"Why would I do that? Your brother's ties to the forest are closer than yours. Something has happened to him to make him aware of his power. If I had called you today as I usually do, he would have heard me. It was time to acknowledge the Hunter. I cannot say I welcome him, for it is my job to protect those within my realm. But your brother has long hunted these forests and he does not kill indiscriminately. Death is seldom a welcome guest, but it has a place in the life of the forest."
"Just leave him alone - he takes on enough without you."
The boar laughed, his hoarse voice squealing high in merriment. "Am I so chance a comrade then, Jes?"
"Who is being dragged through the forest at your whim?" returned the Guardian roundly. "I should be helping my brother coax Skew over the fields rather than chasing off after some child."
"Not that kind of child," grunted the boar, scrambling over a largish log in his path. "I believe that she's older than you." He seemed to find amusement in something, for he snorted a while before continuing. "Child of Travelers she is, though not exactly like you or your brother either. She passed me by as I was eating my breakfast this morning and the smell of her magic intrigued me, so I followed her."
The Guardian waited until he was certain the boar wouldn't continue without prompting. "Where did she go?"
"Through my lands," said the forest king. "I almost stopped at the border, but by then I was curious. I followed her to a place where magic blackened the ground and a new rip in the earth contained the body of a horse - a grey mare who used to graze in your fields."
"You know where my father was killed," said the Guardian slowly.
"Your father is dead?" The boar considered it a moment. "I tell you what I saw: it is up to you to discover what you'll take from it. But first you must deal with the child - or allow me to do so."
The Guardian knew how the boar would deal with one he must have decided might be a threat. The Guardian recognized the same grim spirit lived inside of him as well - though he'd never killed anyone. Not yet. Never wanted to kill anyone - because he was afraid that by that act, something the daytime Jes could not comprehend, he would somehow sever the ties that held the two disparate parts of himself together.
"What did you find at my father's grave?" asked the Guardian. "My mother thinks that there was more to his death than we have been told."
"Your mother may be right," said the forest king. "But that is not for my judgment."
By this time, the Guardian was fairly confident he knew where the forest king was taking him. There weren't actually all that many places to store a person safely in the woods without worrying what might happen to them - even for a spirit as powerful as the forest king.
The old building was so covered in vines and surrounded by trees that it was impossible to see from the outside. It was, as far as he knew, the only building he'd ever been in that had been built before the reign of the Shadowed. The only entrance required some undignified scrambling for anything larger than the boar.
Not knowing exactly what he would face, the Guardian chose to stay in human form and crawled under the foliage, through the crumbling tunnel that had once held water and still bore the mark of ancient algae.
Inside, the boar waited with bright red eyes that glittered in the dark interior, standing over a sleeping person who certainly was no child. Pale Traveler's hair looked more silver than ash in the faint light that poured in through the leaves that guarded the barren rafters that must once have been thatched.
"Traveler," said the Guardian, crouching down and pushing her hair aside to reassure himself that it wasn't his mother who lay there. But the features of the woman who lay sleeping in the forest king's lair were those of a stranger, younger than his mother - but as the boar had said, older than Jes was. "You say she came from town?"
"Yes. She came from the town, walked almost directly to the place where the horse lay dead then started back." He paused. "She wasn't going back to town."