The Tales of the Wanderer Volume One: A Book of Underrealm (The Underrealm Volumes 4) by Garrett Robinson (elon musk reading list TXT) 📕

When I had inspected the village to my satisfaction, I returned to Mag. “We must hide the horses somewhere and leave them,” I said. “If we bring them any farther, they will certainly alert the satyrs to our presence.”

“There are no woods this high up to hide them from view,” said Mag.

“We need a cave,” I said. “The satyrs do not dwell in all of them, nor are all of them connected. We should be able to find an empty one without too much trouble.”

And that proved to be true; in less than an hour of searching, we found just what we needed. The cave was too shallow for the satyrs to have bothered with, but more than deep enough to conceal our horses. We hobbled them and tethered them to a rock that thrust up out of the ground. Foolhoof tossed his head as I wrapped his reins around the stone, and I gave him a reproachful look.

“Do not even think of chewing your way free,” I told him. “I will find you if you do.”

“Mist would never think of doing such a thing,” said Mag haughtily.

I shook my head and led her from the cave.

Without the horses, it was easy to slip past the first satyr village, and the second. We passed them every few spans now, clusters of crude buildings built onto whatever flat ground was available on those high slopes. Occasionally the villages had a sentry posted nearby, but they were easy to bypass. They appeared to be weaker members of their kind, satyrs with missing or twisted limbs, and they leaned heavily on their weapons.

Always we found our way back to the main path, and now I began to notice markings upon it. They were not the prints of cloven hooves, but of heavy boots. Other humans.

“Look,” I told Mag, pointing at the tracks. “It seems we are not too late. We might find our foe at the end of this road.”

“I am right more often than you give me credit for,” said Mag. “Let us hurry. The weremage could be dead before the day’s end.”

We were neither of us wont to bloodthirst, but hunting a foe will quicken anyone’s pulse. We pressed on faster. Yet despite our speed, it was early evening before we found what we sought. To our right, the sun was setting in a display that was as beautiful as it was fiery. It painted the ground in hues of red and gold, and the scant clouds in the sky blazed like the fires of war. But the light had not yet faded when we came upon a great gathering of satyrs, and I had to be quick to rush Mag behind cover before we were spotted. Together we crouched behind a boulder shaped like a black, broken tooth.

On what appeared to be the top of the highest mountain for many leagues, a great circular space had been trodden flat by what looked like centuries’ worth of satyr hooves. Upon that space were now gathered mayhap two scores of satyr warriors, wearing wooden shields on their arms and hefting axes and clubs. They stood in a half-ring two rows deep, all their attention fixed on the center of the circle. There sat ten carved stone chairs, though only eight of them were occupied. The satyrs upon those chairs were old, wizened, and grey of fur, and I knew we had found the elders of the clan.

But almost immediately, my attention went from the elders to the humans who stood before them. They numbered six, and they wore clothing of blue and grey. The Shades were here, just as Greto had said they would be.

“Can you see the weremage?” whispered Mag.

“I cannot,” I said. “Not from here. We must get closer. I want to be certain before we attack.”

“Very well.” Now that we were here, I found myself quite reluctant to draw any closer to the satyrs. But my desire to find the weremage overpowered my caution, as did my curiosity. I wanted to know what the Shades were saying that put such fear in the faces of the satyr elders.

We left the cover of the rock and crept along a slope that fell away from the platform. We were careful to keep ourselves concealed, but it hardly seemed necessary. No one, neither the Shades nor the satyrs, looked away from what was going on. At last, when we were only a score of paces away, I bade Mag to hide again, for now we could clearly make out the Shades’ words. Again we ducked out of sight, each of us poking one eye into view to see what was going on.

“—after you killed the messenger?” one of the Shades—a burly man with a thick, bristling beard—was saying. At first I dismissed him, searching only for the weremage. Then my better sense caught up with me, and I realized the weremage might very well have changed her appearance. Though why would she do so, when she had no idea we were watching her?

The elder in the center of the row shifted in her stone chair and bleated an answer in the satyrs’ tongue. I spoke but a little of their language and did not understand her, but there was a clear defensive tone in her voice, like a child who had been caught in wrongdoing and was inventing an outlandish tale to excuse it.

An elder at the end of the row spoke in the common tongue. “Elder Seko says: Tiglak’s debt was paid. Then we drove the humans towards you. We have told you this already.”

“But what you have not told us,” growled the Shade, “is why you did not tell us of these interlopers.”

More bleating from Seko, and then the translator spoke again. “Elder Seko says: the Lord never said to tell you. He said not to let any humans pass through the valley and live.”

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