I looked around, and found the same face on every stone. Without a shadow of a doubt, these engravings were Craft. Humans hadn’t been permitted in the forest for thousands of years. I couldn’t imagine the age of them, and what might drive the people of that forgotten era to carve, over and over again, the terrible countenance of the Alder King.
The Alder King.
Drooping motionlessly since we’d arrived, the leaves rattled in a hot, stale breeze.
The Alder King, my traitorous thoughts whispered again, naming the nameless fear clutching at me from all sides. The Alder King. Now that I’d started it was impossible to stop.
“Isobel.” Rook strode out of a thicket, pushing aside the branches of a buckthorn shrub. I hadn’t noticed he’d gone anywhere. He went to grab my shoulder, but his hand froze a hairsbreadth above my dress. “We need to leave. Quickly.”
“I didn’t mean to—” The thicket drew my gaze and what I saw there silenced me. Beyond the wild buckthorn hedge lay a clearing with more of the carven stones arranged in a circle. At the center of the circle, a hill bulged from the ground. It was perhaps fifteen feet long and half that wide, and its rounded back stood taller than the tops of the stones. A barrow mound. Rook had been talking about a different danger entirely.
A flap and flutter of wings sounded in the stillness. A croak, and then another. I looked up. An entire flock of shiny-eyed ravens roosted in the trees above us, watching, waiting.
A dozen ravens for death. What about a score—a hundred—more?
“You thought his name,” Rook said, after a pause. “You’re thinking it even now.”
I dragged my attention back to him; I knew dread gripped every inch of my expression.
He didn’t seem angry with me. His expression was neutral, a layer of ice under which fearsome currents raced unseen. I wished he’d looked angry. This was worse. It meant that whatever was about to happen was so awful he couldn’t afford to waste time feeling anything at all.
“Prepare to ride,” he said, stepping back.
Just as it had when he’d transformed the night before, a wind gusted through the trees carrying forth a whirlwind of leaves. I braced myself for his shape to shift as soon as it struck. But this time the wind died as it approached, and the leaves wafted uselessly the last few feet, scattering around his boots. Rook scowled. He stood straighter, and soon another, stronger wind roared up from the depths of the forest. But it too petered out before it reached him.
The barrow mound drew my gaze again and again. All those ancient stones, all of them facing inward, like wardens standing guard over a prisoner. For millennia they had watched it, unable to look away.
By now the heat felt oppressive. A faint smell of putrefaction hung in the air. One of the ravens gave a single, grating call, harsh as a saw rasping against metal.
“Why can’t you change?” I asked, without ever taking my eyes from the mound.
Rook dismissed his latest attempt at transformation with a flick of his hand, though a defiant glint shone in his eyes and he looked none the worse for wear.
“This place won’t allow me to. It appears we have stumbled upon the resting place of a Barrow Lord.”
Well, that was that. I wasn’t waiting around to introduce myself to something called a Barrow Lord, capitalized. I gathered up my skirts, preparing to run. Then something about the way he’d said “appears” caught up with me. “Oh, god. This is the first time you’ve come across one, isn’t it.”
“They are seldom encountered,” he said grudgingly. Noticing my stance, he added, “No, do not flee. It is already awake beneath the earth—it knows we are here. It cannot be outrun, and would only overtake us with our backs turned. This time, we stand and fight.” His gaze flicked to me again. “Or rather, I do, while you do your best to stay out of the way.”
He’d dispatched a thane with a single sword thrust. He’d called destroying the Wild Hunt’s hounds child’s play. But that knowledge was cold comfort with an entire flock of ravens roosting over my head, and the fact that this time, Rook had been willing to retreat without a word of complaint.
“What is a Barrow Lord, exactly?” I asked.
“In this matter, you might prefer ignorance.”
“Believe me, I never do.”
“If you insist,” he said, reluctant. “Most fairy beasts rise with a single mortal’s bones lending them life.” I nodded; I had known as much already. “Barrow Lords are aberrations—each one a mass of remains, entangled with one another in death. They are tormented creatures, enraged, at odds with themselves. We do not nurture their growth. They quicken on their own, in places where the mortals of ages past buried victims of war or plague.”