THE CROWN JEWELS! Garth had struck me as an outlaw from the moment I saw him. How had he fooled me, fooled all of us? Garth or Bash or whatever his true name was, was no more than a common thief.
When he quit the cave, I followed him down the snowy ravine and up again, fighting through the thorns behind him.
The time we’d hidden from the king’s troop on the road? The man hadn’t done it to defend me; he’d done it to protect himself!
I kept him in my sights for an hour as I worked up the courage to confront him. I didn’t get the chance. He was suddenly accosted by seven knights of the realm. They surrounded him with such speed he’d no chance to defend himself. Next they made him mount a horse. A part of me wanted to rush out in his defense, but the other wanted him to get what he deserved. Just before they rode off, Garth spotted me through the greenery. He looked somewhat stunned to see me. Before he glanced away, he shook his head, warning me to stay hidden.
The royal troop rode off in swirls of snow and mud, Garth’s dark hair clinging to his cheeks. He’d warned me not to show myself, but I couldn’t let him go so easily. I darted through the wood after the troop. The horses’ easy trotting pace in the thicker wood turned to a canter as the trees gave way to wider paths. The captors rode too far, too fast. At long last I gave up the chase and stood, breathless in the falling snow.
I hadn’t written Garth a good-bye letter. Pointless now. His name wasn’t even Garth. He’d lied to me from the start.
I wandered deeper in the wood, paying little attention to my steps as my mind repeated the same words over and over. Garth. Bash. Huntsman. Thief. Garth. Bash. Huntsman. Thief.
Three days I journeyed north. DunGarrow drew me toward itself. The tugging sensation was stronger with each step as if I were in an invisible river.
At first the foothills seemed farther and farther away as if I chased a moving land, but on the third day, Morgesh Mountain loomed ahead. Snow melted under a warmer sun, falling from the boughs in slow, heavy drops. Even in my weary state, I sensed a difference in the air as if I’d crossed some invisible boundary and entered the fairy realm.
Reaching a small clearing on the third night, I fell exhausted. By my count it was All Hallows’ Eve—a night to keep watch. All manner of spirits are loosed on the Witch’s Sabbath when covens meet to sacrifice the innocent and seethe a stew of human bones. I was wary to be in Dragonswood on such a night. It took a long while to light a small fire in the damp, even using the last of the parchment I’d taken from the study. Finally small flames licked the torn page and caught the kindling.
As I squatted, damp and shivering, holding my hands out to the fire, darkness weighed down over the world like a hushed, black wave about to fall. I was far from humankind, yet I felt I was being observed like an insect under a mage-glass. I glanced about. No eyes glared from the woods. I heard familiar scuttling noises of small forest creatures and the dry, dusty sound of flitting wings.
Still I sensed something else. Who watches? I looked left and right.
Then in that hour light came, thrown like a ball to the base of a tree. One circling flame falling, then another, and another. I screamed as the light orbs piled up on all sides. Heat washed over me, drying my damp clothes to the stiffness of brown leaves. The rushing sound of flames hushed all else in the night wood. In brightness, I was lifted, swung, paraded through the forest on waves of living fire that did not scorch or burn, but sang beneath me:
Eshkataa breelyn kataa. Bring her in, her in, her in.