Eldew was pleased with how fast they had travelled. It had been, in fact, a pleasant journey. Settlements in Dennali, though numerous, were mainly small and easy to avoid. The land had proved moist, full of streams and lakes and fields of wet grass after rain. By night they moved in this form, by day they slithered along like snakes, low to the ground and harder to spot. When they’d happened to stumble across people, Eldew had allowed his companions to have a little fun, and sometimes they had even slipped a little out of their way to do so …but never had they tarried long.
‘Hold!’ he said, and the other Mireforms came to a halt. He reached to his side, where the end of the rolled-up map protruded, and pulled it out of himself. Shaking it free of mud, he examined it briefly, then turned to consider the silhouettes of the great mountains in the distance.
‘That way,’ he said, pointing with a knife-like claw.
The Mireforms took off again.
Duskwood
Lalenda walked through skeletal trees, bare and dead for a long time now. There wasn’t even leaf litter on the hard, barren ground. Broken trunks lay askew at various angles, some piled atop others to create brittle hills of collapsed wood. Others stood densely, grasping one another with spidery, claw-like branches. Dry lichen coated many surfaces, sending up musty grey clouds when disturbed. Grey upon grey upon grey.
She heard a twig snap, and turned. From amongst branches stared a pair of grey eyes, dry themselves, dry as the wretched face they inhabited.
Grimra swirled protectively in front of her, hissing.
She awoke.
‘Be all right, flutterbug?’ came Grimra’s voice, ghosting over the bed towards her. ‘Startling in her sleep she be?’
‘Yes,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘Dreaming?’
‘Yes. You were there too.’
‘Aha. Explains why Lalenda be frightened then. Grimra be very, very scary, ho ho!’
Lalenda smiled at him – or at least, where she thought he might be.
It had been some time since any prophecy had come to her. She’d taken to wondering if her usefulness in that regard had ended. Perhaps the major prophecy she’d been born to have had been predicting for Battu where and when the blue-haired boy would be born. If that were the case, she would not have minded. Prophecy was not controllable and hadn’t exactly made her life happy. Except that without it, she wouldn’t have Losara.
Perhaps she was lucky to be a prophet after all.
‘Duskwood,’ she murmured.
‘What’s this?’ said Grimra. ‘Why speak this name?’
‘I had a vision of us in Duskwood.’
Grimra gave a low growl. ‘Nothing good be there. No rabbits to chase, no birds to snaffle. Only resting for those without rest.’
Lalenda swung her legs out of bed. Through an opening high in Losara’s chambers she could see the light of early morning. She reached for the water jug and splashed her face, careless of the drops she got on the bedding.
For all its proximity to the castle, she did not know much about Duskwood. It ran out from the mountain on which Skygrip was shaped, from the bottom of the sheer cliff on the southwards side. It was rumoured to be a place for the undead, and that thing in her vision had most certainly been undead. But Losara had told her that Battu had been charged by the Dark Gods to clean the land of such creatures, sending their souls back to the Great Well. Battu had done a half-hearted job, and left spirit creatures called the Trapped intact along the border. Was it possible he had been lax with others as well? With Battu, anything was possible.
Still, what she knew of the place did not answer the important question – why would she go there?
Maybe because a prophecy said she would.
That, in her experience, was not the way prophecy worked. Visions showed things that would come to pass; they did not cause things to come to pass. If no strange reason arose to make her go to such a place, her prophecy would be proven false. If she did go, however, the prophecy would be true, but it would also be the cause of itself coming true. A circle, a paradox, or maybe evidence that the forces of fate were intervening in the natural flow of events?
Lalenda was surprised to discover that she actually found the idea of visiting the wood appealing. Her recent experience of life outside the castle made the walls seem even more claustrophobic than before, made her dissatisfied with reading books day in and out, waiting for Losara to return. Was it so implausible that, given the taste she had recently developed for exploration, she would wake up one morning wanting to see something new, and remember there was a place just behind the castle that she had never seen and knew little about? Was it so improbable that her confinement would drive her to take a short outing just to pass the time?
Idly, she picked up a book from her stack, one she had not delved into yet, and flipped it open. Last Home of the Ebons read the title. The story detailed the demise of the Ebon Elves who, like the Sprites, had not long survived the breaking of the Great Well. Unlike the Sprites, however, there were no traces of Ebons left. They had never interbred with other races, considering them unclean, and so had died out completely. It was with some surprise that she realised the book was about how the last Ebons had made their home in Duskwood, back when the trees were still alive.
It had been the top book in the pile. Perhaps , she thought, if not for the prophecy, I would have awoken and started reading, as I often do on these lazy mornings . Perhaps her curiosity would have been piqued, inspiring her to go and poke around the nearby place that she had just visited in her mind’s eye.
Should she go?
‘Breakfast time?’ asked Grimra hopefully.
‘Certainly,’ said Lalenda. It would give her a chance to mull things over.
The castle was emptier than usual, not only because of the purging, but also because Tyrellan and Roma had taken with them most of the guards and sundry others. As she walked the quiet corridors to the kitchens accompanied by Grimra, Lalenda wondered whom she could ask for permission to leave the castle …and realised that she didn’t really answer to anyone any more. A joy came upon her like tiny stars exploding in her heart.
She decided to go. If Losara could take off on a whim to creep around Kainordas, why should she be restricted by mere force of habit?
She arrived at the castle kitchens, where Greys used to putting out food for an entire castle were, maybe for the first time in their lives, taking their ease on the job, sitting around chatting in front of the iceplace. Saray noticed her enter and nodded to her as he rose. She took her usual place at a bench while he fixed her a breakfast of soft bread and cheese, and a haunch of meat for Grimra.
‘There we go, mistress,’ he said, sliding a plate in front of her. He put down the meat more gingerly.
‘Thank you,’ she replied, as Grimra began to worry noisily at his food.
Was it significant, then, this prophecy? Had it come to her for a reason? Hard to say, for sometimes she dreamed things of little consequence. Not every prophecy had to be ground-shaking. Still, she wondered about it, for it seemed odd that fate would pre-emptively reinforce a notion that she may have had anyway.
Well , she thought, chewing absently, I’ll go. What does it matter where the idea came from?
‘Grimra?’
The ghost somehow managed to sound as though he had his insubstantial mouth full. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m taking a little trip down to Duskwood.’
Grimra moaned, and a strip of half-eaten meat fell to the floor. ‘Why, flutterbug?’