Page 15 of Invocation

Chapter 4

As they walked through the forest, the deteriorating state of Kuda Varai grew even more apparent.

Every so often, they passed another dead tree or wilting bush or dry patch of grass. The death was rapidly spreading outward from the ruins.

A few miles down the path, they found a dead animal. It was a behemoth of a thing, wolf-shaped but three times as big as any wolf Novikke had seen, with needle-like teeth and fur so dark that it drank and consumed light. She realized it was the same kind of creature Aruna had fought when she’d first entered the forest.

But this one had no visible wounds. It was like it had just lain down and died. It was not only the trees that were dying. It was everything in the forest.

A horrible thought came to Novikke. She tapped Aruna’s arm urgently and gestured for the book.

“Will that happen to you?” she wrote.

He stared at the wolf, dead-eyed. He gave her a slow shrug, as if he’d already resigned himself to the possibility.

It was not the only corpse they encountered. Every once in a while, a rank smell would reach them, and they would know there was something dead nearby. A few times, Novikke saw tiny birds lying upside down on the ground, fallen from the trees where they’d been perched.

As they got farther away from the ruins, the patches of dead things became few and far between, and eventually stopped showing up at all, but the speed at which the forest’s demise had already begun was alarming.

Novikke’s eyes drifted to Aruna’s back as they walked. They didn’t talk, and the silence felt heavy and uncomfortable. She was reminded of the first time he’d led her through the forest. He was the same now as he had been then. Distant and unhappy.

When a dark cloud rolled across the sky and covered the moons, she sighed. It seemed only appropriate for a storm to fall upon them now, on top of all their other troubles.

A drop of rain hit her nose, and then another struck her forehead. She pulled up her hood. Aruna stopped, peering up at the sky. The drizzle became a shower. They darted off the path into the narrow shelter below a pine tree. Then the shower became a downpour. Rain slipped through the branches of the tree. Novikke pulled her cloak close around her, but she was already getting wet.

Aruna said something short under his breath. They waited, and when the rain didn’t show any signs of letting up, he gave up and ran down the path again, waving for her to follow.

They jogged down the path for what seemed like ages, rain pelting down on them all the way, and then the shape of a building broke through the mist in front of them.

It was a decrepit log cabin, much like the houses back at Rameka. The door was warped from water damage and years of disuse, and stuck in the door frame. Aruna jammed a shoulder against it, and it fell open. They squeezed through the opening into the cool but dry room beyond. As he heaved the door shut behind them, the sound of the rain faded to a soft drumming.

It was a dark, dusty echo of Shadri’s house. The shuttered windows had kept out animals and overgrowth, leaving the place remarkably intact except for the fact that it was empty. Whoever had lived here before had taken their furniture with them.

Aruna was pulling off his cloak and jacket and laying them out to dry. Novikke did the same, then dug the notebook out of her pocket.

“How did you know this was here?” she asked.

He glanced down at the book as he pulled a blanket from his pack. He took the pencil in one hand while he shook out the blanket with the other. “Been this way before.” He paused, then added, “Been most ways before.”

He stripped off more damp clothes. He pulled his shirt over his head, and Novikke’s eyes dropped to the thick scar on his back. The kind of scar that shouldn’t exist, because a wound bad enough to create it was bad enough to kill.

His pants came off next. Novikke forced herself to look away before he noticed her staring.

She was still wearing the bandages around her middle. There hadn’t been time to take them off yet. She reached under her shirt to unravel them.

Thanks to extensive healing from Kadaki, the wound already looked old. She had a scar very similar to Aruna’s. A messy, pink line above her navel. She wondered what she’d tell people if anyone asked about it. Not the truth, in any case.

Aruna sat on the worn wood floor under the blanket. Novikke gave him an expectant look, and he jerked his chin toward the pack. She went to it, and found a second blanket inside.

She pulled off her rain-soaked pants and sat down a few feet from him, pulling the blanket around her shoulders. She picked up the notebook and thought about writing a few different things before she settled on, “What are we looking for in Vondh Rav?”

He just looked at her, making no move to write.

She glared at him.

He glared back.

She picked up the pencil again. “Am I being taken there to be a mortal sacrifice for the forest?” she wrote, mostly sarcastically, but similarly macabre things had occurred to her.

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