“Do not ever, ever, look into the varums!” a woman hollered. Her willful stride crunched behind him. Distant whistles sliced the air. The vines retreated, slithering back to their stalks.
Jesstin scrambled out of the brush. “What the fuck... was that?”
“Did your custodian tell you nothing?”
“Madame, my custodian was as useless as boots without soles.” As Jesstin returned to himself, he realized, bewildered, how close he’d come to being eaten by the forest.
“Madame.” Her caustic laugh was trenched in annoyance, but he could hear the fear there as well. “We’re a hundred yards from the nearest cloister, and twilight is over. Would you like to find out what horrors plague these woods, these paths, this world once moonrise breaks?”
“Not especially.” Jesstin scanned the darkness until he saw her, finally. She was in her early thirties, perhaps, with long hair that glowed under the moon’s beams. It was too dark to home in on anything more detailed.
He reached for his sword, but she shook her head with a laugh that seemed to say how adorable, and he relented. “Who are you? One of the others? From the maze?”
The woman stepped sideways to look around him. She was breathing hard, and he had a better view of the terror in her wide eyes. “Might your questions wait until we’re safe?”
Jesstin glanced around. “And how can I know you’re safe?”
“I’d heard you were headstrong and overconfident, but stupid? That is unexpected.” The woman charged closer. “If I hadn’t been here when you looked into the varum, whatever words you spoke before I saved you would have been noted as your last.”
Varum. Jesstin had already been miles ahead in his thoughts when Mon had started his endless recitation of dangers. He didn’t know if the woman was friend or foe, how she knew who he was, or if any of it was real, but none of that required an answer while he was exposed, in the dark, in a world whose only rule he recalled was don’t fucking be out at dark.
Jesstin nodded once in concession. The woman took off, returning to the road he’d taken from the river. She looked back to confirm he’d followed, then bolted into the unlit beyond. All he could do was follow, blindly, as they were assailed by the screams and shrieks and creaks of a forest that was not meant for them.
The road opened into a village square. There were shops and stalls and official-looking buildings, starting at ground level and stacking up into the mountains on all sides except the one they’d come from. But it was what he couldn’t see that unsettled him.
The woman disappeared down an alleyway. Between them passed another person, darting across their path in a perpendicular race. Jesstin was as certain as anything that what he’d seen was not a person at all though. He pushed harder to catch up.
She yanked him under some low-hanging eaves and clamped a hand over his mouth. “We’re close,” she whispered against his ear. “Do not lock eyes with those wraiths. Do not speak to them. Do not even subtly acknowledge them. Nod if you understand.”
Jesstin didn’t understand a bloody thing, but he nodded.
“And if you can’t keep that steel from making so much noise, leave it here,” she hissed. “Little good it will do you anyway.”
There wasn’t a chance of him continuing on undefended, so he unclipped it, carefully. He held it out ahead of him, stable in the air, where the metal had nothing to strike. She sighed as if to say, very well. Her finger moved to her lips. He cocked his chin and flared his eyes once. Yeah, I get it. Let’s go.
She moved carefully back into the alley, waiting for him to fall in behind before taking off again. Her slippered feet slapped the wet stones, but his boots were even louder, despite trying to run on his tiptoes like he used to watch Rhiain do when she was sneaking about the keep as a young woman. He didn’t know if it was a good or a bad thing that the shrieking was too loud for it to matter.
Another courtyard appeared ahead, but this one belonged to a building shaped like a U. Spires and battlements lined the top, and stained glass stretched along the middle interior. A half-dozen people stood in a semi-organized assembly outside the doors, ushering people in with frantic waves.
“Go, go.” The woman pushed him forward. Hands from all sides shoved him away from the road and her. Moments after he stumbled inside, the deep, slow moan of doors closing followed, and the thunder of their resounding slam rumbled as a huge metal bolt crashed.
Jesstin tried to tell people about the woman, that she was still out there with those... those... Well, they weren’t people, were they? But no one would listen, or maybe it was that they couldn’t hear him.
Tall as he was, he could see the whole of the place and was stunned speechless. There were hundreds of individuals packed into the building, which was probably the cloister Mon had told him about. The interior was eerily similar to the Night Soul, but there were sofas and blankets and tapestries, and the scent of ales and bread gave it a homey feel.
No. It was the Night Soul—or close enough it made him momentarily forget how scared he should be.
Silence descended upon the room in one frightening instant. Outside, the wraiths began screaming. So, so many of them, howling. Women and children and men huddled in small masses, their eyes glossed and wide. A few milled about unbothered, picking at the food selection and casually sipping their drinks.
“The fiends do this for about an hour.”
Jesstin flagged in relief. It was the woman who’d led him to safety, craned up on her toes to reach his ear.
“They’ll return before lightrise, but as long as you’re in here, you’re safe.”
“You made it,” he replied. She was a stranger, but was also the nearest thing to someone he did know, having been abandoned by Mon.
“Everyone did,” she said. After a guarded look at the doors, she added, “tonight.”
