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Thadred
Thadred found himself in the middle of a clearing tied back-to-back with the woman he hated second most in the world. Only Vesha could claim to be more hated and at this moment, only by a narrow margin.
Sair cursed and snarled behind her gag. Nothing came out coherent, but Thadred had been cursed by enough women to guess at what she was saying.
“I can’t stand you either,” Thadred quipped. “To be fair, we wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t abducted me.”
Sair slammed her head backwards, knocking into his. Her blow struck hard enough to make him see stars, but then Sair whimpered, her bodyweight shifting as she lowered her head.
“Serves you right,” he said past watering eyes. People always forgot that bashing someone else with their head hurt them, too. It was something he’d learned the hard way. Even in full plate armor, he had nearly managed to knock himself out at the time.
“Fine fix you’ve gotten us into, sorceress,” Thadred grumbled. “Tied in the middle of the forest like a couple of goats left out for a brown bear.”
They were alone in the clearing by all appearances, but appearances meant nothing when it came to Kadra’han. The three men were no doubt lying in wait in the trees.
Thadred took a deep breath, shifting in an effort to better accommodate his aching limbs, then grunting when that only made his nerves pinch worse. “Damn it,” he muttered.
Sair made a low sound and Thadred interpreted that as another curse.
The knight cocked his head. A low rhythm thumped from somewhere in the trees. “Sair, quiet.”
Sair made a sputtering sound clearly not appreciating his demand.
“I mean it. Can you hear that?”
Sair paused her struggling for just a moment, long enough for Thadred to confirm.
“Someone on a horse is coming.” He frowned and his chest loosened a little. “Only one.”
Amira and Daindreth wouldn’t separate, would they? Then again, they might if they thought—
“It’s a trap!” Thadred shouted. “There’s four of them!”
Panic rose in his chest as the horse kept coming. Then a Kadra’han on horseback burst into their clearing, a strung bow over his shoulder. His hood was thrown back and his horse glistened with sweat.
Thadred noticed his quiver of arrows was missing several.
On cue, the other three warriors slid from the forest around them. Iasu dropped from a tree, sauntering to stand beside the bound captives.
One trotted into the woods, jogging in the direction the rider had come from, probably to check for a pursuit as was standard practice. The other swaggered to meet the rider.
“Report,” said the older Kadra’han, the one who had grabbed Thadred’s mule earlier.
“I found them,” the rider panted. “I pursued them into a gorge, but they took up a defensive position.” He nodded to the bound sorceress and Thadred. “I delivered our ransom demand and they followed me for a mile or so, then turned back.”
The older Kadra’han didn’t look surprised. None of them did, actually.
“Turned back for the city?” the older Kadra’han asked.
“No, commander. The Cursewood.”
“They headed north? Are they circling back?”
“No, sir, they entered the Cursewood. I followed as far as I could, but they soon disappeared. I returned before I couldn’t.”
Silence descended on the clearing. Even Sair went still.
Thadred had heard stories about the Cursewood even before Amira had mentioned it. Tales told of the blight that the sorceresses had unleashed on the northern forests after their infamous defeat at the tower. The primary embodiment of the curse was the blackbriars—thorny vines of obsidian that overtook and overwhelmed the forest bit by bit, consuming and choking it.
There were stories of ghosts, kelpies, bugbears, poison fumes, trolls, and a dozen other things that could kill, maim, enslave, and otherwise do bad to unwary travelers. Thadred had believed little of it, but looking at the faces around him...
Kadra’han—full-fledged Kadra’han—were master spies and assassins. Reading them for the most part was like reading granite slabs and yet they were quiet now, their faces tight. One of them, who appeared to be the youngest, looked quickly to Iasu who only shook his head.
The eldest of the Kadra’han marched straight to Sair and yanked her gag off. “Does the princess know the forest?” he demanded.
Sair spat and earned a fist across her face for that.
“Hey!” Thadred twisted around. “That was uncalled for.”
The Kadra’han ignored him, remaining focused on Sair. “Do you have children, sorceress?” The Kaadra’han grabbed something at her throat and pulled a narrow strip of leather around her neck. Thadred hadn’t noticed it before. At the end of the leather strap was a wooden medallion carved into the shape of a circle with spiked shapes Thadred took to be stars lining its edges.
The Kadra’han held it in front of Sair, raising his brows. “A son, from the look of this.”
Thadred couldn’t see Sair’s face, but her continued silence was confirmation that the Kadra’han was right.
Sair was a mother. That surprised Thadred, though he supposed she was old enough. Guilt plucked at him—he hadn’t known.
The boy was probably safe. With friends or perhaps Sair’s family. But safe or not, and no matter what Thadred might have against Sair, her child didn’t deserve to lose her. Boys needed their mothers.
“You need to understand something,” the Kadra’han said, his voice low and threatening. “Our empress was content to let you and your mothers and sisters and daughters live out your lives like animals in the wilds.” He grabbed the leather thong and used it to yank Sair toward him. “That was before you meddled and sent an assassin after her son.”
Thadred frowned at that. He’d thought King Hyle had been the one to send Amira after Daindreth. Her oath had been bound to the king, not the sorceresses.
Sair still didn’t speak.
“Now the empress has had a few months to rethink her generosity, she’s decided that she’ll be demolishing your forests and routing out this infestation. She’ll have the power to do it soon,” the Kadra’han said. “You know she will.”
Vesha had struck a deal with demons, Thadred knew that much. That must mean her power would soon be increasing, though Thadred wasn’t sure how or by how much. He committed the other man’s words to memory, hoping that Amira and Dain could make more sense of it than he did.
“You cannot control him,” Sair said, her voice shaking. “Caa Iss. He will consume the world.”
The senior Kadra’han was unimpressed. “You will answer my questions,” he said. “Does the princess know the way to the Haven?”
Sair didn’t speak.
Thadred thought back to what Amira had said, though he hadn’t paid much attention. Sorcery and cythraul weren’t his strong suits, fighting was.
But from what Amira had said—about them needing a guide—he guessed that she had no idea where she was going or what she was doing in that forest. His stomach knotted at the thought of them lost and blundering through a cursed woodland.
As much as he had been dreading Amira and Dain’s rescue attempt, he couldn’t deny frustration when he realized they had left him behind. They would come for him, he had been sure of that. Dain wouldn’t abandon him, and Amira had proven she could break a man out of the most secure palace in the known world if it came to that.
Dain and Amira had to have a plan and the Cursewood had to be a part of that plan somehow. It still rankled him that he was stuck waiting.
“This medallion doesn’t look that old,” the Kadra’han was still speaking to Sair. “Your son can’t be more than ten.” He brushed a finger along her chin and Sair whipped her head away. “You know, we’ve had trouble replenishing our ranks. Most the other sorcerous bloodlines were dealt with, which makes your kind a high commodity.”
Thadred bristled. He didn’t like what this conversation implied. It made something aggressive and protective rise up in his chest.
Sair looked determinedly away.
“We’ve had trouble finding boys with the right lineage,” he said. “As you can see, we’ve even settled for cripples.”
Thadred’s face flushed and he wasn’t sure if it was more humiliation or anger. His fists clenched in their bonds, anger winning out.
How he’d like to get that bastard alone and—
“You should kill me now,” Sair said flatly. “It will save time.” She leaned closer to the Kadra’han.
Thadred had to respect her for it.
“You can threaten me. Torture me. Do what you want to me. But there is nothing you can do that will make me betray my son.” She addressed the Kadra’han with a steadiness Thadred couldn’t have managed himself. “We give our lives for our children, not the other way around. That’s something your empress has yet to learn.”
“You’re brave,” the Kadra’han said. “Some might admire that. I find it annoying.” He gestured to one of the other Kadra’han, not Iasu.
The other Kadra’han took a step toward them.
“Don’t you dare touch her,” Thadred growled.
Sair and the Kadra’han joined in giving him an incredulous look.
“She was your captor,” the senior Kadra’han clipped. “A sorceress. She tried to hunt your master, the archduke. Yet you defend her?”
Thadred realized the ridiculousness of his own words a moment later. Still, he didn’t back down. “It doesn’t matter. You shouldn’t go hurting women. It’s...it’s not right.”
The senior Kadra’han rolled his eyes. “Undall, unbind her hands.”
Thadred tensed as Sair did. What could they do? They were at the mercy of these Kadra’han and were all but helpless, but at the same time, Thadred kept thinking he should do something.
He twisted the ropes around his wrists, sawing them back and forth, but he couldn’t reach the knots. He tried to turn around, but his bad leg was locked up with stiff muscles. Even just shifting his weight was painful enough to make his eyes water.
Undall, the other Kadra’han who had stayed behind with Iasu and the commander, reached for Sair.
She struggled and something snapped in the air, her attempts at a spell, Thadred guessed. Undall drove a fist into her gut for that.
Something cracked and she doubled over, wheezing and groaning. It was a strike with a fist, meant to take down a man twice her size. Sair hunched over, whimpering.
“Stop!” Thadred cried. His chest wrenched and he hated Undall, hated the Kadra’han, and hated his own inability to stop them.
Undall unbound Sair’s hands and the senior Kadra’han gestured to a stump a few steps away. Undall forced Sair down in front of it and a sick feeling welled in Thadred’s gut.
“Spread her hands over it,” the Kadra’han ordered.
Sair was still wheezing from his punch and barely offered any resistance as Undall grabbed her wrists and forced her palms flat onto the stump.
Not wasting a moment, the older Kadra’han whipped out two narrow throwing knives. He drove them down into Sair’s hands and the blades plunked into wood on the other side.
Thadred looked away as Sair let off a cry.
She whimpered and gasped, her plaintive cries making Thadred’s insides coil, snap, and retch. He was caught between anger and horror.
He’d trained for war his whole life. He’d killed men in skirmishes with revolting kingdoms when he was younger, before his accident, but this was different. On a battlefield, it was chaos and madness and the men he butchered were just as set on butchering him right back.
When they had caught Amira, she was an assassin who had tried to kill Dain. But even then, Thadred hadn’t wanted to mutilate her.
This cold, calculated torture was something else. Something less than human.
“Now.” The older Kadra’han leaned over Sair. “You will tell me how to follow them into the Cursewood.”
Sair shook her head, but less resolutely this time, bowing between her arms.
The Kadra’han reached out and snapped back her left thumb. It made a popping, cracking sound that split the air right before Sair’s next scream.
She cowered and whimpered, unable to move without yanking against the knives in her hands.
“Stop!” Thadred shouted.
They ignored him.
“How do we track someone in the Cursewood?” the Kadra’han demanded. “Only sorceresses have been able to pass through unscathed. How?”
Sair stayed bowed on the ground, her breath coming in heaves.
The Kadra’han snapped back another finger, Thadred couldn’t see which one.
Sair screamed again, and Thadred twisted against the ropes on his wrists.
It made no sense. She was a sorceress who had taken him prisoner. She’d ambushed him and used him to set a trap for Dain and Amira, not to mention she’d dragged him through gods knew how many miles of rainy, wet, and cold forest. And she also wanted to kill Dain.
Despite all that, Thadred found he didn’t hate her as much as he had thought he did. Or if he did hate her, it still wasn’t enough for him to enjoy her pain.
“You...” Sair panted, her hair worked free of her braid and fell around her face in stray wisps. “You can’t find your way through.”
“I know,” the Kadra’han said. “Hence my questions. How do we track someone in the Cursewood?”
Sair shook her head.
The Kadra’han snapped another of her fingers in response.
Sair screamed again, but her scream sounded more ragged this time, more broken. Sobs of pain shook her shoulders.
Thadred hadn’t seen anything this awful since Amira had thrown herself into her own curse.
The Kadra’han snapped a fourth finger and Sair jerked back on impulse. There came a wet ripping sound and another scream and Thadred realized she’d torn the tendons in her hands.
“Sair!” Thadred’s voice came out choked and desperate, at least to him. “Just tell them!”
Thadred was certain that Amira and Dain had a plan to deal with the imperial Kadra’han. If he knew them at all, he didn’t doubt it. He strongly suspected that plan involved having the imperials chase them into the Cursewood. Sair could tell these men whatever she wanted—Dain and Amira were no doubt expecting them. But Thadred couldn’t tell Sair that part with the Kadra’han listening.
To Thadred’s relief, she started speaking.
“The Cursewood is alive,” Sair sputtered, her voice cracked and hoarse. “You can no more map it than you can map the waves.”
“Speak plainly.” The Kadra’han crouched in front of her. “What do you mean you can’t map it?”
“It changes,” Sair said, her whole body shuddering. “It moves.”
“Yes. So how do you and your sisters find your way through?”
“You can’t search the Cursewood,” Sair said, her voice rising to a shrill pitch. “It turns and twists on itself. Within its boundaries, you can only find somewhere you have already been.”
“If we can find places we know, why not people?”
Sair panted, not speaking.
“Well, they’ll be looking for the Haven, won’t they?” the older Kadra’han purred. “The princess has been there. That’s probably where they’re headed. Somewhere you can take us,” the Kadra’han added.
Sair shook her head violently. “The princess has never been to the Haven. She—”
Another finger snapped.
“She was talking!” Thadred shouted. “You didn’t have to do that!”
The Kadra’han kept his back to Thadred, chuckling as he knelt before Sair. “You’ve charmed that one quite well. You Istovari women have a knack for ensnaring Erymayan nobles.”
Thadred twisted against his ropes, jaw locked tight.
“I won’t take you to my home,” Sair said, her voice ragged. “Do what you want to me, but I won’t show you the way.”
“Fain,” Iasu said to the senior Kadra’han. That must be his name. The smaller man stepped up before the commander could snap another of Sair’s fingers.
Thadred had lost count of how many fingers Fain had broken. How many did the sorceress even have left?
Fain whipped on Iasu. “Zhan.” It sounded like a challenge as he spoke the other man’s last name. It sounded like it had more meaning than Thadred was catching on.
Iasu was the shorter of the two by a full head, but he met the larger, higher ranking man’s eyes without flinching. He was uncannily confident, almost to the point of arrogance—like a cat facing down mastiffs.
“Perhaps we don’t need her cooperation to find the Haven,” he suggested.
“Meaning?”
“I’ve studied the mechanics of these spells the sorceresses favor,” Iasu said. “They’re spells of marking, not intent.”
Sair kept her head bowed.
None of those words meant anything to Thadred, but the other Kadra’han seemed curious.
“Marking?”
“They recognize familiar souls,” Iasu expounded.
“I know what a marking spell is,” Fain said tightly.
The smaller man shrugged. “It is possible we might be able to find the archduke no matter where he is. So long as the right person is looking.” He glanced to Thadred at that last sentence. “It depends on who we put in the lead.”
Fain turned to the Kadra’han behind Sair, the one who had held her hands down for Fain to stab. “Kill her,” he ordered.
“We could still have use for her,” Iasu said shortly, words rushing out as the other Kadra’han drew a large knife from his belt. “If we do need to reach the Haven after all, she will be best suited to the task. A spell of marking is...complicated.”
Sair’s head snapped up at that. It was slight motion, but it was enough that even Thadred saw she was genuinely afraid.
Some primal, deep-seated fear in Thadred’s chest warned him to flee, told him that this was wrong, that the Cursewood was the last place they should be.
It made no difference. He was helpless as they dragged him aboard his mule again and slung Sair up on one beside him. They tied her to the saddle and her wounded hands dripped blood on the mule’s neck and shoulders, leaving a sticky red film. Her mule was led by the third Kadra’han who the others called Venner.
She wept quietly, head down.
“We’ll be fine,” Thadred said awkwardly as his own hands were lashed to the pommel of his saddle.
Iasu rolled his eyes at those words and the other Kadra’han, the one who had held Sair down, laughed.
Thadred decided then that he was going to kill them all, he just didn’t know how. “It’s alright, Sair,” he promised softly.
She took an extra moment to respond and Thadred realized that was the first time he’d used her shortened name out loud. “How can you say that?” Sair whimpered. She lifted her tear-streaked face to his. “They’ll kill me if I’m lucky.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Thadred snapped, thinking of Dain’s suicide attempt. “There’s always hope. So long as you’re alive, there’s hope.”
Sair didn’t respond, but her hollow, embittered stare told him enough.
As a young boy, Thadred had been sent to deal with insurrections within the empire. They were quick, usually lasting only as long as it took to mount a few heads on pikes and torch a village.
Once, they’d found a rebel instigator, or at least, a man accused of being one. They’d drawn him in the town square, pulled him apart between four mules until his pelvis shattered and his legs ripped off. His screams had echoed in Thadred’s dreams for months.
When they returned to the castle of the local baron with the news that the revolt was quelled, Thadred had done his part as a squire. He’d helped care for the horses and the armor. He’d scrubbed tabards and rolled chainmail in sand to get the blood out.
That night, the local baron had been grateful that order was restored to his fief and had provided all the men with beer, wine, ale, and prostitutes as reward for a good day’s work.
Thadred had gotten good and truly drunk for the first time in his life. He didn’t remember much of that night now. It was hazy and distant, like a fever dream.
After, he listened to the other soldiers laugh about how the revolt leader had screamed as he’d died. Thadred had laughed with them until a prostitute had taken him under one of the wagons, he wasn’t sure why. Had he asked her? Had someone else paid her?
Thadred recalled only a single image, but he remembered it with vivid clarity—her on top of him with light from the torches outlining her naked shoulders, dark hair falling around her face and tears streaming down her cheeks. Even years later, he couldn’t forget that image.
“You’re just a boy,” she’d said, and the tears had come faster. “Just a boy.”
Sometimes, he still saw her and heard her, and he hated it. More than a decade and dozens of women later, but he couldn’t forget his first one or that she’d cried through their whole coupling.
Sair reminded him of that woman. She was a world away and at least a decade younger, but something reminded him of that prostitute. Something in the way she looked at him half with pity and half with accusation.
The Kadra’han saddled up, gathering their own horses. The archer took the lead, trotting his animal ahead a few paces.
The leader, Fain, led Thadred’s mule with Venner riding beside him. Iasu brought up the rear.
“How far is the border of the Cursewood?” Fain asked the archer.
“About three miles, sir,” the archer answered. It was as close to a title as Thadred had heard any of them use. Though they operated with military precision and there seemed to be some sort of rank, there was a kind of informality to their interaction that struck him as...off.
They rode toward the forest and the feeling of dread increased. Thadred couldn’t tell if the sensation was coming from inside or if it was pressing down from the outside.
The minutes ticked by and Thadred noticed a silence descend. An odd emptiness.
“The birds have stopped singing,” he muttered. He usually took that as a sign a storm was coming, but there were no hints beyond the grey curtain overhead.
Sair shifted on her mule. Her bleeding hands had given her dress a bloody apron, soaking the front of her skirt and dribbling down to stain the saddle, too. It was a reminder that she still had the worst of this situation.
The cuff the Kadra’han had placed on her wrist lay stark against her pale skin. Thadred’s ring had been coated in a thin layer of gold, but this was a dull grey-black. Tenebrous steel was primarily iron and silver, and the outside of the cuff had eroded somewhat.
It looked like a garish mockery of a bracelet, like a cursed form of a woman’s jewelry.
Thadred didn’t notice the changes to their surroundings at first. He just looked up at one point and realized that the trees were darker, the air a bit thicker. He squirmed in his saddle, trying to shift the pressure off his hip.
He tried to remember that Sair had abducted him and threatened to kill Dain and hurt Amira, but that did nothing to lessen his guilt at her pain or her silent tears. She thought she was doing the right thing. And she had a child, for gods’ sakes.
“What’s your son’s name?” Thadred asked quietly. He was fairly sure that the Kadra’han could overhear, but they already knew she had a kid. What harm was there in it?
Thadred didn’t think she’d answer for a long moment, but then she did, in a tight, strained voice.
“Rhisiart. After his father.”
Thadred nodded. “It’s a nice name.”
He wanted to ask where her son’s father was. Was the man somewhere safe and doing nothing while his presumable wife was at the mercy of Kadra’han? It made Thadred angry to consider the possibility. Perhaps Sair had been abandoned the way Thadred’s mother had been. Thadred found himself getting even angrier at this stranger—either way, the man had left her—but reminded himself he had greater concerns at the moment.
Sair was quiet for a long time, suffering in silence. “If they take us to the Haven, they’ll kill the mothers,” she said. “I can’t let them.”
Thadred didn’t particularly care for the Istovari sorceresses, just from what he had seen. These were the same women who had cursed Dain and tried to kill Amira and were apparently still trying to do both. He didn’t have much sympathy.
“We’ll just have to see what happens, won’t we?” He smiled, though she didn’t look up to see it. “Who knows? From what I’ve heard, the Cursewood might kill us all before we get to them.”
Fain twisted in his saddle, shooting them both a warning glance.
Thadred grinned back. While he didn’t particularly want to die, if it meant taking that man with him, he might consider it breaking it even.
The other Kadra’han glared a warning and turned back to the front. Thadred kept right on grinning until a wall of nausea and a sickening sense of wrongness slammed into him like a noxious cloud.
All around them, the trees became darker, more twisted. Black vines of obsidian wreathed them in a prison of thorns. The silence around them seemed to thicken and congeal, almost becoming a heavy, tangible weight.
Thadred didn’t need anyone to tell him.
They had entered the Cursewood.
“Move, Myrani,” Fain ordered. He untied his lead rope from Thadred’s mule and then untied Thadred’s hands from the saddle, but left Thadred’s hands tied together. “Take the lead.”
“What direction?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just move.”
“I haven’t been to the Haven, you know.”
Fain lashed the end of his reins at Thadred’s mule.
Grumbling, Thadred took the lead. If that was how it was going to be, that was how it was going to be.
Thadred’s mule shuffled to the front. “I’m bait now?”
Fain lashed the back of his mule again, making the animal take a jolting leap forward that jarred Thadred’s hip.
Cursing, he steered his mule between two trees and nudged it onward. “Bastards,” he muttered. “Whoresons.”
If Fain overheard Thadred’s curses, he didn’t seem to care. The knight kept on, moving his mule at a steady pace.
“Just where do you think I’ll lead you?”
“Keep talking and I’ll whip you instead of your mule,” Fain threatened.
Thadred didn’t want to test him so fell silent.
They plodded on into the forest. The Kadra’han didn’t speak. Sair remained quiet aboard her mule.
Several times, Thadred checked over his shoulder to be sure she was still alive. She slumped over the front of her mule’s neck, her hands held protectively against her stomach.
Thadred wracked his brain. What do I do now?
Even if he and Sair were able to run, they wouldn’t get far. This forest pressed around them in a tangle of overgrown plants, a spiral of blackbriars and thorns of obsidian. It was like a living net.
Onward they rode as the day wore on. At least, he thought it wore on. Time seemed to have lost meaning and the eternally overcast sky gave little hint as to where the sun was.
Could one even see the sun from within this forest? Thadred doubted it. Sunlight was cleansing, purifying. He couldn’t imagine that something like that would be allowed to touch the sprawling infection that was the Cursewood.
The Kadra’han urged him on, not letting him stop. They didn’t seem to care which way he turned so long as he led. Thadred had his mule meander through the trees and across a brook that bubbled with water dark as ink. Frogs scurried out of their path, most of them with deformed, stunted extra limbs dangling off their sides and backs. He caught sight of one with a second, shriveled head and looked away cringing.
Something cracked and squelched under his mule’s hooves, and he looked down to realize his mule was walking on frogs, hundreds of them along the bank of the stream. He shuddered as small bones crunched. Didn’t the things know to move out of the way?
He urged his mule on faster, but still heard the crunching of frog bodies beneath the hooves of the other horses.
“Dear gods,” he muttered, fighting the urge to vomit.
“It’s just frogs,” Fain clipped. “Keep moving.”
Thadred glared straight ahead, thinking it might be unwise to glare directly at Fain. The man wasn’t human. At least, whatever parts of him had been human had been whittled away long ago.
They passed out of the frog patch and Thadred kept pressing his mule along a narrow tract between the oak trees. At least, he thought they were oak trees. It was hard to tell for certain with the blackbriars wrapped around them in a stranglehold.
This whole place was a claustrophobic nightmare of tight spaces, low branches, and obsidian blackbriars in every direction. Some of the smaller blackbriar vines squished under the mule’s hooves, others cracked. The larger ones clacked against the mule’s hooves and the animal slipped on them.
They were solid stone.
“It’s unnatural,” Thadred muttered to himself yet again. Everything about this place was off.
Thadred kept his mule moving. The animal’s ears twitched though there were no flies or any other insects that Thadred could see. They rode on in their column single file, Thadred still at the head.
“Fain.” It was Iasu’s voice that broke more than an hour of silence.
Thadred looked back at the same time Fain did to see the smaller Kadra’han pointing to the base of the trees.
“Horses,” Iasu said. “Fresh.”
Thadred didn’t see what Iasu was pointing to, but the older Kadra’han nodded.
“Within the past few hours,” Fain said. “We must be close.” He looked back to Thadred. “Keep leading the way.”
Thadred hesitated for an instant. Something was wrong. He couldn’t quite put it to words, but something was terribly and deeply wrong.
He stole a glance to Sair. The sorceress was pale, her hair stuck to her in lose strands. She had a haggard, defeated set to her face and she gave him a slight shake of her head as their eyes made contact.
What did that mean? What did any of this mean?
He didn’t know and he had the feeling he was being led into a trap. Or perhaps help to set one.
But at the moment, he had no other choices. Thadred kicked his mule onward and began silently praying to every god and spirit he knew.
Thadred moved his mule as slowly as he possibly could without catching the attention of Fain. Sometimes, Fain noticed and whipped his mule from behind to drive the animal.
Soon, the mule learned and wouldn’t allow Fain’s horse within an arm’s length.
What were they doing? Did this have something to do with magic? Iasu had implied there were ways to use Thadred to find Amira and Dain, but how? Did they expect him to just stumble upon the couple?
From the corner of his eye, he caught movement. For just an instant, he could have sworn he saw a horse or the flash of one from within the trees.
He looked away and didn’t dare mention it. He could only hope that Dain and Amira were the ones trailing them.
Thadred tried to take the Kadra’han in circles, just to see if they would stop him, but he never spotted a part of the forest he recognized. No matter how much he tried to circle, the forest kept changing and reshaping around them.
“What is this place?” he muttered to himself. It was entropy and madness, a swirling vortex of insanity.
Again, he thought he glimpsed a horse out of the corner of his eye. That was the third time in less than an hour. He turned his head straight in front of him and fought not to give anything away.
Up ahead, a line of thick blackbriars rimmed either side of a narrow tract that was probably a stream during the wetter months.
It was tight and would force them to ride single file. Taking a deep breath, Thadred led their small group down the tract. He was a little surprised when the Kadra’han didn’t stop him.
He continued, heart pounding in his chest. “Come on,” he whispered to himself.
The Kadra’han were single file, spread out. It wouldn’t get any better than this.
“Fain,” Iasu said in a warning tone.
Thadred’s heart rate spiked. Were they on to him?
“I see them,” Fain retorted. “Lars, be ready with your bow.”
Thadred bit his lip. They had been spotted. “Stay back!” he shouted to the trees, not caring if he took an arrow to the back for it. “They have an archer!”
“You think a warning will stop them from coming for you?” Fain sneered. Unfortunately, he was right. “It worked,” Fain chuckled. “The magic worked.”
Thadred glanced at the older Kadra’han over his shoulder, then back to the forest. “Stay back!” he repeated, not even sure if Amira and Dain were there.
“You can’t manipulate the magic of this place.” Sair’s voice was dour, heavy, bearing the warning of doom.
“We just did,” shot back Venner, the Kadra’han leading her mule.
“No,” she said softly. “You didn’t.”
Fain turned in his saddle. He pointed to Iasu and the archer and made several waving motions with his hands.
Thadred caught movement from the trees. He looked up and froze. Thadred’s gasp of horror caught in his throat. Half of him wanted to shout to the others and half of him didn’t believe what he was seeing.
A horse’s head poked out from around a thick copse of brambles. The horse was on the small side, perhaps no taller than Thadred’s shoulder. Its coat was of the darkest black, so dark that Thadred mistook it for part of the blackbriar brambles at first glance. The horse shifted, revealing a mane tangled with thorns and vines, dripping with dirty water. Eyes as large and white as eggs blinked at him with elliptical slits.
His mule spotted it an instant later. The animal’s whole body went stiff and it jolted sideways.
The black charged straight for Thadred’s mule. It tore out of the brambles and slammed into the mule’s shoulder.
Next thing Thadred knew, he was thrown from the saddle. His whole world jarred from the impact and a rock crushed into his lower back.
Without thinking, he rolled to escape the torrent of stomping hooves overhead.
The mule screamed and Thadred stared in disbelief as the black stallion chomped down on the back of the mule’s neck. Elongated fangs like those of a wolf clamped near the base of the mule’s skull and snapped.
Flesh tore and blood sprayed, and the mule’s legs buckled. The stallion kept tearing at the other animal, snorting and squealing and stomping his rage.
It all happened in barely the blink of an eye. The Kadra’han were shouting, but the archer was at the back of their column and there wasn’t enough room for him to loose his arrows without the risk of hitting his brethren.
The stallion tore at the neck of the mule until all that was left was a strip of flesh holding the animal’s head on. Finally, the stallion seemed satisfied that the mule was dead.
“Kelpie!” Sair screamed.
Fain was shouting, but his words were drowned out by the screaming of the horses and Sair’s mule.
Thadred crawled away, wiggling under a large blackbriar vine with thorns that jutted out like knives.
The stallion—the kelpie—spun on Thadred and kicked at the blackbriar thorns, squealing in frustration as the knight scrambled out of reach.
Several of the obsidian thorns snapped off and the stallion lunged, trying to reach between them to grab Thadred’s ankle. Teeth snapped at him and Thadred kicked at it with his good leg best he could, but the creature was faster.
Teeth clamped around his boot, locking around the leather so hard that for one instant, he was sure the creature’s jaws would shatter his entire ankle.
Then the kelpie let go and whirled around.
Fain had drawn the sword at his hip and charged the animal, but the kelpie was unimpressed. The stocky black aberration charged right back.
Fain’s horse, as well-trained as it might have been, panicked. The animal reared back, dumping Fain to the ground just as the kelpie smashed into Fain’s horse.
Something snapped with a wet crack that make the air jolt. A horse screamed and Fain bellowed. The other Kadra’han shouted.
Sair let off a cry.
Thadred scrambled back farther into the thicket, wincing as thorns pricked his face, neck, arms, and hands.
He clawed his way through as fast as he dared while the screams behind him grew louder. He stopped only long enough to wrench the ropes off his wrists.
Thadred cursed, coming out the other side of the thicket. He crawled to his feet, limping as fast as he could. Adrenaline spiked through his veins, numbing him to the scratches and bruises from his fall and the usual pain in his hip.
He doubled back, pacing the line of thickets.
“Stupid,” he muttered to himself. “Stupid.” He’d thought that Dain and Amira were the only ones with horses in this Cursewood. Clearly, he had been wrong.
Staggering, he forced his way through the brambles toward the loudest screaming. Blood poured down his face along with sweat, stinging his eyes and rendering him half blind.
He burst back onto the narrow path to find Fain on the ground as his horse squealed and the archer held an arrow nocked in his bow, straining for a shot. The black stallion still tore at the neck and shoulder of Fain’s horse, spewing blood in every direction.
This horse was putting up more of a fight, rearing back, pawing, and kicking at the kelpie, but that only meant more blood, more flying hooves, and less chance for the archer to get a clear shot.
“Sair!” Thadred risked shouting her name. “Sairydwen!”
He stumbled back through the brambles and found her on the ground with her hands still tied.
She crawled to her feet, her dress hiked around her thighs as she struggled to stand. “Thadred?”
The Kadra’han archer made eye contact with them for just a moment. The archer nocked an arrow and his whole body shifted in their direction.
Thadred had one stunning moment of clarity as he realized he was about to die.
Then Fain’s horse slammed back into Venner’s horse, making the archer’s horse jerk back to avoid being struck.
The archer’s shot went wide, darting away into the thicket.
Thadred grabbed Sair and hauled her backwards. She tumbled into him without question and the two of them staggered into the brambles. The screaming and shouting and the squeals of dying horses chased them as they fled.
Sair stumbled along beside him, keeping pace, though that wasn’t too impressive. He was a crippled man, after all.
They ran through the poisonous forest, stumbling and staggering as fast as they could while the Kadra’han and their horses screamed at their backs.
“The river,” Sair gasped, skidding to a stop. “We need to get to the river.”
Her hands were still bound in front of her, but she gestured wildly.
“Where is it?” Thadred demanded, his breath coming in heaves. He spun to face her, flinging his arms wide. “Directions, woman.”
“If there’s a kelpie, there must be a river close by.”
“That’s not helpful!” Thadred snapped.
“I don’t—”
Thadred grabbed her arm and hauled her in the direction that the ground seemed to slope downhill. Water ran downhill, so it followed the riverbed would be that way.
They ran onward as fast as their three good legs could carry them. Behind them, the screams and shouts of the Kadra’han continued. Thadred kept moving, just moving.
They might not be headed in the right direction. In this Cursewood, no one could find anything that they didn’t already know. The two of them might—
The trees stopped and the ground gave way beneath them.
“Shit!” Thadred scrambled to a stop as his feet skidded on gravel. Pebbles rained over the edge of the gorge, not even visible by the time they splashed into the water below. He grabbed a sapling for balance and it gave way. The small tree jerked loose and careened toward the river, taking Thadred with it.
Sair reached for him, and he caught her forearm. She tried to pull him back, but he was too heavy, and they landed in a heap at the edge of the gorge. A few more inches and they both would have been plummeting to an early death.
Panting, Thadred looked down. He could just make out the rushing current of a river. The water was a brackish grey.
“Why didn’t I hear it?” Thadred panted, glancing in all directions. The gorge ran as far as he could see in both directions, disappearing into the tangle of the blackbriars.
“This is the Cursewood,” Sair said, panting. “Distance means nothing.”
The wounds on her hands had ripped open again. Blood dripped on to her dress.
Behind them, the screams of the Kadra’han and the horses had faded. Thadred didn’t understand if that meant their captors were all dead or if the Cursewood had shifted, leaving them miles apart.
“Can that horse chase us?” he panted, feet still dangling off the edge. “It will get lost in the woods, right?”
He felt Sair shake her head near his ear. “The kelpie is king of the Cursewood. He can traverse these forests better than anyone.”
Thadred let loose a string of words he hadn’t used in front of women before. Leaning on a more solid sapling for support, he stood. “We need to move then.” Looking back, he realized that Sair’s hands were still tied. “Here.” He reached for her wrists.
Sair looked away as he fought with the knots. With her hands still wounded, they hadn’t been concerned with her untying them herself. Thadred worked the knots loose easily enough. He almost tossed the rope away, but it was their only tool in this wilderness—five feet of sturdy twine. It was better than nothing, but not by much. Thadred coiled the rope and stuffed it into his belt.
“Let’s move,” he said. Pointing, he nudged Sair onward. “See that ledge along the river there? It’s not much, but it will be too narrow for that horse.”
“He can swim,” Sair said.
Thadred thought back to the pond plants that had been tangled in the animal’s mane and grimaced. “Alright, then. But we should at least be able to take shelter there for a bit.”
He headed off toward the narrow ledge, limping again.
As the initial spike of adrenaline wore off, aches and pains rattled through Thadred’s body. He wondered if this was what it felt like to be old—never able to bend a joint or flex a muscle without some part of you aching in protest. He was too young to feel this old.
Sair stayed close behind him as he limped along the edge of the river. “Why did you do it?” she asked, voice down.
Thadred glanced back. “Do what?”
Sair jerked her chin in the direction they had come from. “Why did you go back for me?”
Thadred shrugged and a cut on his shoulder stung at that. When had he cut his shoulder? “It seemed like the thing to do at the time.” He used another tree for balance as he limped on. “Besides, you’re the only one who can get us to the Haven. Which seems to be our only hope at this point.”
“That was wise of you,” Sair replied in a neutral tone.
Thadred laughed at that, it wasn’t something he got called very often. Thadred reached the cusp of the narrow ledge and braced both hands on the solid ground before carefully sliding one foot down. He tested the stones for a moment, then motioned for Sair to follow. “This way. Come on.”
