The thrashing of tentacles faded behind them as they continued east through the mist. They made camp when they expected night was falling beyond the gray world that enveloped them, when they were tired from walking, when it felt like a day however long it had been since fleeing the unknown creature.
The fog darkened shortly after, and the damp air cooled further. There were no stars, and no moon. No light penetrated the murk. They tried to build a fire but all available kindling was too damp. Will’s tinder sparked, once, but the ember would not light the dead branches and leaves they had gathered.*
After a cold meal they huddled together in their tent for warmth, wrapped in blankets, their backs against each other in the night.
A creature screeched above their tent, and another, unless it was a single circling scavenger.
“Another mist monster?” asked Charlotte.
“It could just be an animal,” said Gralen.
“I have never,” Will said, “heard any animal like that.”
It may be that the moon had risen beyond the fog. Faint light cast the palest of shadows on the canvas of the tent, shadows of birds half again as large as an osprey. The play of shapes against the tent sent them slowly to sleep. Will was the last to nod off, and when everyone else was sleeping he peeked under the tent. He quickly drew back and pulled the blanket over his face. The creatures were hard to see in the misty dark, but seemed more like huge fat insects than any bird known to man. Will fell asleep with their burnt pink coloration and eburnean† gossamer wings crawling through his imagination. He slept fitfully, but he slept.*
When they started out the next morning† they did their best to wring the damp out of the tent.
“I am well past tired of wet clothing,” said Charlotte.
“I thought you liked the wild?”
“I like it because I like to see it,” she replied. “This mist hides everything!”
When they set off, Gralen led them.
“How,” asked Will, “do you even know the right direction?”
“A little bird told me.”
“Can your little bird tell us how far this mist goes?”
Gralen whispered to the raven on his shoulder. It leaped, spread its wings, and faded upward into the fog.
“Nice pet,” said Sam. “Can it do tricks?”
“I’ve only been able to teach it one,” he replied. “Pecking the eyes of smart-asses.”
“Yeah, yeah, Gralen. I wasn’t talking to you.”
The raven returned out of the mist, croaking as it landed on Gralen’s outstretched arm.
“He says the fog only extends a short way further. Probably half a day.”
And by mid-morning the mist had cleared enough for them to see that the path they’d been using was the remnants of a long-unused road. Mostly-buried bits of old paving stones marked where the road had been. Off to the side they occasionally saw round-topped stone pillars engraved with vertical and diagonal lines.
“These are numbers in the Ancient tongue,” said Gralen. “And whatever they’re marking, we’re getting nearer to it.”
After the fifth marker, Gralen counted off on his fingers, and predicted that “we’ll be there by evening, if not sooner.”
By noon the mist cleared completely. With the welcome restoration of the sun the trees were again red and orange. They heard the natural crackling of leaves beneath their boots, the occasional neighing of their packhorse. They climbed a hill and looked west, back where they’d been, and saw the mist hanging over the trees as if the forest were wrapped in a pallid spider’s web.
As they walked further into the afternoon, the far mist became little more than a silver sheen against the leafy western horizon. And when they first saw towers ahead to the east, they could see the mist behind only when they climbed the tallest hills.
Slowly, the towers of the Astronomers grew larger. Slowly the castle became visible between the towers.
…
“My god,” said Charlotte. “I thought it was a child’s skull. There are dead goblins everywhere.”
Half buried in the grass they saw a small skeleton, a fanged skull partially submerged staring up to the sky. And another beyond it. There were fewer trees here, and all around were bleached bits of ancient dead.
“Don’t leave the path,” said Will, as everyone walked off to examine the skeletons.
“Are all of them goblins?” asked Charlotte.
“Here’s a man,” said Sam. “Wearing armor.”
“And another here,” called Gralen. “This was a battlefield.”
“Leaving the path never ends well,” muttered Will, “in stories.”
He followed them off the path just before Sam, furthest from him, stepped out of sight.
“Now we know why the Astronomers were never heard from,” she called back.
“Do you think the night trolls took the castle?”
“It doesn’t look like anyone uses this road, human or goblin.”*
“None of these skeletons have been disturbed since they fell,” said Gralen. “And judging by the bones and rusted armor, it must have been back in the war.”
The forest ended at a clearing. The castle stood on a low hill of yellowish grass in the middle of the clearing. Four towers girded it, walls of granite connecting the towers. Another tower rose from the right corner of the castle. They could see the top battlements of the castle’s inner walls beyond the outer defenses. A golden dome covered the left half of the castle. In the middle, next to the dome, an arch of white marble enclosed a great golden clock covered in arcane symbols, moon phases, and the same Ancient numerals that had been on the road markers.
A moat surrounded the hill. The water was low and murky, and a slime of moss and black leaves covered the human and goblin skeletons that filled it. A drawbridge was lowered on the other side, but it was burned, half gone, pointing toward them like a jagged charcoal tongue.
“How do we get across?”
“I am not going in that water,” said Will. “Not with all those dead things.”
“That I can agree with,” said Sam.
“There is just no way.”
“I had no idea,” said Gralen, “what the war must have been like.”
The dead in the moat, jumbled against the walls, laying in the grass around them; the dead, pale as moonlight on mist, if, as the wise tell us, silence is assent, agreed.
