Another damp, miserable, sleepless night followed and Luthiriensis found it difficult to keep her eyes open as they traversed the twisting confines of the path through the Withering Weald. The trees around them looked even more miserable than she felt, if that were at all possible. They drooped and listed, looking as though they had resigned themselves to a life of drudgery in a scullery that had never seen a broom. Or anything clean at all. She sympathised. If she spent much longer within the Weald, she could well imagine herself standing there forever wishing she had made fewer poor choices in her life.

And she felt watched. All the way. A sense of something dark and foreboding out in the gloom, where mists didn't so much cling to the forest floor as strangle it. Other things began to bother her, too. Like the screams. Not only disturbing, but with feint undertones of torture and a hint of imminent horror that rippled through Luthiriensis' body every time the sound erupted, drifting upon the wind and seeking out anyone far too happy for their own good. Luthiriensis felt far from happy, but the screams haunted her anyway.

There were other screams, too, that began to emerge as they grew closer to the thing that screamed as though a thousand burning needles penetrated a body's most painful appendages. Heard in the lulls between the louder screams, they all heard intermittent screams and calls for help. Desperate cries for aid in their hour of need, accompanied by the clatter and clash of steel against things that the steel dearly wished it didn't have to touch.

"I think ... I think I want to go home now." She turned in her saddle, her weariness almost causing her to topple to the squelching morass of the forest floor. "I think ... yes, I certainly think that you two can take it from here. You're capable. Upstanding. Brave. While I am in desperate need of cotton sheets and a warm fire. And home."

In all her travels, she had not once wanted to go home. Everything of interest lay beyond the borders of Fenestri. The sights and sounds. The cultures and the people. The soft, warm, luxurious beds that called to her in a delightful, soothing, almost erotic fashion. Beds. The very word made her shiver. Yet, not two nights out from the city in Carpancia and she had decided home wasn't all that bad after all. She had even started to miss her mother, but that could well be down to the fact that she hadn't eaten for a day. No-one had. The Withering Weald had that affect.

"It's not long now. Look. See those tree limbs that look as though they're pleading? That's the Screaming Elm. We turn right there, obviously with our ears plugged, and its only a little further to go." Pinto looked far too happy, if Luthiriensis could gauge the dragon's mood correctly. "Don't worry about those other screams. That's probably only Ugnth having lunch."

"Left. We turn left at the Screaming Elm." Mott had, from the moment they set out, done his very best to sit up straight and look brave. If only his face had got that message. "If we take the right turn, we'll encounter ... lunch, and I don't think any of us want to see that."

"Are you sure? Isn't the right turn the right turn? I'm pretty certain Ugnth said take a right." A long, clawed finger touched Pinto's mouth, tapping at her long, sharp teeth. "I thought I was pretty certain. Well, we'll soon find out."

They had ignored Luthiriensis. Or close to ignored her and, after a fashion, she felt both glad and disappointed at that. Glad that they hadn't agreed with her and set her off, alone, back through the Withering Weald and its requisite morose flora, not to mention the possibility of facing the monstrous Ugnth again. Alone. But also a little disappointed that no-one had said that, all things considered, they were better off letting others regain the heir for the King and that, yes, getting out of there and back to civilisation was not only their best option, but probably better for the heir, too. Professionals. That's what the heir needed. Although, the warriors that Ugnth and her children now devoured sounded quite professional and that didn't appear to help them very much.

"Oh, gods! Mother! Mother!" In a lull from the Screaming Elm's howling, that one, particular voice rippled through the air from a distance. A short distance.

They all stopped, the horse and the pony moving in skittish steps. Luthiriensis looked at Mott and the dwarf looked at her. When they had first met, Mott had looked confident in his own abilities. He looked able to look after himself. He looked as though he could hold his own in any fight. Now he looked as though he wouldn't need to stop off anywhere for daily evacuations. Pinto was fine. She'd seen a particularly horrid, crippled moth and cooed at it in fascination.

"Well, perhaps we should go back? Pick up a few more warriors? Maybe a mage or two?" Mott looked over his shoulder now and then slumped in the saddle. "Stragenarr's foreskin! I hate magical forests. Come on. Plug your ears. Let's get this over with."

Luthiriensis turned once again and looked back. She frowned, looking back at Mott and then turned again. That didn't help anything. What she had seen stubbornly remained exactly what she saw, which didn't seem right at all. Before, the path back lay behind them. Now it looked as though the pitiful, and deeply depressed trees of the Weald had decided that it wasn't fair that they were the only suicidal creatures here. They had closed in, somehow, covering the path and blocking the way back. That hardly seemed fair, either, to Luthiriensis. It wasn't her fault the denizens of the Weald had to live here.

They soon found the Screaming Elm, a set of knots in the wide, ancient bole of the trunk giving the impression of a poor, put-upon creature weeping uncontrollably. One knot looked like a downturned mouth. Others looked like squinted eyes with trails of sap dribbling from the corners. Some of its branches looked as though they reached out, for comfort, salvation, or to drag others into its misery, Luthiriensis did not really care. As they neared, the elm let out an ear-wrenching scream that emanated and vibrated from the mouth-like knot. The path split here, but, thanks to the wetted cloth plugs in their ears, neither Luthiriensis or Mott could hear from which direction the screams of the warriors came from. Ugnth and family still played with their food.

"There, there." Pinto stroked the trunk of the Screaming Elm, but it didn't stop another howl from its maw-like knot emerging. "I'm sure things will get better before long."

Pinto shouted that, though it wasn't the elm that had plugs in its ears. If it had any ears at all. Or knots that resembled ears. After a moment, where Pinto tilted her dragon head, frowning, she pointed a claw toward Mott, mouthed something they couldn't hear and nodded as though that made sense. It didn't, for various reasons, but then she began to head down the left-hand trail. The elm looked neither pleased or distraught that they left it so soon.

Before Pinto could get very far, something broke through the undergrowth. It barrelled into the side of Luthiriensis' horse and bounced backward, landing in a heap upon the ground. A man. A human man and he looked half-dressed and almost entirely distressed. Parts of what he once wore as clothing hung from various places upon his body and his hair, bleached white from terror, stuck out from his head in several directions. Regaining his senses, he turned onto his knees, hands clasped, looking up at Luthiriensis in desperation, trembling lips mouthing words she could not hear.

"I'm sorry? You'll have to shout. What with all the screams and everything." She shouted to prove that point, but the man didn't seem to hear, his head whipping around, watching the gathering forest. He spoke once more and Luthiriensis still couldn't hear him. "Look, you will have to shout! We have plugged our ears and ..."

She had no need to continue, pronouncing each word precisely and loudly, as the man disappeared before her very eyes. One moment, his trembling fingers reached and tugged at the material of her once-beautiful suede riding trousers, the next, something dragged him, bodily, backward into the trees, his eyes widening, mouth shouting something Luthiriensis could not hear. It looked like he said 'kelp meat', though what significance that held, she could not say. Now, only the rustling of rotting leaves upon damp branches remained.

Once again, she exchanged glances with Mott. They had nothing to worry about. They accompanied Pinto who, though relations did appear a little strained due to a certain appendage chomping incident, did seem to have a personal relationship with the fearsome lord, or lady, Luthiriensis wasn't quite certain, of the Withering Weald. They held a place of tenuous allowance within the forest due to their companion, the sylvan-dragon, Pinto.

Who was nowhere in sight. Both Mott and Luthiriensis noted this development at the same time and, also at the same time, came to the conclusion that they should ride like the clappers to catch up to the dragon before Ugnth and their children decided one group of warriors was never quite enough and that they could eat a little more. Both horse and pony burst into movement, hooves pounding and squelching in the filthy mud of the forest floor as they raced to find Pinto.

When they did catch up to her, blissfully unaware of just about everything, Luthiriensis and Mott both decided they weren't straying further than arm's length from the dragon. The tentative peace they enjoyed could come to an end at any moment, especially away from the creature that now walked between them. Pinto pointed and said something Luthiriensis couldn't hear, but she didn't need to hear it. She could plainly see what Pinto pointed at.

The edge of the forest. Not twenty yards away. A short trot. A minor gallop. A hop, skip and a jump from safety. She could see daylight and only now realised that they had spent hours within the gloom and the darkness of the Withering Weald and hadn't seen the Sun since they entered. The oppressive atmosphere, the all-pervading sense of lost hope and dire futures would soon fall from their shoulders. Soon, they could stop and bathe in the glow of the warm, welcoming, pleasant blanket of sunshine. They would be free of the looming sense of doom that had hovered above them, surrounding them, in the air, in the moody trees. They could ...

A darkness more terrible than that of the final drift into death without love, or hope, or lasting legacy fell across the beckoning gap in the trees. A fetid, putrid darkness that burrowed its way into Luthiriensis' very soul. A darkness that had all other kinds of darkness running away to cling to the skirts of their mummies. The kind of darkness that, were it alive, which Luthiriensis wasn't too certain it wasn't, would infect the entire world and plunge the stars into a silent black, never to shine again. The kind of darkness that held a wicker hand basket.

"Ah, Pinto. Thought I'd catch you before you left." The voice penetrated through the wetted plugs as though they had thought about existing but the prospect of having to block these sounds made them retroactively decide never to form in the first place. "I know me and your mum have our differences, but I thought she'd like these mushrooms. The Withering Weald's very best. Tell her she should bring the family for dinner sometime. Obviously, I don't mean she'd be dinner! Not this time. Oh, and I still want my leg fixing. Ta ta!"

A vividly horrible leg rose and waved at Pinto as another handed the dragon the wicker hand basket. Luthiriensis didn't hear Pinto's reply, but if it didn't have the words 'Oh, thank you, but we really must be off' in them, she didn't want to know. The blackness that was the loathsome, and surprisingly friendly, Ugnth passed and faded back into the morbid tree line, revealing the light of freedom once again.

Luthiriensis took the opportunity to ride like the wind toward that freedom. She didn't even care if the others followed.