Previously...

“Is it… Yorres? It is you!”

Yorres snapped his head around and saw a deer with a shining silver pelt standing a few feet behind him. It was Mar Sart, one of his best pupils, and a Lightbringer as well. “Where in the realms have you been? You missed the last three gatherings! It’s been almost an entire YEAR… um, are you okay?”

“Yes,” Yorres replied, sounding a bit more like himself. “Greetings, Lightbringer. I have been away, conducting some important studies.” He coughed, realizing how thin and weak he must look.

“For more than a year?” Mar Sart squinted and looked skeptical. Yorres smiled. Few of his pupils could have seen the flood of words behind his eyes, and naturally the clever Mar Sart would be the very first deer he ran into.

“Yes,” Yorres began. “Listen: there is something… something that I need to tell the elders. I’m sure that they will want a meeting with me, but I’m not ready just yet.” They would doubtless want a meeting with him, since it would now be obvious that he had completely ignored their counsel. Would they censure him? Gods, it would be a close vote. Perhaps he had enough time to speak with Magnet or Seed before any inquest was raised. He had only seen one formal censure in his entire life, that of the murderer Baal, and the outcome had been predictably disastrous.

“Ah, I understand.” Said Mar Sart, not really understanding at all, but he knew Yorres well enough to know that ultimately all would be revealed.

“Good. Give me a few hours to rest, to return to my den. Then tell everyone I have returned. When it is done, come to my den and inform me.”

“Do you want me to wait to tell Mystress as well?”

“I… yes. I ask this favor of you. Just give me a few hours to sleep and to prepare.”

“Very well, Lightbringer.” Mar Sart knew that wasn’t Yorres’ true rank among the Lightbringers, but he also knew that Yorres did not care for his other titles. “It is good to have you back, teacher.”

“You have my thanks, Mar Sart. You were always a bright and trustworthy student.” Yorres bowed deeply, as Mar Sart did in return. “I take my leave of you.” Yorres began walking into the shade of the old Forest.

“Farewell, teacher. Yorres?”

He turned “Yes?”

“Where are you going now?”

“To find a mushroom circle,” he replied, grinning broadly. “I am in sore need of sleep.”

Mar Sart watched him as he passed under an oak and vanished into the woods, then made his way to the pond’s edge, humming to himself.

Yorres quickly found a perfect circle of mushrooms bathed in a radiant pool of sunlight. He slowly lowered himself onto the warm grass. He took a cautious glance around him and, realizing he was alone, dropped his head to the grass. Within moments, he dozed, then slept.

He had a dream then, the same dream he always had in the Forest. Though he had not slept or dreamt in a year (apparently), the dream was exactly the same. In it, he flew or hovered high above the Forest like a bird, and as he slept the Forest showed to him each and all of the deer within her. It was this dream that had earned him his reputation as a master of forest politics. He watched them intently now, enjoying the sensation of the dream as he had not in many cycles. Here was Quamar, dancing with some fawns at the Playground. Then there was Lady Bones, laughing loudly with a group of does. There was Flyra, devotedly watching fawns outside the Great Oak. Here was Bylah, wide awake in the birch forest, sitting motionless and flicking his forked tongue in the air repeatedly. Here were Ravyn and Saosin, sleeping quietly next to one another atop a hill. Here were Quad and Seed, idly discussing the merits and limitations of pronged antlers and pawing the ground. Here were Walter and Queze, sitting and talking about nothing in particular near the old ruins.

There were many others, so many now whose faces he did not know or recognize. There were dozens of fawns, making him think briefly that this year’s rut must have been particularly successful before inwardly blushing and turning his attention elsewhere.

Here was Mystress, among those fawns. She was inside of the Old Oak, teaching them a song, a song she had sung many years ago as the two of them walked through the Forest.

If only, if only, the woodpecker sighs,
The bark on the trees was as soft as the skies,
As the wolf waits below, hungry and lonely
He cries to the moon, If only, if only..


And now he heard (or remembered) a trifle of verse in his own voice, an echo of a memory, from that same time.

Will you come to the bower I have shaded for you?
Your bed shall be of roses, bespangled in dew.
Will you, will you, will you, will you come to the bower?


When he awoke there were tears in his eyes.

~

At about that same time, the creature who called itself Bylah was indeed sitting stone still in the Forest. Low flame guttered in his eyes and thin white smoke drifted from his upturned nostrils. His flesh colored tongue snaked in and out, tasting the air. Yes, he had smelled the earth of the grey lands. This meant that someone had passed through the veil from Limbo, but he did not know who. I did not matter. If it were a God he would find out soon enough. And if it were anything else? No matter. Only a handful of creatures may leave that place, most of them as harmless as ghosts. Likely, it was nothing of any note at all, and it is not the purview of Gods to suffer the minor details of matters so trivial.

Still, the veil had opened. It was likely nothing, true, but he would know. He now had only to remain patient. The answer would surely and swiftly come to him, for weal or woe. He would watch for a sign, listen for his agents’ hoofbeats. He would soon know. He had only to wait.

Continue to Chapter Two