“Footsteps,” I said.
Alastair drew back the curtain of branches and looked out. “From where?”
“I’m not sure.”
He muttered something and ducked under the boughs. I followed the crunch of his steps as he circled the tree. “There’s nothing,” he said. “No tracks anywhere.”
“And I don’t smell anything,” Akarra added. “You must have heard the snow falling off the branches.”
Alastair returned and sat next to me with a grunt. “Or you may have been dreaming.”
Akarra shielded us with one wing and exhaled a thin stream of dragonfire into the pile of blackened kindling, which sputtered and caught with a crackle. “Better you sleep now, Aliza. I’ll take the rest of your watch.”
“No, you sleep,” I muttered. “I’ll finish my own watch.”
Neither of them argued, and that worried me most of all.
The moon slipped behind the clouds. I focused on tending the fire, breaking off dry twigs from the boughs overhead and tossing them onto the kindling with clumsy fingers. After nodding off a third time, I finally gave in and woke Akarra for the final watch. She said nothing, only stretched her wings and set her face toward the Barrens and the Wood and whatever waited for us there.
I was glad when she shook us awake at dawn. A dream had troubled me during that second sleep, but I couldn’t remember the details, only dark trees and blood and somewhere close by, the thump of a fourth heartbeat.
Daylight proved a blessing and a curse. Sore backsides and numb fingers combined to make both Alastair and me less than cheerful, and with no hope of breakfast beyond a few bites of bread, I was rapidly heading for irritable by the time we stumbled from the shelter of the tree. The scene outside our makeshift camp improved my mood a little. The pine grew on a ridge overlooking a valley so thick with trees there was no ground visible, and through the trailing snow we caught glimpses of mountains to the south. One peak stood above the others, shining white for a moment before the clouds swirled over the sun and veiled it from our sight.
“Dragonsmoor,” Akarra said without the enthusiasm I expected.
“Isn’t that a good thing?” I asked.
“Rushless Wood stands between us and the peaks of An-Edannathair.”
“At least we’re not in direwolf country,” I said, reaching for a lightness I didn’t feel. Just somewhere that may be much worse.
“It’s farther than it looks.”
I felt the westward wind on my face, remnants of the blizzard that had blown us so far off course. If it didn’t change soon, Akarra would have to fight it the entire way to the mountains. Silently I calculated. A fortnight on the road to Lake Meera, another few weeks at Castle Selwyn, a night and a day across the Barrens, one night on the border of the Rushless, and how much longer through the Wood? We had been away from home for almost a month. I wondered when Alastair’s staff would start to worry. “How far is House Pendragon from here?” I asked Akarra.
“Farther than that. Several days at least.”
“Can you fly?” Alastair asked her.
“I’m unsteady enough as it is, khela. I wouldn’t trust myself to keep you from falling.” She hung her head, and he rested his forehead against her side. “I need to eat,” she said in a faint voice.
At the mention of eating, my stomach growled loudly enough to draw both their gazes. I busied myself with gathering our scarves, now more frozen than dried, from their branches and pretended nothing had happened. I’d been able to push the hollow feeling away for minutes at a time by thinking about how very little food we had left, but hearing Akarra admit her own weakness broke down that defense. It felt as if a lifetime had passed since our last meal at Castle Selwyn.
“Then we’ll go on foot.” Alastair donned his scabbard and threw one of the panniers over his shoulder. He must have seen my despairing look. “For now,” he added. “There are bound to be wild animals in that forest.”
“I’m not leaving you to hunt, khela,” Akarra said.
“Then we’ll hunt with you.”
She raised one horned eyebrow.
“We’ll go quietly.”
“If you say,” she said. “But stay close, both of you. I don’t like the look of those trees, and there’s a strange smell.”
I sniffed and inhaled a snowflake. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. Not something dead but—well, not something alive either.” She looked over at Alastair, who’d left his axe within easy reach at his hip. “Keep that ready, will you?”
The ridge was slippery with snow-covered pine needles. Akarra conceded after the first nearly turned ankle and flew us down to the border of the trees. I tried not to think of the Marsh-Rider Lydon Tam and his description of the inhabitants of Rushless Wood, nor of his foster sister Johanna Mauntell, of her wild laughter and bared teeth and the symbol of the Bleeding Tree carved into her back. If he was right, there was danger here that had nothing to do with the Tekari. We kept close to Akarra as we entered the Wood.
The pines petered out after the first few yards. Trees of a kind I’d never seen before took their place, growing so thick it took careful maneuvering for Akarra to move through them in places. They had the look of poplars, but their trunks were several arms’ lengths around and the bark smooth and silvery, like birch. What branches they had grew high above the ground. It was quiet under the trees and solemn, as if we’d entered an endless pillared hall in the ruins of an ancient overgrown palace, and the trees deadened the sound of the wind enough to make me uneasy. Something was off about these woods. For midmorning, there were a few too many shadows.
“Do you feel that, Aliza?” Alastair asked after a few minutes. He kept his voice low.
“What?”
“The cold. It’s gone.”
Now that he pointed it out, I realized I’d stopped shivering. The air was still. I looked up. Interwoven branches formed a roof overhead that blocked most of the snow and the few flakes that made it through melted before they reached the ground. We continued in silence for a long time, alternately walking and sitting on Akarra’s back. The knot of anxiety in my gut did not loosen. Light took on a curious quality beneath the trees and it was hard to judge how long we’d been in the Wood, though by the ache in my feet and the rumbling of my stomach I guessed it was past noon when an odd sight brought us to a halt.
“Akarra, wait a moment.” I slipped down from her back.
“What is it?” Alastair asked.
I stopped in front of the tree that had caught my eye. A dark streak at chest height marred its silvery bark. At first I’d thought it was fire damage, but on closer inspection the bark proved unharmed. The stain had grown with the wood. It ran up the side of the trunk like moss, but there was no moss to be seen, and it was dark reddish, not black or green. Odd.
“Alastair, get off my back,” Akarra said quietly.
No sooner had he dismounted than she sprang upward, jaws snapping. Twigs fell around us. She landed clumsily, wings hitting tree trunks on either side, the remains of a squirrel’s drey sticking out from her teeth. With a crunch and a spurt of flame she bit down, then spat it out.