Gareth Thornwood had crossed the cursed wilderness once, and no ranger had ever crossed it twice and lived to brag. Now forty strangers looked to him to lead them through it. They stood at the edge of the dead forest, clutching sacks and children, and none of them trusted a word he said. He could see it in their faces. He was blond, bearded, and armed, and to them that made him just another man who might leave them. "They'll bolt the moment the road bites back," Gareth said. He kept his voice dry, but his hand rested on his knife. "Give me one bad night, and I'm leading empty wagons." Derien Cartwright laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. His best friend wore that ridiculous rainbow scarf, the same one he'd worn the day they met. Derien had smuggled goods through worse country than this, and he never stopped smiling. "Then don't give them a bad night. Give them a reason to stay." "Charm won't hold them, Derien." "No. But she might." Derien nodded toward the front of the caravan. A noblewoman climbed down from a fine carriage. Lady Evangeline Ashford wore a blue gown stitched with gold, plainly worth more than every cart behind her. Gareth had expected her to hide inside her cushions all the way to the border. Instead she walked straight to a mother whose child had gone silent with fever. Evangeline knelt in the dead leaves. She pressed her jeweled fingers to the boy's forehead, then pulled a small green bottle from her sleeve. "Three drops now. Three at dusk. He'll walk by morning." The mother stared. "Why would you help us?" "Because I am crossing too," Evangeline said. "And I trust the man who agreed to lead us." She looked at Gareth as she said it, and her green eyes did not blink. The crowd went quiet. If the fine lady with the gold would follow the ranger, maybe the ranger was worth following. Gareth felt the mood shift like wind changing. He seized it. "Listen," he called. He lifted his hand, and something small and bright landed on his wrist. A miniature dragon, scaled in pink and violet, no bigger than a jay. It preened its wings and fixed the crowd with a blue eye. "These little ones nest only where the ground is safe. Where they fly, we walk. Where they scatter, we stop. I crossed this land once by trusting them. I'll cross it again the same way." The dragon chirped and leapt into the gray sky. Children pointed. A few refugees smiled for the first time. "We follow the ranger," the fevered boy's mother said. Others took up the words. Gareth let out a slow breath. They would move as one now, not scatter. But as the caravan rolled forward, the tiny dragon circled back and landed hard on his shoulder, wings clamped tight. It stared at the trees ahead and would not fly. Something waited on the road, and it had already found them.

The last wagon rolled through the gap just as the vine closed behind it. Gareth counted forty refugees and their carts on the clear road. He wiped sap from his hands. Then his dragon dropped from the sky and clamped its wings shut on his shoulder. The road ahead was not safe after all. Gareth walked forward alone. A hundred paces on, he found the reason. A second wall of red vine choked the path. This one was thicker than the last, threaded with thorns and dark leaves. Its stems curled and shifted like they watched him. He touched a stem with his knife. It bled, and two new shoots reached for his wrist. He stepped back fast. Derien came up beside him, rainbow scarf bright against the gray trees. He looked at the vine and stopped grinning. "The lady's bottle is empty, Gareth. There's no medicine left. And no road back." He glanced over his shoulder at the waiting caravan. "They followed you in here. They can't follow you out." Lady Evangeline crossed from the wagons, her blue gown dragging through leaves. She had shifted the refugees' trust to Gareth with her own word, and now they watched her face for a sign. She knelt at the vine and shook her spent bottle. Nothing came out. "I can't kill this one," she said. "Whatever we do, we do without me." Gareth studied the vine. Cutting it made it grow. But no one had tried the right blade. He drew the curved machete from his belt. Green vinework twined up the steel, and the edge caught the gray light. A hunter had once told him it was made for magical greenery. He had never tested that. He raised it and struck. The blade passed through three stems at once. Where it cut, the vine did not bleed. It hissed and blackened and curled away from the steel. No new shoots rose. Gareth cut again, and again, and the wall opened like cloth under shears. The thorns snapped at his arms and missed. The dragon lifted its head. The refugees pressed forward to watch. A murmur ran through them. Gareth cut the last stems free, and the road ran clear beyond. He turned, breathing hard, machete dripping black sap. Evangeline stared at the blade, then at him. A slow smile crossed her face. "You didn't need my father's medicine," she said. "You needed that." An old man near the front called out that the ranger had cleared the road with one blade. Others took up the words. For the first time, they looked at Gareth without doubt. He lifted his wrist, and the dragon spread its wings and flew through the gap into open sky. "Safe ahead," Gareth said. But he looked at the black sap on his steel and frowned. The vine had died too easily. Something had wanted him to swing that blade.

Gareth wiped the black sap from his machete and studied the dead vine. It had died too fast. Someone had wanted him to swing this blade. He turned to the caravan, resting now beside their carts, and made a choice. He would follow the vine to its root and find whoever grew it. "Keep them here," he told Derien. "If I'm not back by dark, take the road forward without me." Derien opened his mouth to argue, then closed it and nodded. Evangeline fell in beside him. "I'm coming. My father's land grew vines like these. I've seen who plants them." Her voice went quiet and flat. She did not explain further. They walked off the road into the gray trees. Gareth read the ground. The vines grew thicker in one direction, all leaning the same way, like fingers pointing home. Within ten minutes he knew the forest was wrong here. The moss grew in rings. The trees leaned inward. Everything bent toward one spot. They found the tower in a clearing. It was small, built of gray and green stone, its walls softened to blend with the moss. Red vines climbed every side and coiled around the door. Gareth cut through them with the machete. They blackened and died and did not grow back. The wooden door swung open before he touched it. A man stood inside. He was dark-haired, weathered, maybe forty, with hard hazel eyes. He held an open leather book in one hand and a slender red wand in the other. The wand was woven from the same vine that choked the forest. "You used the blade," the man said. "I hoped you would." He smiled without warmth. "I am Constantine Blackmire. I planted every vine you cut. They keep people out. But the machete was mine once. I let it find you." Gareth kept the blade raised. "Why guide me here?" "Because you cut a path," Constantine said. "Straight to my door. No one crosses the Ashfeld. You did. That makes you useful." He lifted the wand. The vines at the clearing's edge stirred and rose. Evangeline stepped forward. "You burned my father's land. Fifty acres. I saw the ash." Her voice dropped low and final. "I know your name from the court records." Constantine's smile faded. He looked at her, then at Gareth, and lowered the wand a fraction. "Then you both know too much to leave." Gareth understood now. The unnatural pull, the vine that died too easily, the road that opened only forward. Constantine had herded him here on purpose. The caravan was bait, or a tool, for something the sorcerer wanted. "I have sixty people on that road," Gareth said. "You'll let them pass." "That," Constantine said, closing his book, "depends on what you do for me first." Gareth had his answer. He knew who wanted his caravan deeper in the wilderness. Now he had to learn what the sorcerer meant to take.

Constantine moved fast. His wand snapped up, and vines burst from the floor. They wrapped Evangeline's arms before she could step back. She twisted hard, but the vines only tightened. "Gareth," she said, calm and flat. "Don't give him anything." Constantine dragged her toward the stairs. "She stays in my tower," he said. "You want her back, you leave the blade on my floor. Then you walk out. Alone." He climbed, pulling her with him. A door slammed high above. Gareth heard the lock turn. Gareth stood alone in the round room. The machete was the only thing that killed the vines without waking them. Without it, sixty people had no way forward and no way back. But without Evangeline, the woman who had crossed every road on her father's land, who knew these vines by name, he would be leading them blind. He could not spend one to save the other. He looked at the wand Constantine had left resting on his open spellbook. The sorcerer commanded the vines through it. Gareth had watched him lift it, and the thorns had risen. He set it down, and they had slept. The wand was the leash. Gareth did not lay down the blade. He grabbed the wand instead. Constantine's magic answered his hand, raw and wrong. Gareth did not know the words. He only knew what he wanted. He pointed the wand at the tower door and thought of a wall. Red thorns exploded from the stone. They coiled and stacked into a huge crimson barrier, brambles thick as his arm, spikes longer than his knife. It sealed the doorway floor to ceiling. Boots pounded down the stairs. Constantine reached the room and froze. His wall of thorns blocked his own exit now. "Give that back," he said. His voice cracked. "Bring her down," Gareth said. "Or I bury your door and take this with me. See how you like your forest without a leash." Constantine stared at the barrier. He understood he had lost his grip on it. He turned and climbed. The lock scraped. Evangeline came down the steps, rubbing red marks on her wrists. Gareth kept the machete in one hand and the wand in the other. He backed toward the wall of thorns and swung the blade. The brambles blackened and fell open, clearing a gap wide enough for two. "Move," he told Evangeline. She went through. He followed, then swung once more behind them, sealing the gap shut with living thorns Constantine could not command. Outside, the gray trees waited. Evangeline looked at the wand in his fist. "He'll come for that," she said. "He can't grow another." "Good," Gareth said. He had the blade, the woman, and now the sorcerer's power in his hand. But he had left Constantine alive and furious behind a wall that would not hold him long. He started back toward the caravan. The race was only who reached the refugees first.

They walked into a clearing where the gray trees thinned. Evangeline held Gareth's sleeve. His dragon flew ahead, wings open, the road clear. Then the ground shook. A green shape rose from behind a fallen trunk. It was a wyvern, huge, its scales the color of old moss. Its yellow eyes fixed on them. Something had woken it. Gareth thought of the sorcerer moving ahead, stirring the wilderness as he went. "Down," Gareth said. He shoved Evangeline behind a boulder. The wyvern opened its jaws. Fire rolled out in a wide plume. Heat washed over the rock. Leaves curled and blackened where they had just stood. Gareth pressed low until the flames passed. The beast swung its head, hunting them. Its tail dragged through the ash. Gareth knew what it would do. It would find Evangeline. She was spent. She could not run. He stood and stepped into the open. "Here," he shouted. He waved his arms. "Look at me." The wyvern's head snapped toward him. It liked the moving target. It stalked forward, claws tearing the dirt. Gareth backed away from the boulder, drawing it wide, keeping it turned from Evangeline. "Gareth." Her voice was quiet and hard. "No!" "Stay behind the rock," he said. The wyvern lunged. Gareth dove under its neck. He had his Elven machete,and he drove it down into the its foot. The blade sank deep. Hot blood ran down his wrist. Gareth scrambled clear. He put his body between the wyvern and the boulder. The beast took flight, furious. Its wings beat the air, preparing its vengeance deep in its throat. Right before an enormous jet of flame spews from the creature’s mouth, Evangeline leapt forward in front of Gareth, holding her ancestral blade, enchanted generations prior to deflect dragonfire and kill dragons, wyverns and related beasts. The fire is directed away from them both toward a substantial lake in the distance.