Her people could have pulled them through to Oretcht’ke and forced Trevere to release her, but instead they had hung her out to dry. She would not chew off her own arm like a cat in a trap, but neither could she unknot the ribbon, cut it, or slip it off. For all intents and purposes, it was sealed to her skin.
And that left her here, chasing after a lunatic abomination into the gullet of impending winter, with the goblin she considered her child dragged along for the ride. The woods slipped by like dark screens, the occasional burst of autumn foliage breaking up the evergreen lattice, and in the distance the road continued its slow downward slope into the east.
Into the depths of the Empire.
*****
Trevere slowed the pace as the sun dipped below the Rift, leaving the tilted terrain still sky-lit but muted, the shadows directionless. Lark drew her horse up beside his, and he gave girl and goblin one brief, empty glance before looking forward.
“We’ll stop soon,” he said. “It won’t be long before the light is gone.”
Lark shook her head. “Stop where?”
They had passed turn-offs every few miles, each mile marked by a beacon like those at the Riftwatch and the broken cart. Glass sphere on metal spike, the mile-count etched into the shaft. All the turn-off roads cut north, into the thick woods and the foothills that climbed toward the Khaeleokiel range. To the south, the forest was undisturbed.
She knew why. It was the Forest of Mists: the vast expanse of eastern wraith-land that spilled over the Rift to create the vestigial forest between Riftward and Varaku. Lark had only ever seen that scrubby, dry fringe; now, in her first time beyond Illane, she stared south into the tree-swaddled valleys cloaked with soft fog and felt both that she was staring into a painting of a ghostly realm and that she was being watched.
“Should be a caravan-shelter somewhere,” Trevere said. “Cold comfort, but it’ll keep us out of the wind. And away from the haelhene.”
She frowned at him. Pressed to her chest, Rian was napping; she had let him wriggle under her second tunic when she donned it to keep out the cold. “The what?” she said, one hand on the goblin’s back through the fabric.
“Those flyers. White wraiths.”
She looked over her shoulder as if she could still spot those strange figures, though it had been candlemarks since their escape. “They’re forest wraiths?”
“No.”
Frowning, she eyed him but his gaze was cast forward, expression fixed, apparently content to leave it at that. She tried to recall any other wraiths, but none of the half-remembered tales helped. In frustration she said, “Explain. There are more than just forest wraiths?”
He shrugged loosely. His horse had slowed further, almost plodding, its horned head bent in weariness. Lark’s, though peppier, showed no interest in passing its comrade. “Grey wraiths—same as forest wraiths. White wraiths different. Maybe others. I’m not an expert.”
“What’s the difference?”
“One is beholden to the Emperor and the other isn’t.”
“Then—“ Puzzled, she immediately marked off the grey wraiths as the Empire’s allies. Everyone knew about the conflicts along the Mist Forest border. “If those are your allies, why did everyone run away?”
“They’re not. They’re bound to the Emperor, not the Empire.”
Lark frowned again, brows creasing. That was a line to pounce on, but she was wary of prodding him; he had shown a tendency to lash out with little warning. And Imperials got so snappish when their ways were questioned.
“They’re not human,” Trevere said dourly before she could ask. “Nor ghosts, no matter what people think. They’re something else, and their interest in us is for experiments at best. ‘Avoid contact at all costs’… That’s what we’re told. They patrol the skies over the Mist Forest to keep the grey wraiths in line.”
“And they investigate things like back at the cart?”
“We will not speak of that.”
Lark chewed her lip and watched him sidelong. She had seen the blood. It was too much for the bleeder to have lived, had it been a normal person. But Cob had been stabbed repeatedly during the tavern fight, yet had retained no injuries. Her hand moved to Rian, fast asleep under her shirt, with his torn and bloodied wrappings but no wound. Was Cob’s spirit contagious, or just…helpful?
And what did the Gold Army, or these white wraiths, want with it?
Trevere tapped his heels and his horse reluctantly returned to a trot, drawing ahead and forcing Lark to follow suit. The road was empty in both directions; earlier they had passed a wagon-caravan lugged by heavy-hoofed Tasgards, but nothing since, and Lark guessed that most traffic turned up the trails toward the towns hiding in the woodlands. This was the essence of the protectorate of Wyndon: secrecy, reclusiveness, inhospitality. Not a single village along the roadside.
They rode in silence, Lark mulling over ways to break the ice and Trevere stiff-faced, setting the pace, always staring forward as if fixated on the future. As the light faded further, the day’s minimal warmth ebbed, and Lark hunched lower in the saddle, missing the scrublands and the damp heat of the city during storm season.
Only when the sky had turned a sunless slate-color, deepening like water at the edges, did she glimpse the white movement in the northern woods. Her eyes slid sideways, her spine stiffening. Trevere was a few horse-lengths ahead, just out of easy earshot, and if he noticed, he made no motion.
Low to the ground, the white shape paralleled them no more than a few yards past the forest edge. Not a wraith, she told herself, though it glided effortlessly between the black bars of tree-trunks, keeping easy pace with their horses.
She tapped her heels to her steed’s sides and it picked up into a canter. Trevere shot her a glance as she passed him, his horse automatically falling in behind hers, but she kept her attention sidelong on the white thing.
Nothing about its glide seemed to change, but it matched their speed.
“What are you doing?” Trevere said, an edge of pique in his voice.
She ignored him and set heels to flanks again, and the tired horse strained beneath her as its gait switched from canter to gallop. Still the white shadow paced them. Unshod hooves clapped sharply on the slate road. They flashed past a beacon, the glass sphere reflecting the fading sky, and then a moment later passed a turn-off into a north-running trail.
The white thing never emerged. When the forest resumed, it was empty.
An uneven clop from behind her, a sputtered curse, and the runes lit up on the ribbon. She tugged the reins and glanced back to see Trevere’s horse stumble, right itself with a great muscular effort, then take another unsteady step before coming to a halt with its head down.
Trevere glared at her as he slid from the saddle. “What was that about, woman?” he snapped, eyeing his horse with the wariness of a non-expert. He tugged the reins and the beast limped forward, favoring its right front leg.
“There’s…”
Lark trailed off and peeked toward the northern woods, trying not to look like she was looking. She caught no glimpse of the white thing but knew it was there; she could feel it watching. Sliding off her horse, she led it closer to Trevere and hissed, “There’s something out there.”
Trevere raised an eyebrow at her. “Yes. A wolf.”
“What?”
“You were racing a wolf. Shaggy, so probably a quillwolf. It’s been following us since the cart.”
“But—“
“Be quiet and hope my horse isn’t lamed. There should be a caravan-shelter soon, otherwise we get to spend the night in the woods. With the wolf.”
Lark glanced into the forest again. Still dark, still shrouded, no glimpse of white.
“But—“ she said as Trevere led his limping horse past her.
“Try not to think,” he snapped. “It seems to bring trouble for you.”
Gritting her teeth, Lark laid her hand on the goblin under her shirt. He was undisturbed by the shift in posit
ion, his skinny legs locked around her waist like a second set of arms, but she knew she would regret his slight weight if they had to walk too far. Ahead, the land continued to slope, the foggy forest stretching on forever.
If there was a shelter built anywhere among those trees, she could not see it.
She looked back one more time, to the turn-off they had just passed and the faint gleam of the beacon beside it. But there was only smooth-worn slate and thorny briar, grey on brown on black.
*****
In the wooded depths, the wolf followed them slowly, ignoring all other scents and trails—the leavings of forest hares, the fox-spoor, the little tracks of waxwrens and revanons. The temptation of deer-musk, almost fresh. There was a more important scent, all but masked by woman and horse-sweat and the strange stink that hung about the man.
The scent on the goblin. Aesangat’s tang.
Ignoring the twinge of its ill-fed belly, the pale-eyed wolf shadowed them into the oncoming night.
*****
To Lark, it seemed as if cold poured down from the sky like water as the last light faded, the stars glimmering in the darkness like chips of ice. The Eye of Night had already risen and hung in the east amid its circle of constellations, a black hole punched into the universe. It made her shudder, half from the chill and half from the instinctual anxiety that the Eye provoked.
Even the Shadow Folk feared the true dark.
Trevere led the way, his horse still limping, and she squinted hard to make out their trail in dim starlight. Neither moon was up. The child moon would likely return soon--it only took a few candlemarks to speed its way through the darkness—but she had no idea when its silver mother would rise. She had never paid attention to such things.
If the wolf was still pacing them, she could not see it.
When the caravan-shelter finally loomed out of the forest on the Wyndish side of the road, she could have cried in relief. She had begun to think it a myth, and Trevere more delusional than she already suspected. Its big doors faced the Forest of Mists, and a beacon stood at its western edge, lightless. Trevere led his horse to the doors then dropped the reins to pry at them, and the horse merely bent its head, its narrow flanks heaving despite the slow pace they had maintained.
The doors parted and something white burst from between them, to arch on silent wings into the night.
“Owl,” said Trevere. Lark barely heard it over the thunder of her startled heart. He slipped into the blackness beyond the door-frame, and she led her horse there and squinted in.
If there was ever a time for my people to take me back, it’d be now, she thought. It annoyed her to know they would not.
Something metallic scraped and clacked in the darkness, and she flinched again, her hand moving to cover the back of the goblin’s head. She felt his little fingers tighten on her nape, then he sighed, still deeply asleep. After a moment, a spark jumped in the black confines of the shelter and became a small flame.
It illuminated Trevere’s face and the edge of a fire-pit, nothing more. Then he touched a twist of hay to it and lit a lantern that seemed to have come from nowhere, and the light blossomed to fill the interior.
Lark peered in, leading the horses. The double-door entry was split by a wall. On Trevere’s side was a largely empty chamber, with a few old benches surrounding a brick-sided fire-pit half-sunk into the stone floor, and hay-bales and a long table lurking in the deeper shadows. On the other side was a line of stalls like a stable, light touching them from the open door in the middle of the wall. Not the finest of lodgings.
“Get settled,” said Trevere as he came forward with the lantern. “I’ll deal with the horses.”
In the bleak light, his face looked thin and old, the planes of his features paring away the youth to leave weariness. She scooted out of his way and moved for the fire-pit. Logs had already been set in it, she supposed, as she had not heard him move them; as the fire grew, she spotted a wood-box against the wall and a few battered old cooking-things hanging on pegs. Also a chest, and more bales of hay as if the caravaners might eat them should they run out of food. The air tasted stale, the stone floor spattered with droppings; squinting up, she saw eyes like yellow marbles gleaming in the rafters.
“Rian,” she said quietly, tapping the goblin’s head through her tunic.
The skinny limbs stirred, then a mrrp came from under the fabric, followed by “Ys?”
“Out, please. I have work to do, and you should hunt.”
With a whine of reluctance, the goblin slithered out from under her clothing and dropped to the floor, then leapt up with a hiss at the chill of the stone. He gave her a reproachful look, followed by a wide yawn as he stretched his lean grey body like a cat.
“Go on,” she said, already heading for the wood-bin. “And be careful.”
When she looked up again, he was gone.
Lark dragged more wood over then built up the flames, yawning periodically into her sleeve. Her whole body ached from the unaccustomed riding, and now that they had stopped, the lack of sleep was catching up with her. Through the side-door she could hear Trevere with the horses, talking to them quietly.
The double-doors were still half-open, the air outside still. She knew she should get up to close them, but as the fire in the pit rose higher, it seemed so unnecessary. The heat wafted over her, and she held her hands as close as possible to let her fingertips thaw.
Something white flickered by the door.
Lark’s heart thumped. She stared, but it did not happen again, and she was not sure if it had been right at the doorway or closer to the trees. It had been too swift to see.
A hiss came from above, and suddenly there were things in the air—silent, falling things that swept close enough to make her shriek before they ghosted out the open door. She looked after them wildly, only recognizing them as owls when she looked up to the rafters and saw Rian perched there, black tail lashing in disappointment.
“What happened?” came Trevere’s voice from the other chamber. A moment later, he peeked out with the lantern.
Lark shook her head vigorously, one hand pressed to her chest as if she could slow her own pounding pulse. “Nothing,” she said. “Just…wildlife.”
Trevere ran a scathing look over the surroundings, then went and pulled the double-doors shut. Then he disappeared back into the stables.
Lark sighed, startled out of the need to sleep. She considered the pots and pans and sparse furnishings with momentary, intense misery; she had never wanted to be on some wretched excursion like this, and had no idea what she should do. Her stomach ached and she was cold and angry at her people for stranding her here. For giving her a mission here.
A mission that had only one option now.
I should cook something. Be sweet to him. Figure out how to make up a bed, maybe those hay bales? And then…then…
Her skin crawled. She remembered those white things in his shoulder, knitting him back together. She did not want to imagine him naked.
There was food in the saddlebags. Maybe cooking would be enough to charm him. She knew how to do that. Sort of.
Or maybe I should hit him with a pan and cut his hand off while he’s unconscious. But will that make my hand fall off? Or will it just feel like that? She thought of her hand hanging dead at the end of her wrist for the rest of her life and shuddered.
But I have to do something…
The lantern-light returned, and with it Trevere. He had the saddlebags over his shoulders, and in his other hand a bucket of water, and Lark forced herself to move to his assistance. She caught a whiff of taint still about him—that nasty scent she was beginning to think he sweated—and it curdled her stomach even more.
He let her take the bucket, and for a little while there was silence as she went for the kettle and a pot and he arranged hay-bales around the fire to shield them from the rest of the broad, chilly chamber. From the saddlebags came blankets and flasks and packets of travel provisions, much of which they
had eaten cold on the road. It seemed the soldiers had not expected the pursuit to last this long.
She had just rigged the tripod and hung the full kettle when he said, “See that?” and pointed to the wall above the door.
Lark looked. In the mixed light of the fire and the lantern, she could just see a dense charcoal scrawl: a picture in abstract, made of an upright shape like a clothes-peg plus a straight line reaching out to one side, both wrapped in black swirls like flowing material.
“It’s the old Traveler sign,” Trevere said. She glanced at him, curious; it was not like him to contribute information, but he was huddled under a blanket with his attention on the wall and something about his face told her he was not just speaking this for her edification. “There used to be shrines to him all through this land.”
“Iroliyale, right?” It was mostly a guess; theology was not her strong suit.
“Mm. Friend of your Morgwi. Far-Walker, King of Crossroads. The Shelter from the Storm. I imagine there used to be a shrine on this spot. Torn down like all the others when the Empire claimed Wyndon, but as you can see…” He gestured to the mark on the wall. “The site is still consecrated.”
Huddling into her own blanket, Lark frowned at him. She was not sure if him being talkative was a good thing. “You’re not a secret godfollower, are you?”
Trevere shook his head. His eyelids were at half-mast, but his jaw was tight, and he scratched at his left sleeve absently. “I’m an Imperial. I don’t have a choice. My point is that we’ll be safe here. Ground consecrated to the Traveler permits no bloodshed; that would insult his hospitality. We’d be safe even if we left the door open and the wolf crept in. So tell your goblin to hunt outside.”
Lark blinked, then squinted into the rafters. No flare of goblin-eyes revealed his position. “Rian?” she called, and heard a skitter from the stable-side, then spotted him peeking around the door. “You heard what he said?”
“Ys,” came the goblin’s soft reply. Then he vanished again.
The Light of Kerrindryr (The War of Memory Cycle Book 1) Page 37