Our ancestors made offerings to the King of Shadows and his three queens as if they were gods; Niviène, Queen of the Wood; Melusine, Queen of the Sea; and Beira, the Winter Queen. Those who earned their ire were pursued by Cern and his Wild Hunt. It was only with the coming of the Angelus that they withdrew from mortal affairs.

* François du Lutetia, A History of Narvonne

☀

17th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC

Trist rolled off Sir Lorengel, put a hand to the trunk of the oak they’d fetched up against, and staggered back to his feet. “Margaret?” he called out into the forest. “Cynric?”

“Here!” Margaret’s voice came from somewhere ahead and off to his right. “I’m trying to stop the bleeding, but it’s bad. If we had a torch, we could cauterize it…”

“Use my sword belt,” Lorengel said, and Trist listened to the other knight’s boots scuffing through the leaves on the forest floor. It was enough to follow, though he had to move slowly so that he didn’t trip over roots or errant stones.

“Does anyone still have a wineskin?” Trist asked, his left hand outstretched so that he wouldn’t run into a tree trunk headfirst.

“Nothing here,” Margaret said. “Pull it as tight as you can.” Cynric groaned in pain, and Trist was grateful that he wasn’t the one who had to put the tourniquet on. He was having a difficult time even imagining how to deal with the mess left by a man’s arm being torn out of its socket.

“There,” Lorengel said after a moment. “That’s the best I can do. We need to get him to a barber-surgeon, or get Trist some wine.”

“Or get to the ocean,” Margaret added. “Trist, thank you for getting us out of there, but where are we?”

“The Ardenwood,” Trist said. “I was reaching for the logger’s grove just outside Camaret-à-Arden, but I could not reach it, so I latched onto… wherever here is.”

“You gated us somewhere without knowing where it is?” Cynric groaned, chuckled, and then coughed. Trist imagined the man was probably hacking up blood.

“It was like climbing a cliff,” Trist explained. “I just felt something I could get a grip on. But I do not know why.”

“I can tell you why,” Acrasia said, appearing to his left. She must have manifested entirely, rather than only use an illusion, for Dame Margaret responded to her.

“I suppose it makes sense that you would know the Ardenwood better than any of us,” the Exarch of Rahab admitted. “Would you mind explaining, Lady Acrasia?”

“We faeries tie ourselves to places,” Acrasia answered. “Trist is only the second Exarch we’ve ever taken. Look there, at what is carved into the oak.”

The creak of armor and leather told Trist that someone had risen, and a moment later Lorengel spoke slowly, as if reading aloud from a difficult text: “Here lies Sir Madoc of the Wood, Exarch of Auberon, and Princess Helyan of Narvonne. May they rest together in death, as they could not in life.”

“I would not call it coincidence that the second Exarch of Auberon’s Court felt himself drawn to the grave of the first,” Acrasia remarked, in the silence that followed.

“Did you know him?” Margaret asked.

“No. I was bound beneath the Chapelle de Camiel, during his lifetime,” Acrasia explained. “But once I’d risen again, these past few decades, I heard the stories from my brother, so I recognize the name.”

“Did the Horned Hunter tell you where in the Ardenwood Maddoc’s grave was located?” Trist asked.

“Her brother is Hellequin?” Cynric chuckled from where he lay. To Trist’s ear, the man sounded delirious from blood loss, barely conscious.

“No,” Acrasia admitted. “But we will not be far from wherever King Auberon is holding court. You should use my brother’s Boon to find them, Trist. We can get help there.”

“The last time we sought help from the faerie court,” Trist pointed out, “we lost three days in the mountains. And how do you know we can get there in time? Cynric will not survive a journey measured in days.”

“The King of Shadows is never far away in his own demesne,” Acrasia pointed out. “If you are looking for a safe place to rest, near enough your friend won’t perish before we get there, I do not know another.”

“We can’t just let him die, Trist,” Margaret added.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Trist frowned. He couldn’t escape the feeling that, once again, going to the faerie king would make them little more than pieces on a board of Six Soldiers. The last time, Yaél had very nearly died so that Auberon could seize a new piece of territory. Unfortunately, he didn’t see another option that might save Cynric’s life. “Very well,” he said, making up his mind. “But I would ask you all to be very careful what you say when we get there. Do not agree to any bargains.”

“Why Trist,” Acrasia said, and he felt only more wary at her feline grin, “you’re learning, after all. I think I’m rather proud of you.”

With an exasperated huff that he was unable to contain, Trist unspooled the burning orange thread of the Hunter’s Boon out from his core, focused on the idea of the faerie king, and cast it out. Every other time he’d used the Boon, it had settled easily, like a rope tied firmly to the bough of a tree - even when he’d tracked Adrammelech, coming down out of the Hauteurs Massif. Now, however, he felt instead as if something had reached out and caught the Boon before it could find its target.

Eyes like stars burned in Trist’s mind, and a voice cold as winter ice echoed in his ears: “How interesting. Very well, my Knight of Shadows - come to me.”

Trist stumbled forward, actually pulled by the Boon. “This way,” he said. “Take Cynric and come along, I do not think I can stop.” He kept one hand on the hilt of his sheathed sword, the other stretched out in front of his face to ward off branches. Behind him, Trist heard Lorengel grunt, and Cynric cry out in pain, and they were off.

The journey that followed was an ordeal like Trist’s night ride with Cern, when last he had travelled the enchanted wood. For one thing, he couldn’t see; and for another, because at every step he had the sense of being watched, and that they were not alone. He was not the only one who felt it, either, for Margaret remarked, after perhaps half a bell of walking: “I can see lights in the fog, Trist.”

“Volonté des Feux Follets,” Trist named them. “Will of the Wisps. We get them around Camaret-à-Arden every time there’s a fog. Ignore them. They will lead you into a bog, or off a cliff.”

“Sounds like a wonderful place, your home,” Cynric moaned.

“Log,” Margaret warned Trist, taking him by the hand to lead him around. Acrasia, in the meanwhile, cocked her head to one side, as if listening to something that no one else could hear.

“What is it?” Trist asked the faerie.

“Listen, they’re getting closer,” Acrasia said, and they all stopped moving. At first, the forest was still, save for the sound of a confused nightingale, singing from its perch. Then, the howling of wolves rang out across the wood.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Lorengel remarked.

Trist shook his head. “Those will not be normal wolves,” he said. “It will be the Wild Hunt. Keep walking, but when the Horned Hunter comes, let Acrasia and I do the speaking for all of us.”

They trudged onward, Trist pulled so insistently by the thread he’d cast out that he couldn’t have stopped for more than a few moments, even if he was exhausted. As it was, the Hunter’s Boon kept his legs fresh, and if he wasn’t worried about leaving the others behind - and if he wasn’t blind - he could have raced ahead faster than a bounding stag.

Finally, a breaking of brush all around them, a growling of wolves, and a clomping of hooves signaled the arrival of Cern the Hunter. Though Trist’s feet urged him to keep moving, and the Boon pulled at him still, he paused with an effort of will, and offered a cautious bow.

“Lord Cern,” he said, guessing at the direction of Acrasia’s brother from the sound of his six-legged steed’s snorting. “It is an honor to meet you again. I confess I missed your ride at Falais, but I heard tell of it from my man Henry and my squire.”

“It was pleasant to be allowed to hunt mortals again,” Cern declared, “without care for how many I took. If you can call the Ornes yet mortal. It would have been more entertaining, still, if I had been permitted to scour the entire city of your filthy kind.”

“Have you been sent to escort us to the king, brother?” Acrasia asked.

“I have,” Cern confirmed. “And he has sent five of his own steeds to bear you, as well.”

“Does the King of Shadows ask anything in return for this hospitality,” Trist asked, keeping his voice calm and even.

“Consider it a gift,” the Horned Hunter said, and when Trist glanced sideways to Acrasia’s illusory form, she nodded.

“We accept the gift,” Trist said, careful not to thank anyone. In short order, Cynric was hoisted onto the back of a horse. Trist couldn’t see, but he imagined the semi-conscious knight had been laid across the saddle crosswise, with his legs dangling off one side and his one remaining arm off the other. Lorengel would take the reins and lead the wounded knight’s horse. Margaret led Trist to his own steed, and he gave the animal a chance to snuffle at his hand for a moment, to get his scent, before hoisting himself up into the saddle. Acrasia climbed up onto the fifth horse, and with a dull pang Trist realized that just two moons past, she would have ridden with him. It was better this way: his loyalty, and his heart, belonged to Clarisant, now. Perhaps the faerie was beginning to respect that.

They rode for half a bell more, Trist guessed, but he could also tell that even though the horses were walking, so as not to injure Cynric any further, they were rapidly covering the distance between the grave of Sir Maddoc and wherever Auberon was holding Court. Trist could actually see the power of Cern’s Boon humming in the air around their group, enfolding the entire party in the faerie’s magic to speed their passage.

Eventually, Trist saw something up ahead: bright blue mushrooms, with broad, pointed caps and red tinged gills underneath, rising up out of the darkness on tall, pale stalks in clusters. At first there were only one or two, and then as many as half a dozen at a time, luminescent and taller and taller as they progressed, until the mushrooms rose taller than the height of a man on a horse.

More peculiar than the striking, vibrant shade of blue in the darkness was the fact that Trist could see the mushrooms clearly, even without his eyes. “What are they?” he asked.

“We are entering the heart of the King’s domain,” Acrasia explained. “Things are real here, Trist. You aren’t seeing only the shadows of your mortal world. This place exists just as we do. Remember the circles I drew on the floor of the basement? You’ve been living in a world of drawings your entire life, and now you finally have the perspective to see clearly.”

Trist reached out a hand to brush one of the enormous blue mushrooms as he passed, and with a shake of the cap, a puff of blue motes lifted into the air around them. The spores carried with them the scent of the world just after a fresh rain, and breathing them in soothed Trist’s aches and bruises from the battle in the Tomb of Camiel. He couldn’t help but grin like a child.

“Look!” Margaret called. Turning, Trist found that he could make out the shape of her body by an absence: like a shadow, or a silhouette, she was outlined by the dusty blue spores of the mushrooms. He followed her arm, and caught sight of a hill ahead. Ancient trees rose from the hill, oak and ash with the thorny vines of wild roses growing at their bases, and the roots of everything entwined at the base of the hill, where they formed a doorway.

Led by the Horned Hunter, the knights descended through the door and passed beneath the hill, into the court of Auberon, King of Shadows.