When the final headcount was made, Peter, Gibbous, two sailors, and the second ship’s captain—Egen Barnaby—were missing and believed drowned. Five men buried at sea. Kjell took their deaths hard. Sasha took them harder, assuming responsibility for things she hadn’t seen or properly prepared them for, blaming herself for the voyage across the water and the perils of the unknown. Regardless of Kjell’s insistence that she could not manipulate fate, and Padrig’s reassurance that the voyage would help more people than it hurt, she held herself accountable.
The remaining ship, now carrying twice as many passengers as she had at the beginning of her journey, limped into the Bay of Dendar two days later. Unlike Jeru’s coast with its tropical trees and soft, sand beaches, Dendar’s shores were rocky with soaring cliffs and narrow inlets just wide enough to sail a ship down the corridor, a buffer from the sea.
Once past the corridor, the inlet widened again to a sprawling shoreline, revealing the signs of abandoned prosperity and the well-constructed docks that had once moored dozens of ships, big and small. Amid the staggering cliffs, the greenery was rich and resplendent, the trees creating a shadowy sentry above the rocks. Beyond the harbor, a spiked wall also attested to human settlement, though it wouldn’t have kept a single birdman from breaching the height and finding its prey.
As the ship entered the silent harbor, the travelers stood at the rails and waited, watching for signs of life before they moved to disembark. Empty structures and a desolate dock, it was Kilmorda without the ships marooned in the bay. Sasha was mute at the helm, as if she had expected as much, as if she’d seen the abandoned seaport.
“There are no ships,” Isak marveled.
“No. Those who could flee, did,” Padrig answered.
“And those who couldn’t?” Isak asked.
“They died. Or they hid. Or they spun themselves into something the Volgar wouldn’t eat.”
“There is no one here, Spinner,” Kjell said.
“We will go to Caarn,” Padrig soothed, as if that would rectify everything, but Sasha looked at the Spinner, her brow lowered, her eyes shuttered, and Padrig said no more.
Half of the sailors and the guard were lowered into the water on the longboats and rowed ashore, waiting on the docks for the ship to gently moor so lines could be tossed, the anchor dropped, and a gangplank lowered. Four years after Queen Saoirse had left Dendar, she returned, disembarking with the weary voyagers sent to escort her home. No one ran out to greet them, no citizens of Dendar showed themselves or stepped out from hiding places celebrating the arrival of the bedraggled delegation from Jeru or the return of their queen.
With the loss of one ship, everything had changed. Captain Lortimer and his crew would be forced to either wait in the harbor until the expeditioners returned, or they could join them. Captain Lortimer wasn’t eager to return to a sea with a creature who could drag a ship beneath the surface, but he still complained about his choices.
“I’m a bloody ship’s captain, not an explorer.” Lortimer grimaced. But he threw his lot in with Kjell, indicating he’d just as soon stay close to the man who could heal and kill with equal prowess. His sailors were quick to agree.
Kjell promised to intercede with King Tiras and convinced the men charged with going to Willa to remain with the group going to Caarn. There was strength in numbers, and too much was unknown. Faced with the reality of the expedition, staying together seemed the best option, and the travelers—minus the men they’d lost and the supplies and horses that had gone down with the ship—prepared for another journey. Wagons were unloaded and reassembled; enough horses remained to pull the wagons and the remaining gear, but the travelers would be walking to Caarn. All of them. The group was solemn, their outlook diminished, and their anxiety increased.
“It will take two days to travel inland to the valley of Caarn. But we aren’t going to have to climb cliffs and drag these wagons through the grass and trees,” Padrig encouraged. “There is a fine road, laid with stones. There are roads connecting every corner of Dendar. Caarn is at the apex with roots and branches spanning into the countries of Willa and Porta. The king, and his father before him, and his father before that, commissioned the roads, connecting the people to their king and his kingdom. Everything in Dendar is beautiful,” he boasted.
The silence wasn’t beautiful. It was eerie. Signs of the Volgar—strewn nests, the rare feather, and picked bones—were evident but old. No fresh remains, bird droppings, or stench littered the corners or clung to the air. A human skull, still attached to its long backbone like a macabre club, lay on the main thoroughfare. Someone had stayed behind in Dendar Bay, unwilling to run, and had met his death in the street he’d refused to abandon. A little farther down, the remains of several birdmen were piled, and Kjell hoped the skull they’d seen belonged to their slayer.
They split into groups and perused deserted alleys and peeked into abandoned cottages. A tavern with neatly stacked goblets and corked bottles coated in dust lured them with her grimy bounty. The sailors helped themselves—the guard too—yet celebration seemed wrong, and they walked, traipsing through the quiet harbor town sipping spirits and growing more morose as they searched.
Bags of grain, suspended from beams in the stable to keep them from the rats, remained untouched and unused. Volgar birdmen didn’t eat grain. Kjell and Jerick lowered the bags and fed the horses, loading what remained in the reassembled wagons to bring to Caarn. Kjell left coin in an empty sack and nailed it to the wall, just in case the owner ever came back and found his grain gone, his livery gutted of supplies.
“They intended to come back. It is easy to see. They’ve left almost everything behind. They intended to come back,” Sasha insisted. “The day I left, this village was teeming with people. There was fear, but there was also excitement, adventure.”
“Were these people Spinners too?” Kjell asked.
“Many of them . . . yes,” she replied.
“Where did they go? The ones who didn’t leave?”
“Everyone was going to Caarn. The king—Aren,” Sasha stumbled on the name, and Kjell sensed her discomfort, as if she betrayed the king with every word. “Aren wanted everyone together, just as you are urging us to do now.”
“But they haven’t come back. Surely . . . they would have come back, eventually,” he said.
“Yes. Unless they felt safer remaining. Unless . . . there is still danger.”
“But it isn’t that far. The wine, the grain, the homes with furnishings and belongings. Someone would have come back.” Kjell stopped. Sasha knew all these things and didn’t need the burden of his observations. He didn’t ask her what would happen if Caarn was as empty as the Bay of Dendar.
They reunited back at the docks, arms laden with discoveries. Half of the travelers from Jeru had lost everything they owned when the ship had gone down. No one was using the clothing left behind or the blankets on the beds, but Kjell hoped they wouldn’t arrive in Caarn and have a shopkeeper recognize his boots.
“Chickens,” Isak gloated, holding the headless, plucked birds by their curled feet. “And Jedah has more. They were just running wild. Volgar will eat chickens. If there were Volgar here, there wouldn’t be chickens. It’s a good sign, right Captain?”
Kjell nodded slowly.
“Yes. A good sign, and an even better meal. The inn has a galley as big as a castle kitchen. Start a fire, Isak, and get the cook to help you. We’ll eat there tonight, and we’ll eat well. We’ll leave for Caarn in the morning.”
They found oil and tightly sealed barrels of flour in the inn’s stores and carried pails of heated water to the iron tubs of the well-appointed chambers. They ate like kings, filling their bellies with another man’s bread, washing themselves with another man’s soap, but that night, no one remained on shore except a few guards in the stables with the horses. Although beds and rooms were plentiful, the travelers chose to sleep on the ship, stretched out on the deck in nervous reverence of a bay that felt more like a burial ground.
Sasha slept in the quarters she’d occupied for much of the journey, and Kjell guarded her door, stretched out in the narrow corridor on a pallet that barely fit in the space. Jerick would relieve him halfway through the night so he could get some sleep, but he wouldn’t grow complacent simply because they’d made it to Dendar. He dreamed of the squid, his lance protruding from its soft underside, sinking into the depths and, at the last moment, changing into Ariel of Firi with dead eyes and lifeless limbs. But he couldn’t be sure, and he couldn’t make himself believe the threat was truly gone.
An hour after the ship grew quiet and the lapping of the water started to make him drowsy, Sasha’s door opened and she stepped out, gently closing it behind her. He sat up as she sat down, facing him, drawing her knees to her chest, the only option in the constricted passage. Her nightgown was an ivory silk and modest in every way, but her toes peeked out beneath the hem, and his stomach clenched with longing. He stroked the soft skin of one dainty foot before he forced himself to withdraw his hand.
“When we reach Caarn, you cannot sleep outside my door,” she said gently. Her hair smelled of roses, but violet darkened the hollows beneath her eyes, and he knew he was not the only one who worried.
“Everyone on this ship knows I’m in love with you,” he answered. “They all heard the bans read in Jeru City, they all know what was between us and what was snatched away. Do you not see their pitying looks and their curious gazes? They all know. I would stay away to protect your honor. But I can’t do that. I can’t do that and protect you.”
“I know. But it is one thing to unknowingly betray, it is another to willfully betray,” Sasha said.
“Yes. It is,” he agreed. “When we reach Caarn, you must tell King Aren everything. He can’t be the only one who doesn’t know.”
“I will tell him,” she whispered brokenly. “I betray him by loving you, and I betray you by returning to him.”
“You owe me nothing. There is no betrayal if there is no treachery. I know why I am here, and it is not to challenge the king,” he said.
“My conscience demands that I acknowledge you. My duty demands that I deny you,” Sasha said. “That feels like betrayal. Of myself. Of you. Of King Aren. And I don’t know how to rectify it.”
He was quiet, letting her find her composure, seeking his own understanding. He answered with the first thing that came to his head.
“Some things cannot be healed. They must simply be endured,” he whispered, and grimaced. It was the truth, but it sounded like something Tiras would say, something that the old Kjell would have raged against, simply because endurance signified an acceptance of pain. He wanted to defeat suffering. Not live with it.
Sasha didn’t answer, as if she too had trouble accepting it, but she took his hand the way she used to do, helping him endure. She rested her head against the wall and closed her eyes, but she didn’t let go. They stayed that way for a long time, leaning against opposing walls but facing each other, knees touching, hands clasped. He thought she was asleep, but she spoke again.
“He will want you to leave, Captain. Aren is a good man. A kind man. But he is still a man, and he will not want you in Caarn.” She spoke so softly, he knew the words were difficult for her to say.
“Then I will go,” he reassured. And he would. But he would slay Ariel of Firi first.
The road to Caarn was indeed paved with neatly placed rocks—mile after mile of them—and Kjell drove himself mad seeing trouble beneath each one.
On the second day they skirted a river, the water sweet and cold with a waterfall high enough to stand beneath, providing natural showers for the travelers to wash. The ladies, all three of them, went first, and the men withdrew, giving them the privacy necessary. He wanted to forbid Sasha, to insist she stay by his side, but instead walked, fully-clothed except for his boots, beneath the spray and averted his eyes from the three women, who laughed and talked, their teeth chattering, and their bathing brief.
When he couldn’t see Sasha, he made sure he could hear her, and asked that she humor him by keeping a running commentary when his back was turned or she was out of his sight. He knew some of the travelers and even many of his own men thought him overzealous. He didn’t care. They didn’t know what he knew. Everything was a threat. A lizard, delicate and apple green, darted through the grass, and Kjell’s heart seized. Without thought he threw his blade, skewering the little beast. He watched it die, waiting for the change that would occur at death if it wasn’t in its true form. But it remained a lizard, its limbs growing brittle, its color fading as life fled. Kjell chopped it into pieces, ignoring the voice in his head that told him he was being obsessive. He’d watched Ariel of Firi play dead before, lying still and compliant, an eagle snared by a Jeruvian poacher. When the danger had passed, she had simply flown away.
He was going to have to kill her. He knew that. He couldn’t live with the constant threat to those he loved and to the people around him. At some point, he was going to have to concoct a plan to rid the world of Ariel of Firi. But until they reached Caarn, until he knew what they faced and what steps could be taken, he could only be vigilant and pray that her purposes, whatever they were, were not focused on the queen . . . at least not yet.
When they began to descend into the valley on the afternoon of the second day, the travelers grew lively and Kjell courted a sense of doom. Sasha walked beside him, her eyes gobbling up the countryside, lingering on the trees, touching the sky, reminiscing and reconnecting as they approached the end of the road and the dawn of never again. But the road ended in a mass of brambles and a wall of trees so high and thick, the travelers stopped and gaped.
The forest had grown over the road.
Jerick withdrew his sword, and some of Kjell’s men followed suit, preparing to cut an opening in the wooded obstruction.
“It will take more than swords to tunnel through that, Jerick,” Kjell said.
“Put your swords away. We will ask them to move,” the Spinner sniffed, placing his twitching fingers upon the tree in the center of the road. He smoothed the trunk like it was the hair of a beloved child and laid his grey head against it, beseeching.
“I am Padrig of Caarn. My nephew is King Aren. My blood is of Caarn, my heart and loyalty are to Caarn. Pray you, let us pass,” he boomed.
The tree seemed to hear, even to awaken, but though it stretched its branches and shifted its weight, it remained directly in their path, blocking the road into the valley of Caarn. Padrig tried again, pleading with the trunk of the tree to do as he bade, but the tree continued to guard the way.
The group waited, breaths drawn, watching the shivering trees who in turn seemed to be watching them.
“Can anyone ask it to move?” Jerick asked. “Or just Padrig?”
“Anyone can ask. But most people don’t. Most people just draw their swords and start hacking away,” Padrig snapped, caressing the bark as if trying to woo compliance. He seemed stunned that he could not convince the wooded wall to open.
“Pardon me, leafy mistress. I would like to pass.” Jerick bowed gallantly, drawing laughter from the travelers.
“It takes a bit more than a polite request, Padrig,” Sasha corrected the Spinner. “Yes, Jerick, anyone can ask. But the trees will not answer or obey. It takes the blood of Caarn and pure intentions to command a tree to move. We all have the best of intentions . . . but Padrig is the only one here who has the blood of Caarn flowing in his veins.”
Padrig moved to the next tree and to the next, coaxing and cajoling, and though the trees inched and quaked, listening to him plead, the road remained impassable.
“No one doubts your blood, Spinner. But maybe the problem lies with your intentions,” Kjell observed and placed his hands against the tree, mocking Padrig’s posture but not his tone. He would not beg, but it couldn’t hurt to ask. They had not come all this way to be denied now.
“I am Kjell of Jeru. Bloody move so we can pass,” he grumbled. The branches of the tree Kjell touched began to lift skyward, separating from the boughs of the tree next to it. Straightening and stretching, a narrow divide opened between the two center trunks.
Jerick hooted in amazement. “Even the trees are afraid of you, Captain!”
“Who are you, Healer?” Padrig gasped. “You . . . y-you . . . must carry the blood of Caarn.”
“I am Kjell of Jeru, Spinner. And you are trying my patience.” The others gaped at him, awestruck and open-mouthed. “I have never set foot in Dendar before, much less Caarn.”
“Impossible. Do it again!” Padrig insisted.
Kjell, too dazed and curious to be contrary, repeated his request on another tree, though this time he didn’t curse. “I am Kjell of Jeru. We need to see to the welfare of the people in this valley. Please let us pass.”
The ground began to quake, and the cobbled road began to split and crack. The tree Kjell addressed started to withdraw its roots—great tentacles coated in dirt—and climb from the earth, dragging itself free from the broken road and widening the gap in the forest wall, clearing the way before them.
“Your father was Zoltev, Captain, but who was your mother?” Sasha asked, her shock as evident as Padrig’s.
“My mother was a servant woman in my father’s castle. She died at my birth.”
“And where was she from?” Padrig asked, reasserting himself as interrogator.
“Nowhere. No one. I know nothing of her but her name.”
“And what was her name?” Padrig pressed.
Kjell regarded the Spinner in exasperation. The man knew too much and thought he was entitled to know more.
“Her name is not your concern,” Kjell answered.
“And you are certain she was not of Caarn?” Padrig pressed.
“I know only what I was told.” Kjell barked, impatient and uncomfortable. The trees were gone, but the roots left huge holes in the road, and Kjell turned to the men listening attentively to the exchange.
“The way is open, but the wagons still cannot pass. Let’s fill the holes and replace the rocks,” Kjell commanded, changing the subject from his mother and her origins.
A man named Jedah stepped forward and touched his shoulder. He’d signed on for the journey to Dendar claiming he was Gifted, but Kjell had yet to see what he could do beyond catching chickens with Isak.
“Let me be of use, Captain,” he offered. With fluttering fingers and the palms of his hands, he scooped the air as if scooping the ground, and the displaced dirt obeyed his summons, rushing to return to mother earth, the sound like pounding rain against the sand. “I can’t command the rocks,” he apologized. “But the holes are filled.”
“Well done, Earth Mover. That is not a gift I’ve seen before,” Kjell marveled.
“It is not a gift that has proven especially valuable.” Jedah shrugged.
“In a land of growers, such a gift will be greatly appreciated,” Sasha said. “It is a form of Telling. Don’t command the rocks, tell the dirt to move them,” she suggested.
Jedah looked doubtful, but scooped his hands through the air again, his brow furrowed, his gaze narrowed on one of the displaced cobbles. It rattled and flipped, and he smiled in triumph.
“Keep practicing, Jedah,” Kjell said, but began to move the stones into place. There would be time for practice later. They worked quickly, replacing the rocks and leveling the way so the wagons could pass.
Once they’d crossed through the opening in the wall, the earth groaned, the roots crawled, the branches snapped, and the hedge of trees resumed their positions, blocking the road and displacing the dirt and rocks all over again.
Kjell’s men eyed each other nervously, and the travelers began to murmur among themselves. Now they couldn’t leave if they wanted to. Kjell couldn’t decide if he was comforted by the barrier or unnerved by it. If the Changer followed, she need only become a bird to breech the trees. But if the trees had created a wall, there was something worth protecting in Caarn.
They kept moving forward, unable to do anything else, but more than a few glances were tossed back toward the barrier and up into the canopy that lined the road. The wind whispered through the leaves, but there was no bird-song or animal chatter. In Jeru City, the chickens cackled in the courtyard and the bullfrogs sang a chorus in the castle moat each night. Kjell had cursed the cacophony on more than one occasion, but he found he missed the reassurance that came with sound. Absolute silence could not be equated with peace. More often than not, it portended terrible things. He found himself checking the skies, expecting a Volgar swarm. But none came, and the silence persisted.
Then, just around the next bend, the castle came into view, nestled in a sea of green so intense the white rock of the walls glowed in comparison. It didn’t sit on a hill like the palace in Jeru, but in the center of the valley, the hub of a wheel, just as Padrig had described. The village huddled around it, hundreds of pale toadstools on the forest floor, and the ribbon of the road they traveled angled down toward it, pointing to the end of their journey.
Kjell remembered the way the trumpets had sounded the day he returned to Jeru City, Sasha seated in front of him on Lucian, his heart ebullient. No trumpets sounded or flags waved welcoming them to Caarn. Maybe they hadn’t been seen. Maybe they simply needed to draw closer. Or maybe no one was expecting the triumphant return of a long-absent queen. As they descended toward the village, no people rushed out into the street to greet—or gawk at—the wary parade of foreigners who peered through the trees at the quiet cottages, the empty gardens, and the untended orchards. It was the Bay of Dendar all over again, but as they neared the castle, the trees became so thick they could no longer see anything but the palace gate and a looming guard tower.
The drawbridge was down, the portcullis raised, and unlike the trees at the border that had made them ask for entry, no watchman at the gate demanded they identify themselves. The travelers walked into the palace courtyard, unabated and undeterred, and stood, searching for life and further instruction.