Ghostwalker - Erik Scott De Bie [77]
Lyetha opened her mouth to speak, but closed it. Instead, she looked at Greyt's averted face, seeing the lines of fear, discomfort, and hate there. His gaze was far away. For a time, she thought perhaps he had changed, but she saw once again the bitter, cynical, cruel, and very old creature he had become.
"What is it?" he repeated, still not meeting her eyes.
Lyetha shifted her gaze away. " 'Tis… 'tis nothing," she said.
Greyt did not argue. He merely shrugged and blinked once.
Picking up her skirts, Lyetha went away, slowly at first, but her steps picked up speed until she was running. She could not let Greyt see the tears leaking down her cheeks.
She need not have bothered, for the Lord Singer did not even look up.
* * * * *
Somewhere in the shadows, another pair of eyes watched.
"You could have saved him, Elf's Daughter," mused a spectral voice. The words were too quiet for Greyt to hear. "Just then, you could have saved him."
The Lord Singer shivered once, but he did not wonder why.
Sighing, Talthaliel closed his invisible eyes.
"And so it begins."
CHAPTER 14
29 Tarsakh
"Still no sign of 'em, sir," Darthan reported. "Even the horse's trail has disappeared, as though…"
He trailed off and bit his lip.
"As though what?" asked Meris, though he knew the answer.
"As-as though the f-forest swallowed it up!" the man stammered.
Meris swore despite himself. This damned "cursed forest" nonsense was giving him nothing but trouble. He resisted the urge to slap sense into the jittery Darthan.
"Keep pressing west," Meris said. "Deeper into the Dark Woods."
"D-Deeper?" Darthan swallowed.
"Forget this fanciful 'Ghostly Lady,'" he ordered. "The woods are probably 'haunted' because Walker makes them that way. Well, tonight we're going to undo his efforts."
"If we ever find him," a ranger said from the side. The comment was greeted with snickers and other less optimistic grumbles.
Meris was tempted to lash out at the speaker, but he had to agree.
He and his eight rangers had been searching the godsforsaken forest for most of the day, and it was near midnight. The stolen Quaervarr watchman's uniforms they wore were not as comfortable as woodland garb. The cloudy afternoon had become a dark night, albeit one with a bright moon. Unfortunately, because the canopy was packed so densely, little light shone down, and they were forced to carry lanterns to illuminate their path.
In the weak radiance of the lanternlight, every tree seemed to loom over them, stretching skeletal limbs to grasp at loose clothing and stragglers. The wood was black-in the case of the shadowtops, duskwood, and firs-or luminous white-in the case of some trees of a kind even Meris had not seen before. The men shied away from these mysterious white trees and Meris could not fault them. Low-growing helmthorn bushes sprouted everywhere, jabbing long spines into a ranger's flesh at every turn, prompting more than a few curses. Deep in that black and ghostly forest, the irritating shrub took on an even more sharp and sinister appearance in the mist that covered the ground. The forest brooded silently but for the occasional bird cry from trees directly overhead, causing rangers to jump and draw steel or point arrows at nothing.
If there were ever a haunted forest, Meris imagined it would feel like this.
Keeping his weapons ready, he took lead in the group, searching in vain for signs of tracks or, failing that, signs that they were not turning in circles.
Even now, they crept through another stand of shadow-tops and cut at some especially thick patches of helmthorn. Meris watched the work grimly. All the while, his mind wandered elsewhere.
He was thinking about the dark-clad Walker-the man he had confronted three times but never really fought. Meris did not understand why his father feared Walker so much-the dark man did not seem so powerful or commanding in person, just crafty and treacherous. He was a coward, Meris decided, so afraid of the world around him that he hid behind a high collar and an assumed name, a dark face he thought would protect