‘Enough, Buruk,’ Seren said. She wiped the rain from her face and, ignoring Hull, moved past onto the path. Nerek stepped to either side to let her pass.
The forest trail was flanked by Blackwood trees, planted to assert Edur possession of these lands. Rough midnight bark that had been twisted into nightmarish images and arcane script by the shadow wraiths that clung to every groove and fissure in the rugged skin. Wraiths that now rose into view to watch Seren and those following in her wake.
There seemed more than usual. Flowing restless like black mist between the huge boles. Scores, then hundreds, crowding either side of the trail. Seren’s steps slowed.
She could hear the Nerek behind her, low moans, the clack of the wagons slowing, then halting.
Hull came alongside her. ‘They have raised an army,’ he whispered.
There was dark satisfaction in his tone.
‘Are they truly the ancestors of the Edur?’
His gaze snapped to her, feverish. ‘Of course. What else could they be?’
She shook herself. ‘Urge the Nerek onward, Hull. They’ll listen to you. Two days remaining, that’s all-’ And then she fell silent.
For a figure was standing upon the trail. Skin the colour of bleached linen, tall as an Edur, a face obscured by dark streaks, as if bloodstained fingers had drawn down the gaunt cheeks. An apparition, the dull red eyes burning from those deep sockets dead. Mould hung in ragged sheets from rotting armour. Two scabbards, both empty.
Wraiths swarmed at the figure’s feet, as if in worship.
A wagon door clattered and Buruk staggered out, wrapped in a blanket that dragged the ground behind him as he came to Seren’s side.
‘ Barrow and Root !’ the merchant hissed. ‘The tiles did not lie!’
Seren took a step forward.
Hull reached out a hand. ‘No-’
‘Would you have us stand here for ever?’ she snapped, pulling herself free. Despite the bravado of her words, she was terrified. Ghosts revealed themselves in childhood tales and legends, and in the occasional fevered rumour in the capital. She had believed in such apparitions in a half-hearted way, an idea made wilfully manifest. A whispery vision of history, risen as harbinger, as silent warning. A notion, then, as much symbolic as actual.
And even then, she had imagined something far more… ephemeral. Lacking distinction, a face comprised of forlorn hints, features blurred by the fading of their relevance. Half seen in currents of darkness, there one moment, gone the next.
But there was a palpability in the tall conjuration standing before her, an assertion of physical insistence. Etched details on the long, pallid face, the flat, filmed eyes watching her approach with fullest comprehension.
As if he has just clambered free of one of the barrows in this forest. But he is not… is not Edur.
‘A dragon,’ the apparition said in the language of the Tiste, ‘once dragged itself down this trail. No forest back then. Naught but devastation. Blood in the broken earth. The dragon, mortal, made this trail. Do you feel this? Beneath you, the scattering of memory that pushes the roots away, that bows the trees to either side. A dragon.’ The figure then turned, looked down the path behind it. ‘The Edur – he ran unseeing, unmindful. Kin of my betrayer. Yet… an innocent.’ He faced her once more. ‘But you, mortal, are not nearly so innocent, are you?’
Taken aback, Seren said nothing.
Behind her, Hull Beddict spoke, ‘Of what do you accuse her, ghost?’
‘A thousand. A thousand upon a thousand misdeeds. Her. You. Your kind. The gods are as nothing. Demons less than children. Every Ascendant an awkward mummer. Compared to you. Is it ever the way, I wonder? That depravity thrives in the folds of the flower, when its season has come. The secret seeds of decay hidden beneath the burgeoning glory. All of us, here in your wake, we are as nothing .’
‘What do you want?’ Hull demanded.
The wraiths had slipped away, back among the trees. But a new tide had come to swarm about the ghost’s tattered boots. Mice, a seething mass pouring up the trail. Ankle deep, the first reached Seren’s feet, scampered round them. A grey and brown tide, mindless motion. A multitude of tiny selves, seized by some unknown and unknowable imperative. From here … to there .
There was something terrible, horrifying, about them. Thousands, tens of thousands – the trail ahead, for as far as she could see, was covered with mice.
‘The land was shattered,’ the apparition said. ‘Not a tree left standing. Naught but corpses. And the tiny creatures that fed on them. Hood’s own legion. Death’s sordid tide, mortals, fur-backed and rising. It seems so… facile.’ The undead seemed to shake himself. ‘I want nothing from you. The journeys are all begun. Do you imagine that your path has never before known footfalls?’