Chapter Two

I looked in the direction of the voice without pulling Coryfe to a stop. I could make him out, a tangle of limbs and cloth, strung by a net and suspended in the boughs of a tree, a little off the path. What were the chances, I wondered, of two travellers on this road at night, and one of them being unwise enough to venture off the road and become ensnared by a net?

I considered him. “You could be a trap to lure a traveller off the trail,” I told him.

He laughed, dryly. “I think I am the trapped traveller.”

“How did you get yourself trapped up there?” I asked him, we were drawing equal to his tree.

I did not have long to decide what to do, without having to retrace my steps. I could make out details of him within the net now. A sizeable, booted foot hung out between the weave, the boot finely made and tooled with elaborate detail, the sole barely showing wear. The cloth of his cloak was lushly dyed in a dark blue and embroidered at the hem with a glinting thread. Whoever this man was, he came from wealth.

“Must I recount my entire day?” he was irritable, wriggling within the net and setting it to swaying.

“I am not the one strung up,” I replied, keeping my voice polite. If he were a trap set by one of the magical brethren, manners would serve me well.

“A call of nature,” he mumbled, embarrassed.

“Ah. It’s unwise to step off the trail, even for such things,” I told him.

“Evidently,” he retorted. “Will you help me, or not?”

I drew Coryfe to a halt. “Don’t you carry a knife?”

“It’s on the ground,” he stuck a hand between the weave and pointed down. I could just detect a glimmer in the grasses.

“You must have the worst luck,” I commented, and took an arrow from my quiver.

“Yes. You don’t mean to shoot, seriously?” he complained.

I set the arrow to the bow, aimed, and released. He yelled, the sound overloud in the silence of the forest, as he fell. He hit the ground hard, knocking the breath from his lungs. For a moment, there was no sound, and then he groaned as he sat up. “F-k,” he muttered the curse word, plucking bits of twigs and leaves from his hair as he regained his feet.

He stooped to pick up his dagger, and returned it to the sheath on his hip, before limping out onto the road. He was a big man, taller and wider of shoulder than my father, who was easily the biggest man in my village. His clothing was as fine as I suspected, from boots to cloak, heavy with embroidery and of luxurious material, vividly dyed. The cloak was a midnight blue, just shy of black, and lined with something with sheen. There were jewels in the pommel of the dagger, catching the moonlight.

He picked debris from his hair, as he glowered up at me. “There were kinder ways of doing that,” he chastised me. He had a wild sort of beauty under the tangled fall of his hair, his face given more to fierceness than to charming smiles from the set of his lips and the scowl of his brow. The sort of beauty that made a maiden’s heart pound and think of the lyrics of love songs.

“None that didn’t involve leaving the road. As it is, you have cost me an arrow.”

He walked up to Coryfe who snorted in response. “Your horse doesn’t like me.”

“You smell of magic,” I replied.

“I guess that’s to be expected. I am a mage, after all,” he placed his hands onto the saddle, and lifted himself up with impressive strength and grace, settling himself behind me before the protest formed on my lips.

“I don’t remember offering you a ride.”

He placed his hands on my waist. His hands were large, like his feet, and the nails neatly maintained. Not the hands of someone given to physical labour. “You’d hardly leave me out here,” he said with confidence. “We’d best keep going,” he added. “People who leave traps for men, aren’t people you want to encounter on dark roads.”

I urged Coryfe on.

“I can’t ride with your arrows in my face,” he complained, and pulled the quiver and bow from me, slinging them over his own back, and settled himself closer on the saddle. He was warm against my back, and his thighs against mine were long boned and strong. The last time I had been this close to a man had been when my father had taught me to ride a horse as a child, and this man was not my father. I felt the flush heating my chest and cheeks.

“How is it that a mage could not free himself from a net?” I asked to distract myself from his body against mine.

He made a sound of disgust in the back of his throat. “Do you think it so easy to use magic? You need the right components. I have a dagger, why would I carry components for such a spell?”

“For the event that you drop your dagger through the weave of a net?” I suggested, trying to keep my voice bland. In tale, it was always unwise to provoke magic users.

“Hmmm.”

The metallic smell of the magic clung to the midnight of his hair as it blew over my shoulder, but it was fading now, and I could smell the herbs he carried upon him as spell components, and chypre scent of sandalwood. He sat the saddle with the confidence of much practise, comfortable despite the saddle not being designed for two and there being only one set of stirrups.

“Where is your horse?” I asked him.

“What makes you think I had a horse?”

“You ride like someone who would have a horse,”

“I ride better than you do.”

“Possibly,” I decided he was rude, even for a mage. “Where are you travelling to and from?”

“What’s ahead?”

I glanced over my shoulder at him. “You don’t know?”

“It’s a long story that you don’t need to know,” he was dismissive.

“Behind is Yslt and ahead Benal.”

“What else lies ahead?” he asked, impatiently. “Any cities, castles, anything of actual significance?” His disdain for the villages and towns was not disguised.

“The standing stones of the Graceplains, and beyond, eventually, the coast, and the city and castle of Nerith.”

“Ah,” he sighed it out with an air of resignation. “You will take me to Nerith.” He said the name of the city as if it were a curse word.

“I will take you to Benal, where I am going. How you get on from there, is your own matter,” I told him, firmly.

“We’ll see,” he sounded smug. “The - ” He stopped speaking as a howl cut through the silence of the trees. “F-k,” he muttered again. I wondered if he always cursed under his breath, or if it was an attempt at politeness.

“What manner of creature was that?” I demanded sharply.

It sounded like a Changed Hound. I had only heard that call once before, when there had been a pack in the forest that was driven to hunt through the refuse of the village over a particularly harsh winter. They had been responsible for the lamps being erected in the village streets. There was nothing more frightening then stepping out into one’s courtyard and seeing the glint of aware eyes looking back at you from the face of a Beast.

“Not one we want to encounter,” he replied. I felt him reach to his belt. He threw something out onto the road before us. “Aperianu,” he snarled out at the same time as he heeled Coryfe into a gallop. I saw a flash of light open before us, as if lightning had struck, causing auras in my vision, and tasted the bitter, metallic magic in the back of my throat. The air screamed as it was pulled past us. I gripped the reins tight, and clenched my teeth trying not to scream myself as rode into the brightness.

He slowed Coryfe and looked over his shoulder. The sound and motion of the air whistling through the portal stopped abruptly. “Good,” he said, satisfied. “I wonder where we are,” he added, looking around us.

My hands shook as I relaxed the death grip that I held onto the reins. It took a moment for my eyes to recover from the bright light, and I blinked trying to dispel the auras as I looked around. We were in the middle of a vast area of grassland, the feather heads of the wild grasses bowing and rippling like an ocean around us, and even the silvered moonlight could not dispel the array of colours, yellow, white, green, pinks, reds to the deepest purple.

There was a mountain range in the distance, thick and dark with trees, but otherwise, I could see nothing except more grass plains. There were no houses, no roads, not even smoke rising into the sky in the distance to give sign that anyone lived nearby.

“What do you mean, you wonder where we are?” Fear made my voice tight.

“Well, it’s an imperfect transition, under pressure,” he replied, coolly. “We should be glad we’re not swimming in the middle of the ocean. I suppose we should head to that forest. It would be foolish to sleep out on the plains.”

“It would be foolish to sleep in the forest,” I replied grimly. Did the man intend to kill us? “The grasses would be safer.”

“Why is that?” he was surprised.

I frowned: what manner of person did not know the dangers of the forest? “Imps, fairies, ogres, goblins, fauns, Fae... do I need to go on?”

“It’s not an enchanted forest,” he replied with dignity. “Just an ordinary forest.”

“You can tell that, can you?” I eyed the trees dubiously. The forest grew in a thick tangle, its edge ragged, as if it sought to reclaim the grasslands. The trees had the type of foliage I had been taught the Fae favoured, the leaves three pointed, and as large as my hand, the colours ranging from a rich russet to a lush green. The shrubby undergrowth grew so thickly between the rising, gnarled roots of the trees that I wondered if Coryfe could even navigate passage between the ancient and wide trunks.

“Yes, I can tell if it’s a Fae forest. If it were, I would know where we were,” he reached around me, taking Coryfe’s reins, and redirecting him. “Your horse will need to rest. He is carrying two, and I am not light. We might as well make camp for a few hours and see if you can wield that bow for other purpose than shooting mages out of trees.”