THERE ARE PLACES of power, and places of pain. I had seen both as I passed through the vaults of Hell. Dark, endless paths like tunnels chewed out by blind worms driven by wordless suffering… and sacred, luminous spaces where the heart remembered what it was to be alive.

The loathsome trees that stood before me now were undoubtedly a place of pain. They were twisted and grotesque, and as irregular as a child’s memory. Each was a tree, but it was incomplete. Iainov believed they were memories–the final, distorted, desperate glimpses of what children saw before they vanished into the lightless hearts of the woods. Had they died? Or had they fallen into what might be called a thin place, a place where the walls between life and death had been eroded by time or malice? I had no answers. I felt only the bleakness, the biting despair that hung from those leaves like their flaccid, oily leaves.

Once before I had entered the forest, but this was different. I was playing the part of the captive, and I had not entered on my own legs. Param had been with me, too, and though I knew she had dreaded the forest, she had held her back straight and strong, and given me the courage to mask my own fear. Now I was alone.

The prey stalk the hunters, Bloodfang whispered into my mind. This is a bleeding ground.

It had the look of a deathly place. That was the word for it. Seeds of anguish, sprouted into swaying horrors.

I grit my teeth and strode forward, the sword on my shoulder. I had brought forth enough radiance from the bloody bowl on the altar to steel my heart and warm my bones, but once again I walked blind into darkness, and knew now where I might find danger or death. A delicate balancing act: I did not know how much of that meager power I had gathered would be needed to do the thing Father Iainov had sent me to do. Nor did I know if I had enough to take down the Wolf beyond that.

It came as no surprise that my mind lingered on thoughts of light and radiance, for the deeper I marched into the Forest of the Children, the less light there was. The cavern of Hell in which I had awakened was itself no bright place, lit only by violent cascades of magma, and a sort of reddish gloaming diffused through the high, dark places like the tatters of some bloody sunset, but here it was nearly perfect night. Nearly as dark as the worm’s road under the Black Sands had been. I might have cast Alain’s Light to see by, but it seemed unwelcome here, like a shout in a tomb. This was a quiet place.

I marched until my legs ached, and then I sat with my back against a tree. There was no sleeping in Hell. Not for me, anyway. I waited until the aching past, and perhaps my mind wandered the ashen roads that once led to dreams, but now they led only to the bloody stump of my own miserable isolation, to the raw, aching severance from the starlight of my gods. That was worse than the aching, so I returned to walking.

Three such rests did I take, my eyes and ears strained until my skull rang, searching for the meager signs Father Iainov had bid me watch for. A circle of standing stones, each carven with a pagan sigil. A ridge with a black spike like a finger at the highest end. A riverbed run dry, like a dead artery, littered with white stones like teeth. Past these I walked with only Bloodfang’s occasional commentary. But even the wolf seemed hushed under the warped black branches of the trees around us, crouched low as if before a storm.

THERE! The shout, the howl, was so sudden and bold that I staggered, clutching at my head. Bloodfang’s vision alert came a moment before my own ears picked up the distant scream. It echoed through the forest, running swift as the wind. I spun, seeking the source.

But the blade knew. I felt its attention pulling at me, pushing me forward.

“What is it?”

A lost one, the blade answered impatiently.

My heels were aching even despite the boots I’d pilfered from the dead gaoler, but I ran. I sensed the fire in its blood. I ran clumsily, for the floor was uneven and changed suddenly. Perhaps I was passing through many memories at once, clambering through nightmare jammed together.

A second scream, this time close enough to judge by. I adjusted my couse and ran with renewed purpose, ignoring the strain in my chest, the pain in my knees and hips. I ran with my head low, avoiding the slick, barbed branches that threatened to tear at my head and scalp.

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I ran fast enough that I didn’t see the ambush.

Two dark forms leaped on me from behind trees. They were men, with close-shorn beards that jutted out from under ugly iron helmets. Behind the eyeslits, I saw only the dimmest glimmer of light. One got its hands on me, and the other, in its overeager belligerence, managed to trip me up. I dragged the first to the ground with me. I kicked and gasped to gain a breath, but its hands were on my throat, crushing my windpipe.

“Marshen makes the soup anight,” muttered the one that had tripped me. It shook the shards of a longsword in one hand. “She waits for my return!”

The other one made no intelligible noise. It squeezed its iron grip down over my throat. Ropes of gray, stinking spittle ran from its shriveled lips. It squealed in bloody delight like a boar sighting a meal. I was the meal.

A scream broke the darkness again. This time it was very close—it sounded only a few dozen yards away.

Kill them! roared Bloodfang. Free me!

I couldn’t do both. I couldn’t even free myself. I drove my knee up between the wretch’s legs, but it gave only a dull whuff. That memory of life was gone entirely, I realized. I did it again though, and this time rolled. It lost its bearing and was thrown to the side, giving me a scant moment of respite.

Enough to roll out of the way of the other’s slashing cut. It shrieked at me as I rolled, staying barely ahead of the blade. In its desperation, it tripped over its own feet. I threw myself to my feet. Bloodfang had fallen aside in the fray, and I was weaponless. The Faded were regrouping now. But they were insane. Their minds were gone. They lunged, slashing and clawing for me.

I ducked low under the first strike and shoved the thing aside. It stumbled, and I carried through, barreling into the next one even as it drew its blade across in a wild whip. I felt it slice open my face, from the ear to the corner of my cheek. Then I hit, driving it down under me and knocknig its ancient helmet free. It wheezed a wordless rasp, and I realized it had no tongue. Only a black stump, rotted away to nothing.

It flailed at me as I seized up Bloodfang and brought the pommel down on its skull, breaking the brittle bone open like an overripe melon. Foulness splashed my hands and it quit fighting.

“Mashen makes the soup at night!” crowed the other one, staggering again toward me, “but its her other soup I crave!”

I whirled and brought Bloodfang around. The Faded lumbered right onto the sword’s point, and its own momentum impaled it. The broken sword, upraised for a killing blow, tumbled backward from nerveless fingers. The creature looked down at the black ur-rion in its belly. Then it laughed, a sound too close to a moan of relief. Its knees went out as it died, giving up its last thread of radiance to me.

I sat on the forest floor panting. Bloodfang was slick with dark, stinking blood. I touched a shaking hand to my face and drew it back: bright radiance, fresh blood. I looked at my side, where I’d taken another cut. It stained my dirty tunic, giving off the faintest glow, like a cherry coal stirred to life by a whisper. I closed my eyes and brought forth the heat of radiance, hissing as the wounds sealed themselves. It left me colder, a little more tired, but at least I wasn’t bleeding.

And the forest was quiet. I wondered how far the sound of the combat had traveled: the forest seemed to eat sound, to suffocate it. All except for the wailing.

Above the dry sound of the unseen breeze in the boughs above, I heard a muffled whimpering. The source of the screams, I thought.

Using Bloodfang as a lever, I got back up. I stamped my feet in my boots, summoning a little feeling to them, and followed the sounds of weeping. A well stood where the trees fell back aways, forming an open ring. It was a squat thing, like any well, yet the stones seemed fit at poor angles. It was open to the sky above, and from the bottom came the small sounds of fearful suffering. A sniffle and shudder, and a choked back sob.

“Hello?” I called down, leaning carefully over the hole. My voice reverberated, sounding stronger than I felt.

The sobbing stopped. Then: “Help me.” It was weak and reedy, but enough to grip my heart.

“Hold on,” I told him. My fingers traced Alain’s sigil in the air, and the radiance rose without a thought. The light snapped into being above me, like a full moon shining directly over the well. Down at the bottom of the shaft, twenty strides or more deep, was a pale face. The boy.

He craned his head back, squinting in the light. He was young. Five summers, perhaps seven. His hair was long and dirty, and white tear-tracks stood out against his mud-smeared cheeks. He was naked, and thin, and curled into a ball at the bottom of the black throat.

I cast a wary glance around, suddenly suspicious of more ambushers. Nothing moved. Not even the trees.

“Who are you?” he asked, wiping his nose and eyes.

I turned my attention back to the well. To the lost soul at the bottom. “I’m here to rescue you,” I said. “I’m a Cinderborn.”

And then he started screaming again.