by Ted Neill
Pathus remained motionless and watched for a few minutes, while Haille watched the watcher. Eventually the old man turned. If he was surprised to see Haille he did not show it. Instead he walked toward the gallery, his hands stuffed in his pockets, and stepped up next to Haille. He did not bother with a greeting or small talk, instead he addressed the most immediate matter. “That is some animal. The antlers look like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
“He is with us,” Haille said. Now Pathus did look surprised, one of his eyebrows rising in a pointed arch.
“Truly?”
“Truly,” Haille said. “Katlyn even rides him. She let him out of a cage at a carnival. He’s been with us since.”
“Remarkable.”
They remained in place a while longer before Pathus shifted his feet. “Come with me, your Highness, I will show you something.”
Haille followed their host past the stables, rife with the smell of hay and animals, and towards a smaller stone dome of a building with a wide chimney rising from the center of its roof. It had large windows which were shuttered and a number of racks, full of firewood, set outside. Haille knew a forge when he saw one. But this one with its solid brickwork, spacious windows, and heavy barred door was far beyond the backyard forge of most farmers—it was equal to the one he had seen on the castle grounds. Pathus unlocked the iron door and then a second wooden one behind it, leaving both open wide to let in the morning light. The interior smelled of ash, iron, and leather. Haille caught sight of the massive billows and the smooth, worn handles. Pathus disappeared into the shadows, moving with certainty, confident in the space that was familiar to him. Haille blinked, wishing his eyes would adjust faster, as Pathus reemerged cradling a blade in his arms, the way a parent might hold a newborn.
He set it on a dark shape in the center of the room that Haille realized was an anvil. The steel of the sword was luminous as if it absorbed what faint light there was and reflected it back in a cold glow. Pathus turned it, its point grinding on the face of the anvil, then held it out, handle first, for Haille to take. Haille moved closer and continued to blink his eyes, trying to assure himself that what he saw was not an illusion.
“It is no trick of light,” Pathus said. “I engraved it a few days before you arrived.”
“It is an elk,” Haille said, tracing the lines on the hilt that emerged from the handle and worked around the crossguard like frozen bolts of lightning. In the center of the piece was an elk’s profile that looked like the very elk accompanying them. “How did you know?”
“Know?” Pathus chuckled. “I knew nothing of your coming, I was just . . . inspired. But now that you are here, I somehow think you are meant to have it.”
“Me?”
“You came last night with an empty scabbard. This sword was broken when it was given to me. I knew its steel was special. It was a project of personal interest to re-forge it but it turned into something different. It turned into a masterpiece.”
“Then I cannot take it.”
“Can’t you? A swordsmith makes a sword to be used, to protect its user, not as a decoration. I imagine you will need it, especially if you are to go south into Night’s Reach, as Val said you would.”
“Yes, although I do not know what that means.”
“Night’s Reach,” Pathus said, turning the sword to catch the light, sending a wobbling beam against the wall, “is half the distance it takes to ride to the forest of Sidon in the span of one winter’s night.”
“Why only half?”
“Well, it’s really a measure of how long it might take a creature afraid of sunlight to leave the forest, invade these lands, and return before the sun comes up.”
“Do such creatures exist in truth?”
Pathus shrugged. “Our intrepid Inquisitors would say no, but they would also likely deny the existence of such creatures as the elk out in my yard. I’ve never known anyone to have camped in Night’s Reach. I’ve never seen the creatures that legend says live there, but I did see Cadrae with my own eyes.”
“Cadrae?”
“A village, the only village in recent memory to be built near the forest within Night’s Reach. It flourished for many years, its wood workers creating a thriving industry from selling the lumber cut from Sidon. The trees of an ebony variety make for beautiful carving and solid construction. But then one day the couriers stopped coming and the traders from Cadrae did not show up at the markets. I was just a young man then, but old enough to travel with a contingent of fighting men to investigate.”
“What did you find?” Haille asked, his throat fluttering.
“Nothing. At least no one. Everyone was gone. No sign left of them. There were a few signs of struggle, bed sheets strewn across the floor, furniture tipped over. But not a living soul, human, fowl, horse, or pig. Even the rats were gone. We found a few swords and spears, even a few shields, but whatever resistance there had been had been haphazard, futile.”
“Raiders?”
“Not unless they rode on beasts. Those were the prints we found, three-toed and four-toed on the earth and similar gouges on the shields.”
“What were they?”
“I do not dare speculate, but know this: the forest is cursed. You take a dangerous road.”
“That was what Yana said,” Haille said. He realized Pathus was staring at him with an intensity in his eyes that Haille could detect even in the darkness.
“You were the reason I let you and your friends in,” the old man said.
“Me?” Haille said, poking his own chest with his thumb.
“Your face, it’s your mother’s. She joined me many a time in the castle forge. She loved to make jewelry, bracelets, rings, pendants. I taught her metallurgy and other skills. I counted her as a friend.”
Haille felt suddenly small and vulnerable, the forge open and overwhelmingly dark. Would Pathus blame him for his mother’s death too, sharing in the disdain that so many nobles harbored towards him? Haille said nothing but swallowed a second lump that had formed in his throat. But if Pathus harbored any resentment, his face did not betray it. Instead he genuflected, his old knees popping as he did so. Haille rushed around the anvil that stood between them.
“Pathus, there is no need—”
But the swordsmith waved him away with his left hand and presented the sword with his right. “The original was engraved ‘Wild Heart,’ this one I have named ‘Elk Heart,’ and I know your mother would want you to have it.”
Chapter 6
Sidon
“Horses will be of little use in the forest.” Val hitched a rucksack of supplies to his shoulders later that morning. “We’ll go by foot.”
“May the gods be with you,” Annette said, handing Cody a package of hard tack which he stuffed in his own rucksack before slinging it up onto his back. Full of provisions, blankets, and waterskins, the rucksacks towered over their own heads, but Haille was glad for the supplies; grateful for anything that would aid in their survival.
To that end Pathus had fitted them with additional weapons: a hand-ax for Cody, a short sword for Katlyn, and a shield for Val. There were even saddle bags to throw over the elk. The elk did not seem to mind the burden. Instead he was eager to set off, huffing, scraping the ground, and shaking his head in the direction of the forest: south.
“We’re coming. We’re coming,” Cody said, then admonished himself, mumbling, “I can’t believe I’m talking to an elk.”
There were hearty thanks, hugs, backslaps, and not a few tears on the part of Annette.
“There, there. They are in good hands,” Pathus said, extending an arm around his wife.
Finally Val led them out through the back fence into the fields where the morning fog was lifting. The elk danced out in front of them and set a brisk pace. Haille hoped this would not be their pace for the entire journey; his breath was already coming hard and his load felt heavier than he had imagined. Cody whistled a tuneless melody while Haille and Katlyn turned back and gave one
last wave to the couple that had shown them such hospitality. However, when they turned, the mist had already descended again closing them off and leaving Haille to feel that they were the last people left in all the plains.
Cultivated fields gave way quite quickly to wild ones. In places spools of hay had been rolled across the fields, but never harvested. Now they were flattened and compressed into small mounds where weeds and trees had taken root. Haille guessed that farmers must have come here to sow a field when they had had no other choice than to leave their own fallow for a year. They had come just within Night’s Reach to sow and roll, but for some reason never returned.
There were no signs of habitation for the whole of the morning but the grass was thick, the soil soft and loamy underfoot.
“Fertile lands,” Cody said at one point, rolling a clod of dirt between his fingers.
By midday, the morning mist had burned off. It was a clear day with bright sun that was a respite from the cold. But Val did not welcome it. “Makes our trail easier to find for Twenge and his men.”
“Do you think they are still following us?” Katlyn asked.
“Without a doubt. Once Twenge gets whiff of a trail, he does not abandon it easily. Used to be an Inquisitor when he was younger, still harbors the same fanaticism. It’s why the High Council hired him as a tracker. He’s seen more of my brothers to cells and to graves than anyone else.”
“So the Knights of Oban are still hunted. I would have thought the High Council has better things to do,” Katlyn said.
“The High Council does not easily forget those who betray it,” Val said.
The talk of politics was not interesting to Haille. He noticed that the elk had come to a stop and was waiting for them. Azure was perched in the bracken of his antlers while Cyan and Sapphire wheeled in the breeze overhead. Haille looked beyond to what he thought was a bank of clouds, low on the horizon, but then the shapes coalesced and he understood, with a shiver, what he was looking at.
“It’s the forest,” he said.
The others came to a stop beside him. The edges of the trees were blurry and indistinct, like a distant forest in a painting. Haille struggled with perspective until he realized that the trees were actually still distant, more than a few leagues, and what he was looking at were just the tops, rising the way a ship’s sail appeared first over the horizon. “They must be huge.”
“They are,” Val said, falling into step behind the elk once more.
Haille watched the trees carefully as they continued. The elk checked their approach, turning them so that they marched to the southwest, approaching the forest at an angle. For a moment Cody hung back. “Shouldn’t we be going directly towards the trees?”
“We’re no longer in our own element,” Val said. “I’m following the elk.”
They closed the distance between the forest and themselves throughout the afternoon until they were marching with it along their left. Haille’s fear of the place diminished with the knowledge that they were no longer headed directly into its depths. Fear was replaced by simple wonder as Haille and Katlyn strained their necks to look up at the trees which were higher than the turrets on the castle and easily as thick. Birds and bats floated from one treetop to another in the canopy. The main growth of the woods consisted of thick trunks, with thin peeling bark that revealed the shiny ebony wood Pathus had mentioned. Here the wood was live and the branches thick and knotted, like the muscles on a giant’s arms. The crotches of the trees were so wide and expansive that a small forest of bushes and brambles sprouted there like hair in an armpit. Each large tree had a dozen or so smaller ones, perhaps the size of a normal tree anywhere else, growing like saplings beneath. It was breathtaking. In a place with so many stories of death surrounding it, Haille had not expected so much . . . life.
They traveled along the edge of the forest in the shade of the trees. The forest wall was impenetrable. Leathery leaves and thorns the size of daggers barred their way. Haille drew his sword, eager to test its blade and slash a way forward. But Val stopped him.
“We won’t disturb the wood unless we must,” Val said. “Come on, let’s keep after the elk.”
Haille marched on without question along the edge of the forest. As he listened to the sounds of the creatures from the woods and watched the large bats circling overhead, Haille realized just how different this place was and was secretly relieved to postpone their entrance further. He felt an element of trespass in their plan. If no one had entered the woods and returned alive, perhaps that was a precedent they should respect. Haille watched an enormous bird with a long neck of a vulture and black featherless head step off a branch which bounced from the relief of such weight. The creature flew with slow lumbering wing strokes then elicited a deep sonorous call, closer to a frog’s croak than bird song. The sound was answered from all trees around. Haille shook off a chill. Katlyn looked back at him, fear registering in her eyes. He put on as brave of face as he could, but then tripped on a tree root and nearly tumbled over.
“Val is right,” he said as Katlyn caught his hands in hers. “We’re out of our element here.”
The sun turned blood red before them then sank into slate clouds. Darkness and cold air rushed out of the forest like cold breath laden with smells of mildew, dust, and rot. Just before it was dark enough for the stars to come out, they came upon a break in the foliage where the jays waited silently in the branches. A narrow path led into the forest like a crack in a cliff wall. Its presence seemed as unlikely as their own. Haille looked around for the elk, expecting him to be near the entrance. Instead he was leaping over the tall stalks of weeds and bushes, moving north.
“Where is he going?” Haille asked.
“Leading us to a place to rest I imagine,” Val said.
“Night is no time to enter the forest,” Cody added, following the elk.
Val was right. The elk waited for them alongside a creek where they refilled their waterskins and spread their blankets out for the night. They lit no fire and although they had seen no one following them throughout the day, Val insisted that he and Cody take turns on watch. Haille had trouble sleeping on the hard ground and each time he closed in on sleep, some noise, real or imagined, from the forest would wake him. When he finally did drift off, he dreamt he was back in the starlit room where Garn, the farmer who had helped them escape from Lady Annabeth’s manor in Kinth, had found his dead daughter, Aurora, waiting for them. Haille approached Aurora in his dream as he had in life, with an outstretched hand, trembling over her dead body. But this time Katlyn was not there to intervene. It was upon him to touch Aurora, to heal her. He lowered his hand, his flesh a darker hue than her own bone-white skin which had grown paper thin, so that he could see the dead vessels and withered muscles just below. Just before he placed his fingers on her forehead, before he broke that barrier between what was living and what was dead, she moved.
Her arm jerked up and seized his wrist in a grip that defied her size. Haille made to cry out but found his lungs empty, his breath stolen. He looked to his own hand, the tendons cording, his fingers clenched as he fought to free himself, but Aurora only pulled him closer to her skeletal face that was now animated, her eyes open, deep as the night sky. Her mouth moved, a thousand voices coming out at once, then joining into one.
“She is near.”
Haille jerked awake. Cody’s black shape was seated at the edge of their patch of flattened grass where they were sleeping, his face turned away to the north, oblivious to Haille and his night terror. Haille looked to the other side of their camp. Against the backdrop of the stars that rested like a cloud over the tangled darkness, the elk was standing, staring at him.
As soon as the sky lightened, Val woke them for a breakfast of dried apples and hard tack. Once they had eaten, there was no more delay. They shouldered their packs and marched straight into the mouth of Sidon.
It was the air that was most remarkable. It was thick with moisture and smells. There was even a warmt
h to it that felt summer-like in comparison to the days of wintery cold they had endured for so long. After all of Pathus’ stories, Haille had almost expected to be set upon the moment they entered in the forest by bloodthirsty creatures or mind-crushing fear. Neither of which was the case. They continued on, unmolested, the jays even flitting from branch to branch above, singing out sweet notes to one another.
The woods swallowed most of the light of the day so that the place was dim as a moonlit night, but not as colorless. Despite the black leaves of the largest trees, there was an assortment of greens and even blues that permeated the place, mainly from the smaller varieties of trees that fought for prominence in the space just over their heads. Along the roadside grew bushes of red, which Haille reached out to touch with his sword. They clanged loudly against the metal. Beneath their leaves, their bark was hard as teeth. Beyond them, beyond the road, the woods yielded no more. The growth was as impenetrable as when they looked upon it from outside, if not more so, for here vines rose up from the clutter of the floor and hung as thick as trees themselves from the highest boughs above. Some smaller trees that had had the misfortune of being the hosts to these vines had been bent and crushed in their grip.
