There are as many things that creep in the shadows as there are stars in the sky. Some are harmless. Others merely cause chaos and delight in the disaster. Still others prey upon the living. Superstitions exist not only to explain away things misunderstood, but also remain as communal memory. So that people don't forget that which waits in darkness to devour them. I try to remember that when superstition is turned against me, and yet... my anger grows.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  Dragos couldn’t tell what it was by looking at it. Unspoken things were often obscured by their otherworldly nature. The first time he met Zgavra, it hadn’t revealed its true form right away. Instinct murmured that it was not the zmeu. This was something else from across the veil, lurking, creeping ever closer, right under the noses of men who were supposed to be trained to recognize Nerostit?.

  Seemed that was a tradition lost in favor of escorting captives and money.

  “Julianos,” he called out, heart taking up a rhythm separate from its feverish thudding, tongue making the name blur from his mouth. “Julianos!”

  The caverul sat clustered beneath a tree, enjoying a drink while the wangoner took care of his animals. They’d taken off their helmets, many of them their cuirass as well. Bronze-sigiled leather lay around their lounging forms. Unlike them, Julianos had not devested.

  Julianos heaved a visible sigh. The others mocked him loudly as the chosen one to escort the striga. So special. Julianos slowly got to his feet and ignored his peers as he stiffly crossed the distance between them and the wagon.

  The wagoner stopped him to murmur something.

  The shadow slunk closer, beneath wild honeysuckle. One of the oxen snorted. The other stomped. Both animals stared at the bush, nostrils huffing loudly.

  “Tell your men to put their armor on,” Dragos commanded, despite the distance.

  “It’s hot,” Julianos argued, a few quick strides closing the distance. “Though regulations say not to, I don’t blame them, and they’re not my men. They’re his.”

  The cavaler’s squinted gaze flicked to the man who sat, legs splayed beneath the tree, pouring a skin of water over his head. The man’s ruddy skin glowed where it had been exposed to the sun. Someone from more cloudy, northern climes. His helmet left clear white lines where it covered, arms and legs the same.

  “Something is near. Can’t you feel it?” Dragos hissed, gaze shifting to the grass. Even common fools should feel the presence of something so uncanny. The oxen knew.

  Julianos’ irritated scowl deepened. He half-turned to look at the empty road, and then to the woods that surrounded the brook and crossroads, where a cracked, stone track led southwest to northeast.

  The knight stilled. He snap-pivoted on his heel and strode back to the small cluster. Dragos strained to hear him.

  “Something’s out there. Armor on!”

  He was met by groans and the shooing hand of his suta?. The red-faced man said, “That’s what I will say… in a few minutes. Until then, take your ease, knight.”

  “Some thing is out there,” Julianos repeated, hand falling to the short sword at his hip.

  A few of the dozen sitting there paused. Others chuckled and drank more ale. A few fidgeted, plucking at their armor, slowly donning it.

  Shadows slithered, splintering into snake-like figures in the tall, stomped-down grass. The wagon lurched. The oxen lowed, staggering back, away from the slithering forms. The wagoner rushed to grab their lead rope.

  Dragos saw it all from where he sat, fingers white-knuckled on iron bars. An eagerness surged. Not to see the men hurt, but to see what it was that came after them, quickly followed by the unease of what disaster would surely come. It was a rare Unspoken that granted luck and boons.

  More often, they only brought doom to the living.

  “Run!” Dragos barked.

  The bard in the cart shouted at Dragos, “Run where? We’re locked up, same as you!”

  Julianos turned to face the wagon and drew his sword. The captain chuckled, even as something dark curled around the wrist of the hand that supported his lazy lean in the grass. Julianos turned in a slow circle, sword held at the ready, eyes scanning. A few of the others seemed to catch the unease, finally peering about with curled lips and wide eyes, snatching the armor they’d been toying with a moment ago.

  Black lines streaked over the bent grass stalks, winding around hapless men.

  The boy child hitched a scared breath and started to cry. The little girl who had seen it first shrieked when she saw one of the Unspoken snakes wind around the neck of a knight who had just been in the motion of standing.

  “By your left foot!” Dragos yelled.

  Julianos skipped away just as the shadow serpent flung itself at his leg. It undulated, changing its course mid-air, winding around his other ankle. It flinched and fell away from the bronze sigil on his greave.

  The others were not so lucky. Some had kept their greaves on, some their bracers and cuirass, but none besides Julianos wore their helmet. The slithering forms fell away when they touched sigil-marked leather.

  The wagoner flinched. Dragos's attention snapped to him. A ribbon of shadow wound around his leg, creeping upward, gripping and pulling in a rippling motion up the man’s i?ari, from ankle to hip, to disappear under his shirt.

  Dragos held his breath.

  He had a feeling he’d know soon enough what it was. His mind fumbled through his jumbled memories, but he didn’t have enough information yet. What happened next would tell him.

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  The captain didn’t seem to notice as matte black snakes swarmed his arms and legs. He kept up his guffaw, looking around at the scenery. In the distance, a caravan approached with aching slowness. Mere specks of wagons shining under the hot sun. The rutted stones rippled with heat.

  “Take your helmet off, Julianos, you’re mind’s burnt worse than your mother’s bread!”

  The other knights chuckled, their momentary alertness fading, even as their bodies swarmed with thin ropes of black.

  Julianos shot Dragos an accusing stare.

  The little girl huddled in her mother’s arms stared out past the wooden bars on the livestock wagon with wide, shimmering eyes. Dragos watched her head shake, her tiny gasping breaths proof enough that he wasn’t dealing with a fever dream.

  The medicine had helped clear his head some. This wasn’t madness. What he saw was Unspoken. The child must have been moroi viu, since it was uncommon for most living creatures to see. Sense, perhaps, but not see.

  The girl was cursed or had contact with waters from a spirit river. She was doomed to see what others could not, which evoked a moment of pity as he considered her. Dragos had a choice to make, as the ribbons of darkness slithered up the sides of the wagon. He could say nothing, or call owls to fight the unknown.

  As the ribbons of the unknown nerostit? divided and enveloped men, Dragos considered his options. If the owls didn’t work, the caverul would believe he was the cause of anything that happened next. They may, anyhow. With a sigh, he closed his eyes.

  Julianos stalked over to the wagon. His hand slapped down on one of the black snakes creeping up the edge. It slithered onto his hand and fell off when it touched his bracer.

  “Witch! What are you playing at?” He accused, lip curled in a snarl, his other hand gripping his bronze sword as if he’d stab Dragos right there.

  “Nerostit? is among us.”

  Was it the sigils or the bronze? Dragos's muddied mind tooled the words over in his head until they lost all meaning. He opened his eyes again and ignored Julianos’ glare. On the horizon, the caravan inched closer towards the crossr… The crossroad.

  Metal. Crossroad. A nameless horror crept into his mind and stilled his heart for a skipping beat.

  “Bezgina,” Dragos whispered, sitting up straight. Finally looking at his irate keeper, he said, “It’s a Bezgina. They manifest at crossroads, as dark shadows. They eat memories. It can be appeased, but the price is steep. Julianos, your cohort is in danger, and you must destroy the Bezgina before they forget who they are.”

  It took a moment for Julainos to decipher his slurred speech. The bronze sword lowered but was not resheathed.

  “Why should I believe you?” The knight asked. Not incredulously, but seeking more information. More evidence.

  This one could yet be worthy of the first cavaler’s legend. Dragos licked at a split in his lip and grabbed the bars of his cage. He flicked a veiled glance at the child, then studied the knight’s face.

  One of the Bezgina’s tendrils curled up around the edge of the cart, caressing a man’s neck. The little girl shrieked and tore herself away from her parents. Her back collided with Dragos's cage, and she flinched away, then grabbed at her little brother to pull him close.

  Dragos instinctively pulled himself inward, lifting his knees, wrapping his arms around himself to be further from the iron bars of his cage. “There is one other here who can see. Moroi viu, though the sight alone condemns her to a life like mine. Do you understand, Julianos?”

  “I don’t know what you’re on about, girl,” the child’s father said as the Bezgina slipped a questing sprig into the man’s ear.

  Her mother lunged at the children, her grasping hands snatching at them. The girl pressed against the iron bars, shaking her head, a gasping sob escaping her.

  “Open my cage, let them hide with me. It doesn’t like metal,” Dragos murmured.

  Julianos shot a glance behind him. The other men, including the wagoner, had gathered again beside the brook, under the cool shade. They chatted and laughed, seeming to have forgotten Julianos’ outcry of danger.

  “Quickly!” Dragos hissed.

  The knight thrust a thick key through the two sets of bars and climbed up onto the wagon, then scaled the squat cage to sit atop it. “I will kill you if you try to escape,” he said.

  He believed. That was all Dragos needed. He lurched forward to take the key and open his cage door enough to let the children in. The girl flinched away, even as the Bezgina’s ethereal fingers quested for the other prisoners. The two women, the bard, and their parents were quickly swarmed by the Unspoken’s tendrils.

  “It doesn’t like metal, get in, children!” Dragos snapped, perhaps too harshly. Both were sobbing, standing close to neither danger, frozen by indecision.

  Their mother shrieked as Dragos reached out and yanked the children in. The little boy stumbled and fell on Dragos’s throbbing feet, where he sat cross-legged to fit in the tight space. He grunted when pain lit him up from toes to eyeballs, and he bit back a curse.

  The girl child yanked the door shut and hugged herself, sobbing.

  “Your sword and my claws can drive it back, but these are just feelers,” Dragos looked up at where the knight crouched, balanced on the overhead bars. “To banish it, we have to escape its reach long enough to find the main body and kill it. We could try appeasing it by willingly offering our fondest memory.”

  Dragos wasn’t willing. He had few truly fond ones, untainted by disappointment or despair, and he wasn’t about to let go of any of them. He felt somewhat conflicted about slaughtering the Unspoken as well. It was merely living as its own nature dictated; however, he was not so selfless as to become its victim or give it anything in exchange.

  “How can I kill something I can’t see?” Julianos asked, squinting at the wagon, which must have appeared perfectly normal to him.

  But, as he watched, he saw the children’s mother stop shrieking for them. Their father had risen angrily, only to slowly sit back down again with a dazed expression. The bard started singing a tune to the two women sitting beside him, and they smiled, as if all was fine with sitting in a livestock wagon they couldn’t escape.

  Dragos glanced at the knights in a cluster not far away.

  The captain stood up and brushed himself off, scratching at his backside. He tugged at the belt of his ptruges, the leather strips falling to fan out over the grass. Clad only in short trousers, the man waded into the brook and sat.

  One of the other knights got up as he waved at them, “Come! It’s nice!”

  Soon enough, all of them joined in, going from a rest to a frolic, as if they’d forgotten their jobs. Their reason for being there. The bezgina feasted, its coiling tendrils flicking around them.

  Within the cage, the children clutched each other, pressed against the bars. Dragos grabbed them and hunched around them, away from the bars. He fixed a hard look on the girl. “Stay away from the bars, and stay inside the cage, no matter what.”

  “I’ve got to do something. This is insane,” Julianos snarled, fingers clamped around the cage top, watching his compatriots.

  “I can hunt with you if you give me an ox to ride,” Dragos said and gestured at the bloody bandages on his feet. “I’ll be your eyes.”

  “You’ll escape,” Julianos countered with a doubtful frown.

  “Trust me,” Dragos replied with a tight grin. “You don’t have much choice.”

  (zmyeh-oo): Romanian dragon shapeshifter

  Nerostit? (neh-ross-TEE-teh): Calruthian word for all things unnatural or strange, synonymous with Unspoken. Places, events, and situations can be referred to as this, as well as beings.

  (kah-vah-LEHR): A knight of the Luminatori order

  Moroi viu (mo-roi vee-oo)[rolled r]: A living person lacking a soul. Someone strange, atypical.