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“I’d like to know the answer to that, too. Iris seems to have a lot of secrets hidden behind those winsome eyes,” I added with a grin.
Iris glanced back at me and snorted. “That I do, my girl. Consider I’m much older than you—well, chronologically. We Talon-haltija live a long, long time, like many of the full-blooded Fae, and I’ve reinvented myself several times over. Or rather, my life has been reinvented for me.
“As to Otherworld,” she continued, lowering her voice, “I found out about this land when I was very young. My . . . a friend from long ago in my past used to bring me here on picnics and for visits. He was born here. We met in the Northlands.” She fell silent, and I recognized the look. We’d get no more information out of her on that subject.
As we approached the shadow of the tree line, a strange silence fell over the strip of meadow that acted as a natural boundary for the edge of the forest. I could still hear the birds singing away in the trees, but they sounded strangely muted, as if somebody had turned down the volume on the stereo.
Most forests in Otherworld were warm and welcoming. Darkynwyrd was another matter. Silver fir and alder, willow, yew, hemlock, and elder, the trees were all sentient, and they were all watchful, keeping guard over the dusky forest. Their trunks were tall and broad, with burls in the gnarled bark that looked like faces. They watched as we entered, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I scooted close to Camille, who silently reached out to take my hand.
The branches stretched over the narrow pathway, forming a lattice above us, a canopy of leaves and boughs. Emanating a slightly fetid smell, they were thick with webs strung between the limbs.
Leshi spiders thrived in the arboreal garden, and here and there I caught sight of the fat, shiny orb weavers. The size of a silver dollar, they were slick, with jointed legs and round abdomens, and their venom could paralyze a grown man. I’d heard tales of lone wanderers who had entered the forest and stumbled into webs strung across the path, their skeletons later found hanging in a cocoon of spider-silk. Darkynwyrd wasn’t safe for solitary travelers unless they possessed strong magic or, at least, strong talismans for protection.
Scattered among the trees were large patches of thorny brambles and skunkwort, yungberry bushes—the berries were often used in magical trance work—and eisha flowers, which were harvested for love and lust potions. Darkynwyrd was a treasure trove of magical spell ingredients and herbal remedies for healers and witches and sorcerers, but the trip to harvest them could be a dangerous one. The leshi spiders were bad enough, but the forest was also thick with venomous snakes and sharp-toothed wyrerats. And then there were the goblins and trolls and other, darker beings.
Just the knowledge that we were journeying into the forest our father had warned us never to enter was enough to set me shivering. I clutched Camille’s hand, trying to stave off my nerves. She looked all too calm and collected.
I frowned. “Aren’t you scared?”
She shook her head. “There’s tension here, yes, but consider what we’ve been through this past year. What could be worse than facing down demons? Than facing Dredge? Or Kyoka? Goblins are a nuisance, but we can kill them easy enough. Trolls? We took out two dubba-trolls just a month or so ago. I’ve been practicing death magic. And look at you: You’ve been marked by the Autumn Lord. You’ve faced one of the Harvestmen himself. Why should you be afraid?” She laughed. “I’m more worried about running into Lethesanar’s armies than I am about what dangers we face here.”
I stared at her, thinking she was sounding more and more like Menolly every day. But she made a good point. After what we’d already been through, why should I allow a simple forest to scare me? And we had Smoky with us. The dragon would never let anything happen to Camille without wiping out the enemy first. He’d burn down the entire forest rather than let it harm his prize.
With a snort, I said, “You’re right. I guess it’s a holdover from childhood. All those years we were warned never to come here, never to venture into the dark wood. Father couldn’t have foreseen where we’d be today.” I drifted off, thinking for a moment. “Do you think we’ll find him? That we’ll ever see him again?”
Camille sobered. “I don’t know, Kitten. I hope so, I desperately want to believe we will. Just like I have to believe that I will find Trillian. If there’s no hope, then what good is it all? We can’t ever let our guard down, but we have to hold on to the belief that we’ll be reunited with the ones we love. And look—cousin Shamas found his way to us. We thought he was dead, but he’s fine, and he’s on our side. If someone targeted by an assassin triad of Jakaris can survive, then Father and Trillian have to be able to fight their way back to us.”
Morio glanced back at us. “Trillian is far more savvy than you think. He’s a survivor. Whatever happened, you can bet that he’ll get out of it and take control of the situation. Remember, he lived in the Subterranean Realms for years before the entire city of Svartalfheim relocated to Otherworld.”
As we trekked through the woodland, which stretched for a good two hundred miles before opening into the Shadowlands and the Southern Wastes, I fell into the rhythm of the forest. If I closed my eyes, I could feel it breathing around us. I sank into the cadence of Darkynwyrd’s pulse and slowly let go of Camille’s hand. She was right. What did we have to fear? We’d hardened up since we first left Otherworld. We were far more dangerous, far less trusting. It was harder to catch us in a trap and harder to take us down.
In some ways, we were walking in our own shadow land back over Earthside. The majority of humanity had no idea how close to danger their world was. And we were standing on the front lines, holding off the battle. We’d lost our sense of what it meant to be carefree when Menolly was first turned. Dredge had ended our hopes for a normal life.
And then, when we were assigned Earthside, we’d run smack into Demon Central, and any lingering Cinderella dreams had vanished like so much smoke. We were the true dangers here. Dangerous to any of the creatures who might seek to stop us, to interfere, to harm us. I straightened my shoulders and took a slow, clear breath.
“I smell water,” Iris said, pointing to the right. “Can you hear it?” she asked me. “Your hearing is better than mine.”
I listened, and so did Camille. There, faint but definite, the sound of water lapping against the shore. “Yes,” I said. “I don’t know if it’s a stream or pond, but I hear it.”
“I smell it, too,” Camille said. “It’s not a stream; it smells like lake water.”
I moved up beside Iris and stared at the veritable fence of undergrowth that we faced passing through. “Stickers and briars. Lovely. Should we go on and hope we find a clearer trail ahead?”
She shook her head. “I have the feeling no matter how far we go, we’ll have to wade through the thicket to get to our prize.”
Morio agreed. “It probably just gets worse the farther you head into the forest. And we don’t want to be here when it gets dark. Or at least, I don’t.” He glanced nervously over his shoulder. “It’s one thing to battle it out in the daylight, but night brings out the undead, and I can feel them here. The wood is thick with spirits.”
“Okay, then. Let’s do it,” I said, turning to Iris. “Since I’m taller, let me go first. Morio, move back with Camille. I’ll break the trail.”
I pushed ahead into the thicket, using my silver dagger to sweep aside the brambles. Iris was faring pretty well; the leather of her vest and knee pads didn’t catch on the thorns, but some of the brambles were at eye level with her, and I had no intention on letting her get an eye poked out on my account.
I glanced over my shoulder. “Smoky, keep a close watch on the back end. We don’t want anybody sneaking up on us when we’re caught in a patch of thick thorn bushes.”
As I plowed through the brambles and waist-high ferns, it occurred to me that, as nervous as the forests over Earthside left me, they were a walk in a nicely groomed park compared to Darkynwyrd. Camille had gone a long way to calming my fears of the wild wood, but I wasn’t stupid enough to blow off the dangers that we faced coming here. We might have a dragon with us, but should a wyvern come screeching down from the skies, we’d have a fiery battle on our hands, and none of us would come out the better for it, Smoky included.
As I brushed my dagger through one patch of berry bushes, the faint sound of chanting echoed to my left. Somewhere, up ahead, somebody was singing. Or . . . they were casting a spell. I slowed, motioning for everybody to be quiet, and gestured for Camille to join me. As she slipped up beside me, I nodded to where I heard the chanting coming from and whispered, “What is it? Can you tell?”
She closed her eyes, listening. I could sense her reaching out on the astral, trying to touch the magic. She must have made some sort of contact, because she jerked suddenly, her eyes flying open. She clapped her hand to her mouth and stumbled back into Morio’s arms, as he kept her from falling.
