Consciousness slowly returned to Myranda. All around her was darkness. She was unsure if she had even awoken. The ground heaved with sudden, regular jolts. The air was heavy with an oppressive heat and an indescribably horrid smell. It was a gruesome combination of stale blood, perspiration, and half a dozen other odors that she'd never known before and hoped never to know again. She tried to feel along the floor, but a jingle followed by a resistance revealed that she was shackled to the floor.
Her sleep-addled mind turned over the possibilities. The answer was not a pleasant one. She remembered seeing them here and there all of her life. The black carriages. Where one could be found, something terrible had always happened. And now she was inside. Caught. Condemned.
She struggled against the chains periodically for hours. It was useless, but anything was better than allowing her mind to dwell on the situation. No one who had been thrown into one of these carriages had ever been seen again. The crack beneath the doors let in little air and no light. The lack of air made it difficult to stay awake, but the dark was a blessing. It spared her what was sure to be a horrific sight left by the last unfortunate soul to occupy this place. Tears welled in her eyes as she began to realize that this is how it would end for her.
Sleep had come and gone a dozen times or more since she had first awoken. There was no telling how long it had been. The only thing she could be sure of was that her captors were moving recklessly fast, stopping only occasionally, seemingly to change horses from the sound of it. She was jarred awake when the lurching of the carriage came to an abrupt end as it had with each such stop, but it was different this time. Outside, muffled by the thick carriage walls, a struggle could be heard. Myranda cringed at the screech of steel against steel and the terrified cry of horses.
All at once, the tumult became silent once more. She could hear the latch that held the heavy wooden doors shut being worked. The door dropped open with a thunderous crash. Outside it was night still--or, more likely, again. The crimson light of a torch illuminated the interior of the prison carriage, revealing Myranda's chained form, along with walls scarred by the frantic clawing of untold hundreds of tortured souls over the years. A blast of chill from the air shook Myranda's perspiration-soaked body.
The man who held the torch was enormous. More than a head taller than Myranda and easily three times her weight, he had a build that betrayed a mass of muscle beneath a layer of bulk. The light of the torch fell upon half of his face. Scars old and new told the tales of battles gone badly. He wore no cloak. In its place was an overused suit of leather armor and a crude iron helmet.
"We will free you," spoke the man in a voice to match his features.
He was joined by a second figure. This time a woman. She was about Myranda's height, and perhaps a few years older. One look at her face, though, showed a pair of eyes with the fierceness and resolve of a person twice her age. She wore similarly decrepit armor, as well as a sword at her side dripping with the evidence of its most recent use. The woman held her torch high and smiled as its light fell upon Myranda's bloodstained shoulder.
"It is she," she said, relief and accomplishment in her voice.
The pair of rescuers climbed inside. The woman investigated the grim reminders of past passengers by torchlight. She shook her head in anger and pity. The man revealed a pry bar, with which he made short work of the chains. When Myranda was free, he helped her to her feet, but the untold time she'd spent immobile had robbed her of the strength to walk. He carried her outside and onto one of two horses that were waiting at the ready.
The bracing cold chilled her to the bone almost immediately. She watched through heavy eyes as the rescuers stripped the fallen soldiers of their weapons and armor with ruthless efficiency. When all that could be claimed from the carriage had been similarly pillaged, the woman threw the torch inside. The black carriage took quickly to flame and the three watched with satisfaction. The woman soon put her feelings to words.
"You'll have no more of our lives, you wretched devil," the mysterious woman whispered.
The trio rode swiftly through the night, Myranda riding behind the woman who had rescued her. They had taken the four horses from the carriage, but the time inside had taken far too heavy a toll for Myranda to ride for herself. Aside from the obvious draw on her body, she began to feel that her mind was failing her as well, as the countryside whisking by her was unfamiliar. They were headed though a sparsely-treed field toward a dense forest that seemed to go as far as the eye could see. Behind them, far in the distance, a mountain range rose up from the horizon, a mottled green stripe at its base.
"Where are we?" she called out over the pounding of the hooves.
"The Low Lands," the woman answered.
The Low Lands! If her memory served her correctly, that meant that in her time in chains she had been taken to the other side of the mountains she'd decided not to attempt just before she was caught. She must have been asleep for some time. As tales of the Low Lands slowly came to her mind, she began to wonder if she was any better off now than she had been in the carriage. All through her life, if a tale of murder, crime, or disappearance met her ears, the setting was the Low Lands.
Judging by the size of it, the forest they were heading into was Ravenwood. It was a place that had come to be called the Endless Forest. Now at the fringe of the awe-inspiring sight, Myranda could not think of a more appropriate name.
There was a small break in the clouds, but the light was short-lived. The near-full moon overhead was soon filtered through the increasingly thick foliage of the forest once said to have consumed half of a division of Northern soldiers who had entered, but never left. She swallowed hard and hoped that she would not share their fate. Her fingers were completely numb, and her shoulder had worsened to the point that she could scarcely move the whole of her right arm.