"That's Jes's forest king?" asked Hennea as she scrambled beside Seraph in Tier's wake. "Not exactly what I expected."
"He seldom is," agreed Seraph absently as she tried to pick a quick way through the undergrowth near the trail.
"Do we need to track them, or do you know where we're going?"
"Can't you feel it?" asked Seraph. "I wasn't paying attention until it worsened - but this storm is called."
"Rinnie?"
"Unless there's another Cormorant in the area. Something is very wrong."
They fell silent then, Seraph turning all her energies to climbing. The shortest path home was steep, forcing them to slow before they were halfway there.
"I'm going to the farm," she told Hennea, between gasps for breath. "That's where it feels like she is. I'll be able to tell for certain once we top this rise."
Hennea didn't bother to try and talk.
Seraph stopped at the ridgetop. The farm lay below, but she couldn't see it for the trees and the darkening skies. She had more than vision to call upon, though.
The first thing Seraph had done when she and Tier had moved to the farm was to walk a warding that surrounded it. The farm was too close to the old battlefield, Shadow's Fall, to be entirely safe without protection from the kinds of creatures attracted to shadow. Several times a year for twenty years she'd added to its potency.
Her warding traced along the crest just here.
Seraph knelt in the pine needles and touched the threads of her spelling. Power swept through her in a heady rush - something shadow-touched was trying to cross it at that very moment. Like a spider at her web, she waited, letting her breathing slow, while she waited for the warding to tell her more.
It settled back down after a moment, though she could tell that whatever shadowed thing had touched it was still near. There were some weak areas in the warding, she noticed, as if it had been much longer than the six months or so when she'd last reworked it: something or a number of somethings had been trying the warding while she'd been gone.
Thunder cracked almost instantaneously with the bright flash of lightning, and it was followed by a second strike and a third before the wind picked up into a howling force.
With evidence of Rinnie's distress, Seraph was unwilling to wait longer for more information, but she sent power surging through her warding, tightening it as a fisherman tightens his net. It wasn't enough to completely repair the damaged areas, but it would hold until she had time to do it right.
She came to her feet and started down the slope toward home.
"What did you learn?" asked Hennea.
"Not much, something shad - " Seraph's voice was broken by a torturous howl that rose above the wind.
"Troll," said Hennea.
Heart in her throat, Seraph started running again.
They came out of the trees still somewhat above the farm, but it didn't look as it had when Seraph left it. Instead of a half-plowed field and an empty house, there was a field of tents and her house was illuminated from within and without by dozens of lanterns. For courage, she thought, because it wasn't yet dark enough to require lanterns for sight, though with the rain it wouldn't be long before darkness had hold here.
Among the changes wrought since she'd been home last was a crowd of people that looked to be composed of the whole village, all confronting a troll that straddled the path leading to Redern.
Seraph pushed her way through the first group of people, mostly women and children, and into the clear space in front of them, where she paused to take in the enormity of her task.
It was a forest troll, moss-green and larger than its more numerous cousin, the mountain troll. By the earlobes which hung so long they brushed its stooped shoulders, it was older than any Seraph had ever seen.
That trolls had two arms and two legs had given rise to the rumor that the thing was related to humans. Anyone who thought so, in Seraph's opinion, had never seen a troll. Small red eyes were set deep and close on a head as wide as Skew was long above a nose that was merely two slits in the bumpy textured skin. Tusks curled out of its jaw and pulled the lower lip down to reveal fist-sized, serrated teeth that could snap a cow's skull open.
Seraph's long-ago teacher had speculated that they were hobgoblins