Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 10
walls, preferring jobs as far as possible inside the yards. The
forest was the home of monsters, morphs and other lesser
Winds.
The inspector who built this place had been hoping his
proximity to the wilderness would win him favor with the
Winds. He used to stand on the forest-ward wall, sipping
coffee and staring out at the treetops, waiting for a sign. Jordan
had stood in the same spot and imagined he was the inspector,
but he was never able to imagine how you would have to think
to not be scared by those green shadowed mazeways. That old
man must not have had bad dreams.
Bad dreams... Jordan was reminded of the strange
nightmare he’d had last night. It had begun with something
creeping in thorugh his window, dark and shapeless. Then, as
morning drifted in, he had seemed to awake in a far distant
hilltop, at dawn, to witness the beginning of a battle between
two armies, which was cut short by a horror that had fallen
from the sky, and leapt from the ground itself. It had been so
vivid...
He shook himself and returned his attention to the
moment. The others arrived and now began setting up. Jordan
had scraped away the top layer of mortar around the stones he
wanted cleared. Now he swung back along the edge of the
scaffold, to let the brawnier men do their work. Below him the
reflecting pool imaged puffy clouds and the white crescent of a
distant vagabond moon. Ten minutes ago the moon had been
on the eastern horizon; now it was in the south, and quickly
receding.
He looked out over the courtyard. Behind him, dark
forest strangled the landscape all the way to the horizon.
Before him, past the courtyard, a line of trees ran along the
three hilltops that lay between his village and the manor. To