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CHAPTER TWO

Return to the Forest

w

stone.

hen the plain of Mey Ghorn gave way to the King's Forest, Aspar White stopped and stared, and wished he were

'We came this way just two months ago,' Stephen whispered. 'I don't remember much of what happened then,' Winna said. 'But I would have remembered this.'

'Quiet, the both of you,' Aspar snapped.

Winna's eyes rounded with surprise and hurt, and he couldn't look at them.

Ehawk, the Wattau boy, just stared at the ground.

'I've got to'' Aspar tried to explain, but he couldn't think of anything to say.

'Just wait here,' he muttered instead. 'I'll be back.'

He gave Ogre a switch with the reins, and the massive horse started forward'reluctantly, it seemed. Aspar didn't blame him' Ogre was a killer, a beast with very little fear, but he and Aspar were alike in this. What they rode toward now ought not to be.

As Stephen had said, they had been here scarcely two months before. Then, it had been forest fringe, meadows and small trees, a few giant oaks and chestnuts, their leaves touched with fall color.

Now all was black. From a distance it looked almost like smoke, billowing yet strangely anchored to the ground. Close up, you could Return to the Forest

see what it really was. Vines as thick as ferry cables wound about the trees and writhed across the ground, sending thousands of smaller shoots to grapple with every limb and twig they could reach'which was all of them. The tops of the tallest trees had bent or snapped beneath their clinging weight. And everywhere, thorns'from stickers no longer than his fingernail to woody daggers more than a hand span long.

'Grim,' Aspar muttered. 'Haergrim Raver, what is happening to my forest?'

Stephen cast a glance at Winna. 'He didn't mean''

'I know,' she said. 'His hardness comes from habit, not from his heart. It's like those metal shells the knights in Eslen wear.' She kept her eyes on the holter as his figure grew smaller against the loom of black. 'He loves this forest,' she said softer. 'More than anything. More than he loves me.'

'I doubt that,' Stephen said.

'Don't,' she replied. 'It doesn't bother me. It doesn't make me jealous. It's good to know a man can feel so much, even one who has been through what Aspar has. It's good to know a man has a passion, and not just hollow bones in him.'

She glanced at Stephen, and her green eyes looked almost gray in the overcast morning. 'I love these woods, too'I grew up at the other edge of them. But you and I can never know what he feels for this place. That's the only thing that I'm jealous of'not that he feels it, but that I don't.'

Stephen nodded. 'What about your family? Are you worried about them?'

'Yah,' she said. 'Oh, yah. I try not to think of it. But my father, he'd be the first to leave, if things went too wrong. If he had notice. If he had time.'

Aspar had dismounted now, some distance away. Stephen heard the squeak of him coming off the leather saddle. As a novice priest, Stephen had walked the faneway of Saint Decmanis. The saint had improved his senses, his memory'and other things. He heard Aspar curse, too, invoking the Raver.

'Do you have an explanation for this?' Winna asked. 'Why this is happening? What those thorns are, exactly? Did you find anything in the royal scriftorium?'

'I know little more than you do,' Stephen admitted. 'They are connected in folklore and legend to the Briar King, but that much we already know from experience.'

The fortress of Cal Azroth was still visible behind them, across the Warlock River, a mass of twining thorns and little more. That was where they had last encountered the Briar King. A path of the vines led here, to the forest, where they seemed to have taken hold.

'Why would he destroy his own forest?'

'I don't know,' Stephen said. 'Some stories say he will destroy everything, make the world new from the ashes of the old.' He sighed. 'Half a year ago I considered myself learned, and the Briar King was no more than a name in a children's song. Now nothing I know seems true.'

'I know how you feel,' Winna replied. 'He's motioning us forward,' Stephen said.

'Are you sure?'

'Yes.'

Aspar watched his companions approach. He calmed his breathing.

Sceat on it, he thought to himself. What is, is. No use getting all mawkin'

about it. That won't help a thing. I'll find the Briar King, kill him, and put an end to this. That's that.

By the time they'd arrived, he even managed to force a smile.

'Fast-growin' weed,' he said, tilting his head at the dying forest.

'That it is,' Stephen allowed.

'I reckon all of this sprang from his trail,' Aspar said. 'That makes him easy to track, at least. Unless this stuff has already spread everywhere.'

It hadn't. Only a bell later, they found trees that were only half covered with the stuff, and finally not at all. Aspar felt relief sink down his body and toward his toes. There was still time to do something. It wasn't all lost yet.

'Let's see,' Aspar said. 'We've another two hours of daylight yet, Return to the Forest

but I expect rain at dusk. Stephen, since we're working for the praifec now, I reckon you ought to mark all this on your maps'how far this stuff has spread.

Winna and I will set up camp, meantime.'

'Where do you think we are?' Stephen asked.

Aspar took a slow look around. His bearings had been thrown off a bit by the unfamiliarity of what they had seen earlier.

The forest was more or less west of them, running north-south. East were the rolling fields of the Midenlands. He could make out five or six small farmsteads, a scattering of sheep, goats, and cows on the gentle hills. The tower of a small country church stood perhaps a league away.

'Do you know what town that is?' Stephen asked.

'I make it to be Thrigaetstath,' Aspar said.

Stephen had his map out and was scrutinizing it. 'Are you sure?' he asked. 'I think its more likely Tulhaem.'

'Yah? Then why ask me? I've only traveled these woods my whole life. You, you've got a map.'

'I'm just saying,' Stephen said, 'that this is only the third town I've seen since passing Cal Azroth, which ought to make it Tulhaem.'

'Tulhaem's bigger than that,' Aspar replied.

'It's hard to tell how big a town is,' Stephen said, 'when you can only see the top part of a bell tower. If you says it's Thrigaetstath, I'm happy to mark it that way.'

'Werlic. Do it then.'

'Still, Thrigaetstath ought to be nearer''

'Winna,' Aspar asked, 'where are you going?' She had quietly started her mount walking down the hill, away from the forest.

'To ask,' she said. 'There's a farmstead just down there.'

'Bogelih,' Aspar grunted. 'Are you sure?'

The boy'a straw-headed lad of fourteen or so named Algaf' scratched his head and seemed to think hard about the question.

'Well, sir,' he said at last, 'I've spent my whole life here and never heard it called nothin' else.'

'It's not on my map,' Stephen complained.

'How far are we from Thrigaetstath?' Aspar asked. 'Ogh, near a league, I reckon,' the boy said. 'But ain't nobody living there now. Them black brammels grew over it.'

'The whole town?' Winna said.

'I always said it was too near the forest,' a female voice added. Aspar's gaze tracked the sound to a woman of perhaps thirty who was clad in a brown homespun dress and standing near the stonewalled pigpen. Her hair was the same color as the boy's, and Aspar reckoned her for his mother.

'Pride, that's what it was,' she went on. 'They went over the boundary. Everyone knew it.'

'How long ago was this?' Stephen asked.

'I don't know,' she said. 'Before my grandmothers grandmother. But the forest thinks slow, my grandmother said. It doesn't forget. And now the lord Brammel has waked, and he's taking back what was his.'

'What happened to the folk of Thrigaetstath?' Aspar asked. 'Scattered. Went to their relatives, if they had any. Some went to the city, I reckon. But they're all gone.' Her eyes narrowed. 'You're him, aren't you? The king's holter?'

'I'm the holter,' Aspar acknowledged.

The woman nodded her head at the small buildings of her farm. 'We built outside the boundary. We respected his law. Are we safe?' Aspar sighed and shook his head. 'That I don't know. But I intend to find out.'

'I've ney husband ner family that will take me,' the woman said. 'I've only the boy there. I can't leave this place.'

Stephen cleared his throat. 'Have you heard anything about other villages being abandoned? About people who run'pardon me'naked, like beasts?'

'A traveler from the east brought tales like that,' the woman said. 'But travelers often bring tales.' She shifted uncomfortably. 'Still, there is something.'

'What?' Aspar asked.

'Things come out of the brammels. The animals smell them. The dogs bark all night. And yesterday I lost a goat.'

'I saw it,' the boy said eagerly. 'I saw it at the edge of the woods.'

Return to the Forest

'Algaf,' the woman snapped. 'I've told you not to go there. Ever.'

'Yes, Mum. But Riqqi ran up there, and I had to go after him.'

'We can get another dog, if it comes to that,' the woman said. 'Never, you hear me?'

'Yes, Mum.'

'But what did you see, boy?' Aspar asked.

'I think it was an utin,' the boy said cheerfully. 'He stood taller than you, but he was all wrong, if y'kann me. I only saw him for a minute.'

'An utin,' Aspar grunted. Once he would have gruffly dismissed the boy's words.

His whole life he had heard tales of utins and alvs and boygshinns and all manner of strange beasts in the King's Forest, and in almost four decades he had never seen any sign of them.

But he'd never seen a greffyn before this year, either, or a Briar King.

'I can take you there, master holter,' Algaf said.

'Your mother just told you to stay away from the forest,' Aspar said. 'It's fine advice. You just tell me where, and I'll have a look before sundown.'

'You'll stay with us, will you?' the woman asked.

'I wouldn't impose,' Aspar said. 'We'll pitch a camp in your field, if we may.'

'Stay in the barn,' the woman said. 'It won't be an imposition' it'll be a comfort.' She couldn't quite meet his eyes.

'Well enough,' Aspar said. 'Thank you for your kindness.' He motioned to the Wattau. 'Ehawk, you come with me. We'll go see if this thing left any sign.'

Aspar wrinkled his nose at the smell.

'Don't touch it,' Aspar warned Ehawk, who had bent to trace the track with his finger.

'Why, Master White?'

'I touched a greffyn track once, and it made me ill. Killed smaller creatures outright. I've no idea what left that, but it's nothing I know, and when I see things I don't know in the King's Forest, I've learned to be careful about 'em.'

'It's big,' Ehawk observed.

'Yah. And six toes, yet. Do they have anything leaves tracks like this up your way?'

'No.'

'Mine either,' Aspar said. 'And that smell?'

'I've never smelled the like,' the boy admitted. 'But it is foul.'

'I've known that scent before,' Aspar said. 'In the mountains, where I found the Briar King's barrow.' He sighed. 'Well, let's go back down. Tomorrow we'll track this thing.'

'Something's tracking it already,' Ehawk said.

'Eh? What do you see?'

The boy knelt and pointed, and Aspar saw he was right. There was another set of tracks, small, almost child-size, these in soft-soled shoes. The prints were so faint, even his trained eye had skipped over them.

'Those are good eyes you have there, Wattau,' Aspar said.

'They might be traveling together,' the boy allowed.

'Yah. Might be. Come along.'

Brean was the woman's name, and she served them chicken stew, probably better than she and the boy had eaten in months. Aspar ate sparingly, hoping to leave them some when they'd gone.

That night they slept in the barn. The dogs, as Brean had claimed, did bark all night, for leagues in all directions and probably out of earshot, too. There was fear in their voices, and Aspar did not sleep well.

The next day they rose early and went utin hunting.

Unfortunately, the tracks didn't go far'they vanished about twenty yards into the woods.

'The ground is still soft,' Aspar said. 'And this beast is heavy. There ought to be tracks.'

'In the stories I heard growing up, utins could shrink to the size of a gnat or turn into moss,' Winna said. 'It could be hiding right beneath our feet.'

'That's just stories,' Aspar said.

'Greffyns used to be just stories, too,' she replied.

Return to the Forest

'But the stories didn't have it all right,' Stephen pointed out. 'Each tale and account I read of the Briar King had only a few words of truth about him. And the real greffyn was very different from phay-story greffyns.'

'But real, yah?'

'Werlic,' Aspar agreed. 'I never trusted those stories.'

'You never trust anything except what you see with your own two eyes,' Winna shot back.

'And why should I? All it ever took to convince me there was such a thing as a greffyn was to see one. All it will ever take to convince me a beast that weighs half a ton can turn into moss is to see it. I'm a simple man.'

'No,' Stephen said. 'You're a skeptical man. That's kept you alive when others would have died.'

'Are we agreeing about this?' Aspar asked, one eyebrow raised.

'More or less. It's clear that many things we once considered legend have a basis in fact. But no one has actually seen a greffyn or an utin since ancient times. Stories grow and change in the telling, so no, we can't trust them to be reliable. The only way to sort out truth from invention is with our own senses.'

'Well, use your senses,' Winna said. 'Where did it go?'

It was Ehawk who answered, solemnly pointing up.

'Good lad,' Aspar said. He motioned to where Ehawk had indicated. 'The bark is scraped there, see? It's traveling in the trees.'

Stephen paled and stared up at the distant canopy. 'That's almost as bad as being able to turn into moss,' he said. 'How will we ever see it?'

'Is that a riddle?' Aspar asked. 'With our eyes.'

'But how to track it?'

'Yah, that's a problem. But it seems to be going along the forest edge where the briars are, which is where we're going, as well. The praifec didn't send us out here to hunt utins. I reckon we'll keep on with what we were hired for, and if we run across it again, all well and good.'

'That's not at all well and good by my sight,' Stephen said, 'but I take your point.'

They traveled in silence for a time. Aspar kept his eyes searching the treetops, and his back itched constantly. The smell of autumn leaves was almost overpowering. Long experience had taught him that the smell was a sign that murder was coming. The Sefry woman who had raised him had told him the strange sense came from Grim, the Raver, for Aspar had been born at a place of sacrifice to Grim. Aspar didn't necessarily believe that, nor did he care'he cared only that it was usually true.

Except in autumn, when the smell was already there'

But once again, his nose was right. Approaching a clearing, the scent intensified.

'I smell blood,' Stephen said. 'And something very foul.'

'Do you hear anything with those saint-blessed ears of yours?'

'I'm not sure. Breathing, maybe, but I can't tell where.' They advanced a little farther, until they saw the crumbled, torn body in the clearing.

'Saints!' Winna gasped. 'Saints bless,' Stephen said. 'The poor lad.' Blood soaked the leaves and ground, but the face was clean, easily recognizable as Algaf, the boy from the homestead. 'I guess he didn't listen to his mother.'

Aspar sighed. Stephen started forward, but Aspar stopped him with an outstretched arm.

'No. Don't you see? The boy is bait. It wants us to walk in there.'

'He's still alive,' Stephen said. 'That's him I hear breathing.'

'Asp',' Winna began, but he hushed her. He walked his gaze through the treetops, but there was nothing but bare branches and a sigh of wind.

He sighed. 'Watch the trees,' he said. 'I'll get him.'

'No,' Stephen said. 'I will. I can't use a bow the way you can. If it's really hiding in the trees, you've got the best chance of stopping it.'

Aspar considered that, then nodded. 'Go, then. But be ready.' As Stephen advanced cautiously into the field, Aspar nocked an arrow to his bow and waited.

Return to the Forest

A flight of sparrows whirred through the trees. Then the forest was eerily silent.

Stephen reached the boy and knelt by him. 'It's bad,' he called to them. 'He's still bleeding. If we bandage him now, we might have a chance.'

'I don't see anything,' Ehawk said.

'I know,' Aspar said. 'I don't like it.'

'Maybe you were wrong,' Winna suggested. 'We don't know that an utin'or whatever it is'is smart enough to set a trap.'

'The greffyn had men and Sefry traveling with it,' Aspar reminded her. He remembered the footprints. 'This thing might, too. It doesn't have to be smart enough itself.'

'Yah.'

He was missing something'he knew it. It had to have come into the clearing on foot. He had found only the one set of tracks in. He'd assumed it had left on the other side, then taken to the trees.

'Utins could shrink to the size of a gnat or turn into moss,' Winna had said.

'Stephen, come here, now,' Aspar shouted.

'But I'' His eyes widened, and his head nearly spun from his shoulders; then he lurched to his feet.

He hadn't gone a yard when the ground seemed to explode, and in a cloud of rising leaves, something much larger than a man leapt toward Stephen.