Chapter 3
The Night Is Ours
“It’s been weeks.” Sesto pleaded with more annoyance than he had the will to temper. His peevishness had become his default state. His stomach gurgled from hunger, but keeping anything down other than mead would require a miracle. “Surely now he’ll hear us?”
“Weeks for us. We don’t know how long it’s been for him,” Daire said gently.
“You keep saying that, but as I think on it...” Sesto nodded vigorously as his suspicion ramped. “As I get to know you better, I see you’re holding back. You don’t know why it isn’t working.”
Daire’s fingertips brushed just shy of Sesto’s as he sighed. “There’s so much we don’t know about what Jesstin is doing, but it doesn’t mean it won’t work eventually.”
“Eventually.” Sesto snorted. “Comforting.”
“You must eat. You must build your reserves. I’ve told you, Sesto, this will require patience.”
“Something I lack and do not desire to gain.”
“I’d offer you my own if I could.”
“Spare some for me, will you?” Taven shouted from the stove, where he was warming more tea.
He’d prepared enough tea in the past few days to quench the thirsts of everyone in Rivenholde.
He could have returned home and should have, and the only motivation Sesto could ascribe was an unstable blend of denial and hope.
Sesto turned his gaze to the window and the perpetual darkness of Rivenholde.
The gleaming eyesore at the peak of the hill.
There, the shambolic investigation into Ryquin’s exploits continued.
Everyone knew Ryquin had ordered Elloven’s execution, but he’d never face any consequence for his betrayal, for all the death. For the loss of the pretor’s own niece.
When Daire slid his hand away in withdrawal, Sesto reached for it and clamped his over the top. “He will come back... Won’t he?”
If Daire had an answer, he didn’t offer it.
Jesstin watched in sheer disbelief as Mon disappeared into the fog.
The coward had actually abandoned him.
It was an intriguing strategy, pleading with a man for help and then leaving him with no more than the clothes he was wearing, but Jesstin had tired of Mon’s nonsense before they’d even jumped into the pitiful canoe.
He passed under the arches of Quarta Pars, but when he turned back, they were gone, just like the shore had disappeared when they had launched onto the Desidero.
A thick woodland bowed over both sides of the rutted path leading farther into the Infinitum.
The pendant on his chest revealed his nearest surroundings, but the way ahead was the dark unknown.
“Normal enough forest.” Jesstin studied it on both sides before remembering Mon’s caution. He started with a light jog, but when a screeching howl rattled the trees to his left, he bolted into a full-on run.
He slowed long enough to throw a glance behind him, but he was alone.
Perhaps he’d been a little too dismissive of Mon’s litany of warnings, and he found himself blanking on the parts he had been listening to.
One thing he did remember was that darkness was supposedly when the “things worse than death” came out to play.
Those horrifying, inhuman shrieks escalated as violet replaced the last of the day’s light.
Twilight then. Mon had said to look for the glowing signs on the havres and cloisters, but there was nothing, not a single sign or structure, nothing but trees, and if he was meant to go through the forest, he wasn’t sure he had it in him.
Jesstin’s thigh had bled through his trousers from the force of his scabbard slamming him with his stride. He’d forgotten to secure his belt properly, an embarrassing oversight, but something nudged him to keep moving and worry about his wounds later.
The lonesome path curved, offering more of the same.
A bridge ahead offered a way across a narrow spot in the river, and beyond that, the muted glow of lanterns.
At last, he’d found something. But before he could start the final push, a different light pulled his gaze to the forest. He couldn’t see the source from the road.
There was no way he was going in there at night, except that was exactly what his feet did, compelled by an instinct outside of himself.
The flashing drew him deeper into the woods. The way split between rows of shadowy, towering pines, bowing to a wind sharper than it sounded.
When he could no longer see the road behind him, his tension curiously just..
. melted away, almost as if it had never been there at all.
There was nothing to be afraid of. The trees were just trees, the brush just brush.
And the light ahead, well, it was no more than a pond, moonlight reflecting across its serene surface.
Beautiful, really. It was a place one might stop for a generous sip of water, maybe even a gentle rest, and he decided that sounded like a lovely idea.
He arrived at the pond, drawn by the magnetism of the gleaming water, a promise unspoken but so powerful, words would befoul it.
His breath jolted inward with such unfulfilled expectation, he realized he had been meant to go there all along, and he knew in his bones that if he didn’t gaze into this exquisite pool of divine water, he would die for certain, then and there.
Something barreled into his left side, sending him flying into a thatch of thorny bushes. He was so disoriented he forgot where he was, but it returned like a board to the head. He thrashed around and fumbled for his sword, but it was snagged in a tangle of vines.
The vines were... wrapping around his scabbard and his ankles like fingers without end, like the ones from the labyrinth. Life pulsated through their fibrous limbs, sentient and consuming.
The pond’s glint called to him, but a harsh command broke the spell.
“Do not ever, ever, look into the varums!” a woman hollered. Her willful stride crunched behind him. Distant whistles sliced the air. The vines retreated, slithering back to their stalks.
Jesstin scrambled out of the brush. “What the fuck... was that?”
“Did your custodian tell you nothing?”
“Madame, my custodian was as useless as boots without soles.” As Jesstin returned to himself, he realized, bewildered, how close he’d come to being eaten by the forest.
“Madame.” Her caustic laugh was trenched in annoyance, but he could hear the fear there as well. “We’re a hundred yards from the nearest cloister, and twilight is over. Would you like to find out what horrors plague these woods, these paths, this world once moonrise breaks?”
“Not especially.” Jesstin scanned the darkness until he saw her, finally. She was in her early thirties, perhaps, with long hair that glowed under the moon’s beams. It was too dark to home in on anything more detailed.
He reached for his sword, but she shook her head with a laugh that seemed to say how adorable, and he relented. “Who are you? One of the others? From the maze?”
The woman stepped sideways to look around him. She was breathing hard, and he had a better view of the terror in her wide eyes. “Might your questions wait until we’re safe?”
Jesstin glanced around. “And how can I know you’re safe?”
“I’d heard you were headstrong and overconfident, but stupid? That is unexpected.” The woman charged closer. “If I hadn’t been here when you looked into the varum, whatever words you spoke before I saved you would have been noted as your last.”
Varum. Jesstin had already been miles ahead in his thoughts when Mon had started his endless recitation of dangers.
He didn’t know if the woman was friend or foe, how she knew who he was, or if any of it was real, but none of that required an answer while he was exposed, in the dark, in a world whose only rule he recalled was don’t fucking be out at dark.
Jesstin nodded once in concession. The woman took off, returning to the road he’d taken from the river.
She looked back to confirm he’d followed, then bolted into the unlit beyond.
All he could do was follow, blindly, as they were assailed by the screams and shrieks and creaks of a forest that was not meant for them.
The road opened into a village square. There were shops and stalls and official-looking buildings, starting at ground level and stacking up into the mountains on all sides except the one they’d come from. But it was what he couldn’t see that unsettled him.
The woman disappeared down an alleyway. Between them passed another person, darting across their path in a perpendicular race. Jesstin was as certain as anything that what he’d seen was not a person at all though. He pushed harder to catch up.
She yanked him under some low-hanging eaves and clamped a hand over his mouth. “We’re close,” she whispered against his ear. “Do not lock eyes with those wraiths. Do not speak to them. Do not even subtly acknowledge them. Nod if you understand.”
Jesstin didn’t understand a bloody thing, but he nodded.
“And if you can’t keep that steel from making so much noise, leave it here,” she hissed. “Little good it will do you anyway.”
There wasn’t a chance of him continuing on undefended, so he unclipped it, carefully.
He held it out ahead of him, stable in the air, where the metal had nothing to strike.
She sighed as if to say, very well. Her finger moved to her lips.
He cocked his chin and flared his eyes once. Yeah, I get it. Let’s go.
She moved carefully back into the alley, waiting for him to fall in behind before taking off again.
Her slippered feet slapped the wet stones, but his boots were even louder, despite trying to run on his tiptoes like he used to watch Rhiain do when she was sneaking about the keep as a young woman.
He didn’t know if it was a good or a bad thing that the shrieking was too loud for it to matter.