She was about to put voice to those thoughts and looked at her brother, but when she saw the alarm etched upon his features she frowned deeply and focused upon the tree again. Something had caught his attention, but what-
And then she heard them. The babies. All the children Wild Edric had sired upon the pretty young girls of Blackbriar, girls still of an age when the image of a brooding warrior come to court them still lingered in their dreaming hearts. But why would Edric have stolen the babies himself, have swapped them with such gruesome, inhuman substitutes?
It was a question for later, after the babies had been returned to the safety of the village, and their mother's arms. Tamara glanced around the forest, listened to the skittering of things in the undergrowth. She felt confident that she and William could protect the children, but not here. Not now. Now, they just had to focus on getting out of there.
"Tam," her brother whispered.
She spun around, attuned to the grave inflection of his voice. William had moved nearer to the tree and just to the left. The silver light that bloomed upon his fingertips cast a shuddery glow upon the bark of the tree. There were folds in the shadowy tree trunk, knots and protrusions that seemed almost to suggest faces. Others seemed like gashes in the bark.
