The monster sprang to attack as Rayne shouted for Shalanda and her healing hands. It came around the tree and slammed into Rayne's machine. The beast was massively muscled with long legs. Its head was roughly canine in build but was twice the size of a great bear's. Its body was tremendous and bulbous and belied its great speed, and its skin was tight and looked to split as it roared.

"Somebody kill that thing!" Rayne shouted as she jumped free from her machine. The monster pushed the runner over and gripped the mechanical legs. It ripped a limb loose and howled with victory. Rayne ran for a riderless runner as the thresher beast ripped more parts from its metal victim. It must have tired of the metallic taste because it pursued her with leaping bounds. Then it spotted Boyle running for his trapped craft and followed him. He jumped for his runner and its weapons and started to swing himself aboard.

"Mother!" he screamed as the thresher beast's claws hooked into his calf. The muscle stripped away, and his other leg broke as his body was pulled free of the saddle. Boyle was face down but scrambling, his eyes wide and teeth clenched. The monster had run past him, and it scrapped its claws clean of Boyle's flesh as it turned to continue the attack.

Boyle was in the midst of the dead Keldon warriors, and he drew a sword from one of the fallen men. Rayne could see him sitting up and waving it in defiance as she got aboard an abandoned machine. Rayne laid the sights on the thresher beast, but the creature was upon Boyle again. The scout swung his newly acquired weapon. The sword sheared into a claw and a spray of blood and poison coated one side of his face.

Boyle looked at Rayne. "Shoot!" he screamed and then fell silent as the thresher beast continued its attack. Rayne fired a stream of bolts and felt the world drop away as Boyle's body took several hits. The thresher beast howled again. The giant beast flung itself to the side as Rayne's bolts spent themselves on a pile of slave and Keldon corpses. Its eyes locked on Rayne. Blood poured from wounds in its chest and front legs. The beast walked stiff legged, its rage obvious with every faltering move. Rayne knew she could outrun it, but she wanted it to die and readied herself to attack with the runner's wings.

A growing howl turned her attention from the monster in front of her. Another thresher beast stood over the dead slaves. The new thresher beast was smaller than the wounded beast advancing on Rayne, but it still out-massed a good-sized horse. It ignored the corpses in front of it and advanced slowly on the wounded monster. The bloody monster put its back to a tree and readied itself for battle. It glanced toward Rayne as if to promise a reckoning.

Rayne backed her machine toward Jolreal. Shalanda and the other scout were at their machines but made no move to use the bolt casters. Rayne wondered if they had enough bolts to kill the monsters. She looked quickly at Jolreal, The sorceress was beginning to tremble once again, and Rayne knew that soon there would be two monsters attacking the scouts. But then she saw her aide tense as she gathered power.

Shalanda was a healer, but it was destruction that she called up. Her head snapped back and blood poured from her nose. Rayne could hear a roar arcing through the sky, then Shalanda's wrath fell. The strike brushed against the tree trunk as it hammered the ground. A hail of splinters pierced everyone in the area. Rayne stared in shock at the chunk of wood through her side.

The monsters were alive, though spears of heartwood pierce both their hides. Jolreal lay on the ground, a victim of strain or Shalanda's attack. The monsters turned toward Rayne, and the scholar knew that her party would die as a great crack of sound broke her concentration and she looked up.

Her eyes picked up a twig falling gently to the ground. The twig grew and grew, expanding to huge dimensions. It was a log, several feet thick, and it slammed into the two thresher beasts, ending the battle in a wave of gore.

It was hours before Rayne and the others could leave. Shalanda aided Jolreal first at Rayne's insistence. The waves of healing energy from Shalanda's hand washed through the sorceress's body, and soon Jolreal was awake and talking. Rayne waited patiently for her aide to begin work on her wounds but pressed Jolreal for an explanation of the thresher beast's attack.

"I don't know," Jolreal stammered as she took in the blood and corpses, her eyes lingering longest on Boyle's body. "I tried to command the creatures, but when I tried to enfold it in the spirit of the forest, I was pushed away. Not only did the thresher beast resist, but also the land itself was distant. I could not draw power, and the thresher beast would not stop fighting. My body and mind stumbled under attack." She took a deep breath. "Perhaps there is a buried city or ancient Keldon battlefield nearby-something that poisons the land and drained my strength.

"After I lost the first monster, I tried to call up something to fight the first. The other thresher beast was nearby, and I could command it with some difficulty." Jolreal sighed. "I knew my command of this one was weak, but it was close by and already a danger to us. I just hoped to use it against the first beast." Shalanda returned from her examination of the prisoners and the other scouts.

"Only four of us remain, and the big Keldon webbed to the dead one survived. I collected Boyle and our other scout. There is a deep depression off to the side where we can bury them. What do we do now?" Shalanda asked.

Jolreal still seemed dazed, and Rayne answered after a few seconds' pause, "We'll bury our people, keep our prisoner tied and doped up, and ride for home."

The scouts rode for a week back toward camp. The prisoner said nothing, being drugged and tied upright to a pole

Rayne rigged on a runner. The smooth stride of the runner and the last of their medical supplies kept him reasonably compliant. Perhaps it was the deaths of their comrades, but even the successful capture of the Keldon officer couldn't raise the scouts' spirits. Jolreal and Shalanda felt particularly listless, and guard duty at night was an ordeal since a watch had to be kept on the prisoner at all times. Even the land seemed to reflect the mood, as Rayne noticed patches of blight in the grass and trees.

"Is that normal?" Rayne asked, pointing to withered vegetation along a ridgeline.

"I'm not sure what normal is anymore," Jolreal said tiredly. "I failed to control a beast of the forest. Perhaps it was the effects of some ancient magic or the thresher beast's lure, but I couldn't grasp it. Now everything feels off, as if a piece of that monster was caught in my head."

"I feel different too," Shalanda joined in. "I cast my power out to kill instead of heal. Now the world seems… sour somehow."

That two magic users should feel a change was worrisome, Rayne thought. Perhaps this wrongness was something that needed to be investigated. If only they weren't burdened by their prisoner.

At last the party reached the base camp, and Rayne felt relief as the Keldon was put in a proper stockade and she could get a full night's sleep. The next morning saw her and Shalanda inside the camp headquarters. They would discover what they had brought back to the League.

The building was dark and cramped. Rayne and the others seated themselves to the side. The room reminded the scholar of a courtroom, and Rayne wondered if she should oversee the interrogation.

Camp Commander Priget inspired no confidence in the scholar. Small and fat, he squinted from behind a heavy desk. He was pale, and Rayne wondered if Priget ever went outside. The night before he had listened to Jolreal giving her account of the scouting expedition in obvious disbelief. Only the sight of the drugged warrior outside his office had silenced his snorts of incredulity. The commander had taken the prisoner, and Jolreal had been too exhausted to argue.