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As Gweneth had predicted, they arrived at the edge of Sirione Forest within a few days, but to Zelda’s dismay, there were Wilde Women there waiting for them. It was only a small group, but Zelda knew enough about Wilde Women to be wary. These women were – like the other Wilde Women Zelda had seen – quite tall and muscular and draped in animal hides, with warpaint striped across their faces, and grim expressions. They were also wearing bones as breastplates and helms.
The woman who stood at the forefront of the group wore the skull of a young dragon upon her mess of black hair. She stared at them with serious, slanted eyes.
“Wilde Women of the Dragon Clan,” said Gweneth in an undertone to the others. “They must’ve watched us cross the fields.” She was staring steadily at the women, and she looked wary, though her hand had not gone to her sword hilt and remained instead on Bron’s reins.
“Shall we slay them?” wondered Calain, who reminded Zelda painfully of Aereth in that moment. Like Aereth, Calain’s solution was always to slay first, ask questions later. It was how they’d all come to be standing there in the first place, for Calain had slain the queen of Eriallon without pause. Had she learned nothing?
“No,” said Gweneth at once. “The Wilde Women of Dragon do not pick pointless battles. They are powerful, but they are cautious. If they are here, it is to learn why we seek to enter their forest.”
“We will speak with that one,” called the lead Wilde Woman, pointing her meaty hand at Gweneth. “For she is one of the sheep people and understands our ways.”
“The sheep people?” Calain echoed, puzzled.
Gweneth sighed. “My tribe . . . herded sheep,” she explained.
“Don’t let Gweneth go, Mother,” begged Aereth. “They shall kill her!”
“Hush, little bear,” soothed Zelda.
Her eyes on the lead Wilde Woman, Gweneth dismounted and moved forward.
“Tred carefully, Gweneth,” said Cassandra as she passed.
The other knights dismounted as well, and so did Zelda, pulling Aereth down from the saddle. All of them watched as Gweneth moved forward through the grass, until she was facing the lead Wilde Woman, who also left the safety of her group to approach. Zelda realized it was a show of trust: both had made themselves vulnerable to the other group.
Aereth clung to Zelda’s hand, and Zelda noticed that her fearless daughter was yet again intrigued by a situation she should have been terrified of. Instead, Aereth was goggling at the Wilde Women in silent admiration and wonder. Her little sword was harnessed to her back, and Zelda knew she was itching for an excuse to use it. But against a Wilde Woman? Zelda tightened her hold on Aereth, thinking she would cast a light-shield around them if there was any fighting.
“I am Eydis, queen of the Dragon Clan,” said the Wild Woman with the dragon skull upon her head. “Why do you bring strangers to Ellormest, sheep woman?”
“I am Gweneth, a Falcon Knight and a sheep woman no longer,” Gweneth answered. “I bring my fellow knights, our lady, and her child. We seek refuge. We shall cause you and the nomad tribes no trouble.”
Eydis snorted. “Unless you draw the Rose Guard here,” she said shrewdly. “If you bring the Queen-slayer and her sorceress, then you bring trouble. We cannot freely allow you entry. If you seek entry, we shall each choose a champion and let the gods decide.” So saying, Eydis made a beckoning gesture, and a large woman with a two-handed sword on her back stepped forward. “I choose Olga.”
Big Olga flexed, and little Aereth’s green eyes grew round as she gazed up at her in awe. Zelda didn’t blame her daughter for her amazement: Olga must’ve been seven feet tall and was bugling with so many muscles, Zelda wondered how it was possible that she could move at all. Her sandy hair was a wild tangle around her, and she was draped in skimpy animal hides and dragon bones.
“Well?” said Eydis, who was now looking directly at Zelda. “Choose your champion and let’s have done with this. I have children to feed.”
Zelda saw the Knights of Falcon all turn toward her as one, draw their swords, and plunge their blades into the earth, taking a knee before her. They bowed their heads and waited for her to choose one of them.
Zelda hesitated. She thought the entire thing was foolish, and she didn’t understand why anyone needed to fight. Why couldn’t the Wilde Women just stand aside and let them through? She thought for a moment of pulling the Summoning Stone and calling Arryn. If Arryn was truly the Dragon of Edhen, then she could grant them entry, couldn’t she? But the Wilde Women might misinterpret it as Zelda casting an offensive spell and attack.
“Choose, Mother!” said Aereth excitedly. She was still clinging to Zelda’s hand and looked up at her mother with eager green eyes, her little face framed by sheets of tangled auburn hair.
Zelda’s eyes went from knight to knight. They were all still kneeling before her, heads down, eyes down, dutifully waiting. She didn’t want any of them to fight against Olga, who looked fearsome enough to slay even a Knight of the Falcon, but Calain was the best fighter, the strongest and the most skilled, and Calain had defeated a Wilde Woman before . . .. Zelda had the most faith in her abilities.
“I choose Calain,” Zelda said.
The other Knights of Falcon weren’t surprised. They rose to their feet again and sheathed their swords (Gweneth was smirking), as Calain approached Olga, her sword drawn.
“May the best warrior win,” said Eydis tonelessly, who looked as if she’d rather be elsewhere.
And then the fighting began. It was as if Calain were fighting Yrsa all over again. Olga was a head taller than Calain and her blows were so brutal, Calain staggered beneath her weight as she parried. Their blades crossed and clashed as they fought in desperate silence, grunting and struggling, panting and gasping. Calain wasn’t as big as Olga, but she was wild, passionate, and skilled, often tripping up the bigger woman and giving as good as she got.
Aereth watched, mesmerized, as the two big warrior women struggled against each other. Zelda thought of covering the girl’s eyes but it suddenly seemed useless. What was the point trying to hide the world’s ugliness from the child? Especially when she would probably be a woman in a mere matter of days?
Calain’s mouth was dripping blood and she looked weary but she never paused, never hesitated, never ceased fighting, no matter how Olga cut her, kicked her, or punched her. Zelda couldn’t stand it and thought she would burst if she had to see Calain harmed again. And just when she was on the verge of protesting, Calain disarmed Olga and followed up with an elbow to Olga’s face, dropping her to a knee.
As Calain stood panting over Olga (who bowed her head in defeat), the Wilde Women looked at her with quiet approval, and Eydis nodded sternly. “The gods have spoken,” Eydis said, and she and the Wilde Women stepped aside.
Zelda and the Knights of Falcon led their horses past kneeling Olga and through the avenue of solemn Wilde Women. Aereth skipped smugly beside Zelda and kept beaming up at Calain. And as soon as they were within the trees of Sirione, the girl couldn’t stop gushing about how amazing Calain was and was still ranting on as they made camp.
“And then she brought the sword down again and I thought she would kill her,” Aereth ranted at Gweneth, who was listening in weary amusement, “but Calian got her at the last minute, sliced her arm and disarmed her just like that!”
Selene knelt to dig out a firepit as Cassandra went into the trees to look for firewood. Gweneth went to look for firewood as well, little Aereth hopping in her shadow and helpfully collecting twigs.
Calain pulled up a log and sat heavily on it. She was still bloody and injured from the fight. Zelda sat beside her and took her hand, sliding off the gauntlet and unbuckling the vambrace from which her blood dripped.
“My poor knight,” said Zelda heavily. Her eyes glowed as she touched Calain’s arm and healed her injuries.
“Worry not,” said Calain, flexing her newly-healed arm so that the muscles bulged. She smiled at Zelda. “I was glad to fight for my lady again.” Her eyes softened, she touched Zelda’s face, and they kissed.
Selene glanced up at them as she dug out the firepit, and she had a strange sort of expression. Zelda couldn’t decide if she was jealous she hadn’t been chosen to fight Olga or glad for once that she wasn’t Zelda’s favorite. But before she could ponder it, she noticed Selene clutching momentarily at her heart. The dark knight was frowning and her eyes unseeing as she stared into space.
“What is ailing you, my knight?” Zelda asked Selene and was half-rising from her seat.
Selene smiled, but it was a weak, false smile, and Zelda could see the sadness in her dark eyes. “Nothing ails me, my lady. A little heartburn, tis all. Blame Calain’s poor cooking.”
Calain laughed and playfully threw a handful of grass at Selene, who laughed and blocked the spray with her arm.
Zelda wasn’t convinced, but knowing she would never get the truth from Selene, she decided to play along and secretly observe her.
“Will I be as big as Calain one day?” Aereth asked Gweneth, hopping along in her wake as the knight returned with firewood.
“You’ll be as big as a mountain,” laughed Gweneth, who Zelda knew was thinking of Yrsa, the bear queen.
Like Olga, Yrsa had been more than six feet tall and covered with bulging muscles. Zelda found it hard to imagine her cute, skinny, squeaky-voiced daughter growing into a giant muscle-bound slayer of beasts. The very thought horrified her more and more, for Aereth kept growing and growing. The child was approaching adolescence in what seemed the blink of an eye.
For the first time, Zelda thought she understood what had made Melvalda want to turn Cassandra into a child. Zelda was tempted to cast a similar spell on Aereth, make her stop growing, or at least grow at the rate of a normal child. But growing rapidly was common in the babes of Wilde Women, and to interfere with what was natural in Aereth – even if it was different and strange – would be to violate her. And so, Zelda resigned herself to watching helplessly as her child quite literally grew overnight into a woman.
They continued on through Sirione, following the lead of Gweneth, who knew the way to Edhen by heart, having lived near it the first seven years of her life. They camped in the evenings, while Selene and Cassandra went out to hunt for them, while Calain sang songs and Gweneth told stories. No one spoke of the Dragon of Edhen again, though Zelda knew it had to be on everyone’s minds, even Aereth, who she sometimes noticed gazing at the sky eagerly, as if she might spot the dragon flying overhead.
Zelda thought the forest of Sirione as beautiful and serene as Dark Bloom, though there weren’t nearly as many flowers, and instead of a constant shadowy gloom – caused by the dark shade of the leaves in the trees – the trees here had leaves of a brighter green, which made the sunlight that filtered through even brighter. There were also no goblins or signs of Skoll Wolves, though Gweneth cautioned them against trolls, who slept in the shallow surface of the ground, often covered in moss and mud.
As Gweneth had described, there were ancient statues, towering stone pillars, and crumbling buildings throughout the forest, and they passed many of them as they walked in their tight procession, leading the nervous horses on. Some nights they even camped between the broken walls of the ancient buildings, taking shelter against the wind and rain and lying on their backs, gazing up at the stars through the shifting canopy of leaves overhead.
The statues were all of giant elves in flowing gowns and robes, clutching books and staves, long hair blowing back, the delicate tips of their pointed ears and noses always having broken off. They were massive, rising as high as the towering trees, so that their heads disappeared into the bright green canopy above.
Zelda remembered Gweneth saying that there used to be large elven cities in Ellormest and that Sirione Forest had grown over them, pulling the buildings and houses down into the earth. She tried to imagine what the area had looked like without trees blocking the heads of the statues. The trees themselves were so enormous, they broke the statues and pillars with their roots as they burst from the soil.
“My ancestors,” Cassandra said, gazing with interest at the elven statues as they passed beneath an avenue of stone elven scholars clutching books and staring solemnly into space. “The ancient Tula-Dan.”
“Aye,” said Gweneth. “The Tula-Dan were the first elven race, weren’t they? But then elves started breeding with humans, and they became . . .” She glanced sideways at Aereth, who was listening keenly, and Zelda knew she wanted to say “elflings” but did not, instead saying without skipping a beat, “Smaller elves.”
Cassandra and Selene smiled, having noticed Gweneth’s silent struggle as well.
“Elfling” wasn’t exactly a slur, but it wasn’t a nice word, either. One thing Zelda had dreaded about Aereth’s doting on Gweneth was that the child would start speaking like Gweneth. But thankfully, Gweneth had decided to censor herself for the child’s benefit.
On a particularly windy day, one of the statues suddenly toppled over. The knights shouted, and Zelda barely had time to recognize the shadow falling over her before the statue was barreling her way. With no time to react, she cringed, resigned to her fate – and slowly opened her eyes when nothing happened.
Zelda slowly looked up. She expected to see Calain or Selene, but it was Aereth who had caught the statue, preventing it from crushing Zelda alive. Aereth held the enormous statue above her head on skinny arms, grinning from beneath it at Zelda, her face smeared with dirt. With the lift of her arms, the fabric of her tunic was pulled back against her, and Zelda noticed with silent horror that her daughter was growing breasts.
“Tis all right, Mother!” Aereth squealed, seeing the anxiety on Zelda’s face. “I have saved you!”
Zelda’s eyes went to the giant statue Aereth was holding and her mouth fell open.
The knights were impressed by Aereth’s display of supernatural strength, but Zelda was absolutely horrified. For her, it was just more evidence that her daughter was rapidly growing up, and there was nothing she could do about it. Aereth was growing breasts and was getting as tall as an adolescent. In a couple weeks, would she be a woman? Would she leave them and run off to join the Wilde Women? Perhaps the Dragon Clan would take her, and then they would never see her again. And what could Zelda say to stop her? She could not tell a grown woman what to do.
That night, Cassandra had first watch yet again, and because Sirione was such a peaceful, tranquil forest, the sorceress-knight took watch alone. The other knights slept around the low fire, wrapped in cloaks, gently breathing. Aereth had chosen Selene for a pillow and was dozing soundly with her head on the knight’s breastplate. Zelda frowned at them, thinking that soon Aereth would be too big even for that.
Zelda sat around the fire with Cassandra, unable to rest for her troubles. She stared into flames, trying to understand what the point of a rapidly growing child was. Was it by design or just a side-effect of the potion, an accident? She supposed it made sense that the Wilde Women would want to rapidly breed, especially the Black Bear Clan, who seemed so determined to take Dark Bloom from the elven Wilde Women. Yrsa had indeed boasted about producing a horde of daughters and having them take over the forest.
“What troubles you, sorceress?” Cassandra asked. She was sitting beside Zelda with her knees apart, idly snapping twigs and tossing them in the flames. It was such a simple, casual thing to do, that for a moment, Cassandra seemed like a normal person – and not a sorceress-knight who could dream walk, predict the future, and lift a loaded wagon over her head.
“Aereth,” said Zelda wretchedly. “She caught that enormous statue as if ‘twere nothing!”
“You have seen us pull similar feats, for we are as strong. And you yourself have lifted heavy objects with your mind,” Cassandra gently reminded her.
“Yes,” said Zelda wretchedly, “but it’s just proof that Aereth is growing up! Cassandra. . . she is growing breasts!” said Zelda, as if this were the most horrid thing in the world.
Cassandra laughed softly. “Fair Zelda, why is that such an awful thing?”
“Don’t you understand?” said Zelda almost desperately. “Soon she shall start bleeding, and then she shall leave us! That damned curse Anindel put on her will pull her into Elwenhal. She shall wed the fairy queen’s daughter, and we won’t see her for long years at a time!”
Cassandra reached over and put a comforting arm around Zelda. “I am sorry I could not prevent what happened. I did my best to protect her.”
“No, don’t you go blaming yourself again!” Zelda scolded. “This was no one’s fault but Anindel’s. None of us could have predicted what happened . . .” Her voice trailed off as she realized who she was speaking to, and she looked at Cassandra awkwardly and said, “That is . . . I mean . . .”
Cassandra smiled.
“You still aren’t to blame!” Zelda insisted. “It isn’t as if you could control your visions.”
“True enough. But Aereth growing up won’t suddenly end your relationship with her, Zelda. She will still visit us, and if we ever get around to teaching her letters, I am sure she shall write.”
“That’s right,” Zelda sighed. “We haven’t educated her! I suppose she’d be fine without knowing her runes. I mean, most of the Wilde Women can’t read or write, and they’re . . . fine. Aren’t they?” she said uncertainly and wrung her fingers, looking up at Cassandra with helpless blue eyes. “But suppose she can’t find a clan? She’ll need to know how to read and write to survive in the city, and we—”
“Calm yourself, fair Zelda,” said Cassandra soothingly and rubbed Zelda’s shoulder. “Aereth will be fine. We shall teach her everything we know—how to fight, how to cast spells, how to survive in this world – and when she is ready, she will go forth and she will thrive.”
Zelda didn’t know why, but the confidence in Cassandra’s words comforted her. All the panic, worry, and fear drained slowly out of her, her heart slowed, and she dropped her head against Cassandra’s shoulder. Cassandra was still rubbing Zelda’s shoulder, and she was not wearing her gauntlets. Her hard, strong hand gripped tightly on Zelda’s shoulder a moment, then moved to the front of Zelda’s gown. It was the gown Cassandra had bought her weeks ago in Priine, the blue maternity gown that had pockets in the front that opened, allowing her to breastfeed. Cassandra slowly pulled the front laces, and Zelda watched as one of her heavy breasts spilled out.
Zelda’s breasts had stopped producing milk, but they were still plump and full and large, and the pink nipple was hard, in rigid anticipation of Cassandra’s touch. Gray eyes narrowed in hunger, Cassandra’s eyes turned from Zelda’s exposed breast to her lips. She gently turned Zelda’s face to hers, and as she kissed her, her hard hand closed on Zelda’s breast in a careful massage.
Zelda kissed Cassandra back breathlessly, her cheeks flaming as the pleasure flushed through her. Cassandra’s kiss deepened as her hand massaged Zelda’s heavy breast, and her tongue slid slow and hard in Zelda’s mouth, thrusting against Zelda’s tongue with an insistence that made her shiver. They turned their heads through the kiss, and Zelda could feel Cassandra’s other hand reach for her. In seconds, she was in Cassandra’s lap, her back against the knight’s breastplate as she gently tugged the rest of the fabric down, exposing both of Zelda’s breasts.
Zelda leaned back against Cassandra, her large breasts lifting, and as Cassandra cupped her breasts from under and massaged them, Zelda turned her head, their breathless mouths found each other, and they kissed hungrily again. Zelda moaned before she could stop herself, and Cassandra pulled back, whispering, “Hush!” so that her lips brushed Zelda’s lips. They kissed desperately again.
Cassandra’s touch was hard and fervent, as if she had longed for this moment for days. It wasn’t the same as sex in a dream. In a dream, the sensations were dulled because it wasn’t real. Here, every touch, caress, and kiss was magnified by a thousand, so intense that Zelda could feel Cassandra’s hands long after they had stopped groping her.
As they continued kissing, one of Cassandra’s hands released Zelda’s breast and tugged up her skirt, revealing her panties. Her hand smoothed over Zelda’s thigh, and she carefully placed both Zelda’s thighs over her own, spreading her legs so that Zelda’s legs were spread as well. And then her hand had plunged down the front of Zelda’s panties and was hungrily touching.
Zelda moaned again as they kissed. Cassandra’s careful fingers were massaging her clitoris, which had already been pumping, but now it throbbed harder and faster, helplessly exposed to Cassandra’s insistent touch.
Still fingering Zelda’s clitoris and groping hard at her breast, Cassandra’s kisses traveled down Zelda’s neck to her shoulder. Up and down Zelda’s neck and shoulder her hungry mouth continued, back and forth, until Zelda was shivering and blushing and on the verge of a sudden climax. Her head fell back against Cassandra, and her pink lips parted to cry out, but Cassandra was quick. Her hand released Zelda’s breast (which jiggled hard from the motion) and covered her mouth firmly, muffling her cry, as she continued to fondle Zelda’s clitoris to a hard pulse.
Mouth covered, breasts exposed, Zelda squirmed in Cassandra’s lap, lost in a helpless daze of ecstasy, and it wasn’t until she was trembling and in the middle of climaxing that she noticed Aereth watching them in wide-eyed fascination from behind the tendrils of her auburn hair.