tree in the distance, an old blackened oak struck years before by lightning; moss hung from its dead branches, like a bent old woman spreading wide her skirts to curtsy. “I remember that tree,” she said. She dropped her hand and stared straight ahead through her horse’s ears. “And that red rock we passed, and the grey bramble—all of them. It’s as though I didn’t leave.” She was whispering, too. “It’s as though I never left at all. I don’t know if you’re even real, Nieshka. What if I’ve only been having another dream?”
I squeezed her hand, helplessly. I didn’t know how to comfort her.
“There’s something nearby,” she said. “Something up ahead.”
The captain heard her and glanced back. “Something dangerous?”
“Something dead,” Kasia said, and dropped her eyes to her saddle, her hands clenched on the reins.
The light was brightening around us, and the track widened beneath the horses’ feet. Their shoes clopped hollowly. I looked down and saw cobblestones half-buried beneath moss, broken. When I looked back up, I flinched: in the distance, through the trees, a ghostly grey face stared back at me, with a huge hollow eye above a wide square mouth: a gutted barn.
“Get off the track,” the Dragon said sharply. “Go around: north or south, it doesn’t matter. But don’t ride through the square, and keep moving.”
“What is this place?” Marek said.
“Porosna,” the Dragon said. “Or what’s left of it.”
We turned our horses and went north, picking our way through brambles and the ruins of small poor houses, sagging on their beams, thatched roofs fallen in. I tried not to look at the ground. Moss and fine grass covered it thickly, and tall young trees were stretching up for sun, already spreading out overhead and breaking the sunlight into moving, shifting dapples. But there were shapes still half-buried beneath the moss, here and there a hand of bones breaking the sod, white fingertips poking through the soft carpeting green that caught the light and gleamed cold. Above the houses, if I looked towards where the village square would have stood, a vast shining silver canopy spread, and I could hear the far-off rustling whisper of the leaves of a heart-tree.
“Couldn’t we stop and burn it?” I whispered to the Dragon, as softly as I could.
“Certainly,” he said. “If we used fire-heart, and retreated the way we came at once. It would be the wise thing to do.”
He didn’t keep his voice down. But Prince Marek didn’t look around, though a few of the soldiers glanced at us. The horses stretched their necks, trembling, and we rode on quickly, leaving the dead behind us.
We stopped a little while later to give the horses a rest. They were all tired, from fear as much as effort. The path had widened around some marshy ground, the end of a spring creek that was drying up now as the snowmelt stopped running. A small trickle still came bubbling along and made a wide clear pool over a bed of rocks. “Is it safe to let the horses drink?” Prince Marek asked the Dragon, who shrugged.
“You may as well,” he said. “It’s not much worse than having them beneath the trees. You’d have to put them all down after this in any case.”
Janos had already slid down from his horse; he had a hand on its nose, calming the animal. He jerked his head around. “These are trained warhorses! They’re worth their weight in silver.”
“And purging elixir is worth their weight in gold,” the Dragon said. “If you felt tender towards them, you shouldn’t have brought them into the Wood. But don’t distress yourself overly. Chances are the question won’t arise.”
Prince Marek threw him a hard look, but he didn’t quarrel; instead he caught Janos aside and spoke to him consolingly.
Kasia had gone to stand by the edge of the clearing where a handful of deer tracks continued on; she was looking away from the pool. I wondered if she’d seen this place, too, in her long wandering imprisonment. She stared into the dark trees. The Dragon came past her; he glanced at her and spoke; I saw her head turn towards him.
“I wonder if you know what he owes you,” the Falcon said unexpectedly, behind me; I startled and turned my head around. My horse was drinking thirstily; I gripped the reins and edged a little closer to its warm side. I didn’t say anything.
The Falcon only raised one narrow eyebrow, black and neat. “The kingdom hasn’t a limitless store