Chapter 23 - Family.
Little light came through the crowns of the giant trees, and what passed them broke into narrow bands; the roots rose from the soil in high curved ridges, any one of which a man could have hidden behind easily. Behind one of those ridges, below the crest, Aren and Sir William lay hidden with only their heads showing, and a few metres away, in a small clearing, a boar stood.
The animal was large, about two metres long and a metre at the withers, with a broad chest, a sloping neck and thick brown fur. It was eating mushrooms scattered at the foot of the trunk beside it.
"I think I saw the head of a boar like that on the horse of the only hunter who came back with a kill on the second day," Aren whispered.
"That is no ordinary boar… It is a white-stone boar cub. Strange to find one out here on its own," William answered.
"White-stone?… And where's the… white stone, then?"
"You don't seem to know much about the magical animals out here. Never mind. What matters more just now is that we don't run into its parents," William said after a sigh.
He worked his way along the root, bent low to the ground, and swung wide around the clearing where the cub stood, as Aren followed, careful not to catch a single branch.
"If that's a cub… and it's already that size… how big do the grown ones get?"
"Picture three more of those bodies on top of it."
Aren looked back once the clearing with the cub had fallen behind them.
William stopped for a moment and looked around, then straightened and went on at an ordinary walk; Aren straightened as well and kept to it.
"Do you know the animals of the Great Forest well?"
"Only the ones that live along the outer bound. Cortexes, boars, Sentinel Deer. But we're past the inner bound now, and as for what lives out here beyond it, only the Forest Watch could tell you."
"Why don't the Watch share what they know?"
"Because it is safer that way, for people and for the forest. Once that knowledge reaches the common folk it will reach outsiders sooner or later. One of our own, or the outsiders themselves, will take it into their heads to come in here after rare game, and that ends in tragedy every time."
"Like the one that happened to you?"
William checked his pace, stopped in the middle of the path and turned slowly to Aren.
"Yes. Probably… since the men of the Trade League did break that ban after all… yes… you're right."
William's face fell, and he set off again without another word.
Aren let a few paces go by before he asked one more thing.
"And what was the creature that atta—"
"ENOUGH! No more questions! Just walk and keep your eyes open! All they will do is call other beasts down on us with the noise!" William flared, turning round on him.
"Well… you were a good deal louder than me just now," Aren answered, and stopped where he stood.
William breathed out slowly, let his shoulders drop and shook his head, and in that same instant a dry branch cracked distinctly in the undergrowth behind them.
Both of them turned at once, and the bushes a few dozen paces off swayed slowly forward.
William drew his sword, and a golden shell of energy spread over his whole body.
Aren took a step back and then went still, as the knight had.
Out of the undergrowth came a deer whose antlers carried blue light in every vein, the light running along the curves in ragged patterns, its eyes glowing with that same blue and its coat shifting in bands of brown and white.
William lowered the sword without taking his eyes off the deer, and Aren simply stood with his mouth slightly open.
"That's…" Aren began.
"A Sentinel Deer," William answered.
The two of them watched the deer, which for its part stayed where it was and studied them. Then the deer's head swung round to the side in a fraction of a second, and its ears went flat to its skull.
The animal broke away, went back the way it had come and was gone between the trunks.
They both watched it go, slow to take in what had just happened.
"What's wrong with it? Was it frightened of something?" Aren asked.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
That same second William turned to face where the deer had been looking before it ran.
A long corridor of giant trunks opened in front of him and ran on into the depths of the forest, where the shadows swallowed the light by degrees and the space closed into an impenetrable dark.
William went still and did not take his eyes off that darkness, as his back tightened little by little and his right hand shut harder on the hilt of his sword.
"Aren… We're going. NOW!" William said, and broke into a run, heading west towards the mountain ridges.
By that hour Ockhaven lay to the north, past open roads and hills, and in the castle raised on the central hill above the whole city a council was under way. The council hall took up the corner tower of the third tier, and from its lancet windows the roofs of the upper and lower city could be seen, along with the far line of the Southern Gate.
The table at the centre was covered by a map spread wide and pinned at the corners with metal weights, while the air in the room stood heavy with the smell of torch fat. In the hall were Sir Alistair, Ulrich Thorne, the Hand of the Queen, and Sir Aurey Dane, the Queen's Sword, each in his own place at the table. In the far corner, apart from the rest, Bernard stood with his arms crossed over his chest, and Elara beside him held Leo in front of her with her hands on his shoulders. At the head of the table, bent over the map, stood Queen Edith.
"So… Sir William took some 'friend' of his out of the city on the guards' horse and never brought it back. I take it this friend is Aren," Edith began.
Silence answered her and held for several seconds, until Alistair was the first to break it.
"In all likelihood William took the armour off Gunard, but where Gunard himself is we still don't know. William could not have killed him."
"And where does that certainty come from?" Aurey asked.
"Because they are knights. We are knights. And we do not kill our own," Alistair answered, turning his head to Aurey.
"And do you abduct people as well? Attack townsfolk? Steal horses?"
Alistair's fist tightened slowly, and the muscles at his jaw stood out in hard knots.
"Enough. What matters more now is where they have gone, and what purpose is driving William… and… why he needs Aren," Edith said.
She lifted her eyes from the map to the far corner of the hall, where Bernard and Elara stood with Leo.
The door of the hall swung open with no knock and no warning, and one of the knights of the Green Order appeared in the doorway; he came forward, a scroll held tight against his chest, and addressed Edith.
"My Queen! A letter has come from the Forest Watch!"
Ulrich Thorne put out a hand towards the knight without turning his head, and the knight crossed to him quickly and handed over the scroll.
Thorne cracked the seal, unrolled the scroll and ran his eyes down it, and his brows drew slowly together at the bridge of his nose.
"Bram Wellard reports that the Great Forest has begun to wake without warning, and that today's patrol found fresh horse tracks where the forest meets the western grove."
Bernard's arms, crossed over his chest until then, dropped to his sides; Elara pulled Leo tighter against her, and he took hold of her arms with both hands and looked up at his sister with worry.
Edith frowned, and her eyes travelled across the map to the wide band of the Great Forest.
"Aren… mentioned…" Elara began.
Everyone in the hall turned to her at once, though the words came out of her, dragged up one at a time with visible effort.
"He said… that he'd dreamed of the Great Forest…"
Edith kept her eyes on Elara, paused a moment and then turned to Alistair.
"Gather the men."
Then her eyes moved to Aurey.
"Send a letter to Wellard. Full readiness, and the watch reinforced along the entire outer bound of the forest."
Last of all she turned to Ulrich.
"The Magister's trial is postponed until this situation is resolved, and you will keep watch on what the Aisengarders do. Authority over the city passes to you for the next three days."
Ulrich took that with a short nod and said nothing.
Edith stepped away from the table and made for the door, and the rest fell in behind her to let the queen go first.
As she crossed the threshold, Bernard spoke up from where he stood.
"Wait. And what are we to do?"
The queen stopped and looked back at him over her shoulder.
"You will stay in the castle and wait for news."
She turned back to the door, but Bernard had already stepped after her, and two knights moved into his path at once.
"But I have no intention of sitting here in silence and waiting while Aren is in danger, in the damned Great Forest!"
Edith stopped again and turned to him, her eyes narrowed and her head tilted a little to one side.
"Why are you so troubled over this man? He is not one of yours, after all."
"That isn't so. He is a member of our family," Bernard said, looking over the knights straight at the queen.
"He lived and learned in our village! In Golden Flow! He brought in the harvest, he helped me at the forge, he helped the traders in their shops… he helped every soul in that village and became our own! And that is why… he is, damn it, ONE OF US!"
One of the two knights in front of him stepped forward and drove a fist into Bernard's stomach.
"Mind your tone!"
Bernard caught the knight's wrist in anger and drove his other fist into the man's chin in the same second, hard enough that the knight's vision swam. He took the side of the helm in his freed hand at once and slammed it into the stone wall, and the knight slid down the wall to the floor unconscious.
The second knight had his sword out on the instant and came at Bernard with a wide stride; Bernard stood there breathing hard and furious, ready for more.
Threads of black and violet with a burning aura wound round Bernard's body from every side in an instant, and he froze in place as one of them closed slowly on his throat.
Cutting his eyes sideways, he found Aurey beside Edith, his open palm laid against the wall.
Aurey's shadow, stretched unnaturally along the stone, reached as far as Bernard's own shadow on the same wall.
"Enough," Edith ordered quietly.
Aurey lifted his palm from the wall; the threads dissolved at once, and Bernard dropped to one knee and dragged air in through his mouth.
Elara and Leo ran to him and went down beside him with their hands on his back.
Edith stepped forward and halted over them.
"You are the one, aren't you, the warrior who came out of the Battle of the Divine Ridge alive?… Bernard, called the Undying."
Bernard raised his eyes to her and gave no answer; Edith narrowed hers slightly and turned for the door.
"You may go if you wish, but you take responsibility for yourself," she said as she went.
All the rest followed her out; the second knight took the first under the arms and dragged him slowly out of the corridor.
Elara and Leo stayed beside Bernard in the emptied corridor, where he leaned slowly back against the wall.
All this time, outside one of the lancet windows, a few centimetres from the open frame, Morgiana Schtance had been holding on to the stonework of the wall with her left hand, suspended above the outer courtyard.
The metal hand, with its several moving joints, had closed hard on a jut of stone and carried her whole weight, while her right arm braced against the jut beside it and her body lay pressed to the stone, out of any line of sight from the hall and unnoticed by the guards on patrol far below.
Once the council had ended she edged slowly sideways, further and further from the window.
Her movements were exact, elegant and entirely soundless, and the metal hand found the next hold in the stonework as she came to it.
When she reached the window of an empty corridor she swung a leg over the sill, pulled herself inside and dropped onto the stone floor.
She brushed the dust off her shoulder, straightened to her full height and set off down the corridor at an unhurried walk.