by Terry Brooks
Chrysallin had been told all this by the little girl on that first day. She had been warned what running away would get her. She could simply look out the cottage windows to confirm that it was so. As for what she couldn’t see, she had only to sit where she was sitting now and wait patiently for the visible proof to surface.
It did so quickly on this day. A large heron and its mate settled on a wide stretch of water perhaps a hundred feet away from the window through which she was looking, finding a log that provided them with a sure-footed resting place. They had just folded their wings and set about surveying their surroundings when the log dropped away beneath them and the waters parted in a surge of open jaws and blinding spray. They were gone in an instant, caught between those hideous jaws and dragged beneath the surface. After only seconds, the waters stilled and turned placid once more, the log that wasn’t a log reappeared, and it was just as if nothing at all had happened.
The little girl clapped and squealed. “Did you see that? Wasn’t that wonderful? Wasn’t it exciting?”
She went on like that for a while longer, enthusiastic and voluble, using words like crush and blood and teeth and ripped apart. Chrysallin was used to it and simply ignored her, but it was hard pretending she didn’t care. She hated the little girl. She wanted her dead. She wished she could manage it on her own, but she knew she couldn’t. In the meantime, there was no reason to give this little monster even the slightest satisfaction.
This, after all, was how her days were spent. All of her days, thus far. All those yet to come, too, she imagined, until Arcannen finally came for her. The little girl required a playmate, and Chrys was the closest thing at hand. So the position fell to her by default, and there was nothing she could do but endure her forced participation.
She thought about being back in the sorcerer’s hands, and though anything seemed preferable to spending even one more day with the little girl, the prospect was terrifying. She might feel better prepared to deal with Arcannen this time around, but she knew she was only kidding herself. It would be a nightmare, whatever his plans for her, and not knowing what he had planned for her only added to her fear.
Staying with the little girl, however hateful, was at least predictable. She knew what she could expect, so long as she obeyed the rules. It might be unpleasant, but it was a fixed routine with minimal danger, because she was being kept for Arcannen and no harm was to come to her.
So she did what she was told (not much choice there, anyway) and followed the rules and caused no trouble. If it wasn’t for the pretense and the lies and the stupid, stupid game, it might even have been bearable. But the game was a nightmare. Everything the little girl did was in furtherance of the game. The game was everything to her. The game was life itself.
But that wasn’t why the little girl was insane. The little girl was insane because she actually believed all the stuff she kept insisting was true, not the least of which was her relationship to the witch.
The little girl was neither a prisoner nor an unwilling servant.
The little girl was the witch.
Sometimes your choices are predetermined, no matter how you might wish otherwise. It was certainly so for Paxon Leah and the remainder of his little company as night fell. They had walked for the rest of the day after burying Karlin Ryl. Miriya had argued for carrying her into the forests of the Anar, but both Paxon and Isaturin had insisted that none of them had the strength. All five were bone-weary, so they chose to bury her on the plains and go on as best they could. Miriya was inconsolable but accepted their decision. They dug a trench as deep as they could manage using blades and hands, then wrapped the young Druid seer in a blanket and laid her to rest.
Miriya did not speak to anyone after that, or even walk close to them. It was as if she were a stray following at the edges of a pack, her grief a burden so terrible she could not find a way to share it.
The presence of more plants in the distance forced them toward the Wolfsktaag Mountains, and this was a choice that Paxon, at least, was not happy about. There were worse things than man-eating plants in those mountains—things so huge and terrible that the stories recounted about them had become the stuff of legend. Almost no one had ever seen these creatures, and most of those who had were dead. But even in the family history of the Leahs the stories persisted, a part of the family’s connection to the Ohmsfords and the Druids of Paranor. Paxon knew them—and, whatever anyone else might think, he believed them.
But turning north would take them back into a fresh maze of plants, and no one could bear to think about that.
So they left the flats and went into the foothills with the setting sun and found shelter in a copse of fir where they could sleep safely enough to recover from their ordeal. Paxon couldn’t remember the last time he had slept, but as nominal leader of this small band, it didn’t feel right letting anyone else take first watch, so he took up his position. His weariness had drained him of the ability to dispel his sense of disorientation, and it took time to recover. Standing watch gave him that chance, and within the stand of fir, still well short of the Wolfsktaag Mountains, he felt safe enough to take advantage of it.
At midnight, he tapped one of the Trolls to take his place and went straight to sleep.
His sleep was untroubled, which surprised him. He would have thought he would experience nightmares of some sort, given what he had been through. But not once did he emerge even for a moment from his dark peace. When he woke, the sky east was just beginning to lighten with the sunrise. He glanced around and found everyone still asleep save for Miriya, who had taken the last watch and was looking straight at him from atop her perch on a fallen log perhaps twenty feet away. He rolled to a sitting position and nodded to her. She nodded back, but there was such despair in her eyes that he rose immediately and went to sit with her.
“Did you sleep at all?” he asked quietly, settling himself close.
She shook her head. “I couldn’t. I might never again. I keep seeing that thing coming out of Karlin, seeing her collapse, a shell it used and then discarded. I keep seeing her face.”
She shuddered and clasped her hands as if attempting to hold herself together. “I don’t understand it, Paxon. Why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t she say something about what was happening?”
“Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe she didn’t understand what was happening. She could have known something was wrong without knowing exactly what it was.”
“But she asked us to help her! You heard her. She must have known something!”
“I don’t think her asking for help means she knew what was wrong.” He paused and exhaled toward the mountains. “But even if she did, there’s nothing to say she could do anything about it. Having that thing inside her might have stolen her ability to act. It might have been controlling her.”
They were silent for a moment, looking at each other, then looking away, as if the conversation was too uncomfortable to continue. Paxon thought about Karlin’s horror at finding she was inhabited by another being—one she knew was evil and dangerous. What must that have been like? She had to have been incredibly strong to withstand it. He wouldn’t judge her for it. He wasn’t sure what he would have done if it had been him.
“Maybe she knew what would happen,” Miriya said suddenly, talking to her feet. “Maybe she knew if it left her, she would die.”
Paxon leaned close. “Yet she managed to ask for help and even managed to tell us when the Federation pursuit crashed. She exercised as much freedom of speech as she could. It took courage to do even that.”
Miriya nodded wordlessly. Then she gave a strangled sob and began to cry. “I just want her back! I want this never to have happened! I hate it that she left me! I hate it!”
Now Paxon did put his arm around her, feeling her wince as he did so. But he held on anyway, his grip firm. “She didn’t want to. She tried to prevent it, I think. She loved you. She might even have been trying to protect you.”
Miriya looked at hi
m. “That would be like her. She always worried about me, never herself. She was always trying to make me feel better about something.” She sighed and rocked back against his arm. “It hurts so much that she’s gone.”
She swiveled away from him suddenly, shrugging off his arm. “But we’re going to find out how this happened, you understand? You have to promise me you will help. You know more about Arcannen than I do. I don’t think Isaturin is strong enough to do what’s needed. I don’t think he even cares. He hasn’t said a word to me since Karlin died.”
Paxon was astonished. “Well, he’s probably in shock. He’s lost his entire delegation save for you. He’ll come around. He knows how you feel.”
“Maybe,” she said distractedly. Then, fixing on him, “I can depend on you to help me with this, can’t I? I need to know this, Paxon. I need to be sure.”
“You can depend on me. But just to be clear, I don’t know for sure that Arcannen is behind this. I only think it might be him. Still, I want whoever did this to be punished as much as you do. We just have to be sure who it is before we act.”
She kicked at the foothills earth, looking determined and angry. “I know that, Paxon! Don’t treat me like a child.” She steadied herself. “I just want to make clear that this isn’t something I’ll forget about later. I won’t. I will find who’s responsible, no matter what stands in my way. I won’t rest until then—even if I have to leave the order to achieve it. Even if I should die trying.”
Paxon held up his hands in a warding gesture. “Stop talking like that. I understand how you feel. And don’t worry. We’ll get at the truth. And I’ll stand with you when it matters.”
They lapsed into silence again, a long slow stretching out of time and space that seemed much longer than it actually was. Within the next half hour the sun rose, the sleepers woke, and the new day began.
—
The members of the little company were almost out of food, so they ate only a bit of what remained before setting out. They knew this was likely all they would get for nourishment for the rest of the day unless they foraged or hunted game, and no one really wanted to take time for that. Instead, they needed to find a Dwarf village, and there were plenty of those somewhere ahead. They did find a stream running down out of the mountains and stopped to drink and to fill the two remaining aleskins. Thirst was more of an issue than food.
The difficulty with what they were attempting was apparent from the geography of the Lower Anar. Had they been able to continue through the foothills to get past the carnivorous plants before descending once more to the flatlands, things might have been different. But the Battlemound Lowlands were studded with dangerous plants and trees of all sorts, including the treacherous Sirens and Stranglers. So they couldn’t descend onto the flats when the foothills disappeared but instead were forced to climb into the mountains. The presence of sheer cliffs and jagged outcroppings severely limited the choice of trails and left them much higher up and deeper into the Wolfsktaag than they had intended. The way forward was rugged and treacherous, and even after they had gotten down out of the cliffs and onto the foothills once more, they were swallowed by heavy forestland that fronted defiles, and caverns big enough to swallow entire buildings, which hid who knew what sorts of dangerous beasts.
They kept far enough away so as not to find out, but the presence of those black holes was a constant reminder of how close to the razor’s edge they were walking.
The forests they now traversed were equally disturbing. They consisted mostly of conifers grown so closely together that even walking single-file they could not pass between them without the branches brushing their shoulders—an unpleasant reminder of the plants they had barely escaped before. The darkness and silence were pervasive and ominous, and after a while all of them began to hear noises where there weren’t any. If there were birds nesting in those trees, there was no evidence of it. They never saw a single winged creature. They never saw squirrels, chipmunks, or mice, either. They saw nothing living besides themselves.
Their progress was also mind-numbingly tedious and slow. Their surroundings never changed; the claustrophobic feel of their path never varied. Thousands of trees came and went, all looking exactly the same. The absence of other living creatures was a troublesome and disconcerting constant. They talked a little among themselves sometimes, just to break the silence, but mostly they concentrated whatever strength remained on moving ahead. Paxon passed the time replaying the events that had taken place in the Assembly over and over in his mind, trying to conjure a recognizable scenario that would explain the reason behind the attack, but the effort defied him. Even if Arcannen was to blame, why would he go to so much trouble to disrupt their peace talks with the Federation? What did it gain him? There must have been a reason. He must have thought there was something to gain.
The day passed, and once again it was nightfall. Still deep within the thickly forested foothills, they found a place sufficiently wide to stretch out and sleep while at the same time offering a modicum of protection from predators. After eating the last of their food and drinking a small portion of their water, they sat together in the darkness and silence for a short while, then set a watch schedule and lay down to sleep.
Before doing so, Paxon sat with Fero Darz. In the cool darkness of nightfall, the latter’s face was streaked with sweat and grime, and his lean features were strained. He had barely spoken all day, keeping to himself as they traveled. It almost felt like Darz was avoiding him.
“You’ve been quiet,” Paxon said.
Darz looked at him. “What is there left to talk about? We are just marking time. Just waiting for the inevitable.” His eyes filled with mistrust and dark expectation. “You understand. You know what’s going to happen.”
He was waiting to die. It was so odd to see this side of him that it caused Paxon to hesitate before responding.
“Another day or two and we’ll be fine. The worst is past.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t even know what the worst is. We have miles to go. We’re on foot and everything in these mountains is hunting us. So don’t pretend otherwise.”
“I’m not trying to. But I trust in our ability to fight off anything that comes at us. We’re not helpless.”
“Oh, like the other night? When that thing came out of the girl? Are you trying to tell me you had everything under control when that happened?” He shook his head. “We’re dead, Paxon. We’re just walking around waiting for it to become official.”
“The Sleath.” The Highlander pulled his knees up to his chest and hugged them to him. Time to change the subject. “Why do you think it came out of Karlin when it did? Why did it feel the need?”
“It was protecting itself, of course. What are you talking about?”
“But it wasn’t in danger. Karlin wasn’t under attack. Neither were you and the Trolls. You were all standing off to one side, safely out of the way. It was Miriya and Isaturin and myself who were surrounded by those plants. When the Sleath came out of Karlin’s body, it felt random, unmotivated.”
Darz grunted. “Maybe.”
“And why was it hiding in her in the first place? Why did it use her like that?”
“How would I know?” Darz was angry now, confused. “And what difference does it make? I just want out of this. I want to go home.”
“We all do.”
But Darz wasn’t listening, and he talked right over Paxon. “I believe what you told me. I believe the Druids didn’t create the—what is it called? A Sleath? I don’t know what happened back in the Assembly, but you couldn’t have intended it to come to this. So maybe it was Arcannen or some other madman. Or maybe it was another sect of sorcerers or enemies of the Federation. Maybe anything.”
“I appreciate hearing that. You should tell Isaturin.”
“Should I? I tried, earlier. I couldn’t get him to look at me. He just nodded and kept walking. Like it didn’t matter. Like I didn’t matter.” He shook his head, his eyes fixi
ng on Paxon. “He seems broken to me. You should watch him closely. He’s your leader, but he seems like he’s lost his way.”
Paxon had to agree. Earlier, after they had stopped for the night, he had suggested to the Ard Rhys that he should say something to Miriya. After all, she was hurting from the loss of her partner; a few words from him would provide her with a little comfort.
Isaturin had looked at him as if he didn’t even know who he was. “What can I say to her?” he had replied. “What is there to say? She will have to find her own way through her grief. I can’t help her.”
The bluntness of his response was so unexpected that Paxon had just stood there. Isaturin had dismissed the idea out of hand. He didn’t seem to understand the importance of it. Again, the Highlander had told himself that it was the shock of losing the others, of failing to save them, of being driven out into the wilderness and left with only the tattered remnants of his delegation to find a way home again, that influenced him.
But now he was thinking it might be something more. It might be that Isaturin—who had no real experience with disasters of this sort, and who had not been trained in the field—was beginning to fall apart.
Paxon slept that night with the specter of this possibility gnawing at his confidence. For the first time, he found himself questioning the ability of the Ard Rhys to lead. Why had Isaturin entrusted their fate to him? While he was the High Druid’s Blade and delegated protector of the members of the Druid order, he was neither a tracker nor a survivalist. His experiences made him no better qualified than the rest of them to find a way to survive in the wild or to avoid the creatures that lived there. Even the Trolls were better equipped for that responsibility than he was.
He woke at dawn more doubtful than ever, his eyes bleary and his brain fogged. He had slept badly, restless and dream-racked. The others shuffled around like the walking dead, as well. Because there was nothing to eat, they set out almost immediately. The day was dark with storm clouds, and within the first hour it began to rain. They turned back into the mountains because the foothills ended at a deep, wide canyon that ran east and west for as far as the eye could see. A river flowed along its floor, but it was so far down it appeared to be little more than a slender thread. Trees and brush clung to the cliff faces with roots dug into the rocky surface like grasping fingers, but there were no paths leading down and no indication that attempting a descent was a good idea. The shortest, quickest path was through the mountains where, farther up, the cliffs met, allowing for a way to cross.
