Where Arrows Fall | Snippet 2

The woods had been eerie, almost terrifying. The darkness and the distant thunder and the rustling of branches gave the impression that Alynn and Drostan were walking on the branches of the world tree Yggdrasil into another of the Nine Worlds—a cold and evil world, an eternal winter’s night. Perhaps there were giants watching them from the shadows; perhaps elfin spirits were following them.

All the same, the woods had a certain comfort to them. The calling of birds and the constant crunch of dirt, and certainly the deep smell of fragrant pine and fresh rain, were familiar and never-changing. But when the dirt turned to sand and the trees gave way to small shrubs and finally to plain emptiness, the familiarity was gone. Alynn felt as if she were standing on the very edge of the world; staring into a void that, if she fell into, she would never return from.

The sky and ocean were similar shades of grey; it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. Even the sand seemed more grey than usual. The wind whipped Alynn’s skirts about her ankles and sent Lukas’s sword knocking against the back of her leg. Strands of hair stuck to the corners of her lips no matter how frequently she tried to clear them away.

There were exactly two things that stood out in the void. The first was a small fishing pier. The second was a faering boat, several yards to the right of the pier and dragged halfway up the beach. It looked small and out-of-place, as if it had been placed there by a deity with goals beyond human under-standing.

Alynn looked at everything and shivered.

“Well, the boat’s still there,” said Drostan. He approached it, and Alynn, unwilling to be left alone at the edge of the forest, went with him. “I thought that our mystery guest would have used it for firewood.”

“Isn’t it too wet to burn?” Alynn asked.

“This is Orkney, Lynder. Everything’s wet, all the time. You learn how to make things work.” Drostan reached the boat and looked at the sand around it. Alynn focused more on the boat itself. It was ten feet long, riddled with cracks, and still stained with dried blood….

Alynn looked out over the water and shivered. “Let’s go home. Elspeth probably misses me.”

Alynn and Drostan turned to leave, but a noise caught their attention. Alynn’s gaze darted upwards; an eider duck was tumbling out of the sky with blood flowing from its breast. Curious, Alynn approached the duck. By the time she was within ten yards of the creature, two things were obvious. The duck was dead, and there was an arrow lodged through its heart.

Ignoring the duck, Drostan drew his sword and approached the forest. The bushes were rustling. Suddenly, a figure darted between two trees and then disappeared into the underbrush.

“Ho, there! Stop!” called Drostan. He chased after the figure, and Alynn tried to draw her sword and follow. But Lukas’s sword was longer than her own, and far heavier than she anticipated. By the time she was armed, Drostan was nowhere to be seen. Alynn ran into the forest anyway.

Her heart was pounding by the time she caught sight of Drostan—not from fear, but from exertion. She hadn’t run this fast since long before Elspeth was born. But her fear certainly increased when she realized that Drostan wasn’t moving. He stood frozen, staring at an arrow that was lodged into a tree inches away from his head.