The Journey

The Bleak Forest had no welcome for the living.

Sir Alden Stormrider understood this within his first hour beneath its canopy, when the last grey light of the Landoryan sky disappeared behind a ceiling of twisted branches so dense they might have been woven by deliberate hands. The air changed the moment he crossed the tree line, warmer than it should have been, thick with the smell of rot and something older, something that had no name in the common tongue. He rested one gauntleted hand on the pommel of Stormbreaker and pressed forward, his armour casting faint ripples of amber light as the dragon-magic imbued within it stirred, sensing what surrounded him.

The forest did not want him here. He could feel it.

The undergrowth clutched at his greaves like fingers. Roots erupted from the earth at angles that seemed to shift whenever he looked away, and twice in the first day he was forced to hack through walls of briar so thick that sparks flew from Stormbreaker's edge where the enchanted blade met the dark wood. He crossed a river on the second morning, more a thrashing wound in the earth than a river, white water hammering against jagged stone, by finding a cluster of boulders barely wide enough for a boot and throwing himself from one to the next with his teeth clenched against the roar of it. He made the far bank soaking from the thigh down and knelt there for a moment, breathing hard, saying nothing to nobody.

He was alone. For now, that was the worst of it.

The creatures came on the third day. They had been wolves, once. He could see the architecture of wolves in their shapes, the long jaw, the ridge of spine, the low-slung shoulders, but dark magic had undone whatever grace the animals once possessed. Their eyes burned with a bruised violet light, and when they moved, they moved wrongly, joints bending in directions that made Alden's stomach clench. Three of them circled him in a clearing of dead silver grass, and he drew Stormbreaker in a single clean motion, the sword humming as though glad to be used. The fight was brief and ugly. When it was done, he stood over three still shapes and felt no satisfaction, only a tired sorrow for what they had been before the darkness claimed them.

He wiped the blade on the dead grass and walked on.

It was on the fourth afternoon that he found Thistle, or rather, Thistle found him, which, as Alden would later learn, was always the way of it.

He had been standing before an oak.

No ordinary oak. The tree was enormous, older than anything Alden could reckon, its trunk wider than a merchant's house and its bark the colour of a bruise. It sat squarely across the only navigable path through a press of thorned undergrowth, and as Alden studied it, he became slowly, horribly aware that it was studying him back. The bark shifted. A shape resolved itself from the wood, a crude suggestion of a face, a gaping hollow where a mouth might be, and the ground trembled as two vast roots tore free of the earth and rose like arms on either side of him.

"Oh, you don't want to do that," said a small voice from somewhere above his left shoulder.

Alden spun. Perched on a branch at precisely eye level, one thin green leg swinging idly, was the strangest creature he had ever seen. Small as a child, slender as a willow switch, with skin the deep green of moss after rain and ears that tapered to long, sharp points. The creature's face was all mischief, bright black eyes, a grin that contained too many teeth to be entirely comfortable, a nose that turned up at the tip as though permanently amused by whatever it smelled.

"The heartwood's corrupted," the creature said, nodding at the tree as one root crashed down six inches from Alden's boot. "You hit it with that pretty sword and it'll spread the rot through every root in a hundred yards. We'll both be eaten." A pause. "I'm Thistle, by the way."

"Alden." He kept his eyes on the descending roots. "Then what do I suggest you suggest?"

Thistle was already moving, scrambling along the branch with the boneless ease of a squirrel. "You distract it. I'll find the corruption node, it'll be a knot in the bark, black, about the size of your fist. Cut that, only that, and the rest dies clean." The grin again, sharp and quick. "Think you can manage a distraction?"

Alden rolled his shoulders and felt the dragon-fire in his armour pulse warm against his skin. "That," he said," I can manage."

He charged.

What followed was less a battle than a sustained and furious argument, Alden hammering at roots, ducking the sweep of branches thick as ship's masts, his boots churning the black earth while Thistle darted across the trunk with impossible agility, pressing small green hands to the bark, muttering things in a language that sounded like wind through leaves. A branch caught Alden across the pauldron and flung him three yards. He landed hard, tasted blood, and got up.

Then Thistle shouted something wordless and triumphant, and Stormbreaker found the knot.

The tree shuddered. The violet light bled out of its bark like ink from a wound. Then it was still, just a tree again, enormous and old, but no longer hungry.

Alden leaned on his sword and caught his breath. Thistle dropped from the bark and landed beside him with no sound at all.

"You're heading for the Ashveil Deeps," the spirit said. It wasn't a question.

"I am."

"Then you're going to need a guide." Thistle tilted his head, those black eyes measuring him. "And probably a wizard."

The wizard's name was Argus, and they found him the following evening sheltering in the same cave Alden had been making for, a low-mouthed hollow in a limestone outcrop, barely large enough for three, smelling of old smoke and something herbal. Argus was a lean, angular man of indeterminate age, his robes the colour of storm clouds, his silver beard long enough to tuck into his belt. He looked up at their arrival with the expression of a man who had been expecting them for slightly longer than was polite.

The storm that night was ferocious. Lightning walked the forest like something alive, and thunder shook loose stones from the cave roof. Alden sat closest to the entrance, watching the trees strobe in and out of white light, while Thistle slept curled behind him like a cat and Argus murmured quiet incantations that kept the worst of the wind from their shelter.

Alden did not sleep for a long time.

When he finally did, the nightmare came.

It came the way nightmares always do in Landorya, not as chaos, but as terrible clarity. He saw the kingdom spread below him as though from a great height, and he saw the Shadowspawn moving through it like a tide of black water, swallowing villages whole, and in the darkness he heard voices he recognised. Faces he could not afford to lose. He saw them fall, one by one, and he could not move, could not reach them, could not raise Stormbreaker because his arms had no strength left in them at all.

He woke with a sharp intake of breath, his back against cold stone, his hand already gripping the sword hilt.

The storm had passed. The forest beyond the cave mouth was silent and dripping. Thistle was awake, watching him with those unreadable black eyes, saying nothing, which was its own kind of kindness. Argus stirred but did not speak.

Alden sat with the fear for a moment. He did not pretend it wasn't there. That was, he had learned, the only honest way to carry it.

Then he set his jaw, got to his feet, and began to check his armour for the morning ahead. The Ashveil Deeps were still three days' march through this wretched forest.

He had no time for despair.

He had work to do.