She glared at his retreating back. She didn’t understand him at all.
27
They rode in silence for the next several hours. The trees that were healthy were fewer and farther between. Instead of the wide passages she could follow like a river, they thinned to streams and then to trickles and then to nothing. By midday they were hopping island to island with longer and longer stretches through corrupted woods. Soon there would be nothing but that oily darkness. She could feel it through the web of the forest, the golden fibers fading and then turning to shadow.
They passed a field of yellow mushrooms that smelled like rotting meat and a still pond with fog lifting from the black water even though the sun was bright in the autumn-blue sky. There was no breeze, but the fog moved strangely, swirling in slow circles that caught the eye. It seemed like if she just stopped and watched, she’d be able to make out shapes, but Casrian called her name when she started to slow down and she shook her head, breaking its hold, and pushed on.
There was a thick vine that had wrapped around an alder tree, strangling it. The tree was nearly dead, weeping bloody sap, but the vine thrived like it was midsummer with green leavesand plate-sized scarlet flowers she’d never seen before. She swore the flowers swayed toward them as they approached until she forced Copper up a hill just to avoid getting too close.
There were odd smells and dark shadows where there should be none. She’d catch movement out of the corner of her eye, but there’d be nothing there when she turned her head. Strange far off noises that were too muffled to be identifiable.
When they reached the next healthy copse of trees, she slid off Copper and just sat on the ground, feeling like she could breathe for the first time in hours. Casrian sat beside her, and they let the horses graze on the dry grass.
“I thought we’d see some sign of them by now,” Casrian said, sounding as weary as she felt.
The trees say they’re still out there. We’re moving in the right direction.
Unable to tell him the truth, she caught his hand and threaded her fingers through his. “We’re getting close.”
“You can’t know that.”
He’d stopped asking her how she was finding her way through the woods. Instinct, she’d told him. He was still pretending to believe it.
“Have you ever faced a witch this strong?”
She felt his fingers twitch where they tangled with hers. “No.”
“Will your patrol be enough to kill her or will we need to go back to wait for reinforcements?”
“I don’t know. It’s impossible to say how long the reinforcements will take to arrive. If the messenger from Sulen found a patrol on the road then they could already be on their way. If he had to go all the way to the capital it could be weeks. The longer we let the witch dig into her nest, the harder it will be to pry her out. The more familiars she’ll have time to make.”
A shiver ran down her spine even though she was sitting in a patch of sunshine. It was probably best to assume that itwould be weeks then. Maybe even past the first snow. Freezing temperatures wouldn’t make this any easier.
Casrian’s thumb stroked the back of her knuckles and drew her attention to their joined hands, to the absently comforting touch. Last night, those hands had brought her more pleasure than she’d ever known. They’d held her gently after. It made her ache inside remembering it.
She dropped his hand and stood up. “I need to stretch my legs."
Leaves crunched beneath her boots as she walked away. Sunlight warmed her face as she peered up at the bright canopy, a mix of yellow and orange and toasted brown, birches and sugar maples and ash. Bright red berries were heavy on the thorn tree. Her mother gathered those for a tea she used to strengthen the hearts of the elderly.
She missed her mother. They’d never been apart from each other for so long.
She walked the length of the healthy patch and stopped. Just a foot farther and you could already see the change in the land. The leaves there were already fallen, the ground dull, the trees bare and dreary. As she watched, a pair of crows lifted from the branches, eerily silent.
With a shiver, she turned and began to walk the perimeter, searching for a sign that Casrian’s patrol had passed this way. It would be easier once they picked up the trail again. She wouldn’t have to stay as closely connected to the trees, and Casrian could stop looking at her with that suspicious scowling look on his face.
The rot was all around them now. No matter how far she stretched her senses, she couldn’t find any trees in the direction they were traveling that still seemed healthy. She wasn’t sure whether to press through or follow the edge of the rot, searching for some sign of the lost patrol.
She was still trying to decide when a flash of copper caught her eye. She turned her head just as a fox disappeared into the mossy hollow of an old log. She frowned.
What was that?
She adjusted course to move closer. There was a disturbed pile of leaves beneath the nearest tree. It looked like something had bedded down there for a while. Hopefully not a wolf or a bear or a familiar.
The leaves had been pushed up into a mound, like someone had piled them together in a makeshift bed. And there, dull and dried on the leaves. That was blood. It was rust colored, not black like the stuff that had leaked from the familiars.
“What is it?” Casrian called when he noticed her stop. He was still sitting in the same spot where she’d left him, keeping an eye on the horses. He was watching her though.
“I don’t know.”
