Kordas and Rose had ridden all the way to the front of the convoy, to be one of the first to see the strange forest when they crossed the Gate to bypass the falls and rapids. Another couple of consultations via scrying pool—far less public this time than the last—had left him with decidedly mixed feelings.

On the one hand, the forest hadn’t done anything but unnerve the scouts. Nobody had any reason to go into the Red Forest, and nobody wanted to.

On the other hand, Delia, Alberdina, and Sai had all emphasized aspects of the place that did not fill him with any optimism. The sense that it was a single living entity? He’d never heard of that before, and neither had Sai, who probably knew more about strange things in magic than anyone outside of the long-lost Imperial Palace. The sense of distant rage? Oh, that couldn’t bode well.

It appeared that the Old Men were of the same mind as he was, because as he approached the Gate, there they were waiting, ready to take their barges through, first in line. Whatever was out there, they wanted to be the first to set eyes on it.

He sent Arial to stand next to their Tow-Beast, one of the False Golds he’d “given” to the Emperor. The Tow-Beast was a beautiful creature, and if his coat didn’t shimmer in the thin sunlight as it had when Kordas taken him to the Capital, it was because he, like every other equine in the convoy, had grown a nice, thick coat against the winter.

“Hello, Sunshine,” he said affectionately as Arial moved to stand beside the huge beast. Sunshine snorted a greeting, amiably, and nuzzled Kordas’s hair. Kordas’s hair was easy for the False Gold to reach, because even sitting on Arial’s back, Kordas’s head was even with Sunshine’s nose. Kordas was a little surprised to feel himself choking up, and suddenly he was very, very glad he had taken the time to steal back his horses . . . and gladder still for the intervention of the stable-Dolls who had taken it upon themselves to rescue all the rest, and send them to Crescent Lake. He had since learned that the Dolls had not only saved horses and humans, but every single other living thing in the Palace complex that they could catch up and run with.

There hadn’t been a lot of creatures that weren’t human and couldn’t escape on their own, save for the horses and the chickens. The Emperor had discouraged pets, and even if he hadn’t, anyone who truly cared for their animals wouldn’t want to risk the chance that the Emperor would order their pet taken, hurt, or destroyed to make a point—or to score one. But somehow, even most of the chickens had been saved, at least according to Rose. And he saw no reason to doubt her. Apparently there had been a Portal for food deliveries down in the area of the stables and henhouses. There were no mews at the Palace. The Emperor knew nothing of falconry, and cared nothing for the sport.

The chickens, however, had not been sent to Crescent Lake, because the Dolls had known they’d have dropped straight into water amid the chaotic rush of hundreds of barges coming through that Portal as fast as the Portal would allow. No, the chickens had been sent to the Emperor’s duck and goose farm outside the Capital. Which must have been very confusing for the keepers of that farm. He could just imagine it: suddenly, in the midst of horrific noises from the Capital itself and the violent shaking of the ground, to see an enormous flood of chickens bursting out of their Portal.

Presumably, once they got over their surprise, the keepers had known what to do with the birds. Or surely knew farmers to send them to, even if they weren’t equipped to handle that many chickens.

At least they aren’t charred chicken, like if they’d stayed. He sighed, with a little regret. He hadn’t had fried chicken in a very long time. And although other folks had managed to bring down wild geese and ducks on this journey, so far none of those had made it as far as his kitchen.

“Are you ready, Baron?” asked the stablehand mounted—or rather, perched—on Sunshine’s broad back. He was from the more northerly of the Imperial domains, and his skin was lighter than Kordas’s own.

“Ready when you are,” Kordas assured him. He touched his heel to Arial, and she moved ahead of the Tow-Beast, who strained in his harness, feet planted firmly on the grass of the bank, trying to get his string underway. The barge-towing specialists were called ‘hoggees,’ though Kordas had no idea why. They were earning their keep and much more, and the Tow-Beasts gained decorations of rope braids, brass, and beads with each passing day, from an appreciative convoy. The hoggees appeared to have earned some treats, too.

Kordas experienced only a brief moment of disorientation in transition, probably because the Gates were so close together. The air that went through a Gate link blew from higher to lower air pressure, so environmental effects from the departure side had been muffled. But he got hit in the face with a blast of damp, chill air and a torrent of intense rumbling noise that startled him and Arial, and Arial snorted her dislike of it, though she didn’t falter.

The noise was incredible, like thunder that never came to an end. It was pretty clear that, until he got far enough away from the rapids behind him, he wouldn’t be able to hear a bloody thing. The air was just a short step above freezing, and so very damp there were tiny droplets collecting on the fleece collar of his sheepskin coat.

Kordas glanced back over his shoulder to make sure Rose was still behind him on the pillion pad—he’d never once lost anyone on a Gate-transit, but it was a habit with him to check—and then took a moment to peer in the direction they’d just come from. Dwarfing the size of the Gate, the sight of rapids and deadly breakers practically terraced upon each other, covering a quarter of the horizon, was awe-inspiring. The sound went into his body strongest through his chest, legs, scalp, and fingertips, then seemed to emerge from the other side of him. The sensation of being a drumskin occurred to him, something spiritual. Being within sound felt like being encompassed by a deific presence who had forever to explain their secrets to him.

Or like the land itself had just taken him by his shoulders and directed his attention. Here, man. Here. This is what I am. This is my grandeur, my presence, my truth. You are a part of me. With this I remind you, lest you lose sight of it: I am bigger, vaster, and stronger than you can imagine. Tread on me with care, man, for I can crush you on a whim. But respect me, and I might show you wonders like this.

Kordas didn’t blink for nearly a minute.

He returned from his reverie and peered downriver from the waterfalls and rapids. There was no sign of the mysterious forest; there was nothing but scrub brush, stubby trees, and rocks, but ahead of them the river did make a big curve around a hill, so it was probably on the other side of that. He urged Arial forward; he wanted to get well ahead of the Old Men’s barges so that he could survey the forest himself, alone, for a few moments.

And once around that deep bend, there it was. It stretched as far as he could see in either direction, enveloping the river completely.

It looked perfectly normal from a distance: a vague, gray haze of bare branches and trunks and a lot of red on the ground that was probably fallen leaves. But . . .

But . . .

Now he understood completely what Alberdina had meant. He felt it, just as she had described, a simmering, deeply buried, distant rage. So distant that he might have attributed it to his own bad temper, had he not been warned about it. Arial felt it too. She tossed her head and stamped one foot, trying to tell him that she didn’t want to go on.

But there wasn’t a choice, not really. “Rose, I want a Doll stationed on this side of the Gate,” he said. “And another on the side where the caravan is. And one right here. The scouts told me it took about four marks to transit the forest, so the Doll standing here will stop the caravan at four marks to sunset. Relay that to the Dolls at the Gates, and end the Gate transit for the night.”

“That seems very wise, Kordas,” Rose replied. “I do not believe any of us should take chances here.”

“You sense something too.” He made it a statement, not a question.

“It seems almost familiar, as if someone has taken something I know well and twisted and warped it until it is nearly unrecognizable,” the Doll said. “I don’t understand it. I do know that if I were to put a name on what did this in the first place, it would be the Magic Storms that marked the end of the Great War between human mages five hundred years ago.”

He didn’t like going under those trees alone, so he waited until the barges transited the Gate and joined him. A plainly garbed Doll he didn’t recognize, but who had a thorn pinned through their tunic like a brooch, jumped down from the first barge as they neared him, and took up a station, as if they were perfectly prepared to stand there forever—or at least until the convoy was completely through the Gate.

In the prow of the first barge were Dole, Ceri, and Ponu, their attention completely riveted by that distant haze of trees. Ponu appeared on the side of the barge and waved at him. He thought about riding ahead, but decided that he’d hop aboard for a little bit at least. He wanted to hear their reaction to this place.

He leaned down over Arial’s neck, attached the long lead to her bridle, and dismounted, playing the lead out until he could hop onto the barge with the assistance of Ponu and his apprentice. He tied the lead off on a belaying ring on the rail, and could not help but notice that, instead of coming up to walk right at Sunshine’s tail, Arial resisted for a brief moment before reluctantly moving along.

The normally placid and unflappable Sunshine didn’t like the forest either. He had his ears back, and mouthed his bit nervously, something Kordas had never seen him do before.

“Lovely place you’ve found for us,” Ponu said lightly. “I’m reminded of the traps tunnel-spiders make.” Ponu made no outward sign he’d even noticed the hard sidelook Kordas shot at him.

Well, that’s comforting. Thank you, old man.

“The scouts are already on the other side. They got through it. Let’s hope we can do the same,” Kordas replied. “I wish that this river didn’t cut right through the place though, curse it. If it wasn’t just as bad on the other side of the river, I’d take the time and energy to make a path for the horses and herds to cross the river, no matter the cost.”

“We’d lose animals,” Ceri said flatly. “Far too many. One or two ridden horses, like with the mages that are ferrying the Gate uprights, that’s not a problem, but daft sheep are likely to spook and go off the path, and swine are just as bad. As cold as it is now, and with their fleeces weighing them down, the sheep wouldn’t survive a minute. Pigs might be able to swim it, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

“It’s moot.” He shrugged as the forest drew nearer and nearer, and he saw with his own eyes what he’d scryed in the mirror. “Those damned tree-things and bugs are on both sides of the river, and so is that . . . anger.”

“The anger has a particular subtlety I only just noticed—it doesn’t make me angry at anything in particular. It also doesn’t give me the impression that someone or something is angry with me. It’s just a seething rage without a target in mind. It could well be purely defensive. I’d give a lot if we were just on a leisure trip and I could study this place,” Dole mused. “At a distance, of course. I’ve never seen anything like it. It almost seems . . . Elemental in nature.”

“What Elemental has ever taken on the form of a forest?” asked Ceri, scornfully.

“None that I know of,” Dole replied, ignoring Ceri’s tone. “But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.” He shrugged. “The cataclysm at the end of the Mage Wars utterly destroyed two of the most powerful mages this world has ever seen, and turned everything we know on its head. The only thing that saved what became the Empire was distance, and the fact that the King put in an extraordinary amount of effort to keep harm from befalling his people. The King knew all about the War—you couldn’t not know about the War, no matter how distant you were from it—and according to everything I’ve read, put all of his time, energy, and every bit of magical talent he had into putting a barrier around his Kingdom intended to deflect what he was certain was going to come. He foresaw the War’s mutual annihilation at a time when no one else did. That’s why he was able to move into the power vacuum left when those two armies destroyed each other, consolidate dozens of little Kingdoms and Principalities that had been left reeling from the Mage Storms, and make himself Emperor. Even so, there were many mages that died, trying to keep those shields up.”

This was the most about that ancient war and the aftermath that Kordas had ever heard before. “Where did you learn all this?” he asked.

“From that library that the Dolls brought with them,” Dole replied, as the trees grew nearer and nearer. “They organized it for us so all I have to do is figure out what sort of book I need to read and they’ll bring it to me. I’ve been reading as much as I can, trying to anticipate what we might run into as we draw nearer to the lands that were the worst affected.”

“Was there anything . . . like this mentioned?” Kordas asked. At this point, they were just passing the outer boundary of the forest, and it actually looked more sinister now than it had in the scrying pool. The horses definitely did not like it here; he didn’t think they were going to bolt, but they all had their ears laid back and heads down—and since they were not going to be allowed to go back, it looked as if they had decided to get through this place as fast as they could. They’d picked up their pace to the fastest he had ever seen them pull, and weren’t even covertly eyeing the undergrowth for things that might be tasty.

“Nothing this big,” Dole replied, not taking his attention off the trees. “But Sai believes that this thing didn’t start out this big. He believes it was spawned from something much smaller and has been growing for five centuries. Under normal circumstances, I would have said that it was wildly unlikely for a forest to spread and grow into something this big, but . . . we don’t know how fast these trees grow. If they even are trees. They could spring up overnight, like mushrooms.”

Kordas began to feel very uncomfortable in his heavy sheepskin coat, and peeled it off. Dole and the others did the same. “Why is it so hot?”

“As Jonaton would say, ‘magical fuckery is afoot,’” Dole said dryly. “As for why it is almost as warm as a spring day, I can speculate that it has something to do with those dragonflies. The forest may need to keep them alive, for some reason. If it’s going to keep them alive during the winter, it will have to keep them warm. The forest may have a life process that generates its own heat. If it used magic for that, it might just ground its magic improperly on purpose.”

“To create heat. Any spell or spell-like process would do. Huh. Makes me wonder what’s under it.”

Kordas peered through the haze that had formed under the trees. Just a thin haze, not enough to impede anything, just enough to keep him from seeing any deeper into the forest than two or three furlongs. “I don’t see anything else out there. Just trees and dragonflies. No tree-hares, no ground animals, not even birds.”

“I would postulate that those things that look like mouths may, in fact, be mouths,” Dole replied. Which did nothing for Kordas’s unease. “There are marsh plants that eat insects. These things might eat insects too, or larger things. Those ‘mouths’ could take in a goose, some of them.”

“What can you tell me about these Mage Wars that applies to this forest?” he asked, figuring that if he couldn’t distract himself, he could at least learn something.

“About the wars themselves—not much,” the old mage admitted. “Except that the mages of that time were insanely powerful—how they managed that, who knows? Creating Gates was second nature to them, and they routinely created living creatures. One of the mages created gryphons, for instance.”

“Wait, they’re real?” He cast a sharp glance at Dole to see if the old man was trying to pull a prank on him, but Dole seemed to be entirely serious about this. “Gryphons are real?”

“Seen in scrying, never seen in any lands of the Empire,” Dole confirmed. “And not seen since the Wars, so they may have all died out by now. But yes, at least five centuries ago, they were very real. But . . . you asked me what, about those mages of old, I have learned that might pertain to this place. Regretfully, not much.” He shrugged. “You have to remember that the Wars themselves are almost incidental to the Empire’s history. The only real interest anyone from the Old Lands had in them was in making sure that when everything went to pieces, the King was able to keep his lands protected—and tightly controlled. Even so, the initial Storms were so bad that about half his mages died keeping that protection up.”

“How could anyone protect against an effect bigger than a country?”

“They created protective squads for what they called ‘savior-mages,’ answerable only to the King. You know. For the people’s protection. Heh.” He mimed spitting on the ground. “If you think that sounds like a way to get powerful mages and their bodyguards into anybody’s domain without opposition, you’d be right. But as shield mages, it is true they were without peer. The plan was simple on the surface. Keep them mobile. Put the strongest shield where it can deflect the most danger, then fall back while the next team positions. That’s why the Empire has its roads and canals, and eventually Gates and fast boats.” Dole shrugged again. “The plan became entangled in political and territorial pursuits to the point that it was unsustainable. Savior-mages extorted mayors and barons alike. They took bribes to selectively drop shields and let political rivals’ estates be overrun. The early Empire was obsessed with expansion, in part because the farther savior-mage teams could reach, the better their ‘protection.’ In theory. To return to the point, there is very little that is predictable about the kind of magic Storms that resulted in the mutual destruction of the two opponents.” He rubbed the skin behind his left ear as he thought. “The reason is not just because two unbelievably powerful annihilation spells went off. It is because—well, you know we can store magical energy in things. Raw energy, usually in crystals. Spells and the energy it takes to make them work can be stored in almost anything.”

Of course Kordas knew all this, and Dole knew that he knew, but he sensed that Dole was using words as a kind of shield between himself and thinking too hard about this forest. Some people took comfort in explaining and teaching. Really, all either of them wanted was to get past it, but that could only happen as fast as the horses could pull them. So Dole was babbling. Kordas didn’t blame him.

By this point they’d both shed not only their coats but their outer knitted tunics. It was as warm as a mild summer day under these trees. If I knew the magic to make that work . . . yes, but there is always a cost to magic. Always a cost. We might not want to pay that cost.

“So,” Dole continued, “these things that store power are always slightly unstable. Normally that’s not a problem; it does take a fairly serious impact, magical or physical, to make one of them—well—spontaneously discharge. The kind of impact that probably would have turned the mage that was carrying these objects into a thin red smear on the ground, so the only ones who would be in jeopardy from these things going completely unstable and discharging would be bystanders, or the one who struck the blow in the first place. However . . . we’re not talking about a simple firebolt, here. We’re talking about a destructive spell intended to level an edifice at least the size of the Imperial Palace.”

“I’m following you so far,” Kordas said when Dole paused.

“Now, both of those mages had an enormous arsenal of magical weapons, but also an even bigger storehouse of things that were not weapons, but were spell-bound nevertheless, and what they say were banks of raw energy storage. So when those two destructive spells went off . . .” Dole’s voice trailed off for a moment. “It wasn’t just destructive. It was messy. Whatever it was, the bonds that made spells cohesive simply disconnected, like wagon wheels disintegrating at high speed. Spell fragments combined and collided in ways no one has ever seen, before or since. That’s why the Change-Circles are completely unpredictable. They contain bits and pieces of everything from a spell on a rock you’re meant to use as a campfire, to something intended to liquefy a mountainside, to cures for diseases. And that’s why I can’t actually tell you enough about the Mage Storms or their effects. It would be like shattering a glass mirror, then reassembling thousands of shards, thinking it would show the last image it reflected.”

But Kordas, as always, was distracted by the one piece of information he actually could use. “You can put a spell on a rock to use as a lasting campfire?” he repeated as a question.

Dole sighed, and his expression was that of a parent gazing at a child they are trying to educate who has fixated on a double entendre they hadn’t intended to make. “Yes, Kordas, we can. And yes, Kordas, among many other things, when we encounter power sources strong enough to give us a surplus, we are storing energy in crystals with the intention of giving each vessel in the convoy at least one of such rocks to use in their barge instead of wood. Just like Sai has been making those marvelous cleansing towels of his, and I have been making mage-lights so we can conserve candles, tallow-dips, and lamp oil. We made a needs list, and the Dolls are keeping track, so you wouldn’t have to.”

Kordas badly wanted to pursue this, but Dole’s expression made him think twice about it. I put people in charge of things so I can deal with the larger picture. This is no time to ask about spells for keeping me warm.

Even if it would feel like the gift of the gods to strip down to nothing in a warm boat and have an all-over scrub with good hot water. Cleanliness beyond the basics is not a priority. Especially now. Let’s get through these damn trees, figure out what we are going to do about a hard winter, find a new home, and keep everyone and everything fed and healthy.

And there was absolutely no point in wondering how the mages intended to allocate their magic-stove rocks. He already knew. The sick had priority, then the elderly, then very small children. There were, thank the gods, no babies in this convoy. In fact, there were no children under the age of six. Everyone with babies had gone back to Valdemar, joined one of the villages near Crescent Lake, or stayed to build the new village there. Which was a relief; babies were fragile, babies woke the nurturer in nearly everyone, and the death of a baby or a child was a heartbreak that echoed far past the baby’s own family. Regardless, there was no way that they could make enough such rocks to heat every one of the barges. And the obvious reason why they hadn’t stockpiled these things in the decades before they fled the Empire was because no one had ever anticipated that they’d be going on this trek in the first place, and besides, how would they be stored, when even one could heat a farmhouse?

Well, we’d have devised a way. The Plan was always to use the barges as a means to get to a safe spot and stay there. Use them as stationary living quarters for the year or so it would take to build real shelters on land. We assumed there was going to be sufficient wood for heating and cooking, because we assumed we’d be in a wilderness analogous to Valdemaran terrain, full of deadfall.

Well, that hadn’t happened. Kordas didn’t think they’d been naïve . . .

Well, how could his father and grandfather have anticipated what had actually happened? It was never part of the Plan for someone to murder the Emperor and destroy the Capital! The Plan was that they’d all slip away quietly, after thorough scouting and mapping, during the boat parade that celebrated the Emperor’s “greatness” in the fall. Because after that particular celebration, the eyes of the Emperor turned in two directions—wherever the Emperor was currently waging war, and on his own Court. Harvest would be occupying everyone not in the Court, and agriculture was dull and uninteresting to the Emperor. After that, despite Gates, winter kept most provincials firmly locked in their own domains. And winter was a good time for war, so far as the Emperor was concerned. He didn’t have to juggle the needs of the Empire to get the harvests grown and gathered against the need to bring in an ever-flowing source of recruits, and he didn’t have to worry about rain and the great enemy of all logistics, mud. Snow mattered not at all to someone with as many mages in his employ as the Emperor had; they could just steer the storms and dump the snow on their enemies, where it would stay put, as opposed to rainwater, which flowed where it wanted to flow. And with all the mages in his employ, his troops never needed to worry about the cold.

It was moot now, though. Kordas, to his lasting anger and self-criticism, had acted without sufficient scouting into this new land, and they had no choice but to think fast and work on the run. Even the Plan didn’t account for anything as strange as they encountered every day now. He had to be practical about it all; not get caught up in how weird things were, but evaluate whether any given oddity would do harm and how it could be exploited, if at all. There was just the river and the shore now, with all else secondary, and who knew what was ahead. The Plan was now superseded by the Improvisation.

Well, all this goes to prove the old adage that Father used to tell me: no plans survive first contact with the enemy.

In this case, the Plan had started to go to pieces the moment the Emperor ordered Kordas to come to the Capital. Everything after that had been bald, unapologetic opportunism and misdirection.

“I suppose I should be grateful that things haven’t completely fallen apart at this point,” he said aloud.

Dole snorted. “They won’t, as long as you keep doing the things only you can do, and leave the rest of us to manage what we can do.”

I do understand that I am less than half Dole’s age, he thought with a bit of irritation. But I do wish he’d stop repeating what everyone else has told me a hundred times by now.

There wasn’t so much as a breath of breeze under those trees. “It’s so quiet,” he said finally, and realized that all this time both he and Dole had been murmuring their words, as if they were both afraid that if they made too much noise, the forest might . . . notice them.

Nor were they the only ones, apparently. The only sounds were the muffled clump of horse hooves on earth, the rattling of metal on harnesses, the creak of leather, and the water lapping against the hull beneath them. There were occasional bumps against the bottom of the hulls, and even when they were shuddering from bow to stern, he told himself it was just snags of debris from upriver. No one seemed to be talking in this entire section of the convoy—or if they were, it was in the same muted tones he and Dole were using, so that their voices didn’t carry any further than their boat.

“What on earth are those dragonflies living on, anyway?” Dole mused aloud. “I don’t see any other insects—”

“That doesn’t mean they aren’t there, it just means that they aren’t coming to the river to pester us,” Kordas pointed out. “Or maybe they are somehow vegetarian and eat those fungi. Fungitarian?”

Dole passed his hand over his brow. “Mycophagy. I want out of here,” he growled.

“We’re getting there,” Kordas soothed. “I’m going to ride back some more. I—I have the feeling I should show myself to everyone in the caravan as they pass through this place. Look confident, look unworried. That might damp down rising panic.”

“I’d say you don’t need to do that, but I’d be wrong,” Dole confessed, as even Sunshine seemed so subdued that when he shook his head, he did so carefully, so as not to jangle his bridle. “That sense of unfocused anger is enough to make some people break and try to bolt back upriver.”

“Which would be bad,” Kordas observed. “Very bad. Everything we’re doing hinges on everyone in the convoy going at a nice, steady pace. Disrupt that cadence, and we could start a cascade of problems that have nothing to do with these cursed woods.”

“Go show a brave face,” Dole agreed. “I’ll see what we mages can find out about this place without the forest . . . knowing we’re looking at it.”

The first section of the convoy managed to get through the forest without anything worse than rattled nerves, though Kordas spent the entire time riding up and down the line, making sure that if anything happened, he would be right there to deal with it. Most of the animals in the herds did not even attempt to forage in the forest. Like the horses, they put their heads down, crowded as close as they could to the river without falling in, and did their best to get past the place as fast as they could. With the cattle, goats, and sheep, that amounted to something just short of a stampede. The ducks and geese kept the barges between them and the forest. The chickens refused to leave their barges. And most of the pigs scuttled along as fast as their stubby little trotters could carry them.

That was most of the pigs.

There were a few that seemed torn between fear and fascination. There was something in the air that was a definite attraction for them. They put their noses in the air and took enormous, snorting breaths in the direction of the forest. The swineherds’ dogs kept them from venturing under the trees, although it was clear that the fascination might have overcome them without that prod.

Even people who were about as sensitive as mud clods were unnerved by this forest. Everyone was relieved when they made it out the other side, and the animals had taken no more hurt than to go hungry for most of the day.

Kordas—and Arial—were exhausted. Too tired to go back to their own barge on the other side of the Gate, Kordas asked Rose to talk to Ivy and have the Doll let Isla know he wasn’t coming back. Rose did so, and was silent for a moment. “Ivy says that Isla was fairly certain that would be the case, and that our people come first. And that until everyone is safely beyond this strange place Ivy has described, you must play faithful shepherd.”

Well, that was a relief. He took a last look at the forest—which looked no more welcoming in the growing twilight than it had in the full light of the sun—and sent Arial forward. “Rose, can the Old Men lend me a bed for the night?” he asked.

“One’s being emptied of books for you,” came the prompt reply, which startled a tired laugh out of him.

The next day was the same, and the day after that, and the day after that. He would ride up and down the riverside through the forest, crossbow at the ready—though what on earth he was going to do with it against a magic tree, he had no idea—making it clear that the Baron was watching out for them, and would personally stand between his people and danger. He spotted Sydney twice, once atop a supply barge of grain—no doubt there for the mice, and to fight any other cats there for the mice—and once at the stern of the royal boat. Mages had worked out how many barges could pass through the forest between dawn and the cut-off time, and had spaced themselves out along the convoy, arranging for borrowed beds if need be, in order that he always had at least one mage to help him at all times. When Isla and the boys passed through, he did not linger with their barge, though he did wave to them every time he passed them. It was only when they paused for the night that he got to sleep in his own bed for a change, and Sydney slept atop him.

And so it went, for day after day after day. Never once did the forest seem less menacing, although he thanked every god there was every night as he lay in yet another strange bed that it didn’t get any more menacing. If they had the time to, he’d have brought Gate uprights through the Red Forest and just bypassed the whole thing. A few minutes’ figuring showed that shuffling a barge through the hundreds upriver, then getting a Gate set up downriver of the Red Forest, would take three or four more days at minimum than just bringing the flotilla through the place directly. Add in that nobody knew if “crossing through” the Red Forest with more Gate Links would cause trouble, and that was that.

Ceri and Ponu were hunched over pages upon pages of notes on magical interaction on the journey so far when Kordas caught up with them. Them, and a meal, that is. The two Old Men were apparently of the same mind, as pages, markers, and rough maps were held steady by cups and plates. “Passive only,” they had recommended, the last time Kordas consulted with them about using their mages’ abilities to view their surroundings. “Now that we’ve met the lizard-dogs, we know creatures here can consume magic as part of their life cycles, and will seek it. It would be unwise to broadcast our location, so, best to carefully analyze what we know, versus actively reconnoitering by spellwork.” It was a solid point they brought up again as they chatted with Kordas.

“And speaking of passive observation, we have a friend, a mage name of Angia, wants someone with her on yonder hillock in a couple of marks, and she’d prefer it to be you. Angia wants to watch the Red Forest at night to learn if it behaves differently with the sun down.”

“Why me?” Kordas answered between bites. Strange how the things we dreaded as children become what we want more of when we’re older. We hated sitting still and taking naps, but now they’re treats. “I need a nap.”

“You and me both,” the Old Men answered in unison.

Kordas trudged carefully, using a hiking stick to test the going just a step ahead. His cohort was a well-bundled, stocky middle-aged woman. Angia was said to have a knack with plant magic—and insisted they go no closer than this gentle swell in the field. “Why are we out here, specifically?” he asked, huddled in his sheepskin coat and hoping that whatever she thought was going to appear would do so soon, so he could go collect some dinner and fall into another strange bed. Even if this time it wasn’t a bed so much as a pad made of sheep fleece on the floor of a kitchen-barge. They closed the shutters on their dark lanterns and let their eyes adjust.

“Because things sometimes show themselves by night that don’t by day,” Angia replied patiently. “Any plant, or plant-like thing, is part of a system. It seems to me that if there is something behind this place, it might come out once the sun is down. I didn’t want to sit here alone, and I don’t do anything handy like tossing fireballs. And if it comes to it, I think I can run faster than you.”

“Good points,” he conceded, and finally found a boulder to sit on. It was ice cold, and his rump complained bitterly about the way the rock seemed to suck all the heat out of his body. He almost wished he was back among the trees, where at least it was warm.

Almost.

Rather telling that no one has offered to tie up there overnight. Not that I’d let them.

“Huh,” Angia said, catching his wandering attention. “Either those dragonflies don’t sleep at night, or a whole new bug comes out after the sun sets.”

He squinted, and sure enough, he could just make out little lights, like red sparks, flying among the trees. And the haze that always filled the place glowed ever so faintly as well. Not red, but a sort of yellow-green, a little like the color a will’o’wisp had, but much dimmer. So dim that if he hadn’t been far enough away from the forest that he could contrast it with the normal countryside, he wouldn’t have seen it.

“I need you to know some things,” Angia finally said. “Now that I’m certain no one is around, and nobody scrying. There are those of us among the expedition’s number who have kept our nature secret, and I know you will come to understand why.”

Kordas frowned, a fact hidden by the darkness, but his short exhale from his nostrils betrayed how he felt. Spies? Is it spies? Did I let myself be lured out alone?

Angia continued. “For as long as our history is known to us, our kind have been mixed among the regular population. Most of us have kept our secret, but enough has gotten out that we haven’t felt safe in generations. We are seldom discovered, because the nature of our abilities warns us of danger. We take precautions to keep it that way.”

Kordas heard his neck pop as he unclenched. “All right. Well, you succeeded in picking a dramatic setting. Tell me,” he said.

“Tell you your fortune?” she chuckled. “It isn’t that simple. But you’re close. Funny, I should have seen that coming.”

“This is an ominous place for a game of riddles, Angia, if that is who you are,” Kordas replied. An edge of anger was in his tone that he hadn’t intended.

“Angia is what I am known by, but only I know who I am,” she answered as if that was a perfect response, then took on the tone of—a teacher. That is what snapped to mind.

Someone who knows how to get attention, and is there to educate and dominate any setting. Someone who knows how to orchestrate. All right, then. Let’s see what she’s got.

“Let me ask you, Baron. Have you noticed, in your quietest moments, that you are unreasonably positive about what lies ahead? By strict reasoning, you’re constantly gambling with all our lives. You know this. Haven’t you thought, if this land supports creatures like we’ve met so far, how can regular people, not great soldiers and mages, hope to survive even passing by? Why aren’t there more of them, and why hasn’t the expedition been overrun by disease and misadventure? Have you asked yourself, why am I sure this is the right way?”

Kordas exhaled a breath he didn’t even realize he was holding. “I admit, I’ve wondered all of that and more. When I think upon how lucky we’ve all been, something in me screams, ‘We shouldn’t be.’”

“And then you stop worrying about it, and you assume you’re just being fatalistic. You aren’t. You aren’t being fatalistic enough, except that you can sense what we’re doing and it reassures you. This expedition should fail miserably at every turn, yet it goes on with very few losses. We have guided this expedition by watching and guiding you. When you’ve faced deadly decisions, we could tell they were coming. When you were anxious, we could look at the most likely results of your many decisions, then make you ‘feel better’ about the most fortuitous choices.”

Kordas turned to face her, though both were still obscured by the night. “And things sometimes show themselves by night that don’t by day,” he quoted. “You can foresee the future.”

“Likely futures, Baron,” she corrected. “Some of us can tell likely futures, and others of us can affect how someone feels, or take away their emotions entirely. We cannot tell the future, because, heh, as you put it so well, ‘There is no one true way.’ The future depends upon factors we cannot fathom in full. We can narrow down what might happen into what is the most likely to happen. Also, we can’t choose everything we See. But, I assure you, even that is enough to turn tides, if we can interpret it and nudge small, important moments. Ponds, rocks, ripples and all that.”

Kordas did feel angry now. “I’m insulted. Not just for the treachery of effectively drugging me, but for secretly acting against the wishes of your Baron. You think I should feel happy with this? You’ve just told me you lot have mucked with my free will,” he growled.

“We have mucked with you getting us all killed,” she snapped back. “Your confidence is infectious. Even when you’re wrong. People want to believe you. You back that up with a record of success, so they trust you more and more. You use the word ‘wish’? I’ll tell you about wishes, and what that really means. No, we don’t overrule your free will, because by prayer you’ve asked for guidance many a time. You may have expected glowing figures to speak unto you, but we are who responded to your pleas. We’ll continue to do so, unless you go mad. Then you’ll just become very calm.”

Kordas fumed. “That didn’t help your case any,” he snapped, then let himself calm down. After a few long breaths, he continued. “I’m not abdicating my self, or my rule, just because I like the results! Taking away the freedom to fail removes what someone could have been. Failures make us stronger and wiser.”

“And, bluntly, your failures cost lives. That has to be a consideration,” she observed, and Kordas didn’t like it, but he had to admit it, she was right. “So think about this. Do you abdicate your free will by accepting help from others? No, because it was your decision to consider help, and it is your choice whether to accept that help. What you’re bristling at, Baron, is not being in control. Learning how wrong you could have been, while you were certain you were always choosing right, stings your concept of your self. The fact is, we are acting as agents of your free will, because we guide you toward what your declared goal is, and yes, we prosper by it too. You’ve already freely asked for aid from the unseen.” Whether she meant the spirit realm, or her secret society, wasn’t clarified at all.

“So I don’t like the fact I’ve been given what I asked for, because it hurts my pride? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“I say you dislike the way you’ve been given it. Personally, I think you could always feel that fate itself guided you, and you wished it had been in some open way, visible to all that you were Destined.” She accentuated “destined” as if it were a call from a stage. “You didn’t get the heavens opening up and birds flying and drama you secretly dreamed of. But you did get us. All of us, Baron.”

“What do you mean, all of you?”

“All of us there are, Baron. Every Gifted sibling, of even the slightest skill, is in this flotilla. You see, Baron, over the years, Valdemar became our secret home. We rescued each other from the danger of the Empire, and when we Saw your Plan, we put our own in motion. None remain in all the Empire. We wanted both security for our kind, and the end of our presence in the Empire, denying them our gifts. What they’ve done to our ancestors is . . . unforgivable.” Angia’s voice just stopped for a moment, and she recovered. “If we didn’t need to protect ourselves so thoroughly, we’d have openly offered our aid to you. But we just couldn’t.”

“I’m sorry for what happened to your people. I appreciate your plight, but you are still mucking about in the mind of an entire people’s leader. That’s not right. Even if I like the results.”

“I promise you, Baron. I promise we have respected your sovereignty. We agonized over whether to tell you at all—but the consensus was, you deserve this explanation. Not so you can count on us as if we were known advisors, but so you don’t balk against your secret allies when we help you. We feel like you deserve to know and, with your clear head, understand us. To truly think it through, with context.” She sniffled, unsurprisingly for the weather, but there may have been more to it than that. “Another thing. All this isn’t easy on us, either. We have to decide what possible futures to act upon, to do the least harm. Sometimes, there is no way to avoid tragedy. Danger does not always have a preventable moment. Things will hit us all.” She sounded very downbeat about that. “When we help you take a path that will kill sixty people instead of ninety, we’ve still been part of killing people. It’s never easy.”

“I understand. I’ve done things that I’m not proud of, and it unbalances and sinks my heart.” Kordas let that just rest there a while. Angia didn’t interrupt the silence, and eventually, Kordas resumed. “The Red Forest keeps throwing me off. When I think plans through near it, I feel resentment, and I want to kick someone in the throat. It batters my emotions, and I have to work harder every time through just to stay level-headed. Are you all helping with that?”

“Not much,” Angia confided. “We give you a mild boost in positivity when we can, without getting you drunk on it. But that’s what I’m telling you—even when we nudge you, it’s still you. Just—my advice?—reconcile the fact that you have positive forces on your side that you can’t quite define, and feel good about it. In practice, really, it all adds up to this one thing for you: trust your intuition. When you feel a decision is right, trust that. When you have a flash of intuition, here’s what it is: you are aware of that sudden feeling, but behind that impulse is more analysis, imagination, and forethought than you’re consciously aware of. You have thought it through, so quickly it felt like you didn’t. You were unaware of the process, but you gave yourself an answer. So listen to yourself.”

“So . . . intuition . . . instinct. They aren’t divine gifts? They’re just—fast thinking?”

“Fast thinking, fast feeling, comprehension. You’ve worked hard to be like this, so embrace the benefits of the work.”

“This is dizzying. But I can see the reason in it. Obviously, you have to protect yourselves, and if I’m being honest, I need the help. Just—don’t take anything away from me. I can forgive, and even come to appreciate, your trespass upon me, but don’t override me. Don’t ever take away who I am.”

“I’m not sure anyone could. But I get it. As someone who’s spent her life hiding and pretending, the things in my life that I feel are intensely mine are vital to my sanity. They form the Angia I know.” After twenty heartbeats, she simply said, “I feel good about us talking as soon as we could.”

Kordas made ready to get to his feet again. “Answer me this. Why here, in the black and cold?”

“Good question, Baron, which brings up a good point to make.” Presumably, she gestured around, and Kordas nestled back in. “A few marks ago, I realized the opportunity for everything we found in our predictions about talking with you would present itself tonight. We knew you and I would talk. All any of us perceived about when and where was this general timeframe, starlight, darkness, cold wind, and a strange land as the setting. No distinct scents or sounds, and no way to count the marks passing.”

Kordas laughed. “So, wait, you’re saying that even your certainty is a puzzle?”

She laughed too. “The powers must think they’re pretty funny, the way only a few bits of knowledge get handed out. What to do with that knowledge, well, we still have to sort that out ourselves.” She sniffled and took on a more somber tone. “Kordas. Listen. We’ll need to get back soon. Even before the Palace incidents, we knew we were needed. You took on too much, and it would have crushed you and those around you a dozen times over. If we have compromised or diminished you, we apologize deeply.” Then, after another pause, “How do you feel about all of this?”

Kordas chewed on his lower lip a while. “I feel like . . . I’m disappointed that I am not everything I thought I was. I never knew I was being helped. I thought I led with smart moves and charisma.”

“You do. Every star above here as my witness, if you were anyone else, we’d never have left the old land at all. Unless we’re stuck with them, believe me, we don’t back morons. Morons are only for strong disappointment and weak comedy, and puppets are tedious.”

“Thanks for that. Truly. The other way I feel is deeply appreciative. I mean, I prefer to know when I’m collaborating with someone, but in this case, the results are good for everybody. I may feel differently later, and resent my manipulation in a hundred ways down the line, but for now, though—I can live with this. Only my pride is hurt, and lives are saved.”

“Don’t think you’re any less brave or clever, Baron. We loaded the dice, but make no mistake, the dice were still thrown. Your success comes from being the person you are. The rest follows.” Angia rubbed her hands together and Kordas imagined this same discussion, but someplace warm instead. He liked that discussion better.

“Angia, this makes me wobbly inside, and I need to be as sharp as gar teeth. I’ll second-guess everything now—I’ll wonder if any decision I make is a bad one because maybe you didn’t have any visions, and it’s just my own decision. I can’t believe you’re telling me that I am actually favored by fate. History has shown that being a Chosen One turns out . . . just awful for everyone except the playwrights.”

Angia barked a laugh. “Hah! Nah. Me, I don’t see you as the Chosen One type. You know how to back off before you get yourself martyred. Listen, Kordas, we know how people work. You are about to go through a lot, I can’t lie. Have faith that even when surprises happen, things will be better,” Angia soothed. “Don’t worry about everything. Just do what you know is right. Don’t feel bad that your prayers were answered. You should feel good about it.”

She made sense.

“It doesn’t lessen you to be helped. It means someone else was willing to put themselves out to uplift you.”

That sounded true to him. Most of his best memories involved that.

“We care about you. We’re very close to you.”

There was truth in that, too, he was sure. That was a great feeling.

“And don’t bother yourself about remembering everything. Over the next few minutes, we’ll make sure that all you specifically recall is a cold night, with no results of note, in pleasant company.”

The time out, if he thought about it, was a reset for his nerves. Sure, it was cold, but this night was really something he’d needed. He felt like his thoughts had cleared of congestion from being out here, just observing.

They sat there together in the dark as the bitter breeze gleefully stole more of their heat, until he finally sighed. “I don’t think there’s anything more that’s going to come out,” he said.

Angia levered herself up off her rock. “I think you’re right. Well, it was worth trying.”

He was reluctant to open the shutter on his lamp—but he also felt very reluctant to fall over something and break his leg. And he kept glancing back over his shoulder until they were well out of sight of the forest, and the lights of the barges beckoned to them welcomingly.

“One more set of barges tomorrow, and we’re through,” he said, as much to himself as to her. “It’s mostly storage: things no one needs on the journey, but that we will need when we find a place to make our land and we’ve gotten ourselves established.” And the Spitters and Poomers, he reminded himself. In the end, I don’t think I’d care if we lost those, but after all the work the Dolls did in funneling them to us, I don’t have the heart to unload the boats and leave them on the bank somewhere.

“Don’t relax until everything has got through,” Angia said, a little sharply. “That’s when bad things happen—when you let down your guard short of the goal.”

But she said that as they got to the cooking barge where he was spending the night, and instead of commenting on her words, he just wished her a sound rest and climbed aboard.

After all, what was the point in commenting? He knew she meant well. He knew the forest had gotten on her nerves. She probably couldn’t help herself; it was her fear speaking, not any comment on his capabilities and sensibilities. Angia trusted him.

But he couldn’t help thinking, as he found his pad and the couple spare blankets he was being loaned, that she was wasting her breath. Not likely I am going to let down my guard at any time in the near future, he thought, pulling a corner of the blanket over his head to block out the night lamp. In fact—I am not likely to let my guard down until I am six feet under the earth.

And honestly, probably not even then.