The ants were not native to this land, but had adapted well. They had unwittingly stowed away amid some cargo aboard a sailing ship from Arcosia.
Arcosia . . . The sentience savored the word like a fine wine. Arcosia was a land of many lands. Little fragments of memory had begun to emerge of late, memories of what could only be the sentience’s own origins. Memories of sailing from a far land to this place.
I was once a man. Of this the sentience was certain. Not only that, it—he—had been a leader among men.
Suddenly, it wanted to understand being a man again, somehow connect with the one who lay here. Maybe he had answers.
The sentience turned its attention back to the thousands of ants tromping across the leaflets of moss it currently resided in. Eagerly it diverted the ants, sending them in the direction of some carrion rotting some way into the woods. It had this power, the sentience did, to command the forest, to be the forest. But it wanted to understand being a man.
It removed an ant out of line. The sentience became a part of the ant, directing it to climb the toe of the man’s boot, to crawl along his leg and hip, stolidly following the folds of clothing, and march across his stomach and chest.
The sentience skittered, causing the ant to back away from something on the man’s chest. Something that was nothing. The contradiction made no sense, but the sentience detected some minor power at work here, that the nothingness protected the something by hiding it.
A power. The art.
Perplexed, the ant crawled in circles around it, but learned no more. The sentience would leave it now as a curiosity to be mulled over later. It continued its exploration, stepping onto the flesh of the man’s neck. It climbed the chin and wandered the man’s face, following contours of lips and cheeks, dipping into depressions of eyes.
On the cheek, the sentience allowed the ant to do what it instinctually was born to do: bite. Venom flowed beneath the man’s skin. The sentience prevented the ant from carrying away the tiny piece of flesh to its nest, but made it consume it.
The ant did not possess a wide ranging palate, but it was more the essence of the man the sentience sought anyway, the consistency of flesh, the meaning of blood.
A disturbance near the wall distracted the sentience. It sent a part of its awareness hurtling through duff and moss to the area. The guardians had stopped screaming, but they were taut.
Boots tread across the ground.
Men.
The sentience surmised they sought the one who lay unconscious deeper within the forest. It didn’t want them to find him, for it was curious about his possession of the art, and why the guardians were so worried about him.
It simply opened the ground beneath their boots, heaving back moss like a great maw. It whipped roots around their legs and torsos, and pulled them down. It felt the reverberations of their screams, but screams were harmless. The steel that armored their torsos could not protect them, for tree roots were stronger than steel.
It rolled a blanket of moss over the men, using roots to pull them ever deeper, squeezing them apart. Corpse beetles, and other earthly denizens of the forest, would take care of the rest.
All of this sudden contact with men evoked memories of men the sentience had once known. There was the frail, elderly man who sat high upon a golden throne. A fatherly figure, one who loved him well. Arcos.
There were others—Varadgrim, yes, faithful Varadgrim, and Lichant of the east, Mirdhwell of the west, and Terrandon of the south. All faithful, all friends. Unlike the red stinger ants, they were natives of this land. The sentience called out for them, and could feel Varadgrim somewhere out there, but he was far off. Of Lichant and Terrandon, there was no response at all, but Mirdhwell did stir . . .
Then there was the man who meant the most to the sentience, to the man he had been. Hadriax.
My dear friend, my best friend.
A surge of longing made the rain pour in the forest, pattering the man’s face. On impulse, the sentience called out for Hadriax, and to its surprise, it felt something, a brief hum of life. The sentience pursued it, and once found, held onto it.
This was not Hadriax after all, but something of him was present. As the sentience probed, it found the imprint of a familiar aura of power, but the feeling was decidedly feminine. And far away, so far away.
Desperately the sentience called out to Varadgrim and Mirdhwell, revealing to them the aura of the female before it lost contact.
Find her!
MIRROR REFLECTION
Karigan plucked bits of straw from her work tunic as she strode away from the stable in the dimming light of evening. She’d been helping Hep with feeding, as much as her bad arm allowed. He forked hay down from the loft, and she threw the appropriate amount into each stall. Scooping out grain wasn’t too difficult either, and helping made her feel more useful.
In light of all her recent and strange experiences, it didn’t hurt that the work was nothing but ordinary. It involved no “traveling,” no hauntings, no magic. Being surrounded by all those horses was a tonic for her soul. They asked for nothing more than food, water, shelter, and a scratch behind the ear, and those were easy enough to provide. For those simple things, the horses returned love and affection in earnest, and unconditionally.
Karigan’s sense of peace, however, did not last. As she approached Rider barracks, a tide of wooziness rushed over her, forcing her to an abrupt, unbalanced halt. The castle grounds darkened in her vision, and she forgot where she was going and why. She thought she heard a calling. Not the Rider call, but a lonely mournful calling tinged with desperation. Something touched her mind, like cold fingers leafing through her thoughts and memories.