It rained a little at midday. He cupped his hands to catch the precious liquid and licked the dampness from his palms. Other than that, he found only stagnant ponds and sediment–fouled trickles coming out of the rocks. Higher up, he encountered trees that bore a vivid crimson fruit, but he knew that bright colors in living things frequently indicated danger, and he passed the fruit by. He found a flock of crowlike birds eating berries from a bush, and though the berries looked unpleasant, he tried one anyway and found it edible. With an eye toward the crow–birds, which were squawking at him angrily, he ate the rest.
Weary from his ordeal of the past few days, drained of energy in a way he had not expected, he rested at the crest of the pass for a time before starting down. Some of that had to do with the stress and fear that his encounter with the dragon had created, but some had to do with his not eating or sleeping well. The land had a draining effect on him, its blasted, empty terrain unbearably depressing. How anything could live in that world escaped him. He guessed that what lived there was a match for the land. Certainly the dragon was. He found himself hoping that the dragon was the most dangerous creature he would come across, but what were the chances of that?
After his rest, he descended the far side of the mountains, following the long, winding thread of the pass toward a vast misted plain that stretched away as far as the eye could see. The plain looked devoid of life, but he knew better than to expect that it was. Mist clung to its surface, twisting and writhing through deep ravines and skirting broad plateaus that lifted out of the flats like beasts rising from sleep. Skeletal trees jutted from the plains like bones, and here and there black pools of water shimmered slickly.
He looked out across the plains in despair. Crossing those flats was not something he wanted to do.
But what choice did he have?
He had no idea how far he would have to travel to reach his aunt or what he would find when he did. She had been there a long time by then, anything could have happened to her. He took it on faith that she was still alive. He did not think the runes would direct him to her lifeless body. But she could be hurt or damaged mentally or emotionally. She could have been made a captive or forced to endure any number of other unpleasant things. If she required physical assistance to get back to the doorway of the Forbidding, how was he going to manage that? If she required medical help, what could he do to heal her? The more he thought about it, the more daunting the prospects seemed. Too much time had passed for everything to be unchanged in her life. Something would be wrong with her, something would have happened.
He was not looking forward to finding out what that was.
He trudged on, reached the bottom of the pass, and struck out across the plains toward the heavily misted horizon. The darkwand was taking him south and east, turning him slightly from his previous path. The way forward was swathed in encroaching darkness that lifted out of the east like a shroud ready to be laid over a corpse. The land felt and looked like that corpse, and Pen supposed that it would be appropriate to lay a shroud over it. He did not care to be out and about when that happened, however, and he began to look for somewhere to spend the night. The clumps of rocks he had relied upon for protection and shelter the past few nights were missing here. All that was available were promontories, deep ravines, and stands of stunted trees. He chose the latter, thinking that if he could find a suitable clump in which to nest, he could conceal himself from whatever might come hunting by night.
For what must have been the hundredth time, he wished he knew more about the land and its inhabitants, knowledge that might help keep him safe. But there was nothing he could do about his ignorance, he was there, and the only person likely to give him any sort of useful information was the person he was searching for.
The light darkened from misty gray to deep twilight. A fog settled in, a thickening of the mist that slowly shortened visibility to a dozen yards. Pen had been making his way toward a particularly thick stand of broad–limbed trees with branches so thoroughly intertwined it was difficult to tell where one tree stopped and another began. The canopy of limbs provided a shelter that might hide him while he sought to gain a little sleep. He questioned whether he could sleep at all given his uneasiness after the dragon experience, but he knew he had to try.
He entered the woods just as darkness was closing down, found a stand of wintry, gray–barked hardwoods that were virtually bereft of leaves, and settled down in a patch of heavy, coarse grass nestled between a pair of ancient trunks. Wrapped in his cloak, he put his back against one of the trunks and watched the onset of night steal away the last of the light.
When everything turned black, he listened to the ensuing hush. When the hush gave way to night sounds, he sat listening to those. When the sounds grew closer, a mix of clicks and huffs and low growls, he pressed harder against the tree trunk and brought the darkwand around in front of him for whatever protection it might offer.
And then the sounds evened out and smoothed over, surrounding him but not coming so close that he felt the need to move, and his eyes began to grow heavy, his breathing to deepen and slow, and finally, he slept.
When he awoke, dawn had broken in a wash of familiar hazy gray light, and the surface of the surrounding land was covered in layers of vapor that ebbed and flowed across the contours of the terrain like an ocean’s waves across a rocky shore. He stared out into the all–but–invisible distance, to horizons that ended much nearer than they had the day before and revealed nothing of what they concealed, and he was immediately depressed.
He was hungry, as well, but there was nothing to eat or drink, or at least nothing on which he wished to take a chance. So he turned his efforts to stretching cramped limbs and aching muscles, to finding fresh ways to make the blood flow sufficiently that he could get to his feet and go on. He could barely tolerate the thought of it, his search beginning to take on the feel of an endless odyssey, one that might not have an attainable destination, but would simply lead him on until he was lost beyond recovery in a trackless wilderness.
He thought he might try to use his magic, to employ it to make contact with some of the vegetation or smaller creatures and see what he could learn. It was all well and good to give himself over to the directional dictates of the darkwand, but it would be better if he could feel that he had some small control over his own destiny. Just being able to know a little something more of the world through which he passed might help. He didn’t yet have much confidence in his ability to get out of tight spots, and knowing that his magic could do more than make the darkwand’s runes dance about would go a long ways toward changing that.
He rose finally and looked about, peering through the gloom, trying not to breathe in the fetid smells of the deadwood and dank earth. The sky was lower today, more heavily clouded, as if rain threatened, and the mix of clouds and mist gave the sense of a sky and earth become joined. The way forward seemed immeasurable, a thick wall of gray that lacked any sense of up or down or sideways. He peered into it with trepidation and repulsion, then reluctantly set out.
He walked for a time, but could not seem to get clear of the woods. He was certain they did not stretch far and that he had set out in the right direction. But trees continued to materialize through the wall of the mist, their tangled limbs linked weblike overhead.