underbrush, tall ferns, and vines.
They stretched their arms to the sky. Though the path he traveled was wide enough for three men to ride abreast, the dark branches met overhead, so that he walked down a gloomy tunnel.
Little trails led off through the brush, paths beaten by animals or others. Ilbran knew better than to take those. Forestlings might chance them, but only the main roads were charmed and safe for the stranger, and those only safe while the sun shone.
The silence was unnerving, unlike the peaceful stillness of the meadows, filled with the tiny sounds of insects. This was a watchful quietness, that made him glance over his shoulder and quicken his step. People lived here, he knew, but how? He could see no fruit, no grain, no signs of the Gifts that are given to men.
He saw tiny flickers of motion in the undergrowth. They stilled when he looked directly at them. As in any place, more creatures lived here than could be seen. The path was rutted and pocked with holes from some burrowing animal.
Ilbran stared up through the branches to see the sun. Well after noon. He quickened his steps as much as his aching muscles would allow. This strange silent wood was no place to be alone at night, even if he had never heard the tales of terror.
The path curved its way through the trees. The forest remained silent, no birds, no little animals, none of the rustlings and singings that would have told Ilbran that he was walking through a living world. Ahead of him, a clearing opened out, a meadow of stunted blaggorn and other plants of the open plains, growing thicker and higher in the far corner where a stream cut through the clearing.
Ilbran walked into the clearing. In its center, wide shallow steps led up to a shelter of dark stone, but his attention was all for the man that lay at the foot of those steps.
He was dead, for certain, though the animals had not yet begun their work. Ilbran looked at him in grief. For all the death he had seen in these last weeks, it had not lost its power to move him.
There was no sign to show how the stranger had died. The sword in his outstretched hand had no speck of blood on it. His face was peaceful, as that of all the dead is, unless they die of some poisons; he stared at the sky blankly enough. But his teeth had bitten through his lower lip; his fingernails had left crescents of blood on his palms, signs of an uneasy passing.
He was a man like any other, beak-nosed and wide-lipped, his pale hair cut short to fit under his metal cap, of an age that could have made him Ilbran’s father, perhaps. He wore soldier’s mail, a long leather shirt sewn close with iron rings. The badge he wore was green and silver, the colors of some far-off king.
Ilbran looked at him and grieved for him, and at last stooped and took the sword from his hand. “Forgive me for this,” he said. “Your sword did not save you, but I take it not for greed or for power, but to guard me against your enemies, and maybe avenge you.”
He unbuckled the sword belt, with its sheath and dagger, and put it on. Strange and awkward seeming, as if he were a child playing soldier. It was not to his liking. Though he had grown tall and strong, he had never thought of taking the colors of the king.
He spoke again and asked the dead man’s pardon. Little courtesies can help appease the spirits of the dead.
Then he looked up the wide, shallow, rough-shaped steps to the platform where three great slabs of rock leaned against each other to form the sides of a pyramid, and another slab of rock balanced on top of them, overhanging the sides and forming the roof. The wide cracks in the sides were filled in with smaller stones and masonry. In the front, the tall triangular doorway was left open.
It was a strange rough building, like some child’s toy. Still it would give shelter from the rain, and other things as well, he hoped. This was a safehold that the songs told of, built to give travelers protection from the evil of the forest.
From the eastern corners of the platform walls of stone stretched out, crudely shaped, but reminding Ilbran of something he had seen, something much larger.