Chapter 5
To my surprise, the old forest was but an hour’s ride from Lacanthim.
“Remnants of the wood still cling to the waters of these places,” Seriv explained when I mentioned this.
“They burned a great deal of it back to make farmland. But along the streams and rivers, it refuses to burn. The greater spread of it is to the north.” Then he paused.
“You’ve not seen any stretch of it, I take it, sir? ”
“No. We came from the south.”
“I see. Well. It can be an experience.”
I watched as the wood emerged on the horizon. It was already almost evening, so this was a poor time to go seeking evidence in such a place. Yet I knew Ana would demand to know of it, so I narrowed my eyes and studied carefully as we approached.
To begin with, the forest was not green but had a queer, purple hue to it.
It formed a velvety wall that surged up above the farmlands, and the contrast—in shape, in color, in darkness—was so striking it almost felt like a hallucination.
The trees were of an ancient, altered breed, with pale, delicate boles and wide, amaranthine leaves that blotted out the sun.
They did not grow like normal trees, either: they sprouted in very defined, hexagonal clutches, with six different trunks sprouting from each node of roots.
So this was the famous, unnatural forest of Sapirdad: a wood created by the first imperials, the ancient Khanum, long ago in the elder days to ward away any trespassers.
Like most works of the Khanum, it was quite renowned—but the forest of Sapirdad was unusual in that nobody knew quite what the Khanum had wished to keep people away from.
The accepted theory was that they’d wanted to keep grave robbers from violating the last resting place of their famed sibling tribe—the Daljen.
Who had, like all of the first imperial tribes, died out centuries ago. Yet no one knew for certain.
We rode closer to the trees. The nearer we grew, a strange, unsettling feeling stole over me, though I couldn’t name why.
It was as if a great gloom arose behind my eyes, and my heart was suddenly shadowed.
Even my horse—a pudgy little mare who resented my size—grew skittish and whickered in protest.
“You feel it, sir?” said Seriv.
“I do. What is it?”
“Wasn’t sure if an Imperial Sublime would. It’s the forest, sir. The Orbiis say the trees emit a pheromone that makes the blood frightened. Makes you wish to leave swiftly—because those who made it didn’t wish for anyone to step inside.”
I cringed as a pang of discomfort shot through me. “I thought the trees kept people out just by being so densely grown.”
“That’s what many folk from abroad think, true. Most don’t know about the discomfort because most don’t get near enough to feel it.” He sighed a little. “But we shall, of course. Though we’ll have to go on foot. Our steeds won’t bear it.”
We dismounted and did so, and came to the edge of the forest. Unlike nearly every forest I’d ever passed through, this one was silent and utterly still, bereft of any bird call or a flicker of a moth’s wing.
Even if it hadn’t put some pheromone in me to set my blood dancing, I’d have found it eerie.
Still I looked, engraving the experience carefully, gazing into the great, velvety wall rising before me, endless and unfathomable.
I asked Seriv what he knew of the forest, and he shrugged. “What most do, sir. Rumor. Myth. It’s an old thing, and those who made it weren’t interested in sharing why they put it here. If the reason was ever known, it was forgotten long ago, along with a great deal else.”
“But it was made to ward people away from the last tomb of the Daljen—true?”
“Maybe! Of the Daljen themselves, we’ve little more than stories. They were here once. They farmed these lands and grew wonders. Now they’re gone. That’s the run of it.”
“And they’re worshipped here, true?” I asked. “I heard Trikao Armenta mention the Daljen.”
“Yes, sir. The Armentas revere them as ancestors, as many wealthy Tala folk do. Although, well…the Daljen died out and disappeared, yes? First out of all the old imperial tribes. And no other ancient imperial lands are guarded by such a forest.” He glanced at me.
“So. Perhaps they were doomed, some say.”
I realized what he meant. “Or cursed?”
“You have the read of it, sir. More gossip, more rumor. Were the Daljen cursed? Has that curse now moved on, and ensnared the Armentas? Is that why their line is nearly ended, just like that of the Daljen?” Then, sounding slightly embarrassed, he added, “And then, of course, there’s the lights.”
“What lights?”
“Well—I’ve never seen them myself, sir. But there are rumors of folk sighting a flickering in the trees. A light, flashing and quaking, in the deepest stretches of the wood, where none can approach.”
“When did this happen?”
“Oh, on and off for a while now, sir. First spotting I know of was three years ago. I’ve watched the forest myself, sir, and never seen a thing.
And many watch the trees these days. They’ve seen no one enter or leave.
But every so often, another drover comes flying down a road in the night, crying out that he’s seen the lights again.
” He shrugged. “I manage drunken drovers and feuding farmers. I shall let the works of the unseen be.” He nodded ahead. “That’s where we found Castus.”
We walked to a spot not more than twenty span down the tree line, where many branches were broken and bruised.
From the look of it, Castus had only penetrated about ten span into the trees—yet I couldn’t imagine how he’d managed even this, given how densely the boughs were grown, and how the airs of the forest put a thread of fear in one’s thoughts.
“He said he’d been followed,” I said. “Felt someone growing near to him in the dark.”
“He said the same to us, sir, when we found him,” sighed Seriv. “But we all descended on him in a rush, and in deep night. If there was sign of some other soul out here, we’ve marred it, I’m afraid. And we saw no one else out here, of course.”
I gazed at the patch of broken branches for a long while, thinking. “He also said he came out here to pray—is that so?”
“There are a few old shrines within the wood. They burned back the trees and treated the soil to make paths for the pilgrims. One lies near here, true, the shrine of Master Gaddar. But to my reading of it, sir, the boy was simply out of his head. Which hangs, I feel—for he had to be mad to attack the girl to begin with, true?”
I gazed out at the pale, leaning branches. My skin began to crawl. I turned my eyes away and asked to leave this place.