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“You,” a low voice says, “are not a fair maiden.”
Baze pauses midstep, the rustle of his passage through the dense underbrush of the forest falling into silence with the cessation of motion. Briefly, he considers being afraid, because he is alone in a strange place, in this forest as black as the spaces between stars, and unarmed—before discarding the thought. Baze keeps his gaze turned towards nothing, the absolute darkness about the dense trees that surround them, and returns, “Well accused. I am not.”
“Sacrifices made to the lord are usually fair maidens,” the voice continues. It sounds faintly amused. Baze does not flinch when he suddenly feels the dry slide of scales slip against his bare left ankle. “This is something of a change.”
“Am I not comely enough?” Baze cannot help but reply. “Certainly I have adequate flesh upon my bones – smell sweet enough – to satisfy.” The dense trees about him seem to lean closer at his words, as though assessing him. He does not think he imagines the way the brush plucks at the hems of his sleeves and robes as a slight breeze stirs the air. He has left the marked path far behind him, safe passage a memory discarded at his heels: he is at the mercy of this land and its lord, tempted it as he has sworn himself to do, to spare another from the same.
Sacrifice. The terms required sacrifice, and who of the allied could they have given? Who could they have spared? Shara Bey, heavy with child alongside her mares, her chin held high and proud, her hair unbound? Leia Organa, silvertongued and fey, who spoke hard truths with even harder eyes fastened upon those that addressed her, barely more than a babe? Jyn Erso, wary and watching, a sentinel in the shadows, whose aim Baze himself had helped her hone, hardly older than Leia herself? Mon Mothma, a pillar of those allied, wise and steadfast, who listened with half a smile curled upon her lips, clothed in immaculate white?
Baze is old and poor sacrifice, but these have been long, hard years for those allied. He is amongst the eldest of their number, amongst those who have taken and graduated apprentices, watched them gain their own rights and honors with what he had guided them to learn. He has his legacy, and those allied have their need, and winter approaches. Now, more than ever, those allied need to be wary of their borders, of those neutral pressed so close, for what desperation the long season might bring.
Baze brushes his hair out of his face, and the trees that stand strong next to him seem to breathe. “If the lord of the woods of long shadows is displeased, then it will be necessary to renegotiate the terms that were agreed to these many years ago.”
“I could not say whether or not that would be necessary,” the voice responds from within the brush that Baze is wading through. The amusement in its tone is more discernible now. “The lord is said to have strange tastes.”
“Then I will speak to them in person,” Baze tells the empty night, firmly, and starts back into motion.
“You are a dutiful one, are you not?” the voice asks; if Baze listens for the sound, he can hear the rasp of scales through fallen leaves. It paces him easily, without the slightest hint of effort in its words. “Truly though, even more dutiful than the daughters of this allied force?”
“They are dutiful to their own natures in accordance with their own needs,” Baze retorts before he can stop himself. He bites his tongue before the rest of the thought can escape – that he was here of his free will to ensure them the choice to act as they best desired in the future. What would a denizen of these long, dark woods know of such a far-seeing aim? What would they care? “Is the fact that I am here not enough to speak for itself?”
“Venturing to this land of long shadows and tall trees to ensure the terms of an ancient treaty… safe passage is so important to those allied this winter? Enough so that they send a warrior adorned with sweet osmanthus to the depths of the forest’s heart? To be given to whatever lord of monsters that has won this year?” The voice laughs, soft, light, when Baze cannot help the way his spine stiffens, the way his shoulders tense. “We are not so deaf and blind as to not know what those beyond the trees call us. Beasts. Monsters. Demons. You walk our paths with lights in hand, smelling of flowers and red meat, and expect us to not hear the commotion?”
“No insult is intended. We have great respect for those of the long shadows,” Baze returns tightly.
“You are afraid of us. As many are afraid of what lurks in the dark,” the voice counters. “Why is it that this year, of all years, a sacrifice is sent? What is it that you fear so beyond the trees that you need safe passage?” When Baze is silent, the voice hisses once, long and sibilant, loudly enough to make the leaves on the brush rattle. “Speak, osmanthus-crowned. Or shall I devour you and ensure your journey to the lord of these lands is never completed? Dare you risk the lives of your allied so?”
In the dark, Baze’s eyes widen – before he barks out a rude noise of laughter, broad and unapologetic, as amusement and anger flare in equal measure in his chest. He grins out into the gloom as he continues to walk, a smile all teeth, barely still kind. “I dare you to try. You will find me no green sapling so easily felled.”
Silence answers him, tinged surprised. Baze’s sweet snarl only grows.
“But I will tell you, for the trouble will soon include your precious woods as well,” Baze continues. He does not think he imagines how the way eases for him, the way twigs and thorns no longer clutch so tightly at the diaphanous robes hung on his wide frame. “Have you never wondered what we are allied against?” Baze flicks his braids out of his face, half-heartedly wishes for the pouch of tobacco he’d left behind. “They style themselves an Empire. They desire to possess. To control. We have held against them these many long years, but this past harvest was lean, beyond even my help. The only thing left to us is trade – trade and service and the places we can go that the Empire cannot. These woods of long shadow are one such place – where the ways tangle themselves, where the denizens hunger for raw, red meat, where the sun never shines.
“It is safe – for now. But the Empire is a hungry beast, a true monster, one to be more wary of than even your lord. For all their skill shown in earning their crown, for all the starvation that sharpened their teeth, they are no match for the Empire. I am merely here to slake some of your lord’s hunger, in affirmation of ancient terms, to ensure safe passage. Nothing more and nothing less.
“You of the long shadows speak of your vows and promises. Hold them in great esteem. It is the hope of this one that your lord will remember such loyalties when the Empire advances to the treeline.”
The voice is silent. Baze walks in darkness deep enough to make false colors dance before his eyes, yet his bare feet are sure and unmarred against the ground and what litters it, the twigs and leaves, the loam and brittle bones of those felled under teeth and claws and need. Earth is earth, after all, and this at least remains to him. He may enter these woods with nothing more than his name and his body and the wedding robes (that had sat long years unused in a chest of fragrant wood, a gift and duty that had transformed into a burden over the length of time past) wrapped about his frame, but he still bears the essence of himself untouched. He still has his power and his strength.
“You are a strange choice of sacrifice,” the voice says, eventually, and Baze blows out a breath scented osmanthus sweet.
“I have my reasons. Do you intend to respect my privacy, or will you demand that of me as well?” Baze answers, brusque. He nearly misses his next step as something shifts beneath his feet, as though a force had tugged sharply but painlessly at his guts and marrow. He does not fall, though the sensation makes his skin crawl; he keeps walking with his spine straight and proud, and blinks, wondering if his eyes are playing tricks upon him, when the absolute dark about him begins to lighten.
“Keep your small secrets,” the voice answers. “They are of little threat to me. I merely find it… interesting. Different. You are far more engaging than the children sent in previous years.” It is no trick; the dark does lighten as though with pre-dawn. Baze touches at the shell of one of his ears when he realizes that something murmurs at the bare edges of his hearing, speaking in formless whispers that somehow do not unsettle, for all their ethereal nature.
“I was not aware that the denizens of the long shadows were privy to the receipt of those that are sent off the path in sacrifice,” Baze says absently, trying to make these small voices resolve into something he can understand, and nearly does stumble this time when the voice answers him, full of mischief:
“They are not.”
Baze whirls with his next step, surprised, and so emerges backwards into the clearing that his heart and head tell him lies at the center of the damp, dim soil that comprises the woods of long shadow; he turns his face, lips parted, because the light is even brighter here, soft-edged and thrumming somehow, and his eyes catch upon the rift that splits the earth, a cave that has been shaped carefully into a wide series of terraced steps around clusters of crystals that glow gently – too many crystals to count, clear gems that color the earth under Baze’s feet tingling with energy.
“It is unusual for one such as you to leave the ground in which they were sown,” the voice comments lightly from whence Baze came; he shifts to face the dark trees and brush as he slowly straightens, opens his mouth and then closes it, bowing his head instead. “Boughs that walk. Sweet osmanthus – will it not be difficult for you to survive here in the gloom?”
“I am hardier than you think,” Baze retorts, needled despite himself, then bites his tongue because he remembers, realizes that the being he has been addressing is…
Baze watches through his lashes as long shadow uncoils itself from the undersides of the leaves and branches of the woods, unspools itself like black satin into a shape slender but solid with muscles that shift underneath scales; the serpent – no, the dragon – slides free of the gloom that had housed it and meters and meters of it uncurl from the dark, broad enough that Baze likely could not hold its width within the circle of his arms. Strong legs with four foreclaws tipped with ebony talons press surprisingly lightly into the earth, and the head of the being forms all gold teeth and scarlet maw, obsidian scales crowned nobly with black horns. It turns its eyes to Baze, in the direction of where he stands, and Baze finds them blue-silver and milky-pale, like the light of the crystals now at his back.
“No,” the sovereign lord of the woods of long shadows says, thoughtfully, as more scales slide free of the dark. “Not so fragile.” A flick of a tail yields glossy black fur tipping the foremost reaches of the being, matching the mane that frames its jowls and lines its spine, the long whiskers that drift as though through water towards Baze. “Let us see you, then, osmanthus general.” The lord laughs, a rumble in the breadth of its chest, when Baze’s lips thin. “It was not so difficult to discern. Have more faith in my abilities. Given where you come from? Your age and strength, that you can walk unrooted…?” The whiskers wrap about the lengths of Baze’s arms in cool loops, slide across flesh and cloth as the lord of long shadows steps closer, encircles Baze in coils and coils of its body.
“I’m no fool, am more than merely a beast.” Chill air slides across Baze’s brow as the lord breathes in, breathes out, as those whiskers caress his temples and his braids and the clusters of small flowers that grow there, that bloom and branch from Baze’s strata. “No. An osmanthus, a sweet osmanthus of your height implies years. Years, the breadth of experience. Your tongue and your words, your training; your confidence, your strength. Your composure even in the face of I – ” The dragon bares its teeth suddenly, dagger-sharp and golden, the length of its smallest fangs greater than the entirety of Baze’s hand. “See? Barely a stutter, for all that your pulse is sluggish.”
Baze exhales through his nose as the whiskers wrapped about his wrists uncoil. “And to have convinced those allied to come in the stead of a maiden sacrifice? Power. Power and respect. An osmanthus general of the allied forces, and one worried enough about the threat this Empire presents to take such measures.” The lord of long shadow hums, shifts once more as its head rises. “You are unusual. Different. I like it. I believe I will keep you.”
Baze opens his mouth, pauses as the words parse. “Keep – you do not keep the others?” he says before he thinks better of it, and then the words are already out and he cannot take them back. The lord of long shadow tips its snout down towards Baze.
“Had you never noticed? The numbers of those allied have only grown along the border of your lands and mine since I took the crown. No, I do not keep those sacrificed. We are not without our means to send them back.” It yawns. “And what would I do with so many maidens? It’s not as though I have a need for heirs.” Then it shifts, and Baze holds his breath as the coils of strong muscle about him dissolve into smoke and soot, as the lord of long shadow disperses. “But I am going to keep you. You are interesting,” the lord says, and then Baze is face to face with a man shorter than he, that has milky-pale blind eyes, that is dressed in black robes. He grins at Baze and his teeth are too-sharp and too-numerous and gold. “Your name, osmanthus general,” he orders.
And Baze – Baze, who has given himself in sacrifice to spare those allied, those dear to his heart – bows deep and answers, “Baze. Baze Malbus. Yours, my lord.”