Four days later, dusk approached as Belkynn finally picked up Damar’s trail again. She crowed her triumph, finding the trail far newer than she had yet encountered. He was a wily one. He tested her to the limit of her skills. She thought that only the urgency of her need to be with him kept her in pursuit. She would long ago have given up on any other trail.

She was on a rocky slope heading down out of the Western Worldteeth now. This was her best terrain for tracking. No matter how careful he was, he would turn stones. But then, if he found a flat stone big enough without scree . . .

“Mumble grumble gripe!” Damar was constantly using this phrase; it was only now that Belkynn found it on her own tongue. But the curses she knew from years of soldiery were as impotent.

“At least I’m not going to lose your trail now,” she told the air in front of her. She dropped her pack and tackle, tying it to her with a long silk rope so that it dragged behind. Still following the trail as fast as safety allowed, she adjusted her own outfit and harness. She was tracking the troll now that was tracking Damar; she would need to be ready for combat any moment.

A quarter-league later, the terrain became more wooded. Scrub trees and brush struggled up through scree amid boulders and flat areas of ochre grasses. The tracks grew fresher. Either Damar was attempting more caution, or he was tiring. Belkynn had thought herself ready for sleep, but the troll spoor had fully wakened her.

She was barely able to see by the time she first smelled the troll. Darkness had fallen. A foul-smelling mist crept in from the west. The vegetation all around her had gone from lush to having a tortured, perverse aspect within half a Measure. She looked up, recalling that the moon would rise early tonight. Biting down on her own impatience, she found a stone and seated herself for a much needed rest.

A rumble in her belly reminded her that she hadn’t eaten since midmorning. She had set too brisk a pace. Still, she hesitated a moment before pulling her pack to her. Pulling a plug of dried mulegoat from her pack, she tried not to think of how scarce her supplies were. She’d be out of food in two, maybe three days at most. At least water had been plentiful, and she had had the presence of mind to keep her water skins as full as she could carry.

A horrid scream rent the air. Belkynn jumped to her feet, ancient spear in hand. Gazing wildly around, she used her ranger senses to choose her direction and ran toward the south. As she sprinted, she heard the sounds of struggle grow louder and more violent. Growls and snarls at first. And then a man’s voice. Damar’s voice.

“Damar!” She tripped over an exposed tree root and flew forward onto her face. Rolling into the fall, she dropped the spear and sprinted toward the sound of her lover’s struggle.

Light exploded thirty paces from her as Damar summoned his luminorbs. She ran toward them as fast as her legs would carry her, ignoring the pain as briars and thorns ripped gashes into her hands and cheeks.

She burst into the small clearing to see the troll slam one enormous paw into Damar and send him flying ten paces into the trunk of a small tree. A sickening thud and the glazing of Damar’s eyes told Belkynn the fight was over for him.

Drawing both her climbing picks, Belkynn screamed her challenge to the troll. It had lurched away from her toward Damar’s twitching, groaning form. Now it spun impossibly fast to meet her challenge.

She vaulted off a stone, lunging with her right arm held forward. Just before she was in the troll’s reach, she pivoted to bring her lefthand pick down at the beast’s collarbone. She shifted with her momentum to dodge the creature’s clumsy attack. Hitting the ground, she tumbled, spun, and came about to face it again.

Her pick remained lodged beneath its right collarbone. She sprinted in again. An unconscious flick of her wrist filled her empty hand with one of the long knives. This time the troll tried to hammer its fists down on her. She dodged around the blow, taking some of its spent energy on her right flank as she swung the knife in an arc and reached back over her shoulder with the remaining pick.

When she came again to her wide defensive stance, her hands were empty. She grabbed her remaining knife and stared at the troll. It advanced more cautiously now. Something caught her attention, and she looked down to see one of Damar’s bone batons. She grabbed it up in her left hand and moved to her left. She wanted to put the boulder between them.

The troll seemed to sense her intent. A gurgling noise came from its throat. And then a growl. It moved impossibly fast for a creature of its size. Faster than a bear. More nimble. She barely evaded its lazy slash with a taloned paw.

“Oh?” She spat in its face, lower than she intended only because it was nearly three times her height. “Want to play, do you?”

She considered her chances only in a cursory manner. Her first pick was still stuck in the beast’s shoulder. The second was nowhere she could see. Blood pooled at the troll’s left foot; she could see the long knife where it was stuck in the bone just below the hamstring she had meant to cut. The troll showed no loss of mobility despite those wounds.

It rushed her. Impossibly fast for its bulk. She feinted right, dodged left. Pivoting, she turned to leap on the troll’s back. She slammed her remaining long knife as hard as she could at an angle between its shoulder blade and spine. Holding onto the lodged knife, she jabbed the bone baton with all her strength into the pressure points Damar had taught her.

The troll shook her free. She rolled into a boulder, bruising her ribs on the right side. Ignoring the pain, she scurried around the waist-high stone before rising. The troll staggered toward her. It’s left arm hung limp. It’s face was twisted, too, as though the muscles had gone slack on one side.

She backed away, keeping the boulder between them. Once the troll was where she wanted him, she sprinted and vaulted off the stone again. This time, though, her hands were empty. She kicked her right leg as hard as she could, over the troll’s shoulder. Flipping so that her belly faced the ground, she reached out to grab the climbing pick on her way past.

Her shoulder wrenched painfully as the pick refused to pull free. She swung awkwardly on the troll’s back for only a half breath. Its claws ripped twin furrows in her scalp as she dropped.

Once her feet hit the ground, Belkynn’s eyes locked on the second pick. It had lodged in the troll’s waist a hand’s breadth from its spine. She reached up and tore it free as though it were embedded in mountain stone. The troll bellowed in pain and fury. Its rank, septic-smelling blood streamed from the divot torn out.

Belkynn’s head swam now. Her vision blurred. Blood and puss ran from her scalp, some into her eyes, stinging them. If she didn’t finish this now . . .

Kariastra. The name whispered itself into her mind. She thought it must be something Damar was trying to tell her. She shook her head to clear it.

The troll was picking up the big boulder now, intending to smash her with it. Her pick was useless. She threw it with all her strength into the mad, feral eyes glaring out from the malicious face. It flinched just as it threw the rock at her.

She dodged easily, but it cost her her balance. She skidded on a patch of bloody grass. No way to use the momentum. She was helpless as she fell. Once down, she rolled as quickly as possible only to smack herself again against the tree that had bruised her ribs.

“Kariastra!” She cried out, hoping it meant something.

The spear Dahto had given her was suddenly in her hand. She braced it against the tree at an angle. The troll never saw it, stepping in fury and desperation to end her. It impaled itself fully, pushing her hand back from where she gripped the weapon. It flashed crimson, and the troll ceased to struggle, its weight pinning her to the tree.

She caught her breath as quickly as she could, gagging on the stench. She had no time to rest, though, knowing the speed at which wounds from troll teeth and claws fester. The fog in her head was warning enough that her scalp was rotting. And then there was the smell, always that stench of festering wounds, mold, yeast, and the worst kind of feces.

Giving up on main strength, she felt her way to wiggling from under the dead troll. As soon as she was free of it, she noticed that the light in the little glen was dimming—Damar’s luminorbs were dimming. Concern for him re-energized her. She bolted to where he lay slumped at the foot of a warped cedar of some sort unfamiliar to her.

“Can you hear me?” She asked loudly. The sound hurt her own head.

She searched him quickly for water to pour on her own wounds. She needed to keep the fog from her own head, or she might never save him. Finding only the flask he hid next to his heart, she pulled the bone stopper out of it and poured it carefully into the twin troughs of rotting flesh on top of her own head. She screamed as fire seemed to erupt in the wounds, and dropped the flask.

She cradled her head several moments before she could bear the pain. When she looked up, her eyes were clear again. Pain still crowded her mind, but the rest was clear.

Picking up the flask, she checked to see if any of its contents remained. It was still full, as though none had been used or spilled. She sniffed it cautiously before drinking a long, burning pull of the fiery liquor. Once her tongue had acclimated to it, she filled her mouth with it and put her lips to Damar’s. She forced the entire mouthful down his throat, trusting his body to swallow instead of breathing.

His orbs brightened just enough for her to tell.

“Might want to bring those down here and dim them again,” she suggested.

When nothing happened, she went to work inspecting him. She was confident that his bones were all intact. But his shoulder and a number of ribheads had been dislocated. His dislocated right shoulder was scored with three deep gashes. The furrows were black with rotted flesh, and stank of the grave.

Having stripped away his shirt, she bathed the gashes with the fiery liquor. His nonresponsiveness alarmed her nearly as much as his shallow breath and thready heartbeat. To soothe her nerves, she hummed a song Dahto had taught her while she went to work on Damar’s wound.

Once she had cut away as much of the fouled flesh as she dared, she searched through Damar’s packets. He and Dahto had tripled her knowledge of herbs and tonics during the final month of her pregnancy and the subsequent months of nursing. Still, she could only work with what she had. And between them, she and Damar had only half of what she needed. She pressed what fissil leaves she had into the wounds to keep them from seeping and bleeding further.

“I’m going to have to forage,” she told him. “Stay here, Damar. Stay! In Dreydillon. Keep your ghost, old man.”

Taking a deep breath and closing her eyes, she calmed her mind. Breathing consciously, she cleared her mind of thoughts and worries. Once her mind was clear, she put the question to herself of what direction to go in search of the plants she needed. It took only a moment for her ranger senses to suggest a path upslope toward the southeast.

She looked around before leaving. The one saving grace of troll stench is that it discourages any predators from coming close. She need not worry about Damar being attacked. Her senses denied any immediate danger beyond Damar’s wounds, and so she set off.

Ninety paces up the slope, she noticed the changes. The plants here were healthy, vibrant even. The air was thin, but free of the mineral smell of the encroaching mists. The constant sense of peril she felt from the slope below was absent here. She felt almost welcome.

“Good evening, Belkynn Kallon,” said a soft female voice.

Belkynn spun into a defensive crouch, feeling suddenly very stupid for leaving her weapons behind. But the one who stood before her was no threat. The woman was tall and slender, her features sharp and angular like those of the fair folk she had met. Her eyes were deep emerald. Her hair looked similar to the moss that hung from the tall cedars around them.

“Good evening,” Belkynn replied.

“I have no intent to harm,” the tall woman told her.

“Of course not,” Belkynn replied, smiling and standing more at ease.

“What brings you to my village?”

Belkynn looked around, noticing for the first time that the moonglow emanated as much from the woman as from the moon itself. The moss on the cedars also gave off a gentle illumination. But nowhere could she see another person or any sort of dwelling.

“Village?”

“These are my folk,” she said, indicating the cedars.

“I need healing plants,” Belkynn came straight to the point. “My . . . companion . . . was hurt by a troll and needs a better poultice than I can make with what we have.”

“Tell me what you need,” the woman said kindly. “And tell me how you intend its use.”

“Do you have a name?” Belkynn asked. She knew intuitively that she could trust the woman. Still, she always found it more convenient to deal with persons whose names she knew.

“Kreathania,” she replied.

“Are you of the fair races?”

“I am more ancient,” she replied obliquely.

Belkynn shrugged the question aside and explained her plan. Kreathania listened intently. When Belkynn finished, Kreathania smiled kindly and told her there was a better way. Impatient, Belkynn turned to leave.

“I have much to teach you, Belkynn Kallon,” Kreathania told her. “Damar will heal without your ministrations.”

“He is my responsibility,” Belkynn replied tensely.

“No,” Kreathania gave her an ironic smile. “You are his.”

The tall, elfish lady closed her eyes and sang an eldritch song. Belkynn stood rapt in the lovely sound. Her mind cleared of thought, her heart of worry and urgency. Her own scalp tingled; she felt the wounded flesh pull together and mend itself as though a thousand ants crawled her scalp weaving the skin back together.