The Arkanist

The Aden

The Aden

Jakn and Vena followed Martem into the dark borders of the Aden at five o’clock sharp. From the town, the huntsman led them across a cold grey field, which separated the people from the forest. The trek was short, but along the road, Jakn’s mind flooded with thoughts. As they reached the rim of the wood, he’d given himself a throbbing headache, one fueled by children’s stories telling of how ghosts and vampires and demons werewolves and witches lived amongst the talking trees. He remembered the trees fighting each other in the stories, the old birch against the oak, and the pines siding with the birch because they gave them gifts of fortune and the firs fighting alongside the oak because they were brethren. Such children’s stories rarely became fruition, but he was scared of them nonetheless.

         “Keep your wits about you,” Martem said as he swept beneath the dark shadows. “And your minds. It is often those two things drive a man to madness more than death.”

         Jakn coughed as he stared up at the gnarled and ancient trees, creaking and moaning in the ravenous winds, their canopies heavy with snow and ash. Vena strapped her lute to her back and walked behind Jakn as he hummed under his breath the tune, ‘Endless Road’. His words were smothered by the oppressive hands of the forest as he passed under its looming shadow, and realized he was walking into his nightmares.

         Martem ventured ahead a bit, tapping the rooted and uneven ground, littered with leaves and patches of snow as he went with his birch staff. Jakn hurried after him, Vena at his side, sticking close to the huntsman’s tracks, stepping where he stepped and so forth. After a time of tip-toing about, Martem stopped at a fork of two dirt paths.

         “Are you lost?” asked Jakn.

         Martem only bent down and returned with an arrow, the iron head glinting in the dark shadows. “Bandits,” he cursed. “They’re the only ones in this wood that fletch their arrows with leaves. The rest use feathers of all kinds. They are barbarous, these bandits, hard and strong fighters all of them. Amongst them, they are made up of outlaws escaping the justice of the present crown with a steep price on their heads, highwaymen who are in an open rebellion against the new High King, and seek to deal as they chose. There are also the lords and barons who have been stripped of their titles and lands following the fall of the Anturan Empire, and have found no other way than this to find money and a home. Most are thieves and assassins either deprived of work or sent away by their masters. Some are even old knights of the empire, and of holds who have lost their castles to the new crown, and have been exiled into the wild. That is what awaits us in these perilous woods. That is what we must watch through the murk and shadow. That is what wants to gut us, steal our gold, and rape our corpses.”

 He stared hard at them, eyes like stones. “We must be quiet in our travels, for we could be walking into a trap at anytime.” He began walking silently onward, turning left at the fork. “And I’ll have you know, boy, I’m never lost. This is my home. Do you get lost in your home?”

         “I don’t have a home,” he said, serious.

         “Well that’s a pity isn’t it,” Martem replied. “Every man should have a home, yet it doesn’t have to be a building or place. It can be with someone, or an object, mind you.”

         “His home is with me,” Vena said. “And my home is with him.”

         Martem stopped. “That’s cute enough to kill me.”

         They all laughed at that and continued off through the Aden, the sky lost behind the emerald green curtain. Yet the forest was cold. A strange cold. A cold that chills the bones. Yet there was no wind, the air stagnant and still as stone. There was no snow, no sunlight, no moon. Only darkness and cold. It was a cold of the earth, one that cannot be felt on the skin, but inside, where it gnaws at your organs until all that’s left is the bones, which slowly decay and rot into the ground. Jakn wondered how many skeletons were beneath this soil. He dared not guess.