The forest moving about her. Insects clicking to each other, the high-pitched calls of the bats. Somewhere far off one of the wolves howling, faint and shrill. Another answering.
It went in waves like this, sometimes quiet and then sometimes rising in a chorus about her. It was not the noises that worried her, but the silence. For everything was prey to some creatures and when everything fell quiet, what silent and snarling beast stalked along the forest floor, winding between the trees and staring from the shadows, driving all else to hiding?
She saw nothing, but that did not mean that nothing was there. In each stifling silence perhaps the slow breathing of something that waited and watched. If it saw where she lay lashed to the tree she did not know. Or if it only smelled her in the forest, smelled the warmth of her blood and heard the beat of her heart.
Each time that silence gave way to the sounds of the night, it was like a blanket lifting. And again she would breathe and check the knots and listen and wait with everything in her for the morning sun on that distant horizon.
She woke and he was sitting against the foot of another tree, looking up at her and picking at his fingernails with his knife. The sun had risen already and was bright and orange in small patches as it came down through the trees. Chasing away all that was the night and making her wonder for just a moment if everything she knew lurked and lived in that night was real after all, or if she'd imagined everything and passed the night in safety with only her mind creating about her the illusion of death.
But she knew not to give in to those thoughts, for those who did were those who were dead.
He looked up when she moved to untie the knots and shook his head and kept picking at his fingernails. “For someone who's wanted by half the kingdom, you're certainly finding a lot of time to sleep.”
She didn't answer, but pulled the rope through the last of the knots and looped it through her belt and dropped to the ground. Hanging for a moment from the high limb of the tree to shorten the distance and then letting go and falling into moss and underbrush. He didn't move or look at her the whole time and then stood when she fell.
“Thank you for the horse,” she said.
“Looks like you lost him.”
“I didn't lose him.”
“Then I'm blind in my old age.”
She nodded her head back the way she'd come. Noting as she did that he did not have a horse either. When she'd known him before he'd walked tirelessly in full plate and she wouldn't have been surprised if he could walk to her in the simple leather and chain armor he wore now, but his comment about his age was only half in jest. The way most things had a heart of truth in them and would never even be said if they didn't.
“I tied him to a tree. Didn't want to give away where I was.”
He looked down at himself and then at the tree. “Well done.”
She scowled. “If they had you I wouldn't have bothered.”
He held out a hand as she started back for the horse, and she stopped and looked at him. He shook his head. “You've lost him,” he said.
She looked at him a long moment and felt something in her move and heard again that silence in the night. It had not even screamed. That scared her more than if she'd lain in that tree listening as it was torn to pieces. Because then it at least would have died the way things were supposed to die.
“I'm sorry,” she said.
He shook his head. “I knew when I sent you here.”
“At least they won't follow.”
“Not without a company.”
“What have you seen?”
He looked off into that deep forest and adjusted his belt. The sword long and ancient at his side, the same he'd carried all his life. In what felt to her a previous life. “They're all over the road. Gated the city last night and didn't open it. Word is he's out riding and looking for you himself. But I don't think that's true.”
“He wouldn't do it.”
“He may not care.”
“Not care?”
“That you're gone.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “How will you stop him?”
“I don't know.”
“And that's why he doesn't care.”
She stepped forward then, putting a hand against his chest, pushing him back against the tree. Feeling in her a surge of anger and violence like she hadn't felt for a long time. The air perhaps, or something else. Speaking through gritted teeth. “You don't think I can do it?”
He raised both hands at his sides. “I didn't say that.”
“Then what is it you said?”
“I'm just saying he might not think you're a threat. If he wants war, he can get it with you or without you. He'll send men after you, but he's not going to ride out himself. He has enough power now. They'll follow him.”
She stepped back from him. This her oldest and perhaps only friend. For how else had this world changed and shifted as she lay underground? The dead rising from the fields would have felt the same, cast suddenly into some new life and finding everything around them different, the very stones beneath which they'd been buried broken and gone.
“I can't let him,” she said.
“Then what will we do?”
She had been turning it in her head for a long time and she knew one thing she could do and hated it and yet knew nothing else. Every turn just bringing it into a fuller view.
“If he wants a war, we'll show him he can't win.”
He grunted. “You and I? Buy some bows and march on the gates, maybe? Never mind that you killed our horse.”
“No,” she said. “It's what you said before. He'll be slaughtered. I'll just show him it before it happens. We'll go to the Island Kingdoms, to Erihon. To Mannkaran in the mountains. To Callhud and Jaskerat and The Peak.” She swallowed. “To the Whispermen.”
He did not speak for a long time and when he did she could barely hear him. “You're insane,” he said. “What did they do to you down there?”
“It's the only way and you know it. If he wants war, he won't listen to words. But he'll listen to force. We'll gather all the armies and march them down into the valley. Blockade the river by Stoneguard. Show them how pointless it is. Show him that he doesn't want war.”
“You'll bring them down on your own people. It'll be a bloodbath.”
“I'll bring them down on him. No one has to die.”
“But they will. You think he'll just throw it away and let you climb back on the throne? You think it will be that easy?”
“He's a fool. He's not suicidal.”
He leaned forward and there was something in his eyes born of years and wars and battles and the type of knowledge that only those who survive such things can have. For most die and those who don't simply die the next time and rare is the man who has waded through so much death and come out himself alive and washed in blood and a man like that knows things other men can never know, and it was that which lived in his eyes.
“There is nothing,” he said, “that is more dangerous than a caged king who does not care if others die.”
They walked that day through the forest in the lingering light that filtered through the canopy, falling deep into this shadow world in long beams and moving through them dust and insects and birds. The flittering of animals who would in the night be as hidden as they could, buried in trees and burrows and underground. All holding their breath. Giving these two travelers a wide berth but always about now as the world turned.