“I am not well pleased, little mouse,” the witch hissed. “I try and I try to play nice. I haven’t killed anyone…important…very recently. But just look at what you’ve done!” The witch gestured widely with her free hand to the wasteland of ash and burning trees that surrounded them.
Maritine tried to hurl the witch’s accusations back at her, to condemn her of setting the fire herself, but it all came out as frantic squeaking.
“Leave it to your insane little cult to fight its battles with fire,” the witch said. “If you really want me, stop mucking about and just come and get me.” With a casual toss, she sent Maritine tumbling through the air to land amid the ashes, which flew up about her in a choking, blinding gray cloud.
When Maritine’s vision cleared, the witch was walking unconcernedly away across the wasteland toward a wall of raging fire. The hood of the tattered red cloak had fallen down about her shoulders, and at least from this vantage point no sign of the dreadful skull that had stared out from it remained. At this moment she could have been any pretty young thing in a long, black tunic with a swaggering sway to her step.
Lightning danced crazily across the midnight sky, shimmering off what Maritine suddenly realized was a large carving knife held casually in the retreating woman’s hand, dripping blood. Thunder pealed like it would never quite stop, through a world of smoke and cinders and flames and darkness. Ahead of the witch, the wall of flames guttered and gave way to the smoldering black remnant of a hedge.
Beyond it rose the forest, its canopy alternating—by whim of the lightning—between inky black silhouette and bold, bloody autumn red. Ancient, weathered marble columns flanked by stone wolves framed the gap in the hedge that the witch was heading for. Passing between, the woman reached out to nonchalantly bury the knife in the eye of one of the wolves, the blade sinking into the stone as effortlessly as if it had been parchment.
As the witch vanished into the shadows of the forest, blood began to well from the stone, streaming down the cheek of the statue to collect in a dark pool at its feet.
The sharp report of thunder directly overhead snapped Maritine out of her dream in an instant, and she was sitting up before she even knew she was awake. The next moment, she was on her feet, fighting with the wind to secure her cloak about her shoulders with fumbling fingers. The roiling of fear had turned to knots of dread in her stomach, and that made her very angry indeed.
“Tetch! Where’s Tetch?!” she shouted to be heard above the wind and the thunder, wondering if this accursed storm was ever going to break, while also praying to Seriena it would hold off an hour more. The closest of the watchmen pointed off into the darkness toward where their suspects were being gathered. “Wake everyone! Now!” she bellowed before grabbing his lantern from him and hurrying off across the construction site.
She found the dwarf in a large tent that had served as a workman’s dorm before the spartan furnishings had been hastily dumped outside the entrance and replaced with a motley assortment of rope-restrained men she had no doubt had been rounded up as much for garnering the disfavor of the guards and the foremen as for any actual likelihood they could be connected with the witch—but better a net too wide than a net too small.
“Tetch! The goddess has sent me a vision. I need to know where to find the one-eyed wolf, and I need to know immediately. We’re racing to get down off the Tooth before the storm makes the road any more treacherous than the night already has.”
“The one-eyed wolf, sister?” he asked, snapping to respectful attention but presenting a questioning eyebrow.
“It might be an old statue. It might be some beast in a menagerie. It could be the name of a tavern. It could be some old bandit with a scarred face. All I know is if we find the wolf, we find the witch. Question anyone you think might know. Drag him to the nearest inquisitrix if he gives you any trouble. Just get me the information now.
“And,” she stared pointedly over at the captives who were doing their best to fade back into the canvas of the tent, “break as many ankles as you like.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Into the Woods
“Rain already!” Elissa screamed at the sky.
“Save your breath for running!” Nolan scolded her, tugging at her hand. “If you can yell, I haven’t been pushing you hard enough.”
He had been pushing her. That a soldier still more or less in his prime who lived on the edge of civilization could outrun a young woman who’d spent her days cloistered away in a library pretty much went without saying, but Elissa still found it galling to have her body screaming out so many complaints when her escort wasn’t even breathing hard.
Still, a quick glance over her shoulder was all the confirmation she needed that Nolan could be right. Their race against Riordan had turned into a race against the storm that had turned into a race against the wildfire.
They’d seemed well ahead of it, but the rising winds had helped it leap a road, then race down a network of hedgerows, and in a matter of minutes the flames had gone from a distant concern to a looming menace dogging their heels. It had completely cut them off from returning to the Wolf’s Tooth, and was making it look a very dicey proposition to veer off toward the castle at this point.
Their only hopes of salvation lay in staying ahead of the fire until either a downpour drenched it or they reached this lake Nolan had offered. Either way, Elissa knew she’d be in for a wet and miserable night, but that it would be immeasurably better than the alternative.
The good and bad news was that the closer they got to the forest—and the lake therein—the rockier the ground became. On the one hand, that gave the fire less vegetation to grab hold of. On the other, that made the footing more treacherous, and a turned ankle at this point might make all the difference between life and death.
Raindrops had begun to fall, at least, but just enough to make Elissa’s robes damp and the rocks slippery underfoot. A fire that out of control would never be tamed by such gentle persuasions. What it needed was a merciless pummeling from some drunken brawler of a deluge to knock the fight out of it, then a lulling rain to gently soak the parched earth and convince the fire that it had nothing to return for.
They ran again, as best Elissa could manage. Off in the distance, in the direction of the castle, the warning bells that had been ringing off-and-on for hours rang again, but to a different tune, and Nolan gave Elissa a nod and small, encouraging smile. It might be too little, it might have come too late, but they’d accomplished something in all the chaos. If worse came to worst, Elissa could convince herself now that at least one family had made it to safety that wouldn’t have otherwise outrun the flames, and her last hours would have counted for something.
The next lightning flash lit up the forest close enough to make out the branches that had grown out over the thorny hedgerow. “This way! This way!” Nolan steered them off to the right, and they began to skirt the edge of the forest. “No, wait! That way!” he grabbed her before they’d gone twenty paces and tugged her back the other direction.
They continued far enough along the thorny, unbroken hedge that Elissa had begun having serious doubts about the competence of her guide, when they finally encountered a spot where a rusting iron gate guarded a small gap that had been left for a little-used track leading into the forest.
“What fool chained this thing?!” Nolan slammed a frustrated boot into the gate, which rattled noisily but gave only a couple inches before pulling up short. Unlike the gate, which had clearly been standing there for decades, the chain and lock securing it couldn’t have accumulated a year’s worth of weathering. Still, this was not an insurmountable obstacle. Not much more than head high on Elissa, the gate with its narrow bars had clearly been put there to deter the passage of largish animals, not people.
“Boost me over,” she said, already grabbing the bars and looking for footing to scrabble up. The footing wasn’t abundant, but lifting Elissa didn’t prove a terrible challenge for Nolan, and before long s
he was rolling over the top of the gate. She landed with a fair amount of grace, and with a small tear in the sleeve of her robe where it had caught on one of the gate’s ornamental spikes.
Nolan passed the lantern over to Elissa, then followed himself, minus both the grace and the torn sleeve. At least, Elissa noted, he’d had the decency to do some grunting and some heavy breathing to show he’d put an effort into the climb.
They took only a few moments to recover, then set off quickly along the trail into the deeper darkness of the forest. Behind, them, the red glow of the wildfire quickly became lost from sight behind the hedge and the forest canopy. The trees also provided shelter from the winds, blocking the most biting of them, even as the leaves in the upper reaches—tossed about in the oncoming storm—whispered to each other like a mob of crazed conspirators.
Few drops of rain had worked their way down through the foliage yet. Far more often Elissa would see bright autumn leaves came fluttering down into the lantern light than feel cold water splash against her skin now. The one thing they didn’t seem to be leaving behind was the smoke from the fire, which remained thick enough here to evoke the occasional small coughing fit from each of them.
“It’s like we stepped into another world,” Elissa said, staring around them into the dark, at once comforted by the sheltering embrace of the forest and disturbed by the strange sounds and shadows crowding in around her.
They walked briskly for fifteen minutes or so, encountering a few forks in the half-overgrown trail, but each time Nolan led them on confidently. Either he knew exactly where they were going, or he was invested in making it look like he did.
Something felt a bit ominous to Elissa about the mad whispering of the leaves and the limbs that would reach out of the darkness as they swayed in the wind, but she didn’t get truly spooked until a loud creaking overhead gave way to the sharp report of a heavy limb breaking under the strain of the storm. It crashed down through the forest canopy to rain a heavy shower of leaves and twigs on them, but drew up short somewhere still out of reach of the lantern light, leaving Elissa to wonder if the branch had been as big as it had sounded, and how close it might have come to falling on them.
After that, every groan and creak in the forest canopy set her on edge, straining to listen for the sound of cracking wood. At one point, looking up when she should have been looking down, she caught her toe on a rather solidly placed rock, and sat down heavily, stifling curses that would have been most unfit for the robes she wore.
“I’ll bet this forest has seen a lot of stories,” she said as the pain ebbed, and she eased herself back to her feet. No good letting herself think about how dangerous the trees—or the shadows—could be while there was no escaping them.
“They say it was already old before the first emperor was born,” Nolan agreed. “The trees out here on the edge are babes. People used to fight with it, trying to tame the forest, but the hedge is where they gave up and built a wall to keep it in. They say in the deep forest there are trees so old and so big you could get lost just trying to walk around one.” He met her dubious look with a mischievous grin. “I said they say it. Didn’t say it was true.”
“What else do they say?” Elissa asked earnestly.
“Well,” Nolan said, peering around into the darkness, “the Oobly Yech lives just over there.” He pointed through the trees to the left.
“The Oobly Yech?”
“A slimy, child-devouring monster that lives at the bottom of a sinkhole,” Nolan said. “The ground over there’s unstable, and after a rain, you can find yourself sliding down the mud into a cave you’ll never get out of on your own, even if you survive the fall. People who’ve gone in after lost children say there’s the ruins of a pagan temple that the ground swallowed up down there. Lots of story, even discounting the Oobly Yech itself.
“They say the whole forest’s full of ghosts and goblins like that,” Nolan went on, “and hill folk that have been worshiping demons so long that you can’t tell them from the goblins.”
“Have you seen any?”
“Of which?” Nolan grinned again. “No. None that admitted it. I do know a few folk who live back in the forest, but they’re same as anyone else. Never even met an outlaw out here, come to think of it. Still, no telling what we’ll run into after dark, eh? No one crosses into the forest at night without a good reason, and even the people who live out here won’t bed down without barring their doors.”
“Because of the goblins?” Elissa asked, stepping carefully over a large and gnarled root that intersected the path. Her toe thanked her for being more alert this time by not screaming in pain.
“Never asked. They’ve never said. Probably more folk wisdom than fear of anything in particular—like how people say it’s bad luck to spill salt on a weasel, but never mention what’s like to go wrong.”
“It’s bad luck to spill salt on a weasel?” Elissa asked.
“That’s what I hear.” Nolan nodded. “Can’t recall ever being around a weasel while I had any salt to spill, though. Not sure how anyone found out.”
“I expect the bad luck is weasel bites,” Elissa said thoughtfully, and Nolan found himself forced to agree.
“Well, something’s likely to bite you,” a woman’s voice floated out of the darkness, then clucked warningly as Nolan reached for his sword. “Just stop right there unless you fancy learning how good a shot I am. Who are you?”
“Uh…Lady Minda?” Nolan asked the darkness uncertainly. “Is that you?”
“I asked who you are,” the voice insisted. “Raise the lamp up where I can see your face.”
“It’s Nolan, and my charge, Sister Elissa, milady,” he said as he complied, growing more confident the more he heard the voice. “The fire cut us off from the Tooth and the castle, so we’re headed for the lake to get away from it. It’s getting dangerous-close to the forest.”
Minda Haywood walked out of the darkness on the path ahead of them, lowering her hunting rifle as she came. “Doryne and I are headed that way, too,” she said with a nod. “We’d been at the old hunting lodge for the night when the bells changed. Better a night in the storm than to risk a dance with a forest fire.”
“Where’s Doryne?” Nolan asked.
“I sent her off with our lamp when we spied yours coming,” Minda said. “There are folk abroad these days I wouldn’t care to dance with, either.” She stepped aside and waved them on. “I’ll round her up, but hurry on now. Don’t wait for us. We’ll find you at the lake.”
“And that was…?” Elissa asked as they hurried on down the dark path.
“Lady Minda’s the earl’s oldest girl,” Nolan said. “Heir to county and castle, and a better shot with that rifle than any man in her father’s guard—including myself, to be sure. Stay on her good side if you can.”
“I’ll remember that,” Elissa said.
“Not that I mean she’s likely to shoot you with it or anything,” Nolan added hastily. “The Haywoods are good folk. No King Crogan for the minstrels to be singing about in a thousand years, I guess, but the sort that most people are glad to have sitting up at the castle sorting things out. Hard to ask more than that.”
The storm seemed to think otherwise, choosing that moment to loose a crack of thunder particularly close overhead. Then the real rain began—not a downpour yet, but enough that it could be heard steadily pattering into the leaves of the forest canopy, and enough that the droplets filtering through to land on Elissa finally outpaced the falling of the leaves. It offered every hope that they’d not see the forest turn into an inferno around them, but still managed to renew their sense of urgency to find what shelter they could for the night.
When the forest finally opened ahead of them, it did so without warning, and Elissa slipped on the muddy embankment. Only Nolan’s timely grab at her arm kept her from tumbling headlong into the dark waters fifteen feet below. It was a tumble she surely would have regretted, given the number of rocks that protruded above the s
urface of the water. On another night, that surface might have been a finely mirrored one, but now the wind and the steady rain pattering down kept it churned into ripples that could reflect only disjointed fragments.
The trail split here to skirt the edge of the lake in both directions, and once Elissa regained her footing, Nolan paused a moment to orient himself before setting off to the left. At times, the trail would wander off back into the woods a bit, putting some distance between itself and an untrustworthy bit of embankment. Even when lightning would flicker across the sky, the rain would obscure the otherwise-open expanse of water, making it impossible for Elissa to judge the extent of the lake, but it quickly proved to be more than a pretentious little fishpond.
Ten minutes later found them still walking its edge as they arrived at a relic of a stone bridge. The old structure must have dated from that time when people were still fighting with the forest over where it ended and their own domains began. Once a fine and sturdy thing built to accommodate the width of a cart, it couldn’t have seen more maintenance in the last hundred years than someone coming in occasionally to hack back whatever growth threatened to block access to it.
“Is it safe?” Elissa asked dubiously when Nolan seemed intent on crossing the bridge.
“Safer than staying on this side of it tonight,” he assured her, “and a lot dryer than trying to swim. Don’t trust the railings, though, and stay in the center.”
The forest still sheltered them from the worst of the winds, but once on the bridge they lost all protection from the rain, and taking care with their footing made it impossible to run. By the time they’d traversed its fifty foot length, Elissa’s robes weren’t soaked through, but they’d safely achieved the status of unpleasantly damp.
Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1) Page 27