It was under the darkness of the new moon that Adrienne was told to steal out from the Academy and into the deep forest that blanketed the mountains of Adivine. Bearing no lamp to light her way, she had spent the last forty minutes inching forward through the trees and undergrowth in a halting, groping manner, unable to see the nearly non-existent path beneath her. She tripped and scraped her hands, bloodying them upon the stones and roots of the forest floor. She verged on screaming in her frustration, but steadied herself. Where was Ghislain? According to his message he was supposed to have met her near the forest’s edge.

A wolf howled far in the distance, and the fifteen-year-old picked herself up and tried to survey the damage to her palms. However, within the total darkness of the woods she couldn’t tell blood from muck, only acknowledging her hands were injured because they throbbed. A second wolf answered the first, and this one seemed much closer. Adrienne’s heart rate doubled, but she told herself that her black cloak and cowl, intended to conceal herself from the nelds of the temple, may serve the same purpose when it came to beasts. Hopefully...

She forged on. Over root and under limb. Quietly. Deliberately. But even so, she lost the path. How could she not? A path she had never traversed, only described to her, and to be felt out, not seen. More howls. Adrienne sat down. Should she return to the Academy? Try again tomorrow? The nelds at the temple would have noticed her absence. What would she say? And she would be watched more closely.

The night was cold and she was threatened with the sounds of the forest. Filling her head were images of toads, snakes and other creeping things. She heard a flit of wings though the air. An owl? A bat? Something crept onto her hand and she sprang to her feet.

She took breaths, trying to quell her desperation. She realized that she had been pushing on long enough now that there was no more a way back than a way forward. She cursed herself for not having waited for Ghislain, for the fear of discovery which had prompted her impulsivity. Berating herself was futile, however. There must be some useful steps she could take even still. She was on a mountain and could at least judge the incline if not the way forward. If she headed downhill perhaps she could reach the town, but it was miles and she could remember steeper slopes and even cliffs when she thought back to her original trip to the temple years ago. It would be better to head uphill and hope she would emerge at the temple again. Perhaps Ghislain had arrived there after she had left; perhaps he had waited for her even though she had not waited for him.

Adrienne turned around and a light caught her eyes. Was it a star piercing the canopy? It was too low, she decided, and she took a few steps toward it. Then it was quickly lost, swallowed by tree trunks between her and its source. Adrienne move forward again until it reappeared, a faint point of green luminescence. What was it? A cabin’s lighted window? But that would not be green. The girl found her way impeded by bushes. She decided to push through them rather than possibly forever lose track of her welcome guidance. The further into the bush she fought, however, the more numerous the little thorns that grabbed at her, snagging her dress and arresting her progress—and regress—keeping her for themselves. Adrienne’s heart sped up again as she tried to rip her arms free, but the more she pulled the more they held her. Completely stuck fast, she screamed, imagining herself trapped forever among the thorns, a moldering skeleton for some woodsman to happen upon.

But there was the light again before her, accompanied by a sense that it was closer, not because it had changed in size, but instead because the forest around her had brightened. Adrienne could soon distinguish one shadow from another, the trunks of the trees, their branches, their leaves, ash leaves, ash and yew, life and death, and beneath them a…

The wolf stood in front of Adrienne, before it a fallen deer. Blood matted the fur of the wolf’s muzzle and gore fell from its mouth. The deer was still breathing, helplessly. The odd light cast everything in a monochrome green. The wolf looked up at Adrienne and its hair stood up from its neck. Its hackles raised. Adrienne still could not move. She was overwhelmed there, in the brambles, gazing into...not bestial, but almost human eyes. Adrienne was totally captured with fear, and yet the familiar human orbs calmed her. Perhaps it was natural for the wolf to have human eyes, its method to lure its prey. Perhaps she should look away, but considering her helpless state, Adrienne allowed herself to be hypnotized. She awaited the beast’s attack. The wolf spoke. “Go back,” it said. It said! Adrienne fell to her knees. Consumed with the wolf, she only vaguely noticed the brambles had retreated. The wolf continued. “If you continue down this path, what you will find there will eat upon you as I eat upon this deer. You will perish. And all that you engender will perish. And all the world.”

A hand rested upon Adrienne’s shoulder, waking her. Ghislain spoke: “I am sorry I was delayed. But we should be going.” He held out his hand to her. It was dark, but some moonlight filtered down to the pair. Rather than the proffered hand, Adrienne noticed behind it a dagger belted to the man’s waist. After a moment, she allowed the man to help her to her feet.

“Where are we going?” Adrienne asked Ghislain.

Ghislain found the question puzzling. “I’m taking you to your father,” he said.

“Well, yes. But where is my father? Is he down in the town?”

Ghislain’s eyes narrowed. “No. That would not be very safe for him. He is with his men in hiding, in the forest.”

‘Reasonable’, Adrienne silently opined. She looked across the yard toward the hulking shadowy form of The Temple of the Light Which Shineth Over All. In that dwarfing mass of stone and mortar she had spent the last decade of her life. It was perhaps two hundred yards away... Ghislain could easily catch her before she got there, if he had such a mind. “Lead the way,” she decided.

While the edge of the forest was considerably lighter than the blackness of Adrienne’s dream, the canopy of the trees soon occluded the moonlight from the path and the sound of the man’s slow stride was primarily what led her onward.

She held back some. Perhaps this was her opportunity to escape. She could simply stay still and after he’d gone on quietly hide off the side of the path.

He seemed, however, to sense her thoughts. For when she slowed, he turned back and took her hand with the excuse of offering her guidance.

The vice of his hand upon hers increased Adrienne’s leeriness and she decided to break the silence to calm herself. “How did you meet up with my father again after the war?”

“We shouldn’t talk now,” Ghislain replied, under his breath. “We are still too close to the temple.”

Adrienne tripped over a branch. If only she could have seen it first, she might have bent and retrieved it. A weapon to hit him over the head. A surprise. She had no illusions that she could knock him out, but he might release her hand, and it could give her a head-start to find a hiding place. Why did it seem he could see better than she? Adrienne kicked a stone. That was her opportunity. She pretended to trip, falling to her hands and knees and while there feeling for the stone. Ghislain quickly bent down to take her arm. Adrienne resisted him, and searched some more. Ghislain’s pull became stronger, but her free hand succeed. Her weapon was lighter than she had believed when she kicked it. She allowed Ghislain to guide her upward, but as she stood, she swung the stone madly through the air toward the soldier’s head. Ghislain had not seen the stone coming. As he cursed and collapsed to one knee, Adrienne was off, fleeing from the path through the undergrowth, branches whipping her in the face, thorns grabbing her, pulling her...

“Uh!” Something hit Adrienne across the back. She collapsed forward. Her hands caught her fall and were scraped against the stones and roots of the forest floor. She writhed, the pain in her back unbearable. She heard boots crunch against the twigs and brambles. Legs straddled her. A hand rolled her onto her back. Ghislain towered above her, a terrible, dominating silhouette.

“What now?” Adrienne asked.

Ghislain spat upon her, the moisture hitting her upon the face, her mouth and right eye. He knelt down and pinned her to the earth. Her arms gave a brief struggle, but were easily pinned about her head. “Because of you,” the soldier snarled, “because of you all my family dead. My father. My brother. My mother and sisters were locked into their house, and the house burned. Because of you.”

Adrienne turned her face away into her arm, the spittle still un-wiped from it. Ghislain kept her wrists trapped with one hand and used the other to grab his captive’s face at the chin and turn it toward him. “Look at me, you bitch. Answer me.”

“Answer you how?” Adrienne pleaded. “I did not start a war; I was five. I did not make choices for anyone. Answer you why? You will kill me regardle–”

“Shall I tell you what the soldiers did to my mother and sister before they locked them in the house?”

“I can imagine,” Adrienne said, haughtily. Ghislain swore and struck down upon the girl with all his might, rendering her unconscious.

* * *

In her perilous state, Adrienne revisited the dream she had had ten years ago, after she had first arrived as a ward to The Temple of the Light Which Shineth Over All. The dream that had so frightened her. The dream that she had told the nelds. The dream that the nelds interpreted. The dream that started the war.

The Duke of Fairech, hereditary enemy of the Duke of Adivine. The Duke of Fairech, malignant and despotic, stood resolved over the bed of the child Adrienne. “Come and see the world,” he said. “Your world.”

“No! Leave me!” the child shouted.

“I cannot. I have seen you. I must have you.” The dark form of the duke held out his hand.

“I want to go home,” the child sobbed. “I want to see my papa.”

“I can take you home, so long as you stay with me.”

Mistrustful and still crying, Adrienne took the duke’s hand. The duke took her up in his arms. He seemed of mammoth proportion and she no bigger than a baby in the cradle his arms created. He strode out through the window, but the mountain beyond the window was not what Adrienne remembered. There was no green thing in view. What trees she did make out were ashen and charcoal pillars, totems telling of a great fire.

The duke took steps so great, he passed down the mountain in as few movements as it would take to descend a flight of stairs. In moments, they were in the town of Adivinia, but there was no town, only a tower, a chalky white horn thrust as tall as the duke himself.

“What is that place? It seems evil.”

“It is the tower of the Empress. Forever young. Forever beautiful and she passes on her gifts to her subjects. Is that evil?”

“No,” Adrienne replied fearfully.

“Would you like to see her?” The duke stooped so that Adrienne could look in a window through which she saw a room of white marble. From the ceiling hung a magic glass ball suspended by a string, inside of which was a horizontal rod burning with a brighter light than any candle. It lit the entire room and made the objects within it cast dark shadows. On one side of the glass ball was a golden throne of astounding opulence, while on the other side, facing the throne, a statue of a strikingly beautiful woman. Her face, gazing at the throne scornfully, was so flawless and smooth that Adrienne felt the sculptor must have improved on nature. The woman was carved from some green stone, jade or emerald, its green so deep it gave Adrienne the fanciful idea that all the color absent from the forest without had been drained into the statue’s brilliant stone. Behind the Empress, for so Adrienne understood her, there were three shadows. Three shadows cast from the single magic ball. Beside the statue stood a man in clothes that even a five-year-old girl recognized as gaudy. He had sharp features, and red hair. Prim but not careful, he reminded Adrienne more of an actor than a courtier. And yet Adrienne could imagine him dressed differently, for it was in religious vestments that she was sure she’d seen a picture of him before. Many times. His was the image on coins. He looked out the window at Adrienne and the giant, and his face clouded with disapproval.

“Who is that beside her?” Adrienne asked.

“Little girl, are you yet so young that you do not recognize the devil?”

Again frightened, Adrienne turned her face into the duke’s black and curling beard. “I want to go. You said you’d take me to my father’s barony. I want to see my papa!”

“But your father is not in his barony. Wouldn’t you rather I take you to where he is?”

Adrienne nodded into the duke’s beard. The duke strode onward to the slope of the next mountain.

“The Castle of Oakswald,” the duke indicated. “Your father is inside. Would you like to see?”

“Yes, please.”

The duke sat Adrienne upon one of his hands and lowered her down to look through a window into the Great Hall of the castle. On the floor of the Great Hall, Adrienne saw the body of her father. In his chest was planted a sword. Above him stood the form of the Duke of Fairech. Adrienne craned around to look up into the face of the giant that held her to make sure it was the same man. She trembled and thought to jump down through his fingers, but the duke’s hand closed around her.

“He’s dead because I killed him. I killed him and I took all that was his.” The duke brought the squirming girl up to his eye level. “I took it. And I ate it!” The duke opened his mouth and suspended the shrieking child over it. And then he dropped her inside.

The again seventeen-year-old Adrienne awoke upon her back, her entire head throbbing. She brought her hand to her nose. “Oh!” It had to be broken.

“You aren’t allowed to die when you are unconscious. You have to know your death. Feel it.”

Across a campfire from his captive, Ghislain sat leaning against a tree. In the light, Adrienne could see that he was in his early twenties, with a neat beard and curly blond hair. He did not wear a uniform, but instead dark oiled leather from neck to boots and a traveler’s cloak. He sat with his legs spread wide and his hands upon his knees. From one of the hands dangled a strip of jerky upon which he had been gnawing. His shoulders were slumped. Nothing about him gave the impression of his being a soldier as he had led her to believe in his letters.

“But the messages you sent were written in my family’s private language. You were in my father’s army.”

“My brother and father were in your father’s army. Those who I asked thought it was fine to teach me.”

Adrienne raised herself to her elbow. “That’s not true. They would have to be officers and then they would not tell you.” Adrienne caught her breath. Her dream had been different this time than when she was little. Before when the giant form of the Duke of Fairech had lowered her down to look into the Great Hall of Castle Oakswald, she had seen the body of the Duke of Adivine, not her father, the Baron of Dunharrow. This dream she could interpret herself, and she could hardly bring voice to her conclusion. “Is my father dead?”

Ghislain smiled. “Five years.”

“Then there is no one who would come to my rescue.”

Adrienne’s captor laughed. “I thought you had been told. I wrote those letters thinking you’d be eager to believe they’d lied to you.”

“No,” Adrienne said weakly, mournfully.

She started to cry. “Why? Why, if your family fought for my father do you want your revenge upon me? The Corontine’s men killed your mother and sister. Not my father’s! Why don’t you want your revenge on the Archcorenth?”

“And now you add blasphemy to your crimes?” Ghislain stood up.

“Oh!” Adrienne cried in frustration. She beat the ground with her fist.

Ghislain picked up a torch from beside where he’d been sitting and thrust it in the fire to light it. Then, he walked around to Adrienne’s side. He kicked her. “Come on. Get up. We’re going.”

“Why? Where are we going? Why don’t you just kill me here?”

Ghislain stooped and grabbed Adrienne by the elbow, hauling her to her feet. Then he pushed her on in front of him, keeping one hand on her shoulder and jostling her this way and that for direction, each new assault causing her aching head to rage.

Eventually, Adrienne could perceive something more than trees through the undergrowth: a building of some sort, a dilapidated cabin lit up by the darting orange flare of the torch. And she began to comprehend what would happen to her. “Oh no, you can’t,” she cried miserably. And as they approached the door she began to push back against the hand that led her, digging in her feet. “Oh, why? Why must you do this thing to me? I have done nothing. I don’t want to burn to death! Please.” She flung around and threw herself at her abductor’s feet. “Please, Sir, oh please,” she wept. “You love women or you wouldn’t care what had happened to those in your life. When you see me, think of them. In honor of them, spare me. In sparing me, spare them. They would not want this. Know that.” She buried her face upon his thigh.

Ghislain kicked her from him, so that she fell violently back upon the earth. “Get up. And get inside.”

Adrienne could only heave bitter sobs.

Her abductor stooped and grabbed her up by her hair so that she shrieked. Then he pulled her along, taking great strides up to the building. Upon reaching it, he opened the door and then drew the torch from its sconce. He maneuvered his victim in front of him and threw her upon a rickety dining table, it and two chairs and a mattress the only furnishings in the cabin. “And now, my lady, Adrienne, you will die for the injury and torture you visited upon your subjects.” Adrienne cast about. The window in the cabin was busted out; she could escape once he left, maybe. Ghislain threw his torch into the corner of the building where mattress lay. The inferno sprang to life upon it. It roared up the moss and lichen covered walls. ‘He will leave now,’ Adrienne said to herself, ‘and bar the door behind him, but I will escape through the window’

“But it is not enough for you only to die!” Ghislain exclaimed. “They did not only die.”

“No! No!” Adrienne cried. “You must leave. You must. You’ll be burned to death as well.” Ghislain loomed over her. Adrienne turned her head from him. She coughed as smoke suffocated the room. And then the full weight of Ghislain’s body fell atop of her. And it slid off. Her eyes were blinded with tears brought by the sting of the smoke, but a hand grabbed her wrist and drew her up. Soon she was out of the burning building and leaning over, coughing in the clean night.

“Now, what are you doing in my house?” an unfamiliar voice was saying. Adrienne wiped her eyes and straightened up. “Oh, duckie! Your poor nose,” the voice came again. Adrienne blinked a few more times. She briefly saw her savior, a matronly woman with grey hair and a dirty robe, before the smoke clouded in and began choking her again.

* * *

Adrienne’s coughs woke her from her nap where she’d nodded off, sitting in the library of the Temlot fortress of Nornholm. A servant was hurrying over with water for his mistress to drink. Adrienne took it absently. “Thank you.” Her thoughts were consumed with her dream and events that had happened twenty years ago, before when she had traveled north as a servant of Cordelia, the daughter of the Duke of Fairech; before the births of the twins; before Cordelia’s execution; and before Adrienne married Cordelia’s grieving husband, Temlot’s duke.

Adrienne’s dream had taken her back to the time of the war, when she had lived as a prisoner in a convent in the Temple of the Light Which Shineth Over All, far up in the mountains. There was probably some meaning in the dream, but in the long years since her original prophecy, her oracular powers had atrophied. Had her talent instead been nurtured, perhaps today she could act upon the foresight, but as a child she had been well taught the dangers of misinterpretation.

Still, the presence of the dream at all meant something was going to happen and that her quiet life here as the Duchess of Temlot was coming to an end.

Adrienne rose from her seat and walked over to of the long window which let light into the library. From here, she could look out over the well-kept gardens which surround Nornholm. Walking out into them, she saw her stepdaughter, Aurelia, accompanied by her tutor, Professor Virgil Lawrence, and her lady-in-waiting, Nahla. ‘So like myself and Cordelia,’ Adrienne thought. ‘But I held treachery for Cordelia, given to me by the old woman who had saved me from my would-be-assassin all those years ago. I held murder and revenge in my heart for the Duke of Fairech and his family, and what have Nahla and Aurelia in their hearts but love?’