Myrkwald

Emrick had been walking beneath the trees for less than an hour when he first decided that entering the Myrkwald alone had been a mistake. He would not turn back, but admitting his foolishness seemed reasonable enough. Master Armathen had often told him that a man who refused to admit a mistake would usually make a second one before correcting the first.

The old wizard had been missing for nearly a year.

Emrick had received no letter during that time, no message through the Council, and no word from the merchants who traveled through the northern territories. It was as though Armathen had walked into the forest and ceased to exist. Had the letter not arrived shortly before his disappearance, Emrick might eventually have accepted what everyone else already believed.

Armathen was dead.

Emrick refused to believe it.

He pulled his cloak tighter and continued along what remained of the old road. Thick roots had pushed through the soil in several places, and the stones laid by men generations before had been broken or swallowed by moss. There was little evidence that anyone used the road now. That did not surprise him. The people living near the Myrkwald had made their opinion very clear when he told them where he intended to go.

One farmer had laughed at him.

An old woman had crossed herself.

The innkeeper had simply told him to pay for his room before leaving.

Perhaps that should have concerned him more than it had.

Emrick stopped and listened.

There were no birds.

He had noticed their absence almost immediately after passing between the two boundary stones, but only now did it truly bother him. A forest this large should have been filled with sound. Birds should have called through the upper branches, squirrels should have disturbed leaves, and insects should have moved among the ferns surrounding the road.

He heard nothing.

Even the wind seemed unable to reach him.

Emrick raised his staff and spoke quietly.

“Lumen.”

The small crystal fixed near the top of the oak staff filled with white light. It was a simple spell, one Armathen had taught him when he was barely old enough to understand why a wizard should never walk through darkness when he possessed the means to create light.

The spell worked, but something felt wrong.

The crystal should have illuminated thirty feet in every direction. Here the light reached perhaps half that distance before fading among the trees.

Emrick frowned.

“That is comforting.”

He continued.

He had traveled another hundred yards when something moved to his left.

Emrick stopped.

His hand tightened around the staff.

He waited.

Nothing followed.

“Deer,” he whispered.

He did not believe himself.

He moved again, slower this time, watching the spaces between the trees. The light from his staff passed over trunks covered in moss and patches of small white mushrooms growing along the roots. Nothing appeared unusual, yet the feeling that something watched him remained.

Armathen had warned him many times about trusting fear.

Fear sees what it expects to see.

That was what the old wizard used to say.

Emrick wondered if Armathen would still say the same after spending a year in this place.

He stepped around a fallen branch and nearly walked into the dead stag.

The animal lay across the path.

Emrick moved backward at once, staff raised, then felt foolish when the stag did not move.

He approached carefully.

It was a young male with a small rack of antlers. There were no obvious wounds upon its body. Its throat had not been torn, and there was no blood on the ground. The animal appeared to have simply collapsed where it stood.

Emrick crouched beside it.

The eyes remained open.

Black roots had grown from the ground and wrapped around the antlers.

He leaned closer.

The roots had entered the stag through its eyes.

Emrick immediately stood.

He had studied enough natural magic to know that roots sometimes grew through dead animals. Nature wasted very little. That was not what had happened here.

The stag had not begun to rot.

He reached down and touched its shoulder.

Cold.

Not the cold of an animal that had been dead through the night. The flesh was hard beneath the hide.

Something cracked behind him.

Emrick turned.

A wolf stood between two trees.

It watched him.

The animal was larger than any wolf he had encountered before. Dark gray fur covered most of its body, but patches were missing from its shoulders and face. Part of the flesh along its jaw had been torn away.

Emrick slowly stood upright.

“Go.”

The wolf remained where it was.

“I have no quarrel with you.”

A second wolf stepped onto the road behind him.

Emrick turned enough to see it without taking his attention completely from the first.

Then a third appeared.

“This day continues to improve.”

The first wolf moved forward.

Emrick raised his staff.

“Do not.”

The wolf charged.

Emrick struck the end of his staff against the ground and shouted the first word that entered his mind.

“Repello!”

Force struck the animal in the chest.

The wolf left the ground and slammed into a tree hard enough that Emrick heard bones break.

The other two attacked.

He turned toward the closest and swung the staff with both hands. The oak caught the wolf against the side of its head, but the animal barely reacted. It snapped at the staff, teeth closing around the wood.

Emrick pulled.

The wolf held on.

“Release it.”

Apparently the creature had no interest in following instructions.

The third wolf came from his right.

Emrick released the staff with one hand and extended his palm.

“Ignis.”

Fire struck the creature across the shoulder.

Its fur burned.

The wolf fell, rolled across the leaves, then rose again.

Emrick stared.

The animal did not cry out.

It did not even look toward the flames burning across its own body.

“What are you?”

The wolf holding his staff pulled hard enough to drag him forward.

Emrick stumbled, recovered, then kicked the animal in the chest. His boot did little, but the movement gave him enough space to twist the staff free.

The first wolf was already standing again.

Its front leg hung at an unnatural angle.

It ran toward him anyway.

Emrick backed against the dead stag.

Three wolves.

One road.

No room to move.

He had survived worse situations during training, but Armathen had always been nearby then. Even when the old wizard refused to intervene, Emrick knew he could.

There would be no Armathen this time.

“Think.”

The wolves approached.

Emrick looked at the dead stag.

The roots.

He followed them with his eyes.

Thin black strands ran from the stag into the leaves and continued toward the wolves.

Emrick suddenly understood.

He brought his staff down against the ground.

“Ardere radicem.”

Fire did not leave the staff.

It entered the earth.

A line of heat traveled beneath the leaves.

The black roots burned.

All three wolves collapsed.

The silence afterward troubled him more than the attack.

Emrick remained where he stood, breathing heavily, waiting for one of the animals to rise again.

None did.

He approached the nearest wolf and touched it with the staff.

Nothing.

The black roots connected to its hind legs had burned through.

Someone had controlled them.

Or something had.

Emrick looked deeper into the forest.

“Master, what did you find here?”

“You should not say his name.”

Emrick spun around.

A woman stood between the trees.

He had not heard her approach.

She was tall and slender, with long dark hair falling past her shoulders. Leaves had been woven into several strands, though Emrick could not tell whether they had been placed there deliberately. Her clothes were simple and dark green, and her bare feet rested upon the wet soil.

She watched the wolves.

Then she looked at him.

“Who are you?” Emrick asked.

The woman ignored the question.

“You killed the roots.”

“They attacked me.”

“The wolves attacked you.”

“The roots were controlling them.”

For the first time, something changed in her expression.

“You could see that?”

“I am a wizard.”

“That does not answer my question.”

Emrick did not appreciate her tone, but he also understood that arguing with the first living person he had encountered inside the Myrkwald would achieve little.

“I am looking for Master Armathen.”

The woman became very still.

Emrick noticed it immediately.

“You know him.”

“Leave.”

“What?”

“Turn around. Walk until you reach the boundary stones, and do not return.”

“I have spent nearly a year searching for him.”

“Then you have already wasted a year. Do not waste your life as well.”

Emrick stepped toward her.

“Is he alive?”

The woman looked past him.

Fear appeared in her eyes.

Not fear of Emrick.

Something behind him.

He turned.

Nothing stood on the road.

When he looked back, the woman had already begun retreating among the trees.

“Wait.”

She stopped.

“Is Armathen alive?”

Her face carried an answer before she spoke.

“I do not know what remains of him.”

Emrick felt the words settle in his stomach.

“What does that mean?”

“You will learn soon enough if you remain here.”

She disappeared between the trees.

Emrick followed for several yards, but there was no sign of her. No footprints marked the soil. No branches moved ahead.

He stopped.

A single willow leaf lay at his feet.

He picked it up.

It was warm.

Then laughter moved through the forest.

Emrick knew that laugh.

He had heard it after failed lessons, badly cast spells, and several occasions when his confidence had exceeded his ability.

It belonged to the man he had crossed half the kingdom to find.

“Master?”

The laughter stopped.

A voice answered from somewhere deep among the trees.

“Emrick.”

His blood went cold.

Master Armathen had found him.