{ELEMENTISTS OF WILLOW FOREST BOOK V} The Journey Across Water

Glowing Embers

 1:  Glowing Embers

Julliet poked the logs the fire was feeding on with a stick.  It hissed, crackled, and then roared up.  She sat there for a while, watching the pigeons her sister had shot slowly roast.  Hunger gnawed at her stomach.

She looked around the moonlit camp.  Avril was cleaning and arranging her knives.  Marc and Talia were testing a joke on a very unenthusiastic looking Frédéric.  Minuitte and Casper were chopping logs.  Seraphine, her sister, was nowhere around.  The last time she'd heard of Rex and Cléante were them drawing up maps in Rex's tent.

Seraphine reappeared from behind a tree.  She, Minuitte and Caspar joined her, Talia, Mark and Frédéric in a circle around the fire.

"Do you ever wonder about them?"  Julliet asked the assembled.  "The Burner and the Guardian of the Greenwood?"

Mark shrugged.  "Not really.  They're probably still at their different camps.  We haven't heard anything different from the Dark Wolves."

He didn't mean that they communicated with the Dark Wolves regularly.  He meant that they hadn't heard anything new from them when they tried to tease information out of them before they killed them.

Rex and Cléante emerged from the tent.  "Something must be up between them, though."  The former said.  "All the Dark Wolves we've encountered within the last week-"

"A dozen in the Alps, fifty-three in the Paris region, two half an hour ago, about one hundred and four on Monday..." Frédéric reeled off.

"-Were heading west."  Rex continued.  "Towards England."

Silence.  All ten of Les Serpents Rouges knew were the Burner and the Guardian of the Greenwood were, and what it hinted was to happen in the Song.  If one of them was trying to summon all the Dark Wolves to England...

Well, look at what happened last time.

"So," Rex said, "The question is..."

"Do we hunt them down, or let them pass through?"  Seraphine finished for him.

"Exactly."  Cléante said.  "We fight to avenge Lady Eleanor, and will for aeons to come.  But with Lady Eleanor comes the daughter of Hephzibah.  The Guardian of the Greenwood.  If it is her summoning the Dark Wolves, then we should not stop her.  On behalf of Lady Eleanor."

All ten shivered at the thought of going against Lady Eleanor.

"If it is the Burner doing it..."  Talia prompted.

"We have no direct loyalties there."  Rex said coolly.  "We should not automatically be against him just because Hephzibah is."

"Hephzibah is for Lady Eleanor, though."  Minuitte reminded.  "Therefore we are for Hephzibah."

Silence.

"Let's think of it this way."  Caspar said.  "Our there any reasons why we would want to side with the Burner?"

"The younger one."  Julliet gushed instantly.

Avril smiled fondly.  "You all remember her, don't you?  Our little flame, which ran with us?"

"Yes."  Rex said.  "Sasha Brunner."