The sun didn’t so much rise as infiltrate. When it had sent enough spying beams into the valley that we could see the abandoned camp with some clarity, everyone pretended to wake up. Maybe Yaendrid had actually slept. She at least looked fresh and attentive to the day. The princess was miserable, and the prince blinked and rubbed at his eyes as he tried to care for her. Martiveht was haggard. She walked from building to building, touching the walls. I watched her, and when she disappeared around a corner, I followed her.

  There was an old well in the center of the encampment, and she stood by it, looking into its depths. She noticed me and some minute shift in her posture gave me permission to come near. “There’s a spirit stone down there,” she said.

  I looked into the well. Its sides disappeared into shadow and its bottom wasn’t visible. “Why would a neuthermakra make a shrine here?”

  “Not a shrine. But a stone, definitely. Maybe several.” She gazed about at the weathered buildings, considering. “This place has been abandoned for awhile. Those buildings shouldn’t be standing, or they should at least be weed-choked. The forest is staying away from this place.”

  “I don’t like it,” I said.

  “I don’t like it, either. Listen, don’t tell Yaendrid that there are stones in this well.”

  Did she share my suspicions? “Why not?” I asked cautiously.

  She wouldn’t meet my eye. “It’s attracted some ghosts. They’re down there, fouling the water.”

  “She can’t make you use one as a scout.”

  “No, she can’t. But I don’t want the argument.”

  “She might already know. Maybe that’s why she brought us here.”

  She gripped my sleeve. “Who is she, Haendil?”

  “Yaendrid? Until yesterday I thought that she was just one of the seneschals of the court. And my friend.”

  “And today? Who do you think she is today?”

  I hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  “She seems to know these woods extremely well.”

  “She did venture across them, when she first arrived in Rahasabahst.”

  “She spent time with the bandits.”

  “Yes.”

  She took a step closer to me, but she wouldn’t meet my eye. “Haendil, is she a spy?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and then I added, contradicting myself, “What would a spy want with a bandit band?”

  She was very still, her head cocked, as if she were listening to the ghosts in the well. “She said that she belongs to Haunts and Scribbles.”

  “What of it?”

  “That tower was founded to study us. To try to pin us down, like insects on a board.”

  “But not to treat with bandits.”

  She gave a wry and bitter smile. “You are loyal to your friend.”

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  “I value loyalty,” I told her, and the bitterness of the previous day came back over me. But I didn’t say my thoughts aloud. If my troops had been loyal, we wouldn’t be here.

  Yaendrid, at least, seemed disinterested in the arguments of the day before. She led us away from that haunted encampment, finding a path that ran slowly upwards out of the long valley. Ferns rode the slopes. They were long past their flowering season. Someone once told me that ferns didn’t have flowers in the previous world. I found it hard to believe, so I made a habit of asking the tinkers about it. One of them, a winsome fellow who is a close friend of my son Nolio, told me that the Previous World’s ferns did have flowers, but that they only flowered once a year, and when they did a strange creature would come and dance on the flower petals. I thought about that as we trudged through the forest. Not so different, really, than the hunting fly that Vaenahma claimed to be.

  They were out ahead of us, scouting, and when we came to the top of a rise they were waiting for us. They held a finger to their lips. The path twisted to the left ahead of us and disappeared from view. We could hear voices coming round the bend. Vaenahma made a quick hand motion, and I slipped to the princess’s side. “Walk very softly,” I hissed, and led her off the trail, into the underbrush. There was a bad moment when the skirts of her robes caught on a deadfall. The ripping sound seemed to echo across the valley. But the ferns were high and we squatted down in them to watch the road.

  A group of bandits came walking along it. They weren’t being cautious, and their chatter had covered the sound of the princess’s skirts ripping. There were five of them, and they were being led by a moon-faced lad who seemed to be drunk. He was gabbling and his steps were uneven. His followers were no better off. One of them had a streak of vomit down the front of his robes.

  We had no time for consultation. Vaenahma made a decision. They slipped onto the path behind the bandits and killed one with a negligent flick of their sword. The boy cried out as he died, and the others began to turn. Two of them died before they could even see what had happened to their comrade. The child with vomit down his front fell over without being touched, and that saved his life. The moon-shaped youth stared at Vaenahma, his mouth agape. Then his fingers scrambled for his sword hilt. Vaenahma took one neat step and skewered him. My lieutenant was so quick that I barely saw the jab. I mostly noticed the way the boy stared down at his stomach before he fell over.

  All was silent for a moment. A bird started singing at the top of the ridge. Sunlight patterned down through a fall of pollen and disturbed dust. The princess started to cry.

  I stood and helped her to her feet. We came down onto the road and stood, looking at the fallen bandits. The vomit covered boy was snoring loudly. The other four were laying still.

  At night you can sometimes see a ghost rise. They give no special light, but you can make them out through some disturbance in the shadows. This doesn’t happen in daylight. Sunlight seems to burn them away like mist. Only a sasturi can see them during the day, although anyone with any sensitivity can sense their presence. There are some who deny this. There are skeptics who claim that there aren’t any ghosts, that the Sasturi have concocted the idea that the dead rise, and convinced the world to join in their particular hallucination. These skeptics are the same kind of people who don’t hear music and can’t taste salt.

  Martiveht was angry. “I won’t let them ride me,” she said.

  It was Vaenahma who answered her. “We needed a scout.”

  “Sasturi don’t kill. Not to make scouts. If we had found a ghost in the woods, perhaps. But not like this.”

  Yaendrid was frowning down at the corpses. She raised her face and looked at me. She scowled at me and then rubbed at her large nose. “They were only boys,” she said.

  Vaenahma shrugged, “Boys grow into men. They would be terrorizing the woods within a year or two. And we needed a scout.”

  “I won’t carry them,” Martiveht repeated.

  “Then this little bend of road might be haunted for a long time,” Vaenahma said. “I wonder if the bandits have a pet sasturi. Someone who will let these ghosts ride them, and learn how they died.”

  “Let them. Why should I cover your guilt?”

  “I feel no guilt,” Vaenahma said. “And the prince and princess will be in danger, once it’s known they were involved in these deaths.”

  Martiveht glanced at Iyedraeka. “No ghost remembers its death,” she said, contradicting what she had just said. That is the way with sasturi. They change their stories to suit their purposes. But I shared her anger. I stared at my lieutenant, wondering why he had killed so freely.

  Prince Chahsaeda was unhappy. He was again at Iyedraeka’s side, and she was leaning on him, drying her eyes on his robe. “There might be more of them about,” he said.

  Vaenahma nodded. “There’s only one way to know for certain,” they said.

  “Please, Martiveht,” Iyedraeka said softly.

  Martiveht grimaced, but she turned towards the corpse of the moon-shaped boy. She brought out a little hand loom from the pocket in her sleeve. There was a weaving already started on it, white, as all Sasturi weavings are white. She stretched her face into the Sasturi scream, every tendon and muscle stretching. The tesserae of her expression rearranged themselves and held her in that scream, and her whole body spasmed as the ghost of the dead bandit stepped into her.

  Copyright KPB Stevens, 2025

  The Flowering Ferns

  from The Curator’s Commonplace Book, excerpt written by Huenaed Whistrohm in the year 425