Is this part of a grander scheme? Sylvarresta worried. Attacks like this could be taking place in every castle in Rofehavan. If all the assassins struck simultaneously, Sylvarresta would not have time to warn his fellow kings.

He rubbed his eyes, lost in speculation.

BOOK 2

DAY 20 IN THE MONTH OF HARVEST

A DAY OF SACRIFICE

6

MEMORIES OF SMILES

In the forests of the Dunnwood, Prince Gaborn rode in silence through the starlight, avoiding the narrow gullies and darker woods where wights might congregate.

The trees above him were twisted things, with limbs half-bare, the yellow birch leaves waggling in the night wind like fingers. The carpet of leaves beneath his horse’s hooves was deep and lush, making for a quiet ride.

Shortly after dusk the sorcerous mists had begun to fail. Raj Ahten no longer needed such mists to hide him. Instead, now the stars overhead shone with unnatural clarity, perhaps because of some spell cast by Raj Ahten’s flameweavers, gathering light so that they might let the Wolf Lord’s army pick their way through the woods.

For hours Gaborn had been circumventing Raj Ahten’s army, evading pursuers. He’d managed to kill two more frowth giants, and he shot an outrider from his saddle. But Gaborn had seen no sign of pursuit for three hours.

As he rode, he wondered. The Dunnwood was an old wood, and a queer place by any standard. The headwaters of the River Wye were said to be magical places, where three-hundred-year-old sturgeons as wise as any sage lived in the deep pools.

But it was not these that Gaborn wondered at. It was the woods’ legendary affinity for “right” and “law.” Few outlaws had ever penetrated the forest. There was Edmon Tillerman, who came into the woods as an outlaw, a madman who took endowments of brawn and wit from bears until he became a creature of the wood himself. According to the folktales, he left off his stealing, and in time became a hero—avenging poor farmers wronged by other outlaws, protecting the woodland creatures.

But there were stranger stories still: the old woman centuries ago who was murdered and hidden in a pile of leaves in the Dunnwood, who then became a creature of wood and sticks that hunted down her killers.

Or what of the giant “stone men” that some said walked these woods? Creatures that sometimes came to the edge of the forest and stood gazing thoughtfully to the south?

There was a time—centuries ago—when these woods loved man more than they did now. A time when men could travel them freely. Now, a stillness, a heaviness, had come under the trees, as if the wood itself were outraged and considering retaliation against so many uninvited men. Certainly the heat of the flameweavers, the iron-shod hooves of horses, the mass of men and giants would all cause some damage to the forest.