James awoke slowly. As his dulled perceptions began to clear, he realised that the movement slowly pitching his body from side to side was familiar. He couldn’t yet think of a name, but he knew that the rolling gait of the one carrying him belonged to the old man; the man who couldn’t speak.

The light behind his closed eyes was bright and it was some time before he was able to open them wide enough to confirm the long, grey-flecked hair whispering against his face. He couldn’t see anyone else walking with them, and realised he had no idea if anyone else existed at all.

An endless procession of white trees passed before his eyes, sliding past one another into the hazy distance. In the confused mess of his mind, James assumed it was a forest of silver birch. But as his vision slowly cleared, he realised it was nothing of the sort. The forest was actually as familiar to him as the movement of the old man, comprised of a bewildering variety of strange trees he somehow recognised. But, whatever colours they might normally have possessed had somehow been erased from existence. It was as though everything from the leaves and branches, to the vegetation beneath their feet, was made of inverted shadow; a white so brilliant it pained the eyes.

A gentle breeze stirred the snowflake leaves, but otherwise the forest was eerily quiet. It was some time before he noticed the woman walking beside him. Her face was kind and radiated a warmth that reminded him of his mother. She raised her hand and placed it upon his brow before withdrawing it with an expression that might have been relief.

Fen… he remembered that her name was Fen.

‘Your fever has broken,’ she said, studying him intently.

‘Fever?’ James mumbled, rubbing his numb face. ‘What fever?’

Fen looked away into the trees, her face illuminated by the glowing trunks.

‘Something happened to you upon the riverbank, after you went to Leander’s aid. Do you not recall?’

James frowned, now running the same hand through his lengthening hair. The dull ache beneath his skull that had followed him out of the darkness of sleep was slowly lifting, exposing a disconcerting jumble of memories.

‘Leander,’ James muttered as though to himself, ‘is Leander alright?’

‘Leander is well,’ Fen said, casting a tentative glance beyond his shoulder. ‘She may not show her appreciation for what you did, but it is something the rest of us shall not easy forget.’

James groaned as the memory returned. “Going to Leander’s aid” was a somewhat generous description for the pathetic attempt it had been; carrying Tavin’s bow out to her like a dog mindlessly returning a thrown stick. He had made the mistake of assuming he would be safe from attack, only to find himself facing down the very same arrow that had been intended for Leander. He couldn’t tell Fen that in the end he hadn’t really cared for anyone’s safety but his own.

‘Jame, what did you do?’

James lifted his heavy head and saw Fen regarding him intently.

‘What did I do?’ James said, quietly repeating the same question to himself.

‘We saw you raise your hand and halt the kabavar…’

‘Bettiny…’ James whispered.

‘The kabavar fell into the river and will trouble the quest no further,’ Fen replied curtly.

She looked at him now through narrowed eyes, her former smile wiped from her face.

‘Please do not use that name anymore. The person it belonged to is no longer of this world.’

James tensed upon Torrinth’s back, his head swimming as he attempted to articulate what he had witnessed upon the riverbank.

‘But… Bettiny… she spoke to me…’

‘The kabavar spoke,’ Fen replied, her jaw tight.

‘It was Bettiny!’ James insisted. ‘She was still there!’

He turned painfully to face her from Torrinth’s back, his eyes wide with the implications of his returning memories. ‘I saw him Fen! I saw the man who was controlling her. He was sitting in a kind of tent and he…’

Fen appeared to flounder for a moment at what he was saying, but then her reply cut across him with such violence he recoiled in shock.

‘No one wakes from the clutch of kabavar, Jame! No one! Bettiny was killed the night we fled Galendar. She was already dead when you met her in the forest, and she was dead when Leander sent her to the depths of Ruinsgrave!’

The ruthless finality of Fen’s statement finally brought James to silence and he turned away from her, burying his face against Torrinth’s back. It was one thing to witness all of the strange and frightening horrors this world had to offer, but quite another to be so vehemently disbelieved by one of the few people who had ever shown him any kindness.

It was some time before Fen’s voice returned amidst the whispering of leaves, but when it did, the hard edges that had coloured her previous words had softened.

‘Do you know where you are?’

‘No,’ he replied flatly, staring down at the bleached-white ferns passing beneath Torrinth’s feet.

‘We pass through Lewynn, the White Wood.’

James remained obstinately silent, unwilling to engage in yet another meaningless conversation.

‘The forest is enchanted,’ Fen continued, ‘the sole remaining fragment of a forest that once reached to the very feet of the Black Peaks. It is home to the tree spirit we call Derredin, one of the last remaining Ancients to survive the purges of the Dark Age. Whilst we are within his domain we are safe.’

James wondered if he was having his leg pulled by the older woman. Of course it was strange and not a little unsettling to be walking through a forest bleached of all colour, but attributing it to a Tree Spirit? The preposterous idea lingered in his mind for a moment before it was hurriedly replaced by a more pressing concern.

‘How can we possibly be safe with that small army behind us?’ James said, his voice becoming shrill. ‘How long can it have taken them to ford that river?’

‘Without the aid of their kabavar the barbarians will not find us here,’ Fen replied confidently. ‘The White Wood is a maze and death to those not of the Gelding. And the weevil…’ Fen paused, as though to utter the foul name within the White Wood was a blasphemy, ‘they will not dare set foot within Derredin’s demesne.’

The woman’s unerring certainty went some way to calming his rising panic. But no sooner was it quelled, did another more potent fear come to replace it. Now that the pain inside his head was all but gone, the last of his forgotten memories were unlocked from whatever dark recesses they had been hiding. He saw again the blurred face of the demonic man, and the sick, bloated thing he had pulled from the tortured earth of that other dead world.

He tried to tell himself that it had merely been a bad dream that he had suffered in the bathing pool of the abandoned house. But as tempting as that was to believe, he promptly dismissed the notion before it was fully formed. No, dreams were everything here. Each of them held a truth and a peril that could not be denied. For what was all of this if it were not also a dream? The dream through which he had lived these past two weeks was by far the most consistent and prolonged of the realities he had so far experienced, but he could not so easily dismiss those others that had so briefly intruded upon it. He knew in his gut that the black monster of his vision was real, and that sooner or later it would find them all.

‘Fen,’ James said, turning painfully to regard her once more, ‘we are not safe.’

***

As the unending forest of white opened and closed around them, the unnatural silence that accompanied their passage seemed to intensify, dampening sound and confusing the passage of time. It was like the silence of sleep, a dull soporific veil that grew heavier the further they travelled.

Yet, for all the quiet, the forest teemed with curious life. Half-seen forms tumbled through the vegetation just out of sight, birds and squirrels flitting through the tree canopy like silent ghosts. The creatures of the forest were varied and diverse, but for all their variation, they shared one thing in common: all of them were as white as the forest that contained them.

James no longer feared the possibility of pursuit by the men who had hounded them for the past three days, for he realised the truth of Fen’s words. The forest was indeed a maze. It looked the same in all directions; each avenue of trees receding into a dizzying haze of white. How Kirrin was able to lead the party through the forest in any discernable direction was a mystery in itself.

In a brief moment of lucidity, James had asked the same question of Fen. But her reply had been as disconcerting as it had been absurd, for she had told him that Kirrin was being guided by a fawn. James had seen glimpses of the curious deer-like creatures between the trees, each of them adorned by elaborate swirls of horn laced above their sleek heads. But the idea that Kirrin would be using such a creature for direction – and an infant at that – was frankly preposterous.

James awoke from a doze and quickly glanced to his side to confirm that Fen still walked beside him. With relief, he found her pacing the forest nearby, but his sluggish mind was slower to notice the change that had come over her. The quiet confidence of the older woman had since passed from her expression, replaced now by an unsettling anxiety. Craning her neck, she peered up through the shimmering white to the blue sky beyond it.

‘Fen, what’s the matter?’

The troubled woman replied, but her gaze did not leave the shards of blue, peeking from between the lattice of white branches.

‘We should have passed through Lewynn by now.’

‘You mean we’re lost?’

‘We are not lost, but neither are we upon the path we desired.’

‘So we’re lost,’ James added with a tired smile.

Fen regarded him gravely.

‘We are not lost. We are being taken elsewhere.’

‘You’re kidding me, right?’ James said, smiling sardonically. ‘If I followed a wild animal through the woods, I wouldn’t expect to get where I’d planned to either.’

‘You do not understand…’

Fen was about to continue, when she was rendered silent by a sudden change in the light. James assumed that the sun had merely passed behind a bank of cloud but as the sky became steadily darker, it was more as though the sun had passed out of existence altogether. Before long, it was only the pale, eldritch glow of the trees that lit their path.

‘What’s going on?’ James muttered nervously.

Somewhere in the distance, faint music carried upon the air. At first, it was like the distant melody of church bells; a simple and repetitive tune that lulled and calmed the senses. But the closer they approached its source, the more its complexities emerged from the pattern. It was a composition of staggering beauty, but also deeply unsettling in its alien import; the very air seemed to shimmer in its presence as though reality itself were tested by its play.

Crouched upon Torrinth’s back like a bundle of broken twigs, James peered left to right as the forest began to thin around them. It should have been a welcome sign that at last they were being released from the forest’s glowing embrace, but when they finally emerged it was into a small clearing.

The clearing was empty but for a single fallen tree which lay like a crude barrier across their path. Instinctively, James looked up at the sky, seeking an explanation for the absence of sunlight. But above their heads the sky was an impenetrable circle of black, a void that contained not even a single star. He was still gazing in horror at the absolute blackness of the sky, when he heard a quiet rustling from below. Looking down, he saw for the first time the white fawn that had apparently led them to this place. If indeed it had been their guide, the small creature appeared to have considered its service rendered complete, now nonchalantly grazing upon a tuft of white grass oblivious of those gathered around it.

Kirrin was crouching in puzzlement beside the animal when the sound of a snapping branch rang out like a gunshot from the forest beyond the fallen tree. James tensed as the trees began to part, expecting at any moment to see the tumbling forms of weevil flooding towards them. But it was an altogether different creature that eventually emerged from the white.

A stag, massive in stature yet graceful in its gait, slowly walked into the clearing. Other than themselves, it was the only part of the forest that had not been painted in white. On the contrary, the creature’s fur was matted with emerald-green moss and emblazoned with a kaleidoscope of shifting colours. Blossoms of wild flowers continuously erupted from its body, the many colours otherwise denied to the rest of the forest living and dying in rippling waves across its hide.

As the creature drew nearer, the fractal swirls of bone curving above its regal head raised golden sparks upon the air.

‘Derredin!’ Fen sighed.

Despite its considerable bulk, the flesh beneath the living skin of flowers and plants appeared to tremble and squirm as though not entirely solid. Maggots and buzzing insects spilled from rents in its sides and the voids where eyes and mouth might once have resided. As fertile as its hide might have appeared, its interior was embroiled in rot.

When the huge animal finally came to a halt before the fallen tree, James gasped when its rotten head suddenly slewed from its body. The severed mass dropped heavily upon the fallen tree, causing flowering plants to spontaneously explode into being. In the breathless pause that followed, he waited for the immense body to topple to the ground, but instead it remained where it stood, as indefatigably erect as a bronze statue. Miraculously, a new head began to sprout from the ruins of its neck like a bulbous fruit, two new antlers forming like swirling script. Glistening black eyes emerged from the darkening material of its face, as the rudiments of a jaw knitted together from its tapestry of exposed sinew.

After what he had just witnessed, James was only slightly taken aback when the stag began to speak…

‘You bring a taint upon the White,’ Derredin said, his voice a deep and sonorous counterpoint to the music still playing upon the air.

James expected Leander to address the strange creature, but instead it was Fen who walked slowly forward, her head lowered in deference. Reaching the fallen tree, she bowed low before it, as though its rotting remains were the gilt throne of a king.

‘Your grace, we beg pardon for transgressing upon your domain.’

The side of the stag suddenly burst open, spewing entrails across the ground which erupted into a great cloud of fluttering white butterflies.

‘You commit no transgression, melder of trees. You are welcome here, as is your kin.’ The great head shifted to the side, its glistening eyes peering into the depths of the forest. ‘Those that followed you, however, were not.’

The stag’s flank knitted together seamlessly, emblazoned for a moment in scarlet flowers that traced a crimson wave across its body.

‘Their blighted flesh has been rendered into the earth. Their filthy blades I have buried beneath my roots to rust and rot.’

The great stag took a step closer to the tree trunk and nodded its regal head, the intricate tangles of its antlers raising sparks upon the air.

‘You, flesh that speaks, are of the Gelding. The one you carry is not.’

Fen was now visibly trembling, her body still bowed low as though unwilling or unable to meet the terrifying gaze of the creature towering above her. Casting a furtive glance over her shoulder, her wide eyes alighted for a moment upon James, who clutched impulsively at Torrinth’s back.

‘He is a friend of the Gelding, your grace. A friend of the White.’

The newly-grown fur covering Derredin’s face sprouted a tangle of moss and blue flowers, which erupted like measles across its flank.

‘Bring the flesh to me,’ Derredin rasped.

Fen shifted nervously upon her feet.

‘We beg you, your grace. Pardon this man, for he is special to us.’

‘Bring the flesh, child,’ Derredin repeated, the deadly calm of his voice compelling her to action despite her reluctance.

Gesturing forlornly with one hand, she beckoned Torrinth forward. After staring in open wonder at the creature’s emergence and subsequent conversation, James struggled weakly in the old man’s grip, no longer able to bear the sight of the monstrosity he was being carried towards. When his feet were set upon the ground, he turned to Torrinth, silently beseeching the old man for his help. But like the others gathered nearby, his gaze remained fixed upon the white at his feet.

‘Face me, flesh,’ Derredin’s booming voice intoned.

James clasped his hands tightly together like a frightened child and turned reluctantly to face the creature. The stag’s face loomed high above him, its newly-formed eyes already growing opaque and cloudy amidst the tangles of moss adorning its skull.

‘You carry death within you and without,’ Derredin’s voice grated. ‘Why do you enter my domain?’

James flinched as one of the stag’s eyes popped, disgorging a blaze of yellow flowers to live and die upon its face.

‘I… I… didn’t want any of this!’ James blurted. ‘They… they brought me here because I’m being hunted by men… and… and those horrible weevil!’

Derredin roared, his cloven hooves stamping their sudden fury into the ground. The stag’s hide suddenly bristled with dark thorns, engulfing the colourful blossoms in swirling flails of black.

‘Never speak their vile name here, flesh!’ Derredin bellowed.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ James cried. ‘I didn’t mean anything…’

‘Silence!’

The stag’s eyes were now completely gone, replaced by the tangle of writhing thorns; the flowers that still survived upon its hide now the colour of spilt blood.

When Derredin next spoke, he did so without the unwinding flesh of his mouth.

‘Show yourself.’

James was about to speak when he discovered he could no longer move. His lips were numb, his arms like lead weights hanging at his sides. Inwardly, he shuddered as the unfathomable depths of Derredin’s mind were brought to bear upon him.

A terrible pain ignited inside his head as a pin-prick of light expanded into the darkness behind his eyes. The paralysis rendered him silent or else his screams would have filled the air, for the terrifying shape that had last emerged when he had faced Bettiny across the raging waters of Ruinsgrave, was once more rising to the top of his skull.

Derredin drew the shape from his head, his ancient mind scrutinising the glowing form like a jeweller inspecting a rare blue diamond. James felt Derredin’s curiosity pique as he hurriedly drew the shape closer, until the matrix of power hung in the space between them like a star on the verge of collapse. For a moment, he felt Derredin recoil as the shape twisted and reformed within his grasp, but then his colossal mind bore down upon it, slowing its writhing movement and halting its unbearable expansion.

As James beheld the shifting blue geometries hovering before him, he noticed another shape enveloping the huge stag. Against the brilliant white of the forest floor, its golden light etched blinding lines into his eyes. The shape was very much like the one he carried inside his own head, but infinitely more complex; its geometries shifting and coalescing, sending great spines of power to dance and shimmer amongst the trees. In a moment of understanding, James realised that Derredin was not simply the strange creature standing before him, but a manifestation of the entire forest that surrounded them.

James’ vision blurred as the blue shape quivered and sparked in the air. The tines of light binding the shape together began to quiver and pulsate, before the entire assembly erupted in a blaze of blinding light…

The white-panelled door appeared before him, etched in shimmering light. He was a child again, and was reaching for the door knob to the bathroom. If the door was shut he was never allowed inside, but he had already knocked three times and gotten no answer. He felt embarrassed to see her naked, but was glad to see that she was ok. The water was pink, like the roses in the garden, but his mother was sleeping peacefully in the bath tub, a tired smile parting her lips.

The image broke apart and shifted before his eyes, as another memory was dredged from the depths of his mind. Helplessly, he watched as a familiar setting materialised around him…

They only came to the graveyard at night, when no one else could see them. His father was turned away from him, but he could see his shoulders hitching to the sound of his sobs. James looked up to the sky and saw the cold stars blazing down upon them. He was sad because his mother was gone, but he was happy at least that she was up there where it was so pretty.

‘No! You bastard!’

James screamed inside his own head, forcing his mind to remove Derredin’s grip upon him. With clumsy desperation he pushed the images away, causing the shimmering blue to flicker like a guttering flame. He felt Derredin’s grip lessen for an instant and pressed his will against it with all his might. The stone wall of Derredin’s mind resisted for a moment, and then it was suddenly gone, replaced by a field of glittering gold…

The old man wandered the forest alone, leaning heavily upon a gnarled stick. His hair was long and as white as snow, bound by leather straps into a cord that trailed down his back. Sunlight glinted through the leaves, illuminating his green eyes and the deep wrinkles creasing his tired smile. His passage through the forest was slow and painful, but at last he came to a halt in the middle of a small clearing. For a long time he stared up at the sky as the warm sunlight played upon his face. Smiling, he opened his hand and let the stick topple to the ground. Then, with one last lingering glance towards the clouds high above, he tilted forward and fell like a man diving into the sea. His frail body hit the ground like a bag of dry leaves, but with the deafening sound of thunder, the forest was turned to white…

James crumpled to the ground.

With his mind on the verge of collapse, he gazed blankly up at the white glade that once more surrounded him. Having forsaken their solemn attitudes of deference, his companions now regarded him in stunned awe; Torrinth poised at his side as though to gather him back to his feet.

Derredin remained where he had halted beside the tree. Its body was completely still, but the thorns and brambles that had so recently festooned its body were replaced by the ceaseless blossoming of wild flowers. For a long time, the great stag remained motionless, only the rapid growth and decay of its ever-changing skin giving proof that it was alive at all.

When the creature finally moved, it was only to slowly nod its rotting head.

‘Very well,’ Derredin’s voice rumbled. ‘If you so wish, you may take your charge from my forest. But heed my words, flesh of the Gelding. This man you call Jame is not of our world. His flesh carries a power not seen within the land for a thousand turns.

‘Yet, within this power there lies a corruption, a darkness that will bring you all to despair before there is any hope of salvation.’

The stag raised its head, this time singling out Leander who stood so awkwardly beside her companions.

‘Is this your wish?’ he growled.

James looked to Leander, who stonily returned his gaze. A terrific battle appeared to wage itself within her, but when her nod of assent was given it was firm and decisive.

‘So be it,’ Derredin growled resignedly.

The beast turned its sagging head back to James and regarded him with eyes that were no longer there.

‘There is some good in you, but I wonder if that will be enough.’

Derredin reared its head, sending golden sparks to dance in the air between them.

‘If you so wish, child, I will render your flesh and remove the corruption with it.’

‘No, no, please,’ James pleaded, crawling backwards across the ground. ‘I don’t want to die!’

For the first time, Derredin barked his harsh laughter into the silence of the clearing, a sound like trees being felled by a hurricane.

‘I thought not.’

The body of the great stag began to tremble, its head once more slewing from its body in a shower of white beetles and three-legged spiders. Waves of violence passed beneath its undulating hide, sending two of its legs toppling to the ground like falling trees. When the vast bulk of its body followed suit, it popped like a sack of rotten meat, birthing a thicket of white willow saplings from the site of its demise.

The ethereal music slowly died upon the air, but as though from far away, the ghost of Derredin’s voice echoed within their minds.

‘Take what you will for your little bows, my children. The wood of the white will be needed before this day is out.’