The Third Kingdom

“Do you notice anything up ahead?” Richard asked in a hushed tone, gesturing with a slight nod of his head.

Samantha look toward the trees and then frowned back up at him. “I see trees. What do you mean? Like what?”

“I mean, do you see eyes watching us?”

She turned her frown toward the dark forest rising up before them.

“Eyes?” she asked in a voice drawn thin and high with alarm. She leaned a little bit to each side, then forward a little, peering into the dark places among the trees.

Richard carefully, methodically, studied the dark shadows back in behind the trees. The woods weren’t too far off. In fact, at the moment, they were feeling uncomfortably close. He saw a few sparrows darting among the pine boughs, and a squirrel or maybe a mouse rummaging among the leaf litter, nothing larger.

“No, I don’t see anything,” she finally said. “You saw eyes watching us? Where?”

“I think I saw them up ahead, back in the trees, just off to the right of the trail.”

Samantha’s gaze darted back to the forest, checking where he said he saw something. “Are you sure?”

“No. I only saw it for a moment. I’ve spent most of my life in the woods and I know that sometimes light reflecting off wet leaves, or a few light patches of moss—things like that—can sometimes look like eyes. Sometimes it can really fool you.”

“Maybe that’s what you saw this time.” She sounded more hopeful than confident.

“It’s possible. But now I don’t see it.” Richard took two steps back to replicate where he had been, trying to see if it was a reflection off wet leaves when seen from just a certain angle. He didn’t see it again, so he doubted it was a reflection he’d seen. As he came forward to step up beside her, he still didn’t see it again.

“That’s good, if you don’t see it, right? That means it was nothing, right?”

Richard stared into the dark recesses of the forest, back among the bases of the towering trunks and the smaller shrubs. “Maybe. It might have been a trick of the light, or some water dripping off leaves. But it could also mean that it was somebody, and when I spotted them they moved back and hid behind cover.”

Samantha scanned the fields to their left. To the right the rocky ground rose up sharply into the mountain home where she lived. She looked back to the forest waiting for them at the end of the lightly traveled trail.

“What should we do?” she asked.

Richard surveyed the lay of the land. To the right the mountain made passage impossible. To the left, skirting the path, looked like an option but not a good one.

“Are there any other paths or roads going in this general direction?”

Samantha shook her head. “There are more populated areas to the south. Very few people live in this direction. This is the only path going north and it only goes north for a ways.

“If we go off the path it will be slow going through the forest. We will have to do that eventually because the path doesn’t go all the way north to the wall. It turns off to the west less than halfway to where we’re going. It eventually turns some more to go to the southwest as it makes its way around rugged, rocky ridges. But to the north, after the trail turns away, is uncharted wilderness.

“It only goes north as far as it does because of rugged mountains due west of here. The trail only goes north as far as it has to in order to get around impassable country, then it turns on its way to the few other villages to the west and south.”

“Do many people travel through here?”

She tilted her head to the west. “Those villages are distant over those mountains. Most of the people there trade with places to the south of them, which are closer, so people rarely travel here because Stroyza is not only pretty isolated, it’s not on the way to anywhere. This part of the Dark Lands is just too rugged and uninhabited to be worthwhile for most traders to have any reason to come this way, so we don’t see many people other than a few trappers, merchants, and traders trying to scratch out a living.”

Hands on his hips, Richard nodded as he studied the lay of the land. “I should have realized it.”

She looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

“Well, in Naja Moon’s time, they were trying to save everyone from the danger of the half people and the walking dead, right?”

“Right,” Samantha said, not really following what he was getting at.

“Well if you wanted to stick something dangerous somewhere where it would have the least chance to harm anyone, where would you put it?”

Samantha’s gaze shot back to the north. “Someplace deserted. Someplace people never went. Someplace where no one was likely to ever go near.”

“Right.”