Chapter 30
Rowan squared off against the soldier named Kenet. He was a big man, shaggy as a bear, unkempt for a soldier no matter that his hair was tied back and he’d probably shaved that morning. Black stubble covered his jaw and his bushy eyebrows were drawn together in a scowl.
For some reason, he didn’t like her. He’d apparently decided that just from looking at her, and taken it upon himself to block her path.
It was fine. She didn’t much like him either. She remembered him from Jarn. He’d been one of the men who’d dragged her to the mayor’s house. The mean one. The kind one—Asher—was the one who was missing.
It was one of the things she wanted to talk to Casrian about. More pressing was the fact that his men had picked an awful spot to camp.
“We can’t sleep here,” she told him for the third time.
“It’s the safest place, girl. We can see anything coming and it will be easier to fight in the dark if it comes to that.”
She’d been working on Sol while the camp formed around her. She hadn’t noticed it until the fire was built, the horses picketed, and Casrian was bent over a map with Daris, taking advantage of the last of the daylight to make their plans.
She’d cleaned up her things and made sure that Sol was comfortable before going to speak to Casrian, but she’d been intercepted along the way by this man who stood nearly a foot taller than her.
She crossed her arms over her chest and lifted her chin so she could see his face.
The light was dimming and there was a chill in the air, the icy bite of winter closing in.
And she didn’t want to be out here in the open if there were more of those things wandering around out here.
There was a perfectly good patch of trees over there that would shelter them and warn her if anything approached.
“Even before the woods turned, it wasn’t safe to sleep in the open. ”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I’ve been a soldier for a dozen years and lived in the king’s woods before that. Who told you this?”
Toby’s father had been the one to tell her that.
He hadn’t been completely reliable. His drinking problem was what had landed his family on the border, and he’d sometimes been prone to fanciful stories, but the things he’d taught about the woods—what was safe to eat, what plants to avoid, how to find clean water and the safest paths—had held up for her all these years.
And she knew the trees would protect them.
“A friend of mine who was a woodsman out here in the shadow of the mountains,” she told the bear. “I’ve heard they have a gardener in the king’s woods whose sole job is to keep the trail clear from the king’s hunting cabin to the outhouse. Is that true?”
Judging by the way color rose to Kenet’s face, it was close enough. “You will speak of the king with respect.”
She smiled sweetly. “I have enormous respect for a man who knows his own limits.”
“You don’t know yours,” Kenet shot back.
“You said your friend was here before the woods turned and that may have made the difference. Cursed woods are different beasts altogether. The trees rot from the inside out. There’s often no way of telling one is ready to fall on you until the wind blows, and a witch can make the wind blow.
They can draw a storm out of a clear blue sky.
That creature you saw today was only a familiar, but the natural beasts of the forest are just as bad.
They get twisted, become diseased and unnatural.
I’ve no wish to be surrounded by a rabid wolf pack in the middle of the woods where we can’t see them coming. ”
“How would it be any better out here?”
“We have guards and crossbows to take them down before they get too close. We can—”
“Kenet,” Casrian called from behind the man. “Is there a problem?”
Kenet glared at her. “She wants to move the camp, Captain.”
He stepped aside, and she could see Casrian sitting beside Daris.
Casrian looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “Rowan?”
She shook her head. Maybe Toby’s father had been wrong. Or maybe he’d been right about the old woods, but Kenet was right now. Either way, she no longer felt like fighting over it. It wasn’t the battle she wanted.
Casrian hadn’t spoken to her since he’d asked her to help Sol.
He’d picked up the mantle of captain as naturally as she’d fallen into the first fight she could find.
The authority sat well on him, making him somehow bigger than he’d been when it was just the two of them, less touchable.
He was the king’s witch hunter again and she was nobody worth listening to.
A witch’s daughter. An outcast from Toam. A woman he’d once fucked in the woods.
“It’s fine.” She rubbed her forehead. “I’m sure you have your own way of doing things.”
Kenet looked smug, and she was briefly tempted to kick him in the shin. She’d probably break a toe.
Casrian gestured her over. “Come take a look at this map.”
Daris lifted his head as she walked over. He was darkly handsome with black hair and copper skin. High cheekbones, a strong jaw, and a fine, straight nose. She remembered him from Jarn too, remembered all of the girls at the trial fluttering around him, trying to draw his attention.
“Have the two of you been properly introduced?” Casrian asked.
She shook her head, and he gestured toward his friend. “This is Lieutenant Daris of House Kindan, my second in command. Daris, this is Rowan.”
Of course, he was a lordling. House Kindan. She’d heard of it even out in Toam.
Daris’s smile was quick and sharp. “A pleasure to see you again, Miss Yahl.”
Her gaze shot to Casrian. Betrayal twisted like a knife in her gut.
He had to have told them she was the girl from Jarn. They wouldn’t have recognized her otherwise. No wonder Kenet didn’t like her.
Casrian bent his head to the paper rolled out on the ground, a lantern holding down the far corner.
She sat down on the ground to see what they were looking at.
It was a map, probably from the king’s cartographers, that showed a rough outline of the land around them.
The Catali Mountain Range. The Naistor River marking the border with Caetris.
Sulen. Her village was represented by an “X” on the map that had been drawn in, along with the edge of the swamp and a dotted line that she thought indicated the reach of the witch’s influence.
They were well within that influence now.
And right where she guessed the fort would be located was a circle. “We think this is where the nest is. Somewhere within this circle.”
“That’s where the fort is.” With her finger, she traced the river where it cut through the western edge of that circle. She moved to the east a bit and tapped the parchment. “Right about here.”
Casrian marked the spot and looked at her. “What is the terrain like?”
“The fort sits on a cliff above the river. When we were there, we thought there’d been a bridge there once.
Or maybe a ferry. We followed that path from the river.
It’s all uphill from there. The road curves up and around.
About two miles. We followed the road, though I don’t if it will be as easy with horses.
There were a lot of young trees growing in the path, and that was years ago. ”
“And the fort itself?” Casrian prodded. “Anything you can tell us—the smallest detail—will be helpful.”
“The wall that once surrounded the place had mostly fallen. All black rock covered in moss. There was a tangle of blackberry bushes blocking the gate so we climbed through one of the gaps in the wall. The roof was gone, but some of the walls were still standing. There was what must have been a great hall that had the biggest fireplace I’ve ever seen.
” She laughed. “A fox had made a den of it. Toby nearly peed his pants when it ran out.”
Neither man looked amused. Her smile faded.
“The circular stairwell to the left of the hall leads nowhere. After the first landing, it’s blocked by rubble, but the one at the corner closest to the river was clear going down.
We had a lantern and made it down to the bottom, but we didn’t stay long.
It was damp. It smelled awful. And it was clear that there wasn’t anything down there worth seeing. ”
Just endless darkness. Air that felt heavy in your lungs. A whispering like from the trees…but not.
Casrian’s blue eyes watched her intently. “What was down there, Rowan?”
She released a slow breath. It made her uneasy thinking about that place.
They’d had such an adventure getting there, her and Toby, and they’d been so excited to find the open stairwell.
They’d been joking about what they would do with all of the treasure they would surely find and speculating about whether there were skeletons still in the dungeon.
And then when they got down there…all of the taunts and laughter had ended.
“It was darker than it should have been. The lantern couldn’t cut through the gloom of the place.
The darkness had a weight to it, you know?
Like you could feel it pressing against that little circle of light.
It was quiet. Everywhere else, you could hear the wind and animals, birds, but the walls blocked all of the sound down there.
We didn’t stay. In fact, we left right after we climbed up the stairs even though there was more to explore.
There was a full moon that night and we didn’t stop walking until we were miles away. ”
Daris sighed. “If you’d have sent for a priest then, it would have saved us all a lot of trouble.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m sure a priest would have come running because a couple of kids got spooked in the woods.”
Maybe if they’d been noble kids from House Kindan, but not two brats from Toam.
Daris straightened. “It’s part of their job to inform us of stories of strange happenings and dark places. We would have investigated. It wouldn’t have gone this far.”