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Daindreth
They left the gorge and the shelter of the rocks and followed the trail left by the archer. Daindreth couldn’t see it, but Amira said the man’s ka was up ahead. As they followed that trail, a war fought inside him.
He was used to fighting Caa Iss in his head, but today he fought himself. Daindreth rode close beside Amira, his heart hammering in his chest. He couldn’t leave Thadred. Couldn’t.
But at the same time, how could he ask Amira to come with him into a known trap set by his mother’s Kadra’han?
“Amira,” Daindreth reined in his horse to a stop.
“What’s wrong?” Amira didn’t look at him, instead searching their surroundings. “What is it?”
“No. I...” He touched her shoulder.
She looked at him. “What?”
He shook his head. “I can’t ask you to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Go into the forest with me. Go after the Kadra’han.”
“What options are there?”
Daindreth looked ahead, jaw locking as he considered it. “If I’m taken by them, you and Thadred will no longer be worth anything alive.”
Amira inhaled, straightening in her saddle. “That’s correct. They likely have orders to kill both of us, considering how troublesome we’ve been.”
“Thadred is only valuable as a hostage to get me to comply, but they don’t need me cooperative to take me back to Mynadra.” There were four of them and Daindreth knew better than to think he’d be any real challenge for them. He shuddered to remember several weeks ago when his mother had ordered him bound and shackled to a silver chair.
Caa Iss had been eager, almost giddy when he thought he was about to have full control. The disappointment had enraged the demon. Now whenever he got the chance, Caa Iss hammered at Daindreth’s thoughts relentlessly and without mercy.
“Well, what do you suggest we do instead?” Amira asked shortly. “We can’t leave Thadred behind.”
“But we can’t rescue him, either,” Daindreth said. “Can we?”
Amira swallowed and looked away. “If we can free the other sorceress—”
Daindreth rested his hand on her shoulder. “I almost lost you the last time. If I lose you...”
Amira bit her lip, looking up at him with those deep green eyes that reminded him of rolling hills and open spaces. “I don’t want you to have to choose between protecting me and saving your brother.”
He loved that she knew his and Thadred’s relationship well enough to call them brothers.
“You wouldn’t ask me to sacrifice Fonra,” she said. “I can’t ask you to—”
“You didn’t ask,” Daindreth answered, fighting to speak past the tearing sensation in his chest. “This is my decision.”
Her eyes widened. “You...you want to leave Thadred behind?”
“No,” Daindreth said quickly. “No, it’s not what I want, but...” He took a deep breath. “If we go for him now, you’ll both end up dead and Caa Iss will win.” He shook his head. “Without the two of you, I can’t fight him.” Daindreth cradled the side of her face, feeling the warmth, the life in her skin. “If I fall to the cythraul...” He swallowed. “He will unleash a reign of terror that makes my father look like a goodly saint.”
Amira’s mouth flattened into a line. “What are you thinking, then?”
Daindreth withdrew his hand from her cheek, bracing himself to say the words out loud. “We head straight for the Cursewood.”
“Without a guide?” Amira’s voice dropped. “That’s insanity.”
“Yes, so you’ve told me.”
“Daindreth, that whole place is a death trap. Some people say it is death.”
“Death is what waits for us in that ambush,” Daindreth argued, words coming more easily now that he’d gotten out the first few. “The Kadra’han will follow us into the Cursewood, I’m certain.”
“They won’t get far,” Amira quipped back. “Because we won’t, either.”
Daindreth looked to her. “The blackbriars were created the same day as my curse, weren’t they?”
Amira grimaced. “That’s the common consensus, yes.”
“So, if you have authority over Caa Iss, perhaps you have authority in the Cursewood, too.” Daindreth hadn’t realized that this had occurred to him until he spoke it out loud.
“I don’t think that’s how it works.” Still. Amira didn’t sound so certain. She muttered something under her breath. “We can’t take a gamble on possibilities, Daindreth.”
“Isn’t that what we’re already doing?” Daindreth pointed out. “We’re gambling with the hope that the Kadra’han will have made a mistake and we can rescue Thadred and the sorceress. But don’t we have better odds this way?”
Amira was quiet for a long moment. She looked back to Daindreth and let out a long breath. “This is madness. You know that, right?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “We’ll never make it, Daindreth. People who wander into the Cursewood without knowing the way never make it out.”
“We don’t need to make it out. We just need the Kadra’han to bring us the sorceress. If they caught Thadred, they must have her. They know the stories of the Cursewood as well as you do,” Daindreth reminded her. “Maybe even better. They’ll force her to show them the way. Once we get into the Cursewood, we’ll be blind and surrounded by danger, but they will be, too.”
Amira shifted uncomfortably in her saddle. “Have I ever explained to you just what lives in the Cursewood?”
“Does it change the truth?” Daindreth asked. He couldn’t back down, not now. “That this is the only way we can steal the upper hand?”
“We won’t be stealing the upper hand,” Amira snapped. “We’ll just be cutting off everyone’s hands.”
“Equal footing, then.” Daindreth’s heart beat a little faster as he became more certain. “We can do this.”
“Going into the Cursewood will be like cutting off our feet, too,” quipped Amira. “This is just a middle finger to the Kadra’han. Mutually assured destruction.”
“But they have to follow us,” Daindreth reminded her. “Their vows will leave them no choice.”
Amira rolled her eyes. “You say that like it’s a good thing.”
“I’m counting on them bringing the sorceress and Thadred to us. On our terms.”
“The Cursewood is not our terms!” Amira insisted. “It’s not anyone’s terms! Wilderness—that’s what the Cursewood is, Daindreth. Think of all the worst aspects of nature and imagine them concentrated in one place. The plants are poisonous, the ground is shifting and inconstant. There are a host of animals waiting to kill you and not natural ones, either. Kelpies, stiltfoxes, direwolves, leeches the size of snakes. Toxic gases rise from holes in the earth. The land is under a curse in every sense of the word.”
Daindreth exhaled a long breath. “I know it’s madness, Amira. But this whole errand was madness from the start. We all knew that.”
Amira looked ahead, to where the Kadra’han had gone. Her brows were pinched and her face was lined with warring emotions. She chewed her lip, adjusting her grip on her horse’s reins.
“I trust you, Amira,” Daindreth said. “I trust your judgment. Now I’m asking you to trust mine.” He touched her chin with a finger and gently pulled her around to face him. “It’s madness. It’s a fool’s hope. But it’s our only hope. Our only real hope.”
Amira held his gaze for a long moment and then let off a lengthy sigh. “The Cursewood extends across the entire northern hills,” she said. “If we just head north, we’ll hit it eventually.” She jerked her head a little to their left, diverging from the Kadra’han’s path. “That way.”
Daindreth nodded. “Thank you.”
“Remember saying that when we’re up to our necks in leeches,” she clipped.
Daindreth ignored the brief doubt that flashed through him because it didn’t matter. They didn’t have a better option.
He let Amira lead the way. She barely spoke as she did.
“How can you tell which direction is north?” he asked, motioning to the overcast sky. The darkening clouds promised rain before too long.
“I can’t,” Amira admitted. “But the ka is different up ahead.”
“Different?”
“Noxious,” she answered. “Sickly.”
That sounded about right. He wouldn’t have expected different from a place under a curse.
Daindreth kept a sharp eye out and Amira kept glancing left to right, searching for signs that the Kadra’han had decided to chase them again.
They continued in silence. Something tickled at the back of his neck. Something he couldn’t quite name, but it wouldn’t leave him alone.
Something about the silence made it seem wrong to speak, like words would expose them. When he looked to Amira, he whispered, though he wasn’t sure why.
“Do you sense anything of the other Kadra’han?”
Amira shook her head. “Nothing. Not since the archer rode into the forest. Though he could be using another concealment spell.”
“Concealment spell?”
“That’s how he was able to sneak up on us,” Amira said. “It seems like a...more advanced version of what I did in the warehouse.” She admitted the last part of her sentence begrudgingly, like it pained her to own up to the fact that other sorcerers were more skilled. “Anyway. Nothing otherwise.”
Daindreth glanced over his shoulder and edged his horse closer to Amira. In this forest with the trees so close together, the fog, and two moving targets, not even the best archer could be sure of a clean shot. The Kadra’han probably wouldn’t risk shooting and potentially striking the archduke, but Daindreth would rather not take the chance.
The air thickened. It wasn’t quite a stench and it wasn’t precisely a change in temperature, but the air felt different as he drew it into his lungs. Heavier. It stung his nose and grated his chest as he breathed in. Was this the poisonous gases Amira had warned him about?
Daindreth glanced behind him again, to assure himself that the Kadra’han archer and none of the others were there. When he looked back, he saw the border of the Cursewood.
It loomed in front of them—a dark mass with tendrils that reminded Daindreth of a nest of snakes. Fingers of black extended out from the mass to wrap around and tangle in the trees, spreading into the rest of the forest vein by vein like an infection.
“Blackbriars,” Amira said, nudging her mare on when the horse hesitated.
Daindreth swallowed and checked over his shoulder one more time before kicking his own mare after her.
The black veins spread around the ground and snaked through the trees over their heads. They spread up and wreathed the ferns, or what had once been ferns. The blackbriars had completely covered much of the smaller foliage, leaving eerie black shapes in their wake.
The older branches of the blackbriars had hardened into stony formations, dark as coal. They grew over the trunks of trees and slithered across the ground in twisting patterns. Some of the black veins squelched under their horses’ hooves and others crunched, breaking into pieces.
Daindreth’s mare stepped on one of the older veins and her hoof slid off like she’d stepped on polished stone. She snorted as she regained her footing and took care to avoid the black veins after that.
As they passed under the canopy, Daindreth had the sense of entering a giant maw. The nest of blackbriars swallowed them up as it had swallowed the forest around them.
“See the hard veins?” Amira said, pointing to the dark tendril that had betrayed his horse. “That means this is a permanent boundary of the Cursewood. Or soon will be.”
“Meaning...?”
“It might flare up and extend behind us.”
“So...we could have to travel farther to get out than we had to travel to get in?”
“Yes. That’s about it,” Amira confirmed. “Say what you want about them, but my mothers know how to make curses.”
Daindreth looked up to the black canopy overhead. The blackbriars had embedded themselves in the trees and even laced through their leaves. Daindreth would think the weight of the blackbriars would bow the trees, but it looked as if the blackbriars had locked the tree in place exactly as it was, then set to the work of encasing it in ropes of the curse.
They reached a tree more advanced in the infection state not fifty paces past the border. This pine tree was roped and coiled in the vines, its narrow branches and even the individual needles on its boughs frozen in place, preserved, and cast in the hard black rock like a statue.
“The stories don’t do this place justice,” Daindreth mused.
“No,” Amira agreed, then fell silent.
Daindreth looked back again. Already, Daindreth could see no sign of the healthy forest they had just left. All around them were the unforgiving, relentless black vines wrapping in every direction like a giant parasite.
“This is just the edge,” Amira said flatly. “When we get deep into the Cursewood, that’s where the real fun will start.” A sarcastic, cynical edge entered her voice. “You were right about one thing,” she muttered. “This is the last thing any Kadra’han would expect us to do. They think we’re sane.”
“I didn’t hear any better suggestions from you back there,” Daindreth reminded her.
“Fair enough.” Amira pushed back the cowl of her cloak and reined in her horse.
“What is it?” Daindreth cast his gaze in every direction, one hand going to his sword. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing in particular.” Taking a deep breath, Amira reached for the water canteen at her side. She took a few sips and passed it to Daindreth. “Drink. I’m not sure if that water will keep.”
Daindreth took the canteen from her hand. “Keep?”
“Water goes putrid in the Cursewood. Or so I’ve heard.”
Daindreth took a long drink and then handed it back to Amira. “You finish it off.”
“You weigh more than me,” Amira said flatly.
“You’re the one they’ll attack first,” Daindreth countered.
Amira rolled her eyes, but finished the canteen and screwed the cap back on carefully, her brow furrowed in concentration. She shoved it back in her pack, gathered the reins, and nudged her mare forward again.
As they traveled on, sometimes the woods were so thick that they seemed to be riding at dusk or early dawn. Other times, the forest was almost sunny, though he never quite glimpsed the sun.
Sometimes the woods were silent, and the beat of his heart sounded loud as a drum in his ears. Other times, the chirping of cicadas was almost deafening, and the croak of frogs seemed loud enough to burst his eardrums.
Mists rose in some places, waving up from the ground in smoky tendrils. It might have been Daindreth’s imagination, but he could have sworn that the tendrils reached for their horses as they passed.
Amira drew her horse to a halt in front of him.
“What is it?” Daindreth whispered.
“Shh!” She crouched low in her saddle, craning her neck to see ahead. “Something’s moving up there.”
Daindreth drew his sword as quietly as he could, but his mare still snorted and shuffled her hooves. She was a rouncey meant for riding across the countryside, not a knight’s horse. Swords and fighting were foreign and frightening to this animal.
Still, Daindreth would have to find a way to fight from horseback if—
The dark tangle of black ahead of them shifted and a pair of antlers poked out.
Daindreth almost breathed a sigh of relief.
A young buck stepped out ahead of them, ears flicking. It studied them with large eyes, sniffing at the horses.
Daindreth had never seen a deer so calm up close before. Always, he’d been chasing them with a team of hounds rushing around his mount’s legs.
The deer shifted the rest of its body from the cover of the undergrowth and Daindreth almost gasped.
A black, veiny mass spread out from the buck’s spine, black tendrils that had hardened into stone. As best Daindreth could tell, there was some sort of root of obsidian in the buck’s back that had spread down through the animal’s ribs, lancing its hide and growing into it like a cancer of quartz.
Daindreth’s gut clenched, and he had to fight to keep from retching at the sight. “Sweet goddess, what is that?”
Amira grimaced, her nose pinched. “The blackbriars can infect animals, too.” She nodded at the buck as it wandered across their path, moving stiffly and awkwardly.
With the obsidian veins lancing its flesh, it must be in immense pain.
“That was probably a wound,” Amira said. “A failed predator attack or a hunter’s missed arrow. Blackbriar seeds got into it and took root. Poor fellow’s got them growing in his back now.”
Daindreth watched as the buck shuffled into the trees on the other side of their trail. “He’s having trouble with his back legs.”
Amira nodded grimly. “The briars are probably in his spine.”
“Can we do anything for him?” Daindreth asked. “Poor creature’s suffered enough.”
Amira shook her head. “We don’t have a bow and we don’t have a means of chasing him down. He’d just run if we tried to get close.”
Daindreth glanced to Amira as the buck disappeared. He didn’t see any open cuts. “Can the briars be removed? If they aren’t too advanced, I mean.”
“Don’t know,” Amira admitted, nudging her mare into a walk again. “Everyone I’ve heard of cut out the seeds as soon as they noticed the infection.”
The Cursewood didn’t seem real, more like a nightmare that had been dragged into the waking world.
Unfortunately, he’d also been right when he’d said they had no other options. He kept his horse moving and kept watching the forest for any sign of attack or danger.
Amira made a hacking sound and spat, coughing.
“Amira?”
“The ka,” she grumbled, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. “It’s all wrong here. All rotten.” She cleared her throat again.
Daindreth couldn’t sense ka¸ but this whole place was rotten. He didn’t need to be a sorcerer to know that.
They continued on, riding into the tangle of the forest. Daindreth found himself avoiding the blackbriars whenever possible and tensing up every time he noticed Amira’s horse going near them.
They passed a hot spring that bubbled and popped dark green sludge. The ferns around it were withered and black as if burned. A bubble popped and splashed the trunk of a nearby tree. The tree’s bark withered and burned black, leaving a dark ring where the sludge had hit.
