The Greywood began, quite literally, at a line painted on the road.

It was a long white stripe across the packed earth at the end of Foxglove Lane, a mile and a half beyond the academy gates, where the paved road gave up and the trees began. Beyond it, the forest rose like a wall. The trunks were enormous and pale, the color of old bone, their branches knitted together overhead into a ceiling of dull silver leaves that let in a thin grey light. Everything about the place was quiet. It was not the quiet of peace. It was the quiet of a held breath.

Thirty-one first years stood in a ragged line at the stripe at dawn on Wednesday, and not one of them was talking.

-- You may have noticed, -- said Professor Hale, in his tired, mild voice, -- that the weather is cold. This is not an accident. The Freshman Survival Trial is held at the start of the autumn mana tide, when the forest is at its least forgiving, because it is the only time of year when a student may be made to learn something. You have one pack. One water skin. One blanket. Any tool you can make or carry, and any knowledge you possess. Your covenants are permitted. They will be observed.

He gestured. At the top of a small rise to the left of the road, three figures stood in a row against the grey sky. Two wore the white cassocks of the Holy See, with silver cords at their waists. The third was tall, and slim, and wore a long grey coat belted at the waist, and held something small and bright in his fingers that caught the light as it turned.

-- Inquisitor Corvin has kindly consented to observe, -- said Hale, without any inflection at all. -- As has the Church. Please do not be distracted by it. They will not be interfering with the assessment.

A small, unhappy murmur went through the line. Tobias, beside Alan, made a thin whistling sound through his nose, and pulled his breast pocket closed over Crumb as though to shield him from the Inquisition.

-- Do not look, -- Alan whispered.

-- I am not looking.

-- You are looking.

-- I am looking at his shoes. -- Tobias swallowed. -- They are very clean. It is unnatural.

-- You have begun to learn from me, -- said Alan.

-- That is a terrible thing to say to a man before a bear.

Alan did not smile. He stood with his pack on his shoulders and his hand loose at his side, and he did not look at the rise. He had spent the whole of the previous night turning over the problem, and he had arrived, at four o'clock in the morning, at a single hard decision.

-- I am not going to use the sync, -- he said, very quietly, behind his hand.

There was a pause in the Lobby.

-- At all? -- said Priscilla.

-- Not once. Not for a single skill. -- He kept his eyes on the trees. -- He is watching me. The Inquisitor. He asked a question last Monday, and I do not think he believed my answer. If I borrow anything in that forest, even a footstep, he will see the shape of it. I do not know how. I only know that he will. So I am going to do this the ordinary way. On my own legs. With whatever you have taught me, but nothing borrowed.

-- You will still have our counsel, -- said Valeria. -- That is not a violation of anything. We may speak. We have always spoken.

-- Yes.

-- Good. -- A crisp pause. -- Then I would like it recorded that this is the correct decision. It is the decision of a man who has chosen to depend on his own training. I approve of it. I have approved of it from the start. -- A very small silence. -- I should also like it recorded that I would have preferred you to use my sword, in the tournament, last week, when it mattered. That is a separate matter. I am only noting it.

-- Duly noted, -- said Alan.

-- I am still not entirely resolved on the question.

-- I am aware.

-- It does not diminish my pride, however. -- She said it very stiffly. -- In how far you have come. I wished to say that. That is all.

He felt, quite suddenly, an absurd lump in his throat. He did not know what to say. He tightened his hands on the straps of his pack.

-- Thank you, Senior Valeria, -- he said.

-- Do not thank me. Walk.

A horn sounded from the rise, long and low, like the lowing of a great animal. The line of students broke apart. Some of them ran, whooping, into the trees. Some of them walked, in carefully measured steps, with their eyes on the ground. And Alan, with Tobias fastened to his elbow like a limpet, crossed the white stripe at an even pace and entered the Greywood.

Day one was a map, and a march, and the quiet, sweet, wearying work of putting one foot in front of the other.

The map lived in his head. Priscilla had drawn it over four nights from the academy's survey archive, an elaborate three-dimensional chart of ridges and streams and ley lines, and had loaded it, as she put it, directly into his visual cortex. It was not a sync. It was a conversation. She simply described the terrain in a quick, clear, precise voice, a few paces ahead of what his eyes could see.

-- There is a ridge in two hundred meters, -- she said. -- Keep it on your right. It conceals a drop. Past it, the ground will descend toward a stream. You will want to fill the water skin there. It is shallow. Do not drink upstream of the dead tree.

-- Which dead tree?

-- There is a dead tree. There always is. -- A pause. -- I did not model the individual trees. I am a theorist.

-- That is very reassuring.

-- It is very honest.

They walked. The trunks closed around them. The air was cold and damp, and the ground was a deep springy carpet of grey needles that swallowed the sound of their feet. Somewhere high above, a bird gave a thin repeated cry. Tobias, who had lost his compass in his own pocket within forty minutes of the start, trudged beside Alan with a face of gray resolve.

-- I would like to say something, -- he said, around noon. -- In the event that I die.

-- You are not going to die.

-- In the event that I do. -- He drew himself up with enormous dignity. -- I would like it known that I was not a coward. That I walked into this forest willingly, with a lost compass and a small and frightened mouse. And that if there is any honey cake left in the world, I would like it to be given to Crumb.

-- It will be done.

-- Thank you.

-- It is only a mouse, Tobias.

-- It is a hero, -- said Tobias, in a low and trembling voice, and clutched his pocket.

They filled the water skins at the stream, downstream of the dead tree, which Alan found without difficulty. They ate cold bread. They rested. By late afternoon the sky, which had been the color of pewter all day, began to darken at the edges, and a fine cold wind came whispering through the trunks, and the first drops began to fall.

-- Ah, -- said a very gruff voice in his head. -- Rain.

-- Senior Helga?

-- I told you to wax the blanket.

-- I did wax the blanket.

-- Then take it out and use it, you idiot. Do not stand there getting wet.

It was the finest piece of work he had ever seen. She had spent forty minutes of her allocation on it, on a cold evening in the Cinder Annex, working beeswax and a trace of pine resin into the weave of the grey wool with a hot iron and a stern expression. It had come out of the process transformed, stiff and sleek and faintly golden, and when he threw it over a low bough and pegged the corners with the sticks she told him to cut, it made a lean-to as tight as a drum. The rain beat against it and ran off in silver sheets. Inside, he and Tobias sat cross-legged on a bed of dry needles in a pocket of perfect shelter, steaming gently, and watched the water fall.

-- It is waterproof, -- said Tobias, in a voice of awe.

-- It is a very good blanket.

-- It is the best blanket I have ever seen. Where did you get it?

-- A friend made it, -- said Alan.

-- Is she single?

-- She is, ah. -- He considered. -- She is a person who would throw a hammer at you for asking.

-- ... I admire that in a woman, -- said Tobias, after reflection.

In the dark of Alan's head, a gruff voice said, very quickly, -- Tell him I do not take questions. -- And then, after a short, strange pause, in an altogether different tone, -- It is a good blanket, though. Is it not?

-- It is the best one I have ever owned, -- said Alan, quietly.

-- Hm, -- said Helga. -- That is only because I made it.

They passed the afternoon in the shelter, and when the rain let up, they came out into a forest that dripped and shone, and walked on. It was somewhere near dusk that Nyx spoke up.

-- Stop, -- she said. -- Do not move your feet.

He stopped. Tobias walked into his back.

-- What is it?

-- Look at the leaves, -- said Nyx softly. -- Three paces ahead, to the left. The ones with the dark underside. They have been turned over. Not by wind. By a heavy animal, in a hurry, within the last two hours. -- A pause. -- Look at the ground beside them. The mud.

He looked. In the damp earth beside the trail, half-filled with water, was a broad round print with five deep toes and the faint ghost of a claw.

-- That is not a boar, -- said Alan slowly.

-- That is a bear. A young one. It went east. It was not hunting. It is afraid of something. -- Her voice had gone dry and quiet. -- It is possible that the something is not a bear.

-- Oh, no, -- whispered Tobias.

-- Walk west, -- said Nyx. -- Not quickly. Not quietly. Make noise. Talk. Sing. Anything. It will hear you and go the other way.

-- What shall I sing? -- said Tobias, in a high small voice.

-- The first thing that comes into your head.

Tobias drew himself up. He took a deep breath. And in a quivering tenor, with his hand on his heart and his eyes fixed upon the middle distance, he began to sing a song about a honey cake that had been left on a windowsill in the rain.

It was the worst song Alan had ever heard. It had eleven verses. It rhymed cake with mistake, and sill with still, and ended on a long vibrato note that made three crows burst from a tree overhead. And as they walked west through the dripping dusk, with the bear's prints fading behind them and the song rolling out through the trees, he found that he was fighting, with all his might, a desperate and entirely undignified urge to laugh.

-- Oh, kid, -- said Nyx, weakly. -- Oh, that is the finest thing I have ever heard.

-- It is a very sad song, -- said Alan.

-- It is a work of genius. -- She was wheezing. -- I will remember it for a thousand years.

That was where they found the wolf.

It lay on a flat black rock beside a narrow stream, a few hundred paces beyond the place where Tobias had finished the eleventh verse. It was small and silver, and curled in a tight ball, and as they approached, it gave a thin thread of a whine. Its left foreleg was bent at a wrong angle. A thin line of blood ran down the stone.

-- That is Cassian's, -- said Tobias, stopping short.

It was. The silverfang cub lifted its head, and its eyes were dark and wet and frightened, and when it saw Alan, it did not growl.

-- Where is he? -- said Alan.

-- I do not know. -- Tobias looked around, bewildered. -- He was ahead of us. At the stripe. He must have, he must have gone on, and the cub fell, or was dropped, or.

-- The leg is broken.

-- Is it?

-- I think so. -- He knelt on the wet stone. -- Do not move, little one. I am not going to hurt you.

-- You do not know anything about wolves, -- said Tobias.

-- I know a little about pain.

He did not use the sync. He thought about it, for an instant. It would have been so easy. Seraphina's touch lay in the back of his mind like a coal, ready to be called. But Corvin was somewhere in the trees. And the ring on his finger was warm. And there was a thing Seraphina had shown him, on a cold evening in the chapel, that required no mana at all.

-- Water, -- he said. -- Tobias. Give me your skin.

-- What?

-- Cold water. From the stream. As cold as you can get. And your scarf.

He worked as she had taught him. Pressure above the break. Cold water on the swelling, to slow the blood. A splint of two straight sticks and Tobias's scarf, bound firm and gentle, not too tight. He spoke softly all the while, a low, steady, meaningless murmur, the voice she used in the chapel when her hands were busy. The cub trembled. It licked, once, the back of his wrist. And then, in a long exhausted sigh, it laid its head on his knee, and went limp.

-- Is it dead? -- whispered Tobias.

-- It is asleep.

-- That was, -- said Tobias. -- Alan. That was extraordinary.

-- It is only first aid.

-- I do not know first aid.

-- Nobody does, -- said Alan, wearily. -- That is why it is called first.

-- My first aid is better, -- said Valeria, in a very flat voice, from the Lobby.

-- It is not better, -- said Seraphina, with a warmth that was almost audible. -- It is only louder.

-- It is faster.

-- It is a tourniquet and a curse.

-- It has saved a great many lives.

-- And lost me a great many patients.

-- Ladies, -- said Alan, mildly, to nobody in particular. -- The wolf is trying to sleep.

They carried it between them, wrapped in his coat, until the trees thinned and the forest opened onto a small stony clearing. There, on a fallen log, with his white shirt torn and his hair in disarray and a look of such naked misery on his handsome face that Alan stopped in his tracks, sat Cassian Vale.

He looked up. His eyes went to the bundle in Alan's arms. For a moment his face was completely blank.

-- Is he, -- said Cassian. His voice cracked. -- Is he alive?

-- He is asleep. His leg is broken. I have splinted it.

-- I lost him. -- Cassian rose, and took two staggering steps, and stopped. He was shaking. -- We were crossing the ravine. I went ahead. He slipped. I did not see. I turned around and there was nothing, and I have been searching for three hours. I did not. -- He swallowed, with an effort. -- I did not know what to do.

Alan held out the bundle. Cassian took it. His arms closed around the little silver body with infinite care, and for a long moment he stood there with his forehead pressed against the wolf's soft fur, not speaking at all.

-- Thank you, -- he said at last, in a low rough voice, without raising his head.

-- It is nothing.

-- It is not nothing.

-- I would have done it for anyone's.

-- I know. -- Cassian drew a ragged breath. He lifted his face, and his eyes were red-rimmed, and for the first time Alan saw in them not the glitter of a prodigy but the fear of a boy who had very nearly lost the only thing he was sure of. -- That is exactly why I did not expect it.

He did not say any more. He did not need to.

They parted at the edge of the clearing, Cassian toward the first checkpoint with the wolf cradled against his chest, Alan and Tobias in the opposite direction, toward the dark. As they went, a soft crunch of boots made Alan turn, and he looked up toward a ridge that ran along the northern edge of the clearing, and saw, silhouetted against the last grey light, a tall slim figure in a long coat.

It did not move. It did not wave. It stood quite still on the ridge, perhaps sixty yards away, with its hands clasped behind its back, looking down. At the clearing. At the wolf. At the boy in the torn shirt. And, for a very long moment, at Alan.

And then, with great slowness, its head turned, and its pale eyes came to rest on his left hand, where the ring lay dull and grey against his knuckle.

Alan did not look away. He did not bow. He looked, instead, at the figure's shoes.

After an interval that might have been a second or a year, Corvin lifted his hand, in a small friendly gesture, like a man tipping a hat to a stranger on a road, and turned, and vanished into the trees.

-- Well, -- said Nyx, very softly. -- He has made his point.

-- Which is?

-- That he is watching your hands. -- A pause. -- Keep them in your pockets.

They made camp that night in the lee of a great fallen trunk, a mile past the clearing. They built a small fire from dry heartwood, as Helga instructed, and Alan boiled the last of the stream water in the little copper pot, and watched the bubbles rise. Tobias sat across the flames, wrapped in a waxed blanket, with Crumb curled on his knee, snoring, and a look of absolute and enormous contentment on his face. He had eaten four crackers and half an apple. It was, he said, the best meal of his life.

-- Dear, -- said Seraphina.

It was very soft. It was the voice she used in the dark, carefully pitched, a little hesitant, like the first step onto a frozen pond.

-- Yes, Senior?

-- I should like to ask you something. -- A pause. It was a long one. He could almost hear her gathering herself. -- It is a small thing. You may say no. It is only that. -- Another pause. -- I wondered, if you wished, whether it would be, whether you might. -- She stopped. When she spoke again, it was in a rush, and quite small. -- There is a twist of paper in the left pocket of your pack. I wrote the list for you, on Tuesday morning, and I wrapped what I had left of the herbs inside it. Valerian and rosehip. And a little gold-thread root. You will have seen it. I did not touch it since. I did not put anything anywhere. I only. -- Her voice faltered. -- May I ask you to add a pinch to your tea? Only a pinch. For the left channel. It is a very cold night. And you have been walking all day, and I should so like to. -- She stopped again. -- If you would like to. If you would not, I will not mention it again.

The fire crackled. A log shifted, and sent up a brief fountain of sparks. Tobias snored on, sublimely.

Alan sat very still, with the little copper pot in his hands. He felt something loosen in his chest, and tighten, and loosen again. It was so small a sentence. A child could have said it. And it had cost her, he thought, more than any healing she had ever done.

-- Yes, -- he said.

-- Yes?

-- Yes, please. -- His voice was quiet, and not entirely steady. -- I would like that very much. Thank you for asking.

For a moment, there was no sound at all in the Lobby.

-- Oh, -- said Seraphina. She said it as though she had been struck, very gently, with a feather. -- Oh. I. -- A breath. -- Thank you, dear. Thank you.

He reached into the left pocket of his pack. There was a small twist of paper, folded neatly, tied with a thread of gold, and when he opened it, a faint sweet bitter fragrance rose from the dried leaves inside. He pinched a little between his fingers, and dropped it into the pot, and watched it bloom in the hot water, curling green and gold.

-- She asked, -- said Nyx, very softly, in the narrow channel. -- Did you hear? She asked.

-- I heard.

-- I did not think she could.

-- Neither did she.

-- Do not say anything, -- said Nyx. -- Just drink it.

He did. It was warm, and sweet, with a bitter note beneath it like warm metal, and for the first time in days, the tight left channel along his ribs eased by a whole degree. He lay back against the log with his hands around the cup and looked up at the thin cold stars between the trees, and listened to five people not saying anything.

It was the most peaceful hour he had spent in weeks.

It lasted until dawn.

He woke to the feeling of the ground trembling. It was very slight, a low vibration in the earth, like the footfall of something very large a very long way off. The fire had burned to a bed of grey ash. The air was thick and wet and strangely cold. Beyond the fallen trunk, where the trees dropped away into a deep narrow ravine, a pale shape was rising, slow and thick and silent, rolling up out of the dark like milk poured into water.

It was fog. But it was not the fog of an ordinary morning. It shimmered faintly, a dim pearl glow, as though lit from inside, and where it touched the trunks, the bark seemed to dull and thin, the way a candle flame dulls in a closed jar.

-- Alan, -- said Priscilla, very softly, in a voice with no drawl in it at all. -- Do not breathe that.

-- What is it?

-- I do not know, -- said Priscilla. -- It is not in my model. -- A shaky pause. -- It is a mana fog. And it is feeding.