She was ravenously hungry, and she ached for a hot bath, and more than anything, she felt a deep, urgent fear that it was already too late, that her journey was already doomed.
"Stop it," she admonished herself under her breath, stuffing her blanket into her pack and digging out a hunk of bread. "Just keep moving. Nothing else matters."
Her pack was exceedingly light, filled only a small gather of stores from the castle kitchen, a flint, a flask, and a few coins. She dug near the bottom, seeking a bit of leather strap for her hair, and saw a heavy lump, wrapped in cloth. It touched her hand, and she withdrew the object, sighing.
This, of course, had not come from the castle kitchen. It had come from the academy cathedral. She had gone there to retrieve it the night before, after packing the rest of her meagre provisions but before donning her armour and going to wake Sigrid. It was, of course, Darrick's candle, taken from his family's vault in the transept gallery. She felt its small, dense weight, considered unwrapping it for just a moment, and then rejected the idea. She was in a hurry after all. It was good enough just to know that it was there, accompanying her, even if it really was just a symbol. She replaced the wrapped candle in her pack and cinched the knot tight.
And yet that sense of creeping unease only grew. Finally, as she stood and shouldered her pack, cocking her head to listen for the sound of the stream that she knew was nearby, she realised what it was.
The angle of the sun did not indicate late morning, but early evening. She had slept almost an entire day away.
A moan of panicked frustration came from deep in her throat. She turned on the spot and then realised something even worse. Her eyes widened beneath the tangled thicket of her hair.
"No!" she half whispered, shaking her head in denial. "No! How could I have been so stupid?"
She ran several paces this way and that, glancing feverishly through the trees. After a minute, her feet splashed in the stream she had originally been looking for. It was small comfort now.
Her horse was gone.
She clapped a hand to her forehead, clawed her fingers into her hair, and let out a guttural cry of mingled anger and despair. She hadn't properly secured the reins when she had stopped for the morning. Chances were that the horse had already retraced his steps all the way back to the castle stables.
She would have to travel the rest of the way on foot.
After several minutes of useless raging, Gabriella forcibly calmed herself. Still fuming, she knelt by the stream, splashed her hands and face, pulled her hair back in a tangled but economical ponytail, and re-shouldered her pack. After a moment's inspection of the angle of the shadows and the height of the sun, she set off.
She was young, she reminded herself. She could travel much further in a day than could any Army division with its supplies and arsenals. Besides, she wasn't traveling the same path that the Army had gone. They had been forced to take the thoroughfares and highways. More important, they had not approached Merodach via the most direct route. They had skirted through the Shambles, and Godramgate Hills, and Broadmoor Valley, finally approaching Merodach's camps in the rocky foothills of Mount Skelter.
Now, however, Merodach and his armies would be on the move. Gabriella had no time to take the long route, especially if she was reduced to traveling on foot. She had no choice but to get to the man as quickly as possible. To do so, she would take the only short cut she knew—the best and worst short cut imaginable.
She would head straight through the cursed steppe of the Tempest Barrens.
The sun crept downwards as she plodded on, making decent progress even without her horse. For now, her journey was taking her through such dense forest that she would not have made much better time even on horseback. The gloom of the trees blotted out the daylight, hearkening a very early evening, and Gabriella determined that she would continue into the night, traveling by starlight in order to make up for lost time. As she walked, she nibbled more of the bread and dried venison from her pack, careful only to eat enough to keep up her strength. Fortunately, she encountered numerous streams along the way, allowing her to replenish and preserve the water in her flask. These were often bordered by wild blackberry bushes, which she harvested and ate even as she walked.
Slowly, night began to settle firmly across the sky, and the distance between the trees began to increase. The huge, ancient oaks, their trunks carpeted with moss and as thick as pillars, began to give way to fresh birches and spruces. The air cooled and grew busy, gusting noisily. Colourful dead leaves crunched and swished before Gabriella's persistent footsteps, occasionally catching in the wind and swirling away like startled birds.
She began to see signs of human occupation. Clearings appeared, pocked with stumps and often centred with small cabins or cottages, candles lit within their windows and thin streams of smoke issuing from their fieldstone chimneys. These, she skirted around, all the while deeply longing to approach, to knock at the heavy doors and seek shelter, even just a simple straw bed and a cup of hot broth. But she resisted. She had to keep moving. On some level, despite the gravity of her mission, she feared that if she stopped once, even for a small comfort, she might find it doubly difficult ever to begin again.
For the Little Prince, she thought, forcing herself onwards. And for Sigrid, and my father, and all the rest. Then, more darkly: And for Darrick. And Rhyss. For their memory, and vengeance…
She pressed onwards as the moon arced high over the trees, casting its cold light down and creating its own spindly shadows on the forest floor.
Scars of grey bedrock began to show through the undergrowth, protruding in occasional humps and spines. Gabriella walked over these with growing trepidation, knowing she was nearing the outermost reaches of the dreaded Tempest Barrens. The further she traveled, the fewer human outposts she would discover. This, along with the gusting wind and the silent eye of the moon, filled her with quiet dread. Still, she did not stop or slow her pace. She was committed to the path regardless of her unspoken fears.
There were many stories about the Barrens. Most of them, she reminded herself, were pure fantasy, invented for sport, to be told around midnight hearths in the safe confines of taverns and castles. Perhaps only a small percentage of the tales were true.
But, she couldn't help wondering, which percentage?
Unbidden, her mind dredged up the old legends, things she had collected in her memory since she had been a very young girl. The barren steppe was cursed with ancient black magic, the histories claimed, leftover from the days when wizardkind warred there, scorching the earth with their worst and most inventive battle spells. The magic had tainted the very rocks and plains, never dissipating, but sinking into the earth like acid. It pooled invisibly in caves and depressions, growing in the very grass, poisoning the creatures that fed there and turning them horrible and mutant.
Worse, the legends declared that the magical armies had employed mystical creatures in their forces—dragons and centaurs, elves and goblins, giants and cyclopses, even monstrous spiders, walking trees, and rock trolls with boulders for fists. Many of these creatures had been left behind, wandering the Barrens for centuries, mad and vicious, stalking the unwary traveler.
Most awful of all, however, the myths whispered of dead armies that still roamed the plains, cursed ghosts rejected even by hell, forever marching in search of an enemy to destroy and devour, to claim unto themselves.
Surely, the worst of the stories could not be true. As with most legends, the reality was surely far less horrible than the tales that had grown up around it. Even today, brave adventurers occasionally trekked off into the Barrens in search of artifacts and treasures, magical remnants that could be exploited for gain. Many of these adventurers returned full of wild tales, eager to impress their meeker listeners. Surely, exaggerations were to be expected. Probably, the worst the steppe had to offer was a dearth of drinkable water and the occasional cursed burial mound or rogue wildcat.
She told herself these things
as the night deepened around her and the trees thinned, became scraggly and bare. She walked on, and the ground seemed to terrace vaguely downwards, descending and growing barren, marked by increasingly larger patches of dead rock and scree.
She encountered ancient campsites, reduced to little more than black scorch marks where fires had once burnt, surrounded by litters of small bones. Once, she came upon an abandoned cottage, mostly buried in vines, pulled apart by a crooked oak tree that had grown through its roof. Symbols had long ago been painted across the open doorway, but now they were faded to worrying obscurity. Gabriella walked around this, keeping her distance, and tried not to think that the leaning structure was watching her as she passed on.
Tall, yellow grass became the dominant feature of the landscape, dotted only occasionally with stunted trees and scrubby bushes. The grass tossed busily as the wind threaded through it, making thousands of whispering voices, hinting at words.
The moon climbed the sky, became a lantern high overhead. Gabriella's shadow moved alongside her now, short but distinct, like an inky ghost.
She was weary and hungry. The chill of the deepest watch of the night weighed heavily upon her. She stopped finally in the centre of an ocean of shushing grass and considered lying down for a few hours. She must be very near the border of the Barrens now, and she did not wish to close her eyes within that cursed landscape even one more night than she had to.
She ate just a little more, unrolled her blanket, and then, achingly, removed some of her armour and lay down.
She longed for a fire but was too exhausted to search for kindling and work the flint. Even in the cold, however, she felt the subtle warmth of the sigil around her neck. Perhaps it was her imagination, but the falcon emblem almost seemed to radiate heat in waves, soothing her and calming her shivers. It was impossible of course, but she did not reject its comfort, even if it was only a figment of her exhausted mind. Nearby, bobbing jovially in the breeze, a spider hung in a web between two stalks. It seemed to regard her, and she was reminded of the spider in the castle halls, the one that had visited her briefly on the night Rhyss had been killed.
"Watch over me, friend," she whispered, turning away. "Be my guardian this night."
She lay in the tall grass, blinking slowly, feeling a dismaying sense of déjà vu. It seemed to her that she could hear the bell of the academy tolling faintly under the rush of the wind, could feel the slope of the hill beneath her, leading down towards the valley brook and the castle bridge. She closed her eyes and remembered the shadow of Darrick as a young boy, his dirty face and wild hair silhouetted against the sun.
That was Whisperwind powder… I won't tattle on you if you get me some.
She was always very good with the magical tools and potions. That was why she was always the one to blow the Whisperwind, or pluck the strings of the enchanted harp, or speak the words to conjure the smoke visions. Toph had always told her she was talented in the magical arts.
She closed her eyes. Fleetingly, she felt the memory of Darrick's first, impetuous kiss pressed onto the corner of her mouth like a promise of good things yet to come. In her memory, she covered that kiss with her hand even as he ran towards the academy, grinning mischievously.
In reality, lying amongst the dead grass and pale moonlight of the borderland, she slept. The spider watched, unmoving, bobbing in the constant wind.
The next morning dawned bright and clear, waking her with its blazing orange light. She sat up, chilled to the bone and once again ravenously hungry. Blinking and rubbing her eyes, she looked around.
A small pile of berries sat nearby her at the very edge of the mashed stalks of her erstwhile bed. She frowned down at it. The berries were tiny but bright, tumbled into a neat pile of red and deep purple. Wild elderberries and raspberries, she thought. There were even a few acorns scattered into the mix, as if whoever or whatever had left the pile had been slightly unsure of what, exactly, a creature like Gabriella might best breakfast on.
She raised her eyes and looked about her, scanning over the waving stalks of grass. There was nothing else in sight save for a few distant trees and thin bushes.
Carefully, she reached for the berries, plucked one up. She popped it into her mouth and chewed it thoughtfully. Wherever it had come from, it was extremely welcome. Her stomach rumbled eagerly at the burst of flavour, and she quickly scooped up the rest of the pile. The berries were methodically consumed, leaving only the acorns. She considered trying one, even tested the nut of it between her teeth. In the end, however, she decided to save them just in case she was less fortunate as the journey continued. She slipped the acorns into her pack, stood up, and stretched in the morning sunlight.
Whoever her mysterious benefactor had been—and strange as it certainly seemed—it was a much different awakening than she had expected. Perhaps the magic of this bizarre place so close to the Tempest Barrens was not entirely dark after all.
Unless, of course, the berries were poison.
Considering this a bit worriedly, she set off again.
The grassy valley continued on for some time, becoming golden in the morning light. She encountered one more stream, trickling thinly through a highway of round, purplish stones, and stopped to refresh herself. Filling her flask once more, she felt cautiously confident that water would not be an issue as she crossed the steppe. Food, however, could soon become a scarcity, assuming that her strange night-time benefactor did not show up again. She puzzled over the mystery as she continued onwards.
Shortly after noon, Gabriella spied a structure on the horizon. It jutted up irregularly, forming the unmistakable shape of a ruin. It was too small to be a castle but too large to be a cottage. As she neared it, squinting in the hard noon sunlight, it began to take on the shape of a long forgotten inn. The main building stood devoid of any roof. Its brick and stone walls looked as barren as bones in the grass. Behind this, a stable was almost entirely lost in vines, bent crookedly in the constant wind. Finally, approaching the ancient structure's shadow, Gabriella spied the remains of a well, its bucket long gone and its stones collapsed sadly inwards.
She slowed as she neared the main building. Part of her wanted to enter it, if only to search for any supplies or tools that might be of use. Another part of her, much deeper and less articulate, insisted she stay far away from it.
It is cursed, she thought suddenly, as if the idea had come to her from the very air around her, whistling and moaning through the bones of the old inn. Something awful happened here. And I think I know why. This is the boundary. This was the last outpost of humanity, right at the edge of the Barrens, catering to the adventurers and magical treasure hunters. It lasted awhile, maybe even decades, but eventually, the Tempest claimed it, completely and irreversibly.
Gabriella took a step backwards. Normally, she prided herself on not being a superstitious person. This, however, was more than idle nervousness, like she had felt whilst skirting the abandoned cottage the day before. This was like a smell in the air or a dull throb, just outside the range of hearing but sensed nonetheless. Stay away, it warned unmistakably. She determined that that was good advice.
She began to pace a wide circle around the property, watching it constantly. The skeleton of a large horse lay in the weeds alongside the inn. Grass swished and whined through the cage of its ribs. Its skull seemed to have three eye sockets. Of course, that had to be an illusion. She looked again, felt her blood chill at the sight of it, and then looked away.
The inn was perfectly still and silent as she rounded it, and yet it did not feel dead. She shuddered, unable to shake the feeling that the stillness was a façade, that the inn was watching her with its empty black windows and doorways, measuring her, debating whether or not to allow her to pass.
Finally, thankfully, it was behind her. She walked on, throwing looks back over her shoulder at it, unwilling to let its watchful emptiness out of her sight until she was well away from it. As it dwindled into distance, she felt the intens
ity of its gaze seem to lighten. She drew a deep breath, turned away from it for the last time, and continued on her way.
She had passed into the Barrens. The desolate steppe stretched out before her now like a stone ocean, unbroken by trees, shimmering with the waves of its yellow grass. A pall of loneliness filled the space, expanding all the way to the flat horizon.
Gabriella walked on.
She sang to herself, just to fill the void of silence. She recalled every bard's tale she could remember and recited the bits that she liked best. Her voice rang out pristinely, with no echo yet clear as silver bells in the whispering emptiness. Eventually, however, even the sound of her own voice began to spook her. She fell quiet and plodded onwards, her boots leaving a wake of bent stalks behind her.
Sometimes, the grasses gave way to expanses of smooth, cracked rock, some of them larger than the courtyard of the castle she had grown up in. Here, nothing grew, and yet, occasionally, strange cairns of stones would stand erect in the sun, casting hard shadows. Some of these cairns were nearly as tall as she, balanced so precariously that it seemed that the slightest breath of wind should knock them tumbling. Other times, the rocky shelves would be carved with ancient symbols, some so large that she could not make them out even whilst standing in the middle of them. It was as if they had been meant to be viewed from high up, by the very birds of the air. None of the symbols made any sense to her, even the ones that were small enough to be seen in their entirety, and all of them left her feeling strange and feverish, shivering even in the warmth of the autumn sunlight.