The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [40]
This is mad, Grace. Completely mad.
Which was precisely why she needed help. She stopped in front of a door and knocked. It opened after a scant second—by all the gods, didn't the man ever sleep?—and Durge gazed at her with somber brown eyes.
“Good morrow, my lady.” He wore a tunic as gray as the keep Grace had seen in her dream. “Though I suppose it isn't morrow yet, as the sun is not yet up.”
“But you are, Durge. And I'm glad, because I need your help.”
“As you wish, my lady.” He eyed her fur-lined cape. “We are going out, then?”
“We are.”
“Then allow me to fetch my cloak.” He retrieved the garment, which was warming on a chair by the fire—that was Durge, always at the ready—and threw it about his thick shoulders.
“Don't you even want to know where we're going, Durge?”
“I imagine I'll find out when we get there, my lady.”
Grace winced. She didn't deserve this kind of loyalty, but all the same she was grateful.
“We'll need our horses,” she said.
They rode away from the castle just as the sun crested the horizon. The cold air pinched the soft flesh inside Grace's nostrils and made her jaw ache, but she was warm inside her heavy gown and cloak, and it felt good to be free from the castle's stone walls.
Beneath her, Shandis cantered lightly over the frozen ground. Last summer, Grace had left the honey-colored mare in Castle Spardis, and she had believed she would never see the horse again. However, a few days after their return to Calavere, she was thrilled to discover Shandis was in fact housed in King Boreas's stable. Aryn and Durge had brought the mare with them when they journeyed from Spardis to Ar-tolor last Krondath, and Ivalaine had returned Shandis—along with Durge's gigantic charger, Blackalock—when she visited just before Midwinter. Durge rode Blackalock now, following Grace as she led the way north, away from the castle.
After an hour, they crossed the old Tarrasian bridge over the River Darkwine. Chunks of ice floated on the water below. Once on the other side, they were no longer in Calavan. Gloaming Wood was closer now. Grace could make out the wispy branches of bare trees; she leaned against Shandis's neck and urged the young horse into a full gallop. She knew Durge would warn her it was reckless to ride so fast over the snow, but first he would have to catch her.
Icy wind numbed her cheeks as the snowy landscape rushed past. Grace risked a glance over her shoulder; she was right—Blackalock pounded furiously after Shandis, and Durge wore a glower of disapproval. That was good. Durge needed something to worry about, and this way he wouldn't stop to think about where they were headed.
Many stories were told in the castle of Gloaming Wood. For as long as anyone could remember, the patch of primeval forest had been a place of shadow and rumor. Folk spoke of lights that shone among the trees late at night—lights that would draw a man into the wood, only to disappear once he was deep among the trees, leaving him lost and alone. Some whispered of hearing queer music or eerie laughter when they passed near the eaves of the wood, and it was said a man could not come within a hundred paces of the forest with an axe in his hand. A terrible fear would come upon him, leaving him shaking and pissing.
When Grace first heard such stories, she had dismissed them as fabrications of the castle's common folk. Then she had met Trifkin Mossberry and his peculiar troupe of actors, and she had been forced to adjust her thinking. The Little People were not products of a fantastical imagination, at least not on this world. Elfs and dwarfs and greenmen—all of them were real. And at least some of them dwelled in the shadows of Gloaming Wood.
By the time Durge caught up with her, they had reached the edge of the forest. Grace brought Shandis to a halt and waited for Durge to dismount and offer his hand to her. In these heavy clothes, she would never make it to the ground by herself without falling facefirst in the snow.
“Thank you, my lord,” she said with