Kelley Armstrong: Sea of Shadows

Ashyn saw the governor pull back his sword, his eyes wide with shock. Blood flecked from the blade and oozed from Tova’s rear leg. Ashyn crouched beside him. The sword had cut to the bone. Someone pressed a scarf into her hand. She looked up to see the village healer.

“Thank you,” Ashyn said.

Healer Mabill helped her bind Tova’s leg. Tova tried to walk but lurched and whimpered until Ashyn made him stop, and he collapsed at her feet.

“I need to take him back,” Ashyn said. “He’ll be fine tomorrow. Hounds heal quickly.” Even as she spoke the words, she knew what the others would say.

“We can’t delay the Seeking, child,” Healer Mabill whispered. “It always takes place on this day, when the veil between the worlds is thin. Someone will need to go back for help while we push on.”

Ashyn wanted to argue. Moria would snarl and spit like her wildcat. That’s why she was the Keeper, and Ashyn the Seeker. Like Tova, Ashyn’s world was ruled by duty. That duty lay with the spirits waiting for peace.

“I’ll run for help,” Faiban said. “I’ll tell them to come for the hound, then rejoin the search.”

The governor shook his head. “We need all the guards.” He turned to the bard, who’d joined the group to soothe their difficult task with music. “You go. Hurry to the village and then run back to us.”

The bard—a portly man who likely hadn’t run in twenty summers—stared at the governor.

“We can spare you,” the governor said. “If you do not go, we must bind the hound and hope someone in the village hears its howling. I know the Seeker would not want that.”

The bard nodded with some reluctance and took off back toward the village as fast as his thick legs would carry him.

Ashyn tried simply to leave Tova on the path. But as soon as she’d start walking away, he’d limp after her. So, for the first time in his life, he had to be bound. Ashyn knelt and explained it as she tied him, but he kept lunging against the rope until he collapsed in pain and exhaustion.

Even then, Ashyn looked back to see him trying to crawl after them, and it took Faiban and another guard to keep her moving forward. When he began to howl, the tears started.

“He’ll be fine,” Faiban whispered. “He’s a good, strong dog. But we can’t do this without the Seeker.”

Duty over self. The spirits over Tova. She only hoped he understood.

It wasn’t long before the forest was so thick that Faiban had to walk ahead of Ashyn and let the other guard follow her. Although they could still hear Tova’s howling, the path was nearly gone. That’s when one of the rear guards took out the spool of red ribbon and tied the end to a tree.

Without a ribbon, it would be nearly impossible to find the way out. Until now, Ashyn hadn’t fully understood that. It always had seemed odd that so few of the damned ever managed to find their way back to the village. Now, surrounded by endless trees, she understood.

Most exiles never traveled far from the marked place where they were always left. That made Ashyn’s job easier. It would take all day to reach that spot, though, even with guards at the fore, hacking through saplings and vines.

It made little sense to cut a new path each spring. They all knew that. So, too, had the first governor of Edgewood. The tale of the path was one of Moria’s favorites, and Ashyn could hear her voice telling it as she walked.

The governor had sent extra guards on a Seeking to prepare the path properly. They’d made it wider and laid out the discarded branches and vines to keep down new growth. That way, the path would last for many summers. But by the time the Seeking party headed out the next spring, the forest had swallowed the makeshift lane entirely.

The governor had not been a man accustomed to having his will thwarted, even by nature. So he’d asked his warlord to provide men to clear a path as wide as a road. The village guards watched from the tower as the passage was cut until the party could no longer be seen. The next day, one of the men came racing back along that path, gibbering nonsense.

Certain the man had swamp fever, the governor quarantined him and sent a search party after the others. But the man soon recovered and told his tale. They had been working on the road, and he’d been sent back to camp for water. When he’d returned, he’d looked ahead to see the men hacking through the forest. Then, without even a change in expression, they’d turned and begun hacking one another, as calmly and diligently as if they were still chopping trees and vines.

The man had run to his fellow workers, screaming for them to stop. They hadn’t uttered a sound, just kept chopping at one another, stone-faced.

Eventually the search party returned to report the scene exactly as the survivor had described it. The governor declared it had been a mass outbreak of swamp fever. However, in light of the tragedy, there would be no more attempts to create a permanent road. And so the forest swallowed their work, leaving only the initial stretch.

Ashyn looked out ahead, thinking of that worker and what he’d witnessed. She started to shiver.

“Are you cold, my lady?” Faiban asked.

She managed a smile for him. “Unsettled.”

“The forest does that,” he said, nodding sagely, though she knew he’d never passed the second tower himself. “Shall I tell you a tale?”

“Can you make it a happy one?”

He smiled, his plain face lighting up. “Of course. I am not your sister. Let me tell you a story of a fair maiden of the North, who tamed a snow dragon…”

At noon, the Seeking party ate and sent the signal. A few had whispered uneasily when the governor fired the green flare, which meant all was well. The bard had not yet rejoined the party.

At least Tova was fine. Ashyn would know if he wasn’t. The hound must have gotten back to Edgewood, and the bard would come panting and wheezing down the path at any moment.

When they finished the noon meal and the bard still hadn’t arrived, she did start to worry. But what could happen? Yes, there were vengeful spirits. Yes, there was swamp fever. But it took days for spirits to drive a person mad. And one could only contract swamp fever by drinking contaminated water or being bitten by the infected. The Seeking party had brought its own water, and any infected exiles would have died over the winter. The bard would come soon enough, and if he didn’t, then he must have returned with Tova and stayed in the village.

By late afternoon, the Seeking party reached the marked site where exiles were abandoned… after their guards had led them there on a circuitous route so they’d think they were farther in. The guards left the exiles under the largest tree in the forest, but the Seeking party could not see it from the ground, and had to send a scout to scale trees as they walked.

While the village volunteers stayed to make temporary camp, the governor waved for Ashyn and the guards to follow him. It was time for the Seeker to begin her work.

With every step, Ashyn’s heart beat harder. Tova ought to be here. No matter what the governor said, the Hound of the Immortals was supposed to help the Seeker find the bodies. Now she was on her first Seeking, without her hound, and if she failed…

I won’t fail. I must not.

When the governor stopped walking, Ashyn continued past him. Twigs cracked behind her, and she turned to see Faiban following, sword in hand. She smiled at him, and he hurried to get in front of her, murmuring, “Just tell me where you want to go, my lady.”

She pointed with another smile and he tripped over his feet to cut her a swath deeper into the forest. Ashyn followed slowly, letting her mind shift to the second world. Since entering the forest, she’d heard no whispers. The spirits of the ancestors stayed out. This was the domain of the damned.