The woods thickened, and the mist grew steadily heavier. Shadows floated all around them, cast by tree trunks, limbs and things unseen and unknown. The woods were still, and there was an odd sense of emptiness about them that was troubling. Aphen picked up the pace, suddenly worried.
She had reason to be. When they reached the clearing where she had left her sister, Arling was gone.
29
The pitted stone bulk of Kraal Reach rose against the gray smudge of the horizon, easily the most formidable keep that Oriantha had ever seen. Hidden in a thick cluster of boulders to the west, she studied the fortress in silence.
Next to her, Tesla Dart shifted restlessly. “We should not be here.”
Oriantha nodded. “But here we are, anyway. Is there a way in?”
The Ulk Bog stared at her in horror. “We do not go in there! You did not see what they do? Somehow you are made blind?”
Tesla was speaking of Khyber Elessedil’s head, spiked atop the east gates, ravaged by the elements and picked over by scavenger birds. Oriantha had crept close enough with dawn’s approach to make certain of what she was seeing. Such a terrible thing to witness, but it was not the first and would not be the last. Not while they remained inside the Forbidding.
The shape-shifter and the Ulk Bog had come looking for Khyber Elessedil and Redden Ohmsford almost a week ago—immediately after leaving Crace Coram to make his way back through the break in the Forbidding’s wall. If the boy and the Ard Rhys were still alive, Kraal Reach was where they would be found. Tesla Dart was certain of it. All of Tael Riverine’s prisoners were taken to his fortress as a matter of course, and that’s what would have been done with them.
Not that Tesla Dart believed for one minute that being here was a good idea. From the moment that Oriantha had told her what they were going to do, she had bemoaned their impending fate, railing against the foolishness of such a decision. But Oriantha was determined. She had made up her mind that even though her mother and most of those who had come with her were dead, she was at least going to bring back the two who remained alive. She was not going to leave them behind; she was not going to save herself without first doing what she could to try to save them.
And she had made it clear that the Ulk Bog would help her whether she wanted to or not.
Mostly, it was because of the boy, she thought. Redden Ohmsford. There was a quality about him that reminded her of herself. It spoke to her, intrigued her, drew her. Maybe it was the magic, a vast store of power and possibilities that were a birthright like her own—inherited, not learned, an inseparable part of who they both were and which defined them in ways that none of the others would ever entirely understand.
So after coming down out of the Dragon Line Mountains, they had journeyed on through the Pashanon, avoiding Furies and Harpies and several dozen other dangerous species, the Ulk Bog guiding them and Oriantha keeping a careful watch on her while she did. Pleysia’s shape-shifter daughter had learned the hard way to be cautious. She didn’t trust Tesla Dart. Her part in the demise of the Druid company was still suspect. Whatever had happened to Oriantha’s companions was not going to happen to her. Because of her shape-shifter heritage, she was much closer to being one of the things that were confined to the Forbidding than had been any of those who had come with her. If Tesla Dart did anything to arouse her suspicions, she would sense it and be able to act on it.