The forest village showed itself unexpectedly, hidden on approach by the bulk of a long rib of granite. Ice had sheared the gargantuan stone apart centuries ago, and the road ran straight through the notch between the halves for thirty strides.
Their progress between the close granite cliffs was cacophonous as the echoes of hoofbeats and Staysha’s rattling wagon rebounded in the narrow passage. Only when they emerged from the other side were the buildings revealed, and the sudden stillness was startling. Even the rustle of the wind in the treetops seemed to have ceased.
From the first second, a terrible sense of wrongness pervaded the place, and Fern didn’t need to feel the tension in Astryx’s body behind her to register it.
“Maybe we shouldn’t stop here?” said Staysha, drawing up beside them and surveying the area skeptically.
Astryx held up a hand for silence. Beside her, Zyll’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.
Six buildings, their pitched roofs furred with crowns of dried needles, made up something like a village center. Fern spotted a few other dwellings tucked back into the trees.
A little river ran through the center of the barely-a-town, straddled by a crude wooden bridge. Upstream, the paddle wheel of a decrepit mill groaned with every revolution.
There were no people visible. No audible voices. No smoke.
Fern noted fenced gardens in clearings, but their contents seemed trampled and disrupted.
“It’s like it’s hollowed out,” whispered Fern, wincing at how loud her voice sounded in her own ears. She pointed at the largest of the buildings. “Why are the windows boarded up?”
That peculiar, mournful call echoed again, descending into that throaty, wet coughing sound, and gooseflesh rippled from Fern’s tail to the tips of her ears.
Zyllhissed.
“Okay, but really, whatisthat?” asked Breadlee. “Puts the jim-jams in my haft.”
Astryx didn’t answer, but instead dismounted from behind Fern. “Stay on Bucket, or in the wagon,” she said. With a grace that didn’t betray her recent wound, she drew Nigel—who had the presence of mind to remain silent—and approached the door of the boarded-over structure.
It might have been something that passed for a tavern in this tiny community, although there was no signboard or outward indication other than its second story and the size of its river-stone chimney.
The Oathmaiden paused and listened at the door, then reached out slowly to try the latch. When that didn’t work, she put a shoulder to the banded planks and pushed, unsuccessfully.
With a glance back at Fern and Staysha, she rapped sharply on the door with her free hand, thrice.
A moment of hush, then a scuffle beyond the door that Fern heard even from her place astride Bucket.
“If y’aint Haber’s Five, best you go, and soon!” came a rough voice from beyond the door.
Fern almost missed a stiffening in Staysha’s posture. She studied the bard’s face, but found nothing in the dwarf’s expression to explain it.
“I don’t know who that is,” said Astryx. “Is this door boarded from the inside?”
Another pause.
“Aye,” replied the voice suspiciously.
“Enough force will knock the nails right out. You’d be better off pushing something heavy against it. I’m called Astryx.”
A murmured conversation ensued, and then a different voice, reedy and querulous, piped up, “Oathmaiden?”
Nigel couldn’t help himself any longer. “Indeed,” he declared. “None other!”
“Someone’s coming to help you then?” asked Astryx. “Someone called Haber?”
“He’s late!” cried the reedy voice, although the rough one tried to shush it.
Astryx stared down the road through the village, scrubbing absently at her ear. With a small sigh, she appeared to arrive at a decision, then called through the door, “I think you should probably let us inside. I don’t know Haber, but I know what’s in your woods.”
If itwasa tavern, it wasn’t much of one, and there was no bar. There were a few tables, but they were crowded against one wall amidst a tumble of old chairs. The place was lit weakly by oil lanterns hanging from the rafters and thin fingers of light that stabbed through the boarded windows. The hearth squatted cold and dead. A pile of planks and pulled nails lay beside the door.
