by K. Ferrin
As evening approached, they began to see signs of civilization again. Animals milled about as they had elsewhere, but here, the humans did as well. They stood alone or in small groups, away from the animals, their faces paintings of storm clouds in a blackened sky. They swiveled their heads to watch as Ling and her companions sped past. She didn’t turn to see if their expressions changed as they saw the army of coyotes that followed close behind them.
In the distance ahead of them, black smoke billowed into the sky. Ling was certain the others had also seen it, as it was too obvious to miss, but no one spoke of it. There was nothing to be done but continue forward toward whatever it was that awaited them. They thundered into town to find themselves in the midst of an angry mob of Brisians. Their voices were raised in shouts, their normally friendly and open faces contorted with grief and anger. Beyond them, the docks burned just as they had in Nantes, but here there was no pile of corpses. Instead, arrayed in front of those burning docks was a line of warlocks. They wore robes of purple and gold—Tovenveran and Tovendieren.
Ling yanked her horse to a stop so sharply the beast squealed in protest, its hooves throwing up a cloud of dust and debris as they slid to a halt. Without a word Dreskin drew two glass globes from the saddlebags behind him and lobbed them into the midst of the warlocks. Ling caught a glance of a swirling red liquid inside one of the glass balls before they both exploded in an angry fire at the warlocks’ feet.
“This way!” Drake shouted, and they spun almost as one to follow her. They didn’t run back the way they’d come; there was nothing back there but more warlocks. Instead, they ran somewhat parallel to the coast, but angled inland. Ling heard screams and shouting behind her but dared not pause even long enough for a glance. They barreled across the dusty landscape, grasses whipping by them. Navire was beside her still, his breath a constant snarl.
The coyotes turned to follow, but this time closed in to attack. Navire launched into them, ripping and tearing with teeth and claws. He was a giant of a dog, but there were too many. Ling yelled at him to follow, her words whipped away in the blinding wind of her passage.
Ling’s eyes teared up as the wind ripped past them. She could hear nothing, had no idea if the others still rode with her; her senses were consumed with the harsh breathing of the horse beneath her, the steady drum of its hooves as it ran, and the smearing countryside passing by her.
Ahead she could make out a low wall, and beyond that a mass of tangled trees and shrubs and grasses. She aimed for the wall, tightening her legs against her horse and wrapping her hands in its mane. In an instant she was airborne. The horse landed hard, and Ling struggled to stay in the saddle as they swooped into the tangle of vegetation. She was swallowed instantly, leaves and branches slapping at her violently, threatening to tear her from her already unsettled seat. Her horse snorted, stopping suddenly, and Ling found herself airborne once again, for an instant, before she hit the ground.
She rolled as she hit, and came to a sudden stop against the trunk of an enormous tree. She looked up to see her horse quivering where it had stopped, head down, sides heaving. She realized she was alone and climbed to her feet in a panic. Before she could take a step back toward the wall the others came crashing through the trees toward her. She counted as they came, Celene with Amalya clutched in her lap. Fern. Dreskin. Several breaths later, Drake came barreling through the trees as well.
They leapt off their horses and began furiously pulling goods out of saddlebags. She was vaguely aware of them talking. Drake said something about the wall not stopping them for long. Dreskin protested, saying no one, not even warlocks, would follow them into the Woedenwoud. Fern spoke quietly, but her words cut through the din of panic that surrounded her. “Only a fool would enter these woods, and we, the biggest fools of them all.”
With a start, Ling realized they must be in the Woedenwoud. But she had little time to consider that any further. She was focused on the woods behind them, back toward the wall. There was one member of the party yet to come through.
Chapter Thirteen
“We should bed down here.” Fern yanked the saddle and bags from her horse’s back and let them fall to the ground. “I need food, and I’d much rather hunt over there,” she pointed back over to the other side of the wall, “than in there,” she gestured into the tangle of green in front of them. “Besides, we’d be fools to push deeper into the Woedenwoud in the dark.” She yanked a handful of leaves off a tree beside her and began rubbing down her horse.
Drake had also pulled everything off her mount and was furiously sorting through it all. “We need to get as far away from here as we can. We move deeper.”
“No, we stay. Drake…” Fern went to Drake and wrapped her hands around Drake’s. “They won’t cross that stone wall. Not for me. Not even for Ling. Fariss himself wouldn’t cross that wall. The Woedenwoud is death to any who enter it. They know that. What they don’t know, what none know save Alyssum and I, is there is a slim barrier between that low stone wall and the actual Woedenwoud. We are safe here. As safe as we could possibly be this close to such wild magics. But once we pass through those trees,” she gestured behind her, and Ling could just make out a line of trees glowing strangely white in the evening gloom, “we will be in dire peril. Our lives will be on the line every instant until we come out on the other side.”
Fern pulled Drake into a hug, her blue eyes focusing on each of them in turn. “We need all the rest we can get now. Once we cross that boundary, we’ll get none of it until we are through. If we come out at all.” Her tone and her gaze were gentle, but the tight wrinkle between her eyebrows gave her concern away.
Ling had heard of the Woedenwoud. There was a stone wall, far from Meuse and far from anywhere she’d ever been, that stretched along the entire southern border of Brielle. It separated Brielle from a wild land, uninhabited by people, that ran along the entire length of their country. Dangerous, everyone said. But no one had ever said why. Evelyn had been fascinated by it, as she had been with all things exotic and magical, but it had seemed so distant she spent little time thinking about it.
Celene stood still, staring toward the dull glow of the trees a short distance away. She gripped Amalya tight against her, much to the girl’s irritation. Next to them, Dreskin stroked his horse absently, his eyes and focus somewhere off in the darkness beneath the trees. Ling could practically smell the fear coming off them, a sour underbelly to the smell of sweat that clung to all of them. It wasn’t the warlocks that scared them so badly. Not one of them stared back the way they’d come. Ling shivered despite the warmth of the night.
Drake relaxed against Fern, leaning her head against Fern’s shoulder. She nodded slowly. “You’re right. I know you’re right. We stand a much better chance if we travel by day than stumbling blindly through unknown territory in the dark. I just…” She didn’t finish speaking. Instead Ling saw her arms tighten as she squeezed Fern and then stepped away. She returned to her pack, but this time she moved slowly, deliberately, pulling out a blanket and tossing it to the ground. She pulled out food as well, setting it aside neatly in preparation for cooking.
Her actions spurred the others to move, and they too began pulling out bedding. Dreskin and Fern wandered off in search of firewood. She could hear them chatting amiably as they worked, and Ling was happy to see Fern’s return to some level of normalcy, even though it hurt that it still didn’t seem to include her. She turned away from the others and made her way slowly back toward the stone wall. She kept low and moved quietly. The warlocks may have refused to enter the wood, but that didn’t mean they were not lingering outside, hoping Ling and the others would flee back across the wall once they realized they’d entered the Woedenwoud.
But if the warlocks hoped for that, then they really didn’t understand what was at stake. Just as she hadn’t. All the decisions she had made had all been focused on herself, her family, her friends. She’d never really thought much beyond that narrow circle. But as she tho
ught back to the smoking pile of bodies in Nantes, the terror in the eyes of the young boy in the barn, for the first time she really understood what drove Drake and the others. And now her.
Their own lives hung in the balance, and certainly that was part of their motivation. But what really drove them, what would keep them going no matter what the warlocks threw in their paths, was the reality that all life was under threat by the loss of magic. It was so much bigger than warlocks or Mari. The warlocks didn’t understand it, but what Ling and her companions did now they did for that boy, and all the hundreds of others like him.
They would never stop; Ling knew that as surely as she knew the sun would rise in the morning. They would not stop until they either succeeded in closing the breach or exhaled their last breaths. All that had befallen them, all that was to come, might damage them, but it wouldn’t break them. It just made what they did that much more important. Even Fern could see that again.
Ling peered through the darkness, but she could detect no movement on the far side of the wall. She couldn’t hear anything either. No breathing, human or animal, nor the creak of saddle leathers. Perhaps Fern was right. Perhaps the warlocks so feared this place they’d already given them up for dead. Ling wasn’t sure if that made them lucky or cursed. She could hardly imagine something so terrible that it scared warlocks off that completely. With a shudder she realized she wouldn’t have to imagine it much longer.
She crept closer to the wall, placing her hands flat against the top of the rough stone. It radiated heat against her palms, reflecting the warmth of the sun back into the cooling evening. She tried to think back to where she’d lost track of Navire, but her memory of the last hour was nothing but a jumbled mess. She had no idea where he might be or at what point he’d fallen behind her. She pushed up with her arms, slithering silently on her belly onto the top of the wall, the rough stone poking sharply against her chest. She stayed there for several minutes, listening, before she rolled over onto the far side of the wall.
“Navire?” she whispered as she moved slowly through the dark. With every step she expected some trap to fall upon her, like what had happened when she’d left the Salt Caves in Marique. Even if they hadn’t left some trap behind, there might even now be a night bird watching or a coyote listening, waiting to inform their warlock masters that she wasn’t dead after all. They couldn’t be far away, and Ling had no doubt they could be back instantly if they received word of her presence.
She pushed on, fear prickling her skin into vast ranges of miniature mountains, each topped by a single strand of the fine hair that covered her arms. Navire had risked his life to protect her; she would not leave him. If he were dying, he would die knowing she was by his side. She scanned the night for the telltale glow of golden eyes in the darkness, but there was nothing. She kept moving forward, one slow step at a time, pushing back against the steady pressure of fear. “Navire?”
She heard a small sound off to her right. She froze, waiting. For several minutes she heard nothing more, then just as she was lifting her foot it came again. A whine, so soft she could almost believe she’d imagined it. She shifted direction and headed toward the sound, staying in a tight crouch. “Navire,” she whispered again, pausing. Two breaths and then another low whine sounded just in front of her.
She dropped to her hands and knees and crawled forward, hands running over the black ground as she sought the dog. She found him moments later, and he whined as her hands settled on him. She could hear the faint thud of his tail as he tried to wag it in greeting. She couldn’t see the damage, but she could feel it. He was covered in blood. She had no idea how much of it was his and how much belonged to those he’d killed, but there was enough of it to set her heart beating in fear.
He was a big dog, but she slid her hands beneath him and lifted him anyway. He moaned as she lifted, and she felt warm fluid run over her arms. She hurried back to the low wall, dread thrumming through her with every step. She was very aware of the risk she was taking. But the only sound was the steady crunch of her own steps as she hurried through the rough gravel at her feet. She set Navire on the wall, pulling and pushing long slow breaths in and out of her lungs. Or at least, so she imagined. She leapt over the wall, hefted Navire back up into her arms, and ran into the deep cover of the wood, trying hard to keep from jostling him too badly.
She hurried through the thick greenery, and soon she could make out the flickering glow of a fire. Amalya was there with her usual blackened stick, happily humming to herself as she drew the same line again and over again in the dirt beside the fire. Celene and Dreskin chatted as they ate, Dreskin sprawled back on one elbow, feet close in to the fire. Drake was more subdued, but laughed along with them at something Dreskin had said. Fern was nowhere to be seen, and Ling thought she must be out searching for her own sort of food.
Ling stepped into the circle of light cast by the fire, and all conversation died as they looked up at her in shock. She paused for a moment, staring down at them, her concern for Navire too big for her to put into words. Dreskin came to his senses, shoving gear and cooking equipment aside to make room. He motioned for Ling to place Navire near the fire.
“Drake, pull out the kit,” he said quietly. Drake paused for a moment, and Ling knew she was debating whether they should waste such precious supplies on a dog. “Not the time to second guess,” Dreskin said, and in that instant Ling forgave him for everything she’d been so angry with him about. She’d not had to explain. He saw what Navire meant to her and didn’t question it.
In truth, Ling was a bit confounded by her affection for the dog herself. But when she thought back to the grimoire, to the long days she’d spent so alone as they’d journeyed here, about how abandoned she’d felt by Fern’s anger, and even now by Fern’s indifference toward her, it made perfect sense. They’d known each other for such a short time, but Navire was hers, in a way she’d never expected to experience again. He’d given her that sense of connection she’d been missing for so long. She couldn’t lose him now.
Celene crawled to Navire’s side and looked him over, running her hands over his body slowly. “He’s lost too much blood. He won’t make it.”
Ling felt a bolt of rage strike her, a flash of her old anger mingling with new. “What do you know of it?” she said, an accusation more than a question. She glared at the others. “I don’t care what it takes; we’re going to do everything we can to save him.”
Dreskin and Drake exchanged a long glance between the two of them and Celene. Their hesitation enraged her even more, as if they were the only ones in this group who could make a decision. She opened her mouth to speak, but Dreskin interrupted her. “Do it,” he said simply. Drake looked away, out into the wood around them, and Ling wondered if she looked for Fern.
Celene returned to her prodding. “He’s bleeding heavily. We need to stop the blood loss immediately or nothing else we do will matter.” Celene pressed the flaps of skin along either side of a deep wound together and grabbed at Ling’s hands. Ling resisted the urge to yank her hands back. Celene placed Ling’s hands against Navire’s wound. “Press here, hard. As hard as you can.” Ling leaned in and watched in shock as blood welled up around her hands, between her fingers, matting up his fur. Navire whined but held still.
“Build up that fire. We need water boiling now. Get me a knife, a long one. That cut’s not small. And bandages, make me some bandages.” Celene’s normally timid manner vanished. She issued orders in a quick, emotionless staccato, and the others moved to do her bidding without question.
“Harder, girl. Or he’ll die,” Celene spit as she thrust the knife deep into the heart of the now raging fire. She tossed fabric into a pot of water, not quite yet boiling. She set the needle and thread from their aid kit in a neat line beside her, then knelt in front of Navire.
“Amalya, darling.” Celene called to her daughter. Amalya placed her stick very carefully on the ground, exactly parallel to the line she’d been drawing. She moved
to her mother’s side, kneeling in front of Navire.
“Are you sure…?” Drake began a question but Celene shot her a sharp glance and Drake resided.
Amalya put her hands to either side of Navire’s head, leaning over him until her own forehead was pressed against his. She lingered like this for several minutes. It felt like an eternity to Ling, who sat watching large globules of blood still leaking from beneath her hands.
“Ready, ready, readyreadyready,” Amalya said, her words blurring together into one long nonsense word. Then Celene snatched the knife out of the fire, shoved Ling aside, and slid the blade into the open would.
Navire screamed, and Amalya along with him. Their voices twisted together in an agony of pain, and Ling fell backward in terror at the sound of it. Amalya’s scream choked off. “Nononononono,” she said, and instantly Navire’s screaming ended, the tension vanishing from the hard lines of the dog’s body.
Everyone watched, frozen, eyes open wide. Amalya pulled herself away from Navire, sobbing as she moved back to her stick. She picked it up and began rocking as she mumbled something that sounded like sleep over and over to herself.
Celene thrust the knife into the fire once again before plunging into Navire’s torn flesh a second time, cauterizing it. This time he didn’t move at all. The smell of burning hair filled the air. Celene tossed the knife aside and picked up the needle and thread. She worked quickly now, tearing away what blood-clotted fur she could, sponging away blood, and sewing Navire’s other injuries closed with smooth tugs.
She was done in minutes, though it was not soon enough for Ling. Celene carried a pot of bloodied water a short distance from camp and dunked her hands and arms in it. She had blood up to her shoulders, Navire’s blood. It ran down her arms and formed gruesome puddles on the ground beneath her, thankfully invisible in the dark of the night. She dumped the remainder of the water out on the ground before returning to the small group.
