Elestar Ravencrest's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

The next morning Elestar led Rowan down the track toward Harveststead Farm. He meant to prove the beast came from Darkwood, not his tower. If he found the creature first, he could send it back before the knight named the boy. Rowan walked in silence, jaw tight. The forest leaned close on both sides, and Elestar felt it watching them. They reached the farm at midday. A farmer named Thomas Barley stood in his trampled yard, staring at a broken fence. His cows huddled in one corner. "Third night," he said. "It took the wheat again. My children will go hungry." His plain grief cut worse than any threat. Then Elestar saw her. The dryad, Sylvara, stood at the tree line. She had followed Rowan again, though leaving her rowan tree drained her like blood from a wound. Her skin had gone grey and dry. Bark showed at her wrists. Sir Emberblade came around the barn with his sword already drawn. The greying knight moved without hurry, the way a man moves when he has hunted many things. His silver armor caught the sun. He saw the dryad's strange skin and the leaves in her hair. "There," he said. "The beast." "No," Elestar said. "She is not what took your grain." Emberblade did not lower the blade. "She came from the wood. She is not human. That is enough." He stepped toward Sylvara. She was too weak to run. Elestar reached for the words to soothe him, but Rowan moved first. The boy threw himself between the knight and the dryad. "Stop," Rowan said. "She's mine. The beast is mine too." The yard went still. Thomas Barley stared. Emberblade lowered the sword one inch. "Explain." "I summoned it," Rowan said. "By accident. I lost it. The stolen grain is my fault, not hers." He did not soften it. He said it flat, the way he closed any subject. Elestar's chest went cold. The boy had just handed the knight the very thread that tied him to the beast. Everything Elestar had walked here to hide, Rowan had spoken aloud to save the dryad. Emberblade studied the boy a long moment. Then he sheathed the sword. "An honest answer," he said. "That is rare." He turned to Elestar. "The creature is still out there. If the boy made it, the boy helps me end it. He rides with me at dawn, or I take him now." Elestar looked at Rowan, then at the failing dryad clinging to Rowan's arm. He had come to clear his apprentice's name. Instead the boy had confessed and bound himself to the hunt. "He goes with you," Elestar said. "And I go with him." The farm was safe for one more day. But Rowan's training was no longer a quiet thing behind tower walls. It rode out at dawn, toward the beast he had made.