Only I and the Brothers Ashiun, if they agreed to accompany me, should be able to enter.
The moment I passed into the Wood Between, I knew it was a terrible place. The trees grew so thick, so twined together, that there could be no flight for one of my size, though I was scarcely grown then to my full wingspan. I flew up from the mists of Cozamaloti and landed on the banks of a wide river I did not know.
From there, I was obliged to walk.
How can I express to you the pain of a winged creature forced to hobble along the dirt? My feet were tender; they bled as rocks and roots tore into them, and they soon throbbed as though with each step I trod upon hot coals. My wings I folded against my back, but branches reached out and snatched at them, tearing.
And there was no sight of the sky. The fate of Cren Cru’s gaping void seemed preferable to me!
Dark halls, distant shouts, and the cold of biting winter.
The Chronicler fled, his senses ringing with bursting life made all too real in the pain of loss and the fear of pursuit. He ran, stumbling in the gloom, his hand pressed to the stone wall of a staircase to keep his balance, expecting men-at-arms to leap from the shadows any moment.
“You are not my father?” a tiny, malformed child had asked old Raguel, the former chronicler.
“No, thank the Lights Above,” Raguel had responded with his habitual acidity. “You have no father.”
It was true and untrue all at once. Impossible and all too possible. As an older child beginning to feel the bindings of his limited height, he soon guessed, though he never dared speak aloud his conclusions. He guessed that the man who visited the library every so often and asked after his progress was more than just the Earl of Gaheris. He guessed from glances; he guessed from curt words. Later, after Raguel died and his apprentice took over as castle chronicler, he guessed the truth when summoned to the earl’s chambers to write out dictated letters. He guessed from tone of voice and turn of head. He guessed it all, and he understood, though his heart broke with hatred and love.
“You have no father,” he whispered to himself as he fled. And now it was true indeed: His father was dead.
Loss that the Chronicler should not have allowed himself to feel swept over him, and he was almost glad for the fear to drive it out.
“I have done you no service,” Earl Ferox had said. And this was the most painful truth of all. As castle chronicler, the diminutive, forsaken son might have spent a long life in solitude and quiet work. As declared heir, what life remained to him would be spent on the run.
For who would serve a dwarf lord?
In escape lay his only hope. Any moment now, Earl Ferox would breathe his last, and when that happened Alistair would send for him, he knew. Alistair, who had the support of the earls and who would not so easily give up mastery of Gaheris to his former teacher. So he must escape, steal a horse (was it stealing, after all, if Ferox had named him heir?), and ride into the wild lands. To the east and into the mountains? No, he would never pass over them. To the west, then, seaward? But what to do when he faced the wall of the sea? North, into colder climes? And freeze the blood in his veins! It must be south, then—
Foolishness, all foolishness. What good did any future plan accomplish if he could not so much as escape Gaheris’s binding walls? The castle that stood in fierce defense against all comers was also a mighty prison.
It was all madness. All hopelessness. But he would not be taken like a lamb for slaughtering.
He could already hear the tramp of feet, whether real or imagined he could not guess. The pursuit would begin any moment, he was certain. But he passed no one as he fled through the keep and out the door into the inner courtyard. Round him were the high walls of Gaheris, and watchmen stood at their interval posts. Torches flickered in their iron holders, but their light was as nothing to the cold moon watching from above.
The Chronicler hastened across the stones, as yet unhailed by any searcher. But there were guards posted at the gates to the outer courtyard, and who could say if they would let him pass? His flight might end before it was well begun. But what else could he do? There was nowhere he might safely hide—
With a sharp curse, louder than he intended, the Chronicler crashed into someone in the dark and fell back hard upon the ground. A figure he could not discern stood above him, blending so perfectly into the darkness that he almost could not see it even now. Then it bent, and the light of the moon fell upon its face. A wrinkled, ugly, utterly old visage.
“Evening, Your Majesty,” said the scrubber.