At the forest’s edge, only Xan and Dala still lingered in the mist, staring back at her, looking like ghostly spirits of these greenwoods. And maybe they were. Dala kissed her palm, held it toward Nyx, then backed into the fog and was gone, leaving only the elder.
Nyx did not understand why Xan had avoided her all day. Had I done something to offend her? Or were there secrets the wizened woman was not yet willing to share?
The elder’s eyes—sapphire and emerald—shone out of the pall. It was nearly all that was visible of the snowy-haired woman’s countenance. Only at that moment did Nyx realize how Xan’s eyes matched The Twins, the two bright lakes that framed either side of the misty town: Heilsa’s blue waters behind Nyx and Eitur’s green spread, somewhere farther to the north, lost in the fog.
Before she could ponder this, Xan began to sing to her. With the woman’s lips hidden, it was as if the elder’s voice came from the whole forest. There were no words that Nyx could understand, but the intonations and melody, the lilt and rhythm, spoke of passing ages, of tiny seeds growing into creaking giants, of death’s inevitability, and the joy of petal, leaf, loam, and all the creatures enjoying their brief spark here.
She pictured Bashaliia, winging through branches, chasing motes flashing in sunlight. Tears rose, which had always been there, held back in the false belief that they were no longer needed. The salt washed her eyes.
Xan continued to sing, but under her voice, another song wafted, stranded in golden notes. They bathed her until Nyx opened to them. She closed her eyes and fell back through the ages of the Kethra’kai in these woods. Images blurred. She tried to follow, but she stumbled, too raw and untrained for such travel. She caught a brief glimpse of dark cliffs, of ancient seas imbedded in those walls, of something stirring in the shrouds above.
Then she lost the rhythm and tumbled back into herself.
She opened her eyes as the song drew to an end. She stared ahead, but Xan was already gone. As she stared into the mists, she felt abandoned yet again, cast from a kinship that could never be hers.
Jace approached, moving with tender concern. “Nyx…？”
She looked over to him, starting to shake. He reached to her, and she fell into his arms. He held her, letting her sob, staying silent, as if knowing there was nothing he could say. But his warmth, his scent, were enough.
I’m not abandoned, she reminded herself.
She waited for the last echoes of the song to fade out of her, to find herself back fully in her own skin, in Jace’s arms. She finally hugged him back more firmly, letting him know she was all right.
She leaned back and stared up into his face. “Thank you.”
He blushed, mumbled almost apologetically.
She slipped out of his arms but found his hand and held it. She stared over at Kanthe and Frell, who looked embarrassed.
Frell cleared his throat with a cough. “We should be going.”
* * *
KANTHE KEPT NEXT to his mentor as they approached the edge of Havensfayre. “Do you know where you’re going?” he asked Frell. “Have you ever been here before?”
“No,” the man admitted. He nodded to the misty town, still barely visible through the pall. “But Prioress Ghyle gave me a name. The Golden Bough. An inn somewhere in Havensfayre.”
As they marched along the rutted road, the fog thinned slowly to either side. More and more of the woodland town appeared out of the mists, going from hazy illusion to an undeniable sturdiness.
Despite his pretended worldliness, Kanthe gaped about at this forest trading post, aglow with a thousand lamps. It looked as if the entire place had been grown rather than built. And in many ways, it had. Here, an ancient grove of Reach alders climbed into the sky. The giant trunks had been hollowed out into homes, climbing many levels, with tiny windows shining and crooked stone chimneys piping with smoke. The highest homes vanished into mists, revealing themselves in the glow of distant windows.
Yet despite all of this, the trees still lived, spreading branches leafed in green and gold. Many of those limbs had been carved into bridges. And where those failed to span, hundreds of swinging wooden bridges crisscrossed throughout the town. Even the trees’ massive roots, many as thick around as the trunks of the Reach’s remaining forest, had been sculpted into natural staircases.
As their group passed under one such archway, Kanthe spotted stone steps that dug down, adding new meaning to root cellar. From the laughter and clinking of stoneware rising from below, he suspected a good portion of Havensfayre lay buried under this ancient grove.
Still, not all of the town had been carved from the forest.
As they continued, ordinary homes of stone and wood, of shingle and thatch, appeared, abutting against the trunks. These grew in number, stacking one atop the other, but still there remained a naturalness in the curve of walls, the layers of lichen on stones, the spread of circular windows, like the glowing eyes of owls.
Frell stopped periodically to ask for directions from the townspeople, who all seemed uniformly cheery, despite the perpetual fog. Kanthe understood why. Music wafted all around. Lamps glowed everywhere, glassed in every color. The air itself smelled of woodsmoke and rich loam, as if every breath held life within it.
Still, this late in the day, the avenues and winding streets were mostly thin of people, a mix of darker-skinned lowlanders and pale Kethra’kai. Most shops were shuttered, but several stands lured their passing noses with the scent of sizzling meat, bubbling stews, and frothy ale.
“Right yonder,” an apple-cheeked man said to Frell from behind a fiery griddle, and pointed down the way. He looked close to burning his round belly on his stove. “Past the Oldenmast. You can’t miss the Golden Bough.”
Kanthe hoped the man was right, feeling already thoroughly lost. Between the mists and the meandering streets and alleys, he would have had a hard time pointing toward the waters of Heilsa, which seemed a world away. He searched around. The lamplight stretched in all directions, fading into the distance, making it hard to judge the breadth of this town.
Frell thanked the hawker for his directions and got them moving again.
Jace drew closer. “Is it me? Or are we going in circles?”
Kanthe realized he wasn’t the only one confused by this jumble of a town.
Frell huffed and led the way. “It can’t be far.”
Jace cast a sidelong glance at Kanthe, then shrugged. “If not, I’m going to raid the next stew stand we cross.”
“Or tavern,” Kanthe added.
Finally, they rounded a huge bole of a tree that looked far larger than any of the others. Its bark had fallen away or been stripped, exposing a whitish-gold wood. Its surface had been polished to a sheen that reflected their passage. A pointed archway opened into it, sealed by tall doors of the same alder wood. Over it and lit from within, a huge round window glowed with brilliant shards of glass. To one side, a fiery sun cast out golden rays, lighting up a pale blue sky. Beyond those spears, the pieces of glass grew ever darker as they crossed to the other side, where stars appeared, sparkling like diamonds, all surrounding the silvery face of a full moon.
“This must be the town’s kath’dral,” Jace said as they passed it.
“No, this is Oldenmast. Dala told me about it.” Nyx stared up at the silver moon with a haunted expression, plainly reminded of the danger that had brought them all together. “It’s not our gods that are worshipped here, but those of the Kethra’kai. Here they give honor to the pantheon of the forest.”