GO!
More screams, these not from his own mouth. He jerked his head up and looked around, but the forest was empty save for the chattering birds in the canopy overhead. He scurried to his feet, snatching his sword from its dry place beneath the lean-to, and stumbled down the path he had created. Branches tore at him, scratching at his face as he ran in the darkness. He made it to the path’s end, where he used to sit for hours, day and night, watching the soldiers safeguard the bridge. The screaming multiplied the closer to the forest’s edge he ran, and in his waking nightmare he imagined a parade of hideous monsters slipping out of the shadowed gaps of the world, lopping off heads and devouring entrails, turning the southern banks of the Rigon into a bloody form of the fiery underworld.
And then he reached the carnage at the edge of the forest. Soldiers, those still alive anyway, fled in all directions. Chasing them, almost lazily, was a formless mass of smoke that shimmered black and silver in the moonlight. It surrounded the men, gray tendrils whipping from its swirling center, knocking them aside as they shrieked in unimaginable terror, and then disappeared into the tall grass in a spray of red. The smoke was gradually moving away from him, progressing toward the opposite side of the Gods’ Road. Crian watched, his feet made of lead, his mind locking tight. What he saw-it just couldn’t be. Jacob couldn’t have been this wrong about the forest.
Again that voice, this time softer, more serene, yet oddly more urgent than ever.
Go.
The spirits of the Ghostwood were real. They had watched over him, lurking in his thoughts, stealing into his dreams. Had they felt his love for Nessa? Did they sense his frustration and anger toward the soldiers who chased him? This shapeless creation before him-was that its normal form, or could it shift and change, perhaps even becoming human?
He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to know. Before him was an opening, and he would not dare refuse the spirits’ command. Crian burst from the line of trees, running at a full sprint through the open space. All that separated him from the bridge was a couple hundred feet of green grass. He didn’t dare take his eyes off his goal, didn’t want to even acknowledge the misty cloud that slowly receded away, leaving trails of body parts strewn about the grass. As he ran through its lingering presence, a chill seeped into the very depths of his bones. He held his breath, waiting for it to take him, to crush him like any other mortal, mocking his hopes.
It never did. His feet churned up bits of grass and chunks of dirt and rock, and his ears still rang with the echoes of the soldiers’ piercing screams. By the time his boots fell hard on the steel-reinforced granite surface of Karak’s Bridge, he felt like sobbing.
It took much less time to cross the bridge, and once he was on the other side, he spied a large structure of some sort in the near distance, situated at the base of the mountain that rose behind it-the Temple of the Flesh, he assumed-and then he was flying alongside the river, keeping up a constant speed, no matter how dicey the footing became. Integrity swung useless in his hand. A part of him wanted to stop, to rest his burning chest, but he didn’t dare. His footfalls would not slow until the Ghostwood was banished from his sight. Besides, there was still the chance he was lost in a delusion or a dream, that Avila’s men, his men would come storming into the delta. These lands were considered neutral no longer. It was enemy territory now, and according to his sister, it was full of enemies to be crushed.
The terrain became marshy and damp, and finally Crian’s mind returned to him. He collapsed to his knees, gasping in air. He couldn’t run further. He just couldn’t. A glance behind him showed Karak’s Bridge in the distance, and beyond that.…
He looked away. The Ghostwood terrified him, and a deep part of him wanted to never, ever think about it again. When his breathing grew more controlled, Crian rose back to his feet. He had to be careful now. With things as they were, there was no guarantee he would be treated as a guest rather than a threat. Sticking to the cover of the twisting wetland mothertrees and swampy vegetation, he struggled through the quagmire, his boots constantly getting sucked beneath the mud or ensnared in vines. He heard recognizable animal sounds: the repetitive bleats of the whippoorwills, the throaty exclamations of whooping cranes, and the ominous splash of large, hidden bodies dropping into the bog. He kept his wits about him, remembering the lessons Moira had taught him about staying alive when trapped in the delta swamp. Head down, keep moving, don’t turn around for anything. This wasn’t his first venture into the wilds, after all. Hopefully it wouldn’t be his last.
It was morning by the time he found the landmark he was seeking-a vast garden of blood roses and orchids that exploded in red and white brilliance from the drab greens and browns of the swamp. The sound of the ocean rumbled in his ears, not very far away. He immediately climbed the bank, yelping as he narrowly avoiding the snapping fangs of a frightened bogsnake. Keeping close to the spiky vines of the roses, he worked his way through a tightly woven copse of trees. When he emerged on the other side, he breathed a sigh of relief, almost falling to his knees and crying his thanks to the sky. A small, brown-rooted courtyard led to the rear of a simple log cottage with a hay-lined roof. Moira’s cottage. He was here at last.
Throwing caution to the wind, he went straight for the front door. He didn’t care who saw him now-he had no secrets left to hide. He rapped lightly on the wood, a grin stretching across his face, and tapped his foot impatiently as he waited for Moira to answer.
She never did.
Gently he leaned his weight into the door. It rotated inward, unbarred. He stepped inside, hesitating just before he crossed the threshold. The windows were unshuttered, letting in the light of the rising sun as well as buzzing insects that circled the bowl of fruit sitting on Moira’s simple kitchen table. It was the same table they sat around whenever he visited, chatting about loved ones, the taste of the many luscious and exotic soups Moira would set to boil in her inglenook, the beauty of the sunrise over the vast eastern waterways-anything but the life of enforcement and violence he lived outside this peaceful delta.
Moira’s simple three-room cabin, filled lovingly with a lifetime’s worth of trinkets and curiosities, was his own sort of haven. For the first time in his thirty-eight years of life he appreciated the significance of the place’s name. Haven: a place of safety and shelter, a refuge for the unwanted, the outcasts…but this place would be none of those things once his father had his way.
Swatting at a large horsefly that was hovering in front of his face, Crian pivoted on his heels and left the cabin. If his sister wasn’t here, there was only one other place she could be. He strolled out the door, making sure to close it behind him, and veered left down the dirt cart path that passed in front of the property. He walked casually, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. This far south, the delta was sparsely populated. Not twenty years ago it had been a disorganized harbor for miscreants and starving thieves who dwelled in the swamps and survived by assaulting passing wagons en route to the meager docks that bordered the Thulon Ocean. Deacon Coldmine had led the drive to clean the place up, aided by Rachida and Peytr Gemcroft. The scum had scattered in all directions. It was in the delta that Crian’s carriage had been attacked that fateful day he met Nessa and her malformed brother. Crian had given up his sword in thanks for their aid. The thought of the blade put a smile on his face. Winterbone, a beast of a thing he’d had difficulty carrying. Father had been none too pleased to learn he had “lost” it, but of course his reaction would have been far worse if he’d learned the arduous thing had been given to an offspring of Ashhur. Crian knew the mutant DuTaureau still had it, and that thought brought his mind back to Nessa.