kind of world than mine. Can’t you reshape it, turn it into something more pleasant?”
“This is nothing to do with me!” said Molly. “It’s not my woods, not my world.”
“No,” said Tarot Jones. “It’s mine.”
We both looked round sharply, and there he was, lounging at his ease between two tall and twisted trees. He was smiling at us, with his big, horsey grin, and not in a good way. Tarot Jones, the Tatterdemalion, the Totem of the Travellers. A raggedy man, with an air of the wild things about him, he looked perfectly at home in the dark forest. As though this was where he belonged. I wondered if this was how he saw all wild places, all the time.
He looked down his long nose at Molly. “You know nothing of the true wildness of the woods. The sleeping power of the dark face of Mother Nature, red in tooth and claw and loving every moment of it. There was a time I didn’t; but I had to give up my innocence, put it aside and leave it behind so I could become wise enough, and strong enough, to protect my people. To defend my Tribe from all those who threatened them.”
“We’re no threat to your people,” I said carefully.
“Of course you are. You’re a Drood.”
“Try not to be so literal in your thinking,” I said. “You’re the hero of your story, and I’m the hero of mine.”
He looked suddenly older, and oddly sad, for a moment. “I’m no hero. Not any more. I wanted to be, but I had to give all that up to become the guardian and protector my Tribe needed. When they come with weapons to move us on, I have to face them with worse things than weapons. I stand between my people and a cruel and vicious world, and they must never know, never find out, all the awful things I’ve had to do on their behalf. To keep them safe. I am teeth and claws in the night, the fever that burns in dark places, the terror and horror of abandoned places. There is blood on my hands, but I do not regret one drop of it. You’d understand that, being a Drood.”
I nodded slowly. “Like I said, we have some things in common. So why don’t we put our differences aside, just for the moment, and work together to get out from under the hands of the Powers That Be? You can go back to your Tribe, and I can go back to my family. We don’t have to do this. We don’t have to fight and kill, play the Game, for the amusement of others.”
He cocked his head on one side, studying me with bright eyes. “Fine words, for a Drood. When did you ever turn away from violence? You kill for your family. I kill for my Tribe.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t do that any more.”
“Good,” said Tarot Jones. “That will make this so much easier.”
He gestured with his left hand, and all the trees around us tore themselves free of the dark earth. They rose up on their roots, lurching and swaying, and plunged towards us, thrashing branches reaching out with clawed and clutching fingers, to rend and tear. A savage power moved in the trees, ancient and unstoppable. There was a harsh anger in their movements, as though this was what trees dreamed of all the time, in their long, deep sleep. Of revenge on men, for what they did with saws and axes and fire . . . The trees advanced from every side, with deafeningly loud creaks and cracks, their roots churning up the dead earth. I looked quickly about me, but there was still no way out.
“I have had enough of this!” said Molly. “I am never defenceless! Never!”
She produced an aboriginal pointing bone from somewhere about her person. That nasty old night magic that can kill with a gesture. She stabbed the discoloured bone at the nearest tree. Anywhere else, the kind of curse magic bound into that bone would have been enough to blast the tree into kindling, but nothing happened. Molly swore briefly, and threw the bone aside. Her left hand was immediately full of an ancient arthame, a witch dagger. The leaf-shaped blade was deeply scored with old runes and sigils. Molly spoke a Word of Power over it, but the blade didn’t burst into flames as it should have. Molly looked shocked. She shook the blade hard, as though that