Forty Two: The Forest Court

"I can't feel my arse and I'm starving." Jordan glared down at the top of his tutor's head. "How long are you going to make me sit up here?"

"For a start, until you quit whining." Yddris's words were accompanied by a plume of smoke that spiralled up to Jordan's perch in a branch that overlooked Hap's garden. He settled into moody silence, glaring into the trees. This was supposedly an exercise that would help him gain precision over the use of his magic, but so far he'd only succeeded in getting bored, numb and hungry. He tried to clear his mind, but he was too stirred up now. It was difficult to settle already, when he felt in danger of overbalancing and falling off at any moment.

The tree he sat in was just beginning to bud, and weak shafts of light made their way through the canopy, though they were so feeble that it dissipated before illuminating anything much at ground level. After the storm the forest smelled fresh, and he was certain that the weather was not as bitingly cold as it had been.

Thirris exited the house and stood on the veranda for a moment. Ren was perched contentedly on his head.

"I don't think he's in the right mood to get anything out of that exercise, Yddris," the older man said. "You have had him at it for a while."

"Thank you," Jordan said. He sniffed. "Are you cooking?"

"Cara's called a meeting," Thirris told both of them. "She wants to hear news from the Reach most of all. So I thought we might have a spot of early lunch and head down there afterwards."

Jordan shuffled along the branch and eased himself down the trunk, wincing at the reluctance of his legs to cooperate. His knees almost buckled when he touched the ground.

"I don't recall telling you to get down," Yddris growled around his pipe, but didn't force Jordan to go back up. With all the will in the world Jordan didn't think he'd have been able to. He hurried back inside before Yddris could change his mind, and went to his guest room for a new pair of trousers, since his morning up a tree had left the backs of his legs wet. He draped his old ones over the back of his chair and rummaged in his knapsack for his second pair. He wasn't sure how he felt about attending a Guild meeting; he was nervous, even though everyone he had spoken to had been polite as a minimum. It was another world to the Reach. When he thought about it in contrast to the meeting with Arlen's guild, however, he relaxed. Nothing here could ever be worse than that.

He returned to the front room before he could dwell on those thoughts. They inevitably led to fears and worries he could do nothing about while he was so far away from the city; how was Grace doing? Was she safe? Would Marick leave her alone while he was gone? His first letter to her lay sealed and addressed on his desk, waiting for the first caravan out of the Guildtown. In mad moments he caught himself anticipating her response, even though he hadn't sent it yet. He hadn't appreciated just how convenient texting was until it was no longer an option.

Thirris handed him a plate of pie out of the tray nestled in the hearth fire as he entered. It steamed invitingly, the rich smell enveloping him. The top was a layer of buttery root mash, the base thick with vegetables and gravy, and as he tucked into it he groaned. "You're going to have to teach me how to make this."

"Has Nika never made it for you?" Thirris asked. He chuckled. "Yes, I can teach you."

"Nika can make this?" Jordan asked Yddris. "Why doesn't he?"

"Because, I expect, it's not very convenient." Thirris got up with a groan, taking the tray from the fire. "It doesn't feed very many at once, and considering your tutor sounds like he's been running a guesthouse for the better part of a season, I don't blame Nika for keeping it simple." He paused for a moment while Jordan wolfed it down. He wanted to savour it, but at the same time could barely keep from inhaling it all at once. The herbs had finally worn off, revealing the extent of his body's exhaustion. For the previous few days he'd had the appetite of someone double his size. "Kiel's teeth, Yddris, have you fed him at all in the last few months?"

"Well." Yddris also sounded a little concerned, which might have made Jordan feel abashed if he hadn't been distracted. "He's found the season very stressful. If Nika could see this, he'd think he was looking at a different person."

At this Jordan found the self-control to slow down. It was a new thing to him, too, to have any kind of appetite; sometimes he felt like a different person, until he glimpsed the edge of his tattoo bandaging over his shoulder, or his fingers brushed against Arlen's hunting knife on his belt, and it dragged him back to reality. He couldn't quite bring himself to take the knife off, though he knew it was more out of irrational fear than any real need for it. Somehow, if he abandoned it in the bottom of his bag for the whole visit, Arlen would know. The Devil was not psychic, he told himself, and knew it for truth – just not quite enough to take it off.

A knock at the door interrupted the quiet in which they ate.

"I'll get it," Yddris said, standing, as Thirris began to labour back to his feet.

"It'll be Astra," Thirris said. Jordan almost choked on his mouthful. "I invited her to walk in with us."

"Do you know her well, then?" Jordan asked. He tried not to sound like he thought Thirris was doing it deliberately, but whenever he found himself with the older Unspoken, at some time Astra inevitably showed up.

"Not Astra herself, particularly." Thirris scraped at his plate. "But Kolter and his tutor were good friends of mine. Both great talents, both taken far too young. I'm determined she finds a good match to step into Kolter's shoes."

Before Jordan could reply, footsteps sounded in the hall and Yddris reappeared with Astra behind him. She nodded at each of them in turn, but declined the food when Thirris offered it. Instead she perched on a spare surface and waited for them to finish, as impassive and quiet as ever. Occasionally Jordan felt her eyes on him, but whenever he looked up she was staring in another direction, or petting the shadow-runner who had taken a great interest in the newcomer.

Jordan had no idea what to think about his relationship – friendship? – with Astra. After they had been to see Yerrit, she had invited him to have apple cake with her in the refectory, and they had talked quietly for a solid hour about art, as if they'd always been friends. The next couple of times he had seen her, she had kept the conversation clipped when she couldn't entirely avoid him. The sudden changes made him uneasy, and always between them was their strange early encounter, where she had made a pronouncement to him about his soul or some such thing that made very little sense, and which she had never mentioned again. He had become well-accustomed to not seeing the faces of most of the people he spoke to on a day to day basis now, but with Astra he never got any better at reading her true intentions.

He dawdled behind the others as they made their way into the Guildtown. Despite sitting still all morning, he felt sluggish after his hurried meal and his brain was mash from forcing it to focus. He wasn't eager to relive the dark season in front of the whole Guildtown. He had a horrible feeling the attack on him in the castle during the siege would be dragged out and examined. He was just beginning to relax here, and he was about as eager to relive that night as he would have been to get a tooth pulled.

They were far from the first to arrive. As they reached the town centre clearing, they joined a small crowd of other Unspoken heading the same way. They were all bypassing the town's biggest building, instead funnelling down a narrow trail to one side of it. They followed its wall and then a short stretch of wide trail for a few minutes before the woods opened out again into another clearing, the existence of which Jordan had been completely oblivious to until now, concealed as it was by main block. In the centre was another stone building, but this one had no roof, and all around the sides were low sets of tiered stone benches, only three layers deep. Unspoken already dotted these stands of seats. The floor of the building was packed earth, strewn with straw to sop up the worst of the damp underfoot. In the centre were two stone pedestals, one higher than the other and in which was carved a short set of steps and a stand to balance papers on. The other was little more than a block.

"Cara will stand there," Yddris said. He had fallen back to walk with Jordan when the gathering closed in, and now he pointed at the higher pedestal. "And the speaker will talk from the witness stone." He indicated the other block.

"It looks like the Assembly," Jordan said. It wasn't an association he liked much. "But smaller."

"The Assembly room was modelled on this place." Yddris ushered him onto a reasonably empty bench, where they had a good view of the platform below. "Our people have been using this building to meet and discuss important issues since the days of the first Harkenn. Since long before the Guild as we know it was formed. Our town is in the densest forest in Nictaven, because when our kind first settled here, it was the only place our persecutors would never follow us."

Jordan shivered surreptitiously.

Cara swept through the open entrance, her appearance marked by the reverence with which other Unspoken stepped aside to let her pass. She headed straight for the high pedestal and set a large leather-bound book on its stand.

"The records," Yddris explained. "She'll be writing a summary of what is said as we speak."

"We have the most comprehensive history collection in existence," Thirris said from his other side. "Faellian Harkenn hates it, but his ancestors signed a treaty that prevents him from ever possessing it."

"Wherever history happens, there are Unspoken," Yddris said, and Jordan was certain his tutor noticed how the words chilled him.

As the last few Unspoken filed into the building, a quiet descended, though there was no obvious signal that they would start. Jordan glanced over his shoulder as Hap and Koen settled on the tier behind them, Koen still gasping for breath from whatever training he had just come from and sulkily ignoring Hap's quiet comments.

"Alright?" Jordan whispered. "You sound terrible."

Koen only shook his head and patted him on the shoulder by way of greeting.

"He's being dramatic," Hap muttered.

The quiet scaled down into a restless silence, cutting off their conversation. At his side, Yddris straightened and turned his gaze to Cara, so Jordan followed suit.

"Welcome," the guildmaster said, and though the forest continued to move and shift above them, her voice carried easily. "I have called this meeting to discuss several issues that have come to light during the dark season. I hope that we can come to some interim solutions. I have three issues for you today. First are the losses we suffered in the city of Shadow's Reach this season. We will also discuss the sabotage of isolated towns and hamlets around the Barrens fringes. Thirdly, we must discuss the breach in the Whispering Wall."

The first Jordan had expected, and the second he had been aware of. The third he had only heard about in conversations he wasn't part of, and of which he wasn't entirely clear on the meaning. Yddris had shown him the Whispering Wall before – the distant emerald wall that represented balance in the currents – but it was still an abstract concept. If it was made of magic, how could it breach? And what would have caused it?

"This third issue," Cara continued, "will encompass the strange behaviours of demons over the season, and the possibility that it is linked to the plague in the south."

Jordan clenched his fists in his lap. All of those issues could mean he was called to witness; he had seen evidence of everything. Damn Yddris for constantly being in the middle of everything.

"To start us off, I would like to call Yddris to the stone as a witness for our first point of discussion. We will also hear from Hap and Astra, who have graciously agreed to witness for us."

Along the bench, Jordan sensed more than saw Astra stiffen.

Yddris rose, leaving no one between him and the other apprentice. As his tutor crossed the platform and climbed up to the witness stone, Jordan shuffled closer. He gently extracted Ren from his hood and set her on the bench between them, and the shadow-runner promptly took the hint and began pawing at Astra's clenched fist.

"Take her with you if you want," he murmured. "She's good for nerves."

He braced himself. He had no way of knowing how Astra would react to his presumption, and was fully prepared to be rebuffed. Instead, to his surprise, she let Ren climb into her lap and began to stroke her almost compulsively. With her other hand, she gently touched Jordan's fingers in thanks, though she didn't spare him a glance as she did so. Face heating and chest loosening with relief, Jordan turned his attention back to Yddris.

"...the only person I know to have survived such an attack," his tutor was saying, and Jordan's heart sank when he realised where this was going, "is my own apprentice, Thorne. From what I gathered, his saving grace was to keep the wound open. It seemed as though the contact with Nika's magic reignited it, with some effort. So far I haven't seen evidence that his ability has taken any lasting harm from the encounter."

Cara finished writing something, and looked up at the stands, unerringly finding the spot where Jordan sat bolted to his seat. "You may simply stand to answer a couple of questions for me, Thorne. If you consent."

On shaky legs, Jordan rose. His hands sweated inside his gloves.

"When your magic left you after contact with this weapon," Cara said, "can you describe to me how it felt?"

"Cold," Jordan began hoarsely, then cleared his throat and tried again. "It was cold, and empty. One second it was there, and then it was like my breath had been punched out of me. It wasn't like it was just...gone, you know? It was like it had been scraped out by force from the inside. I thought I was losing my mind." He trailed off as his voice wavered. A hum in the air indicated the agitation of the Unspoken around him. Astra sat as though turned to stone. "Even when it came back, it took a few hours to feel normal again, and several days for the wound to stop bleeding."

"So it didn't remove it, only cut you off from the source. You didn't feel as you did before you manifested? It wasn't simply shock?"

"No." Jordan swallowed so that his voice wouldn't crack. "I...didn't want the Gift, when I got it. If you'd asked me before then whether I'd want it taken away, I'd probably have said yes... But when it went that way, I wanted it back. I think I might have begged Nika to bring it back. I don't remember very clearly. Someone told me afterwards it was me that scraped a chunk out of my shoulder." He shut his mouth, abruptly aware that he was sharing things with the entire guild that even he and Yddris hadn't discussed. Then he added, more quietly, "I haven't taken it for granted since, at least."

"And..." Cara paused and seemed to steady herself. "You haven't felt anything amiss with your Gift since you recovered?"

"No, I haven't."

"Okay. Thank you, Thorne."

Jordan sat. Yddris's eyes lingered on him from the witness stone, until Cara's questions pulled his attention away. Koen's hand squeezed his shoulder from behind.

He tuned out of the rest of that section of the meeting, unwilling to think about it anymore. In many ways, that night had been the beginning of some of his worst problems – he had agreed to join the Devils that day. Harkenn had lost patience with his slow progress. Worst of all, it had driven home that he was entirely reliant on Nictaven, that being separated from it felt like a living death. That more than anything had shrivelled his hopes of getting home. It was hard to motivate himself to find a solution when all it would mean, if he succeeded, was most likely losing his sister and being stuck in this world alone for the rest of his life.

As Hap returned to his seat from his own turn at the witness stone, Jordan dragged his attention back to Cara. He hadn't been able to look at Yddris when he returned to his seat; at the time of the incident, his tutor had been out cold from overexertion. He had no idea how much Nika had said of it before today.

Little Dunbauern had not been an anomaly, it quickly became apparent, as Cara rattled off a list of villages and hamlets that had had nets sabotaged, either in part or as a whole. Jordan's gut turned to ice as she described one sighting of a strange cloaked figure leaving the site of what later became a Wight massacre. He felt the eyes of the others who had been at Dunbauern flick to him as she said this, a confirmation of their worst suspicions. Jordan wondered if one of those creatures had ever managed to come close to their camp while they were distracted. The idea made him want to vomit.

"But how are they getting around?" One Unspoken raised a hand, and spoke at a gesture from Cara. "If they are indeed the same perpetrators as the Shadow's Reach murderers, how can they be getting to isolated Barrens hamlets without ever being caught? They have to be moving without Unspoken escort. How are they doing it?"

Yddris raised his hand. "I think we can conclude that they have some form of magic. It's not the same as ours – Kiel knows what its source is. The Angel who serves Lord Harkenn has said that these things have no aura."

"But everything living has an aura!" someone protested.

"That's impossible!"

"You'd trust an Angel's word?"

"Quiet, please." Cara's voice carried effortlessly around the space, and to Jordan's amazement, despite the buzzing tension, everyone subsided. "Carry on, Yddris."

"Harkenn's Angel slave has no love for Caelum," Yddris continued in a tight voice. "I believe she was actually almost attacked herself by this thing. I have never known her to be wrong about these matters. I would be prepared to consider the possibility that these things can hide an aura, like it's rumoured some Angels can. If they have enough magical capability to sabotage a rune net and survive the Barrens alone, that does not seem like such an outlandish idea."

"Could they be Angels?" someone asked.

"Lord Harkenn has had a specimen in his dungeon for several weeks. They aren't Angels. They aren't like anything I've ever seen."

"You keep calling them things," Cara said.

"I have seen the body, Cara. I couldn't tell you how it functions. It's blind, near bloodless, and was missing several key organs."

Cara was silent for a time. The whole room seemed to hold its breath.

"Yddris," the Guildmaster said slowly, her voice gone very solemn. "How many bodies have gone missing from Kelian temples?"