David Farland - The Sum of All Men

“Binnesman,” Jureem said. “Binnesman has put some Earth Warden's spell on the Prince, hiding him.” Gaborn was leading them all somewhere they did not want to go.

One of Raj Ahten's captains, Salim al Daub, spoke with a soft, womanly voice. “O Light of the Earth,” he said solemnly, “perhaps we had better relinquish this fruitless chase. The horses are dying. Your horse will die.”

Raj Ahten's magnificent horse did show signs of fatigue, but Jureem hardly imagined it would die.

“Besides,” Salim said, “this is not natural. The ground everywhere we walk is harder than stone, yet the Prince's horse runs over it like the wind. Leaves fall in his path, hiding his trail. Even you cannot smell him anymore. We are too near the heart of the haunted wood. Can't you hear it?”

Raj Ahten fell silent, and his beautiful face went impassive as he listened. He had endowments of hearing from hundreds of men; he turned his ear to the woods, closed his eyes.

Jureem imagined that his master could hear his men rustling about, the beats of their hearts, the drawing of their breaths, the strangling noises their stomachs made.

Beyond that...must be silence. A pure, profound silence all across the dark valleys below. Jureem listened. No birds called, no squirrels chattered. A silence so deep that it was as if the very trees held their breath in anticipation.

“I hear,” Raj Ahten whispered.

Jureem could feel the power of these woods, and he wondered. His master feared to attack Inkarra because it, too, harbored ancient powers—the powers of the arr. Yet here in the north the people of Heredon lived beside this wood and apparently did not harvest the power, or did not commune with it. Their ancestors had been a part of these woods, but now the northerners were sundered from the land, and had forgotten what they once knew.

Or maybe not. Gaborn was aided by the wood. Raj Ahten had lost the boy's trail, lost it hopelessly.

Now Raj Ahten turned his head to the northwest, and looked out over the valleys. The sun shone briefly on Raj Ahten as he gazed at a deep valley, far below.

The heart of the silence seemed to lie there.

“Gaborn is heading down there,” Raj Ahten said with certainty.

“O Great Brightness,” Salim begged. “Haroun asks that you leave him here. He feels the presence of malevolent spirits. Your flameweavers attacked the forest, and the trees want retribution.”

Jureem did not know why this annoyed his master so. Perhaps it was because Salim asked him. Salim had long been a fine guard, but a failed assassin. He'd fallen from Raj Ahten's favor.

Raj Ahten rode to Haroun, a trusted man who sat on a log, his shoes off, rubbing his maimed feet. “You wish to stay behind?” Raj Ahten asked.

“If you please, Great One,” the wounded man asked.

Before Haroun could move, Raj Ahten drew a dagger, leaned over and planted it through his eye. Haroun gasped and tried to stand, then tripped backward over a log, gagging.

Jureem and the Invincibles stared at their lord in fear.

Raj Ahten asked, “Now, who else among you would like to stay behind?”

Gaborn rode full-tilt, and though his mount was one of the strongest hunters in Mystarria, in the afternoon he felt it giving way beneath him.

The stallion wheezed for breath. Its ears drooped, lying almost flat. Serious signs of fatigue. Now, when it leapt a tree or jumped some gorse, it did so recklessly, letting brambles scrape its hind legs, setting its feet loosely. If Gaborn did not stop soon, the horse would injure itself. In the past six hours, he'd traveled over a hundred miles, circling south, then heading back northwest.

Gaborn felt certain Raj Ahten's scouts must have begun to lose mounts by now. He could hear but two or three dogs baying. Even Raj Ahten's war dogs had grown weary of the chase. Weary enough, he hoped, to make mistakes.

He rode on, leading Iome through a narrow gorge. Night's shadows were falling.

He could see quite well here. As if the eyebright administered the night before had not yet worn off. This amazed him, for he'd expected it to lose its effect long ago.

He felt thoroughly lost, had no idea where he'd managed to end up, yet it was with a light heart that he raced down into a deep ravine, covered in pine.

Here he found something he'd never expected to encounter so far into the Dunnwood—an ancient stone road. Pine needles had fallen on it over the ages, and trees grew up through the middle of it. Yet all in all, as he headed deeper into the gorge, the path could be tracked.

It seemed a decidedly odd road, too narrow for even a narrow wagon, as if it were made to be trod by smaller feet.

Iome must not have expected this road, either, for she watched it with wide eyes, looking this way and that. In the darkness, her pupils dilated.

The woods grew silent as they rode for the next half-hour, and the trees grew immense. The trio descended from the pines into a grove of vast oaks, trees larger than Gaborn had ever seen or imagined, spreading wide over their heads, the oak boughs creaking softly in the night.

Even the lowest branches rose eighty feet overhead. Old man's beard clung to those boughs in vast curtains, thirty and forty feet long.

On the hill beside him, in the trees, Gaborn saw lights winking among the boles of trees. Tiny holes had been dug beneath a rock shelf. A ferrin warrior rushed before the light, his tail whipping.

Wild ferrin, living off acorns and mushrooms. Some inhabited caves up there; others lived in the hollows of great oaks. Gaborn saw lights from their lamps among the immense roots and boles. City ferrin seldom built fires, since those attracted men who would dig the ferrin out of their burrows. Somehow, the presence of wild ferrin comforted Gaborn.

He strained his ears, listening for sign of pursuit, but all he could hear was a river, somewhere off to his right, rushing down the ravine.

Still the trail descended.

The trees grew old and more vast. Few plants thrived beneath these trees—no gorse or winding vine maple. Instead the soft ground was covered in deep moss, unmarred by footprints.

Yet as they traveled, Iome cried out, pointed deeper into the woods. Far back under the shadows, a gray form squatted—a heavyset, beardless man, watching them from enormous eyes.

Gaborn called out to the old fellow, but he faded like a mist before the sun.

“A wight!” Iome cried. “The ghost of a duskin.”

Gaborn had never seen a duskin. No human living ever had. But this looked nothing like the ghost of a man—it was too squat, too rounded.

“If it is the spirit of a duskin, then all is well,” Gaborn said, trying to put a good face on it. “They served our ancestors.”

Yet Gaborn did not believe for a moment that all was well. He spurred his horse onward a bit faster.

“Wait!” Iome called. “We can't go forward. I've heard of this place. There is an old duskin road leading down to the Seven Standing Stones.”

Gaborn flinched at this news.

The Seven Standing Stones lay at the heart of the Dunnwood, formed the center of its power.

I should flee, he realized. Yet he wanted to reach those stones. The trees had called him.

He listened for a long moment for sounds of pursuit. Distantly, he heard trees bending in the wind, speaking something...he could not quite distinguish.

“It's not much farther,” Gaborn told Iome, licking his lips. His heart hammered, and he knew it was true. Whatever lay ahead, it was not far distant.

He spurred his horse into a canter, wanting to take advantage of the failing light by covering as much distance as possible.

Ahead he heard a far-off rasping sound—like the buzz of rattlesnakes.