by Stefon Mears
Cavan urged his blue roan through the rent in space.
7
The black pebbled path ran narrow along the edge of the obsidian cliff. And the cliff looked like literal obsidian. Shiny and brittle, with tiny chips of it broken up to form the trail. The trail was all there was of the cliff on this mountain of obsidian, so narrow that Cavan and his friends had to ride down single-file.
Cavan in front on his blue roan, the Amra on her bay, then Ehren on his blond chestnut. Amra had argued with the Hawkspeaker about the riding order. She wanted to be the first to meet any hazards between them and their destination, as always. But the Hawkspeaker insisted — this was Cavan’s need and Cavan’s path. He had to lead or they might wind up somewhere else.
The air was still, but cold as a lichyard at the hour of the wolf. Cavan could smell only the blood anointing his upper lip, as it anointed seven other places on his person.
No moon in the sky above them. No stars. Only a blackness deeper than the obsidian of the mountain. Even the Hawkspeaker’s hawks did not follow them here.
The world seemed reduced to Cavan and his companions, their path, and their horses. Their horses, whose hooves did not echo, only crunched with every cantering stride.
Sweat gelled quickly on Cavan’s forehead. At the back of his neck. Formed and gelled without so much as a drop rolling its way down his back. Just one more thing that was not right in this place where nothing was quite right.
Cavan’s stomach twisted with more than the remnants of his bloody meal. This was not his world, and the wrongness of it echoed within him. He thighs ached to kick. To urge the horses faster. Bring them to a gallop.
But their speed didn’t matter. The Hawkspeaker said so. They could have walked the horses and arrived at the same time, if they wished. Movement, more than speed, was what mattered.
But Cavan could not simply walk.
If the Hawkspeaker’s magic was anything like what Cavan had learned in his time with Master Powys, will and focus made a difference. And Cavan focused better on travel when he rode. Walking was a time for letting his mind wander.
“No song?” Cavan called back to Ehren.
“Not in this place,” Ehren said. “We don’t need the attention.”
The question had only been meant in teasing, but Cavan was shocked to realize that he actually would have welcomed a song. The familiarity of it. Even the confidence of its meaning.
Something had truly gone wrong in Cavan’s life. His inheritance looked to be valuable enough to kill for. His foster family was in danger. And he would have welcomed the sound of Ehren singing.
Truly, this was a time as dark as its place.
A glance up and down the cliff side showed Cavan that they’d begun their journey somewhere in the middle of the towering mountain, hundreds of feet up. Below them the valley gave his thirsty eyes their first break from the relentless blackness.
Gray. Gray boulders, copses of gray trees (that had the look of evergreens, which, Cavan supposed, made them evergrays), and darker gray dirt.
And gray bodies. Sixteen of them. Hanging from the lower branches of the nearest tree to where their path looked to pass.
“Are those humans or orcs?” Cavan called out before the curve of the mountain hid the bodies from sight for a time.
“Can’t tell from here,” Amra said. “But we’ll find out soon enough. They aren’t going anywhere.”
“Don’t be too sure,” Ehren said.
He had a point. In a place like this, the dead might rise and move about without even so much as the twitch of a finger from a necromancer.
And if those corpses started moving, they would have an agenda of their own. An agenda that might not include letting Cavan and his friends pass.
Just what Cavan wanted to think about as he rode the trail down the mountainside. He’d been lucky enough not to fight the dead so far in his life, and he’d hoped that would never change.
Soon enough the bodies were out of sight, gone until the next circuit on the route down. And now Cavan could see thick, deeper forest. Shades of gray as far as he could see. And splitting the forest in twain looked to be a path.
Cavan had a sneaking suspicion he knew what path that was…
When the curve took him away from the forest, it showed him more obsidian mountains, including his first look at actual color. Three peaks away, a red-orange flame burned atop some kind of spike…
…or spear.
It cast no light beyond itself. The orange-red light of the flames unreflected in the obsidian of the peak beneath the spear. Cavan pointed to the flame as they rode, but neither Amra nor Ehren felt the need to comment.
Round and round they went. Each curve around the mountain was progress. A few more dozen feet down. The trail never broadened, but neither horses nor riders were worried about that. Cavan, Ehran and Amra had ridden their share of mountain passes before.
And each pass brought them closer to the sixteen hanging corpses.
On the third pass down, Amra called, “Orcs. At least half of them are orcs.”
On the fifth pass down, she amended, “Half of them are orcs, six are humans, and two elves.”
“Are you sure?” Ehren said. “The skin.”
“Want me to put a dagger in the pointed tip of one of their ears?”
“No!” Cavan said and Ehren at the same time.
Amra only chuckled.
But finally the trail reached the foot of the mountain and led them among the dark gray of the cracked, rocky ground.
The cold air still did not move down here, but Cavan was getting used to the smell of the bloody paste smeared at various spots on his body. Here the trail was no longer the black pebble of crushed obsidian, but instead the paler gray of the boulders around it. The smallest of these boulders reached about the height of his blue roan’s shoulders, but the largest looked like enough raw material for a sculptor to carve out a small keep.
Cavan could only see the trees past such boulders because the trees grew taller still. Tall enough that they might have been welcome among the shorter trees in the Wailing Woods.
Or perhaps they were the same kind of trees. Only younger. Grayed out as they were, and in the absence of their smell, Cavan couldn’t begin to guess.
The trail twisted its way between the boulders, wider now. Barely enough for the three of them to ride side by side, which Cavan only realized because Amra pulled up next to him on his right and Ehren did likewise on his left.
Thus, they were riding side by side when they rounded the last boulder and saw the trail lead into the thick forest ahead of them.
And standing between them and that forest, sixteen dead men, and orcs, and elves. Each trailing a noose from his throat. And each with a reddish gleam in his eyes.
* * *
The corpses wore rags. Not tattered by age, but more as though they’d been stripped of whatever they’d been wearing in life before they were hanged. That they were sent to the gallows in whatever detritus could be found so that passersby would not have to look upon their naked shame.
Cheap wools and roughspun, some kind of bark-beaten cloth for the elves.
The head of each corpse had been shaved clean. Ritually. Hair, eyebrows, whatever whiskers they might have had. Their lips were sewn shut with what looked like sinew.
No brown skin nor fair skin for the elves, no green for the orcs, no pale skin for the northern humans nor inky skin for the one who looked to have been from the deep south. All sixteen corpses had the same skin tone in this place: uniform slate gray. Not quite the pale gray of the boulders and the trail, but not quite the darker gray of the dirt around them.
They smelled of turned dirt. As though they’d dug themselves out of their graves, but that made no sense to Cavan at all. And not just because they all looked to have been hanged and left to rot. Cavan knew that orcs ate some of their dead, and left the rest where they fell, to rot or be eaten by whatever animals would have them.
And though Cavan had never seen it himself, he had heard it stated as fact that elves dissolved their dead. Whether through some potion or spell — or perhaps just the nature of elves — Cavan didn’t know.
But all the corpses looked to have been hanged. And they all smelled like grave dirt.
Amra reached for her sword, but Cavan whistled the horses to a halt.
He raised one hand in greeting.
“Hail, you who have fallen. We seek no quarrel with you. We have important business that takes us down this path. Please. Stand aside. Let us pass in peace.”
A human in the center took one step forward. He had old battle scars that must have healed without magic. Cavan could see their ugly, jagged edges peek out around the man’s roughspun rags.
A voice came out of the dead man. His sewn-shut lips never twitched, nor his cheeks. His lungs never moved with air, and the apple of his throat never bobbed. But a voice came out of him anyway. A hollow, sad sound that seemed to echo with longing and loss.
“Go back, living man. This world is not yours.”
Something about that voice. Cavan remembered the day Kent told him to stop seeking his mother. Cavan felt that same sink to his belly and shoulders once again. That same bitterness on his tongue. And underneath those feelings, a sense of hopelessness. Of the unwanted.
Those feelings pulled at Cavan…
But Cavan knew the pull of magic, and how to press his will past it. He inhaled deeply and focused on his task. Kent was at the other end of this path, and Kent was in trouble.
“I don’t claim this world,” he said. “But I must follow this path before I return to my own world.”
“Go back, living man. This path is not yours.”
Cavan was ready for a memory this time, but it still hit him hard.
Cavan remembered standing in the stables of Master Powys’ tower, mounting his blue roan Dzink for the first time. The smell of straw and horses. But most of all, the feeling of failure, like a hole in his gut that tried to drain away everything he wanted or cared about in life.
A failure. Again. Not focused enough to be a warrior. Not patient enough to be a wizard. He was good for nothing at all. A waste of time, and air, and food, with no reason at all to go on living.
Cavan had to slap himself across the face to yank himself back to the present. To the place between, where sixteen corpses stood between himself and the family that raised him. To his right, Amra was shaky and pale. Her teeth were gritted and her grip on her sword, white-knuckled. But she had not yet drawn.
On Cavan’s left, Ehren’s brow looked untroubled. His lips moved constantly in silent prayer.
All three horses shifted uneasily, but did not so much as nicker. As though afraid of drawing attention to themselves.
“I must ride this path through to its end,” Cavan said. “Those who need me are waiting.”
“They are lost, living man. All are lost. Go back, or we shall string a noose for you.”
No memory this time. Just pure despair, welling up from deep within Cavan. Overwhelming him. Of course all was lost. Of course Kent was dead. And his new wife, Rena. And Reed and Alec. And their wives too. And whatever children they had.
All gone. All lost. All because of Cavan’s failures.
Better to lay down his sword. He wasn’t fit to carry it anyway. Better to let them fit him for a noose. End his suffering. End his…
No.
Cavan had failed at everything he had ever tried to become. A warrior. A wizard. He’d even failed in his desperate flirtation with thievery.
But Cavan had never stopped trying before. And he would not stop trying now.
Low sounds came from all the corpses. Almost a kind of chanting, in some lost, forgotten language. The tongue of the dead, perhaps.
Cavan tried to kick Dzint forward, but his legs wouldn’t move. He tried to whistle the charge, but his lips were frozen still.
So he focused on his arm. His sword arm. Poured all of his considerable willpower into making his arm move.
The corpses came together then, their arms outstretched and hands weaving. A sickly orange light grew among them and Cavan could see a twist of rope forming in the hands of their leader.
No. Not this day. Not with so much at stake. Not with Ehren and Amra ready to fall at his side. He would not doom them. He would not doom himself.
Today was not the day Cavan would die.
He would not fail Kent this time.
His arm came free as though a chain had snapped. He ripped his sword free of his scabbard and gave a cry of defiance.
Then Amra had her sword drawn too. Her cry echoed his own.
Ehren lifted his smooth, goldenwood staff high overhead and sang a paean to Zatafa, in Penthix. “Ia anay Zatafa, meen nares esh ata na!”
Golden light flared out from him. Drowning out the orange of the corpses’ magic. Banishing from the hands of their leader the noose they forged.
All sixteen pairs of red eyes came up in shock.
Cavan whistled the charge, and all three steeds leapt forward as one.
Cavan leaned forward. Sword ready to slash.
But the corpses were gone. Back, hanging from their tree branch. Without a sign of life or movement from any of them.
Cavan sheathed his sword and urged Dzint to even greater speeds.
Pace might not influence how fast Cavan reached Oltoss, but his will to get there all the sooner blazed even brighter in light of those recent feelings of despair.
And if that meant he put more distance between himself and these corpses, so much the better.
Cavan, Amra, and Ehren charged forward into the deep, gray woods.
* * *
The forest was as cold as the mountain had been. And the path in this place between shouldn’t have felt cramped. But it did.
The path itself was plenty wide. Wide enough for all three horses to ride abreast, and still leave room for Cavan and Amra to swing their swords without interfering with each other. Even Ehren had room to swing that staff of his. If it came to a fight.
Cavan hoped it didn’t come to a fight.
The path here was not dirt or stone, but seemed to be made of thousands and thousands of dark gray needles from the great trees around them. Soft enough that the hooves of their hobbies made no more than a hushing sound as they trotted along. Slower, now that Cavan felt comfortably past those hanging corpses who spoke and chanted through sewn-shut lips.
Or at least as “comfortably past” them as he would feel in this place. And he could not get his mind away from them completely, because the smell of rot clung to the still air. Not the smell of corpse rot, but of wood rot. Tree rot. Decomposing needles and bark, wet and fermented.
More death. And if hanged corpses could rise and interfere, why not trees that smelled of decay?
And it was those trees that made this forest feel cramped.
They didn’t look rotted. Despite their odor they looked like healthy pines, with pale gray bark and dark gray needle leaves. But they were far too big to be pines. The smallest of them was as wide as Cavan’s sword was long. And the broadest could have been transplanted to the Wailing Woods and fit right in. Easily wide enough that all three of their horses could have stood inside it — nose to tail — and fit.
The canopy of all those trees blotted out what passed for the sky in this place. And yet the trio did not ride in darkness. Not in this place of perpetual twilight. Cavan could pick out no place that glowed. Nothing that provided them relief from the pitch blackness he would have expected under so thick a canopy. Still, all about him was a shadowless world in shades of gray.
The branches of those trees came low enough, even stretched out over the path, that every hundred strides or so, Cavan could have swung his sword over his head and nipped the bark of a low branch.
And the branches felt even lower than that. Cavan felt the urge to duck his head as he rode. To his left he could see Ehren feeling the same urge. Instead of riding tall in t
he saddle as he usually did, he kept his chin tucked down. Even Amra, to Cavan’s right, had her brow furrowed and her neck tucked in.
Must have been the first time in her life she felt too tall.
“I keep expecting to see faces,” Amra said. “In the trees, I mean. Eyes watching us. Mouths chanting or gibbering.”
“The trees aren’t the power here,” Ehren said. “I’m not sure what is, but it’s above us. Not around us.”
“Terrific,” Amra said, glancing up. “Well, if it’s up there it hides well.”
“Shouldn’t we be hungry?” Cavan said, desperate to change the subject. “Even if we haven’t been riding for hours, it feels like we have.”
“We don’t eat here,” Ehren said, shaking his head and keeping his eyes on the high branches. “Nor drink. Same way we haven’t sweated away the places Hawkspeaker anointed us. I’m not even sure we’re breathing. Not really.”
Amra flared her nostrils in a deep, loud inhalation.
“That’s not what I mean,” Ehren said. “There’s more to breathing than air. Deep breaths should relax us. But they don’t here. The air is missing something.”
“Life,” Cavan said. “Nothing in this place is alive. Nothing but us.”
“Exactly,” Ehren said. “Even our own aliveness is … suspended here.” He shook his head. “But I’m not sure anything is really dead here either.”
A scuttling noise above them cut off whatever Amra started to say.
“Anyone see it?” Ehren said.
Cavan shook his head.
“No,” Amra said. “It was too quick. Sounded big though. Bigger than our horses.”
Cavan whistled the horses to a stop.
“What are you doing?” Ehren said, exasperation plain on his face and in his voice. “We need to keep moving. Maybe it won’t—”
“It will,” Cavan said, voice calm and certain despite the jangling along his nerves. “The corpses wouldn’t let us ride past, and neither will this. Better to face it now than waste time trying to elude it.”
