Blackveil

“We must begin,” Graelalea announced, and that was all it took for the company of twelve to fall in line. Grant abdicated the role of leader without, notably, a word of complaint, and Graelalea strode to the head of the line as if there’d never been any question.

They set off, keeping the wall beside them as they headed east. There was a road Karigan remembered—more from Alton’s reports than her own experiences—that they must be traveling toward, an old Eletian road that intersected with the wall. They walked on in silence, Karigan in the middle of the line behind Yates and ahead of Ard. Yates glanced back at her with a grin, but it didn’t look quite so jaunty now.

Karigan shifted the unfamiliar weight of her pack on her shoulders and grimaced at the stiffness of her infantry boots. She really should have tried to break them in more before now. She hoped they did not break her in first. Otherwise the walking cane the Weapons had given her would be needed for more than the occasional support. At the moment it remained strapped to her pack.

Thinking about her personal discomforts helped divert her from worrying about the greater threat of the forest, but not entirely. Sometimes she thought she caught the jostle of a branch that had nothing to do with wind, for there wasn’t even a breeze. She heard the occasional scurry-scurry in the underbrush. In any other forest she’d have dismissed it as squirrels. Here? She hated to guess.

She felt the watchfulness of the forest, as if it had stopped everything to observe them. It was not the regard of a single unifying presence like Mornhavon, but on some level the forest was aware. It did not attack them, but reared up over them like a giant wave, hovering, waiting, inevitable. She wondered if the Eletians gave it pause, if their presence set it back. If it decided otherwise, what would happen if it stopped watching and came crashing down on them as all waves must?

They walked on, the mist revealing little about the time of day, but making tendrils of hair cling to Karigan’s face and leaving her clammy and chilled. She focused on the rise and fall of Yates’ feet ahead. Ard’s raspy breaths followed behind.

Karigan had no sense of how much time had passed when they halted. All she knew was that her shoulders ached and one of her heels was being rubbed raw by the boots. The damp air was acrid on her tongue.

They clustered around Graelalea. “We begin on what is called in the common tongue Avenue of Light.”

Karigan glanced around but at first espied nothing that resembled a road, for the area around them was thick with undergrowth. However, when she looked harder, she discerned where the growth was a little less thick, the lines too regular to be natural. Her foot wobbled on a loose stone which was, on closer scrutiny, a sea-rounded cobble, one among many, the paving stones of a road.

“Not much light here no matter what it’s called,” Ard muttered.

No one disagreed.

“If we were to continue on this course along the wall,” Graelalea said, “we would come to the Tower of the Heavens. But we shall take the road.”

It was a pity, Karigan thought, they couldn’t have all just entered the forest through the tower, but the soldiers and Ard, being neither Green Riders nor Eletians, would not have been able to pass through the walls.

They paused where they stood for several minutes while Yates made notations in a journal and Grant and Porter produced devices to take measurements of the road and its juxtaposition to the wall. When they finished, the company turned away from the wall and followed Graelalea down the road deeper into the forest. Karigan felt her last chance to run to safety slipping away.

It did not take long before Karigan decided to make use of her bonewood cane. She had no wish to twist an ankle on a loose cobblestone rolling underfoot. That they were slippery with slimy moss did not help. The stones clicked and clacked as the company made its way, and there were outbursts of swearing when someone tripped or slid. Rotting logs that had fallen across the road complicated matters, and they had to jump over gullies where the roadbed had been washed away. None of the Eletians made a sound.

In fact, Telagioth’s sudden, silent presence beside Karigan took her aback. He said nothing but gazed hard at the bonewood. She stared back at him, at his cerulean eyes and effortless strides, but he did not speak. She could not contain herself.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Your walking stick,” he replied. “It has an unusual quality about it.”

“Would you care to take a closer look?” Karigan thrust it toward him in what she thought was an unthreatening manner but he skittered away.

“No, no,” he said, raising his hands. “I am sure it will serve you well.”

Karigan thought it a curious reaction. Maybe there was something to the Weapons’ assertion about the bonewood after all, but she was hoping she would not have to be fending off Eletians in addition to whatever endangered her in the forest.

Despite Telagioth’s caution, he still walked with her, so she asked, “What do the Eletians call the road? If Avenue of Light is its name in the common tongue, what is its Eletian name?”

“Celes As’riel. Avenue of Light is not a perfect translation. A better translation might be Star-lighted Path. Or just the Lighted Path.”

“Celes As’riel,” Karigan echoed. She liked how it rolled off her tongue, but it had sounded more musical coming from Telagioth.

“This road was made broader than any other in Argenthyne to accommodate travelers from the north, and perhaps that is why it is called ‘avenue’ in the common.”