Pendric thought this might even be working, until the voices screamed in his head. They overpowered all the gentle forest sounds, they overpowered his own thoughts. They overpowered everything. He fell to the ground burying his head beneath his arms. When this did nothing to dampen the keening voices, he rose to his knees and smashed branches against a downed log and screamed out his own anguish, unable to distinguish his voice from the others.

Finally he stopped, panting with exertion. Something must have happened at the wall, and he needed to find out what. His horse was gone, he had spooked it into running off. He climbed unsteadily to his feet and trotted in the direction of the encampment.

Eventually he found his horse grazing on leaves alongside the trail. He approached it carefully, speaking softly so as not to spook it again, and collected the reins. Once mounted, he slapped the horse with his riding crop, sending it into a breakneck charge.

The sky was darkening when finally his exhausted horse stumbled into the clearing of the encampment. Bonfires burned everywhere, and many torches and lanterns were clustered at the breach. Pendric kicked his horse onward, until bloody foam dripped from its mouth, and its sides heaved. He’d kill it if he had to, to get him to the wall. The horse took up a tired trot. When he reached the breach, he swung out of the saddle and simply let go the reins of his horse, not caring if it fell over and died.

A couple of soldiers stood atop the breach, peering into the forest. Others crowded around his father, who spoke rapidly with officers. Pendric shoved aside several soldiers to reach him.

“Corporal, I want you to carry the news to Lord D’Yer with all haste,” Landrew was saying to a soldier in D’Yerian blue and gold.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Sergeant, as the only witness to this event, you are to ride straight to the king so he may know what has befallen here.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The sergeant was Uxton, if Pendric remembered rightly. Both the corporal and sergeant left the group at a run to attend to Landrew’s orders.

“What’s happened?” Pendric demanded.

His father finally took notice of him, his regard withering. “Your cousin has been taken by Blackveil.”

An involuntary, almost hysterical giggle erupted from Pendric’s throat. “Evil takes evil.”

His father’s slap rocked him like a blast of white lightning, but it helped clear his head, made him feel better. He almost wished his father would do it again.

“Remember who you speak of,” Landrew growled. “Your own flesh and blood.” Around them, soldiers shifted uneasily. “He at least attempted to do something about the wall, and he was sacrificed for trying.” With that, he totally dismissed his son.

“My lord,” shouted one of the soldiers on the breach, “there’s something going on down there, I don’t—”

Human cries of terror rolled over the wall in waves, and all were shocked into silence.

“Someone’s coming!” the soldier reported. He and his companion moved about the breach to help whoever it was over the wall.

Pendric watched in fascination. The man who descended the ladder was not his cousin, but another soldier.

“What happened, Mandry?” one of the officers demanded. “Where are the others?”

Tears streaked down the man’s cheeks. “It opened up.”

The officer knelt beside Mandry, who sat on the ground, his back to the wall. “What are you saying? What opened up? Where are the others?”

“The ground—it opened up and took them. It almost got me, but I ran. I could hear their screams . . . from beneath the ground. I looked back—there were only bumps on the ground where they’d been, like newly buried dead. Then Carris, I saw his face in the moss. ‘Help me,’ he says. ‘It’s—it’s swallowing me.’ And then he was pulled under. I tried digging after him, but the ground, it started moving beneath my feet again, so I ran.”

Murmuring and cries of dismay broke out among the soldiers.

“Silence!” Landrew shouted. Pendric watched as his father’s face became as set as granite with determination. He then called to his servant. “Bring me my sword. I’m going in there myself.”

The officers protested strenuously, but could not dissuade him. Even as Landrew climbed the ladder, giggles bubbled in Pendric’s throat.

If neither his father or Alton returned, there was a very real possibility he might be next in line to be the lord-governor of D’Yer Province, and for some reason it struck him as very funny.

BLACKVEIL

The sentience undulated in the moss beneath the man’s body, taking in its weight and contours. It absorbed blood that trickled from his head wound. The sentience penetrated the man’s mind, but found only dark nothingness. Bewildered, it fled, back into the world of moss.

The man was not dead, that much the sentience gathered, but the guardians of the wall were keening in anguish. Not only were they alarmed by the sentience’s wakefulness, but they were distraught by the man’s presence in the forest. So distraught were they, their efforts to coax the sentience back to sleep proved weak and ineffective.

The sentience was intrigued. What could upset the guardians so about this one man? Why was he important to them? With him in his darkness, it was difficult for the sentience to learn much about him.

Red stinger ants filed out of the nearby mound of soil and forest debris that was their nest. Attracted by the man’s scent, they formed a line leading in his direction, marching relentlessly forward over leaf and under twig. Bite by bite, they would return to their nest bearing tiny bits of human flesh. If the man’s consciousness returned at some point during the process, the poison the ants injected with each bite would leave him paralyzed, and a helpless witness to the slow devouring of his own body.