Thank you.” Mother smiled back and handed me a roll. I wasn’t as attached to the butter that both of them seemed to be but it was nice to have the thick bread to soak up the broth. Finally father broke the silence, “Clefernan’s’ve heard tell that the Seelie and Unseelie are beginning to posture like war is on the horizon again.”

Mother sighed, “You know them though, they’re always saying that. It’s been more than a hundred years since they went at it, and even then those were small skirmishes at best.” She eyed me, “Eat your soup, Saemus, before it gets cold.”

The voice gave me another quest and I accepted offhand and ate quietly as they continued to talk. War between the two of the courts would be something that I wasn’t interested in outside of a learning standpoint. I was too young yet to fight, but still, it sounded interesting to me.

We were cleaning up the table, mother and I while father packed a long-stemmed pipe that he favored in his chair by the fire when the weather shifted and the rain began. We all smiled, the rain would be good for the Cindry trees.

The wind whipped through the tree, the branches outside rattling hard enough that it sounded like someone screaming outside. All of us stilled, mother and I looked to father who stood up and made his way to the door and opened it to the slowly darkening skies outside.

The wind gusted by again, but this time the screaming came in the lull between sounds.

Mother moved to the far wall of the room, then turned and slung a bag to father and pulled a cloak on herself as she ordered, “Stay here, Saemus!”

Father pulled his sword from its sheath, the glass blade beautiful as it was deadly. Mother pulled a quiver from the wall and then her bow before she joined her husband at the door.

She was out the door with an arrow notched to the string and pulled back in a heartbeat and father turned back to me, “Go hide, son.”

I frowned, the urge to go and try to investigate with them warring with my own self preservation and mind to obey my parents.

My years of obedience kicked into overdrive and I clambered up the staircase toward my room where I shut the door and barricaded it with my book shelf and waited a moment before opening the hatch that mother had sung into the tree for me to use as a window.

Rain began to pelt the tree and ground as lightning arced through the sky above us. Mother and Father scanned the yard around them for a short time then crossed into the direction of what could only have been chaos unleashed. Screams tore through the night and with those screams came the roars and cheering of something with deeper voices and more guttural language.

Trolls? I blinked to myself, then watched as mother and father slipped out of sight followed by figures that were hazy at best. Did I dare call out to warn them?

One of the figures stalled for a second and I could have sworn I saw them look over their shoulder before they continued on after my parents toward the noise.

I bit my thumb and thought about my options. There was no way I could help in a fight, I had no training and I wasn’t strong by any means or sense of the word. I was quick, sure, but that was only because I had to be in order to chase the dryads to get them to talk to me.

Then I remembered something that father told me once, “Speed can be a gift in many circumstances, but quickness of wit is just as important. If all else fails you, Saemus, be faster of mind than your opponent.”

They didn’t know I was here and my parents could need me. I had to help them.