The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [45]
The red-haired boy leaped onto his horse and urged it into the forest after Durge. The fey hunters bounded or flitted or scuttled after, fitting new arrows to their bows as they went. They seemed to have forgotten Grace in their glee for the hunt, and in moments all of them were gone. Grace reeled, gathering her wits, then she picked up the hem of her gown and dashed into the trees after the hunters.
There should have been a trail where the fey folk had trampled the ground, but instead she saw only Durge's footprints in the thin layer of snow. She followed them. The trumpet rang out again, and it already sounded alarmingly far off. Grace ran faster. Branches scratched at her face and tore her clothes. At some point she lost her cloak, but she didn't stop for it. Despite the cold she was sweating, and her breath came in ragged gasps.
Several more times Grace heard the call of the trumpet, and each time it was fainter than the last. She lost Durge's trail on a stony patch of ground, and when she heard the trumpet call again, it was off to her left, and so distant she could hardly make out the sound over the thudding of her heart.
Grace staggered in that direction, but after that she did not hear the sound of the trumpet again. The sweat froze her dress stiff as her pace slowed, and she grew clumsy with the cold. At last she could go no farther, and she leaned against the trunk of a gigantic tree. She listened, but there was no trumpet call, no trilling of high laughter; the forest air was still and silent.
“I've lost him,” she mumbled with numb lips.
Pain stabbed at her heart. Durge was gone—the kindest, truest, and dearest friend she had on this or any world—and it was her fault. The agony of that thought was too much to bear. Grace threw her arms around the tree, pressed her face to its trunk, and wept.
“Are you well, daughter?” said a kindly voice behind her.
Grace pushed herself from the tree. A moment ago the forest had been gray and bleak, but now green-gold light sparkled through her tears. She wiped her eyes and gasped.
“Whyever do you weep so?” said the old woman who stood before her. “Is it for this great father of trees you embrace? If so, then dry your tears, for he is not dead. When spring comes, he will be green and full of life again.”
Grace stared, sorrow and shock receding. Like the light, a feeling of peace radiated from the old woman. She was tiny and withered and beautiful, her skin as delicate as flower petals, her hair as fine as spider's silk. She wore a robe the color of snow, and in her hands was a wooden staff every bit as gnarled as the fingers that gripped it.
“Who are you?” Grace said.
The old woman smiled, and her eyes—the same color as the light—sparkled. “I suppose you may say I am the queen here, even as you are queen out there.” She made a sweeping gesture with the staff. “Of course, my reign is nearly at an end, and yours is only about to begin, daughter.”
Grace struggled to comprehend these words, but she couldn't, not quite. Her brain was dull and slow from fear and cold. “I'm not crying for the tree.”
“Then for whom is it you weep?”
The words tumbled out of her in a rush. “It's Durge. The boy—the one with red hair—he and the other hunters are chasing him through the forest. And they've done something to him. They tied a pair of antlers to his head, only they aren't just tied in place anymore. They're real. The hunters are going to kill him, and it's all my fault.”
The old woman cocked her head. “Your fault, daughter? Now how can that be?”
Grace felt more tears welling up. “I lied about the white stag. I told them he ran one way when he ran the other. But he was so beautiful. I didn't want them to kill him.”
The other shut her eyes and gripped her staff. “Yes,” she murmured. “I