Page 141 of Silver in the Bone

“Travel swift as an arrow,” he said. “Stop for no reason, not even to rest. I will lock the path behind you and return within three hours. You will have little more time than that to complete your task before the dark comes.”

Not that I had a way to track how much time had passed. I’d have to keep an eye on the sky and go by my gut.

I hugged my workbag and waterskin close to my body. “I’ll see you then.”

I burst out from between the spiky boulders at a full run, sucking in deeper and deeper breaths of the sickly sweet rot of apples withering on the forest floor.

Beads of ice clung to the bare branches like forgotten diamond necklaces. Overhead, the gray sky seemed to hang lower than usual, as if to greet the ghostly mist. I had the suffocating sense that I was being bottled in. A buzzing filled the air, almost like cicadas in the summer.

Between two oaks had very little meaning when the trees had that identical look of putrid death. All the trunks in the grove were twisted into anguished spirals, as if they’d tried to pull themselves free from the ground.

In the end, it was the oaks’ size that gave them away. The two giants were bent toward one another. The heavy lower branches were draped along the ground, bracing their towering bodies as the upper branches wove themselves together over the path. The image of them, like lovers collapsing into death together, held me there a moment longer than it should have.

Shaking myself, I climbed through a gap between their intertwined bodies and continued.

In the years before the curse, the deer had cut such a deep groove into the earth that the path was still visible beneath the wet skin of decaying leaves and black mold—without it, I would have been lost within moments. The trees, stripped bare of life, all had the same gaunt look as they faded in and out of the mist.

My heart hammered in my chest and I winced as something—brittle bones or twigs—snapped underfoot. I swung my gaze around, scanning to see if I’d drawn any unwelcome attention, but it was impossible to see more than a few feet in front of me. Every waiting shadow in the mist became a potential threat, the creaking of the trees a sign that something was watching me from above. My body felt electrified with awareness as I started moving again.

The mist churned around me, drawing me deeper into the isle, past the festering open sores that had once been gleaming pools, around the homes turned hollow, through fields of crops that had died on the vine.

The buzzing only grew louder. The river. I should have reached the river by now—

One moment my foot was pounding through the reeking mulch, the next the ground was gone and I was falling forward.

My body was quicker than my mind to react. I sat hard, rolling my weight back to land on my tailbone and back ankle. Pain shot up my left leg, and somehow, I caught the curse before it slipped past my lips.

At least my instincts and timing hadn’t failed me yet. I had, indeed, reached the river.

The bank dropped sharply into the muddy bed. Netting, fish bones, and leaves piled high in the place of water. Here and there, other debris emerged from the wasting foliage. Shields. Shreds of fabric. A wooden doll.

I backed away from the edge, giving my ankle an experimental roll. I grimaced; it was twisted. I thanked every god of luck I hadn’t broken it, but this wasn’t going to help my already lagging speed.

I’d only gone a few steps when something moved at the edge of my vision. Slithering.

With a sinking fear, I turned back toward the riverbed.

Dried leaves slid toward me, skittering like startled roaches, as beneath them something moved. More leaves fell away as it rolled, worming forward. I bit my tongue hard to keep from making a noise as a gray, hairless head turned up from beneath the mulch and released a shuddering breath. Another moved beside it. Another.

Hellfire, I thought.

Two facts crystallized in my mind as I slowly backed away. The first, that the Children of the Night made that buzzing sound as they slept, a horrible mockery of a purr. The second, that they’d turned the length of the river into a nest. They had burrowed down to avoid the light.

Which I was losing with every second I wasted here.

I pressed a fist against my mouth, holding my breath, and used the other hand to clutch my bag tight to my body.

Slowly, so slowly it was almost agonizing, I limped my way along the river as it curved through a grove of young trees, all denied the chance to thrive. My heartbeat throbbed in every part of my body, and my knees were threatening to turn to water. I couldn’t tell if I was on the verge of throwing up or pissing myself in terror, or both.

You’re all right, I told myself over and over. You’re okay. This is for Cabell.

The mist seemed to take pity on me, stretching itself thin enough that I could see the way ahead. Finally, the rounded top of the burial mound came into view, and I could feel my body again.

Unlike the river, the small lake, no more than a mile across, had retained some of its water. It had thickened at its edges with slime and moss that gave it a boglike appearance.

The burial mound—the barrow—was massive, taking up the entirety of the small island at the center of the murky water. After the endless parade of gray, the shock of bright green grass covering the mound’s rise took my breath away. There had to be some sort of old protective magic on it. Somehow, impossibly, it had held.

I walked along the edge of the lake until the mist revealed a small rowboat caught on the bank. Pulling it free from the grasping mud, I moved it along to clearer water and pushed down, testing it for leaks.

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