The Collector

Prologue

She was strong, and she was fast. The wind of the coming storm, whistling between the trees and sending smaller creatures scurrying for shelter, made her fur undulate in waves as she paused in her running to sniff at the air. Her friend was close, and his howl had told her that he had found something that he thought she should see for herself. Assured that she was on the right path, she took off again, loping through the underbrush and finding paths and clear spaces with a supernatural ease. She caught the scent of frightened prey as she ran, and was tempted to follow it and catch a good meal for the night, but her friend's call had been insistent and worried. She pressed onwards, strong legs carrying her swiftly, and soon she burst from the forest and into the sparsly treed hills that lay beyond it. There her friend was, nearly invisible in the dark sky but clear to her eyes and more than obvious to her nose with the wind blowing the way it was.

He was a great Dire Wolf, older than he seemed, and more intelligent than any human would imagine. His body bore the scars of many battles, some the jagged and torn patterns of tooth and claw, but others were the clean and straight lines of man-forged weapons. In his youth he had been taken by a powerful Wizard, his intelligence raised and his strength bolstered so that he could become a guard animal for the tower the mage had constructed. When the mage had fallen to a rival, her friend had managed to escape his servitude, but there was no way to change him back to what he had been before. He had survived for long years outside the society of Wolves, a tormented merging of human mind and Wolf instinct, he had been on the verge of going mad when he found her.

"Shaia," he called to her as she began to lope up the hill he crouched at the top of. The name rang clearly in her head, though he used neither human speech nor the simple communication of Wolves.

"I am here, Grey-Eye," she responded, though she was limited to Wolf-speak. The name she had given him when they had become friends was difficult for the Wolf language to convey, but she had long ago worked out a way to do it. "What is it you have seen to pull me away from the last hunt before a storm?"

"On the road from Keisallan, travelers," he replied, indicating that she should crouch next to him and observe as well.

She obliged him, settling her white-furred body down beside his grey-black one. He dwarfed her in every way, his jaws alone larger than her whole head, and she positioned herself so that his bulk would block most of the wind howling from the east. She peeked over the rise of the hill and down to the road below. The hard-dirt road, more of a well-traveled path, wound its way through the hills from the miles-distant trading city of Keisallan to the small town of Tranneth's Hollow, and while it wasn't uncommon to see travelers on it, it was rarely used at night, and never when one of the Great Storms was blowing in from the sea to the east. Tonight there was a band of six on the road, leading their horses and pack animals and leaning against the heavy winds.

"Brave ones," she said, cocking her head to the side and looking up at her friend. "But why call?"

"They are not normal travelers," Grey-Eye said, his thought-voice dropping to a growl. "There is magic with them, I can feel it. They have a Wizard, perhaps more than one. The large one looks like a Warrior, and the women move too confidently."

Shaia looked up at her friend for a long moment, and then began to change. The shape shift took only moments, the space of a few words in the common tongue, and when it was done in the place of the white wolf there was a beautiful young woman lying next to the great Dire Wolf. Her hair was long and pulled into a single braid that looked as if it hadn't been taken out for days, but still shone a starry silver in the weak light of the moon through the thickening clouds. Her eyes were of a matching colour, bright and energetic, and looked down upon the struggling men and women with deep interest. Her ears were sharply pointed, and though her face lacked the angular features of an Elf the ears and the smallness of her body had led many to believe she was one of those long-lived people. She was clothed in a plain shirt and pants of warm leather, soft boots covering her feet, and about her neck hung a silver chain with a medallion in the shape of a growing tree resting between her small breasts.

"Adventurers," she said aloud in the common trade language of the humanoid races, and Grey-Eye growled his agreement. "But why would they come to the Hollow? There is no treasure here, no dungeons to raid, no lost secrets to uncover."

"Perhaps they know something we do not," Grey-Eye said.

Shaia considered this for a moment, then shook her head. "There is the hills, the forest, and the Hollow, and nothing else for many leagues around. If there were something in the forest, we would know, if there were something in the hills, we would know again."

"Something in the Hollow?"

"Perhaps, I have heard no mention of it from the townsfolk when I go to speak and trade with them. They have lived in as good a harmony with nature as can be expected from common humans, had they been hiding more than the petty concerns of men I would have sensed it."

"Then why?" Grey-Eye wondered, more than a little worry in his thought-voice. "Adventurers do nothing that does not lead them to treasure or some piece of forgotten lore. They seek only to improve their skills and their power, and amass more wealth than any man has a right to."

"Some are not so terrible," she chided him, knowing from experience that his estimation was true for the overwhelming majority, even if it was not for all. "Even I considered it once, before I found my place in this forest, before I found a good friend in you," she smiled at the Dire Wolf, reaching out a hand to stroke at his scarred fur.

"Some are not so terrible," he conceded, leaning slightly in to her hand. "But even the better ones never do anything without good reason, and always drag trouble along with them."

"Then I suppose I'll be making a trip into town during the storm," Shaia sighed. "And I was so hoping to feast on a fresh kill and wait out the rains with a full belly and a warm den. Now I'll be locked in that inn with the girl who doesn't stop staring and the boy who nearly wets himself with lust whenever I so much as walk into the room. And the suspicious glances of the parents who think I am intentionally causing it all!"

"I will not be able to rest easy not knowing what they're doing here," Grey-Eye said.

"I know, and I'm doing this for you, my friend," Shaia replied. "I simply hope they will let me have a room to myself this time instead of sharing with that daughter of theirs again. I sometimes think she lusts after me more than her brother does, and I can't do anything about it without angering the parents to the point where . . ." her voice trailed off as her eyes locked on the last member of the Adventuring group making its way towards Tranneth's Hollow. He was average height for a human man, and while his form was slender he moved with a definite masculinity, a confidence of motion that was lacking even with the large man leading the group. He had stopped, his horse whinnying slightly at being left even further behind from the rest of the horses, and he was staring right at where Shaia and Grey-Eye lay.

"He sees us!" Grey-Eye said, tensing, but Shaia was quick to flatten her hand against him, warning him to stillness. She couldn't see his face, the hood of his cloak was pulled up over his head, but she could tell somehow that he hadn't spotted them. That he knew something was there was obvious, but he hadn't been able to identify it yet, and if the huge Wolf were to move, he would be spotted for sure.

Deep within her Shaia felt something stirring. Something about this man had touched off a swell of emotion in her that was quickly rising to the surface. Slowly the man brought his hands up to his hood, and then paused for a moment, as if considering, before throwing it back and revealing his face. Shaia caught herself as she gasped. To call the man handsome would be an insult to his beauty. Even with the increasing wind throwing his dark hair about his face his features screamed an absolute perfection that was at once strange and impossible, but also completely natural and right. Startling blue eyes looked out from an unlined face that held the traits of a mixed human-Elven parentage, scanning across the hilltops as he sought them out. Shaia flushed hot as desire hit her like a breaking wave, and it was only with an effort of will that she steadied her breathing.

"By all the Gods!" she said in a husky whisper. "I've never seen anything like him!"

Grey-Eye growled again, but remained still. "Now I believe I will rest even less easy should you go to the Hollow," his thought-voice said, spinning sarcasm through the words in a way that he had learned from his long-dead former master. "Can you control yourself around him long enough to learn his purpose, or will you bed him immediately?"

"What?" Shaia said, embarrassment mixing in with the desperate desire that still remained, even as the Half-Elf pulled his hood back over his head and continued down the road, abandoning his search of the hills. He was quickly out of sight in the growing darkness. "I will do no such thing!"

"And why not?" Grey-Eye said, amused at her embarrassment even as he worried over the presence of the Adventurers. "You want him, I could smell it forty paces upwind of you. You've never been reluctant to indulge yourself before."

"But, I …" Shaia spluttered, before finally giving up and laughing at her friend. "Yes, I admit it! I want him. But until I find out why he's here, it's probably better that I remain a little more distant from him and his group."

"And once you find out what we want to know?" Grey-Eye goaded, his large head turning to regard her. The large steel-colored eyes for which she had named him conveying all the emotions and thoughts that swirled in his magically-altered mind.

"Well, then I will have my way with him," Shaia said, grinning. "I wonder how experienced he is, perhaps I can learn something new."

"Yes, I wonder how experienced he is too," Grey-Eye said, the playfulness dropping out of his thought-voice as he turned his head again to stare in the direction the Adventurers had disappeared. "But I'd really prefer it if he didn't have anything new to show me…" His thought-voice trailed off just as a flash lit the hills, followed closely by the first peal of thunder in the storm.