Trust. A thing I used to take for granted, when I was a simple foundling and student. I trusted Mirel and my cohort siblings. Is it insanity that I still believe it can be achieved? For moments in time, at least, I've been proven correct. Still, I fear it's as transient as the weather.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  “I need my claws and my box,” Dragos said.

  Julianos stood on the bars and looked around. “Fine. Where is the Unspoken?”

  “Its, er, feelers are near the others.”

  “There,” the little girl pointed at the men in the river, and then her hand jabbed at the people listening to the bard sing a ballad. Her lower lip quivered as she looked at her parents.

  “They don’t prefer animals unless they’re starving.” Dragos's gaze flicked around, tone cold and practical, though a part of him felt a pang of misery for the children. “It’s eating well. It might not bother us.”

  Julianos stared out at the caravan slowly creeping toward the crossroads. Breeze rippled the wild grass in the meadow. The sun rode high in a crystalline sky, and to the average eye, idyllic scenery. “We have to kill it before anyone else is affected.”

  “Untether an ox and unlock the wagon gate. When these people leave, it should follow them and leave us be.”

  “You want me to blindly go over there. That’s a lot of trust you're asking for,” Julianos said flatly, staring at Dragos through the top bars.

  Dragos met his gaze with an unwavering one. “I know. But if you fall, we are as good as finished.”

  “You’d better never take your eye off me…” Julianos started. His brow creased as he gazed straight down at Dragos and the children. He finished his sentence with a vaguely accusing tone. “Monster.”

  The knight’s memory had been affected as well.

  The bard’s voice faltered. He rubbed his brow and apologized to the others. “Sorry, I—I can’t remember the next line. Funny, I’ve sung that song for years.”

  The man and his wife glanced at each other. They’d been standing together, his hand on her arm. He pulled it away quickly. “My apologies, miss. I’m not sure why I was holding onto you.”

  The children’s mother brushed a palm over where he’d been gripping, as if wiping dirt off her elbow. She uttered a curt word. “Indeed.”

  The bezgina’s tendrils bulged like sucking leeches.

  Julianos leaped off the cage, twisting to grab the outer bars. He dropped neatly to the ground and paced cautiously toward the team of oxen. The huge beasts had thick, proud horns capped with leather, their mottled gray flanks gleamed even in the tree’s shade. Untethering them from their harnesses, the knight took the lead on one. He walked slowly, as if on grass riddled with snakes, each step slow and deliberate, frequently glancing at Dragos for warning signs.

  “Your way is clear, cavaler,” Dragos said. Flicking a glance at the girl child, he asked, “What is your name?”

  The girl squeezed her little brother tighter, the whites of her eyes bulging as she looked from her parents, who seemed to have forgotten them, to the strange man who showed more wounds than skin. Dragos knew how he looked. Terrifying.

  “Olta.”

  “Olta,” he said softly. Kindly. “You can see what is happening. This iron cage will keep you and your brother safe. Stay in here until we return.”

  The girl nodded. The whimpering boy in her arms pressed his head to her shoulder.

  The back gate dropped with a creak and thunk of wood. Julianos stood beyond it, beside the ox, looking in. One of the young women looked over and murmured a soft, “Oh.”

  They got up and wandered out, one by one. Most went to the brook, where their captors sat splashing each other like children. One by one, they waded in. The unsettling part was not that the adults acted like children, but the black lines that wound around them all, pulsing with a sickly rhythm.

  Dragos eased the cage open and crawled out on limbs confused by pain and stiffness. As he closed the cage door, Olta lunged, dared to grasp his bruise-mottled knuckles. Surprise sparked, and he met her terrified gaze.

  “Don’t forget about us, don’t—don’t leave us…”

  “If I survive, I promise I’ll come back.”

  Her touch fluttered. She nodded and stepped back into the center of the cage and sat, tugging her brother to sit in her lap. Dragos exhaled tension and crawled to the edge of the wagon to meet the ox’s limpid eye.

  “We’ve a job to do, you, I, and this knight,” he said, making the subtle connections to its animal soul.

  She had no objections, merely wanted to taste the sweet-scented grasses in the meadow. Dragos smiled briefly.

  “Help me first, and then you can spend your days here, if you like.”

  “Are you talking to me, or the beast?” Julianos asked, eyes flicking back and forth between him and the ox.

  “Not you. She’s agreed to carry me,” Dragos explained, gaze moving around the grass. The bezgina’s attention was on the clustered people enjoying sparkling waters nearby. It left them alone.

  The cavaler’s nose scrunched, lip curling. The albstriga ignored his disapproval and shuffled to climb onto the beast’s back, flinging a leg over it. The massive bony hump where its shoulders met made for an awkward seat, but he managed. With no mane to hold onto, he’d have to rely on his balance and leaning on the bump in front of him. At least it was a slow walker, not prone to bursts of speed or shying like horses.

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  “Where is my box?”

  Julianos tipped his head toward the wagoner’s seat. A compartment beneath it had some hasty sigils written across the wooden door; wards against evil spirits. Dragos nudged the ox toward the front of the wagon and leaned to open it.

  He caught the knight’s subtle look of surprise and smirked. “I’m a man, not strigoi or Nerostit?. Just a peddler surviving on his crafts.”

  Julianos’s lips thinned. A consideration fell across his stern features, and he said, “You need armor if we’re going to fight the… thing. Watch for me.”

  Dragos paused as the cavaler strode with careful steps to the pile of discarded clothing and armor. As much as someone else’s sweaty gear didn’t appeal, it was a good idea. Julianos picked through the discarded things as his compatriots lazed in the brook, staring off into the distance.

  The freed captive flicked a look at the oncoming caravan’s progress. They should hurry. The Bezgina might leave those travelers alone, however, what would those people make of this scene? Children in a cage, caverul and miserable, beaten wretches alike sharing a soak beside the shade trees?

  Dragos ran his hands over his belongings, a sense of relief flooded him to have them back. He busied himself fashioning a new strap of rope for his box, and Julianos returned with a full set of armor, boots, and clothing. He opened it, resting it on the ox’s hump.

  The nightweb, starlace, and scroll were gone. Everything else remained. A nauseating anger filled his gut. Luminatori stole them? Or destroyed them? Either way, it rankled.

  After a moment to digest his ire, he found what he needed and handed Julianos a small, acrid-scented packet. “Here. Put this somewhere on your person.”

  Julianos sniffed it and frowned. “Stinking Chamomile?”

  “Pest repellent. In this case, the pest is the bezgina.”

  “Ah.” The knight tucked the packet into his leathers with a wry look.

  Dragos strapped the bronze-embellished armor on over his tattered black robes. The helmet he’d been handed had a false plume at the top. The old wearer kept his head shorn. Dragos stuffed it down on his head and buckled the chin strap.

  He struggled with the boots. As much as he wanted nothing to be touching his abused feet, he didn’t dare leave them unprotected. The idea that he could lose memories, or worse, his knowledge, gave his limbs a chill trickle of terror. His stomach shrank, quivering at the idea that any of it could be lost. The rare and primal fear stilled his hands until he realized he’d stopped moving.

  What he knew was even more important to him than his life.

  Julianos turned in a slow circle, then asked, “Which way?”

  “Where the crossroads converge,” Dragos replied, patting the ox to urge her forward. Despite the peril, he felt lighter in heart once they lumbered away from the wagon. No longer crammed behind bars, free. How could he not feel alive?

  The animal scent of the beast beneath him warmed his nostrils as they left the shade of the trees and moved onto the road. With his mind’s eye, he saw the torn stitches of the veil, beyond which the body of the Bezgina lay. A shimmer on the ground attached the black feelers to its main body.

  “We have to draw it out, somehow.”

  Julianos glanced up at him. He kept hold of the ox’s lead, gripped in his left fist. His sword led the way, ahead of the animal. The knight’s jaw clenched loud enough for Dragos to hear it clicking.

  “Step to your left,” Dragos warned. Julianos stopped, then nudged the ox and moved with exaggerated care.

  “I feel stupid,” he grumbled.

  Dragos considered what it would be like to not see a danger you knew was there, somewhere. Fear could easily take hold. As long as the cavaler didn’t turn that fear on him, he could manage. Still, he tugged the buckles on his gloves and called a halt.

  He sat atop the ox and considered the tear. It was not something a person could fall through, nor see through, but he could see it, a ripple on the ground at the center of the four roads. He murmured, “Bezgina sit in places like this and lick at whatever passes by. Who knows how long it's been here.”

  “I don’t care. How do we get it to come out?” Julianos checked the edge of his sword and worked his jaw, staring toward the shimmer he could not see.

  Dragos opened the peddler’s box. Something that could cross the veil, something from the other side. He thought again of Zgavra, who could have made short work of the creature, and sighed.

  He shouldn’t have snapped at the monster. Regret tinged his thoughts as he perused his wares. Iron nails? He didn’t have many. He had the box of filed shavings, but it probably wasn’t enough, either. The hole was bigger than a wagon, full of writhing ribbons of black.

  Julianos scoffed and drew Dragos's attention. The knight pointed his sword at the brook. People were wandering off in different directions. His captain started the exodus. The man—clad in nothing but his undershorts—hauled himself up out of the stony brook and wandered barefoot into the field. Black tendrils snapped.

  “Huh,” Dragos murmured, observing the slender tentacle slink back into the tear at the center of the road.

  Another man followed him, scratching his head and looking around. His voice carried on the breeze.

  “I think I forgot something… Or, maybe left something behind?”

  A soft murmur from the others still sitting on the edge of the water responded. Each one nodded, their dazed expressions clear enough for Dragos to read. The Bezgina had made them forget who they were, where they were going. Even the bard merely hummed, no doubt unable to remember words to any song in his repertoire.

  The chilling fear of that kind of loss gripped Dragos again as he pulled open a vial. Sulphur? Useless. There had to be some way to lure the Unspoken out of its place in the thinned barrier between the world of the living and cel?lalt t?ram, the other dimension from where it spawned.

  Another of the knights got up and meandered away from the brook, over the short granite bridge. More tendrils snapped and whipped back into the shimmering spot. The ox rocked back, a warning low rumbling beneath Dragos. Julianos glanced at the beast, and then at Dragos.

  “What’s happening?”

  Dragos slid the vial back into its leather loop and answered.

  “If I had to guess, the Bezgina is losing its dinner. If we’re lucky, the rest will wander off, and it’ll come after us.”

  The knight’s confusion slid into a look of horror. “Wait! I thought we didn’t want that?”

  “Plans change,” Dragos replied, rummaging through a small drawer within the box. He hated this plan, but he could see how it could work.

  One of the women got up to follow the captain and the knight into the meadow, looking around as if lost. She called out to the men. “Wait! Where are you going?”

  The captain turned around and shrugged.

  Dragos swallowed against his fear, throat rising and falling. He shut the peddler’s box. Nothing useful there.

  “I know what we have to do, but I don’t like it.”

  (kah-vah-LEHR): a knight of the Cavalerul de Lumina

  Albstrig? (ALV-streeguh): White witch. Barn owl. A pale ghost or evil spirit.