CHAPTER 95

The forest is overgrown. The forest is its own thing, uncaring of trespassers. The forest is a labyrinth, impossible to tame or master.

Until it isn’t. I’m halfway down the hill, in sight of the valley’s bottom, when the bushes and thorns and roots begin to clear. I find I have less trouble picking a place for my feet to land on, and when I stare straight ahead, I think I see a path, elusive, there and not-there, but a direction to keep in mind.

Essa shouts after me. But there’s no time. The fire is alive and raging, and I move on instinct almost.

Mossgreen is talking to me, I tell Rue in thought. He wants us to follow this path.

Fine, Malco, he answers. But are you sure?

Am I sure? Am I sure that I want to follow an almost-path to a troll of uncertain allegiance for reasons that I don’t entirely understand?

I’m not. But the path leads to the same place the fire is going. I will trust him until he gives me reasons not to.

Rue buzzes louder at that, as if he himself is uncertain but willing to take the risk. Though he’s always ready to take the risk, so that’s not surprising. Was he always like this? Did it happen after he gained his weapon-shape?

“Malco,” he buzzes suddenly. It’s startling. I’m used to speaking to Rue in my mind these days, almost forgot he can form words.

“Yes?”

“I can’t hear Essa. And I can’t hear Hildegarde.”

He’s right. I stop in my tracks. A short time passes where the only sound I can hear is the beating of my heart against my chest. Then:

“Malco!”

Essa. Faint, distant. They lost me. I turn back and run towards them.

“Essa! Hilde!”

Is it me, or has the path grown coarser? There are roots I don’t remember seeing, and surely I didn’t run through these sharp bushes that pull at my skin like they want to hold me back. Surprisingly, my heavy war mantle doesn’t get caught anywhere. It slides through the undergrowth like a fish through water.

I walk until I can’t walk anymore. A wall of thorns stands in my way.

“Malco!” comes Essa’s voice, muffled, from the other side.

“Hilde! I’m here. You’re together?”

“We are. How did you go around this? This path is a nightmare.”

Right. I see what’s going on. I turn my back to the wall, to face the immense green.

“Hey!” I yell. “Not like this! I’m coming to you, but I’m bringing them along, do you hear?”

The trees waft to and fro, like trees are wont to do. The bushes shake with the cries of birds and small creatures inside them. All else is silence. The wall of thorns remains obstinately in place.

“Let them through, Mossgreen!”

A breeze courses through the green. It feels like the forest is closing around me. What was a path becomes a tunnel, shooting into the heart of the woods. If I focus, and with a little imagining, the wind seems almost to speak. Come, it says.

Alone in the green tunnel, armed and protected and with Rue by my side, it feels almost like the Challenge. The final stretch, the final tunnel, with a prize waiting at the end. If I take the path, I will find the prize. It would be easy, even: where once there were gnarled roots and bushes, now there’s only a smooth and easy path. Essa’s voice has grown as dim as the wind’s, covered by layers of vines and leaves. I am not burdened by the loss of my father or the weight of my indecision. I am free to take this path.

It’s almost by accident that I spot the owl looking down at me from a high branch.

“No,” I say.

The forest rustles.

“I won’t. Not without them.”

Every bough and bushes shakes by action of no wind. Thorns snake from the thick green walls around me and wrap around my legs, my arms. Grip me and squeeze, drawing blood.

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“No, Mossgreen,” I say, ignoring Rue’s insistent and panicked buzzing. “I won’t do it. You can’t force me to go alone.”

The forest hangs in stillness for a long beat. The thorny vines loped around my limbs tighten. My hand grows numb, my teeth grit with the pain. I look up at the owl. At her round, intelligent eyes, its smooth feathers. I see the shift, the shiver that travels up her and the sudden light that sparks behind the eyes and makes them strange and alien. The owl looks down one last time, then opens her wings and flies away.

It happens almost imperceptibly. A subtle change in the pressure, more blood flowing down to my fingers. The vines uncurl and fall to the dusty ground in thin, limp ropes as the walls of the green tunnel become thinner, less real, and then disappear completely, exchanged with trees and bushes and undergrowth.

“Malco!”

Essa and Hilde’s voices sound right behind me. I wait while they traverse the wall of thorns, now reduced to a few packed prickly bushes. Essa appears first, Black Sword drawn, slicing left and right until she sees me.

“They attacked us!” she says, breathlessly. “The trees and the vines, they reached for us. I couldn’t even draw my sword. Are you alright?”

I nod.

“Was that Mossgreen?” Hilde asks, appearing from the tunnel Essa had cut through. “Was it him trying to kill us?”

“It was him,” I say, pensively. “But I don’t think he was trying to kill us. This is all a little strange. I think I saw Arbiter just now. In the shape of an owl.”

“What owl?” Essa looks up.

Hilde approaches me, reaches a hand for the crook of my elbow.

“Why would Arbiter be here?” she asks. “Malco, I think I did something wrong. You’re not yourself. I don’t know what I took—”

“You took my grief over Medrein’s passing,” I interrupt. “I feel it.” I smile down at her. Dear Hilde. Always so worried, so concerned. “And you did well. There were… A lot of complicated thoughts bundled with him, I think. And now I can’t feel them. Not like I used to.” I breathe in. The thought of Medrein passes through my mind like wind, unimpeded and unable to find purchase in the slippery walls of my awareness. “I know what I saw, Hilde. Please believe me.”

“So… What?” Essa asks. “What is this? Lysander, and Valkas, and Mossgreen, and now Arbiter. Why is all of this so important? Why is everyone so interested in…” She hesitates, rubs her eyes. “What is everyone so interested in, even?”

That I cannot answer. My gut tells me this is it. Whatever it is, whatever’s been happening, whatever it is for: this is where it ends, or starts, or where all the different strands are meshed in together. I look down the tunnel Mossgreen built. It still exists as a path. Whatever the question is, down that path is where I will find answers. And I wouldn’t be an Inquisitor if I didn’t feel the pull of what secrets lie in wait.

“I really don’t know, Essa. But I’m dying to find out.”

*

The remains of the forest tunnel are no longer smooth, but they still let us move quickly. We quickly leave the hill behind and move serpentine around a copse of large trees and across a narrow creek that flows between them. Without the altitude, we lose sight of the moving spear of black smoke that were trying to overcome. But still we press on.

We make small talk, confident that the only things liable to overhear us are small furry forest dwellers. The owl has gone missing.

“Do you feel any different since you picked the new Perk, Hilde?”

“Different?” the dwarf frowns. “Different how?”

“Different,” I shrug. “I talked to Lysander about it once, how your Perks kind of want you to think in a new way. Observant, for example, keeps picking up details, whether I’m focusing on something or not. Dirty Fighter keeps me thinking I should always go for the eyes, or, you know, any available gonads. Doesn’t mean it’s the best thing to do, but it’s what the Perk wants me to do. Like they’re tools and they each keep trying to solve each problem their way.”

“I see.” Hilde looks down, her brow fixing into a bold V. “I cannot say. Perhaps. I feel strangely preoccupied with you two, I must say. Asking myself whether you are sad, or worried, and whether it would be proper to remove those thoughts from your minds. Is that it?”

“Sounds like you, Hilde,” Essa says with a sardonic smile. “Always worried about others.”

I see Hilde glance up at Essa and smile back. Not for the first time, I’m reminded that the first interaction between the two involved Essa stabbing Hilde and leaving her to die. How did they get over that particular hurdle?

“Have you gained any Perks, Essa?” I ask.

“I gained two when I picked the Archetype,” Essa answers. “Protector and swordmaster. As well as two spells. When my Legend grew, I—”

“Your Legend grew?”

“When I fought your duel,” she says, nodding. “Apparently volunteering to fight to the death in sight of a few dozens is a suitable act. I gained another Perk there, though I haven’t had a chance to test it in combat. But I see what you mean about them changing how you think. Why?”

Why? I mull the question over as I feel Essa’s eyes on me.

“Well, Lysander also said that the Archetype itself wants to be… fulfilled. It wants you to behave in a set of ways. And if you have an Archetype and a few Perks all pulling in different directions…” I hesitate. “How do you know you’re you?”

Both Hilde and Essa observe me keenly. We approach a bend on the path, and the air has begun smelling of ashes again. Now that we’re in the lowlands again, we can feel the effects of Valkas’ assault on the forest.

“Like Essa said,” Hilde pipes up. “I still sound like me.”

“Right, but—”

“Hilde’s right,” Essa interrupts me before I can go on. “We are all ourselves. Perks affecting our behavior are no different from a lesson you learned.”

“But Essa, you stabbed Hilde,” I say, trying to tease out complex philosophical knots. “When you met her. Remember? Now you’re friendly, after you gained a Perk called Protector. Don’t you think that’s—”

“I think I learned my lesson,” Essa says stubbornly. “I’ve changed as a person, completely naturally and not—”

We all stop at the bend in the path. The smell of ash is heavier here, and there’s a certain eagerness, a certain curiosity about what we might find, like Valkas’ fiery expedition is just around the corner. We turn onto a very thin column of smoke. Not the black smoke of something burning, but the white smoke of something long since burnt. It stems from a small rise in the middle of a large clearing.

Both Hilde and Essa look at me, in search of confirmation.

“Yes,” I swallow. “That’s Hollow House. Used to be, at least.”