2

⁠—⁠—⁠— II ⁠—⁠—⁠—

To greet the coming of night in the Marches requires a great deal of bravery.

This is true even should you have a roof over your head and four strong walls around you. As for camping outside, no man endowed with wits would ever consider it even in the direst of circumstances.

Growing up in the safety of the Middle Country, the hardships of the Marches were foreign to the twins of Parros—and the fiends, beasts, and barbarians that lived there mere fairytales. Fear had always been at a distance, never something that jumped out and bit into their hearts. Had it been otherwise, there was surely no way they would have spent an entire night in the Roodwood with the prickly vasya as their only shelter.

Even though Rinda and Remus were blissfully unaware of the good fortune that had protected them thus far, this was to be their second night in the forest, and if nothing else, the events of the day had taught them caution. The bodies of men— riders from Stafolos Keep—lay about them on the ground where they had fallen, and it was a certainty that more riders would be out searching for their missing brothers.

“Um, Rinda?” Remus spoke in a low, worried voice, their grim surroundings having a chilling effect on him.

“Not now! Go pick more of that grass!” Rinda spoke without even turning to look at him, so accustomed was she to her role as undisputed leader. She was busily tending to the wounded warrior that had saved them, washing his powerful arms and legs with a wetted cloth and applying a poultice of medicinal herbs.

“But the sun’s going down!” her brother continued.

“I can see, you know.”

“It’ll be nightfall soon!”

“I know, that’s precisely why I’m hurrying!”

“Let’s build a fire then. I’ll go get grass, okay?”

“No!” Rinda’s voice was stern. “If they see the smoke from the keep, we’re as good as caught!”

“But if we wait until dark—”

“Remus, I know why you’re afraid.” As she spoke, Rinda had propped up the man’s leopard head and was now attempting to pour water through his lips, without much success. “It’s because we’re in the Marches, right? But what would you have us do? Shall we just sally over to Stafolos Keep and say, please sirs, we’re afraid of the ghouls and demons in the woods, might we stay just one night? Think that would work?”

“But, but Rinda! Rinda…”

“My name is to be spoken, not whined,” Rinda said, her eyes flashing. “Really, is that anyway for the true heir to the throne of Parros to act?”

“But…”

“Strength, Remus. We have to live through this, somehow. Now, we’ve managed to get horses and swords, and there’s food in the riders’ saddlebags. If we can just make it through the night, tomorrow we can ride out to the road, maybe even find a town of some kind. But for tonight, we have no choice. We’re staying here.”

“We should have just left that thing you’re taking care of alone and gotten away while it was still light.”

“And lose our way in the accursed Roodwood and end up riding around in circles for all time? Don’t be foolish! And besides, I always know the right path. After all…” Rinda furrowed her brow and spoke as though deep in thought, “after all I am a Seer of Parros.”

Her brother fell silent. On the surface, the twins of Parros may have looked like two pearls from the same oyster, but Remus knew—had known for all of his fourteen years—that inside, they were different. For he lacked the power that should have been his by birthright along with the royal blood that flowed through his veins. He lacked the gift of foresight and clairvoyance, the gift of prophecy.

Rinda barely noticed her brother’s injured silence. Instead, her face suddenly lit up, and she leaned over her giant patient.

“Remus, look! He’s come awake!”

The leopard head shook from side to side, weakly at first and then with greater determination. The twilight was a pale lavender in the gloaming hour. Set in the leopard head, the man’s eyes shone with an unearthly yellow glow in the deepening dusk. Then he turned to look at the two children leaning over him.

The giant maw moved slightly, and out came a low growl. Remus, startled, drew back, but Rinda stayed leaning close over him, holding his head in her delicate hands and trying to get across to him somehow that they were his friends.

“Water? You want water?”

When she lifted the Gohran helmet that her brother had used as a makeshift bucket to bring water from the spring, the leopard-man abruptly rose to a sitting position and reached out a hand, his eyes flashing.

But when he lifted the helm to his mouth, he growled wildly in despair and frustration. The leopard mask placed on his head formed a barrier between face and water, preventing him from quenching his thirst.

Rinda tilted her head quizzically at his despair. Then suddenly, she clapped her hands together as an idea came to her. Standing up, she began to search around the clearing. After a while, she returned to her patient with a satisfied look on her face, brandishing her find—a single hollow stalk of straw. After demonstrating with the straw herself, she gave it to the man, who placed it between his lips and began, eagerly, to drink.

It was likely that a good nine-tenths of his weakened state was due to severe thirst and hunger. He seemed greatly improved after he had finished drinking—in what seemed to Rinda an impossibly brief period of time—the contents of the large helm.

“Who would do such a thing?” Rinda spoke as she gazed thoughtfully at the leopard head. “Why, if you put a mask like that on someone and left him alone, how would he eat or even drink? I tried to take it off while you were sleeping, you see, but it wouldn’t budge. It’s been fixed with some foul curse, I should imagine. But really, how could a powerful swordsman like you end up having something like that put on your head?”

The ears of the leopard head were bent forward attentively. From deep within the mask, two eyes sparkled with a penetrating light as they stared at Rinda, evidence he understood everything the girl said. The two gaps in the mask around his eyes were the only places where his true face showed through, but still, thought Rinda, so fierce was the suppressed rage and iron will hidden in those yellow eyes that she would not have been surprised to find that, in fact, they were the eyes of some wild creature and not a man’s at all. When Rinda had finished speaking, the leopard-man raised his powerful hands and tried once again to pull off the mask.

His efforts were made in vain. He let his hands drop again and gave a low anguished growl, but he reached out again when Rinda offered him some of the dried meat rations she had taken from the black riders’ saddlebags. It seemed the strips were easier to push through the mask than the water had been, and he soon began chewing on the dried meat hungrily.

“Well, at least you won’t die of starvation, even if you can’t get that off,” proclaimed Rinda, seeming somewhat relaxed as she knelt to watch the ravenous man eat.

Remus stood nearby, staring in round-eyed wonder. “So, what, he’s actually a human?” he asked with some doubt.

“More than you are sometimes, I should think!” said Rinda. “This leopard mask was put on him by some king or nobleman—or perhaps it was an evil sorcerer whose wrath he incurred. I’m sure of it! He certainly didn’t put it on himself— I can’t imagine anyone who would! Yes, it must be the work of some sorcerer. Why else would it stick on like it does even when he struggles to remove it? We’ve saved you,” she said, now turning to the leopard-headed warrior, “so we’re your friends. Now, what can we call you?”

While Rinda had been talking, a change had come over the leopard-man. It seemed the food and water had succeeded in bringing him back to life, though doubtlessly his phenomenal strength and powers of recuperation had also helped. Still holding a strip of dried meat in his hand, he let out a muffled growl. Rinda jerked back, startled at first, until she realized that he was saying something, though the mask made his words hard to make out.

“What’s that?” she prompted him again.

“Guin…”

“Guin?” asked Rinda. He seemed to be saying that one word over and over. “Is that your name?”

“I… I think so.” Now his words were coming through more clearly.

“You can talk! I’m Rinda, and this is my twin brother, Remus. What land are you from? By the shade of your skin, I’d say you’re not from the north, or are you?”

“Aurra…” was the only answer he gave.

“Pardon?” asked Rinda. “What was that?”

“Aurra…”

“Aurra? Is that where you’re from?”

“I don’t… know.”

His words were horribly muffled and slow as he struggled to speak through the leopard-head mask. Rinda was starting to get irritated and clucked her tongue impatiently as she leaned toward him.

“Aurra… Guin…”

“So, tell me—how did you ever get this thing put on your head?”

“Um, Rinda?”

Remus might not have been as quick-witted and lively as his sister, nor was he a prophet, but he never lacked in practical sense and logic. While casting worried glances around at the deepening navy shades of dusk, he had seen that getting the leopard-man to speak enthralled his sister all the more every minute; she seemed to have forgotten their grim surroundings, where they were, and how much trouble they were in. Unable to restrain himself any longer, he reached out and grabbed Rinda’s shoulder.

“What? That hurts!”

“Um, Rinda, the night… it’s coming!”

“I know that!” Rinda snapped back, but her face had taken on a somewhat worried look. She took another look around to reassess their immediate situation, and finding the shadows of the approaching night far deeper than she had thought, she quickly made the sign of Janos.

“Excuse me,” she said, turning back to the leopard-headed man. “The night’s coming. The night is coming!”

“So it seems.”

Whether the twins had become used to the speech of this man who called himself “Guin,” or whether the water he had been drinking had finally soothed his parched throat, his words were much clearer now. He looked around them, deep into the viscous violet gloom that filled the woods and hid lurid promises of fear and horrors unknown.

The underbrush in the woods around them rippled and rustled as a billow of wind picked up, carrying with it a foul rotten odor. Vampire vines swished in the treetops, and the beady eyes of vipers and things far worse glimmered crimson in the thick brush below. Silent during the day, the forest was coming alive again, showing its true face in the dark of night.

“Is that a problem?” asked Guin.

Rinda clucked her tongue in despair and disbelief. “Really! Have you no idea where this is? This isn’t the middle country anymore. Why, Stafolos Keep stands right on the border between the middle country and the Marches! Gohran rule is just a rumor in the wind out here, and even the black riders of Mongaul wouldn’t think of going farther than the Roodwood with anything less than a full company! And that’s exactly why we’ve come to the forest to hide. Better demons that don’t know where we are than riders that do, right?

“But not now, with night almost here!” she continued. “That might not be a bad thing where you’re from, but here in the Marches, the night belongs to spirits and wildlings and worse! Night is when the forest dwellers come out!”

“That’s why I want to make a fire,” said Remus, hugging himself tightly, his teeth quietly chattering.

“No,” said Rinda, reflexively turning him down. Then, after some thought, she gave in. “But I guess there’s no way around it. The vasya bushes were enough to keep us safe for one night, but you’re too big to hide there. Or wait, Guin, do you have some spirit blood in you? Are you not afraid of the night?”

For some reason, Rinda had been reluctant to call him by his name, and when the word left her mouth a peculiar, almost otherworldly shudder ran through her limbs. What’s wrong with me?

Though well-versed in omens and signs of all kinds, suddenly Rinda was scared to examine with her inner eye the tremors that now shook her body. Aware of her brother’s suspicious gaze, she followed his lead and wrapped her arms around herself and grabbed her shoulders, pretending that her shivering was due to the cold of the forest air.

The leopard-man, for his part, hadn’t seemed to notice Rinda’s discomfort at all. Instead, he had stretched his giant hands before his face and seemed to be engrossed in staring at them.

“I was wounded,” he muttered so low that only Rinda could clearly hear him. “Here, too, a scar from a blade. I must have been in battle. But this—this looks not unlike the mark of a lash. The Marches? Stafolos Keep? This ‘Roodwood,’ I have heard of… but why would I have come here? An enigma, along with this—” Here he lifted his hand to finger the leopard mask where his head and face should have been. “How have I come to have this… this…”

“You mean you don’t know?” shouted Rinda, putting her hands to her mouth in surprise. “You don’t remember at all?”

“It… seems that way.”

Thanks perhaps to the empathic abilities that ran in their blood, Rinda and Remus—particularly Rinda—had no trouble understanding Guin’s speech after a while. Had it not been them, had he spoken to unattentive ears, the slow muffled speech emitted by the great leopard mouth would have sounded nothing so much like animal whines and growling.

“Whom did I fight?”

“Whom did you fight? Why, you demolished an entire squad of the Gohran duke’s black riders!”

Rinda pointed at his handiwork as she spoke. The leopardman looked around and shook his head in bewilderment.

“I did that?”

“And what’s more, you saved us!”

“Rinda, can we make a fire? Please?” said Remus, almost shouting in his desperation, forcing Rinda back to the reality of their present situation.

“Right… right, of course. But you do know we’re not going to make it through the night alive.”

“Ghouls like the smell of blood, I hear,” added Remus. It was a little bit of trivia he had learned a long time ago. “It can’t be safe to be near these bodies.”

“The spring!” said Rinda after some thought. “We’ll just build a fire near the spring and spend the night between the water and the fire. The nixies won’t come out of the water to bother us, and isn’t fire the shield that Janos gave mankind? Right, and we’ll have to take three horses with us, too. We’ll need them, to ride out of this accursed forest at the first light of day.”

“Why are…” began Guin, struggling to find the right words. “Why are you here, in a place of such danger?”

“Well, we were—” Remus began to reply when his sister gave him a sharp pinch on the arm.

“The archduke of the Mongauli is after us,” was all Rinda said. “Well, we’d better get going.”

“Who am I?”

The giant man’s voice was so soft it barely passed his lips, yet it was so full of raw anguish that Rinda, who had just now been in a great hurry, stopped and turned around.

“Who am I? ‘Guin’—is that my name? With whom did I fight, and why am I in these woods? And this! For what possible reason could this have been put on me? What sorcery holds it, that it will not come off no matter what I do? As I sit here I cannot even recall my face.

“Was I being pursued,” the leopard-man asked no one in particular, “or had I escaped from some punishment for a crime? Where was I born? Who taught me the way of the sword? I don’t even know what kind of life I have lived; I remember nothing.”

“And ‘Aurra’ …Like ‘Guin’—the word that seems to be my name—this word ‘Aurra’ has been ringing in my head since I awoke. Aurra… Aurra? Is it some thing, or some person? What could it mean?

“My harbor, my house—my armor, my lord—where are these things? Is there a place where I might find peaceful sleep in the arms of a friend, or a place, where if I went, I would be hunted down, a wanted man, my life at risk? I… I do not know.”

With this, the warrior grabbed the leopard head in his giant fists and strained, as though he had gone mad, to take it off. But the mask stayed stubbornly affixed to his head. Crouching down, he covered his head with his arms.

Seeing him troubled so, Rinda’s kind heart was filled with sympathy. She placed a hand on the warrior’s shoulder and tried to comfort him as though he were a child. “You must be quite tired, and you’ve been wounded in battle,” she said, speaking gently in her sweetest voice.“I’m sure you’ll remember everything in due time, and find out how to get rid of that mask, too. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

“But for now, we must go. We are not welcome here. All will be better in the morning…”