About an hour later they were trudging through the Rearwood on their way to the academy. Weysh seemed oblivious to Yenni’s apprehension. Forests had always been mysterious places to her, the realm of beasts and spirits. Curiously, the Creshens seemed to find them charming and romantic. Either way, cutting through the Rearwood was the fastest way to get where they were going, and they weren’t the only ones taking the shortcut. Other students occasionally overtook them on the forest path. So she did her best to focus on Weysh rather than the nervous prickling on the back of her neck.

“Let’s go to Suli’s tonight,” he was saying. “I might be able to actually taste something this time.”

Yenni spied a cluster of bright-blue, bell-shaped flowers and wandered over to pick one. It had a wonderful soft fragrance. “Can you smell this?” she said, turning back to him.

But he was gone.

Yenni spun around, her heart pounding. There was no one in sight, and no sound but chirping birds.

“Weh-sheh?” she yelled. She dropped the flower and held her spear out in front of her. “Weh-sheh!”

“YENNI!” he yelled back from somewhere down the forest path. Yenni shot off after the sound of his voice.

“Weh-sheh!”

“Yenni!” he called back, fainter this time. She stopped, trying to place him. His voice was coming from somewhere in the woods, off the path. Sure enough, up ahead she saw a spot where the trees had been disturbed, the ground stirred up by large, dragging footprints.

She ignored her tracker’s instincts, pulling on her speed runes and crashing through the scrub and branches. At the moment it was far more important to get to Weysh than to be stealthy. Her heart seemed to race faster than her frantic steps. What was going on? Why did he not change to Dragon?

At last she came to a clearing—a tiny spot of grass and wildflowers surrounded by thick trunks and a shivering umbrella of greenery overhead. She spun, looking for some clue as to where he could have gone, but she saw no footprints, no broken branches, nothing to indicate where to go. She cursed herself for not painting a focus rune across her eyes, but the shocked and scared looks she received from Creshens when she did had become so tiresome, and she had been with Weysh besides.

“Weh-sheh!” she shouted again.

Her answer was a pinch of pain on her stomach.

Yenni dropped into tortoise stance to defend herself and held her spear in front of her. A familiar, wooden clacking echoed through the clearing, and Yenni gasped. Cold sweat slid down the side of her face.

Oh divine Mothers and Fathers, not this.

She wondered if she was having another dream as out of the trees of the Creshen forest, tall, dark, and horribly surreal, stepped a rune puppet.

35