“I am not fat! I’ve just got big bones.”
“You’ve got a big stomach and a bigger appetite,” said Peter, entirely unsympathetically, not taking his eyes off the trail ahead. “I’ve seen meat pies go running out of the kitchen when you walk in.”
“I just have a great appetite for life,” said Clarence loftily.
“Then stop complaining,” said Richard. “We’re on our way to adventure! This is what you said you wanted.”
“That was what he wanted when we were all safe back at the Castle,” said Peter. “Anyone with any real experience knows that adventure is someone else going through hell, a comfortable distance from wherever you are, sitting and reading about it.”
“We are on a mission of mercy, on our way to rescue poor downtrodden mining folk from an unnatural menace,” Prince Richard said firmly.
“On our way to an early death, more like,” said Peter. “I’m only here because someone’s got to watch your back and keep you out of trouble.”
“Thank you, Captain Grumpy,” said the Prince. “Do let us know if you spot something really depressing, so we can all have a good brood over the unfairness of life.”
“Don’t give him ideas,” said Clarence.
“History will vindicate me,” said Peter.
“I’m only here to get firsthand experience for a new song,” said Clarence. “I’m quite happy to leave the actual adventuring to those more suited to it. You two get stuck in, and I’ll hold the horses. I’m good at holding horses.” He broke off and shivered suddenly. “How can it be this cold, this early in the season? We’re only just into the fall . . . Maybe I should get my calendar overhauled.”
“It is cold,” said Peter. “More than properly cold. I’m wearing my long underwear and I can still feel the nip of autumn in some very private places.”
“Far too much information,” said Richard.
“I hate it when the seasons change, at the end of the year,” said Clarence. “Always looks to me like the whole world’s dying . . .”
“Stop being such a gloomy bugger,” said Peter. “That’s my job.”
“He’s just being minstrely,” said Richard.
“That’s not even a word,” said Peter. “You made that up.”
“Is it just me,” said Clarence slowly, “or has all the sound gone out of the woods?”
They all listened carefully. The birds had stopped their singing, the insects had disappeared, and there wasn’t even a whisper of movement in the tightly packed trees on either side of the beaten trail. The only sound left was the clear, steady progress of their mounts. It was as though the horses and their riders were the only living things left in a dying world. Richard stood up in his stirrups to look around, but the darkening shadows threw back his gaze. He slumped down again.
“Everyone keep their ears open,” Peter said steadily. “We’re a long way from anywhere halfway civilised, and heading into dangerous territory. There are still monsters in some of the darker parts of the Forest.”
“What?” Clarence said immediately. “Dangerous territory? No one said anything to me about going into dangerous territory! I thought we were just going to check out a small mining village. Are we lost again? Do you want me to check the compass?”
“We’re well on our way to Cooper’s Mill,” said Richard. “And you leave that compass alone. You can break delicate mechanisms just by breathing on them.”
“Still,” said Peter, “it does seem to me that we should have reached Cooper’s Mill by now. If we’d been going by the direct route. Like we agreed.”
“All right, so we’re taking a little detour,” said Richard. “Since we were going in the general direction anyway . . . I thought we might take the opportunity to stop off and take a look at the Darkwood.”
Peter and Clarence both reined in harshly, bringing their horses to a sudden halt, and Richard had no choice but to stop too. They all looked at one another for a long moment. Clarence’s normally flushed features had gone suddenly pale, while Peter studied the Prince with narrowed, thoughtful eyes.
“No wonder it feels so cold,” Clarence said finally.
“You didn’t say anything about going anywhere near the Darkwood,” said Peter.
“Because I knew if I did, you’d both wimp out on me!” said Richard. “It’s just a name! You can’t let it get to you like this. The Darkwood isn’t nearly as big, or as much of a threat, as it used to be. Hasn’t been for years. Don’t look at me like that! The whole area’s barely a mile in diameter these days, and there aren’t any demons left in it.”
“Some people say that,” said Peter. “Other people say otherwise, because they’ve got more sense. Just because you can’t see the demons, it doesn’t mean there aren’t any there.”
“Yes it does!” said Richard.
“There are still demons,” said Clarence, looking mournfully around. “All the songs and stories say so.”
“Not real demons,” said Richard. “Not like back in the Demon War.”
“There are still creatures that linger near the Darkwood,” said Peter, glaring about him into the darkening shadows between the trees. “Lurking in the deepest, most troubled parts of the Forest. Watching from the gloom at the side of the trail, lying in wait for some poor young fools to come wandering by.”
“You’re getting as bad as Clarence,” said Richard. “Those are just stories! It’s been a hundred years now since my illustrious ancestor stamped out all the monsters during the Demon War! I just thought, since we were going to pass by the Darkwood anyway, we might as well stop and take a look. Just to see what it’s really like. You said you wanted some decent new material for a song, Clarence. We could be the first men to step inside the Darkwood since . . .”
“We?” said Clarence immediately. “What’s all this we shit? I’m not going anywhere near it!”
“Neither am I, and neither are you, your highness,” Peter said firmly. “Riding out for a little adventure is one thing; risking your soul and your sanity, quite another.”
Richard just laughed at both of them, and Peter and Clarence knew the situation was hopeless. You only had to hear that bright and carefree laughter to know that the Prince had made up his mind and would do what he intended to do, and that he was determined to get his friends into trouble too, for their own good. It was, admittedly, one of the reasons why they stuck with him. Life with Prince Richard might be dangerous, but it was never dull.
Prince Richard of the Forest Kingdom was tall, dark, dashing, and far too handsome for his own good. Now in his mid-twenties, he was brave and charming and loudly cheerful, and would have been unbearable if he hadn’t known all that and refused to take himself seriously. He didn’t value any of his better qualities because he didn’t feel he’d earned them. Which was why he was always so ready to rush off and do something unwise, in search of derring-do.
He’d done some fighting in the border skirmishes, but he hadn’t found anything heroic there. Just killing. He did his duty, riding alongside his father’s soldiers to drive out the invading Redhart forces, but he took no pleasure in it. He was still looking for the honour and glory promised him by the legends he’d grown up with, of his legendary ancestor, his great-granduncle, Prince Rupert. Who rode on dragons and bore the Rainbow Sword, who saved the Forest Land and all its people from utter destruction by fighting off a whole army of demons, and defeating their leader, the dreaded Demon Prince, Lord of the Darkwood. So whenever chances of action or adventure presented themselves, you could always rely on Richard to be out at the front, smiling and laughing. And nearly always the first to be dragged away by his friends when it all went horribly wrong.
Clarence Lancaster was a man of medium height and far more than medium weight, with an endless appetite for all the good things life had to offer. He and Richard had been close friends since childhood school days, when they were universally judged a bad influence on everyone else. He was determined to be a minstrel and have his songs admir
ed and venerated across the world. He sought out heroic situations so he could observe them, from a safe distance, and then write about them in an authentic manner. Clarence was a sheltered, middle-class merchant’s son, with an assured comfortable future, and he couldn’t wait to throw it all away, in the name of Romance and Adventure.
He always dressed in the most colourful and radical fashions, none of which ever suited him. He had long red hair, and an equally fiery goatee. He was smart and earnest and thoughtful, and not nearly as observant as he liked to think. He and Richard had bonded early on through their shared enthusiasm for old songs and legends and their mutual distrust of all forms of authority. They were soon inseparable, and their fathers left them together in the vain hope that one might turn out to be a good influence on the other. Richard and Clarence both firmly believed that things had been much better back in the days when there were real dangers to be faced and heroic deeds could still be performed by young men who thought they needed to prove themselves to their fathers.
Clarence accompanied Richard to the border skirmishes and fought bravely enough at Richard’s side when he had no other choice. But he had been horrified by the senseless, never-ending blood and slaughter and the complete lack of honour or glory. Just blood-soaked killing grounds and sad, anonymous deaths. A soldier’s life turned out to be nothing like the songs. Clarence turned his back on the border the moment Richard was ready to leave, and he never went back.
Richard’s only other close friend was an entirely different sort. Peter Foster was a soldier from a long line of soldiers, trained since early childhood to bear arms in the service of those who claimed to be his betters. He was in his late twenties, and liked to think of himself as the mature and steady member of the group. He’d been brought in as a teenager to train the young Prince Richard in how to fight. They’d taken to each other, and Peter never left. A large and stocky man, Peter wore hard-used leather armour instead of the more usual chain mail, because he liked to be able to move quickly and freely at all times. He carried a sword on his hip, an ugly and nameless butcher’s blade, a shield on his back, and all kinds of useful, vicious, and quite appallingly nasty secrets tucked away about his person. Peter liked to feel he was prepared for anything an unfriendly world might throw at him.
He went to the border skirmishes, alongside Richard and Clarence. To look out for them, and guard their backs. A lot of his family were already there. He didn’t expect anything heroic, so he wasn’t disappointed by what he found. He had never believed in honour or duty, just a soldier’s wage.
Peter was pleasantly ugly, with a scarred face and cool grey eyes, and he had more successes with women than Clarence and Richard put together. (Although Richard lied about his experiences. The others knew, but didn’t say anything. It wasn’t easy, being a Prince.)
• • •
They approached the Darkwood slowly, and very carefully. They’d left the trail behind some time back, and now they wound their way in and out of sparsely set trees in the growing gloom of late evening. There were warning signs everywhere—great wooden boards with blunt and even harsh words on them. Some so old the lettering had all but faded away, some so recent it looked like the paint was still wet. The woods were completely, unnaturally, still and silent. No bird sang; not a single insect buzzed or fluttered. No sound or sign of wildlife anywhere. The trees and vegetation had become increasingly stunted and sickly, even twisted, as the three riders drew near the Darkwood boundary. Fruiting fungi burst out of cracked tree trunks in pallid, unhealthy colours, while gnarled branches clutched at the lowering skies.
The horses didn’t like where they were going. They snorted loudly, tossing their great heads and fighting the reins, and only the firm hands of their riders kept them moving in the right direction. The horses could feel that something wasn’t right. And although he wouldn’t admit it in front of his companions, so could Prince Richard.
They rounded a sudden corner and there it was, right in front of them. The horses lurched to a halt, digging their hooves in hard, almost throwing their riders. Night filled the forest ahead. It seemed to rise up forever, while stretching endlessly away in both directions, an impenetrable wall of shadows that marked the outer boundary of the Darkwood. The one place in the Forest where it was always dark, where night ruled and always would. The horses reared up and shrieked horribly, their eyes rolling hysterically. Richard swung quickly down out of the saddle and slapped a heavy cloth over his horse’s eyes, holding it in place with both hands. The horse quietened some as Richard spoke soothingly to it and then turned the animal around and walked it back round the corner in the trail. He tied the horse’s reins to a sturdy branch and wrapped the cloth firmly around its head. By the time he’d finished, Peter and Clarence had their horses tied up beside his. The three young men looked at one another. They didn’t say anything. What was there to say? The Darkwood wasn’t what they’d expected, but now that they’d seen it for themselves they all knew that nothing anyone could have said could have prepared them for the reality of that dark and silent wall. Richard was the first to move. He didn’t discuss it with his friends. He just walked back round the corner in the trail, and stood before the Darkwood boundary, staring into the darkness. Peter and Clarence looked at each other, shrugged pretty much in unison, and went back round the corner to join him.
They stood together, shoulder to shoulder, as close as they could get, unconsciously seeking support from one another. They all shuddered pretty much in unison, and not from the cold autumn air, or even from the terrible cold wind that came gusting out of the Darkwood. There was more inside the Darkwood than just the night, and they could feel it in their souls.
“We shouldn’t be here,” said Peter.
“Hush,” said Richard, not looking at him.
“What is that smell, coming out of the dark?” said Clarence. “Oh God, that stinks. Like everything that ever died in there has been left piled up in heaps . . . What is that?”
“Death,” said Peter. “Rot and corruption. A warning.”
“Where is that wind blowing from?” said Clarence. “Why doesn’t it stop?”
“Let’s get out of here,” said Peter. “This is nothing like what we expected, and God knows we expected bad enough.”
“No,” said Richard.
“You’re not seriously thinking of going in there, are you?” said Clarence.
Prince Richard smiled at his friends; if the smile seemed a bit forced, neither of them was in any state to notice.
“Seems silly not to,” said Richard, “after we came all this way to see it. We’ve all read the stories and histories, listened to the songs, wondered what it’s like in there, in the night that never ends. But have you ever spoken with anyone who’s experienced it for themselves? I want to know. I want to encounter it firsthand. To know what my ancestor Prince Rupert knew. The experience turned him into a hero. I want . . . I need to test myself against the Darkwood. To see if I’m made of the same stuff as my ancestor.”
“You’ve lost your mind,” Peter said flatly. “No one would go in there of his own free will.”
Richard flashed that brave, careless smile at his two friends. “I’m going in. You can stay here.”
“Hell with that,” Peter said immediately. “You go in there on your own, you’ll never come out again.” He glared at the wall of darkness before them and then looked at Clarence. “We won’t be long. You look after the horses.”
“Hell with that,” said Clarence, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets so his friends wouldn’t see how badly they were shaking. “You think I’d let you two hog all the fun? They’ll write songs about us for this. And my song will be the best of all, because I was there.”
The three of them looked into the Darkwood. None of them moved. Because just looking at the boundary was enough to put a chill in their hearts and slow their thoughts to a crawl. It was like looking down from a mountaintop and nerving themselves to jump. The darkness gave away no
thing at all. And for all their brave words, each one of them was quietly hoping that one of the others would find the words that would let them turn away with honour. Or, failing that, each of them wanted one of the others to go first. In the end, of course, it was Richard. He stepped smoothly forward and the wall swallowed him up like silent dark waters, without even a ripple to mark his passing. Peter and Clarence plunged in after him.
• • •
They all cried out as they entered the Darkwood, stumbling to a halt just a few feet inside the boundary. Horror, and a kind of spiritual revulsion, held them where they were. The cold hit them hard, cutting into them like a knife, leaching all the heat and life and energy out of them. They didn’t belong here. Nothing human did.
Richard made himself look around, his head making slow, jerky, reluctant movements. Dead trees were everywhere, rotting and slumped together. Trees that had been dying for centuries but were still standing. Still suffering. Their leafless, interlocking branches thrust up into the starless night sky and then bowed forward to form an overheard canopy, like the bars of a cage. There was some light, a shimmering silver glow from phosphorescent fungi, that clung to the trunks of those trees nearest the boundary. Just a touch of light, to make the darkness seem even darker, and more cruel. The close, still air was thick with the sick, sweet stench of death and dying things, and never-ending corruption.
Clarence stood shaking and swaying, panting for breath and sobbing like a small child. He’d never felt so alone in his life, or so close to his own death. The darkness seemed to sink into him, like a stain on his soul that he would never be free of. It occurred to him that this was the darkness you saw inside your own coffin, forever. He turned abruptly and ran, back through the boundary and out into the light, into the sane and sensible world of the living. Unable to face a spiritual darkness that was so much more than just the absence of light.
Peter tried to stay, for Richard’s sake, but he couldn’t. He’d been a soldier all his life, never wanted to be anything else, and walked with Lady Death for his companion in many a dark place. He’d known fear and loss and horror, but never anything like this. A darkness that didn’t care how brave he’d been, or all the great things he’d done or might do. He’d never been afraid of the dark before, but he was now. He retreated, step by step, refusing to turn his back on the Darkwood. He backed right through the boundary, leaving his dearest friend behind, on his own, because even that betrayal was more bearable than staying one moment more in the Darkwood.
Once In a Blue Moon Page 12
