“By the Sun,” Uncle Naro finally managed to choke out as the buzz of nervous voices began to rise like the thrum of a disturbed wasp nest. “Let’s hope the Moon looks favorably on whatever poor bastard crosses that lot the wrong way.”
All about Cahna, heads still turned north in the direction the men had been trudging along, the adults nodded together. While Cahna did not understand exactly what her uncle meant by these words, it didn’t matter. She learned more by way of her confusion, as she looked to her parents to see if they might explain it to her.
There, in the faces of the two people from whom she had known only strength and kindness and courage, lay heavy something Cahna had not thought she would ever see. It terrified her, the emotion she saw lining the creases that had just started to frame her mother’s eyes, as did the tension she saw in the firmness of her father’s jaw.
For, as all children know, when one’s own parents show fear, it is very nearly the end of the world.
CHAPTER 3
“There is no day in which I would find the Arocklen Woods anything less than breathtaking. It is true that for much of the year the forest is dreary and cold, almost all light smothered by the snow and ice which packs its highest branches, but even in those depths of winter there is a wonder to the place, a mesmerizing quality which exists heavily in the muffled silence of the evergreens and the frozen stillness of undergrowth and rivers and hills.
That being said, I am not fool enough to claim that such icy fascinations are not outweighed by the true magnificence of the Woods when taken in under a summer sun…”
—private journal of Talo Brahnt
Raz stood a ways behind Syrah, the reins of both horses held firm in one hand while he allowed the woman her much-needed moment of solitude.
They stood at the base of the stairs, the wide space of cleared land that separated the Saragrias Ranges from the forest devoid of the wind-blown snows that had covered it every other time Raz had visited the place. He looked around, noting with an unamused grunt that the changing of the seasons left behind not even a hint of the violence and butchery which once plagued the ground around his feet.
It had taken them nearly a week to manage the mountain path in its entirety. Without Syrah to keep him company, Raz thought he might have found their crawling pace maddening. Instead, he’d discovered he couldn’t help but enjoy the time they spent navigating the winding steeps, easing the horses down each step, one after the other with careful deliberation. Syrah kept his mind from straying too often to the dark cloud of worry that started to hang over him the moment they’d left the safety of the Citadel’s walls, her presence and spirit guiding his thoughts constantly elsewhere. She’d pointed out the gracious flight of the cliff falcons, their calls echoing against the crags above their heads. She’d forced him to stop earlier than he would have liked every evening, grabbing hold of his arm and tugging him along the path until they found a spot in which the Sun could be seen setting over the distant horizon in a painting of colors. She’d spent the evenings telling him stories of her childhood in the Citadel, often repeating tales he’d heard half-a-dozen times before, but he never cared. It kept his mind from straying, kept him focused on her and the world she saw, so filled with beauty and wonder that he was often more than a little jealous of her understanding of life and all its value.
Jealous, that was, until this moment.
Raz watched the woman carefully, ignoring the tug of the reins in his hand as Gale and the mare—Nymara, Syrah had decided to call the animal—shuffled about looking for particularly appetizing tufts of grass. He took in the tension of her shoulders, noting the shake of the hand that grasped the steel of her Priestess’ staff. It was newly forged, that steel, worked metal to replace the weapon lost to her in this very spot, as the past freeze had just begun to take hold. Raz wondered if Syrah realized this fact, though he doubted it.
It seemed a paltry connection to make when compared to the other things that must have been going through the woman’s mind.
Syrah was facing south, away from him, her one eye taking in the thick line of trees that waited for them some hundred paces across the grass. Raz felt an odd sadness well up within himself as he followed her gaze, taking in the forest of his own accord. To him, the place spoke of welcome and anticipation. As a cool breeze blew down from the mountains, the branches of the old firs and towering pines tilted and swayed, back and forth like hands enticing him to approach. His sharp ears made out songbirds crafting their music in the greenery, and even here he could see patches of the Sun’s flitting light dance brightly across flowery underbrush. He’d loved the place even in the harshest night of winter, taken something very much like comfort in its solitude. Now, though, he wanted nothing more than to experience its magnificence in all its Sun-lit glory.
And so his sadness grew as he looked again to Syrah, who—he knew all too well—was feeling a very different set of emotions as she took in the Arocklen Woods.
She’d lost much, in this place, her eye being the least of those things. Raz fought back anger as he remembered the state he’d found her in, a tortured soul torn down to little more than bruised skin and bone by the gruff hands of the Sigûrth as they’d declared their war against her kind. He’d been the death of many men that night, the cold touch of iron vengeance which had stolen the lives of a score and more of her captors.
It was one of the few rampages in his life Raz could look back on without so much as an ounce of regret.
After several minutes, Raz decided it was time to pull Syrah back from the dark waters of memory. Looping the reins together so that Nymara wouldn’t stray too far from Gale, Raz moved quietly through the grass, the silk mantle Carro and Jofrey had returned to him whispering around his calves, the old weight of his gladius comforting across his back. When he was a pace behind her he allowed the woman another few moments, seeing now the true intensity with which she looked into the shadows of the Woods.
Then, gently, he took the last step forward and settled a lithe arm around her narrow shoulders.
Syrah jumped only slightly as the weight of his limb fell across her, but even then she did not look away from the Arocklen. It was a few seconds before she made any motion, in fact, finally reaching across herself to grasp the fingers of his hand.
“It’s a stupid fear, isn’t it?” she asked him in a hushed voice, still not looking away from the trees. “There’s nothing there. I know there’s nothing there, and… and yet…” She trailed off.
“It’s not,” Raz told her, following her eye through the twisted evergreens. “What you feel is as justified as anything else in this world.” He looked down at her again. “I told you, we don’t have to do this. We can go around.”
Syrah snorted, and Raz was pleased to see a smile play on her pale lips as she raised an eyebrow. “It’s adorable that you think that’s an option,” she said in an amused tone. “Even on horseback that would add weeks before making it to Ystréd, not to mention what time it would take to hunt once we ran out of provisions.”
Raz shrugged. “We could make it work.”
Syrah cocked her head up at him. “The sooner we reach the city, the more time we’ll have to figure out our next move. Summers are short here, Raz. The freeze will arrive again before you even get a chance to feel the sun on your skin.”
Raz frowned, though not at her words. The tilt of her head had shifted her hair, revealing the warped knot of scarring that was all that remained of most of her right ear. It hurt him to see that, hurt him to realize he had not been there to stop it.
And it hurt him now, dwelling on what she was about to put herself through.
“We don’t have to do this,” he repeated, looking her carefully in the eye. This time, she smiled in truth, seeing the depth of his concern. She let go of his hand and reached up to rest her palm against his cheek. Her skin was warm to the touch, her fingers gentle against his scales.
“Yes, we do,” she said, and despite the softness of
her voice he heard the finality in the statement.
Making this out, Raz gave in and nodded. As she drew her hand away he turned north, whistling once. Immediately Gale raised his broad head from the grass it was buried in, and a few seconds later he and Nymara were trotting over, the mare snorting in an annoyed sort of fashion as she was pulled unwillingly along by the stallion’s stronger frame.
A minute or so later they were mounted and approaching the edge of the tree line again, the warmth of the Sun fading slightly when they trotted into the shadows of the branches. Syrah did not pause as they passed into the Woods, though Raz saw her start to tremble the slightest bit when the trunks began to close in around them. He let her be, wanting her to draw from her own strength to overcome her terror, and it wasn’t long before he heard the woman take a deep breath, letting it out again as the shivering subsided. For nearly a quarter-hour they traveled in silence, Raz keeping Gale close to Nymara’s flank, never straying far and only taking his eyes off the woman’s back when it came to guiding the horse over streams or around fallen trees. Before long they were deep within the trees, the space between the pines, firs, and hemlocks growing wider while the trunks thickened until some of them were so broad Raz doubted he knew any five men in the world who could link hands around their bases. At this point Syrah began to relax in truth, the opening up of the forest floor seeming to relieve a little of the weight bearing down upon her shoulders, the brightness of the light streaming between the leaves warming away some of the lingering tension. After a time she finally turned around in her saddle and—though her face was strained—spoke in a calm, steady voice.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
Raz nodded at once, allowing himself to look around in truth now that Syrah seemed to have found some measure of control over her fears.
The scene around him felt like witnessing a finished masterpiece after seeing only the rough attempts of its early creation. The Arocklen, in winter so calm and still, was now practically vibrating with life. Everywhere he looked, the green of the forest was almost overwhelming, moss-lined bark melding with swaying saplings, dipping flowers, and colorful underbrush. All around them the sounds of the Woods played like a distant orchestra, with the calls of birds and the rush of a nearby river colluding with the wind through the leaves until the hill they were traversing felt like an amphitheater of earth and stone and grass.
It didn’t take them long to find the path south. During the freeze it had been harder to distinguish, the dirt of the worn trails difficult to make out against the frosted brown of the forest floor. In summer, however, it was a clear road, twisting its way cheerfully through the Woods as space allowed, sometimes wrapping around lichen-covered boulders or else trailing along streams for a time until the waters became shallow enough to cross.
It was so drastic a change compared to the trek north Raz had experienced that it took him a while before he realized some of the surroundings were starting to become familiar.
A tree with a particularly noticeable bend. An odd shift in the earth where a thick root partially protruded out of the ground. A clearing in which—where once there had been only snow and fallen branches—now grazed a small herd of deer, their ears flicking up at the dull thumps of Gale and Nymara’s hooves on the trail. A few hours into their journey Raz felt some of the joy of the woods fade, replaced by a tense echo of a fear he hadn’t realized he’d forgotten.
When they started climbing upward, the echo became claws scraping at the back of his mind.
“What on earth…?” Raz heard Syrah demand under her breath as they reached the ridge of the hill, pulling her mare gently to a halt. She was a short way ahead of him, and had come across the markings first. Whereas winter’s passing had obliterated any hint of a fight from the stone steps along the base of the mountain path, the grassy floor of the Arocklen had not fared so well. Where once the face of the incline might have been a uniform of green speckled with the reds and purples of flowers, there were in places now the unmistakable scars of what could only have been fire scorching earth. As Syrah urged Nymara forward, peering closer at the patterns in the damaged grass, Raz’s eyes read the ground like a book, the black and brown spots and lines little more than the words of an old story. Here, the blast of magic. There, the ring of flames. Raz could almost smell the seared flesh and the crack of bone as the wolves had died one after the other.
Abruptly, Raz felt his throat tighten. “Syrah,” he managed in a hard voice as he started to pull Gale about, “come with me.”
The Priestess tore her eyes from the scorch marks to look around, confused. “Where are we going?” she called out after him as Raz kicked Gale into a slow gallop back down the hill, in the direction they’d come.
Raz answered, but spoke too quietly for her to make out the words.
“To say goodbye.”
It took them the remainder of the morning to find the lake. Raz possessed little more than a general idea of where the place might be, and they ended up circling back to the path frequently as a point of reference in their search. Rather than grow irritated, however, Syrah became only more determined with each loop they made through the western Woods, her face set from the moment he had explained to her what it was they were searching for.
Fortunately, their perseverance eventually bore fruit.
Raz stood by the woman this time, the pair of them sharing their moment of silence at the edge of the water. It was still, shimmering only when the occasional breeze blew down from the canopy above, and so clear they could see the bottom all the way from where it dipped into the deepest parts until it rose again to form the small island in the center of the lake. Upon this little plot of land grew a single tree, a gnarled pine, half-bent with age. It had the look of a wise old man, the weight of his life twisting him almost to his knees, and yet its thick, spiny foliage was hearty and green with life. With each gust of wind the tree’s branches would shift, and every time Raz would peer carefully into the shadows beneath, seeking out a very particular shape.
Finally, there was the glint of metal in the shifting pattern of the Sun.
“There,” Raz said, lifting a clawed hand and pointing.
Syrah followed his finger, but it was still a few seconds before she, too, caught sight of the thing. When she did, he heard her try to repress the shaking gasp that overtook her.
The shape of the staff, black beneath the branches, then gleaming in the light, stood out to them like a beacon, guiding their eyes. Raz followed it down as the tree shifted about once again, and it wasn’t long before he found what he truly sought.
Outlined against the trunk of the old pine, there appeared to be the form of a man at rest, seated with his legs outstretched, his back against the roughened bark. His hood was pulled up over his face, the white outlines of his sleeves bent to give the impression that his hands were resting in his lap. The Sun danced over him, and from this distance anyone else might have thought the figure was only taking a midday nap in the calm brightness of the summer day.
Raz felt his throat constrict again, and he swallowed hard.
Talo Brahnt sat where he had died, his last breath spent at the end of the very blade now slung across Raz’s back. By either twisted luck or merciful magic, his body seemed not to have been disturbed in the months of winter it had lain there, propped up and at peace in the shade of the tree that had become the man’s only remaining companion in death. Despite all attempts, Raz couldn’t help but frown as his mind wandered back to that night, seeming an eternity ago, the three of them illuminated in the golden light of the healing spells Carro al’Dor had been casting with desperate fervor.
But Talo had been too far gone, and steel had been the only mercy left to him.
The touch of Syrah’s fingers about his wrist made Raz tense, then relax. He realized he’d been clenching his fists at his side, and he loosened them, feeling his palms throb where his metal claws had dug through the leather of the gauntlets to the skin beneath.
>
“Where did it happen?” Syrah was asking him, and it took a moment for Raz to clear his head. When he did, he pointed to the western surface of the lake.
“There,” he told her hoarsely, finding he could say little else. Syrah nodded, her eye on the surface of the water he was indicating. She let go of his hand and started moving around the edge of the shore, leaving Raz to gain control of the anger and sadness that threatened now to overwhelm him.
When he managed it, he turned and moved to join her.
Syrah stood quietly, her eye still gazing into the water, apparently not noticing that the tips of her boots were under threat of a good soak as she sank into the loose earth. Raz could guess what she was looking at before he reached her side, and it didn’t take him long to find the object of her interest.
Most of the ursalus' body, unlike Talo, had been ravaged by the beasts of the freeze. Whether it was wolves or other bears or some different manner of creature, it looked as though little was left of the terrible animal which had stolen away the High Priest’s life with nothing more than a swipe of its great clawed paw. The bear, though, had been a horror of massive proportions, easily outweighing Raz five times over, and some parts of the corpse looked to have been simply too big to drag away into the relative shelter of the trees. From where he stood Raz could just make out the staggered line of what remained of the thing’s spine, an odd pattern of what might almost have been pale stones from which bent and broken ribs extended upward, creating a maze through which little fish darted even as he watched. It looked as though one limb might have survived the scavengers as well, though the long bones of the paw were now half-buried in the rock and stone of the lake bottom.
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