Of Root and Riddle
Eighteenth Day of Olweje-eza (Olweje Ascending) 1348 A. L. (After Landfall)
There is a part of you that wonders at the prospect of binding the foe to your service, not as they are, for you would not trust them with blade at your back, much less with strange magic, but rather as one of them had sought to do to you.
Was it he, was it one of the dead, you wonder uneasily, gazing about at the twilight woods beside bright path? The giant makes it clear that service for a year will not involve revealing any of the secrets of your prisoner's past and so you are left at a quandary for how to find if the peril is past and who had been at its root.
It is of that worry that you take counsel with the others and it is Inge who gives you a solution, though grim it is in saying. "The bones of the dead remember what they have seen in life, some echo of the soul that was. Ikomi has not given me the gift of speaking their tongue, but we will find someone like that in the east I'm sure of it. Ilfa..." she stumbles a little over the name of her old master. "Ilfa was sure that the easterners were more versed in Her secrets than common rumor told."
"So be it then," you reply, marveling a little at your own willingness to take the heads of your foes like some chieftain of the ancient Gaels in the long dark years before even Rome rose on the banks of the Tiber, but then you doubt these spirit-kin would wish for a christian burial even if you were minded to give them one.
As Tom goes to collect the head and Inge adds her own healing touch to those of your men who still need it, you ask Zaia how many of the droughts he had made use of in the fight. Two you find, lower than you had feared but still a high price to pay for a single head tied to the saddle pummel...
"We should salt it before long lest it draw flies," the doctor notes with the same tone he might have taken if it was just a slab of meat. You are more than happy to leave him to the whole grim business and turn your thoughts to the reason you are even in this benighted forest to begin with.
The giant motions for you to follow him along the path a while longer traveling westward until in the distance you can hear a stream. It is a mere thread of water silver-bright that cuts across the path from wooded hollow to wooded hollow guarded on each side, or so it seems to you, by two great willows, leaning their heads mournfully towards the pittance of water. Here your new guide, who had finally gotten around to introducing himself as Lone Branch , leads you towards the south up the course of the water.
"I wonder if he will take us all the way to the well in the hills?" Silver muses as he places his steps carefully in the wake of the great churning roots. The other horses are clever enough to follow along where he does, but you doubt you would have as much luck were it not for his guidance and even so you had slowed to a relative crawl. At least the trees do not seem shrouded in ash here, not a speck of it on leaf or branch, leaving Zaia to wonder if all of it had been some sort of glamor laid on the forest, though Uhumbi does not know and Lone Branch does not seem minded to answer idle curiosity.
Just when you are considering if you aught to call a halt, as much of the heat of the noonday sun as the length of the journey you the forest ahead of you opens into a glade like an eye in the midst of the deep woods, fragrant flowers bloom at your feet and at the other end of it are four weathered basalt boulders that must have been hurled here by some mighty heaving of the earth, though long has the mantle of moss grown upon them.
"Those look almost like..." Inge trails off. "No, they are, they are thrones, just built for treants."
It takes you a moment to realize that must be the proper word for walking tree, but once you do it is obvious than this must be some sort of meeting place for the elders of the woods. You wonder if you must wait here in audience and how much it might take for Antonio might wait days past the due date for you, but not weeks and you had pledged to be there.
Thankfully it seems your fears are unfounded. Lone Branch seats himself with the sound of wooden limbs creaking on stone and then he motions for you to take your own seats... on the grass for there is no other place fit for anything smaller than a giant to sit. You speak your piece as you had been instructed entreating the spirits of the woods to keep to their old bargains and on swift wings carry news of the growing darkness.
For a long moment here is silence, then..."Speak for the stone herder you do, of the woods he is yet not, dwells in the houses of stone by the bitter water, knows he does that he would be questioned of where his true loyalty lies, but here he sends strangers for which the woods hold neither good will nor ill. Clever trick he has played on us." It is hard to say among the slowly spoken words of Lone Branch admires the whit or disproves of trickery. But then he turns eyes like old amber shinning onto you and asks. "Tell me mortal man do you think we should extract a price from Ohun Greenbelt fot for his conduct or count it by his cleverness paid?"
Zaia whispers urgently from your left. "If we do the latter it may be an agreement that the price fall on us."
What do you reply?
[] The fey should seek such assurance of Ohun's fealty as they wish, you are but a messenger
[] They fey should not count price and bargain when the enemies of all are as near as Koman, perhaps nearer
[] Write in
OOC: The fact that you found the treant means you did not have to roll anymore encounters. Nothing in this forest is going to mess with him. Not yet edited. 
