Prologue

Twelve years ago

The people of Byroden rarely ever left their town. Travelers who passed through on their way to glory, riches, or certain death in the Rifenmist were welcomed with warmth and sent on their way with good wishes, but seldom was their example followed. Most people who made their home in Byroden didn’t feel the call of curiosity or the need to traverse untrodden paths. They carved out their lives between the Gladepools to the north and the endless plains and rolling hills to the south, and they were happy. They caught fish in the pools and worked the land of their ancestors, while their homes and hearts held the history of the town: from the notches in the walls that showed generations of children growing taller, to the stories told around the hearth with mirth and merriment, to the small but tenderly cared for cemetery at the edge of town. Life in Byroden followed the cycles of nature and life.

On rare occasions, younger townsfolk who were cursed with wandering feet did leave to find their fortune in the cities. To far-off Emon, to take to the Ozmit Sea or to study at the city’s temples or academies. To Kymal, if their desires were of a more questionable nature. But those wanderers were few and far between, and more often than not, eventually, they returned.

It was a simple life and, according to the adults who lived there, it was a good life.

But the children of Byroden played at adventure. They ran after travelers until they couldn’t keep up with the horses anymore. They used sticks for swords and staffs and reenacted every bedtime story ever told to them. They pretended the ore being extracted from the mines outside of town was not simply metal but pure magic, far stronger than that of Mistress Fara, the gnomish healer, or that of Old Wenric, the musty halfling owner of Byroden’s Bliss, the local tavern with its single guest room that thrived on foolhardy wanderers. They saw mystery and wonder in every corner of their hometown.

And whenever a traveler passed through Byroden, word among the children spread like wildfire. Regardless of chores, lessons, or bedtime, they immediately gathered to see what was happening.

So on that day, when a well-dressed elven man with long dark-brown hair and heavy bracelets around his wrists rode through the town with the setting sun at his back, glancing curiously at the houses around him, Feena was the first to see him. She dumped the oats she was carrying into the goats’ trough and looked around until she spotted Tym, working in his parents’ hayloft. She curled her fingers around the copper wire flower hanging from her necklace, pointed in Tym’s direction, and let him know they needed to gather. Tym shouted down to alert his younger brother. His younger brother raced across the street to collect the farrier’s daughter, and the farrier’s daughter threw a crumpled note through the open window of the butcher’s attic, where his eldest son sat practicing his letters. So the word rushed through town, weaving through muddy streets, echoing from one person to the next.

Until it reached a pair of wayward half-elven twins, who’d escaped their mother’s notice and had spent the afternoon tracking near the Gladepools. They both had dark-brown hair, fine features, and simple but well-made clothes. They were not yet ten and were convinced they were invincible. Two days ago, the boy had overheard Old Wenric mutter about a boggle—a mischievous creature—near the pools, and so he’d talked his sister into tracking down the creature and capturing it. After all, a trophy like that was sure to impress the other children, and perhaps they could even entice the boggle to play some act of mischief on Padric, the town’s grumpiest farmer.

But despite the boy’s quiet feet and the girl’s piercingly keen eyes, they’d run around in circles for hours feeling for all the world like they were the ones on the wrong side of the creature’s mischief now.

With dusk settling in, the boy kept glancing around at the rustling undergrowth, shivering at the yawning wind around them. Although he and his sister were alike in many ways, he appeared far less at ease amidst the trees and their lengthening shadows, and while he had been the one to bring up the boggle, that was miles on muddy ground ago.

“Are you sure it exists?” asked the girl. She wore her long hair bound back in a braid, and she absentmindedly tugged at the leather cord that held it in place, causing a few strands to slip out. With her feet planted firmly on the marshy soil, she looked at ease. She looked like she belonged here.

“I’m sure I heard Wenric talk about it,” the boy replied, sullenly but unable to back down. The boggle and the opportunity to play pranks still outweighed his discomfort, even if they did so barely.

“Fine.” The girl rolled her eyes. “We’ll keep looking.”

She pushed a stray strand of hair out of her face and crouched down in a narrow clearing, where she thought she’d last seen the boggle’s tracks. The ground here was uneven, with gnarly tree roots digging through the earth like fingers clawing for purchase, and a dusting of leaves everywhere. A nearby twig had broken off at an odd angle. Something had disturbed the dirt underneath.

After a moment, the girl reached out and traced her fingers over the nearest root, leaving a thin oily coat of ooze on her fingertips. She smelled at it and grinned—the boy gagged—when a branch snapped. Then another. The leaves around them rustled and heavy footsteps came their way.

The girl lurched to her feet, while the boy grabbed the small knife he’d stolen from the kitchen that morning.

“Vex! Vax!” A third person stumbled into the clearing. Neither boggle nor marshland creature, it was the baker’s oldest boy, Duncan. With his bigger-than-most halfling stature, he made enough noise to scare every animal and creature in the vicinity away from them. Duncan came to a halt in front of the twins, putting his hands on his knees and trying to catch his breath.

“Visitor,” he breathed. “Come quick.”

The boy called Vax tilted his head, the boggle already half forgotten by the promise of mysteries back home. “Someone interesting?”

“You scared away everything around us,” the girl called Vex snapped, folding her arms and accidentally smearing some of the ooze on her light-blue sleeves. “I had a trail! I was close to finding that boggle.”

“Were not,” her brother immediately shot back.

“Were too.”

Duncan straightened but still sounded winded. “An elven man,” he said. “Looks like royalty or something, all fancy robes and sparkling bracelets and his nose in the air. He was on his way to Old Wenric’s when I ran out here.”

“What does someone like that want in Byroden?” Vex demanded crossly.

Vax put the knife back in his belt. “I don’t know, but we’re going to find out.” He reached out, brushed the ooze off his sister’s shirt, and offered her a crooked smile. “Unless you want to keep walking in circles.”

“We weren’t walking in circles. I know these woods.” She slapped his hands away.

Vax shrugged. The knowledge that they’d soon be out of here made it easier to be nonchalant. “I’ve seen this tree at least three times, so unless it up and moved we were.”

“Next time, you can track if you’re so clever.”

Duncan cleared his throat. “Are you coming or are you going to argue all day?”

“We’re coming,” Vax said, while at the exact same time his sister snapped, “Both.”

“I didn’t see any weapons or supplies on him,” Duncan said—entirely too used to the twins’ bickering and far too preoccupied by the stranger. “He looked like he dressed for market day and not for survival.”

“Maybe he knows magic?” Vex suggested, despite herself. The travelers who passed through Byroden to the Rifenmist usually fit the same pattern. Armed to the teeth, a peculiar kind of restlessness, and more supplies than sense. No one entered the Rifenmist without preparation.

“If he does, he must be very powerful,” Duncan said. “He wasn’t in a hurry either. It looked like he was trying to find something here, and I want to get back before he finds it.”

With that, he set a firm pace out of the shadowy marshlands, having fulfilled his duty as a friend to warn the twins of the strange goings-on in town but not wanting to risk missing another moment of this break in the daily monotony. And perhaps—not wanting to linger too long amidst the trees’ shadows and the whispers of a boggle nearby. The twins might see the creature’s presence as a challenge, but the baker’s son preferred life to be calmer and slightly less complicated.

Still, the oddity of the traveler was quite enough to lure both twins away from their quarry. Vex cast a lingering glance at the clawing roots where she’d been inspecting the curious ooze, then shrugged and turned to her brother. She knew, with all the confidence of a nearly-ten-year-old, that the boggle was out there, hidden in the darkened corners, laughing at the two of them. She also knew, with that very same confidence, that there would be other days. She wouldn’t have wandering feet, like the adults sometimes grumbled about. As long as she could play at adventures with her friends, get into mischief with her brother, and at the end of the day go home to her mother, she was content here. She was happy, and nothing could ever change that.

So while dusk covered the marshland like a blanket, she let the tracks be the tracks, grabbed her brother by the hand, and charged after their friend. And somewhere in the shadows, a small creature laughed.

ALL THE CHILDREN OF BYRODEN had gathered in the stables of Byroden’s Bliss, where most of the stalls had been converted to storage. Just as there was only one guest room in the inn, there also was only one hay-covered corner for a horse left, and the traveler’s blue roan stood comfortably chewing her hay.

There had been more, once. Bliss used to have three guest rooms and enough space to keep at least half a dozen horses. Until some fifteen years ago, when Old Wenric’s father broke his shoulder while working his land, decided to stay with his son for a few days, and simply never left. Three years later, a cousin from far-off Drynna showed up at Wenric’s doorstep, her infant daughter in tow. She refused to share what brought them here, but she begged for a few nights’ rest. She, too, never left. Old Wenric grumbled it was for the better, when anyone asked him. Those few and far-between travelers foolish enough to brave the Rifenmist could brave a night together in a single room too, and with no children of his own to follow in his footsteps, his cousin’s daughter became his apprentice.

Iselle was fourteen now. Quite too old—according to her uncle—to spend her time playing, but fortunately she was clever enough to know better. She left the shutters open so the other children could spy more easily.

And the strange traveler was still there, illuminated by the soft glow of half a dozen candles. He sat on one of the raggedy wooden chairs, his back ramrod-straight and discomfort written clear across his face. With one hand he held on to a cup of some hot drink or other. No one had seen him take a sip yet.

By the time the twins clambered into the stable, the whispered theories were flying back and forth. The traveler was in fact a powerful mage, on a quest so secretive he could not speak to anyone about it—or speak to anyone at all. He was a nobleman in disguise, or a traveler from places so distant they might as well be imagined, like Westruun or Stilben or the cities beyond the Ozmit Sea.

Vex climbed onto a bale of hay next to Feena so she would have a better viewpoint of what happened inside, but Vax stayed in the shadows near the entrance to the stable. He leaned against the wall. He wasn’t sure what held him back. Perhaps it was a lingering discomfort from the boggle hunt, perhaps it was the all-too-familiar way in which the traveler arched his eyebrows, but he could see fine from here. Some days, he was far more comfortable being hidden.

It was this angle that allowed him to see the traveler’s face when the door to the inn opened and the last light of dusk filtered in. Briefly, the man’s discomfort melted and made place for a sense of wonder. The lines around his eyes softened, and his shoulders dropped. But it was only a moment and then it was gone, the man’s aloofness firmly back in place. He got to his feet and bowed slightly to a person just out of their collective line of sight, and while they were all too distant to overhear him, the gesture sparked another round of whispers.

Vax stole a glance at his sister, who had pulled her knees up to her chest and was biting at her lip. Her eyes flicked in his direction, as always acutely aware of his watching her, but she didn’t move. Not until the other person stepped into the candlelight, and Vex gasped.

The person on the other side was a slender human woman with thick dark hair, kind eyes, and gentle hands. Byroden’s seamstress, Elaina. The twins’ mother. She held herself proudly, her face a mixture of concern and defiance.

But before either of them could do or say anything—though Vax had no idea what to expect, exactly—the grizzled face of Old Wenric swam into vision. He leaned out the window, glared at his dumbstruck audience, and pulled the shutters closed.

Immediately the twins were covered under a barrage of questions.

“Did you see that? Why would your mother meet with a traveler like him?” Tym demanded.

“That’s obvious, isn’t it?” Feena shoved him with her foot and immediately turned to Vex. “Do you think he’s family? Do you think he’s your father?”

“He looks so rich. Did you see his jewelry? He has more gold and gems than the whole town put together,” Duncan put in.

From there the suggestions continued:

“Maybe you’re elven royalty.”

“Maybe you were hidden away here to protect you from a curse or enemies or …”

“Maybe he’s coming to bring you home.” A short pause from Feena, and then she continued, “Wouldn’t that be something?”

They all said it like it was a good thing, and Vax felt the air constrict around him. Like his sister, he only played at adventure. Of course he was curious, some days, at what lay beyond the Gladepools. He loved to hear the stories travelers told and the trinkets they brought from distant places. And some nights, he dreamed of being a hero with all the ferocity of a nine-year-old boy. But he always dreamed of coming home here. He didn’t want to be anywhere else.

Before anyone else could suggest they were better off somewhere else, he snapped, “We’re good here, the three of us. This is home.”

He pushed himself away from the wall and stalked out into the courtyard past the inn, where dusk deepened to night, and a lone owl took to the sky. On warm summer nights, when the days were long and the harvest plenty, the townsfolk would gather here to tell tall tales around a campfire, to drink and dance. But on days like these, when the weather was turning and change was in the air, the place felt lonely and cold and far too big for his boots.

Mere moments passed before another set of footsteps echoed against the walls, and Vex quietly came to stand next to her brother. Her eyes showed the same confusion and worry and fear.

“It’s not real, is it?” she asked softly. “Vax?”

Vax set his jaw, though his hands clenched. Neither of them actually knew much about their father, but they’d never needed to know. They had a family. They had a home. “No. It can’t be.”

“He won’t take us away, will he?”

“Of course not. He can’t.” His lips trembled. “This is where we belong. Don’t you know what Mistress Fara always says? The people of Byroden might as well have roots for feet, because no one truly leaves.”

She offered him a weak smile. She slipped her hand in his, and she noticed his fingers were far colder than the night air warranted, so she pulled him closer until she realized they were both shivering. “And whatever happens”—the girl whispered the words fiercely, because they both needed to hear them—“we’ll always be together. Right?”

The boy didn’t have to think about that. He swallowed past the tremor in his voice and believed the words hard enough to make them so. “Always and no matter what happens.”