The Waystation
The next morning dawned clear and bright, the type of spring day that seemed designed to make travelers forget the misery of the week before. Lark set a harder pace than usual, and neither Pippa nor Darian complained, though by midday both of them were panting on the steeper sections of trail.
The green oaks grew thicker here, their canopies interlocking overhead to create a cathedral of dappled light and shadow. Ferns carpeted the forest floor in great sweeping waves, and small streams crossed the path at regular intervals, their waters cold and clear from the mountain snowmelt above.
Noctis ranged ahead as always, his certainty unwavering. Whatever scent he was following had grown stronger overnight, and his excitement was palpable in the way he moved, in the eager tension in every line of his body.
They stopped briefly at midday to eat and rest, then pushed on.
The terrain grew rockier as they climbed, the path winding between moss-covered boulders and ancient trees whose roots had grown around the stones over centuries.
Lark could see the High Greenwood more clearly now, the jagged peaks rising above the forest canopy, still touched with snow despite the warming weather below.
Somewhere in those foothills, Rion was waiting.
By late afternoon, as the light had begun to slant golden through the trees, Noctis suddenly stopped. His ears pricked forward, his body rigid with attention, but this differed from his tracking posture. This was alertness. Warning.
Lark held up a hand, and the others halted behind her.
“What is it?” Darian asked quietly, his hand moving to his sword.
Lark scanned the forest ahead. The path curved around a large outcropping of rock, obscuring whatever lay beyond. She could see nothing unusual, hear nothing except the normal sounds of the forest, but she had learned to trust the wolf’s instincts.
“I think there's someone ahead,” she murmured. “Stay here.”
She moved forward in silence, her steps finding the quiet places in the undergrowth without conscious thought. Years of training guided her around the fallen branches and loose stones that might betray her approach. She reached the outcropping and pressed herself against the cold stone, listening.
A voice, distant and indistinct, but definitely human.
She edged around the rock until she could see the path ahead. It opened into a small clearing where a waystation sat, squat and ancient, its stone walls green with moss and its roof patched in several places with mis-matched materials. A thin curl of smoke rose from the chimney.
Someone was inside.
Lark returned to the others and reported what she had found. Darian’s expression hardened.
“Could be travelers,” he said. “Or it could be enemy scouts.”
“Could be,” Lark agreed. “We need to know.”
They approached the waystation cautiously, spreading out to cover multiple angles. Darian circled to the left, keeping to the trees. Pippa hung back with Noctis, her hand on her satchel of devices. Lark went straight up the path, making no attempt to hide her approach.
If whoever was inside meant them harm, better to draw their attention to a single target while Darian moved into position.
The door of the waystation opened before she reached it.
The man who emerged was young, younger than Lark had expected, with a thin face and lank brown hair that hung past his jaw.
He wore the remnants of armor that had seen recent battle; the leather scratched and dented, one pauldron missing entirely.
His eyes went wide at the sight of her, and his hand dropped to where a sword should have hung at his hip but found only empty air.
“Wait,” he said, stumbling backward. “Wait, please. I’m not going back. I’ll die first. I’m not going back there.”
Lark stopped, her hand at her side ready to summon a dagger in an instant. “To whom?”
“The Ashen Enclave.” The man’s voice cracked on the words. “Duskwood’s army. The bastards who are going to destroy this entire continent if someone doesn’t stop them.”
Darian emerged from the trees behind the man, his sword drawn. The deserter spun at the sound, saw the blade, and made a strangled noise of despair. He dropped to his knees in the dirt.
“Please,” he begged. “Please. I’m not a fighter. I was a quartermaster’s assistant before I got conscripted. I just want to disappear somewhere they’ll never find me.”
“How do we know you’re not a spy?” Darian demanded. “Left behind to watch for pursuit?”
“Why would they leave a spy on this road? They don’t think anyone’s following. They think they won.” The man looked up at Lark with desperate eyes. “You’re her, aren’t you? The woman from Wintersorrow. The one Duskwood keeps talking about.”
Lark felt a ball of ice settle in her stomach. “What does he say?”
“That you’re coming. That you’ll walk right through the front gates because you have no choice.” He shook his head. “He sent some kind of ultimatum, didn't he? He’s been talking about it for days. Says you’ll trade yourself for your friend because that’s what people like you do.”
Pippa had emerged from the trees now, Noctis at her heels. The wolf circled the kneeling man once, sniffed him thoroughly, and then sat down with apparent disinterest. Whatever threat assessment he had made, the deserter had apparently passed.
“Get up,” Lark said. “Let’s talk inside.”
The waystation interior was a single large room with a hearth at one end and a rough wooden table in the center.
Empty supply shelves lined the walls. The fire the man had built was small and struggling, more smoke than heat, the work of someone who had clearly never had to make a fire for himself before.
They settled around the table, the deserter on one side and the three of them on the other. Noctis positioned himself near the door, watching.
“Start from the beginning,” Lark said. “Who are you, and why did you run?”
The man’s name was Allyn. He had been conscripted into the Ashen Enclave’s army six turns ago when they swept through his village and given a choice between service and death. He had chosen service because he was a coward, he said, and because he had a mother and two sisters who depended on him.
He had thought he was joining a military campaign. One he could survive if he kept his head down and did what he was told.
Instead, he had watched the Ashen Enclave murder prisoners for information, or torture them and then kill them when they had nothing left to give.
He had seen their magic spread corruption wherever it touched, blackening the earth and twisting the animals unfortunate enough to be caught in its path.
He had heard screams from the lower levels of the fortress where they worked on “experiments”, sounds that haunted his sleep even now.
“Most of the prisoners from the Narrows are dead,” he said, his voice hollow.
“They tortured them for information about Autumncrown’s defenses, its weaknesses, its leaders.
When they’d gotten everything they could, they …
” He swallowed. “There are only a few left. The ones Duskwood kept for other purposes.”
Lark’s hands had gone cold. “How many?”
“Four, maybe five. I’m not certain. I wasn’t allowed near the dungeons.” His brow furrowed. “But there’s one they’re keeping separate from the others. A witch. Tall, ginger hair. Duskwood has him in a private cell, away from the rest.”
“Why?” Darian’s voice was hard. “Why keep him separate?”
“I don’t know. Above my knowledge. But Duskwood needs him for something. He’s being kept alive on purpose.”
Rion. Lark kept her face carefully neutral, but her pulse was racing. Alive. He was alive.
“Tell us about the fortress,” she said.
The Ashen Citadel. That was what they called it. Two days’ travel east of here, perhaps less if they pushed hard. It was built into the base of the foothills where a river came down from the High Greenwood, an ancient structure that was the ancestral home of the Duskwood family.
It had a moat fed by the river, deep and cold. Walls forty feet high. There was only one gate, facing west, heavily guarded at all hours. Most of the army was camped inside, maybe three hundred soldiers, plus whatever remained of the experiments they kept caged on the north side of the courtyard.
“These experiments,” Lark said. “What are they?”
“Corrupted creatures. Animals twisted by dark aetheria into something else. They want to use them as weapons, or at least try to. But most of them are too unstable to control.” Allyn shuddered. “The smell from the cages is unbelievable. Like rot and decomposition.”
“And the prisoners? Where are they held?”
“Dungeon level. Below the main keep. There’s only one stairway down from inside the fortress, and it’s guarded day and night.
But …” He hesitated, glancing at Darian as if expecting to be accused of lying.
“There’s another way. The sewers. They drain into the moat, and there’s an old grate that leads up into the dungeon level.
The guards know about it, but they don’t watch it.
Nobody thinks anyone would be crazy enough to try coming in that way. ”
“Why not?”
“Because the grate is underwater. You’d have to dive into the moat, find the drain in the dark, and swim through the sewer tunnels without drowning. And even if you made it, you’d come up inside a dungeon full of guards.”
Lark filed this information away. Difficult. But not impossible.
“What about magical defenses? Wards? Traps?”
Allyn shook his head. “Nothing like that. Duskwood doesn’t trust magic he doesn’t control. The Citadel is defended the old-fashioned way. Walls, soldiers, the moat. He’s relying on strength in numbers and the assumption that no one would be stupid enough to attack.”
“And me?” Lark pressed. “You said he expects me. What exactly does he think I’m going to do?”