Alecyn and Madeleine made camp in a hollow that smelled pleasantly of heather and wildflowers. Madeleine was staring broodingly into the fire.

“What is the matter, Madeleine?” Alecyn asked.

“I think we should avoid the lowland paths. We put innocent people at risk.”

Alecyn considered it. “You have a point. But it is a long journey, and surely we will have a faster time through the lowlands than up in the mountains? We could always skirt around any villages or farms we come across.”

“That may not be enough. Our pursuers will think nothing of torturing a family to death for just a hint of a memory of our passage.” She looked across the fire at Alecyn, and the other woman nodded.

“You are right. I did not realize how dangerous they were. Tomorrow, we are heading back up into the hills. She did not relish spending all day climbing one hazardous slope only to scramble down its sheer side and then scramble up the next. But Madeleine was right. The risk was too great.

“Tonight, I want you to help me through the trance to reach the Spirit Road again.”

She thought she saw a sigh in Madeleine’s body language and bristled. “It is not ideal, I know. And when we reach Welcome, you can hand over my education to someone qualified to do it, but until then, you are all I have!” She was firm, knowing that otherwise, Madeleine would take any excuse to delay.

Madeleine did not put Alecyn off her course. Instead, she shrugged her shoulders and moved to sit next to Alecyn. As Alecyn closed her eyes, Madeleine hummed a soft tune.

The next day, Madeleine pushed them on. Alecyn rose late and slowly, woken by repeated nudges from Madeleine’s foot. As sleep left her, melancholy settled in, which clung to her for the rest of the day. At some point, she realized she had fallen back into the habit of following, with Madeleine taking the lead. It suddenly seemed unimportant. The sky overhead was grey and oppressive, the woods dark and uninviting. Everything that was good seemed a long way off and unobtainable. Weariness rode her shoulders like a burden. The lessons had stopped. Alecyn found that she barely had the energy to eat the food Madeleine prepared for her every night, let alone maintain her insistence that she learn more about her powers. And every night, as Alecyn rolled herself into her blankets, she heard Madeleine hum the soft chiming tune.

It was midday, on the fourth day after the woodsman’s house, when the changes that had been all around her in the landscape penetrated her awareness. Her head raised, she frowned, feeling as though she was half asleep. She was a country girl. She had always lived close to the woods. And she knew it should not feel like this. The wrongness shook her, weariness falling away. The trees were dark and dank. Overhead, branches tangled together to form an impenetrable canopy. Shadows bunched and gathered beneath, spreading, and joining like oil on water. Thick ivy throttled the tree trunks and formed vast webs between the trees, hiding everything more than a few feet away from view. The path they walked wove between and through these walls of warped vegetation.

“Madeleine, where are we?” Her voice felt dead, as though absorbed by the air. She almost felt as though the sudden sound had disturbed the surrounding forest, which seemed to shift resentfully at the life that moved freely within it.

“Where we were.” Madeleine’s answer was short. She had been increasingly taciturn over the last few days. She no longer seemed to feel any imperative to persuade Alecyn to follow her. Her attitude was almost becoming contemptuous. Alecyn wondered at the deep fatigue that had kept her from wondering about this change before now.

“Where is that?” Alecyn asked flatly. She stopped in her tracks, waiting for the other woman to notice. Madeleine continued up the slope for a couple more paces before realizing. She turned.

“We are heading west through the highlands, north of the Hasten Mountains. We will soon reach a pass through the mountains, which will lead us down to the Westlands. There, we will find towns and cities, and eventually, we will reach Welcome.” It was all delivered in a tone that said she had explained all this before. Alecyn bristled.

“The country has changed. This is surely not a typical forest.” She gestured at the surrounding darkness.

“This is what these lands are like,” Madeleine replied, beginning to trudge back up the slope, humming the tune as she did. Alecyn felt she had heard it before, heard it many times. It was like the tune you heard last on the car radio on the way to work. Whatever caught your ear as you got out would haunt you for the rest of the day. This piece she felt she knew intimately and was tired of it. She was tired of the woods, of the trek through dismal hills. She did not have the energy to argue or even to speak. Alecyn’s head dropped, and she resumed her trek.

She did not look up as the trees on her right opened. The land falls away in sheer, jagged cliff faces. Beneath was a valley that looked like an axe blow had cleaved from the hillside. The path they followed ran along the top of the ridge they had just climbed, curved around the head of the valley, and then ascended further up the far side, where it disappeared behind towering stone gates. Walls that spanned a narrow pass held the gates, and three towers reached for the sky behind those walls.

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Madeleine stopped, looking across the valley at the towers. Her face lifted, and a smile split her face.

“At last!” She breathed.

Alecyn’s head lifted slowly, and she frowned at the towers. A memory flickered like a weak candle in a strong breeze, teasing her with the chance of recognition before extinguishing. Had someone told her of towers? Tall towers?

“What is...what is that place?” She asked. A sudden warning of danger flooded her, and the stupor she had been wading through subsided, leaving a new wakefulness. Madeleine ignored her. She was kneeling on the path, facing the towers, and bringing the box onto her front.

“Madeleine, this is wrong,” Alecyn said, the alarm that had stirred her now growing. “This is the place Erevar warned me about.” The memories had suddenly crashed home without warning, the words springing from her lips before she had any conscious thoughts about them. She backed towards the trees, unable to look away from the dark windows that peppered the towers’ surface.

Madeleine was opening the box and now singing a different tune. She raised her voice louder, and Alecyn felt a chill. The sounds coming from Madeleine suited this place. It spoke of lightless corners and parasitical creatures whose sole existence was the suffering of something else. It jarred within her, unnatural and evil. She covered her ears.

“Madeleine, stop!” She cried, but the other woman was not listening. Blasts of sound now reached them from across the valley. They were discordant and bone-shaking. It suddenly became clear to Alecyn that Madeleine's song had caused a reaction from whatever was inside those towers. She dove from the cover of the trees towards Madeleine.

“Stop it, for God’s sake, stop!” Alecyn shouted, grabbing Madeleine by the shoulders.

Madeleine lashed out, backhanding Alecyn across the face. The force of the blow was unexpected, and Alecyn reeled back. The towers had more blasts of sound, and the gates opened.

“What are you doing, Madeleine? What is that place?”

“Humans call it Nameless.” Madeleine spat. “It belongs to my master, who is coming for you.”

“Why? You saved me…”

“I saved you from the one who took my voice. He schemes against my master. I owe him no loyalty. I serve a higher power, and he will restore me in exchange for you.”

From the gates, shapes were spilling forth. Alecyn could not distinguish what they were except that they moved with the riders’ speed and the dancing shadows’ fluidity. The thought of the Mutes crossed her mind, and she dreaded witnessing the new horror it brought. She turned to run, but Madeleine’s voice rose again in song. She had heard the same tune over the last few days. It wrapped her in cotton wool, dulling her senses and slowing her steps. She turned her head. It seemed to take forever. Madeleine continued to sing as she reached into her belt pouch and produced a long, wooden object. The flute. Without looking at Alecyn, Madeleine stepped closer to the cliff edge they stood atop, reaching over the edge with the flute. A shock coursed through Alecyn’s deadened senses.

“No!”

Her first step caused pain and seemed to take an eternity. With each passing moment, the next became faster until suddenly she was running. The song reached her still and bounced from her. The flute called to her, and its song was the greater. Her outstretched hand connected with Madeleine’s as the other woman’s fingers opened. Alecyn clenched her own fingers closed, forcing her to grip the flute. Madeleine’s eyes opened wide in rage, and she began to writhe and twist to escape Alecyn’s grasp. They danced on the edge, stones cascading from beneath their feet, each with one arm raised high, locked together, the flute joining them.

Alecyn considered Madeleine’s eyes and saw the terror of failure in them and the hate born of that terror. They were the eyes of a desperate woman. Her arm trembled, and Madeleine pulled away slightly, beginning to shake herself loose from Alecyn’s grip.

“Please!” Alecyn whispered. “Please do not. It is all I have left.”

“I... have... nothing left,” Madeleine replied, her large eyes boring into Alecyn’s. “But he will restore me!”

Alecyn felt compassion for the tortured desperation on Madeleine’s face. “You are not like them, Madeleine. Please! They did this to you, but it is not who you are!” Alecyn’s fingers slipped to the base of the flute, losing the battle.

“I am like them. But there is nothing I would not do to be free of them. If ordered to, I would have killed you too.”

The words hammered at Alecyn, along with the memory of screams and blood music.

“You murdered... that poor family…”

Madeleine had her free arm between them and pushed Alecyn back as she pulled the flute from her grasp. Alecyn could feel the yawning chasm beneath them, and she felt it reaching her. Then something diverted Madeleine's attention, causing her grip to weaken. Alecyn followed her gaze, and her eyes locked on a man standing atop a slope of loose stone further along the path. A shock of recognition stung her. The same eyes had found hers in the ruined city. The same soul had touched hers in the forest after she had carried herself and Madeleine out of that place. And now she was here, running towards her, a small dark shape streaking across the ground ahead of him. Joy bloomed in Alecyn’s heart as she recognized Eevee and lashed out with new strength.

“That is mine!” She shouted as she tore the flute from Madeleine’s grasp, falling away from the precipice as she did. She looked up at Madeleine, who stood with her back to the edge. Blaring horns sounded from somewhere behind her, where those dark riders raced towards them. Madeleine had the box in her hands, a look of pure horror on her face as Alecyn raised the flute to her lips.

“Don’t do it, Madeleine.” She warned. “It’s not too late, please!” Flute in one hand, she reached out towards the other woman with the other. “We will find someone who can help you. Someone who can help both of us!”

“Kill me, human!” Madeleine shouted. “Use your magic and strike me down to save yourself! While her face displayed anger, her eyes pleaded.

Alecyn put the flute to her lips but could not play. She could not have plunged a blade into Madeleine’s body, and she could not do this. She let the flute drop, sitting up and shaking her head wearily.

“I cannot do it, Madeleine. I took an oath in my world. To preserve life and to do no harm.”

“This is not your world!” Madeleine screamed. “Strike me down! End this before I end you! I must do it!”

“Then do it. I will not try to stop you.”

Tears filled Madeleine’s eyes as her hand turned the handle of the box, and the hateful blood music rose. Alecyn did not look away as she heard a man’s voice shouting. She felt regret that she would never see her home again, that this was where her adventure ended. She did not look away as Madeleine closed her eyes tight and turned the handle faster. Blood music poured out. Pain. Alecyn’s world became a pain.