The heavy plates of my dark armor, which had been baked by the sharp sun during the day, began to slowly cool, transferring the chill of the oncoming night through my gambeson and onto my skin. That quiet, metallic clink accompanying every movement of my shoulders and thighs was unnaturally loud in the deep silence of the woods. I realized that in this world, where trees remembered the birth of human lineages, I was a foreign, intrusive element. The steel armor, forged by human smiths in the hearths beneath the castle, was a symbol of human pride and fear, but here, under the canopy of ancient oaks, it held no real weight.
My left hand held the leather reins firmly yet calmly. With my other hand, I subconsciously checked the strap of the heavy travel cloak that draped over my shoulders, shielding me from the dampness beginning to rise from the undergrowth. I remembered the day I received that cloak—it was three years ago, when the king knighted me into the castle guard after the Battle of the Red Marshes. Back then, it seemed that the world had clear rules, that honor and loyalty to one’s oath were the highest values a man could live by. How foolish I had been.
The real world had nothing to do with the heroic songs the minstrels sang at the royal table for a few silver coins. Those who composed those songs had never stood upon the ramparts in the dead of night when fear crawls beneath your fingernails, and they had never experienced the absolute, paralyzing helplessness I had felt a few hours ago in the northern tower.
The image that no one would ever erase from my memory flashed before my eyes once more. The stone chamber, which only yesterday had smelled of dried flowers, was cold and alien. Every detail there told the story of an assault that lasted no longer than a few seconds. An overturned chair, its back splintered as if pressed by an invisible, immense force. The silver chalice, from which we had drunk sweet southern wine together just last night, lay in the corner, crumpled like a piece of worthless paper. And on the ground, amidst the ruin, lay the purple ribbon.
I had lifted it from the floor back then, my hand trembling in a way it never had in any battle. The silk was delicate, but scorched at one end, as if struck by lightning. When I pressed the fabric to my face, the gentle scent of wild thyme she used to wear in her hair was gone. There was only the smell of cold, ancient dust, and the scent of ozone that lingers in the air after thunder strikes the earth. This was not the work of men. No human abductor, no rival nobleman would have left such a trace behind.
Old Father Boniface, whom the king, in a fit of despair, had summoned from the chapel below the castle in the middle of the night, barely looked at the ribbon before his entire face turned as white as chalk. His old, gnarled fingers began to cross themselves frantically, his lips moving in a silent, voiceless prayer.
“This is no sin of a mortal, Your Highness,” he whispered to the king then, his voice shaking like dry leaves in the wind. “This is a Shadow from the old world. An ancient entity that has slept in the northern wilds since the ages when our fathers did not yet know how to speak. It emerged from the depths of the Forbidden Forest. It took what it deemed most beautiful, and returned to where the human eye cannot reach.”
The king merely sat upon his throne then, his head in his hands, his golden crown slipping down onto his forehead. That mighty ruler, before whom half the known world used to kneel, looked in that moment like an old, broken man who understood that his power ended at the forest’s edge. His captains spoke of gathering an army, of drawing swords and launching a punitive expedition, but I saw the fear in their eyes. They knew an army meant nothing in the Forbidden Forest. They knew the trees themselves could swallow hundreds of men without a single blow being struck.
And so, I did not wait for the king’s orders, which would have never come anyway. I went down into the quiet stables, where the air smelled of straw and oats. My black stallion greeted me with a soft nicker. He knew me; he knew that when I laid the heavy travel saddle upon his back and fastened the saddlebags, we were not going for a routine patrol of the ramparts. I packed only the bare essentials—a little dried meat, a supply of oats for the horse for the first few days, and the longsword that hung heavily at my left hip.
As I rode beneath the heavy iron portcullis of the castle gate, the guards did not question me. They saw the look in my eyes and understood that words would be useless. They knew where I was going, though none of them spoke it aloud. To them, I was a dead man willingly marching into the maw of a forbidden world.
Now, as the purple twilight definitively turned into a deep, impenetrable forest night, the world around me shrank to just a few meters of the trail my stallion struggled to find ahead of us. The crowns of giant oaks and pines merged above our heads into an unyielding, black canopy through which not even the faintest starlight could pierce. The air was icy and sharp, smelling of damp earth, decaying wood, and ancient moss that blanketed the tree trunks like a thick coat.
Yet, it was not the kind of silence a man knows from the safety of his home. The forest lived its own hidden life. From the darkness came the faint snapping of twigs, the drawn-out rustling of leaves, and sounds I could not attribute to any animal I had ever hunted in my life. Occasionally, from the depths of the woods, a deep, prolonged groan of an ancient trunk echoed, sounding almost like a human sigh.
I stopped the horse in a small clearing where the trees parted for a moment, allowing the cold light of the moon to fall upon the ground. My quest was only beginning, and I was well aware that I had no direction. There were no paths leading to a destination in these woods, and no man could guide me. If I was to have even the slightest hope of finding her, I first had to seek out those who had lived in this forest from the very beginning. Creatures of whom the old folk spoke only in tales around the fire. Smarter than men, older than the castle above us.
The horse suddenly froze. His ears shot forward, and a low, warning snort escaped his throat. I felt his muscles trembling beneath my saddle. I gripped the reins tighter, my hand automatically sliding to the hilt of my sword, even though I knew steel might not be enough in this gloom.
From the purple mist that rolled lazily between the trunks at the edge of the clearing, a figure slowly began to take shape, without making a single sound. It was not the shadow of the wizard, nor a wild beast. It was something else.