by M. A. Larson
Evie glared at her with wide eyes. Falada smiled back and, thankfully, didn’t speak again.
“Forgive me,” said Basil, his voice rising to cover Falada’s. “I was just looking for the kitchens. As lovely as that mutton was hot, I couldn’t sleep without trying it cold.”
“Can’t say I blame you, sir. Always did like a bit of mutton myself.”
“Well? Come on, then!”
Patric’s voice softened. “Just this way. Don’t tell the King I tried his mutton or he might lock me in the tower.”
Basil chortled a bit too loudly. Falada had her hands pinned over her mouth to keep from laughing. Evie implored her with her eyes to keep quiet.
Basil quickly turned to the girls and said in a whisper, “I’ll get Forbes. Meet us in the trees.” And then he left to join the guard. “Coming!”
Evie, Demetra, and Falada waited a moment longer, then crept out from behind the suit of armor. They hurried down the hallway toward the main entrance. Falada stopped short, motioning for the others to follow her down a side corridor that branched off to the left. Within moments, they emerged from a servants’ entrance into the brisk night air. The instant the rain hit Falada’s face, she fell to her knees.
Evie was desperate to get out of Stromberg before they were spotted, but when she saw Falada, face raised to the sky, she stood frozen. The princess’s body was wracked with sobs, though the rain slapping the stone covered any sound. Evie pushed the hair from her eyes and stood and watched.
“Look at that, Evie,” said Demetra. “That’s what freedom looks like. That’s what I want to do.” She walked over and knelt next to Falada. She put her arms around the princess, and Falada clutched her so tightly it nearly knocked her over. Evie stood in the driving rain and watched as her friend comforted a Princess of the Shield twenty years older than her. Finally, she said something to Falada and helped her to her feet. When the princess spoke next, she was a completely different person than she’d been in the tower.
“The stables are just round that way. In this weather, we’re unlikely to meet any guards, but if we do, let me do the talking.”
They crept through the empty roads that rolled gently across the kingdom until they found the stables. Falada had been right. The guardsmen couldn’t be bothered to patrol in the downpour. She led them into the stables and selected five horses, strapped on their tack as expertly as any stable boy, and led them out the hunting gate, an unmanned exit through the curtain wall that was only used when the King and his party wished to make use of the vast forests surrounding Stromberg.
Once they were outside the walls of the kingdom, they slunk back around toward the main gates. If there were any lookouts atop the wall-walk braving the storm, they wouldn’t have seen Evie, Demetra, and Falada skulking through the mud directly below. When they finally reached the gatehouse, they splashed across the grass to the edge of the forest. There they found a spot that was well concealed with brush where they could still see the entrance. Evie peered out into the night. Lightning flashes lit up the mountaintop, freezing the rain in place. All was quiet except for the storm. There was no sign of Basil or Forbes.
“Are you all right?” said Demetra, putting her hand on Falada’s arm.
“I’ve never been more all right,” she said, smiling at Demetra. “Those things you said up there . . . well, you’ve inspired me in a way I never thought I’d be inspired again.”
“Me?”
“I may never forgive my father for what he did, but you helped me see that it wouldn’t have happened if not for the witches. I very much needed to be reminded of that. I’m not afraid anymore. And now I’m ready to rain fire on the witches, too.” She and Demetra hugged, and then she went to the horses and rechecked their gear. Watching her, it was difficult for Evie to imagine how the mousy girl she had first met in the tower had become the self-assured princess standing before her now. “They can take everything from you,” she said. “They can take your windows. Take your sun. But as long as you have hope, you still have a weapon.” She turned to Evie with a smile. “I was just about to lose mine when you turned up.” She climbed into the saddle of one of the horses, looking every inch a Princess of the Shield. “Right, let’s be off.”
“We’ve got to wait for Basil and Forbes,” said Evie. “But it would be wonderful if you’d be willing to join us on our mission.”
“No, I’m sorry, that’s not possible. The witches are targeting my company. This isn’t the ordinary danger we face as princesses, this is an attempt to destroy us all. They already killed me once. I won’t let that happen to my sisters.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Demetra.
“The same as you. You’re coming with me.”
Demetra looked over at Evie in confusion. “But . . . I’ve got a mission. I can’t just leave.”
“You’ve got to. I don’t mean to sound heartless, but you said yourself you don’t know how old those marks are. I hope it isn’t too late for Christa, but the fact is we’ve no idea what’s happened since the witches crossed out their last face.”
Evie studied her friend’s eyes as they flooded with heartache and doubt. Despite the roiling fear in her stomach, she made a decision. “She’s right. You’ve got to go.”
“But . . . what about the Academy?”
“Basil, Forbes, and I can handle it. We’re nearly there now anyway.”
Lightning flashed across Demetra’s face. Thunder crackled over the valley.
“Demetra,” said Evie, “I never knew my real mother, so you’ve got to listen to me. Go to yours now. Protect her from the witches.”
“Please,” said Falada. “I owe your mother my life. I’d do it myself, but I haven’t been out in the world in quite some time. I need your help.”
Demetra looked from Falada back to Evie, heartbroken at the decision she was being forced to make. “Once she’s safe,” she said, her voice just above a whisper, “I’ll come back. And then the witches will pay.”
Evie forced a smile. She nodded.
“Will you say goodbye to Bas for me?”
“Of course.” The two friends hugged tightly. Then Demetra mounted a black horse. Evie couldn’t deny that she, too, looked strikingly like a Princess of the Shield. Demetra wiped the tears from her eyes as she began to ride off. Then she stopped and looked back at Evie. “We’re going to win this war.”
“Yes, we are.”
“Good luck, Princess,” said Falada to Evie, and then she rode silently after Demetra until they both vanished into the darkness.
May the Fates look after you both.
“Evie!” came an urgent voice. “Demetra!”
Evie turned and peered through the rain. Two figures stood huddled beneath the words Here May One Live Freely.
“Over here!” she hissed, waving an arm. “Basil! Forbes!”
They ran against the rain until they were beneath the cover of the trees.
“Are you all right?” said Forbes. “Basil said they locked you up.”
“Yeah. Fine.”
“Brilliant, we’ve got horses!” said Basil. “Where’s Demetra?”
“She’s gone.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry, Bas—”
“What do you mean she’s gone, Evie? Where?”
“The witches are trying to kill everyone in her mother’s old company. She’s gone to the Blackmarsh to save her.”
“What?” He began to shout. “Dem—”
Evie leapt at him, jamming her hand over his mouth. “Quiet, Basil! You’ll get us all killed!” Above her hand, his wide eyes stared back at her. He looked even more upset than Demetra had been. “Keep quiet, all right?” She slowly took her hand away.
“How could you let her go, Evie?”
“She needs to look after her mother,” she said, her stomach sudden
ly in knots. “All we’ve got to do is find Rumpelstoatsnout. Her family needs her more than we—”
“You had no right.” He turned away and climbed onto one of the horses.
“I didn’t tell her to go, Bas. We all decided it would be—”
“Yes, well, you’re the only one left to yell at.” He looked over at Forbes, who had already mounted his own horse. “Let’s go.”
Basil began to ride away. Forbes looked down at Evie with a cocked eyebrow. “There you go again, letting family cloud common sense. Your soft heart is going to cost us this mission.”
Evie mounted the last horse and wiped the rain from her face, then followed Basil without uttering a word to Forbes.
They rode slowly through the woods, parallel to the mountain ridge. Once they’d gone far enough to avoid being seen, they came out from the trees and stepped to the edge of the cliff. Beneath the nighttime storm, the valley was an endless black void stretched out before them. Pulses of white lit up the billowing clouds.
“There,” said Evie, pointing at the horizon. “That must be the Dagger. Do you see it?” In the intermittent flashes of lightning, the faint outline of another mountain range appeared at the distant end of the valley. One peak stood sharp and tall above the rest, like a blade. “The King said the Wood of the Night is beneath the Dagger. That’s where we’ve got to go.”
They sat beneath the rain clouds and watched as darts of white light repeatedly stabbed the forest valley. Then, without a word, they began their descent.
“UGH, I CAN’T WAIT to be rid of this bloody chair,” said Basil, adjusting the leather straps over his shoulders. He also had the stone hawk to contend with, making him the team’s pack mule.
“I can carry it if you need a break,” said Evie.
“No, it isn’t heavy. It’s just so . . . unwieldy.”
“It’ll be a harp on the way back,” said Forbes. “This is the easy bit.”
They’d been following the trench down the middle of Goblin’s Glade for most of the day, and the rain had not stopped. At best, it was a fine drizzle. At worst, it pounded down so loudly they could barely hear one another speak. But now the sun had broken free for the last hour of daylight, bathing the forest in a glowing green that made it come alive. The pines shook themselves like wet dogs, spraying sodden needles everywhere.
Evie looked up. The clouds were tall and hard-edged, the kind that billowed and plumed like a golden palace in the sky. Behind them was blue sky and warm sun.
“Here’s the Dagger,” said Forbes. The valley had been closing in for the last half hour, funneling them toward a pass between two towering mountains. Light gray stone fletched with trees bulged up on either side of them, disappearing into the clouds. “Wood of the Night must be through there.”
“Bas, are you all right?” said Evie, riding up next to him.
“Yeah. Fine.”
The faint trail in the moss that had been serving as a road started to slope downward to a bend ahead. All they could see were walls of green and gray growing closer and closer, steering them into the pass. “I’m sorry about Demetra. You’re right. We should have waited and decided as a group. It was all so frantic and we’d just escaped the tower and . . .”
“I understand. I just . . .” He looked over at her with a shrug. “I didn’t get to say goodbye.”
“You’ll see her again. She said she’ll come to the Academy once her mum is safe.”
Large stones had started to appear on the trail, tumbled down long ago from the mountains. The pass was narrowing dramatically. Still, the sun felt nice on their backs.
Suddenly, Basil burst out laughing. “Do you ever get those strange moments of perspective? When you step back and see how absurd everything really is?”
“Bas, I was raised by dragons.”
He laughed again. “I was just sitting here thinking about Demetra, and about you. About how we all met.”
She smiled at the memory.
“It occurred to me how utterly ridiculous my life is. Do you realize no one else in the world has had the experience I’ve had the past few years? Not one. I shouldn’t even know you or Demetra or Maggie or Anisette, none of you. And look at us now . . . two princess cadets on the verge of graduation off on a mission to save the Academy.” He chuckled in amazement. “You know, I still wake up every morning hoping I’ll be sent home, but I must say, if my mother hadn’t put me in as a princess cadet, things would certainly be far more ordinary.”
“If you weren’t a princess cadet, none of us might be around anymore. Demetra certainly wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t been in the Drudenhaus with her.”
They rode on in silence for a moment. “I miss her already.”
“Me too.”
Their conversation faded away as the horses began to slow. They had reached the bend in the pass, and the trail had gotten steeper.
“Easy coming down,” said Forbes from below. “It evens out over here.”
“After you,” said Evie. Basil’s horse began to creep down the trail between the stones. Evie followed. She clung to the reins, far more nervous than her horse.
“Incredible . . .” said Forbes from the bottom of the trail. He was staring through the pass to whatever lay beyond.
“What is it?” called Basil. Forbes didn’t answer. Instead, he urged his horse forward and disappeared through the gap in the stone.
Basil glanced back at Evie with apprehension. “Forbes?” he called.
“Come on!” came Forbes’s distant voice.
They continued until they reached the thin dirt rut between the mountains.
“Blimey,” said Basil as he disappeared through the pass.
Evie’s horse walked to the curve and stepped through. She leaned forward and peered around the bend. Her eyes went wide. The path continued into a thick, dense wood that descended like a waterfall as the valley floor fell away. The Wood of the Night reminded Evie of the whirlpools her sister’s tail used to cause when she dove into the lake. The forest itself seemed to be swirling into the ground. The warm blue sky ringing the valley met an impenetrable wall of black clouds directly above the sunken black wood. The shadows inside the forest were as dark as if the sun had already set.
“Do you reckon that’s the Wood of the Night?” said Basil in astonishment. Forbes looked over at him.
“Right,” said Evie. “We don’t know what’s in there, so let’s just find Rumpelstoatsnout, get the harp, and get out of here.”
“Where do we begin?” said Forbes.
“The path,” said Evie. “If the path is an option, we take it.”
“Be ready with that sword,” said Forbes. Basil looked over at him, then pulled his sword free.
The three of them rode ahead, following the path as it curved down into the Wood of the Night. But as they reached the edge and the air began to darken, their horses refused to go on. They jerked their heads, whinnying and pulling against their reins.
“Come on!” said Evie. “What’s the matter?”
“We’ll have to leave them,” said Forbes, fighting with his horse. “They’re not going in.”
Basil jumped off his before it could throw him. “I can hardly blame them.”
Evie gave it one last try, jerking hard on the reins to establish control, but it was no use. Forbes was right. The horses were not going to obey. They led them back up the path and tethered them loosely in a fertile bowl filled with delicious green treats.
“I’d rather stay here and eat grass, too,” said Basil.
The three of them walked down the path and entered the blackened wood. In seconds, the blue sky and sun were gone, replaced by bracing dusk air. Crickets chirped. Owls hooted. The trail dropped precipitously down into the Wood, with branches spreading off it like the web of a spider.
“Let’s try to stay near the top,” said E
vie. “It’ll be much easier to go down if we need to than to come back up.”
They left the main trail and followed the rim of the basin as it arced around the sunken valley. The forest was completely dark down there, further shrouded by a thin, hanging mist.
They continued in silence for some time, weaving through the trees, eyes wide against the darkness. After two hours in the difficult terrain, they came across a fast-moving stream that poured down the hillside and drained into the valley. They paused and drank, then sat and rested their legs.
“Does anyone have any idea where we are?” said Forbes. “Or when we are? I can’t tell if it’s midnight or midday.”
Evie’s eyes followed the stream back up the hillside, where it sluiced through mud and tumbled over stone. “How in the world did we get this far down? I thought we were at the top of the basin.”
“We’d better find this troll soon or I’m going to sit in this chair and there’ll only be the two of you left,” said Basil.
Evie held her breath and listened. Her eyes darted through the trees. It could have been the wind, or it could have been . . . something else. “Let’s go. I don’t think we’re alone.”
“What is it?” said Basil. He swiveled around, scanning the forest.
“Let’s go,” she repeated. Basil and Forbes followed her down the trail. She stepped carefully to avoid the crackle of the leaves. Though her head remained still, her eyes darted everywhere. She kept thinking she’d seen something in the corner of her vision, but when she turned to look, there was only empty forest.
A gust of wind shook the trees, and now everything was moving. Even when the wind stopped and the leaves began to settle, shadows continued to swirl and bob. Forbes drew his sword.
“You’re right,” whispered Basil. “There’s something out there.”
“There are many somethings out there,” Evie whispered back. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. “Do either of you have experience with goblins?”
They both shook their heads.
“You’re about to.” She herself had encountered them before. It was one of the single most difficult days she’d had in all the years she lived in the forest. She and her sister had been in a race back to the cave. Knowing she had virtually no chance of winning against a creature ten times bigger than her, she decided to take a shortcut. As she dashed through an unfamiliar section of forest, she’d stumbled upon a goblin. It stood around two feet tall, with a bulbous gray body and long, lanky arms. Its head was bald and its teeth were sharp. It was covered in brittle black hair. And when it attacked, the two grappled through the leaves in violent struggle. Evie took a hard thrashing and had even been bitten twice, but when she finally got hold of a stick, she was able to take the upper hand and send the creature scurrying into the bushes. The thing that haunted her about that day, even more than the fight and narrow escape, was the high-pitched giggle the goblin had made as it retreated into the forest.
