But war had come, war with Hardorn, and the Guards had been taken away to serve elsewhere, never to return. Now the only way that the people of Errold’s Grove could keep the road open was to run their own volunteer patrols over it. Then things had somehow gotten mixed up with magic as well, and so far as the people of Errold’s Grove were concerned, order and their old way of life had all but disappeared.
First had come the physical storms, worse than anyone had ever seen before, that washed out the road in places, flooded the village twice, and buried it in yards of snow for most of the last several winters. Then had come the mage-storms to batter them all along with the physical storms, and all anyone from Valdemar could do after the Herald’s initial warning was to send a messenger with a map that showed what places were going to change, and when. That was no great help, when all the places were out in the wild Forest and no one could get out there to chase large animals away from the danger zone. So the animals became monsters, or maybe the monsters were brought in by the magic; no one was really certain. The only thing that everyone in Errold’s Grove could agree on was that now it was far too dangerous to leave the village and its fields. You never knew if or when you might disturb something that was canny enough to follow you back home. People stopped going into the Forest, and the dye-traders stopped coming, since there was no longer anything here to trade for, or even worth the peril to investigate.
Cowards! Darian thought, angrily scrubbing the tears from his eyes with his knuckles. Other people kept going in! Other people weren ‘t so scared of their shadows that they gave up!
People like his parents, for instance. . . .
Darian’s parents had been trappers, as had many generations of his ancestors on either side. But when it became too dangerous to actually live in the Forest, they had made Errold’s Grove the base of their operation, carefully working a territory with cautious respect for the Hawkbrothers’ claims and the new strangeness that the mage-storms brought with them. Some of the creatures that arrived on the wings of the mage-storms had handsome pelts of unusual colors, and traders would pay a lot for them. Other changes had occurred in the normal species of the Pelagiris that had made improvements in color or texture of the furs of animals native to the Forest, and for these, too, traders would come. Then, although they were not as expert as the villagers had been, they would look for the dye-fungi when time permitted, thus bringing back a bit of the prosperity that had left on the storm-winds.
They were careful! Darian silently told the village. They knew how to be careful! They would never, ever have let anything follow them here, no matter what you think! They always made certain to use traps that any truly intelligent species would spot, just to keep their consciences clean, but even with that caution they had brought in some incredible prizes. Darian had often gone with them, for during the winter they would both be out together for weeks at a time. He loved the Forest, and even at its most dangerous, he had never been as terrified of it as the villagers were now. It was right to be cautious around the Forest, but it was stupid to be afraid of it - after all, it wasn’t the Forest that was so dangerous, it was the things living in it, and as long as you were careful, there was nothing to worry about! Any fool could see that!
And how could anyone let fear blind him to so much of wonder and beauty?
“Dari, listen,” his mother would whisper, and he would cock his head to listen for the new sound that had caught her attention - perhaps the liquid trill of a new bird (or was it a tervardi?) - or the bell-like tone of a hammer-jay. Whatever it was, once he caught it, he would look to her, and see the pleasure shining in her eyes as she listened, too. Then she would tell him what it was they had just heard, and spin him tales of the little lives of the creatures of the forest, tales far more wonderful than anything in those dusty books the villagers thought so important.
“Dari, look,” his father would say, pointing to something wonderful - a soaring hawk, the sunset light glowing red and orange on a towering cloud, a doe with a fawn only minutes old. And then his father would show him how to follow the hawk and watch it stooping to a kill, what the fiery sunset portended in the way of weather, and how to find the fawn when she hid in the grasses to doze while her mother went off to drink or graze. He would stand an excited witness to the hawk’s victory, sit in quiet contentment until the last red rays of the sunset faded into blue dusk, or creep up to whisper to the fearless fawn, being careful not to touch it lest its mother scent him and reject it, even though his hands itched to stroke its soft pelt.
He still loved the Forest, loved the green silences, the huge trees, the sounds of it. He couldn’t get anyone else in the village to see what drew him there; when he tried, they looked at him with suspicion and even a little fear, just as they had looked at his parents.
But he could have borne even that, if he still had them. Dad - Mum - why didn’t you come back? Why did you leave me alone? Why did you let the Forest take you away from me?
The pain returned, greater for having been bottled away beneath his anger and rebellion. His eyes flooded with tears, his throat knotted, and he pounded his hand against the bark of the tree until his knuckles were raw and scraped. Loneliness filled him until there was no room for anything else, except for anger at the insular villagers who hadn’t even bothered to mount a search party when his parents didn’t return. It didn’t matter to these fools that the exotic furs his Mum and Dad brought back had been the only thing that kept traders coming to the village! Oh, no - because they went out into the Forest, everyone was just certain that something would follow them back into the village, something too big and monstrous to get rid of! There hadn’t been a particle of evidence that something like that had any chance of happening, but it didn’t matter; his Mum and Dad had been watched like criminals every time they came back from a trapping run. And they’d felt it; how could they not have? So they would go back out more and more often, spending less and less time in the village. And maybe that was taking on too much risk in the middle of the mage-storms. Maybe that was why, after an agony of waiting, he knew that they wouldn’t come home this time.
They’d left him behind because there was going to be another mage-storm coming, and Justyn and some of the others had persuaded them not to risk his safety along with their own. He’d protested, but they’d slipped off during the night, leaving him with the innkeeper as they usually did. By the time he woke up the next morning, they were gone, and the wind and snow had obliterated their trail. He’d tried to follow, but had been forced to turn back.
He waited and waited, going out every day to watch for them, sure each dawn that he would see them coming in laden with their prizes.
But this time he had watched in vain, for they didn’t return.
Darian was left to the village to care for, and it hadn’t taken them long to figure out how to dispose of him. Within a day or two of being certain that Darian’s parents were never returning, the village elders had quickly apprenticed him to Justyn. Justyn had long been after his parents to bind Darian over to him as an apprentice; Justyn had told them that he had the Mage-Gift, and that it had to be trained or it would be dangerous. Mum and Dad only laughed at him and told him he was a silly old fool if he thought a boy could be dangerous to anything or anybody. But the villagers had been only too ready to believe in the danger, and only too happy to get him disposed of - and more than once there’d been intimations that “disposed of” is exactly what he’d be if they detected any connection between him and these weird times. They told him then, and they continued to tell him frequently, that he should be grateful to them for seeing to his care, and for persuading his parents to leave him behind on that last trapping run. They never stopped telling him how grateful he should be, in fact. There was even a hint behind it all that it was a good thing that his parents had been lost - because now he, Darian, would no longer find his own life at risk in the Forest.