Page 188 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

“Remember, Eadaz,” Aralaq said, “whatever you see in this place is an illusion.”

“I know.” She sheathed her arm in a bracer. “See you soon.”

Aralaq growled his displeasure. Axe in hand, Ead stepped into the mist.

An archway twisted out of boughs, laced with flowers, formed the door. Flowers the color of stormclouds.

I dream of a shaded bower in a forest, where sunlight dapples the grass. The entrance is a gateway of purple flowers—sabra flowers, I think.

Ead raised a hand, and for the first time in years, she conjured magefire. It danced from her fingers and torched the flowers, revealing the thorns beneath the illusion.

She closed her hands. The blue flame of magefire would unknit an enchantment if it burned for long enough, but she would have to use it in moderation if she meant to conserve enough strength to defend herself. With a last glance at Aralaq, she hacked her way through the thorns with her axe and emerged unscathed in the clearing beyond.

She was in the Orchard of Divinities. As she took a step forward, a scent breathed from the greensward, so thick and cloying she could almost roll it on her tongue. Golden light speckled grass deep enough for her to sink to her ankles.

The trees pressed close together here. Voices echoed beyond them—near and far away at once, dancing to the purl of water.

Were they even there, or was this part of the enchantment?

“Min mayde of strore, I knut thu smal,

as lutil as mus in gul mede.

With thu in soyle, corn grewath tal.

In thu I hafde blowende sede.”

A great spring-fed pool came into view. Ead found herself walking toward it. With every step, the voices in the trees swelled and her head whirled like a round-wind. The language they sang in was steeped in the unfamiliar, but some of the words were unquestionably an old form of Inysh. Older than old. As ancient as the haithwood.

“In soyle I soweth mayde of strore

boute in belga bearn wil nat slepe.

Min wer is ut in wuda frore—

he huntath dama, nat for me.”

Her hand was slick on the axe. The voices spoke of ritual from the dawn of a long-dead age. While she took in the crisscross of branches above her, Ead forced herself to imagine them drenched in blood, and the voices luring her into a trap.

At the end of the path, I find a great rock, and I reach out to touch it with a hand I do not think is mine.Ead turned. There it was, a slab of stone almost as tall as she was, guarding the mouth of a cave.The rock breaks in two, and inside—

“Hello.”

Ead looked up. A small boy was sitting on a branch above her.

“Hello,” he said again in Selinyi. His voice was high and sweet. “Are you here to play with me?”

“I am here to see the Lady of the Woods,” Ead said. “Will you fetch her for me, child?”

The boy let out a musical laugh. One blink, and he was there. The next, he was nowhere.

Something made Ead look toward the pool. Sweat prickled on her nape as she watched for any ripple on its surface.

She drew in a breath when the water birthed a head. A woman emerged, sloe-eyed and naked.

“Eadaz du Zala uq-Nara.” Kalyba stepped into the clearing. “It has been a long time.”

The Witch of Inysca. The Lady of the Woods. Her voice was as deep and clear as her pool, with a strange inflection. Northern Inysh, but not quite.

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