The Poison of Woedenwoud

by K. Ferrin

Ling’s curiosity got the best of her. “How do you know? You’re from Brielle just as I am.”

  Every eye shifted to Ling uncomfortably for a moment before sliding away again.

  “Come on, we keep moving,” Drake said.

  “Something is wrong here, Drake. Really wrong,” Celene said.

  Ling gritted her teeth in irritation that her question went unanswered, but Drake merely nodded. She said nothing as she pushed deeper into Nantes. Ling gave the dog a last pat and followed, the dog trotting along at her heels.

  “Those houses are not empty.” They’d been walking for about ten minutes in silence so heavy Ling actually jumped at Fern’s words. She followed Fern’s gaze with her own, but saw nothing. “They are there, hiding within their houses. I’ve seen several curtains twitching as we’ve passed. They watch us.”

  “I’ve seen it too,” Dreskin confirmed. “But where are their lemfreu? There are no animals in their compounds.”

  Every business and house had a large open paddock sort of space surrounding it or in front of it, big enough for horses or cattle or other large creatures. Every one of them stood empty, gates ajar. Ling wondered if the smaller lemfreu might still be inside, cloistered with their human companions. Thinking of the pile of bones and corpses back in town she somehow doubted it. If people were in those houses, she suspected they were in there alone.

  “There is no evidence of attack. This doesn’t seem to be the work of the warlocks. It doesn’t look like they’ve been here at all,” Drake said.

  They walked in silence for another couple of minutes before they finally saw living animals. Though living was perhaps an overstatement. Most of them were so starved their ribs and spines stood out plainly from shrunken flesh. Some were still locked inside the paddocks outside their houses, others stood disconsolately in the middle of the road, eyes closed and heads hanging low.

  They came upon a group of goats standing bunched together in the center of a crossroads. They had the finest fur Ling had ever seen, long and smooth, and it looked like it would be incredibly soft to the touch. But their bones showed through their fine hair, and they stood as all the others did, heads low. Ling wondered if they’d been struck deaf and blind somehow because they didn’t stir at all as the group passed them by, not one of them glancing in their direction. Not even a single ear twitched.

  All of them seemed lost and confused, depressed in a way Ling had never seen from another living thing, human or animal. Some wandered as if seeking something. Others seemed to be simply waiting to die. She shooed a couple of cows off the road. They moved just far enough for her to stop bothering them, and then settled once again, eyes downcast.

  At her heel, the dog whimpered, a high-pitched whine that didn’t seem to line up with his large and dangerous-looking form. He was tall enough that she could set her hand between his shoulder blades with a large bend still in her elbow. She left it there, enjoying the warmth in his fur, the feeling of his ribcage expanding and shrinking as he breathed. The dog seemed to like it too, and he pressed against her side as they walked.

  They eventually came upon a house with a wide paddock surrounding it and a large barn off to the right side of it. The paddock was empty, but the sign on the gate said chevalmyn. Drake led them through the gate and up to the front door. Here, as everywhere else, there was no sign of human life. Everything was still and silent. Abandoned, Ling thought.

  Drake pounded on the door and waited. No sound came from the house, no creaking of floorboards as weight shifted, not the barking of a dog. Drake pounded three more times and every time they were met with the same silence.

  “Let’s go to the barn,” Dreskin suggested. “If we find horses there, we take them. We’ll leave money behind, should anyone care to come find it.”

  “Such a thing cannot be tolerated,” Celene said, indignant.

  “We have little choice, Celene,” Drake said. “We need to get to Caern, and we need to get there fast. I agree, Dreskin. We take what we find.”

  They pushed the barn doors open wide. Daylight spilled into the dim interior, and the warm smell of hay and horses wafted out at them. Several noses appeared over stall doors, and one horse whinnied from somewhere near the far end of the barn. Relief flooded through Ling’s system. At least they’d have horses to ride across country to Caern, but even that relief was not enough to assuage the deep discomfort she felt at what was going on here. She thought it somehow had to be related to the war, to the dying of magic, though she didn’t understand how.

  Underneath the usual quiet barn sounds, Ling heard something else, something that didn’t quite fit. It sounded like laughing, or maybe sobbing. She looked around and saw the others heard it as well. They moved slowly into the barn, searching.

  They found him huddled beneath a heavy horse blanket in an empty stall. A young boy of perhaps eight years, face stained with dirt but for the frequent trails his tears had left behind. He cowered before them in obvious terror while sobs racked his narrow body. Celene knelt on the floor in front of him, her daughter beside her as always. Amalya changed her chant the moment she saw him, burning, burning, burning turning quietly to crying, crying, crying.

  “We mean you no harm,” Celene said, her voice warm and gentle. “We seek horses. We are traveling to Caern. We heard yours are the best in all Nantes,” She said, a smile on her face. Ling wondered if that were true or a lie meant to help open the boy up.

  The boy studied her for several minutes, his face twisting as he tried to gain control of his sobbing. Large tears welled continuously in the corners of his eyes and trailed down his cheeks. His nose was crusted with snot from crying, and Ling wondered how long it had been since he’d bathed.

  “They are broken,” he said, his voice choked with his grief. “They are silent now. They are all silent.” The words came out as a wail, and he collapsed back onto the floor of the barn.

  Celene glanced toward Drake briefly before turning back to the boy. “What do you mean they are all silent? Do you mean the lemfreu? They no longer speak?”

  The boy shook his head, his eyes going distant. “At first they killed them all, in the town square. Those that first stopped talking. They thought it was some evil sickness or something. But the burning didn’t stop it. Nothing stopped it. I feed these.” He jutted his chin toward the horses in the stalls. “My parents bid me let them die but…I can’t. I can’t let them die, even if they are broken or sick or I don’t know what.” His weeping overwhelmed him once more, and he turned away, hiding his head beneath his arms.

  Celene let him cry, and Drake said nothing, though Ling could see her frustration clearly in the tightness of her stance. Amalya reached out and touched the boy gently on his shoulder. The tremors in his body eased instantly, and he turned to look at her. Amalya ran a single finger down the boy’s cheek. “Tears,” she said, barely louder than a breath.

  The boy calmed at her touch. His eyes widened, and he watched Amalya for a long moment, the raging emotion of an instant prior gone. Amalya smiled, then turned away, almost seeming to forget all about him as she pulled out the blackened stick and began to draw. The boy turned back to Celene, eyes wide with wonder.

  “Can we take them? We will help them for you,” Celene said.

  He looked up at her, his face now serene, the overwhelming emotion seemingly wiped away. Hope kindled in his eyes, but he shook his head no. “They are broken. They don’t speak. You don’t want beasts such as these.”

  “We don’t mind that so much,” Celene said.

  The boy looked at her and then looked at Amalya. The girl was still saying the word crying over and over under her breath as she marked up the floor of the barn. He nodded his head then. “She is gifted,” he said, distracted by his study of her. “If you care for one of the gifted, I know you will take care of them. Take all of them. It will be better.” He climbed to his feet. “Take care of them, please.” He turned and left the barn without looking back, his narrow shoulders squared in som
e internal resolution.

  Celene sat back on her butt, stretching her feet out in front of her. They were quiet for a time, absorbing what the boy had said.

  “She calmed him,” Ling said, surprised by what she had just seen. The others nodded, unsurprised at what had happened.

  “It’s the magic,” Celene said, echoing Ling’s earlier thoughts. “It has left them.”

  “The breach,” Fern breathed. What little color she had in her cheeks had vanished as they’d made their way through town. “It’s finally happening, then. Not enough remains for even the innate magics. I wonder where else.”

  “Like as not it’s everywhere now. What madness must have swept the world while we hid in the Darkling Sea,” Drake said. Tears stood in her eyes.

  The dog whined again, and Ling knelt beside him, wrapping her arms around his huge chest. He’d been lemfreu. She wondered what had happened to his human. Perhaps she or he was one of those in the mountain of bodies down in the harbor. Ling wondered if even the dog knew. The question of how all those people had died, whether someone had killed them all before tossing them into the pile, or if they had leaped to their own fiery deaths, unwilling or unable to live without their companions, she didn’t know. It was likely they would never know.

  Ling had always pictured terrible things when she thought of the loss of magic, things like economies failing and starvation. But she’d never imagined how it could destroy people from within this way. How could she have? She’d grown up in a place without it. For the first time she considered what it would be like if suddenly everyone she knew lost the ability to speak, or see, or feel. She stared at the empty city around her, realizing the entire social order of Brisia was failing: the values they’d held as a people, everything they’d held sacred, all of it, vanished. These people had killed their own lemfreu, their family forged in the power of magic. She couldn’t imagine how empty, how quiet, the world must feel to them now. Perhaps as if their very souls had been sundered. So it must feel for the animals too.

  “You were right,” Fern said, her voice quiet. The harsh brassiness of her anger had been replaced with a different sort of grief. “You were right to bring us here. It must be stopped, no matter what the cost. You were right.”

  Chapter Twelve

  They wasted no time getting the horses saddled and ready to ride. There were fifteen horses left in the barn, and they took all of them. They would ride hard to Caern, as fast as the horses could manage, stopping only long enough to change out their mounts. They’d release any that couldn’t keep up. They worked fast, but in a distracted sort of way. Ling was disturbed by what she had seen, and it was clear the others were similarly bothered. Fern was grim, her face pale, but she prepared as quickly as the others, her desire to go back to Alyssum overrun by the need to stop Fariss and seal the breach.

  Ling wondered what they would find in Caern, in the villages they would pass through between here and there. She wondered what they’d find when they made it to Lille in Brielle. Would the impact have spread there yet? She thought it likely it had.

  In Meuse they depended heavily on imports. Fresh fruit and vegetables, meat and rice and grains, they all arrived daily on boats from every destination on the Lisse and Arnhem rivers. Most of these goods did not come from the lowland, flood-prone lands of Brielle. They came from farther afield, from places like Brisia. Without this daily influx of food and goods, Meuse would starve.

  It was clear nothing had been shipped from Nantes for quite some time. If the rest of the magical lands were as disrupted as Nantes, people in Meuse would be starving by now. She tried to remember how much food her mother kept in reserves for the town, but she couldn’t recall. She’d long wondered if Witch had survived; she wrote about it often in the grimoire. She’d added her parents, Rudy, and Shera to that list. Ling had worried about what Fariss would do when he found them, but perhaps there was no one left there for him to torment.

  They took off at a fast gallop, clumps of dirt from the road flinging high into the air behind them, hooves pounding heavily. The animals were larger than anything they had back home. Horses were uncommon in Brielle—the thick mud and raised platform cities were not designed for such large beasts. The few she’d seen had been small, almost hairless things, impressively strong for their tiny size. These were large and powerful animals, covered in short, thick fur that gleamed in the sunlight. They ran easily, snorting and stepping proudly, and Ling found she had no trouble keeping her seat their gait was so smooth. She’d never seen such glorious animals in her life.

  Her fascination didn’t last long however. Smooth their gait may have been, but her body was not accustomed to such a posture. Her knees began to ache and her inner thighs to chafe. Once again she cursed the man who’d made her for his attention to detail. Of course, she didn’t really chafe, and she had no knees, not like the others did, but she felt the pain anyway.

  The large dog sprinted along beside her, tongue lolling, and she swore he had a smile plastered on his face. She’d given him some meat before they’d left. They’d all eaten swiftly, knowing they wouldn’t stop again until they got to Caern. She wondered what she’d do with a dog of that size back home in Meuse, and then pushed the thought roughly away. She’d never see Meuse again.

  They rode for hours, keeping a wide distance between themselves and every village and settlement they passed. Dreskin or Drake would split off as they approached, joining back up with the group on the far side of town, reporting much the same as they’d seen in Nantes. Those animals not already dead or dying in the road or paddocks wandered aimlessly. The only signs of human life were a sharp twitch of a curtain and a shadow jerking back from the window. Ling wondered what would become of all of these people if they failed to close the breach. She wondered what would happen to them if they succeeded.

  The sun set, and they rode on through the light of a near full moon. They traveled through broad open grasslands below clear starry skies with nothing to offer any cover. Drake was true to her word: they spent no time worrying about the exposure and striving for secrecy. They rode openly, and at a speed Ling was increasingly impressed the horses could keep.

  They stopped very briefly, only for a few hours. They had to; Ling had to reset. The next morning, she endured a rough awakening. They had no time to allow her to read through the grimoire and come to terms with all that had transpired. Instead, Drake told her the story, all she knew of it, as they rode on through the pre-dawn darkness.

  In the earliest hours of the morning they saw the first sign of pursuit. The dog, who’d run at her side this entire time, peeled off suddenly with a snarl. She lost sight of him immediately in the underbrush, but she shouted out in surprise, reining her horse to a stop. From a short distance away she heard the unmistakable sound of animals fighting, low growls and furious snarls, and then a squeal that cut off sharply.

  The others trotted up to her as the dog came back, pulling something heavy behind it. Ling climbed off her horse, feeling like her joints were suddenly made of rusted metal rather than magic, and knelt as the dog pulled its prey to her.

  He dropped a coyote, large and rangy, at her side. She looked up at the others, confused. In the dim light she couldn’t read any of her companions’ expressions.

  “A spy, no doubt,” Celene said.

  “Why not simply use the dog?” Dreskin asked. “A coyote is far more likely to draw our attention.”

  “That dog is bonded,” Celene answered, leaning down to scratch his ears. “In the more usual way, of course, but even with that sort of bond, a Tovendieren would struggle to break through.”

  “You’re saying that dog somehow knew that coyote was spying on us and killed it for us?” Ling was skeptical. There was little doubt the dog considered her his human now, but the rest of it seemed unlikely.

  “He may not have realized a warlock rode inside that thing, but he certainly knew it followed us. He may simply have thought it hunted us, and was thus a threat to be de
alt with,” Celene answered.

  “But you think he knew.” Dreskin didn’t ask; he stated what they all could clearly hear in Celene’s tone.

  “These are not the simple animals you are accustomed to,” Celene said. “They may have lost their magic, but don’t think that makes them the same simple meat packages you are used to. They have lived bonded to humans, sharing thoughts with them since birth, for generations. There are reasons the Brisians generally don’t sell their animals to outsiders.”

  Ling turned to look at the dog. He sat panting in front of her, the same large smile on his face. She reached over and cupped his jaw in her hands. He looked into her eyes as confidently as any human she’d ever spoken with. “Thank you,” she said. “I am sorry, I don’t know your name, and I can’t hear you speak it to me, but I will call you Navire. You are like me, magic, but not magical.” The dog licked her face, his wide tongue leaving an impressive swath of spit along one entire side of it. She laughed as she pushed him away.

  They rode on, and twice more that morning Navire set off into the grasslands around them to kill things. They didn’t stop for him, and he didn’t seem to expect them to. He’d catch up to her within minutes and settle himself back at her side.

  By midday they’d released six of their fifteen horses, those they’d ridden through the previous day and the night. A short time after that, the coyotes came again. This time there were at least a dozen of them, scattered beside and behind them. They were never visible long enough for the riders to see their eyes, but there was no doubt they were in thrall to a warlock. There were too many for Navire to fight, and Ling asked him to stay at her side. He did so, but his hackles were raised, and he snarled viciously when any came too close.

  They spurred their horses faster, and Ling wondered if they could hold this pace and still make it to Caern. She had no idea how far it was across the horn to that coast, but they galloped madly across the fields, the thundering of hooves reverberating in her ears until it was the only sound she knew. By early evening the horses were slathered with sweat, sides heaving. They’d had to leave one behind when it had begun snorting flecks of blood from its nose. They dared not stop for more than a few seconds.