5

Something was wrong with the forest, Hugh decided. Magic sped up the tree growth. That was an accepted fact. Five-year-old growth looked like twenty-year-old trees. The woods swallowed any abandoned property, and people in the forest towns spent a fair amount of their time trying to keep the wilderness from encroaching. But this place was something else.

An ancient wood spread on both sides of the path. Massive white oaks with trunks that would take three people to encircle. Hemlocks towering a hundred and thirty feet above the forest floor. Rhododendron and mountain laurel so thick, he would need to chop it down to get through. This forest felt old and rugged, soaked in the deep currents of magic.

Life thrived between the branches. Squirrels dashed through the canopy, birds sang, and quick feral cats slithered through the brush. Here and there a pair of glowing eyes blinked at them from the shadows as their party rode through what once was a two-lane rural road and now was little more than a few feet of asphalt, just wide enough for the horses and the truck to pass through.

The dual engine truck burned gasoline during tech and enchanted water during magic. Like all enchanted engines, it made enough noise to wake the dead and their top speed would be about forty-five miles per hour, but faced with dragging the salvage back by hand, Hugh had decided not to look a gift truck in the mouth. The sluggish vehicle lagged about two hundred yards behind them with the main body of his party, but its distant roar didn’t travel far. The forest smothered it, as if offended by the noise.

Bucky loved the woods. The stallion kept trying to bounce and prance, his tail straight up in the air. Hugh held him in check. He didn’t feel like prancing.

Yesterday, after the wedding, instead of getting drunk and celebrating, he’d walked through the second reception site, which Elara’s people quickly set up inside the castle walls, reassuring, healing those who needed it, and expecting another attack. Elara had made an appearance, in a clean dress and her hair still perfect as if nothing had happened, and did the same, moving through the reception area, smiling and asking people about their children. They passed each other like two ships in the night, uniting briefly to cut the second cake, a carbon copy of the first one, which confirmed what he had already suspected. The Departed had expected trouble.

The void crept closer with the evening, and by the time the subdued celebration finally died down and Bale found him wanting to get drunk and celebrate, it was gnawing on him with sharp icy teeth. Hugh knew that the moment booze touched his lips and he felt fire and night roll down his throat, he wouldn’t stop. The lure of a numb stupor, where the void was a distant memory, was too strong. But Hugh had to stay sharp, so he told Bale no. He went to bed alone. Vanessa was still sulking, and he didn’t care enough to look for her. Seven hours later, at sunrise, he was on horseback and out the gates. There would be no moat without the salvage.

Ahead, the two guides Elara sent with him halted their horses. Hugh rode up, Sam at his heels. He would’ve preferred just one guide, Darin, the one barely in his twenties and obviously starstruck at being invited to lead twenty Dogs into the wilderness. It wouldn’t have taken much convincing to get Darin to spill Elara’s secrets, which was probably why his lovely wife saddled him with Conrad, who was in his fifties and had that unflappable quality farmers and older tradesmen got with age. He would be a tougher nut to crack.

“See him?” Conrad asked quietly.

Hugh scanned the forest. A few yards away, from the side of a fallen chestnut, a big shaggy wolf stared back at him. It was the size of a pony, gray, with golden eyes that caught the light, glowing softly with magic. A dire wolf.

The wolf turned and stalked off into the woods, melting into the green shadows.

“Pretty boy,” Conrad murmured.

“Do they come close to the castle?” Hugh asked.

Darin nodded his dark head. “The woods are full of them. We’ve got three packs by the last count.”

Three packs of dire wolves meant there was plenty of prey for them to hunt. “Any other predators or game?”

“There are all sorts in the woods,” Conrad said. “Bears, cougars. Things.”

“We’ve got stags,” Darin jumped in. “Seven feet tall, with really big horns. Looks like there is a whole tree on their heads. And hippogriffs. We’ve got hippogriffs.”

Better and better. Hippogriffs only hunted in old-growth woods.

“We should be going,” Conrad said. “It’s not far now.”

Hugh shifted his weight, and Bucky danced forward. Hugh let him prance for a few steps and then reined him in.

“Tell me about this place we’re going to,” he said.

“Old Market,” Conrad answered. “About five hundred people lived there before the Shift. Not much there: a grocery store, a post office, a gas station. Your typical one-street-light, one-church town. It was a bit of a hub for the country people in the area, so they did have a decent hardware and county store, which is where we’re going. Should be some good salvage there.”

“When did it go dark?” Hugh asked.

“About fifteen years ago.” Conrad grimaced. “The flare came and the woods just blew up. Things came out of them that nobody ever saw before. That’s when a lot of small towns around here died. People left for the cities. Safety in numbers and all that.”

“What about the castle?” Sam asked. “When was that built?”

“That was pre-Shift. A guy called Mitch Bradford built it for Becky Bradford, his wife. His second wife.” Conrad paused for dramatic effect. “Bradford made his fortune in bourbon and then branched out to international trade. He called Becky his princess, and Becky liked castles, so he went and got one for her from the Old Country somewhere. After the Shift, his company didn’t do so well. Then there were some natural disasters. Fire in the left wing, bad plumbing, that type of thing. By the time we got here three years ago, his son practically begged everyone he knew to take the castle off his hands. It needed a lot of repairs, but we fixed the drafty old thing. It’s home.”

“Where was home before this?”

“Oh, we lived in all sorts of places,” Darin said.

“Why did you leave to come here?” Hugh asked, glancing at Darin.

“Because of the Remaining,” Darin said. “They—"

“Darin, why don’t you go on and scout ahead,” Conrad said. “Make sure we don’t run into anything.”

Darin clicked his mouth shut and rode on.

Conrad turned to Hugh. “I know what you’re doing. If the Lady wanted you to know, she’d tell you. Leave the boy alone.”

Hugh considered stringing Conrad up by his ankles. An hour or so with the blood pooling to his head, and the older scout would sing a beautiful song filled with all his secrets. Hugh was still deciding if he was going to do it, when Darin came riding back around the bend.

“A fort!” he reported. “Looks empty.”

Hugh looked at Sam and nodded at the column behind them. “Get Sharif.”

The kid turned his horse and rode back. Half a minute later, Sharif came riding up from the back. The lean dark-haired scout had been covering the rear. Sam followed him.

Hugh touched the reins, and they rode on. The path turned. A wooden palisade rose to one side of the road, a ring of sharpened tree trunks ten feet high. A crude guard tower stood on the right, just inside the palisade walls, overlooking the road. A bell hung from its ceiling. The gate of the palisade stood wide open. The road curved to the left, widening into what used to be Main Street. An old pre-Shift two-story house crouched on one side, a trailer on the other, both mostly eaten by the forest. He could just make out the sharp point of a church steeple in the distance between the new trees.

The palisade lay silent. No sentries. No movement.

Hugh glanced at Conrad.

“This is new,” the older scout said. “Wasn’t here nine months ago.”

Sharif dismounted. Light rolled over his dark irises and flashed green. He inhaled deeply, crouched and sniffed the road.

“Nobody’s home,” he said quietly.

Hugh dismounted and fixed Conrad with his stare. “Stay here with the boy.”