Darkness had descended fully by the time she caught sight of the closest tower that flanked one side of Haradis's main gate. It rose above the treeline like a spear point, the small windows near the top nothing more than black spots from which no lamplight shone.
“The woodland breathes softly,” Serovek said in quiet tones. “And carefully, as if it either waits for something to come forth or hopes it passes by once it finally does.” The slight change in the way he held the cane knife alerted Anhuset to his rising caution.
She didn't scoff at his observation, feeling too a kind of unnatural hush that thickened around them, growing more and more stifling the closer they got to the city. No animal sounds, no scurrying for food, no howls or the crackle of dead leaves under creeping feet other than theirs. This forest was empty of its creatures.
The night held no mystery for her. She saw better in the shadow than she did in the light, and nothing looked out of the ordinary as they trekked closer to the gate. But the silence—it breathed, just as Serovek said, and Anhuset strained to hear some odd whisper or ghostly conversation float toward her. A burbling sound teased her ears, and she pointed in the direction from which it came, close to the city and growing louder as they walked.
“Water,” Serovek said.
Anhuset frowned. “I used to go adventuring with the herceges in these woods when we were children. There's no water on this side. The Absu curves around the city's southeastern border before bisecting it.”
“There was no stream on this side when we arrived in Haradis to fight the galla, but I know what I hear. It's the sound of water.” He groaned softly. “And I'm just now warming up.”
His good-natured complaint didn't lessen her increasing unease. A strangeness clung to these woods now, even without the wet whisper of running water that wasn't supposed to be nearby. It was as if each step closer to Haradis took her one more step away from the living world, where the stars glimmered above, and the shadows cavorted below as they had always done. This felt more like a falling away toward an abyss where everything that pitched into it fell and fell and never stopped. This wasn't her magic sounding a warning; her instincts recoiled ever harder from Haradis with each step taken.
“Anhuset.”
They'd halted. Anhuset frowned. When had they stopped? Serovek stared at her, concern mingled with puzzlement carving lines into his forehead. “Can you feel it?” His voice was barely above a whisper. “Haradis is more than abandoned, more than destroyed. It's befouled. Those who died here...theirs weren't clean deaths. Are you sure you want to do this? We can turn back any time you wish.”
Were he anyone else, she'd assume he either patronized her or considered her weak. Instead, she considered his words for a moment, knowing they were offered in empathy and a shared sense of wrongness suffocating the entire area. “I'm sure,” she said. “Was Haradis like this when you were here?”
Serovek shook his head. “I don't know. The galla were spewing out of the heart of Haradis, thicker than a hive swarm. Maybe what we're feeling is the memory of the trees. Such evil leaves a smear on everything it touches and lingers.”
His conjectures were reasonable and only added to her sense of urgency that she scout the city and report back every detail to Brishen, despite his expected disapproval. She might tell him things he already knew or expected, but her instincts, which had always served her well and kept her alive, told her this was something far more sinister than the haunting tragedy of Haradis's ruin.
“You've done me the favor of delaying your own journey to give me this opportunity, margrave, and I'm grateful. You aren't obliged to accompany me into Haradis. I promise to be swift. In, a quick look around, and out again so as not to delay more. But I have to do this.” As Anhuset spoke the words, sense of duty overrode instinct, and she barely controlled the urge to sprint out of the woods for the gate hidden behind the tree line. “I need to.”
He eyed her for a moment without speaking, then lifted the long knife he held to regard it with a measure of disdain. “I doubt this will do much good against anything lurking in the city, but it's better than nothing.” He swept a hand in the direction of Haradis and gave Anhuset a short bow. “Shall we, madam?”
Gladness sang through her that he chose to join her, but she pushed it down. Such foolery was reserved for the drunken hours after too many pints in an alehouse and no bedmate to help stave off melancholy self-reflection. It had no place here where the darkness that was more than darkness inhaled, exhaled, and waited.
She gasped at the sight greeting them. The last time she'd visited the capital had been when Brishen brought his new bride to face his parents and the royal court. Haradis, far from the sea, now perched on an island.
A series of canals dug by unknown hands in a spiderweb pattern channeled the water she and Serovek heard earlier. From her vantage point, she couldn't see their source, but the water's flow told her it came from the Absu itself. A small portion of the river had been redirected here—not for irrigating fallow fields but to isolate the city within the confines of a liquid labyrinth. A prison for the galla.
“Someone's been very busy,” Serovek remarked beside her. “And very afraid. This took the labor of many, and they favored speed over neatness.”
He was right. The canals were numerous but
