My memories of that journey to Nhadtereyba have taken on the aspect of a dream. Yaendrid led, of course, as she knew the countryside so well that she could navigate it by night. The rest of us were nearly useless. Martiveht had failed to find a ghost, so we had no spectral scouts. Vaenahma and myself were city guards and unaccustomed to landscapes that included cliff faces and forest groves, although I suppose my lieutenant spent time wandering across forbidding landscapes before they came to Rahasabahst. The princess and Martiveht weren’t accustomed to gallivanting through the countryside. Neither was the prince, really, although he had hunted in these lands, so could pretend to a superficial knowledge. But that was during the day. When the sun shone, these were royal forests. By night they were bandit lands.

  I remember darkness, and shapes that were just a deeper darkness, and the smell of loam, the call of night crows, the beat of a drum owl’s wings. There was no moonlight, so we went single file, and relied on the proximity of the person in front of us to guide us. I kept my hand on the hilt of my sword. But it was as unlikely that our enemies could see us as it was that we could see them. We went slowly and listened closely. Yaendrid was at the front, and Vaenahma was behind her. Then the sasturi and the princess and the prince. I was the rear guard. I could feel the night gathering at my back, could feel danger as if it were a breath on my neck.

  We came to the top of a cliff, and we would have walked off it without Yaendrid, for enormous trees grew up from the valley below, and their tops were indistinguishable from the woods that grew along the cliffside. We wound our way carefully along the ridge. I did not imagine that we could go down in the dark. Yet we stopped and Yaendrid’s voice called back to us, issuing instructions. And then we were moving forward cautiously, one by one, and Chahsaeda was pulling my hand forward to place it on a stout rope, and whispering about where I should put my foot.

  We had found the Bandit’s Staircase, a legendary place which we city dwellers swore could not exist. A series of steps down through the branches of the trees, railed with a hefty rope and nothing else. Each step was a slow and cautious movement of the foot, a grasping for the feeling of the branch that we were to step onto, as the person in front of us murmured directions. Each step required a concentration so deep that my mind began to ache like an arm that has been holding a shield for hours without rest. The distance to the ground below was measured by a length of time, not by any known method of measuring height or depth. Slow time. Grueling time. Each second an eon of fear. Leaves rustling in a narrow breeze. Bark worn smooth by many hands. Places where someone had carved a name, or an instruction. Places where a groove had been cut into the trunk, a step of sorts, a place to rest your weight as you moved to the next branch.

  And then, finally, we were on the ground, and there was something too spacious about the valley, as if it were an enormous, echoing cave. We gathered together in a clump. Yaendrid was tense, staring into the darkness ahead of us. I looked, too, all of my senses directed into the blackness, seeing nothing. I heard the creak of the trees, the rustle of leaves, and the sound of running water. Did I hear something else? A growl? A shift of limbs?

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  “I will light the lamp,” Yaendrid said at last.

  “You have a lamp?” I asked.

  “No. There is one at the bridgehead.”

  She led us towards the sound of water. I could make out pilings. A rope bridge, I thought, its railings tied to the pilings, the broad rope that you walked upon extending silently into darkness. There was a lamp there, hanging from a hook, and a tinderbox. The door of the lamp creaked when she swung it open on its hinges. A spark flared. Vaenahma, who had come to my side, tensed.

  “What?” I asked them.

  “The other bank,” they whispered.

  I looked. In the glow of the lamp I could see the expanse of the rope bridge. There were structures on the other side of it, flat-sided buildings built beside the river. I could hear my heart beating as I regarded them. There was no movement. A bandit homestead, but seemingly abandoned.

  Yaendrid started across. The lantern swung back and forth in her grasp. We fell back into line. The lantern light swung up and down, scouring the raw planks of the slab-sided buildings. The light swung up to thatch roofs that had fallen in, the tops of the walls looming like jagged teeth. It swung down past blank and staring windows and doors. Up to places where trees had grown within the buildings, and their crowns scattered leafy shadows everywhere. Down to where carts with broken wheels sat entangled by weeds.

  I gave a cry. The lantern light had caught two eyes, shining in the darkness. I heard Vaenahma draw their sword. The lantern light steadied. It shown on an enormous black dog, rising slowly to its feet. The dog regarded us, not growling, eerily silent, as if waiting for us to dare to move. If it started barking, it would alert every bandit within miles, I thought. We all stood still, balanced on the circumference of the rope, the bridge swaying beneath us. The dog regarded us with yellow eyes. Then it huffed out a breath so large that it could be heard throughout that strange valley, and turned and padded off into the darkness.

  We slept that night on cold ground, beside the abandoned buildings. We took turns keeping watch. The woods whispered all around us, and I felt as if Ordalamia itself had invaded our little kingdom. That it was not the leaves that were whispering, but great arboreal snakes. The kind that bandit queens like to capture and claim as pets. The kind that bandit kings like to tattoo on their forearms. We are only a few generations removed from banditry ourselves, we citizens of the Kingdom of Rahasabahst. But that night I knew that we had been tamed by trade and laws and the expectation of safety. That the wilderness was no longer inside of us. But it was alive in these woods, and in the hearts of our enemies.

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  Copyright KPB Stevens, 2025

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  The Witch Book of Chadaeyan Oduun

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