The clouds had cleared by the time we finished burying the troll, and red had bled across the sky. A thin gray silt had been left across scores of miles by the ashfall earlier in the day, giving the irkwood a dour, surreal quality.

Lisette stood from the last of the markers we’d made from river stone and shattered pieces of the old bridge, murmuring a preosta — a priest cant. She moved first to Olliard, pressing her auremark against his chest and cleansing him of both disease and malignant od that might have clung to him from handling the troll’s carcass. He breathed a sigh of relief at the touch of her magic and smiled, murmuring thanks.

When the young cleric moved to me to do the same, I held up a hand to stop her. “No need,” I said. “I’m covered.”

The doctor’s apprentice frowned, studying me. When I didn’t elaborate, she huffed in frustration. “You’re the one who told me I should do this,” she remarked pointedly.

I didn’t want to tell her I was largely immune to disease and had my own protections against curses, and I especially didn’t want the cleric to make contact with my own aura. She’d probably sense something off with it, and that wasn’t a conversation I was interested in having.

She was using her power to stitch up your wounds, I reminded myself. If she was going to notice anything, she’d have done so already.

Maybe so, but it was still a risk I wasn’t interested in taking. I’d get myself cleansed later if I needed to. There were other ways besides the services of a priest.

“We need to get moving,” I said. I nodded toward the bridge. “Now we’ve buried the poor bastard who built that, it should be safe enough to cross it. Should be, mind. Your chimera warded?”

Olliard nodded. “Of course. I had her protections renewed only a few weeks ago by a mage in Isengotta.”

With that, there wasn’t much more to say. Olliard took another ten minutes to fuss over his beast, and I watched him add a few more small baubles to the array of charms tied either to the hog-headed creature’s harness or woven into her coarse fur. Surreptitiously, I closed my eyes and inspected the wards with my auratic senses. They weren’t the best work, but they were professionally done. They’d serve.

Lisette watched me the entire time Olliard was tending to Brume. I grew annoyed with the attention and glared at her. “What?” Burying the troll had been foul work, and between that and my taste of the creature’s dying trauma I wasn’t in the best of moods.

“You’re an adept,” she said. “You’ve been trained to wield your soul.”

I lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Common enough.”

Lisette shook her head slowly, more in thought than denial. “Yours isn’t some layman’s talent. You knew about curses and burial rites, and a moment ago… you were feeling Brume’s wards. I sensed you doing it.”

I shifted, uncomfortable. Damn clerics, I thought. “Surprised?”

“Yes,” the novice said honestly. “You don’t look the type. Sorcerer or warlock?”

I carefully set my face into a mask and averted my eyes, not wanting to give anything away. It was true enough I didn’t much look like your typical mage; I am tall and broadly built, much of my weight a swordsman’s hard-earned muscle. I keep my copper hair long to help hide the glint of gold in my eyes, and life on the move doesn’t lend to regular grooming. My skin is sun-tanned and covered in the sort of dense accumulation of scars only gained through a life of physical violence. I’ve got a long face with a heavy chin, deep-set eyes, and a nose many-times broken.

I don’t often get a look at myself, but I knew well enough what I looked like. A brute. A killer. Hard-edged. There were plenty of words for it, but it all boiled down to the same thing — I didn’t much look like the type to know my way around an arcane conundrum. Or the type who’d even know words like conundrum.

Lisette’s inquiry was a dangerous question. Sorcerers are common enough, and anyone with even a passing talent at magic could be described as such, usually if they’re untrained or gained their power from some natural source. Warlocks are another matter entire. Not all are evil or draw their power from diabolical sources — the only prerequisite was to have gained power through some sort of ritualized pact or bargain — but the word still carried a certain stigma. Especially when talking to someone trained among the clergy.

I decided for a half truth. “I knew a magician back before the war.” There was only one war in recent history I could be referring to, so I didn’t need to elaborate. “A proper wizard. He taught me some tricks.”

Lisette’s frown deepened. “He taught you sacred burial rites?”

I folded my arms and suppressed a cough. “Sure. The magi are supposed to be all-knowing, right?” I couldn’t quite keep the questioning note from my voice.

I could tell the girl wasn’t convinced, but Olliard (bless him) chose that moment to approach and clap his hands together, startling both of us. “I think we should be set! I put a few of the charms I bought last time I had the chance on the cart, too. I’ve heard that wild magic can stick to objects as well as people.”

I nodded. “Good idea. Cart’s made of wood, and dead matter collects od like you wouldn’t believe.”

Olliard blinked in interest, his owlish eyes widening behind his foggy lenses. “Is that so? I’d never heard of this.”

“It’s true,” Lisette said, a note of scholarly interest trickling into her voice. She noticed her master’s interested gaze and her cheeks turned slightly pink. She adjusted a lock of yellow hair and elaborated. “It’s why you find so many ghosts and fey spirits in dead trees and the like.”

“Fascinating.” Olliard’s eyes glittered, and Lisette gave the old man a shy smile.

“Much as I love class time,” I drawled, “we don’t have much light left. Time to be on.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Lisette’s mood darkened again, and she pointedly turned her back to me. We all piled onto the cart and, with the sun quickly sinking beneath the distant horizon beyond the forest, crossed the bridge.

******

Night fell, drowning the forest in a deep, impenetrable darkness. We didn’t stop. Camping in an irkwood after nightfall is probably one of the stupidest things one can do, and luckily I didn’t need to tell my companions that.

Olliard lit a lantern and attached it to a long pole, which he hung over the cart to light the forest road ahead. The pole hung out over Brume. The doctor lit two more lanterns and attached them to the sides of the cart, making the vehicle a little island of somber orange light within a sea of shadowy wilderness.

“No insects singing,” Lisette noted. Her eyes blinked sleepily and she suppressed a yawn. “No owls. It’s just… silent.”

“Hm.” Olliard hunched over Brume’s reins, his eyes fixed on the depthless black beyond the lantern-light. “Should be out of this before dawn, unless the path has been altered. Be a terrible time for elf mischief.”

I closed my eyes, though I was careful not to let exhaustion whisk me away into dreams. I didn’t sense any tampering with the road. There were no illusions, no phantasms, no subtle enchantments that might cause us to lose days of time or walk off a cliff. Even still, I didn’t dare let myself sleep.

Though I wanted to, very badly. Despite my bravado earlier, my injuries were not healed and burying the dead troll had been exhausting, painful work. Every bump and jostle of the cart made me feel like my hipbone was about to burst out of my skin, and my ribs ached with a dull, constant agony.

Part of me wanted to take my leave of the healers and vanish into the night, foolish as the thought was. Lisette was already suspicious of me, and there was every chance we might run into a patrol from Vinhithe. We weren’t so far from the city still, and I would be hunted.

More than that, I didn’t want to be around them when something dark found me again. In a way, I had been lucky it was Nath who’d found me in the woods days before. It could have just as easily been one of any number of dark and wicked things looking to claim the Headsman’s head. I’d made a lot of enemies in my time. Further, I had a soul thrumming with old magic. I was an enticing meal, for anything brave or smart enough to try me. And in the state I’d been in after my escape from the town, there wasn’t much I could have done about supernatural predators.

Olliard of Kell and his apprentice had saved my life. I didn’t want to repay that favor by dragging them into my affairs. But Olliard’s wards also helped protect me in my vulnerable state, and his ministrations helped me heal faster.

There was nothing to do but sit, wait, and hope nothing found me.

Hope. Right. Because that was something I had in abundance.

“You should sleep,” Lisette said to me. She didn’t meet my eyes. The apprentice healer sat at the edge of the cart with her back against the wooden barrier, hugging her knees to her chest. She looked very tired, and very young. Younger than I’d first thought. She was a tall girl, gangly, with a narrow face splattered in freckles and eyes just a bit too large for it. With her straw-colored hair, she looked more like some scrawny farmer’s daughter than a neophyte of the Church of Urn.

My mind flashed back to the boy in the Vinhithe cathedral. He’d been even younger.

“Dangerous to sleep in an Irkwood,” I noted mildly. “Don’t want to carry dreams out of these trees.”

“Master Olliard’s wards are good,” Lisette assured me. “And I’ve blessed them myself. You should be safe.”

I didn’t reply, and the girl shrugged the conversation off, indifferent. Her attention wandered. My gaze fell down to my ring. The black stone swam with eddies of red, and I grimaced at the sight. It had eaten well while I’d been unconscious for most of two days.

“That’s a beautiful ring,” Lisette said.

I glanced at her, surprised. I frowned and held it up, inspecting it. The ivory band was a very pale yellow, nearly white, and the black stone was held in place by tiny claws evoking nothing so much as a splayed ribcage. I’d always thought it had a rather fell look to it.

“It is?” I asked skeptically.

The apprentice nodded, tucking her chin on her knees. “It’s the detail. Whoever made it had an exquisite hand. Who gave it to you?”

None of your business. I bit down on the thought before it became words. The girl hadn’t done anything to deserve my anger, or create it. “An ally," I said. "One who knows curses."

Lisette frowned. “Curses?"

Olliard spoke up from the driver’s bench. “That’s enough, Lisette. Leave the man in peace.”

The apprentice blushed and cast an apologetic look at her master. The three of us fell into silence and the cart rolled along through the Irkwood, taking us deeper into the wild dark.

I covered the ring with my other hand and tried to keep the pain from showing on my face.

“Lisette is right,” Olliard added without turning around. “You should rest. Your miraculous recovery aside, you need to keep up your strength. You too.” He looked over his shoulder at his apprentice. “Brume and I will keep watch.”

Lisette glanced nervously at the darkness beyond the lantern light, but nodded. “Yes, master.” She settled back against the side of the cart and closed her eyes. The doctor waited until her breathing had become regular before speaking again.

“Once you’re healed, Alken, what’s next for you? Not that I’d mind having a strong arm keeping me and the girl safe, but I imagine you have your own roads to walk.”

I closed my eyes, giving up the fight against sleep. “Suppose I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. How about you? What’s your business in this village we’re heading to?”

“I’m a traveling physician,” Olliard explained. “I wander here and there, offering my services where they are needed. I have a few places I visit semi-regularly. Caelfall is one such. Been most of two years since I’ve passed through, given, but I’ve known the people there, oh…” he rubbed at the wiry growth of hair on his chin. “Well. A long time. The preoster there is a good man.”

More priests, I thought sourly. Aloud I said, “and if they did have something to do with what happened to the troll?”

Olliard was quiet a while. When he finally spoke, his words were nearly a whisper. “Sometimes, good people do terrible things to protect the ones they love.”

I shifted to be closer to the doctor, leaning an arm over the side of the cart. No matter how I sat or lay down, no position wasn’t a torture. “You think the troll went fell? It happens, sometimes.”

Olliard shrugged and let out a tired sigh. “I don’t know. I try to not act without facts. Misunderstandings sometimes create the saddest of tragedies.”

I arched an eyebrow. “That why you didn’t just leave me to die, like your apprentice wanted?”

Olliard glanced at me over one shoulder, and there was slight reprimand in that look. “Lisette did not advocate to leave you to die. She is a kind-hearted girl, for all the horror she’s seen. She may growl, but she could no more leave another soul to suffer than the moons could fail to rise.”

“And what if she was right?” I asked, keeping my tone casual. “What if I was dangerous, and went on to hurt someone after you helped me?”

Olliard turned his eyes back to the road and didn’t reply for a while. Finally he said, “then it would be my responsibility to stop you, and make amends for my sin.”

“And you’d do it?” I asked. “Try to stop me?” I tried not to put any special emphasis on the word try. I was curious, not trying to intimidate the man.

“I would stop you,” Olliard said, very quiet. He spoke very calmly, without bravado or conceit.

I waited, but the doctor didn’t elaborate. Finally, in a lighter tone, he said, “time to get some rest. Don’t want you catching a fever now. Sleep. Doctor’s orders.” He turned back and flashed a grin. “Trust me, these wards are professionally done. No mischief will find you in your dreams.”

I eyed the old man warily, but was tired and sore enough not to bother arguing. I settled into the cart and, despite my better judgment, closed my eyes.

The doctor’s wards were good, that much was true. But it wasn’t forest spirits I was worried about. There were more dangerous things in the world, and a few charms and prayers weren’t going to be enough to hold them at bay.