When Syliva and her entourage left, Esula the dryad remained. On silent feet she followed the caravan through the woods, followed them north—not west, as the bearded one claimed—through the thickets and groves. They were loud and noisy. Their presence attracted all manner of voracious beasts and angered denizens. Esula wondered how they could find the will to carry on, when so many of their number fell to the inhabitants of the Vastglen. Then she remembered what the northern reaches of the Vastglen hid—Sylcara. That ancient ruin she so longed to visit. The one place in the forest forbidden to her and her kind. The precious secret of Sylvia, from which she was prohibited. Then she understood their fervor, their dauntless march through the shadowed wood. For who would not wish to uncover the ancient arcana and relics that the place held?
Esula’s next revelation was that she should not be doing this alone. She stepped into a pine tree beside her and out of a sycamore, tens of miles away. Around her satyrs danced and reveled. The juxtaposition of the silence of the northern stretch of forest and the reveler’s glade stunned her for a moment, and then she was part of the dance, swept up in the movement of bodies, the thud of hooves, the wail and warble of the pipes. This was the satyrs’ way. For how long she danced she could not tell. Hours? Days? Weeks? When the music finally faded, she was exhausted, and slept for perhaps as long, sheltered within the trunk of a ribbon-strewn beech. Only now could she seek out her contacts: Myth and Levy.
These two satyr were different to the rest somehow. They piqued Esula’s curiosity, but she knew not to probe too deeply, lest she lose the favor of their patron, Cosa. She fluttered around the edge of the grove, through the low-hanging bows hung with bunting, until she spotted the pair drinking from their wineskins, sitting atop a tree stump as wide across as a carriage. She approached quietly, then whispered to the pair.
“Myth, Levy, it is I, Esula, daughter of the forest.”
The two satyrs looked at her in surprise, then at each other with laughter in their eyes.
“Always so formal,” Myth chortled. “What is it you want, dryad? Some company through the night?”
Esula blushed, cherry blossoms blooming about her face.
“No,” she stammered. “I need to speak with Cosa.”
“To speak with us is to speak with her,” Levy replied curtly, clearly displeased by her answer.
Esula pondered the truthfulness of Levy’s statement for a moment, before deciding she had little to lose. If Cosa sent help, she’d finally gain entrance to Sylcara. If she didn’t, the caravan headed there might well break into the ruins anyway, and she’d still have her chance.
“The caravan Sylvia dismissed, the one with the supplies for the elves, do you remember it?”
“Surely,” Levy replied. “It’s the first in years.”
“They’re not headed west, but north,” Esula said with gravity.
The pair of satyrs stared at her, not comprehending her meaning. Esula stepped closer.
“To Sylcara,” she whispered, barely audible.
Still, the pair seemed confused.
“The ruins? The one place in the Vastglen we’re forbidden entry? You must know of it?”
Myth shrugged.
“Nope, but if you think Cosa would be interested, we’ll pass the message along.”
Deflated, Esula merely nodded, and stepped back into the shadows of the forest. To Myth and Levy, it seemed as if she melted into the foliage.
“Worth bothering Cosa about, you think?” asked Levy.
“Sure It might afford us the chance to butcher some terrified mortals lost in an endless wood, after all.”
Levy laughed mercilessly, her split tongue lashing the air between her fang-like teeth. A dark fire flared within her as she rose from the stump and the pair began racing along the trails out of the grove.