Haunted woods, Kelan thought. Haunted woods.
Though the path was familiar, this was no longer the same greenwood through which his father had led him. A bitter winter had come to these parts, the trees lifeless in its grip. Ice strangled them. The cold ground was as hard as marble and burned his bare feet. Snow and wind bit into him.
Charred bodies, things that might have been children had he not known better, hung from the highest branches. Kelan studied them closely, but they remained dark and intangible; they could have been birds or small animals. Doing his best to ignore them, he pressed on, yet creatures more ominous held sway. No doubt demons hid among the frozen trees, watching him, wanting him. Were it not for the ghost that walked behind him—the black boy—he might have fled, screaming.
That, and the great wall of stone.
With the foliage stripped bare, Kelan saw its vast extent as he had not seen it before. It ran as high as the treetops and far, far beyond, into the murky realm of the clouds. He wondered if the thing were nothing more than an illusion. How could something be so big? Its earthy tone blended perfectly with the leaden sky, and reaching out to it, he thought his hand might pass right through the improbable structure. It did not, for it was solid and sobering. He felt a deeper cold there, as if on the other side lived some monstrous beast, one that breathed not fire, but ice.
The black boy moved up beside him, his expression filled with fear. He seemed unaffected by the cold or distracted by the whispers, yet proximity to the wall appeared to clutch him by the throat. He would not draw closer. In fact, he drifted back a step to a safer distance. He held his book tightly across his chest.
“Let’s go back to the pond,” Kelan said, begging.
The black boy raised his head. Pointed further down the path.
They pressed on, and after a short time, they stopped short. The laboring groan of shifting rock shook the ground beneath them. Knives of ice rained from the trees. Kelan blocked them with his arms, but one grazed him, leaving a stinging scrape.
He knew what was coming next. He stepped back. The black boy stood firm beside him. The earth shook again, and as before, a door appeared in the wall. It ground against rock as it slowly grumbled open, exposing a dark corridor.
Had it not been unbearably cold, Kelan might have resisted. He stepped into the narrow breach between the wall and the door, fearful it might suddenly close and crush him. At the edge of his senses, he smelled spoil and rot. Ahead, amid flickering shadows in the corridor, he could barely hear uncountable voices, tormented, haunting. He imagined the most horrible of dungeons awaited, ruled by demons with no love of human life. This was not the place of dreams, but of nightmares.
He turned. “Are you coming?”
The black boy would not come forward, would set not foot past the threshold. As if breaching that fine line meant certain doom.
Kelan felt his throat tighten. From this point forward, he was on his own.
Behind him, rising above the groans of those faceless souls, a voice whispered his name. He turned back to the corridor to see who it was.
Darkness.
He turned back.
The black boy was gone.