Maeve ducked her head under a low-hanging bough and brushed away a branch on her right.

  “I can see why they came this way,” she said. “Nobody would come here unless they needed to.”

  The blackthorn and ferns hung over the side of the road, forcing the group to travel in a single line. It wasn't enough to keep the vegetation off the riders.

  “I see light,” Fergal said. “We might be coming out the other side.”

  The optimism was short-lived. The light was merely a clearing large enough for a home and an outbuilding. As she emerged from the trees behind Fergal, Maeve caught the silhouette of a woman watching them through the crack in their open front door.

  “Excuse me,” Maeve said as she raised her hand.

  The front door slammed shut. She could hear something heavy and wooden dragged across the floor behind it. Brendan approached the house but did not knock on the door.

  “We don’t mean to frighten you,” Brendan said. “We just have a question or two.”

  Maeve couldn’t make out what was whispered inside the house, but a hissed reply from a second person ended the conversation.

  “They’re not going to tell us any more than the farmers up north did,” Brigid said. “Where do we go now?”

  Maeve scanned the treeline. To their left, between the home and the outbuilding, she spotted worn patch of dirt under the first few trees.

  “There.”

  “Sorry?” Brendan asked.

  “There’s a path through the woods there.”

  “That could be a bald spot from lack of sunlight,” he said.

  He caught himself before Maeve could stare him down.

  “Sorry, I forgot myself.”

  Brigid and Fergal dismounted and joined Maeve as she led them through the opening. The group weaved their way between the pine trees. Their horses twitched with every graze from a tree branch. Brendan’s initial observation was understandable. The ground on which they read was worn without signs of heavy traffic. Two things differentiated their path from shady ground: its contiguous line and the ever-so-slight gap in the trees on either side of it.

  “Do you know any of the people in this area?” Brendan asked Fergal.

  “I do not, but I’d likely recognize them if they stepped into my father’s inn,” Fergal said.

  Four hundred yards from the house, the path widened for the group to stagger their formation, but not enough to lead their horses side-by-side.

  “Safe to say you’ve never been here, then?” Brendan asked.

  “It is,” Fergal said as the forest thinned. “I’ve only ever passed—”

  Fergal grunted as he stumbled forward onto his side. His horse huffed as the fall jerked its reins. Brendan let go of his horse and stepped over to check on their guide.

  “Fergal?”

  “I’m grand,” he said. “Just caught myself on a small stump like a fool.”

  Brendan retraced Fergal’s steps.

  “Not a stump,” Brandon said.

  Maeve and Brigid rounded the pack of horses. Brigid helped Fergal to his feet as Maeve joined Brendan.

  Fergal had tripped on a stone one foot tall hand a half-foot wide. Sunlight, whenever a clear day allowed it, crept through the thinning forest, encouraging grass to impinge on its floor and obscure the bottom half of the stone. It didn’t help Fergal that they were walking south, leaving the side of the stone that faced him covered in moss.

  “This is too odd to be natural,” Brendan said. “I know what we’re heading toward—and it’s close.”

  “Go on, then,” Maeve said.

  The group realigned behind Brendan as the sorcerer led them into the brighter section of forest. It was twenty yards or so before they found more stones intermittently marking either side of the path.

  The area opened into a meadow encircled by the rest of the forest. Maeve could not see much through the woods on the far end of the meadow, but the smell of sea air wafted over the tree tops and the sound of bickering gulls emerged from the south.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Twelve stones protruded of the grass in a circle roughly thirty yards in diameter. Centuries of rain pockmarked and stained their surfaces. The eight stones that remained upright all leaned in different directions and at different degrees. The four that had fallen lay broken, either from the fall or from centuries of water freezing and melting within its cracks.

  “Hai, looks like one of those old—what did Mam call ‘em—fairy circles,” Fergal said.

  Brigid didn’t need to meet Maeve's eyes to understand the assignment.

  “Y’know what? I think you’re right,” Brigid said. “Ever hear talk of something like this being here?”

  Fergal shook his head.

  “Don’t hear much talk about fairy circles in town—except for the occasional old man that gets a bit mouldy at the inn.”

  Brendan nudged Maeve and nodded toward something outside the circle. A large animal skeleton lay on the far side of the meadow.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Brigid asked.

  “I thought bears were long gone from the island,” Fergal said.

  “You thought right,” Maeve said. “That’s looks like a wolf from here.”

  "Never heard of one getting that big."

  Brendan glanced at his hands and then at his sister. Brigid gave a slight nod.

  “We should split up,” Maeve said. “Can you two sweep the area, maybe over there to the south and see if there’s anything on the shore?”

  Fergal twisted in place.

  “Of course,” he said, “but if there are more beasts of that size skulking about, I must ask if thinning our numbers is the best move.”

  Brigid unfastened a three-foot wooden club from the back of her saddle. Metal bands spaced four inches apart encircled the club’s wider end until it tapered into a handle wrapped in leather. She winked at Fergal as she handed it to him.

  “Here’s that ‘something heavy’ you were lookin’ for,” she said. “I’m betting that you can bring down something bigger than that thing over there with it.”

  Fergal examined his new weapon while Brigid went back to her horse to fetch a spear for herself.

  “You might be right,” he said. “After you.”

  The pair left their horses, walked around the outside of the circle and disappeared from the southwest corner of the meadow. Maeve waited until she was confident they wouldn’t return before she spoke to Brendan.

  “Down to you,” she said. “Give it a thorough look this time.”

  Brendan strolled to the center of the circle and slowly studied each stone. He turned to his right to face east and closed his eyes. After a few deep breaths he raised his arms and started to move his hands in a circle.

  “Sellaid síabrad.”

  His irises shifted from green to blue. After a few more rotations of his arms, every part of his eyes emitted a faint azure glow. He moved through the circle in short, methodical steps. His head turned at random as if something repeatedly passed through his periphery.

  Maeve passed the first few minutes of Brendan’s investigation with a cursory scan of the treeline. She found no other remains—human or animal—in the meadow. She gave the circle a wide berth as she advanced on the large wolf carcass. It was evident from a distance that it had been picked clean, unlike the stag near Knockalla.

  It’s been out here much longer than the stag, Maeve though to herself. Assuming that the information we’ve gotten so far is correct.

  “Stop,” Brendan said. “Don’t get close to that yet.”

  Maeve whipped her head towards Brendan.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Still working on it,” he said, “but this is dark stuff. There are a few different aspects in play here. But it was done here.”

  "Didn't they already have wolves in the Creeve?" Maeve asked.

  "They did," Brendan said. "Now they have more. If you think about it, we have seen more tracks in the past two days out here than all that time back home."

  “But you said it was dark," Maeve said. "Are these really wolves we’re tracking or is it something worse?”

  “They are wolves—and it is something worse.”

  “Brendan, can you just—”

  “—someone used sorcery to make these wolves monstrous.”

  “So they’re big.”

  “Not just big, but ravenous. Indiscriminate in their violence. Their very nature has been corrupted.”

  “That explains the discoloration around the stag’s neck.”

  “It does,” he said.

  “If the creatures are meant to be that nasty, how do those fellas get them to operate in tandem?”

  “That’s where the multiple aspects come in. I can’t tell ya which spell was cast first or the exact ritual they used, but the animals were altered with one manner of spell, and they used some fiercely dark magic to bring them under control.”

  “What do you make of that beastie over there?” she asked.

  Brendan stepped toward the skeleton, careful not to break his casting motion. He stumbled over the first step he placed outside of the circle; within three strides he had collapsed onto his hands and knees. He raised a hand as Maeve approached.

  “Stay there.”

  Maeve hesitated for just a second before ignoring his order. She squatted by his side.

  “What’s happening?” she asked.

  “Whatever they did to control them was bad,” he said in between retches. “I haven’t had a reaction this violent since my first years of training.”

  “So whoever did this had to be a very powerful sorcerer,” she said, “in order to withstand the effects.”

  “Not necessarily,” Brendan said. “It’s true that some of the darker techniques involved actions that can upset a man’s system. But you can lessen that reaction by splitting the work between multiple people.”

  “Can I get closer to the bones?” she asked.

  “Most likely,” he said. “I’m in bits like this because I was using a spell that beckons residual magic. That’s what helped me figure out the manner of magic that was used.”

  Maeve walked over to the remains.

  “Picked clean,” she said.

  “I wonder why the scavengers picked this one apart, and not the stag up north.”

  Maeve’s heart sank as she examined the rib cage.

  “It wasn’t scavengers,” she said. “The ribs were scoured by big, long teeth. Bigger than most animals you’ll see around here.”

  Brendan gulped.

  “That means this wolf was—”

  “—the runt of the litter,” Maeve said. “And those people turned the rest of the pack on it.”

  “To wield that kind of control over another living being...” Brendan said.

  He punctuated the incomplete thought with a shudder.

  Brendan nearly fell sideways at the sound of rustling trees from the west side of the meadow. Maeve, however stepped toward the noise.

  “Just in time, you two.”

  “For what?” Brigid asked as she stepped out from under the closest tree to the circle.

  “For our trip into those woods near town,” Maeve said. “We have a good idea of what happened here.”

  Fergal jogged over to Brendan, helped him to a standing position and studied the sorcerer’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” Fergal said. “Had I known you this squeamish around dead things I would have let you go searching with your sister.”

  He gave Brendan a reassuring pat on the shoulder and walked back to the horses without noticing that Brendan’s jaw hung open.

  Maeve grinned and gave her comrade a shoulder pat of her own in passing.

  Brendan dropped his head and sighed before joining the rest of the group.