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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.
As soon as she had regained her balance, she whispered frantically, “We have to get out of here. Now. No time to explain. Either turn back or turn the other way.”
Undecided—we’d come so far already—I finally turned to the right and plunged ahead, forging through the undergrowth as fast as I could. Whatever it was, it was bad, because Camille didn’t spook very easily.
We’d forged on for another ten minutes when there was a shift in energy, and the already-dim path grew darker, the sunlight blocked by a great shadow. I jerked my head up, expecting to see a wyvern winging overhead, but there was nothing there. Just a shadow. A gloom that rested between us and the latticework of sky shimmering between the tree branches and webs.
“What is it?” Iris said, her voice low.
“I don’t know,” Camille said. “I sensed . . . back there I sensed something connected to the Corpse Talkers. It felt like some rite. Trust me, we do not want to witness whatever dark rituals they pursue.”
“Corpse Talkers?” I shuddered.
Lips to lips, mouth to mouth,
Comes the speaker of the shrouds.
Suck in the spirit, speak the words.
Let secrets of the dead be heard.
As children, we’d sung the rhyme to chase away the bogeys, but like so many nursery rhymes, legend had its foundation in fact.
Only the women of their race ever became actual Corpse Talkers. Only the women were ever seen. It was rumored the mysterious race of misshapen Fae lived in some underground city built of bone and ash. Able to speak for the dead, Corpse Talkers offered their services for a bloody price, and they were worth every penny—worth every heart that they ripped from the victims to seal their communion with the dead. Always cloaked in long robes, only their glittering eyes showed through the gloom of their hoods.
“You’d better stay well away from them,” I told Camille.
