Forest For The Trees (Book 3) Read Online Free Page A

derelict, and met the fool’s
assertions of no memory regarding the actions taken with outright disbelief. 
What had happened to him?
    Adrian sat in the cold, his wrists bound, sitting back
to back with Bayonne.  The meager body heat from his fellow prisoners made no
discernable difference when faced with the assault waged by winter’s chill
legions.  Light breeze stole the wafting heat off his clothing, preventing the
fabric from warming against his skin.  A succubus cold reached up from the bare
earth of the roadbed, draining the energy from his legs until they felt as
frozen as the stones further off the road, stones that transformed the
remaining snow blanket into a lumpy quilt hastily thrown over a bed.  Not least
of all was the barren wasteland inhabiting the souls of each man sitting with
him.  Their unexpected lots transformed their spirits into a living embodiment
of the Death Season.
    The witching hours.  That is what gran used to call
it.
    He had not thought of her in long years.  Strange it
should come back to him under such circumstances.  She had never lived as a
member of a soldier’s family, and had always insisted on treating him same as
the local boys in her hometown despite his future career having been decided
since his birth.  His father could never have born any son except one who would
prove as loyal and steadfast as he.
    Others had insisted that the witching hours were the
most dangerous of times, existing on midnight’s stroke on the exact full of the
moon.  Such times were when anything dark and terrible could happen, especially
if one tempted Fate to rewrite your destiny.  The village boys, on the few
occasions when Adrian allowed his nature to devolve to one more natural to his
age and join them, had thrilled with the rebellion of committing those acts
warned most strenuously against.  They would sneak from their beds to meet in
empty groves, holding two mirrors to face each other exactly at the midnight
bell to see if an imp really would spring out from the reflected infinities.
    Gran had scoffed at such foolery.  According to her,
the witching hours were times when a person’s soul darkened under a cloud of
despair, turning barren under uncertainty.  Such times were the harshest trials
through which emergence was never guaranteed.  All one could do was fight to
the best of his nature and hope to see the sun shine through the fog one day. 
Even the most desolate wastelands could produce flowers, given time.
    Adrian had accepted her words without much thought. 
He had assumed he understood her meaning.  How ironic that only late in life
would the lesson come home with such weight.
    His fingertips brushed across the dirt, over the spot
on which he had sat for days.  Buried there were his insignia, the decorations
for a long career of faithful service.  Everything that could identify him as
an enemy officer of any rank.  Hardest to part with had been the silver
eleven-point crown insignia that marked him as the top general; not because it
meant casting away the decoration personally bestowed on him by the former king
but because it also served as his personal scrying anchor.  How would the
intelligence officers locate the prisoners?  The crack that now split the
surface already worried him, causing him to wonder if it were still
functional.  If the scryers located the anchor later, all they would see would
be a bare stretch of road rather than the captured general.
    Bayonne and Cherrad had helped him conceal the
decorations in a shallow grave dug through the frozen ground with their
stinging fingertips the day after they had been herded like cattle to
this lonely camp.  None could guess what these strange savages would do with
them except Adrian would certainly garner special interest if they came to
recognize the prize they had captured.
    He was one soldier among many, older than most though
clearly still a capable campaigner.  Every man imprisoned with him were