Sy woke with his heart pounding in his ears like a mallet against wood.
As in the dream, it was daylight, but he was once more surrounded by tall, whispering pines, and no roots, or anything else, poked through the soft dirt.
Beside him, a small, round, tawny rabbit chewed on a white clover blossom. It was close enough that he could touch it, could stroke its small forehead if he reached out. His heart slowed, and a relieved breath of laughter escaped him. He reached a finger toward the rabbit, and it stopped chewing, its nose wrinkling as it sniffed the air.
Something slithered along Sy’s leg. Remembering his dream, he shot up.
A long black snake rested on his leg, stirred into motion by his waking. Barely suppressing a cry, he shook it off. It disappeared haughtily into the undergrowth. The rabbit vanished in the opposite direction.
Rid of his guests, he sighed and took in what was left of the camp. David and Bertrand were gone, as were all their supplies. He located his rucksack roughly where he had left it.
As he did, it moved. The rowan branch Anya had given him was on the ground beside it. Forcing himself not to move too quickly, he reached for it. The bag moved again, like there was something inside it, rummaging.
He lifted the branch of rowan. What was he supposed to do with it? Feeling foolish, he waved it over the bag; when that did nothing, heart in his throat, he poked it.
A fat red squirrel burst forth and scurried away, a piece of stale rye in its mouth.
Groaning with relief and exhaustion, he dropped the stick and rubbed his face. It seemed he had the use of all his senses and limbs. Only a sleeping spell, and no ill effects, other than the heavy strangeness of his dream. He calmed the burning sting of the betrayal by focusing on more practical matters, such as the fact that Anya’s shotgun was gone, as was the pouch of ammunition he’d had on his waist.
And, as he dug through his rucksack, he realized, so was the map.
They’d left him all his provisions, at least, except those stolen by the squirrel. He still had his pen kit. He opened the satchel and checked it – nothing missing there.
It was then he noticed his left palm was covered in some mysterious substance. He rubbed it with his thumb. Ink. They’d traced the mark on his palm in ink; pressed it to parchment, heassumed. He supposed he should be grateful they hadn’t cut it off. Or maybe not; it would not be long in the climbing summer heat before the severed flesh began to decompose, making the paraglyph unreadable. It would have been a waste.
So, David did suspect the king’s mark held the key to the spell they all sought. Did everyone? Sy realized his cooperation – or the mark on his hand – may soon be as sought after a prize as the bird itself.
Bertrand’s strange behavior made much more sense. They knew the mark may hold the key to the spell and that Sy would not help them. David had been wavering; Bertrand had been trying to convince him Sy was not only an obstacle, but a danger.
Since entering the forest, Sy had been doing his best to prove that himself.
And now they had the location of the phoenix, a map to lead them there, the gun, and the knowledge that Anya was on her own.
Sy put his head in his hands, then slammed a fist into the dirt. He’d been such a fool. Every step of the way. He’d been a fool to try at all.
But he had no time to wallow. He may be at every disadvantage, but the game wasn’t lost just yet. He plucked a jar of figs from his rucksack, stuck the branch back in, and forced the fruits down his throat. The sun was out; the river was east. He walked.
While he walked, he considered his dream. Nothing like any dream he’d ever had. Not quite like a dream at all. As with the trick Sabina had played on Anya, something had gone awry with David’s spell.
More than that, it almost felt as if something spoke to him, something beyond the dream, beyond himself, beyond comprehension. Colors that hit his eye, but that he couldn’t see. If he could paint what he saw, the parts that made sense – recreate it in vivid detail, gold and red and silver and green – he could make himself mad repainting it, study it his entire lifetime, several lifetimes, and still not see the scope of it. He simply didn’t have the eyes.
The magic he had seen, the magic he sensed here. It wasn’t that it wasnothinglike the magic he made in the capital. Theywere kin; in the same family, the same alphabet. What were letters but a way of arranging thoughts into recognizable patterns? Of communicating ideas in the only way another could ever possibly understand them, in the hopes they would, in fact, say what one wanted them to say?
And what were glyphs, after all, but an attempt at making sense of the insensible? At bottling an earthquake, or catching a pixie by its wings?
And what if they could do more than merely catch, or confine?
A spiderweb spread across his face, tangling in his eyebrows and eyelashes, pulling him back to more comprehensible realms.
As he closed his eyes and wiped the web from his face, he felt something catch on his ankle. He stepped forward, trying to shake it loose, but it only tightened. He realized what it was as he tripped: a copper wire snare. The weight of the rucksack on his back sent him careening forward, and his fall pulled the snare tighter, wrenching his ankle. With a curse, he landed in the brush, barely managing to catch himself with his hands.
Before he could even catch his breath, he heard the quick shifting of brush that meant someone running toward him. Helplessly, he reached for his pen, lifting the satchel’s flap and sincerely regretting the loss of the shotgun, even if he could barely use it. He couldn’t appear less threatening if he tried.
A tall woman with an ash-brown braid and leather gloves emerged from between a pair of junipers.
He let the flap fall. His chest tightened.
“Sylas.” After the way they’d parted, he’d expected the next time he heard his name from her mouth, if he ever heard it again, to sound wretched with hate – or worse, indifference.
