They camped again that night on a hilltop at the western edge of the marshes, in the best defensible position Holly could find, uneasily aware of how much smaller their group now was. None of them slept well, and they were up early, eager to be free of the marsh smell, which reminded them all, Ember thought, of death.
By mid-morning, they had come to a ridge which was the last high ground before the foothills. To their left, the road wound south to parallel the river that led to Starkling, the summer fort town of Northern Mountains Domain. Before them, a much narrower track led down into a vast bowl of land filled by the Great Forest.
All northern children were raised on tales of the Great Forest, in the same way the children of the south heard stories of the Weeping Caverns, the home of Lady Death. The Forest was vast, stretching over the two Domains, and once it had reached from cliff to cove in the south, too, right down to the desert which separated the Domains from the Wind Cities. But people had come and settled and farmed, and cut down the trees in great swathes, and slowly, over hundreds of years, it seemed that the Forest became aware of the depredations.
“Time in the Great Forest does not run as time runs for us,” her mother had told her, a note in her voice which meant that this was knowledge personally won, at high cost. “But it has learned, at last, not to welcome humans.”
For that reason it was dangerous to go into the Forest alone. No one in her right mind would cut down a living tree here. No one would light a fire. No one would leave the path.
“Each one who ventures under Its trees finds a different Forest,” Martine had said, eyes distant, remembering. “And there are places there where the wall between this world and the next is easily breached.”
The compact which forbade wind wraiths and water spirits to attack humans in settled areas did not run in the Forest, but at least the Power here kept wind wraiths and water spirits away as well.
The Forest was still full of morning fog, and they looked across the tops of high black spruces spearing through a milky cloud, and beyond that to the shimmering heights of the Eye Teeth Mountains. In the south of the range, they could just make out the perfect cone of Fire Mountain, wreathed with clouds—or smoke.
The day seemed to pause as they looked, although Ember could hear birdsong below them, in the Forest.
“A long way to go,” Holly said.
“We’re at the border,” Ember replied. “From here, we’re in the Northern Mountains Domain.”
They looked at each other, Holly with compressed lips, Tern with eyes wide. Curlew shrugged.
“It’s no different from the Last Domain,” he said. “The rest is children’s tales.”
“The power in the Great Forest is not a tale,” Cedar said softly. His hand went to his belt as though expecting to find something there, but came away empty.
Holly pointed north a little.
“The Power isn’t always against us,” she said. “I was born not far from here. The way my mam tells it, I was born under the shade of the Forest itself, when she got took short gathering berries. She reckons It welcomed her. We played a lot on the edges, when we were little. Saw some strange things, but nothing ever hurt us.”
There was a note of nostalgia in her voice, which surprised them all. Holly was usually so matter of fact.
“They say if you treat the Forest with respect,” Ash volunteered, “you will be—well, not safe, perhaps, but not attacked.”
He smiled reassuringly at Ember as he spoke, and she bit her lip with chagrin. Did she look so frightened? Of course she was, but she didn’t want to show it so clearly.
“The sooner we start, the sooner we’re there,” she said, and kicked Merry into a quick walk down the rough track and into the mist, the dogs breaking away and joining her in exuberant chase.
“My lady! Wait!” Holly called, exasperated. Ember drew rein and twisted to look back, guiltily aware of having broken protocol—a protocol which existed for her safety. Grip and Holdfast shot past her and then circled back, tails waving happily.
The others were riding willy-nilly down the trail, through the waist-high saplings and low bushes which bordered the tall trees of the forest. Someone had cut the bordering trees down a few years back, it looked like, to leave a clear division between their land and the forest. But Forest was reclaiming Its territory, and the farmer, whoever it was, was nowhere to be seen. Ember shivered. There wasn’t even any sign of grazing animals. She wondered what had happened, when Forest had realized the trees were gone.
As Ash and Holly cantered down toward her, there was a flicker of light, like sun through leaves, and behind them, around her, were no longer saplings, but huge and towering trees. Ember blinked, shook her head, feeling that if only she could shake it just the right way her addled mind would go back to normal and she’d stop seeing impossible things…
Cedar and Tern and Curlew came into view, the sun flickered again, and it was a cloudy, dull day and the trees were gone, replaced by a kind of fern which grew higher than her head. The sounds were different, too—no birds calling, none… The horses laid their ears back, neighing with fear and their eyes showed white.
“Dragon’s fart!” Tern said. They were all looking around, frightened, alert for danger. “Where have the others gone?”
Most of their rearguard group had simply vanished. Ember prayed that they’d not entered the Forest at all—that they had seen the first group disappear and held back.
“The dogs aren’t here either,” Ash said, worry deep in his voice.
“Stay together,” Holly said.
Ember found some reassurance in the others’ closeness, the horses’ animal warmth. She bent to pat Merry on the neck, calming her. When she looked up, the forest had changed again. Trees, but softer and greener than any she had known. These were southern trees, surely, with luxuriant wide-leaved undergrowth… and the air was balmy, summer-warm and moist, although she could see the sun and it was still at spring height in the sky.
The horses began to calm down. Thatch even bent his head to crop at the grass.
“No!” Ember called. Ash had already pulled Thatch’s head up. They all knew the stories. If you ate in the other world, you had to stay there. All the old stories said so, and stories were all they had to guide them.
“We’re adrift in Time,” Cedar said.
“But not in place,” Ash added. He pointed to a big rock outcrop halfway up the hill. “That’s shifted, but it was there in our—before, when we arrived.”
“Forest holds all of Time in Its palm,” Holly said. Her eyes were looking past Ember to the deep forest beyond. “Death is nothing to It. Everything lives, and goes on living, within Its grasp.”
“But can we get back?” Ember asked. Someone had to be practical. She nudged Merry to take a few steps back up the trail, but the trail had disappeared. The hill was covered with rocks that would break a horse’s leg with one misstep. Reluctantly, she turned her head to stare down—the trail was clear enough, here, though it was no more than a deer’s track. At least the birdsong had come back.
Uncertain, Ember looked at Ash and Holly.
The world flickered again and the ancient huge trees were back, but not the same ones… a different species, some kind of conifer that Ember had never seen before. And this time, the rock outcrop was much, much smaller than it had been.
She began to shake. She couldn’t think. It was like the moment when Fire had first appeared… when a Power displayed Its strength, humans were left adrift and confused.
“We are seeing the history of the world,” Cedar said in wonder. Annoyance flared in Ember. As if that was a good thing! With the anger, the shaking stopped and she could begin to consider what they should do.
“This is a message,” Holly said. “Forest wants to remind us of Its power. And of our weakness. Humans may cut a few trees down, but It exists forever, and It will reclaim what has been taken, in time.”
“As it should,” Cedar said. Ash glanced at him, and Ember realized it had been an odd thing for a farmer’s son to say. Cedar’s dark eyes seemed larger when he looked at the Forest, as though they reflected a world rather than a scene. But she wasn’t about to argue the limits of Forest’s power here.
“We have to go on,” Ember said. The only way to get through the Forest was to go through the Forest.
Ash was nodding. Tern and Curlew looked appalled. Cedar stared off into the darkening trees with surmise.
It was up to Holly.
“Aye, my lady,” Holly said. Ember almost fell off Merry in astonishment. That was the first time Holly had ever taken any notice of her opinion. She realized belatedly that she herself was of highest rank in this party; not that Holly would pay attention to that if it were a matter of her safety.
Ember licked dry lips. She’d planned to do this when they reached the first of the big trees, but she’d clearly left it too late. Worth trying, still.
“By your leave, Great Forest, we seek permission to travel through your borders, doing no harm, seeking only safe passage.”
There was no response. Which could have been good.
Holly nodded at her, then went forward, taking point, and Ash, then Cedar, followed her. Ember went next, Tern and Curlew behind.
At least the horses didn’t seem afraid. Holly clicked her tongue at her mare and they went forward at a walk.
The sky flickered.
Saplings were only waist high. The air was cooler, the rock outcrop the right size. The trees ahead… they were black spruce and larch, as they should be. With a bound of her heart, Ember saw the dogs, waiting at the edge of the trees. They barked a welcome and dashed back to the horses, then away again, into the woods.
“Don’t stop!” Cedar called, and Ember could hear Sight speaking through him, so she nudged Merry with her heels and kept on, into the Great Forest, into what she hoped was the Forest of her own time.
As the shade of the trees fell on her, she felt Merry twitch all over, but that was all. No terrifying shapes swooping from the branches above, no strange sounds. No malignant thorns reaching for her soft flesh. The sky stayed still, as it should. Just trees, and a deepening mist, thickening as they descended into the valley.
Unlike the pine forests nearer to her home, there was enough light filtering through the branches to allow mosses to grow beneath them. The curving light green of feathermoss, the bright tiny stars of sphagnum moss shoots, even some red fireweed lining the edge of the track, its flowerstalks reaching high but the bells not yet open. There were other trees occasionally, too—aspen, birch, balsam fir, each bringing its different green to the whispering patchwork of boughs. They emerged from the fog and slipped away again as Ember rode past, Merry’s hoof-falls muted by the damp.
“We’re being watched,” Ash said, bringing his bay up beside her. He was right. Ember could feel eyes on them from beyond the screen of mist. The horses were happy enough, though, their ears pricked forward, their steps light but unhesitating. Holdfast and Grip padded before them, alert but not growling. Surely they would sense danger before the humans?
As they rode along the path, the horses’ hooves splashing in the boggy ground, shifting sunlight began to pierce the cloud around them. But Ember could hear something, feel something, see something flicker at the corners of her vision which was never there when she turned her head.
It seemed that Forest was allowing them to pass, and allowing them to stay in their own time. Nothing barred their way except small, fast-running streams and the occasional sapling fallen across the path, which the horses stepped over easily. Spruce had shallow roots and were prone to being wind-blown, but most of the fallen trees were aspen, and she wondered if the black spruce guarded their territory. Anything seemed possible.
They spelled the horses every couple of hours, whenever they came to a clearing with enough sunlight in it to feel safe, although Ember was sure that feeling was an illusion. At least the clearings gave her something to do. She searched the ground for plants that the horses found edible and harvested as much as she could, stuffing it into a sack, knowing that in the mountains feed would be scarce. Tern helped her, while Ash and Cedar scouted for small game, and Holly and Curlew kept watch.
“Don’t go far,” she said to her cousins, and Cedar grinned.
“Yes, Mam,” he said mockingly, but when he looked out into the shifting shadows of the trees, his face clouded and his hand again went to his belt, as if to find something that wasn’t there.
Most of the plants Martine had taught her to recognize, and she knew which to avoid: baneberry, nightshade, dogbane. But there were many others, like the heart-shaped twayblade and cow wheat, horsetail fern and bracken and even some sedges by the streams that she could cut with her belt knife and stash away. She came back triumphant from one sortie with a handful of tiny strawberries, sweet as honey in the mouth. Only one berry for each of them, and one over which she gave to Tern, who blushed.
All the herbs were in blossom. She walked through them surrounded by butterflies and bees, busily harvesting too, finding the meagre drops of nectar in the heart of the tiny wildflowers.
She looked up from collecting some fresh tight-curled fronds of bracken to find Ash staring at her, a dog on either side, also staring. Her red hair crinkled so much, it was impossible to keep tightly bound, and she was abruptly aware of the strands across her face and neck, of the sweat under her arms. She must look as mucky as a cowgirl. She grinned and shrugged at him and the corners of his mouth lifted in a small smile. Then Grip bayed once and was away, across the clearing, chasing the black ear tips of a hare above the grass.
“Grip!” she called. “Not in the Forest!”
Fast as thought, Ash grabbed his bow, nocked an arrow and let fly. The hare leaped once and lay still, the arrow quivering in its side. Grip happily collected it and brought it back to Ash, laying it at his feet and sitting back as he’d been trained.
Ember looked at Ash wonderingly. She’d known he had talent with the bow, but nothing like that.
“I couldn’t let him go off into the Forest,” Ash said, almost apologetically. “Besides, they need fresh meat.”
He gutted and jointed the hare swiftly and fed the dogs. The hare’s fur was thick and full so close to winter, but it was in moult, changing from its white winter coat to its brown summer one, so it was less valuable.
“No way of tanning it, anyway,” Ash said, throwing it to Holdfast to play with. She and Grip had a joyful game of tug-o’-war with it before they all set off again.
Holly called camp when they came to a clearing with a running stream about an hour before sunset.
They saw to the horses in a watchful silence. Birds were settling down in their nests and the quiet whispering of the trees was easier to hear as the evening breeze began. The mosses and small shrubs rustled as the night creatures emerged.
Merry shivered under the curry as an owl called sleepily and was answered. Ember patted her.
“Settle down, you’re all right,” she said, and the cheerful, familiar scolding tone worked. She stood placidly as Ember finished with the polishing rag and then combed her mane and tail free of the burrs and twigs they’d picked up. Not as many burrs as in mid-summer, thank the gods.
Holly had stopped grooming her mare Simple, and was standing, brush in hand, her head cocked to listen.
“Can you hear that?” she asked Curlew, but he shook his head.
“Birds,” he said. Holly frowned.
“No, something else,” she said. “Something calling.”
“Calling what? Who?” Ember asked, but Holly shrugged.
“It’s gone now. It sounded like… I don’t know. Like someone calling the cows home.”
As they sat in the growing dusk to their hard bread and cheese and dried fenberries, Ash sat next to Ember and said quietly, “Don’t think about fire tonight.”
“I’m not that stupid!” she flashed. The very idea of calling Fire within the Forest brought her out in a cold sweat. She had never realized how many ways there were to be afraid. At home there were, of course, lots of ways to die, most of them linked to the intensely cold winters: frostbite, the dry cough that turned to coughing blood, windbite, wolves, wolverines, snow blindness that led you over crevasses and into drifts, simply failing to make it home by nightfall. But they were known dangers, and there were methods to deal with all of them—mostly involving being home by nightfall.
But here there was no home, and no shelter, and the dangers were so many and so different that there was nothing which could protect them. And that was without the Powers of Forest and Fire stalking them.
Life was not easy in the Last Domain, so its people worked together, kept each other safe, stayed in groups. She had lived her life in a warlord’s fort, surrounded by people whose job it was to keep her safe and well. To be out here, with so few other humans, was deeply unsettling. It was like walking out onto the lake ice the first time in early winter, when you weren’t sure it would bear your weight. Every creak of the ice brought your heart to your mouth; every hint of danger here brought her out in a sweat.
Remembering the dead they had already left behind, her eyes filled. A tear dropped onto her fenberries, and she wiped her eyes surreptitiously, but Ash saw.
“I can’t tell you it will be all right,” he said.
“I don’t need you to tell me that!” she snapped, getting up and moving away. “I’m not a child!” She was sorry a moment later, but when she turned back to look at him, his face was only a blur in the failing twilight and she couldn’t tell if she had hurt his feelings. She sat down again, a little nearer to him, feeling his warmth strike across the air between them, making her heart beat more strongly. She was achingly aware of his bare forearms where he had rolled up his shirt. A crescent of moon edged over the trees, the moonlight showing Ash’s muscles and tendons clearly, his big crafter’s hands… she shivered at the thought of those hands touching her and couldn’t remember what she should be saying.
“I wish I were braver,” she said randomly. “Like Mam.”
“Aye,” Holly said, “your mam’s brave all right. I saw her rebuild the compact and face down the wraiths. Saved us all, her and the other three.”
The compact. The spell which allowed humans to go about their business without attack from wind wraiths, or water spirits, fire sprites or delvers, the dark beings who lived underground. Without that spell, existence would be terrifying and hand-to-mouth; every move out of doors fraught with danger, every hunting trip, every attempt to sow seed, an invitation to disaster. The compact had made the Domains possible. Sometimes it had seemed impossible to Ember that it was her mother, with three others, who had remade that spell when it began to fray twenty-one years ago. Her mother who had such trouble sewing or brewing or even ordering servants, though she did all those things because a warlord’s lady must, in the northern domains. But there were times when her mother cast the stones to predict when the Ice King’s men would attack. When she had sent men out to fight, and die. Then Ember had watched her with awe; her green eyes seemed like gateways to other places, other Powers, and Ember had been fervently glad that she had no Sight at all, that the gods had no interest in her, had given her no responsibility. Her mouth quirked, thinking of that unfounded relief.
The night was growing darker, despite the thin moon which showed through the very tops of the trees around them but cast the clearing into deeper shadow.
Holly lifted her head, on alert.
“Hear it?” she asked. Ember shook her head. Cedar got up and went to the edge of the clearing.
“There’s something…” he said.
“Aye. A calling,” Holly said slowly.
“I can’t hear anything,” Ash said.
“You’ve got about as much Sight as a rock,” Cedar said dismissively, although not unkindly. Ash nodded as though that were old news.
“It’s gone now,” Holly said, almost regretfully.
Ember slept with difficulty, aware of Ash’s warm bulk lying next to her, tormented by dreams where that warmth grew into an inferno of passion but never reached satisfaction.