Chapter 12 Into the Woods
Rolan had expected the woods to be dark, gloomy, and terrible, and to his dismay, his prediction proved all too accurate.
He walked slowly, stepping on the hoofprints Luc’s horse had left in the loam.
Within minutes the trees closed around him, and when he looked back, he couldn’t see the house at all.
It was as if the forest were endless, stretching forever behind him, forever ahead.
Twilight played tricks with his vision, making shrubs loom like wolves and tree branches crook like claws.
What was he doing? He should be running down the path after Anaya and Evaine, going home where he belonged. His pa probably thought he was dead by now.
He certainly didn’t seem to be looking for Rolan.
There was just so much heat under Rolan’s skin.
He was burning up from the inside out. He couldn’t stop hearing Anaya’s accusing voice, or his own stupid words, or Evaine’s pleas.
What did they want from him? Did they really think he could just go back to Crisanth and apprentice to some carpenter or shoemaker?
Did they really think Rolan Strider, son of the city’s most notorious criminal, could ever fit in among respectable society?
He knew where he belonged. He had known all his life.
So why hadn’t his father come looking for him?
Rolan plunged deeper into the trees, his eyes stinging, his heart burning.
He listened attentively to every little sound, but there were so many that he was soon overwhelmed.
Creaks and groans, sighs and drips, sudden snaps and long, low murmurs.
Each one sent a shiver down his spine. He imagined the trees were whispering as he passed, falling silent only when he looked directly at them.
At least, he tried to tell himself it was only the trees watching him.
He tried not to think of the Cryptics.
But once he started, he couldn’t stop. He pictured the monster he’d seen in the station cell, with its thousand legs and dozen eyes and teeth like broken glass. He pictured it ten times bigger. Twenty times. Until it towered to the sky and crushed him with a single step.
“No,” Rolan whispered, forcing his eyes open. “I ain’t—I’m not afraid.”
But he was. There wasn’t any way around it. He could imagine monsters the size of palaces, but he couldn’t imagine himself brave.
So he stopped trying, and instead he pretended he could take another step.
Then another. He couldn’t trick himself into fearlessness, but he could trick himself into motion.
Anyway, standing still wouldn’t be any safer.
He was deep in the shadows. If any place in the woods was safe, it had to be at the Arcanist’s side.
He needed to find Luc as quickly as possible.
Rolan began to run.
He followed the horse’s trail by the fading evening light, leaping over logs and streams, sliding down steep banks in a scrabble of dead leaves and stones.
Twigs stuck in his hair and needled leaves pulled at his cloak.
He raced on, teeth gritted, one hand out to push aside branches and the other locked around the hilt of his knife.
After a while, he almost began to believe he could handle the woods.
Then he realized he’d lost the horse’s trail.
Once again, Rolan froze. Nothing looked like a hoofprint. The leaves around him were disturbed, but only by his own blundering feet.
He was lost.
Looking up at the sky, Rolan saw it had gone fully dark.
Stars peered coldly down at him. Hidden in their gleaming patterns, he knew there were directions—stars pointing north, stars pointing south.
But he didn’t know how to tell one from another.
He’d never had to. In the city he’d always known where he was.
Out here, every tree was the same. Any direction was as awful as the other.
He couldn’t find Luc. He couldn’t even find his way back.
The only light he had was the watery starlight, and he cursed himself for not thinking to take a torch.
But it had been light out when he’d set off after Luc.
Like the idiot he was, he’d imagined himself catching up to the Arcanist long before now.
“I’m going to die out here,” he groaned. “If a Cryptic doesn’t get me, an animal will, or a black pit a thousand feet deep with sharp rocks at the bottom.”
He considered the options and couldn’t decide which was worse. He only ended up working himself into such a frenzy that he nearly began to cry.
Which was completely unacceptable.
Rolan had suffered many humiliations in his life.
He’d once been found by the guards while trying to climb up a chimney in only his underwear, after some older boys had stolen his clothes.
Another time, he’d been forced to share a cell with a woman who’d claimed he was her long-lost sheepdog, and had to suffer through the night as she patted his head and told him to sit and called him my poor Puddlepaws.
And then there was the hanging-upside-down-from-a-lamppost incident, which had somehow ended up with him here, in this awful wood, on the verge of dying horribly and gruesomely in the dark.
But he had never been caught crying. Not even Anaya had ever seen him cry.
Through sheer force of will, Rolan stopped his tears and began to walk. Maybe he couldn’t tell east from west, but he could put one foot in front of the other. Eventually, the woods had to end.
He trudged on for what seemed like hours, until his mind went numb and his body moved automatically. Somewhere along the way, he gave up all hope of finding Luc or the house. He just walked, wondering if he carried on like this long enough, would he forget his own name?
It was just as he reached the crest of a high ridge that he heard it: a low click click click.
Rolan stilled, pressing himself against a narrow tree, his dulled senses suddenly sharpening again.
Click click click.
The sound came from above—and was chillingly similar to the sound the Cryptic had made in the station cell, just before it had attacked.
As he’d done then, Rolan stayed quiet and motionless.
He breathed softly, trying to calm his heartbeat.
How did Cryptics hunt? By sight or sound?
By smell? This suddenly seemed to be the most vital bit of information in all the world, and he inwardly cursed Luc for having never told him.
What kind of miserable excuse for a teacher was—
Eyes.
Rolan blinked rapidly, thinking he’d been seeing things. But there they were, glowing blue, the same color as the box of Cryptic parts in the Arcanist’s house.
He held his breath.
Two eyes, misty blue, stared straight at him from the shadows. Slowly, they grew bigger. Moving closer. Swaying back and forth.
Rolan felt as if his skin were melting with fear, as if he might liquify then and there.
Click click click, went the Cryptic.
Thud thud thud, went Rolan’s heart.
He pressed himself against the tree, a whimper escaping his lips as the eyes drew within inches of his face. The ice-blue light of them bored into him. Hypnotic. Beautiful, in a horrible way.
This close, he could make out the silhouette of the thing’s body.
To his surprise, it wasn’t very large. Not much bigger than the Cryptic he’d seen a few weeks ago.
This one didn’t even have half as many eyes, and it seemed to stand on just two legs, like a very tall bird. It stood no higher than Rolan.
“H-hello,” he breathed. “You’re not so bad, are you? Maybe you’re a nice Cryptic? Huh? Wanna be friends?”
He slowly, slowly slid the knife from his belt.
To his astonishment, the blade was glowing softly blue, just like the creature’s eyes.
He remembered the Arcanist stabbing the talon, and his blade absorbing the light that leaked from it.
This was a different knife, a smaller one, but maybe it was also infused with Cryptic power.
It had the same double spiral etched in the metal as he’d seen on Luc’s.
Maybe tonight, this little stolen blade would save Rolan’s life.
He attacked first, whipping up the knife and plunging it toward the Cryptic’s left eye.
The monster moved fast, shooting upward into the air, easily dodging Rolan’s clumsy strike. For a moment he thought it might have taken flight. Could Cryptics fly? There was a chilling prospect. He had seen feathers in Luc’s chest of so-called secrets.
Maybe he’d scared the thing off.
But then, all around Rolan, the forest began to move. Tall dark stalks he’d taken for saplings lifted and crooked on knobbled knees. He realized, with a horror that rooted him to the spot, they were legs.
A shadow rolled over him—a long, scaled belly.
All those legs were attached to one body, the body of the Cryptic he’d foolishly mistaken for being little.
In truth, it was like a gigantic, nightmarish version of the grandfather longlegs spiders that liked to gather in the basements of Crisanth, the ones that always gave him jitters.
Rolan screamed.
The Cryptic roared, smoky blue mist seeping from its gaping maw.
Bursting into motion, Rolan sprinted over the slippery forest floor, tripping over roots.
He went sprawling only to leap up again and make it a few more steps.
Finally, something whacked him across the chest—a branch or a Cryptic leg, he couldn’t tell.
He went flying, smacking the ground hard and rolling before coming to a breathless, pained stop.
He’d lost his dagger. He’d lost a boot. He pushed himself to his hands and knees, gasping for breath as the Cryptic rushed toward him.
In a slant of moonlight, he saw the entire thing at last—as big as the Arcanist’s horse, poised over him like a spider.
It roared again, and he felt something hot and wet splash on his cheek. Drool? Venom?
“Please,” Rolan whispered, and he didn’t know whether he was talking to the Cryptic, to the goddess Alethine, or to the spirit of the long-dead mother whose face he couldn’t even remember. All he knew was that he was done for unless—
Unless the Arcanist came thundering out of the dark, a blade in both hands and a war cry on his lips.