A new silence fell, weighted as with lead.
The procession reached a fork in the road, one branch turning north and the other turning south. Ahead, the plateau was split by a cleft running in a line north and south without any visible end. The eastern massif rose beyond the crevasse. The six corpse wagons continued north toward a distant temple placed at the fissure’s edge. Its wall bristled with horns, chimes, and corpse-fire lanterns burning with the waxy gleam of magic.
The commander himself, and the two guards who had helped her in the kitchen, accompanied the seventh wagon straight ahead along a rutted path. The oxen plodded toward a line of ghostly trees grown along the crevasse in the manner of trees growing alongside a river, fed by its moisture. As they approached, the uncanny appearance of the trees grew evident: paler than milk, almost translucent, like no trees she had ever seen. The women clustered close behind the wagon as they trudged in its wake. What else could they do? There was nowhere to run. Even Asvi felt a chill like doom whispering off the wraithlike trees. Branches stirred as if tasting their approach.
“What will we do?” whispered a woman whose living name had been Vicara. She was often frightened, and cringed at every unexpected noise. “Will it hurt when they eat us?”
“Hush,” said the one who’d been called Bilad. She never smiled. “Our sacrifice keeps the city safe. We prepare a home for those who come after us.”
They all looked at Asvi.
“Why did you do it?” Bilad asked the question at last.
“I want to see the dragons.”
They sidled away from her, as if she were a dangerous influence, malicious and wild. But there was no escaping the crossing: these twelve old women, even if Asvi and several of the others really weren’t so very old, not like aged Kvivim, whose family, the elder had told them in a frail whisper, could have afforded the tithe for her but didn’t want to pay it for a woman who could barely walk. Maybe a different death would have been preferable, but Kvivim had stubbornly clung to life and Asvi admired her for it.
The respite was over and the end was nigh.
They walked toward where the trees grew thickest, spreading out to either side for some distance along the crevasse until the wood petered out into a few last stragglers.
In front of the central grove stood a massive gate of white wood shaped as a dragon’s gaping mouth. The trees crowded up on either side like brambles too thick to penetrate, forming a barrier that blocked anyone from going into the forest unless they entered through the gate.
The drover halted the wagon. The guards used ropes to drag open the gate, not touching it with their hands. A gleaming silver-white path led straight from the gate’s gulletlike opening into the shadows under the trees.
The priest-commander raised both hands, palms up to entreat the heavens. “So is it said, that in the first days after landfall, a fog rolled down out of the mountains of morning, and in it dwelt a ravage of demons. Again and again they descended, ravenous and insatiable. No sacrifice assuaged them, not even the offer of daughters in a marriage of blood. Only when the dragons came did the demons retreat. Ever after, according to the covenant of the new land, the dragons took their tithe in return for protection. By your sacrifice the world lives.”
Dutiful Bilad went first through the gate’s open maw, assisting old Kvivim. The others followed, but the commander tapped Asvi’s arm with his staff of command to hold her back.
In a low voice he said, “The temple here could use a cook. It’s so isolated, no one will know.” He gave a sly tilt of his head back the way they’d come.
The other women had all crossed by now. They halted on the other side, surprised as the guards set their strength to the ropes and began to haul the open gates shut.
“Asvi?” Bilad called, sounding scared now that she wasn’t with them to steady their hearts with her food.
She thought of Danis’s words. What could the priest do to her now? Once she crossed, he could not follow.
“You do need a cook, but it won’t be me. My father did not raise me to act so dishonorably. I will not let others shoulder the burden on my behalf. But you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you? Your own magistrates cheat people, demanding more than they can pay and keeping the extra money for themselves. You would cheat the tithe by keeping me back to gratify your own belly. It’s a disgrace you feed such poor food to the women you send here. They deserve better on their journey.”
“Why waste food on people who will be dead soon?” he snapped.
“You are not a good man. No wonder the dragons don’t want the curdled taste of the likes of you.”
She turned away from his reddening face and slipped through the opening just before the guards slammed the gates shut.
“What was that about?” asked Bilad.
“I told him the priests ought to serve better food on the long walk.”
Several of the women laughed nervously. No one moved. The trees sighed, and in their rustling whispered regret, despair, exhaustion, fragility, worthlessness, fear, pain, defeat, surrender. The sun began its slow descent across the vast expanse of the sky. Looking out over the land falling away westward was like being able to see into forever. But they didn’t belong to that world anymore.
She turned her back on the life she’d lived and set off along the trail. Her limbs felt wooden, graceless, heavy, but the lure of dragons pulled her on.
The others reluctantly shuffled after, deeper into the disturbing silence. Although the branches had no leaves, the trees’ eerie canopy nevertheless blocked the sun’s rays. They followed the trail as along a path wrapped in an intangible shroud that sucked away all noise and most light. No birds sang or insects buzzed. Not a single flower bloomed although it was midsummer.
In the dimness, it was just possible to see strange shapes warping the trunks with bulges and decaying mounds. Now that Asvi walked through the wood, she saw these were not ordinary trees. They too were ghouls, akin to the creatures who had pulled the corpse wagons. They grew out of bodies, eating the flesh and building a scaffolding out of the skeletons to stretch toward the everlasting sky.
Their presence troubled Asvi like a boil burning hot in her gut. What if they reached out with their swaying branches to yank her into their midst? They flourished because they fed on the dying flesh and abandoned magic of discarded women.
Were these trees what it really meant to feed the dragons? That women walked so far and suffered so much fear and exhaustion only to become food for ghouls? Why not just feed the doomed women to the hauling beasts and be done with the façade of ceremony? The false promise of noble sacrifice?
Bitterly her heart soured and raged. It wasn’t fair or right. Danis had been correct about that. Maybe Danis would find a way to change things back home as Asvi could never have done.
Yet the part of her mind that measured ingredients and portions nudged her fear and anger aside. There weren’t enough trees to account for all the years and generations of the long walk. The women hadn’t all died here, short of their unseen goal.
“Keep walking and don’t stop or pause at all.” She herded them onward when their steps lagged as they stared around in fear and despair.
Light marked the end of the trail’s tunnel. A gulf of brightness awaited them, so fierce it was hard to look as they came closer. A person could drown in such light. Her heart beat faster. Her steps picked up as if she were going to meet the long-sought lover she had never had.