He could see the doubt in Torcaill’s face. It went unvoiced, but it was there. There was no instinct of obedience, Orisian thought. No immediate recognition of the authority of a Thane. It would have been better to have gone to Kolglas, to face what had to be faced there. But that was an old choice, taken and fixed. There could be no turning aside from this road now, only a race to its ending.

“Get the men mounted,” he said dully. “We have to move on quickly.”

They crested the ridge, and beheld a strange sight. Beneath them, stretching away into a haze of mist, stood a sea of dark treetops. Here, surrounded by hills, was a forest where no wind stirred. Strands of fog hung over and amongst the branches, like impaled fragments of soft, translucent cloth.

“The Veiled Woods,” Yvane murmured in Orisian’s ear. She rode with him once more now, to free Rothe for any fighting that might come. “That’s not what I would have hoped for.”

“If that’s where she is…” Orisian let the sentence trail away. Nothing he could say would make the forest below appear any less threatening, or decrease the apprehension that filled him at the sight of it.

“Best to tread lightly, when the Anain are stirring,” Yvane said. “If we can.”

Rothe drew his horse to a halt beside them.

“Not seen anywhere less inviting in a long time,” the shieldman observed gruffly.

“That, we can agree on,” muttered Yvane.

Torcaill’s warriors were strung out along the ridge top, almost as if they were drawing up in formation to charge down upon the army of mist-armoured trees. Torcaill himself was twisted in his saddle, looking not at the Veiled Woods but back down the slope they had climbed. Ess’yr and Varryn, standing close by, were facing that way too. They were speaking softly but urgently in their own language.

With Yvane pressed up behind him, Orisian could not easily turn or see over his shoulder. He had to wrestle his horse around in a tight half-circle. He saw at once what the others had. Shapes were moving at the edge of the forest: indistinct flickers of movement in that boundary between the light of open ground and the gloom of the woods. Insubstantial things, at this distance, but there could be no doubt what they were.

Torcaill came riding down the line of horsemen.

“Do you mean to press on, sire? Into those woods?”

Orisian nodded.

“Very well,” Torcaill said without hesitation. “Get your Kyrinin to lead the way. They’re our best hope of finding the woman. I’ll leave a dozen men here, to delay pursuit. They’ll have the slope to favour their charge, if the woodwights come out from amongst those trees.”

They went steadily down towards the Veiled Woods. Ess’yr and Varryn ran on ahead. No one spoke. The mists settled about them, and the trees closed over their heads.

VII

The Veiled Woods quickly defeated the horses. Before they had gone more than a few dozen paces in from the edge, a thick mass of looping bramble stems and contorted undergrowth blocked their path. There was no track to follow here, not even a suggestion of one. Ess’yr and her brother darted easily through the thicket and disappeared. The horses baulked. The ground was uneven, rippled by rocks, roots and dead wood half-hidden by wet grass. The trees, which had seemed tall and stately from the distance of the ridge crest, were in fact crowded, twisted and misshapen, thrusting their branches out at odd, low angles to obstruct any man on horseback.

“Get down,” Orisian told Yvane. Once she had done so, he dismounted too, and stood by his horse’s head, patting the bridge of its nose.

“We have to go on foot,” he said to Rothe. “It’ll take far too long if we try to ride.”

“We can lead the horses.”

Orisian shook his head. “Too slow.”

Torcaill rode over to them, his horse picking its way carefully, setting down each hoof as if it did not trust the ground.

“No way through for horses,” Rothe told him.

“No.”

“We’ll lose touch with Ess’yr if we don’t keep up,” Orisian said, feeling the first intimation of desperation.

There was a sudden sound: a muffled, rising rumble like far-off thunder. All of them looked back the way they had come, but the trees and low fogs blocked any view.

“They’re charging,” Torcaill said, tense. “So soon. I thought it’d take longer. Or that the wights would turn aside and look for a way round.”

“The White Owls are in a hurry,” Orisian said. “Just like us. This isn’t just some raid they’re on. It’s more important to them – to Aeglyss – than that. They won’t turn aside, or hide away.”

Somewhere at the rear of the weary bunch of riders, someone shouted out, “I see them! Wights coming!”

“Go, if you must,” Torcaill snapped down at Orisian, already turning his horse. “I’ll send some men with you on foot, and come after, if we can curb the pursuit here. I’ll not just abandon our horses to the wights. We’ll need them yet.”

Orisian saw no point in arguing.

“Stay with Torcaill,” he said to Yvane, and then, “You too, Eshenna. Rothe?”

With that, he started to run, fearful of being unable to find any sign of Ess’yr or Varryn beyond the thicket. He barged through the tangled undergrowth, feeling it rip at his clothes and snag his hair, but not caring. Rothe came blundering after him.

“Slow down, Orisian,” the shieldman shouted at him. “Wait for the others.”

Orisian waded on, fighting the resistant vegetation like the current of some fierce river that he was trying to cross. He burst free of its tenacious grip at last, and stumbled on over the scattered debris of a giant tree that had long ago fallen and been eaten into fragments. He could hear Rothe’s heavy tread close behind him. Further back, someone – one of Torcaill’s warriors – was cursing the brambles.

Orisian ran around a stagnant pond of murky water, sprang over a rotted, split stump. Still he could not see Ess’yr or Varryn, or any sign of their passing.

“Ess’yr,” he shouted, and regretted it instantly. The cry sounded far louder, in the limp, damp air that lay beneath the trees, than he had expected. He imagined it ringing out through the forest, turning the head of every living thing. He told himself that any White Owls would not need his voice to find him, but it was small comfort.

Then he saw Ess’yr up ahead, standing beside a moss-wrapped tree, and relief washed through him.

“Come,” she said as he reached her. “Quickly. There is scent. Perhaps it is her.”

And with that she was already spinning on her heel and running on, deeper into the Veiled Woods. Rothe drew level with Orisian and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“I think I heard fighting, perhaps. Back behind us. Not sure.”

“They’ve got her trail,” Orisian said – hoping, believing, that it was true.

He set off after Ess’yr.

There was a dark scar across the forest floor, running up to the base of an ancient tree, where the turf and moss and leaf litter had split – or been torn – apart and peeled back to expose the earth. Orisian crouched down next to it and dug his fingers into the loose soil. It had a warm, wet smell.

“It seems fresh,” he said. There were still insects crawling across the loam, still worms writhing in it.

Varryn went on a few paces and bent to examine the grass.

“Not long,” Ess’yr said. “We are very close behind her.”

“She was here? Is this to do with her?” Orisian asked, wiping his hand on some moss.

Ess’yr was watching her brother. “With her. There is the smell of na’kyrim here. Or with the Anain. We walk in their sight. They are awake, in this place. Can you not feel it?”

Orisian frowned. He felt the age, the eeriness of the Veiled Woods, but surely that was just to do with the old, twisted trees, the moist air. He looked again, with more careful eyes, and saw the moss – rich and luminously green – that clothed rocks and fallen timber, saw the leaves, some brown, some yellow, some even a blotched green, that still clung to twigs. He breathed in deeply, and felt the softness of the air in his chest. It all felt like a place out of its season.