“You know what this means?”
“I do.” Garrett sheathed his sword and erected himself before Perci. He was a dark, impenetrable tower, the shadows thick in his eyes. “You will take us to Saul,” he told the boy. “Quick as you can. If you betray us, I will string you up for the crows.”
He stripped Perci’s dagger out of his belt, wilted the boy with a glower, and set to breaking camp.
An army? She stood in the shadow of the Nightness-singed tree. As Perci quavered and Garrett toiled, she shut her eyes and dared to hope. What if? What if we can destroy the Wolde? What if the Pale Knight is beaten? What if the Thillrians cave the Undergrave in and Father’s magicks never go off?
Her heart caught fire with hope. Her bones quivered beneath her skin. After scouring the camp, Garrett came to her and hung her satchel in her grasp. She looked at him, feeling light as air.
“Can we go now?” she asked.
Garrett nodded, saying nothing.
“This way, m’lady.” Perci pointed northward. “I’ve two friends in the brush. They’re waiting.”
She saw Garrett tense. “Be calm.” She touched his arm. “Just two. We can manage two, right?”
Perci went first into the trees. Garrett slid past her and followed. Roiling with emotion, she trailed both of them.
Garrett has no trust.
Should I? Is it safe?
How big is the army?
When do we attack?
How did Saul do it?
How many did he send to find us?
While a hundred questions tingled on her tongue, Perci collected his two youngling comrades. They emerged from their hiding places up in the trees, dirty and dressed in Shivershore rags, falling silent in Garrett’s shadow. Evram and Imyr were their names, so Perci explained, neither of them older than fourteen. Paler and skinnier than me, she thought. Quiet and in need of supper. Fear nothing, Garrett. These are no Wolde.
Over the next hours, Perci and his companions led the way north.
The silence as they marched through Sallow became overbearing. No one seemed to understand her excitement. She imagined the Wolde destroyed, Grimwain driven into exile, and her father forever laid to rest. And Garrett. We could be together. Every step she took felt plodding, a waste of time, when all I have to do is slide into the shadows and find the army.
Somehow, someway, she resisted doing anything rash. I will see Saul soon enough, she promised herself. Things will fall into place just as they should.
And then, an hour later, everything changed.
She marched between another thousand trees, daydreaming of burying Saul beneath her biggest hug. Grey skies haunted the heavens, but the wind was absent, the rain long gone. Garrett led as much as Perci, Evram, and Imyr, seeming to know the way to the army.
After climbing out of a wet, stony valley she came to a sudden halt.
“It…
“No…”
Here, deep within Sallow, she saw at last the aftermath of her storm. Behind her, the twisted woodland flourished, but ahead to the end of her sights, death reigned. The heart of Sallow was a graveyard. No birds sang. No animals skittered. Beyond death’s line of demarcation, every tree lay dead, while every shrub, bush, and thorny weed wavered in the wind like corpses burned at the stake. Sallow’s ashen soil, dry as dust, looked much the same as the surface of Cornerstone.
She remembered the storm, the endless nights in the snow-buried hut, the numbing cold lasting forever. She looked to Garrett, who stared without expression.
“Garrett…” She gulped.
“I see it.”
“I am sorry…”
“Not your fault.”
Perci and his mates, no strangers to the spectacle of dead Sallow, gazed across the tomblike landscape as though it were any other thicket.
“They says it goes like this in a giant circle,” Perci remarked. “The long winter did it.”
“Aye. Round and round and round,” said Imyr. “A day’s trot every which way ‘bout the ‘Grave.”
“And Saul is in there?” she asked.
“Aye,” Perci answered. “They’ve food from the westfields and more from County Dray. The deadness is no bother.”
Hard to believe, she thought. Gaping at the deadened realm, she wondered how anything could survive mere breaths after the last living tree. So clear was the line between life and death that the landscape looked like it belonged in one of her dreams. On one side, the living world, she mused. Beyond the last tree, the Ur already reign.
It was Garrett who broke her from her trance. He came to her and folded her hand into his. “If Saul survives in there, so can we,” he reasoned. “Saul’s no fool. He calculates every risk.”
“But I killed everything,” she uttered. “Every tree, every bird. I should have gone somewhere else.”
Garrett shook his head. “There was nowhere else to go.”
She needed time to take it all in. Stepping past Garrett and gliding like a ghost between Perci and Imyr, she strode to the last living tree and set her feet on the dead earth beyond it. From her new vantage, she saw Sallow’s morbid panorama in its fullest. The withered, leafless trees stood like black splotches of ink against a funeral canvas. There seemed no sign of Saul or any great army. The Ur were not here, not yet, but the wasted earth looked like the perfect place for them to build their very first tower.
“You sure?” she said to Perci. “There is an army in there?”
“Two armies, m’lady,” Perci reminded her. “Ours and the Pale Knight’s wolf’uns.”
She swallowed a hard breath. “You can guide us safely?”
Perci grinned. “Aye. Easy. Er, why is it you’re not wearing shoes, m’lady?”
“Never mind that.” She grimaced. “Lead the way. And try not to get us killed.”
Perci obeyed. Imyr and Evram sulked past. Garrett grimly nodded.
The journey continued.
For hours unknown, she trailed Perci and his mates, remaining always in Garrett’s shadow. In the deathly landscape, her focus fled and her imagination got the better of her. She daydreamed the tomblike trees would reanimate and strangle her. She feared the earth might open and an Ur crypt devour her whole. Fearful, she looked skyward in search of the Black Moon. She glimpsed the dark sphere many times, but lost it again and again in the broth of clouds. Watching me, she knew. It knows I am here. And so will Grim.
And then, at long last, she heard something other than the cold crunch of her feet against the leaves. Faraway voices echoed between the dead trees. Distant shouts, heavy footfalls, and the murmurs of men yet unseen made a clamor that sounded like music to her ears.
“Them’s no wolves,” Perci declared. “We’re here!”
Wending between twenty ashen trees, Perci and his mates led her into a valley between two slate-topped hills. Her excitement rose, then fell, then wavered somewhere in-between. The camp of the Thillrian army emerged into view, though it was hardly what she expected. Ragtag tents stood everywhere, most of them no more than strips of canvas stretched between long-dead trees. Handfuls of half-armored men meandered hither and to, none of them in any particular order. She saw Thillrian banners, black, gold, and silver, hanging limp for lack of wind.
Twenty banners. Eighty-some soldiers.
This is no army.
“Where is everyone? Where’s Saul?”
With a shrug, Perci halted at the camp’s edge. None of the soldiers seemed to notice his presence or hers. They were listless, as tired as the trees. She dared another twenty steps closer, halting in a dusty clearing surrounded by dead trees and two-hundred wind-beaten tents.
And still nothing.
It was then she noticed many of the Thillrian men were wounded. She saw their limbs wrapped in scarlet-stained bandages, their faces as haggard as the sky. Wait…these are men returning from battle.
Did we lose?
Skittering ahead of the others, she approached a trio of Thillrian soldiers resting in the sha
dow of a long-dead tree. The three men’s faces were white, their beards scraggly and black. Among them, only the oldest stood, leaning against a tree whose bark was as pale as his skin.
“Hello, ser,” she said. “I need your help.”
The soldier lifted his gaze to hers. He could have been Perci’s grandfather, considering his age. He looked ill-fit to fight, for his body was as frail as kindling, while his breastplate bore so many scars she wondered how it had not fallen to pieces.
“Lassie,” he grumbled, “You must be lost. Tis no place for a pretty thing like you.”
“I am not lost.” She gestured at the clearing’s far side, where Perci loitered and Garrett watched. “Those boys brought me here. I seek Saul of Elrain. You might know him. He’s brown-haired and stern. His battle-staff is…well...famous.”
“Aye, I know this Saul of yours,” said the fellow slumped at the tree’s bottom.
She knelt before the wounded soldier. His arm rested in a sling, his eyes betraying oceans of weariness. “Please…tell me where he is,” she asked.
The soldier sat upright. She saw blood seeping from beneath his hauberk. “Your Saul isn’t here,” he coughed. “He’s with the rest.”
“The rest?” She shivered.
“Either dead where the wolf-men killed him. Or fleeing from Undergrave Hill.”
“You mean…”
“Aye.” He nodded. “Battle’s all but over. We’re half of what’s left.”
She stood and staggered one step backward. She looked to the other two soldiers, her blood chilled by the pity in their gazes. “The battle?” Her voice cracked. “Over?”
“We’re sorry, M’lass.” The oldest shook his head. “We tried. We knew it going in. The Pale Knight’s too much for us.”
“You’re Ande, right?” grunted the soldier at tree’s bottom.
She swallowed her horror. “Yes. Why?”
The soldier raised a his broken finger. “Behind you.”
Slowly, miserably, she looked to see what awaited her. She half-expected to see Saul’s specter, drawn and pale in death, scolding her not to do what she and Garrett had already decided. She pivoted on her heels, and for a few breaths she stared in silent disbelief. The young, dark-haired man standing walking up to her was not Saul.
He was shorter, spryer, and though his cheeks were spattered with blood she knew him just the same.
Marid.
Marid is alive.
Shades
In the Thillrian war camp, Andelusia sat on a bundle of straw and wondered how it had happened.
Silver-clothed tents and scarecrow trees ringed Marid’s campsite. A fire crackled in its center, hurling red cinders into the dusk. Frozen, she gaped across the flames, whose hot light hurt her eyes.
“Dead,” she whispered to poor Imyr. The boy hunkered nearby in the dirt, making small talk with Perci. “He was dead. How could he not have been?”
Helpless, Imyr shrugged. “I dunno, madame. Looked plenty alive to me.”
During the long walk to his hidden camp, Marid had held her hand, but she had felt nothing. He had said words to her, and the sounds had fallen mute against the blood pounding in her ears. Upon arriving, he had hugged her, but then wandered away into his tent.
Leaving me alone with all these people.
The night deepened. The shadows made by the fire fell across her like the grasping talons of the Ur. In Marid’s campsite, six simple tents surrounded the campfire. Beyond the tents lay Sallow, the trees cackling in the cool breeze. As she stared wide-eyed into the dark, someone brought her a cup of water and a bowl of broth, but she drank neither. When she stood to look for Marid, someone else asked her to sit, and she wordlessly complied. Garrett sat on the fire’s far side, grave and silent, but she dared not speak to him, for fear I am dreaming.
At length, Marid emerged from his tent. His hauberk was dented and his greaves splattered scarlet, but he looked as healthy and handsome as the moment she had lost him many months ago.
“Ande…” He sat beside her. “Thanks for waiting. Had to clean my face.”
She looked at him as though he were a ghost. “Marid…you are…how are you…is it safe here?”
“We’re safe. Leastways for now. Degiliac won’t leave his valley. Will you have some soup?”
She glanced to Garrett for reassurance. The darkness in her lover’s eyes gave none. It was Marid’s smile which softened her fears and set her senses straight again. She and he locked gazes, and she began to believe he was no ghost, that he was truly alive and sitting right in front of her.
“You were dead.” She shivered. “The winter took you. You never came back.”
Marid sighed. “You wonder what happened. Well…they got me. I made it not a thousand steps from our cabin, and the wolf-men snatched me up. I was clumsy. I had a sword, but I dropped it in the snow. The handle froze my fingers. They must’ve been waiting out there the entire time. They got me without a fight and took me to the Pale Knight’s camp. I was so afraid, Ande. I thought they would come for you, but I heard them fret. ‘Stay far from the witch’s house,’ they said. ‘Master’s orders.’ After that, I hardly cared if they killed me or not. It was good enough to know they wouldn’t try to hurt you.”
She looked him up and down, expecting to see some horrible injury or remnant of torture. She saw none. She glanced to Garrett in disbelief, but he merely shrugged.
“But…here you are.” She blinked at Marid.
“Only because the Pale Knight let me go.”
She flinched when she heard him say it. Her knowledge of the Pale Knight extended only as far as the leaflets from Lyrlech. From what she remembered, Grimwain’s warlord allowed none to go free.
“Not funny,” she huffed.
Marid grinned. “Not trying to be. A few weeks ago he came to me in the middle of the night. He unlocked my cage and unshackled me. He said, ‘Scamper off, little mouse. You and a lucky few get to go free.’ I was not about to argue with the man. I took his offer and ran. Others were…well…not so fortunate.”
“Makes no sense,” she said. “Why would he?”
Marid set down his soup bowl and folded his hands beneath his chin. She only then noticed the exhaustion in his eyes.
“It makes sense. Sort of.” He looked into the fire. “I’d met the Pale Knight once before. He’s the one who came to the cabin in the dead of winter. He’s the one who stole the book you kept in your satchel. He could have skewered me that day, but he let me go. And the second time, I saw in his eyes that he recognized me. I guess I’m lucky. I should probably be twice dead.”
“And now you fight against him.”
Marid sagged. “Funny story, that.”
All went quiet around the snapping fire, at least in her mind. The others’ conversations fell to the far corners of her awareness. “Are you well?” She touched Marid’s shoulder. “I mean…not just your body.”
Marid’s happiness dimmed, his shoulders seeming heavier than moments ago. “We tried for you, Ande. We really did. It was a hopeless fight. I feel guilty for surviving it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean—”
“The Wolde,” Garrett remarked in the background. “The Pale Knight’s men are victorious. The survivors in this camp are all who remain.”
“Aye.” Marid sagged. “The war’s over. They crushed us. I should’ve known. We needed more men, more time.”
She reached for him. “Are you wounded? The blood…your armor…”
“Not my blood.” Marid touched his hauberk. “One of the wolf-men’s. I wish I could go back and kill more, but there’re too many. They’re too well-armed. If Saul were here, he…well…”
Saul.
Shadows swarmed into her eyes, a darkness so deep that when Marid saw it, his mouth fell shut. “Saul?” The name snapped off her tongue. “What happened? Is he hurt? Dead? Tell me.”
Perci and his lads fell silent. Two soldiers sitting nearby ceased whispering. Ev
en Garrett put his cup down to listen.
Marid retreated into a moment’s thought. “I…I saw him,” he struggled to say. “Just yesterday when the fight turned against us. His staff was broken. He was using what was left of it as a crutch. He was hurt, Ande. I tried to get to him. I swear it.”
“Where?” She narrowed her eyes.
“North.” He pointed into the night.
Like storm clouds gathering, darkness roiled inside her. Her mouth went hard, her jaw tight. She bounded to her feet. Looking afraid, Marid remained planted on his seat of straw.
“I have to find him,” she said. “Let there be wolf-men who try and stop me!”
Marid tried to reason. “In the morning, Ande. Wait, and we’ll all go.”
“Yes. Wait til dawn, madame,” pleaded Perci. “The forest’s too dark. You’ll never find anything.”
She glared across them all. She hated their reluctance, their fear of the dark. “What good is dawn?” Black fire smoked inside her veins. “He could be dead by then, and you lot will have sat on your rumps and had soup while Grimwain picks his bones clean. No. Not this time. Stay here. I can find him faster without you.”
The Nightness surged inside her. It felt more invigorating than any feeling, even that of Garrett handling her roughly. She felt nothing like her ordinary self. She was fearless, impulsive, angry.
“I am leaving.” She glared at them. “Right now.”
“Leaving where?” Marid finally stood. “Ande, you’ve only just gotten here.”
She laid a quick kiss on his forehead, stunning him, and then she pushed him away. “Stay,” she commanded. “Do not come after me. I will find him. Before you finish your soups, I will be back.”
She looked to Garrett. If he disapproved, she could not tell.
He understands.
At her whim, all went black. The campfire sputtered, driven to death by the barest flutter of the Nightness. As the shadows thickened and fumed at her feet, Marid reached for her wrist. He was too slow. Like mist, she had no substance. She became one with the darkness, and in the time it took her onlookers to draw a breath, she ascended in Nightness form above the warren of tents and murdered trees.
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