A shrill scream echoed through the trees as they ran through the night. It was the unmistakeable scream of a female voice, stretched and distorted by uncontrollable rage. They all knew who it was but no one spoke her name. With an involuntary shudder, James swept his gaze across the darkness as he ran, expecting at any moment to see Bettiny’s glowing body gliding out in pursuit. But for now at least, they were alone.

Despite his overwhelming fatigue James kept pace with his companions. His aches and pains were momentarily forgotten in the sea of adrenaline still coursing through his body, but it wasn’t long before he felt his exhaustion gradually gnaw its way back into his consciousness. His legs stabbed the ground in frenzied desperation, but when the fallen trunk of a tree crossed their path, his foot clipped its side and he was sent sprawling to the forest floor.

The light footfalls around him stopped and then he was gazing up into the dark eyes of his companions. Leander’s voice cut through the silence but the expected admonishment did not come. Instead, she turned to Fen and spoke a word James could not understand.

Fen hesitated, glancing at the other woman uncertainly.

‘Do you think it wise to give it to him now?’ she asked, reaching to her waist where a collection of tiny wooden vials hung from her belt.

‘What choice do we have?’ Leander replied curtly. ‘None of us can carry him at this pace.’

James flinched away as Fen brought a small bottle to his lips.

‘You’re trying to poison me!’ he gasped, fighting to catch his breath.

‘Do not be a fool,’ Leander grimaced. ‘It is something to help you travel more easily, nothing more.’

James tapped the bottle away and tried to stand, but his legs folded, spilling him back onto the ground.

‘Take the draught or stay where you lie, it is your choice,’ Leander said through clenched teeth. ‘But the longer you wait, the sooner we shall all be killed.’

Fen bent closer to him, the earnest pleading in her eyes eventually causing him to grudgingly acquiesce. Taking the bottle himself, he filled his mouth with the cold liquid and swallowed it in a single gulp. The liquid burned, searing his throat like surgical spirit. He grabbed his neck gasping for air, but just as he was beginning to believe he had been deceived, the pain suddenly lifted and he was left only with a lingering sweetness inside his mouth.

‘Now, stand,’ Leander commanded.

‘I can’t,’ James protested. ‘Didn’t you just see me try?’

‘Stand!’ Leander shouted.

With a forlorn sigh, James steeled himself to raise his heavy body from the ground. He expected his weak legs to once more fail him, but when he pushed against the damp soil he sprang to his feet in one effortless motion. With shocked disbelief, he felt the heavy incumbency of his body vanish. He no longer felt the ache of his muscles, nor the fatigue of his legs and arms. A sudden, terrible urge to run consumed him and without waiting for the others to move, he bounded off into the forest. Before long, the familiar shapes of his companions joined him, guiding his passage through the forest. He felt annoyed that his freedom to run had been curtailed, but at least they weren’t trying to stop him.

With mild fascination, he watched as the countless trees of the forest passed beside them. It was strange, but it felt almost as though he was standing still and it was the trees that were rushing past him. The memories of the horrors he had just witnessed, even the fear of pursuit, seemed suddenly insignificant and before long he found himself quietly chuckling as they sped on through the forest.

The green moon slid gracefully through the sky as the blanket of stars wheeled with it. The forest was now a blur, an insubstantial ghost that rushed past his body like fog carried upon the wind. Light ignited the sky as the great sun dawned impossibly early, turning the fog from a momentary grey to a riot of blazing autumnal colours. James laughed openly, the warmth of the sunlight and the wind sweeping across his body filling him with an unquenchable joy.

Suddenly, the trees were gone and he was sprinting instead across an open meadow. He turned his head and noticed for the first time a young woman running beside him, desperate to reach him. He felt her hand upon his arm and then an insistent tug as she gradually brought him to a halt.

James continued to jog on the spot as he impatiently watched other figures stagger forward, some of them bent almost double as they gasped for breath.

James frowned.

There was a strange sound in his ears; two sounds now that he thought about it. One was like the shrill whine of an insistent wind, the other like a pounding drum beating out of control. Raising his hands to his face he saw that they were bright red and shaking violently.

Understanding gradually dawned when he realised that the sound he heard was that of his own ragged breathing, his heart hammering out of control. A wave of concern rippled through him, but then just as quickly it melted away, replaced by an irresistible urge to let his eager legs propel him on across the meadow beyond.

‘Release me at once!’ he shouted, tugging impatiently against the woman’s grip.

The stranger scowled and moved her hands to his wrist where she pushed, bending his hand painfully backwards. He felt the bones about to break and let his feet tumble from under him. He hit the ground heavily, but before he could move, the woman’s strong hands were pinning him down.

‘Quickly Fen, there is not much time!’ the woman shouted breathlessly.

Another figure moved closer, her breath rasping in her throat, her face flushed pink. Between her slender fingers she held what looked like a ripe cherry, but coloured an ominous blue.

Carefully placing the fruit between his teeth, her hands pressed upon his jaw causing his teeth to break its skin. A foul bitterness flooded his mouth causing him to retch. He tried to spit the liquid from his mouth but the woman’s hands held his mouth tightly shut.

‘Swallow it!’ she said desperately.

James swallowed the disgusting fruit and winced, eager to get this pointless exercise out of the way so that he could resume his run.

But something was wrong…

The vast energy that had but moments before surged through his body, seemed now to be pouring out of him. His vision swam and he looked uncertainly up at the woman holding him to the ground. Her face was fierce, a terrible scar running across half her face. Her hair fell about his shoulders like a tapestry woven from black silk, her body pungent with the musky scent of sweat and burnt incense.

‘You’re… you’re beautiful,’ he said, smiling uncertainly up at her.

The expression on her face was difficult to read, but her painful grip upon him lessened.

James continued to smile, but a sudden cramp sent waves of pain blazing through his body. His stomach felt as though it was on fire and he rolled to the side, finally freeing himself of the woman’s grip. He started to scream but the woman’s hand sealed his mouth, turning it into a muffled exhalation. Struggling against her grip, he bent to the side and vomited across the grass beside him. A thin, green liquid poured from his mouth, burning his throat and mouth as it came.

Finally he collapsed onto his back, drawing deep breaths into lungs that felt as though they were on fire. The pain and fatigue of the past hours he had spent sprinting through the forest descended upon him like a crushing wave. The old wound in his shoulder throbbed as his head felt ready to explode. The fragile light of day seemed to dim and then the darkness at the edges of his vision rushed in to smother him completely.

***

James awoke to the sound of quiet conversation. Lifting his heavy eyelids, he looked up to see four dark figures emerge from the distant line of trees. His head still hurt terribly and he felt tired to his bones. But worse than that, he had no idea where he was.

His head rested upon someone’s lap. He tried to get up, but the motion sent fire rushing through his limbs.

‘Keep still, you must rest,’ a gentle voice soothed from behind as a delicate hand rested upon his brow. ‘You will feel better as the day unfolds, but for now it is important that you resist the urge for movement.’

‘Bettiny?’ James mumbled.

The hand upon his head seemed to flinch and then withdrew.

‘It is I, Fen,’ she said quietly.

The tone of her voice brought back the hazy memories of the previous night; the woman who had once been his nurse transformed into some kind of monster.

‘What the hell happened?’ James groaned, holding his throbbing head.

‘You drank of the waters of the wellspring, the life-blood of the forest,’ she replied simply.

James pulled a face, simultaneously disgusted that he had drunk a bottle of bathwater and incredulous that it could affect him so.

‘It is dangerous to partake of the life-blood without assistance,’ Fen continued. ‘Were you not caught by Leander, you would have continued to run through the forest until you died upon your feet.’

‘I don’t remember running…’ James replied in confusion.

‘We passed many leagues through the night. But we misjudged how fast you could run. You were very lucky. Had Leander not caught you, you would not have lasted the morning.’

‘Where are we?’ he asked, his voice rising.

‘Silence!’ Leander hissed as she strode out to greet Torrinth and the three brothers.

‘We are being pursued,’ Kirrin said, still catching his breath, ‘but the barbarians track us without skill.’

‘How many?’ Leander asked. ‘How far?’

‘Three of the men are wayfarers but more than five score follow in their wake, no more than three leagues from where we stand. We have created a diversion that should send them further to the north, but it will not be long before they realise our deception.’

Tavin smiled bleakly and looked over his brother’s shoulder to where James was lying, ‘Our friend here created quite the path through the forest.’

Leander nodded curtly and turned. Her eyes narrowed as she scanned the wide meadow beyond; a shimmering lake of yellow bordered by dark trees.

‘Something is wrong here,’ she said, walking slowly forward. ‘Where are the village sentries? We are in plain sight, yet they do not signal. They could not be so careless as to ignore the western boundary!’

‘What shall we do?’ Wellin asked, drinking deeply from a wooden flask before passing it to his younger brother.

‘Our path remains due east. We will continue to the village and seek what assistance they might give,’ Leander replied, stooping to pick up her bow. ‘And then we shall see to it that the intruders do not leave the Gelding alive.’

***

The trek across the meadow was long. The flaxen blades of grass whispered against their waists as they waded through them, raising windborne seeds to dance upon the air like silken butterflies.

James travelled once more upon the old man’s back, his head lolling from side to side as he fought to remain awake. In his fevered dreams he saw black figures swarming out from between the trees, but each time he jerked awake the distant edge of the forest remained as it was.

After what might have been more than a mile of walking, the ground began to pitch gently upwards. As James jerked awake, he saw a haphazard line of rooftops silhouetted against the sky.

Noticing Fen walking beside him, James asked quietly, ‘Where are we?’

Fen regarded him thoughtfully, her fingers curled tightly around her bow.

‘Venn is one of the many meadow villages scattered throughout the northern fringe of the Gelding. It is a place famous for its orchards and its production of wine.’ Fen’s open expression became clouded when she added, ‘and, it was also the birthplace of the healer you knew of as Bettiny.’

James closed his eyes and groaned miserably against Torrinth’s shoulder. He thought of Bettiny’s parents and the news they carried of their daughter’s terrible fate. The lingering effects of the potion he had drunk the night before left him feeling feeble and wretched, and the nearer they got to the village the more he felt inadequate to entering it.

It wasn’t until they drew nearer, however, that they each registered the unnatural quiet; no birds sang; no insects dared flutter their wings. Even the breeze seemed unable to elicit as much as a whisper from the willow trees, scattered between the strange buildings like lonely sentinels. After the myriad sounds of the forest, the sepulchral silence of the village was ominous.

They passed from the tall grasses of the meadow and stepped onto a soft covering of moss and clover; the transition between the two marked by a perfect circle which surrounded the entire village like a gigantic crop circle cut within a field of wheat. The dwellings that lay beyond were small, and varied wildly in design as though each had been crafted by a different hand. Some had pitched roofs of green thatch, others resembled Native American teepee; tapering swirls of chestnut-coloured wood twisted into hollow points. Other houses defied description altogether, constructions caught halfway between geometric shapes and the chaotic tangles of woven tree roots.

Kirrin approached an oval opening in one of the teepees and pushed aside the heavy curtain hanging across its portal.

‘Empty,’ he said, fixing Leander with a quizzical frown.

‘Tavin, Wellin, check the other homes,’ Leander said, striding over to another of the strange dwellings and whipping aside its curtain.

Tavin and Wellin followed suit, passing from house to house, ducking under curtains and sliding open doors. However, the result was always the same; the village was deserted, inside and out.

From Torrinth’s back, James gloomily surveyed the interiors as they passed; tables laid for meals, chairs toppled in haste or anger, washing lines laden with dry garments. As mundane as the scenes described, their emptiness was deeply unsettling. Turning away in distress, James was the first to see Kirrin appear from behind a long, rectangular building. His noble head was downcast, his usual upright bearing collapsed as though some vital support had been crippled within. The change within the man was alarming and James felt himself involuntarily tense.

‘They are all of them in the orchard,’ he said quietly.

A sudden gust of wind pulled the dark hair from his solemn grimace, sending the tall grasses beyond the village rattling like a nest of angry wasps. With Leander leading the way, they followed him around the corner of a deserted brewery and up to a simple fence bordering a plantation of fruit trees.

James clung to the desperate hope that they would find the villagers tending their trees, or perhaps gathered in quiet council. But, the putrid smell of decay upon the air banished these thoughts as quickly as they were formed. His eyes travelled from the wind-fallen fruit rotting upon the ground, to the dark shapes hanging from the branches of the trees.

‘No!’ Fen’s voice wavered beside him.

Leander brought her hands to her mouth, her bow slipping into the crook of her arm.

‘The children?’ Fen asked with dismay.

Kirrin gravely shook his head and his brothers turned their eyes to the ground as though in shame. Fen buried her face in her hands and openly wept.

‘They have been dead these past three days,’ Kirrin’s deep voice intoned. ‘Whoever attacked the village has long since departed. There are tracks leading away to the north, but perhaps only half a dozen men…’ Kirrin hesitated, his posture becoming uncertain, almost clumsy.

‘Six men did this?’ Leander replied incredulously. ‘How can so few have overwhelmed an entire village of our people?’ Leander’s voice seemed to plead.

‘There are signs that they were not alone…’

The stoic man paused, somehow unnerved by what he was about to say.

‘Weevil were among them.’

‘Weevil?’ Leander cried aloud. ‘How is that possible?’

The other warriors shook their heads, each of them stunned by what they had heard.

At last Leander straightened her arm, her bow slipping into her hand where she gripped it in a trembling fist.

‘We will not leave the dead to hang by these foul ropes,’ she said, her voice simmering with rage. ‘Quickly, cut them down and lay them to rest.’

‘But we don’t have time!’ James exclaimed, suddenly alarmed that Leander wished to stay a moment longer in this accursed place.

Leander spun to face him, her scarred face contorted by hatred.

‘Do not say another word!’ she spat. ‘Perhaps where you are from the passing of life is not worth a damn, but here it is sacred.’

‘I… I’m… sorry, I didn’t mean any disrespect,’ James faltered.

‘You disrespect by your very presence within our land. Keep your mouth shut and you may yet live to see another day.’ Turning to Torrinth she said, ‘Put him down. If he is well enough to resume his ceaseless complaining, he is well enough to assist.’

‘Please, I don’t think I can do this,’ James pleaded to his silent companion as Leander strode deeper into the orchard. ‘I’ve never even seen a dead body,’ he said feebly, ‘let alone touched one.’

If he used his imagination, he might have said that Torrinth’s silence held a measure of sympathy, but as the old man lowered him to the ground and ushered him towards the nearest tree, it was clear that he had no further say in the matter.

James brought his hands to his mouth and peered up at the stricken faces of five adults, hanging by their broken necks. The branches of the tree seemed to display the figures reluctantly, as though ashamed to have been implicated in their deaths. The men and women’s wrists had been bound before the rope had ended their lives, and yet the most horrible sight was the mutilation done to their legs and feet; it was as though sharp knives had been used to flense away the flesh up to their knees, exposing bones blackened by dried blood.

Torrinth brought his hand to his neck and removed the blunt blade from where it had been hidden beneath the suit of dark armour. The knife glinted dully in the sunlight as he placed it firmly in James’ hand. The metal was warm to the touch, the edges of the curious blade as blunt as a river-smoothed pebble.

Pointing to the coarse rope binding the nearest corpse to the tree, the old man slowly nodded his head.

James peered nervously up at the noose, bound so tightly to the dead man’s neck. He shivered as the dead man’s eyes stared blankly down at him, the rope creaking as the body slowly rotated in its grasp.

Taking the blade in his trembling hand, he stretched upwards. His fingers touched the man’s cold flesh and he flinched, almost dropping the knife to the ground. With a groan of anguish, he gritted his teeth and stretched further, until the blunt edge of the blade hovered beside the twine stretched as taut as wire cable from the dead man’s neck. The blade’s edge had barely touched the coarse weave of the rope before it severed with an audible snap.

Torrinth caught the body lightly in his arms and slowly laid it to rest at the base of the tree; his weathered hands placing the corpse’s head against the trunk of the tree as delicately as a father laying a child to sleep.

James proceeded to release the other four people as though in a trance; the man’s wife and his three adult daughters; each of them carefully laid side by side by Torrinth’s tender hands. When the last rope was severed, James sank to his knees like a man finally defeated. His eyes lingered upon the dead mother, her careworn face still holding onto the lines of anguish that had tormented her flesh moments before the rope had strangled the life from her.

He realised with dismay that Leander was right to doubt him, was right to blame him for everything that was happening. For, was it not his own mind that had tortured and murdered these innocent lives? The dam that had been built from his abject denials suddenly broke in a tide of remorse. A ragged sob was pulled from the emptiness of his body as his tears pattered upon the blood-stained tunic of the dead father.

Under his breath, James repeated the same refrain over and over again, chastising himself for the crimes his perverted mind had committed, ‘I killed them, I killed them all!’

By the time he had recovered his senses, he saw that the rest of the bodies had been laid to rest. His companions were gathered nearby, their solemn faces turned to the ground in silent contemplation. Only Leander looked elsewhere, for her eyes were fixed solely upon him.

Unnerved by her scrutiny, he turned instead to watch Fen walking slowly between the trees. Now and then, she stopped to crouch before the bodies now at rest beneath the swaying branches. It was only when she reached the tree under which he and Torrinth had laboured, that he saw the tiny object she placed within each of their mouths. Her lips muttered silent words as she closed the eyes of those still gazing blankly up at the sky.

With her obscure work complete, she approached James where he knelt, her fingers removing the tears from his wet face as his own mother had once done to him as a child.

‘They are at rest now, Jame. Do not mourn them any longer. They are returned to the forest and will be forever more.’

James shook his head, the overpowering guilt crippling the succour of Fen’s tenderness like a butterfly clenched in a fist.

‘I killed them,’ James croaked, his breath still catching in his throat.

Fen shook her head resolutely, her eyes searching his own as though attempting to soften the hardness she found there.

‘The hands that killed these people belonged to men and monsters that hold contempt for all living things. A murderer would not weep at the sight of such slaughter,’ she said, frowning at the dozens of bodies now at rest beneath the trees, ‘such a murderer would derive only pleasure.’

Fen’s words finally went some way towards calming the hopelessness that now clung to James like the soiled robes hanging from his frail body. He cast his gaze back down to the orchard floor, and finally understood Leander’s decision to delay the quest in order to release the villagers from their nooses. The cruelty and barbarism wrought by the actions of these men and monsters had been purified by their intervention, leaving behind only the senseless debris of lost life. The very trees implicated in their murders, seemed to sigh with relief as if only now were they capable of mourning the souls that had once tended them so faithfully.

‘What did you put in their mouths?’ James croaked, his breath still catching in his throat as the others turned to leave.

Fen regarded him thoughtfully as though still gauging the extent of his self-recriminations.

‘They are the seeds of the Olendea. The plant is sacred to our people and is always sown upon those who have died before passing into the white. The Olendea will take these bodies and make them its own. Life will continue in place of that which was lost.’