“Horses will be of little use in the forest.” Val hitched a rucksack of supplies to his shoulders later that morning. “We’ll go by foot.”
“May the gods be with you,” Annette said, handing Cody a package of hard tack which he stuffed in his own rucksack before slinging it up onto his back. Full of provisions, blankets, and waterskins, the rucksacks towered over their own heads, but Haille was glad for the supplies; grateful for anything that would aid in their survival.
To that end Pathus had fitted them with additional weapons: a hand-ax for Cody, a short sword for Katlyn, and a shield for Val. There were even saddle bags to throw over the elk. The elk did not seem to mind the burden. Instead he was eager to set off, huffing, scraping the ground, and shaking his head in the direction of the forest: south.
“We’re coming. We’re coming,” Cody said, then admonished himself, mumbling, “I can’t believe I’m talking to an elk.”
There were hearty thanks, hugs, backslaps, and not a few tears on the part of Annette.
“There, there. They are in good hands,” Pathus said, extending an arm around his wife.
Finally Val led them out through the back fence into the fields where the morning fog was lifting. The elk danced out in front of them and set a brisk pace. Haille hoped this would not be their pace for the entire journey; his breath was already coming hard and his load felt heavier than he had imagined. Cody whistled a tuneless melody while Haille and Katlyn turned back and gave one last wave to the couple that had shown them such hospitality. However, when they turned, the mist had already descended again closing them off and leaving Haille to feel that they were the last people left in all the plains.
Cultivated fields gave way quite quickly to wild ones. In places spools of hay had been rolled across the fields, but never harvested. Now they were flattened and compressed into small mounds where weeds and trees had taken root. Haille guessed that farmers must have come here to sow a field when they had had no other choice than to leave their own fallow for a year. They had come just within Night’s Reach to sow and roll, but for some reason never returned.
There were no signs of habitation for the whole of the morning but the grass was thick, the soil soft and loamy underfoot.
“Fertile lands,” Cody said at one point, rolling a clod of dirt between his fingers.
By midday, the morning mist had burned off. It was a clear day with bright sun that was a respite from the cold. But Val did not welcome it. “Makes our trail easier to find for Twenge and his men.”
“Do you think they are still following us?” Katlyn asked.
“Without a doubt. Once Twenge gets whiff of a trail, he does not abandon it easily. Used to be an Inquisitor when he was younger, still harbors the same fanaticism. It’s why the High Council hired him as a tracker. He’s seen more of my brothers to cells and to graves than anyone else.”
“So the Knights of Oban are still hunted. I would have thought the High Council has better things to do,” Katlyn said.
“The High Council does not easily forget those who betray it,” Val said.
The talk of politics was not interesting to Haille. He noticed that the elk had come to a stop and was waiting for them. Azure was perched in the bracken of his antlers while Cyan and Sapphire wheeled in the breeze overhead. Haille looked beyond to what he thought was a bank of clouds, low on the horizon, but then the shapes coalesced and he understood, with a shiver, what he was looking at.
“It’s the forest,” he said.
The others came to a stop beside him. The edges of the trees were blurry and indistinct, like a distant forest in a painting. Haille struggled with perspective until he realized that the trees were actually still distant, more than a few leagues, and what he was looking at were just the tops, rising the way a ship’s sail appeared first over the horizon. “They must be huge.”
“They are,” Val said, falling into step behind the elk once more.
Haille watched the trees carefully as they continued. The elk checked their approach, turning them so that they marched to the southwest, approaching the forest at an angle. For a moment Cody hung back. “Shouldn’t we be going directly towards the trees?”
“We’re no longer in our own element,” Val said. “I’m following the elk.”
They closed the distance between the forest and themselves throughout the afternoon until they were marching with it along their left. Haille’s fear of the place diminished with the knowledge that they were no longer headed directly into its depths. Fear was replaced by simple wonder as Haille and Katlyn strained their necks to look up at the trees which were higher than the turrets on the castle and easily as thick. Birds and bats floated from one treetop to another in the canopy. The main growth of the woods consisted of thick trunks, with thin peeling bark that revealed the shiny ebony wood Pathus had mentioned. Here the wood was live and the branches thick and knotted, like the muscles on a giant’s arms. The crotches of the trees were so wide and expansive that a small forest of bushes and brambles sprouted there like hair in an armpit. Each large tree had a dozen or so smaller ones, perhaps the size of a normal tree anywhere else, growing like saplings beneath. It was breathtaking. In a place with so many stories of death surrounding it, Haille had not expected so much . . . life.
They traveled along the edge of the forest in the shade of the trees. The forest wall was impenetrable. Leathery leaves and thorns the size of daggers barred their way. Haille drew his sword, eager to test its blade and slash a way forward. But Val stopped him.
“We won’t disturb the wood unless we must,” Val said. “Come on, let’s keep after the elk.”
Haille marched on without question along the edge of the forest. As he listened to the sounds of the creatures from the woods and watched the large bats circling overhead, Haille realized just how different this place was and was secretly relieved to postpone their entrance further. He felt an element of trespass in their plan. If no one had entered the woods and returned alive, perhaps that was a precedent they should respect. Haille watched an enormous bird with a long neck of a vulture and black featherless head step off a branch which bounced from the relief of such weight. The creature flew with slow lumbering wing strokes then elicited a deep sonorous call, closer to a frog’s croak than bird song. The sound was answered from all trees around. Haille shook off a chill. Katlyn looked back at him, fear registering in her eyes. He put on as brave of face as he could, but then tripped on a tree root and nearly tumbled over.
“Val is right,” he said as Katlyn caught his hands in hers. “We’re out of our element here.”
The sun turned blood red before them then sank into slate clouds. Darkness and cold air rushed out of the forest like cold breath laden with smells of mildew, dust, and rot. Just before it was dark enough for the stars to come out, they came upon a break in the foliage where the jays waited silently in the branches. A narrow path led into the forest like a crack in a cliff wall. Its presence seemed as unlikely as their own. Haille looked around for the elk, expecting him to be near the entrance. Instead he was leaping over the tall stalks of weeds and bushes, moving north.
“Where is he going?” Haille asked.
“Leading us to a place to rest I imagine,” Val said.
“Night is no time to enter the forest,” Cody added, following the elk.
Val was right. The elk waited for them alongside a creek where they refilled their waterskins and spread their blankets out for the night. They lit no fire and although they had seen no one following them throughout the day, Val insisted that he and Cody take turns on watch. Haille had trouble sleeping on the hard ground and each time he closed in on sleep, some noise, real or imagined, from the forest would wake him. When he finally did drift off, he dreamt he was back in the starlit room where Garn, the farmer who had helped them escape from Lady Annabeth’s manor in Kinth, had found his dead daughter, Aurora, waiting for them. Haille approached Aurora in his dream as he had in life, with an outstretched hand, trembling over her dead body. But this time Katlyn was not there to intervene. It was upon him to touch Aurora, to heal her. He lowered his hand, his flesh a darker hue than her own bone-white skin which had grown paper thin, so that he could see the dead vessels and withered muscles just below. Just before he placed his fingers on her forehead, before he broke that barrier between what was living and what was dead, she moved.
Her arm jerked up and seized his wrist in a grip that defied her size. Haille made to cry out but found his lungs empty, his breath stolen. He looked to his own hand, the tendons cording, his fingers clenched as he fought to free himself, but Aurora only pulled him closer to her skeletal face that was now animated, her eyes open, deep as the night sky. Her mouth moved, a thousand voices coming out at once, then joining into one.
“She is near.”
Haille jerked awake. Cody’s black shape was seated at the edge of their patch of flattened grass where they were sleeping, his face turned away to the north, oblivious to Haille and his night terror. Haille looked to the other side of their camp. Against the backdrop of the stars that rested like a cloud over the tangled darkness, the elk was standing, staring at him.
As soon as the sky lightened, Val woke them for a breakfast of dried apples and hard tack. Once they had eaten, there was no more delay. They shouldered their packs and marched straight into the mouth of Sidon.
It was the air that was most remarkable. It was thick with moisture and smells. There was even a warmth to it that felt summer-like in comparison to the days of wintery cold they had endured for so long. After all of Pathus’ stories, Haille had almost expected to be set upon the moment they entered in the forest by bloodthirsty creatures or mind-crushing fear. Neither of which was the case. They continued on, unmolested, the jays even flitting from branch to branch above, singing out sweet notes to one another.
The woods swallowed most of the light of the day so that the place was dim as a moonlit night, but not as colorless. Despite the black leaves of the largest trees, there was an assortment of greens and even blues that permeated the place, mainly from the smaller varieties of trees that fought for prominence in the space just over their heads. Along the roadside grew bushes of red, which Haille reached out to touch with his sword. They clanged loudly against the metal. Beneath their leaves, their bark was hard as teeth. Beyond them, beyond the road, the woods yielded no more. The growth was as impenetrable as when they looked upon it from outside, if not more so, for here vines rose up from the clutter of the floor and hung as thick as trees themselves from the highest boughs above. Some smaller trees that had had the misfortune of being the hosts to these vines had been bent and crushed in their grip.
The noises they made, hoof beats, bird tweets, and the shared word here and there, were muffled, and did not travel any farther than the barrier of foliage that walled in the road. It was just as well—the woods imposed silence, demanded it. Once they were quiet, Haille realized that the forest itself was full of sounds. Clicks, songs, even throbbing, which was something like distant thunder, but with the regularity of a fading heartbeat. For the moment however the noise inspired more wonder than fear.
They tracked along the road for hours, but it didn’t feel like they went anywhere. The path twisted and rose so that there was only a small portion visible at a time, and it was impossible to look back and judge one’s progress, for each turn looked no different from the last. Sometimes the woods would open up, vines would thin, and so would the medium-sized trees, so that they were looking into great clearings where mists floated about the round columns of the immense black trunks. Haille came upon these places with an expectant feeling, certain that such a change in the foliage meant something was ahead, perhaps a pond, a lake, or even a ruin. But that was never the case. The larger trees closed in again, the vines returned, and the forest retained its secrets.
Sometime in the late morning—Haille could only guess it was still morning for the sun was lost—they heard the patter of what sounded like feet overhead. The jays gave out cautious twurps. and Haille turned to look. He saw a tree branch shaking, much in the same way it would after a squirrel had run across it, but he saw nothing that could have left it shaking so. Katlyn noticed it too and reached down to the handle of her short sword.
“They are harmless,” Val said.
“But ugly,” Cody added.
“What are?” Katlyn shuffled her feet to catch up to Val who followed right behind the elk.
“I suspect we will see in the next clearing,” Val said.
Up ahead, Haille could see pale daylight filtering onto the road from a break in the foliage. At first he saw nothing, except a few waving vines and nodding branches. Then against the bark of one of the great trees he saw something gold. He gave a gasp. Before he could say a thing, he went silent—for he saw another. Now he watched the creature’s progress by the branches and vines it disturbed. There was another break in the foliage and he saw its body clearly.
It was clearly an animal, about the size of a cat, and yet it had two legs and two arms like a man. The pathways were remarkable: the creature could run along the branches as if they were trails and bridges. Haille was used to seeing squirrels travel so, but to see creatures whose walks mimicked humans was more striking.
There was a commotion right before them. Two of the creatures had slid down vines and stared back at them. The sight was disconcerting. Their faces were animal, with hair and leathery skin, but they also looked vaguely human with round, forward facing eyes. They were hideous, only because they were close to human and yet clearly not. There was no question that they were studying them, with what level of intelligence Haille could not guess, but he would have preferred creatures that just ran away, terrified.
The jays took up perches deep inside the elk’s antlers.
“What are they?” Katlyn asked.
“Tree-walkers,” Val said, turning and falling back in line behind the elk.
“Aptly named,” Haille said, a bit glad they were leaving. As he looked over his shoulder he saw that the two creatures had scampered onto the road and watched them from behind. Then with a few hoots, which were answered from the trees far above, they leapt back into the bushes.
“Cody is right, they are hideous,” Haille said.
“Only because you are not used to them. You look the same way to them I’m sure,” Val added.
He imagined Val was right. The intelligence of the creatures was fascinating to him. No one back in Antas would even believe him if he tried describing them. But the more he thought about them, the more his fears of the forest were assuaged; if these were the most hideous creatures the woods had to offer, he truly had little to fear. And if these small tree-walkers, with no quills, spikes, or fangs, could live in the trees, playing about, indulging their curiosity at strange passersby, how dangerous could Sidon be? Maybe the legends and stories of Sidon were overly embellished. For the first time Haille felt that their journey would be uneventful. Perhaps there was a chance that he and his friends had somehow stumbled onto the one lost path right though Sidon, and would emerge on the other side, proof that the stories were only that: stories.
They continued onward. The forest had become monotonous and to fight boredom Haille and Katlyn exchanged riddles. She was much better at them than he. Even with Cody’s help, she stumped him more often than not. They ate a midday meal while on the move and pushed forward until early evening when the little light that filtered down in the woods began to fade. Haille’s feet hurt and Katlyn was scuffing the soles of her boots with each step.
“Can we stop to rest?” Haille asked Val.
“Not yet. Not here. The smell of the forest has gone foul,” Val said.
Haille took a deep breath. He could only smell the same mildew, sage, and charcoal scents that had accompanied them on the entire journey. If anything, he felt that he could detect a new odor, one that was sweet like candy. He wondered what kind of tree bud or flowering plant made such a smell.
“What do you mean? I smell a pleasant perfume here.”
“Yes,” Val said, “I noticed that.” He shrugged. “Well, I suppose we have already walked a great distance; we can rest.”
Since it was dinnertime they indulged in some smoked beef and honey cakes that were going to go stale if they did not eat them. Katlyn surprised them with a small jar of raspberry jam that Annette had packed for them. Katlyn, Cody, and Haille spread it on the cakes as a dessert, the jays fluttering down among their feet to pick at the crumbs like hens in a barnyard. The jam brought Haille back to the comfort of Pathus and Annette’s home. For their first day in the forest, he thought things had gone quite well.
“Val, why don’t you join us,” Haille said.
Val was a few steps farther down the path, sniffing the air. “You don’t smell that? It’s almost like something … dead.”
“It’s the woods,” Cody said. “Something’s always dying, rotting.”
Val relented, sat, and bit off a piece of smoked beef. The ease and comfort Haille was remembering from Pathus and Annette’s was making him feel relaxed and safe. Combined with the long day of marching, he soon felt drowsy. His lids fluttered but he snapped them open and jerked his head back. Haille knew he should not fall asleep so soon. They would surely march a little farther after dinner. He turned and looked about for something interesting to study to keep him awake. One of the black vines he had seen before hung nearby him. He leaned close. It was moist with some viscous oil. White hairs poked through the fluid, and beads of the substance hung on their ends. Haille’s breathing must have been harder than he thought, for the branch jerked suddenly. He held his breath, but the vine moved again on its own, a slight tremor, that followed all the way up into the boughs where it came from.
Odd.
He turned back to his jam and cake and finished them. His hunger quite satiated, he leaned back, relaxed. A quick nap would not hurt, he decided. After all, the others would wake him if he slept too long. Haille yawned. It would just be a brief nap. In Sidon of all places, how shocked everyone would be when he told them he had slept there. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
In his dream he pictured himself being cradled, rocked gently. Strong arms held him from all directions. What a pleasure, to be looked after with such care. Was this a memory? The answer seemed to be no. Somewhere he remembered there had only ever been one person who cared for him so and she was quite distant.
Was that a feminine voice, telling him to wake up?
He shook his head. Now the gentle touches turned firm, even hurtful. This did remind him of a memory, one he had forgotten: being a toddler and strapped to his crib during storms. It was not until Yana had come that they had stopped the practice. He did not want to remember it. It was time for this nap, this dream, to end. Now he felt a tight sensation around his body. He could not move. He fought. Along with all this was music, a chirping he at first thought was soothing, for it was familiar, but then as the strangling increased he realized it was an urgent, desperate melody. The sound now seemed to be something he could feel against his face. He went to wave it away but his hand was stuck.
Now his paralysis panicked him. His dream was a nightmare. He strained to wake up, but his eyelids were heavy, it was like lifting leaden shades. Finally they came unglued. There was a mass of angry, squeaking feathers flying at his face, trying to wake him. At first he thought he must still be dreaming for when he looked down he realized the forest floor was far below. Then he saw Cody next to him, doubled over, held in the air from the waist, black shapes coiled about his body, his face relaxed and unconscious.
“Cody!” he cried out. He shifted, a fly caught in a spider’s web. A petite hand dangled next to his face. He could not turn any more to see her, but he knew it was Katlyn hanging alongside him.
“The vines,” he choked out. The very vines he had noticed before had wrapped them all in a cocoon of sorts. He struggled, his mind still slow as if he were drunk. He whipped his body about. Some vines came loose but they were strangely powerful and persistent. One slithered across his face and a deep whiff of the oil on them made him dizzy with sleep again. But Sapphire slamming into his face roused him. He kicked again. The vines gave him an angry shake and squeeze. The pressure was excruciating, his breath coming hard.
He continued to rise into the trees. Now he could smell the foul air Val had mentioned, a rotting, vomit-inducing odor. Tears of panic blurred Haille’s vision. As he blinked them away he recoiled. He was high up in the boughs now, where it was darker, but even in the dim light he could see broken faces looking back at him. At first he thought they were human, for they had the same eye sockets and square toothed mouths, even blond hair still sticking to the places where flesh remained; then he realized they were too small. These were the bodies of the tree-walkers, crushed in the embrace of other vines, so many other vines, twisted around them. Their faces were corroded and skeletal, but each one looked anguished and surprised. One had a vine that snaked into its mouth and out its eye, as if the vine was in search of the secrets trapped in the creature’s mind. As his gaze darted around he saw other animals of varying sizes and shapes, a deer-like creature, a warthog, rodents, all in various states of decay, bones protruding, fur falling, skin going taught, mouths open in silent screams, answered only by the engulfing greed of the vines.
Farther down Haille could see Val asleep in the middle of the road, the vines slithering about him, too. Only the elk had been unaffected, but he was behind a curtain of the vines that darted and snapped at him like snakes. He slashed at them with his antlers, but for each one he cut, two more would slip past and try to wrap his legs. Haille cried out Val’s name, but the captain did not stir. The elk turned his head and Haille heard a voice, “Your sword!”
Haille was not sure whose voice it was, Val’s, or perhaps Cody’s. But he remembered his sword, Elk Heart. His hand was pinned, but it was close to the handle. He was not sure what good it would do but he pulled on the crossguard with his fingers and he heard the blade slide from its scabbard.
The bully of the vines released his grip, almost dropping Haille completely. Haille snatched the sword before he tumbled to the ground. The vines were whipping off him so quickly he had to grab a limp one in order to keep from falling. He held himself up with one arm and swung the sword with the other. Even those vines he did not touch went limp just in its proximity. He turned and swung towards Katlyn. The vines unfurled, rolling her gently down to the ground. Haille put his legs together and shifted his weight towards Cody. With a swing of the blade, the vines relaxed around him as well, lowering him back to the place in the road where they had eaten, and slept, in the first place.
Haille slid down a limp vine, hit the ground, and rushed over to the elk and Val. He flew recklessly into the vines. He didn’t care. He swung the sword with abandon and this time the vines did not have the opportunity to retreat. He hacked through them and in response all the boughs above them trembled as if the trees were shaken by a great gust of wind. The coils unwound from Val, dropping him a short distance to the ground. He landed and woke with a start. The severed vines about him wrapped themselves into tight coils, much like a spider would curl its legs around its egg sack.
Haille shivered. He wrapped himself in his own arms but stopped for the enclosing sensation was too similar and too reminiscent of what he had just felt while trapped in the trees. He wondered if he could ever be embraced again, or had this forest stolen that from him, along with any sense of time, direction, even daylight? He looked to Val, Cody, then Katlyn as they gathered close to the elk.
“Nice work,” Val said, panting, his voice empty of the usual bravado. “That sword, is . . . something. Praise be to Pathus.”
Katlyn sniffed and wiped tears from her eyes. Cody jumped and grabbed at his neck at an imagined vine returning. Finding nothing he shook his head and cursed again. They were alive and Haille knew they were all thankful for it. But there had been a shift. It was as if they could feel it in the very air.
They were trespassers and the forest had turned against them.