Chapter 5 #3
Colton nodded, reaching over me and turning the page.
I tried not to wince at the dirt beneath his fingernails or the roughness of his grip on the ancient parchment and released a sigh as he manged to complete the task without tearing it.
I curled my fingers into fists to stop them from smacking his hand from the precious parchment and watched him silently leaf through the chapter dedicated to the Stag before he paused on the next, which spoke of the Tiger.
“The Tiger was tasked with shepherding the wayward creatures of the forest and making certain that all paid homage to the Great Elm which lays at the heart of the labyrinth where the amulets must be hung if the curse is to be broken,” I said while Colton studied the image of the huge spirit whose pelt was coated in small animals, mice, rabbits and squirrels riding on its back, foxes, badgers and hedgehogs roaming between its legs.
“So you prepared for the Great Hunt in secret,” Colton surmised, turning another page and another. He didn’t pore over them the way I had when I’d first gotten my hands on this book, but he did read the annotations, study every image. Perhaps he was more than just a brute after all.
“I prepared in my own way,” I agreed.
“Because of Rissa?”
Her name on his lips was a dagger through my chest. I hadn’t heard it spoken aloud very often in recent years.
Mother and Father certainly never uttered it, and I’d long since fallen into the same pattern.
People in town knew of course, but they didn’t bring it up, didn’t just spit her name out in a conversation as if it were nothing at all to do so.
“You remember her name?” I asked dumbly, and Colton drew his eyes from studying the pages which spoke of the Carp and looked at me intently.
“Do you really think me so self-interested that I didn’t know the people of the town I grew up in, Ferris?”
“Truthfully?” I asked, and he narrowed his eyes before nodding. “Yes. I don’t mean that badly,” I hurried to clarify. “But you and all of the Champions were always so focused on your training. I hardly ever saw you socialising aside from frequenting the taverns for free meals and drinks-”
“I can’t help it if people liked to show their thanks for our sacrifice by paying out for a few meals here and there,” he protested, and I shrugged.
“I wasn’t judging. And I agree. The chances always were that most of you, and likely all who entered this place wouldn’t ever come back again.
Every Champion chose to risk the forest in hopes of saving our people.
Why shouldn’t you have benefitted from some free drinks and easy company in the lead up? ”
“Easy company?” he echoed in amusement, and I fought against the heat which rose in my cheeks as he leaned closer to me. “If you had no objections to offering me easy company, then how come you never did so?”
“Oh please,” I scoffed, hiding the heat in my veins and busying myself by turning another page in my beloved book. “You were hardly short of offers and clearly had no need of one from me.”
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t wish for one.”
I snapped the book shut and he barely snatched his fingers away in time.
“Are you seriously flirting with me right now?” I demanded, meeting his gaze defiantly and finding nothing but a cocky smirk awaiting me. Colton had clearly gotten his way with far too many women, thanks to that smile, but I wasn’t going to become another of them.
“Do you want me to be?” he asked.
“No. Go see if you can satisfy Helga in Gunther’s place if you’re looking for someone to fuck in the back room of a dirty tavern inhabited by all manner of woodland beasts. I came here to see this curse broken, not to become the latest of your nameless conquests, Colton.”
“Ouch.”
“Don’t play the fool. You had no interest in me before we found ourselves together in this place, and I had none in you. Let’s allow that to remain the bar we set our acquaintance at.”
“Acquaintance? Is that all I am to you? Haven’t I saved your life in here?”
“Haven’t I saved yours?” I indicated the tavern we were currently sheltering in, and he conceded defeat by raising his hands.
“Fine. But you’re wrong about me only paying attention to you now, Ferris.”
“Of course I am,” I replied scathingly.
“Always a book in hand, always a scheme in mind. You get that little crease right…there.” He pressed a finger to the furrow between my brows, and it only deepened in response.
“Always watching, always plotting. I saw you, Ferris, and you saw me. Only, I think perhaps you dismissed me a little too quickly.”
I pursed my lips as he withdrew his hand, only to find him pressing that same finger to the cover of the book in my lap.
“This is Fae made,” he stated. Not a question.
I sighed. “I traded for it.”
“You can’t trust a thing inside this,” he pushed.
“I know.” But I did trust it all the same.
There were so many different accounts recorded in this tome, so many sightings recounted over a thousand years of the spirits when they’d wandered close to the edge of the forest and had been seen from beyond it.
The legends of what they’d once been were all documented here too, from Fae who had been living before the magic of the forest was shattered and the curse sent the spirits who had once protected it into the frenzied state of loss they now embodied.
“You didn’t show me the other book you’re carrying,” he said, allowing me my lie, or perhaps believing it too easily.
“It’s not a book, it’s a journal,” I told him, making no move to show him it, and thankfully he accepted my rebuff.
“I’m sorry about Rissa,” he said.
“I’m sorry about your parents,” I replied, earning a hard smile from him.
“That’s different,” he grunted.
“It is and it isn’t,” I agreed, fighting a shudder as my thoughts slipped to the Hollows.
Colton looked away from me, his eyes on the edges of the window we’d blocked with a wooden dresser.
“If I survive this place, my next stop will be at the Necromancer’s door,” he growled, a menace to his tone which hadn’t been there before. Despite our current predicament and the proximity we held to death, I couldn’t help but shudder at that suggestion.
“You can’t mean that,” I breathed, looking over my shoulder as if someone might have overheard him, might pass his threat to the ears of the beast we all feared even more than these trees.
No one dared speak ill of the Necromancer, let alone lay threats at his feet.
You never knew what ears he might have listening, what foul creature he might send to your door.
“I can and I do,” Colton replied without a flicker of fear. “What more can he take from me anyway? I’m not afraid of a coward who hides in his castle sending monsters out to do his dirty work.”
“I heard someone say the Necromancer is as dead as the army he rose in his image,” I whispered, laying my hand on Colton’s arm as if that might soothe the roiling fury which had been unmasked in his gaze at the mention of his parents’ death.
“You can’t kill someone who wed themselves to death already, Colton. ”
It was said the Necromancer had once been a prince of the Fae who hoped to become king when the spirit of Providence decided to select a new monarch.
But he’d been an impatient male and there were many princes and princesses who might be chosen for the throne.
As the years ticked by and the immortal King Arthrun’s reign grew ever longer, more heirs were born but no new monarch was selected, and it drove him to madness.
He coveted the crown the king wore with a fierce desperation and decided to claim his power in case the spirit chose another prince or princess to rise to the throne and disregarded him entirely.
So one day, he crept into the palace and killed the king while he slept before taking the crown from his bedside, lifting the sacred relic and placing it upon his own brow.
The crowns of Fae weren’t like the crowns of men.
They held ancient power and would only yield to one owner at a time, granting power which aligned harmoniously with the soul of the one who wore it.
But the power the crown had granted him manifested while he hid in exile, bestowing upon him magic more ruinous than any which had come before it.
By the time Bane Crownthief revealed his power over the dead, he’d already amassed an army and set it loose on the world at large.
His anger was for the Fae but his Hollows struck at any living being they could find.
My people had been hit harder than any. We’d been caught unawares and occupied with the forest’s curse and we had no wall to hide behind.
Thousands had fallen to his army of soulless dead, and we all knew well to run at the first hint of a Hollow.
Colton studied the fear in my expression, then sighed, shaking his head and waving a hand at our surroundings.
“No need to fear the Necromancer in here, Ferris,” he pointed out. “We should focus on one foe at a time, don’t you think?”
I relaxed a little even though it was madness to consider the spirits an easier foe than anything, but at least their power was born of nature, their curse something which could be broken.
The Hollows and the Necromancer who wielded them were another matter, and one I planned never to come close to.
I had my work cut out for me in this place and if I managed to win the forest’s boon, then I would gladly allow my turn at adventure to pass and stay well clear of the Hollows, the Fae and anything like them for the rest of my years.
“Do you think we might find another spirit in the morning?” I asked, glad to change the subject.
“Tomorrow will be worse,” Colton said simply, like the fact that we’d faced so much death and carnage already meant nothing at all.
“That was just the welcome party coming to whittle us down and choose the real hunters it wants for this game of brutal chance. We’ll find out the truth of this place in the coming days…
assuming we’re still alive to witness it. ”
He got up and rounded the fire to his own bed, taking his turn on watch while I carefully returned my book to my pack.
I said nothing more as I curled beneath my blanket and willed sleep to come for me, but I had the horrible feeling that he was right and our entry to this cursed place had been the easiest part of the hunt.
“Don’t worry, Rissa,” I breathed into the silence, even though I was beginning to doubt my own words. “I can do this.”