The Wood

The Wood is a living boundary: a grove of trees on the outskirts of Ilmar that contains within its dark a magical world of hungry predators, hidden paths to other lands, and masked inhabitants who walk between realities. It is spoken of in shorthand as "the Wood," and the text maintains a careful distinction between the physical forest - the Anchorwood, two streets from the Anchorage taproom - and the vast territory it opens onto: other worlds, other cities, other inhabitants. The Wood is not merely a setting but an actor with its own schedule, its own law, its own hunger. It opens and closes gates of passage according to the moon's course and its own inscrutable timing, bars entire civilizations from its ways on pain of death, and shelters or refuses individual travelers by criteria no Palleseen logic can parse. Its creatures - tall, flattened, fish-bodied predators with lizard legs and jagged bone-wedge teeth - roam through it and through the city beyond, immune to conventional weapons, ignored by the Indwellers as fellow inhabitants.

Across the three books in which it appears, the Wood is the axis around which Ilmar's identity, the Palleseen occupation's failures, and the cosmological structure of the world turn. In the first book it is the site of a diplomatic rupture that seals the city under military occupation, the route by which refugees escape into the Lands of Never Again, and the threshold at which a symbolic marriage between city and beyond is enacted and finally revoked. In the second it becomes a destination for a former priest's private act of theological desperation, a place to set smuggled gods loose beyond any shrine. In the third it is revealed as a parallel realm underlying the whole world without borders, accessible at any point via portals, whose very existence renders the Palleseen Sway doctrinally small and therefore must be locked away.

The Wood's arc is one of escalating revelation. What begins as a physical hazard at the edge of a colonized city - a place where soldiers are posted and warding bundles are required for safe passage - unfolds into a living entity with its own covenant, its own keeper, its own memory of forests that predate civilization. It ends as something structural to the world's ontological fabric: a realm whose existence is itself a threat to the certainties upon which an empire rests. The books trace the Wood from forbidden ground, to open door, to undeniable cosmological fact that no empire can close.

The Place

Geography & Character

The Anchorwood is a grove of trees two streets from the Anchorage taproom on the outskirts of Ilmar, yet the dark between its trunks "went on forever" and it contains within itself a magical world of hungry predators and hidden paths to other lands - City of Last Chances, ch 2. The physical forest marks an edge; beyond it lie other worlds, other cities, and other inhabitants - City of Last Chances, ch 2, ch 25. The trees are the locale; the crossing between worlds is what the Wood enables, and the two are related but not identical - City of Last Chances, ch 42, ch 25.

Within the Wood, Palleseen logic fails. Safe passage requires a warding bundle - a lacquered bundle of sticks, feathers, carven wood, and precious metals made by a dozen artisans and enchanters - and counterfeit versions flood the shadow-markets of Ilmar - City of Last Chances, ch 2, ch 3. The Wood's fauna includes tall, flattened, fish-like predators with lizard legs, crocodile tails, and jagged bone-wedge teeth, immune to Palleseen baton fire - City of Last Chances, ch 2. These creatures are ignored by the Indwellers as fellow inhabitants "of the Wood" - City of Last Chances, ch 2. A vast fish-like creature with "a vast fish-like eye" and "a great slash of a mouth filled with wedge-shaped teeth" breathes among the trees - City of Last Chances, ch 46.

In the third book the Wood is revealed as a parallel realm of endless trees existing alongside the material world, navigable to any destination if one knows where to enter and exit, bounded by no visible horizon or end - Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 25. It is a magical realm underlying the whole world without borders, accessible at any point via portals - Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 28. Hellgram's people "never guessed at the existence of the Anchorwood," and its borders can be sensed as "the differential of realities" - City of Last Chances, ch 42. The Indwellers' mist, a chill damp autumn-scented fog rolling from the trees toward the city, renders Palleseen soldiers irrelevant, walls becoming "no more substantial than flattened-out creases" - City of Last Chances, ch 20.

Who Holds It

The Indwellers, masked and robed people of the Wood, serve as the only guides through its interior, carrying staves, charms, bird legs, and skulls, and are immune to the creatures that hunt within - City of Last Chances, ch 2. They "never came to Ilmar save when the moon was right," and the Wood's gates open and close their passage to the outside on the Wood's own schedule - City of Last Chances, ch 6.

The Anchorage at the Wood's edge is secretly the Port to Nowhere, a waystation through the Wood, and its keeper holds the title "harbourmaster" and carries a book of calculations - the moon's course, an antique Maric calendar, seasonal magic - predicting when the Wood opens - City of Last Chances, ch 36. The old covenant between the keeper of the Anchorage and the Wood predates the earliest houses of Ilmar and obliges the keeper to answer the Indwellers' call and to officiate rites of passage - City of Last Chances, ch 47. Langrice is described as "Ilmar's ambassador to the Anchorwood," an unspoken office the Allorwen recognised, and as someone whose place it was to live at the boundary between Wood and world - City of Last Chances, ch 42, ch 44.

The Palleseen military maintains a constant presence at the Wood's edge, with a Palleseen Hand - a mechanical weapon with stick fingers and strings of tablethi - bristling between spiked barricades, and two sentries posted at the trees - City of Last Chances, ch 36, ch 20. Yet the Wood's apparent passivity under occupation is a closed door rather than emptiness: "The Reproach had left its prison at long last and had come to the Wood," and the Wood reveals itself as infinite with its own inhabitants - City of Last Chances, ch 46.

A symbolic wedding of the city to what lay beyond the Wood, practised under the Varatsins and the old covenant, was officiated by the keeper of the Anchorage; the practice died with the Varatsins - City of Last Chances, ch 47.

What Happens Here

The Wood is the stage for a diplomatic rupture that defines an occupation. When Sage-Archivist Ochelby's warding bundle is swapped for a straw doll by a conjurer, the Anchorwood beasts kill him, and an Indweller enters the Anchorage to proclaim the Wood barred to Pallesand on pain of death until restitution is made - City of Last Chances, ch 2, ch 6. The killing triggers a formal rupture with cascading consequences: a centipede-demon kept at the Fort escapes during the chaos and kills Useless - City of Last Chances, ch 7.

The Wood is the only route out of Ilmar for those the occupation would otherwise hold. Blackmane leads Allorwen refugees past Palleseen troops mustering at the Anchorwood's edge toward the Anchorage, where Langrice confirms the Wood will open that night - City of Last Chances, ch 36. The Wood honours deals made in its presence: "I talk to everyone. I'm the go-between. The third party. Sit down with him and make a deal. You know, if I hear it, then the Wood will make sure it's honoured" - City of Last Chances, ch 36. In the final act, Langrice announces "The Wood's open" and the Allorwen, students, factory people, and Maestro Ivarn Ostravar prepare to cross - City of Last Chances, ch 47.

The Wood shelters and refuses individuals by its own criteria. It "was welcoming home its lost child," opening its trees to shelter Fleance while Palleseen reinforcements arrive too late - City of Last Chances, ch 20. Fleance follows the Indwellers out of the Anchorwood into the city through the fog, into "other places" - buried halls, tombs, the ghosts of vanished forest - and begs the last Indweller to take him home - City of Last Chances, ch 25. An Indweller throws a piece of dead wood at the kneeling Varatsin Duke, who disintegrates into rats scattering into the Wood and toward the city - City of Last Chances, ch 47.

In the third book, the Wood serves as a tactical transit route: Dantell dispatches Lovern and his surviving men into the Wood on a calculated heading and step-count, their objective being to emerge at a predetermined point on the far side - Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 25. One man is killed by a fish-lizard beast in the crossing; Lovern himself does not survive - Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 25, ch 42. The Left-Eye Brigade earns the nickname "Fifteen-Minute Men" specifically because of the lethal time-limit imposed on travel through the Wood - Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 25.

In the second book, the Wood is a destination: smuggled gods are released into the wild there, unmoored from any shrine or temple that might contain them, and Jack resolves to go into it to continue the work - House of Open Wounds, ch 7, ch 51.

History

City of Last Chances

The Anchorwood is a grove of trees on the outskirts of Ilmar, two streets from the Anchorage taproom, yet the dark between its trunks "went on forever" and it contains within itself a magical world of hungry predators and hidden paths to other lands - ch 2. It is spoken of in shorthand as "the Wood," and the distinction between the physical forest and the broader territory it opens onto is maintained throughout the book: the trees mark an edge, beyond which lie other worlds, other cities, and other inhabitants - ch 2, ch 25. The Indwellers, masked and robed people of the Wood, serve as the only guides through its interior, carrying staves, charms, bird legs, and skulls, and are immune to the creatures that hunt within - ch 2. The Wood's own fauna includes tall, flattened, fish-like predators with lizard legs, crocodile tails, and jagged bone-wedge teeth, immune to Palleseen baton fire, which the Indwellers ignore as fellow inhabitants "of the Wood" - ch 2. Safe passage through the trees requires a warding bundle, a lacquered bundle of sticks, feathers, carven wood, and precious metals made by a dozen artisans and enchanters, whose counterfeit versions flood the shadow-markets of Ilmar - ch 2, ch 3.

The book opens with the Wood already in a state of tension. In the first chapter, soldiers are posted near its edge because of "something at the Anchorwood," and news arrives that the Sage-Archivist of the School of Correct Erudition has been killed two streets from a boarding house, reported as wildfire - ch 1. The second chapter reveals the full event: Ochelby, arriving at the Anchorage with an escort to join the Indwellers' crossing, frames the journey as a "formal embassy from Pallesand" to Scrymisa and other lands beyond the Wood, but his warding bundle is swapped for a straw doll by a conjurer at Mother Guame's circle house, and the Anchorwood beasts kill him; the nearest beast makes "a sound like deep, liquid chuckling" before eating him - ch 2. Scrymisa, the "Emerald Shore City," is reachable only through the Anchorwood, and the lead Indweller tells Ochelby, "It is not our city. We do not go there" - ch 2. In the immediate aftermath, an enormous fish-bodied beast tears up stones chasing a fleeing retinue woman northward, having already killed a sentry, and carries Ochelby's uniform jacket in its jaws - ch 3.

The killing triggers a formal diplomatic rupture. An Indweller enters the Anchorage and proclaims the Wood barred to Pallesand on pain of death until restitution is made: "The folk of Pallesand have shed the blood of the Wood. They are barred from the trees on pain of death. Let it be known among all your kin. You are forbidden our ways until restitution is made" - ch 6. The Indwellers "never came to Ilmar save when the moon was right," and the Wood's gates open and close their passage to the outside on the Wood's own schedule - ch 6. The closing has immediate practical consequences: a centipede-demon five men long, kept half-starved in a pit at the Fort and believed to have come from the Anchorwood or to be a conjurer's last work, escapes during the chaos and kills Useless - ch 7. The Gownhall, Ilmar's great library and academy, had survived previous occupations partly through the lure of its scholarship on the Wood: We have studied the Wood and its ways for generations, would you throw all that away? - ch 37. The Palleseen military maintains a constant presence at the Wood's edge, with a Palleseen Hand - a mechanical weapon with stick fingers and strings of tablethi - bristling between spiked barricades, and two sentries posted at the trees - ch 36, ch 20.

The Wood's role as a boundary and a living entity recurs throughout. The narrator of chapter 10 evokes the Anchorwood, the Indwellers, and the Port to Nowhere as Ilmar's older, hidden identity, set against the city's Maric present - ch 10. A beast from the Anchorwood, assumed to have returned or dissolved, instead hunts through the Reproach, a fish-faced, scale-flanked, armoured-tailed creature that ignores the starvelings there but seizes and kills the living, eating a soldier and lodging Murredy's corpse in rafters - ch 11. In chapter 18, an Anchorwood beast erupts from trees in the Reproach, attacks a phantom knight, is wounded by Hellgram's sword, is bowled over, and then abandons Hellgram to pursue Ruslav and Nasely with singular determination - ch 18. Hellgram himself is a foreigner who stumbled out of the Anchorwood years ago, collapsed, calling a name, and was taken in by Langrice - ch 15. His wife was lost in the Anchorwood five years prior; he believes she survives, while Langrice privately suspects "She's dead. Or never even made it through the Wood" - ch 24. Hellgram's own magic is described as "Foreign magic... Something from beyond the Wood," and he tells Ivarn Ostravar that Fleance is "not of the Wood, nor of here, nor anywhere" - ch 31. Fleance, a Heron riverman hiding at the Wood's edge in dead leaves, sees the beast arrive and is caught between it and open country; the Anchorwood then "was welcoming home its lost child," opening its trees to shelter him while Palleseen reinforcements arrive too late - ch 20. The Indwellers' mist, a chill damp autumn-scented fog rolling from the trees toward the city, renders Palleseen soldiers irrelevant, walls becoming "no more substantial than flattened-out creases" as the Indwellers walk through it - ch 20. Fleance later follows the Indwellers out of the Anchorwood into the city through the fog, into "other places" - buried halls, tombs, the ghosts of vanished forest - and begs the last Indweller to take him home - ch 25.

The Wood's relationship to the city of Ilmar is framed as ancient and foundational. Langrice tells an origin story: "Before there was the city, there was a grove in a great forest. Before there was an inn there was a lone warden, an anchorite, in a hut between the trees. And the tide of human history washed away the forest and threw up the buildings, but the grove it could not touch. And always and forever, there was someone whose place it was to live at the boundary between Wood and world" - ch 44. The Anchorage at the Wood's edge is secretly the Port to Nowhere, a waystation through the Wood, and its keeper holds the title "harbourmaster" and carries a book of calculations - the moon's course, an antique Maric calendar, seasonal magic - predicting when the Wood opens - ch 36. Langrice is described as "Ilmar's ambassador to the Anchorwood," an unspoken office the Allorwen recognised, and as "someone whose place it was to live at the boundary between Wood and world" - ch 42, ch 44. She does her nightly accounts at the Anchorage while thinking about thieves she has tied up and left in the Wood as "her own special offering to the monsters" - ch 27. The old covenant between the keeper of the Anchorage and the Wood predates the earliest houses of Ilmar and obliges the keeper to answer the Indwellers' call and to officiate rites of passage - ch 47.

The Wood opens and closes on its own schedule, and this gating is central to the book's political and narrative tensions. In chapter 36, Blackmane leads seventeen Allorwen refugees past Palleseen troops mustering at the Anchorwood's edge toward the Anchorage, where Langrice confirms the Wood will open that night; nineteen refugees and wards are gathered in a hidden cellar beneath the hidden cellar - ch 36. The harbourmaster's book predicts the opening, and the Wood will honour deals made in its presence: "I talk to everyone. I'm the go-between. The third party. Sit down with him and make a deal. You know, if I hear it, then the Wood will make sure it's honoured" - ch 36. By chapter 40, Culvern still feels the duty to re-establish diplomatic relations with the Indwellers and reopen the Port to Nowhere so that "the lands beyond could be contacted and exploited for the greater glory of Pallesand and perfection," even after Ochelby's death; an Indweller places a wooden object on his desk with "a clack of wood on wood," and Culvern's first instinct is to "take this apart and sift it for magic" but holds back to preserve the chance of entering the Wood in peace - ch 40. Palleseen soldiers continue to watch the Wood though the moon is down, and Yasnic is tasked with reporting on troop strength at the Anchorwood and the streets around it, finding a large military force with weapons turned outward but eyes everywhere - ch 15, ch 41. Brockelsby is ordered to arrest runners near the Anchorwood - ch 39.

The Varatsin old nobility trafficked with things beyond the Wood and married into strange bloodlines; their line was exterminated by the other Armiger families, and their court persists in the Reproach - ch 17, ch 18. A symbolic wedding of the city to what lay beyond the Wood, practised under the Varatsins and the old covenant, was officiated by the keeper of the Anchorage; the practice died with the Varatsins - ch 47. In chapter 47, the Reproach stands held before the Wood by a single sigil on a stick, and an Indweller throws a piece of dead wood at the kneeling, begging Varatsin Duke, who disintegrates into rats that scatter in all directions, some into the Wood, some toward the city, leaving behind a wooden mask - ch 47. Langrice announces "The Wood's open" and places the Palleseen warding bundle on the counter; the Allorwen, students, factory people, and Ivarn Ostravar prepare to cross, while Blackmane decides to stay in Ilmar and Hellgram nods to go through - ch 47. The Indwellers arrive for reparations, judge Fleance's body, and refuse the Varatsin Duke entry - ch 47.

The Wood's apparent passivity under Palleseen occupation is revealed to be a closed door rather than emptiness. In chapter 46, Brocklesby waits all day for insurgents that never come because the Wood "failed to disgorge its horrors," then backs into the Wood, where the Anchorage and all buildings of Ilmar vanish behind him and the Indwellers flit between trees ignoring him; a vast fish-like creature with "a vast fish-like eye" and "a great slash of a mouth filled with wedge-shaped teeth" breathes behind him - ch 46. The text states: "The Reproach had left its prison at long last and had come to the Wood," and the Wood reveals itself as infinite with its own inhabitants - ch 46. In chapter 45, Yasnic reports soldiers in brigade strength at the Wood's edge and monsters attacking Pals on every street from there to the Anchorage, while the Siblingries have prepared the Hammer Districts for emergencies and wonder if aid will come from between the trees, from the Lands of Never Again beyond the Wood - ch 45. The Duke's curse, a wasting affliction that rots the flesh and keeps the bearer alive beyond death, is possibly sourced from the Anchorwood or the Indwellers, though the text offers alternative origins - ch 13.

The Gownhall's knowledge base is explicitly required for Anchorwood operations: the Gownhall will reopen under Palleseen scrutiny because its scholarship on the Wood is needed, and the Temporary Commission of Ends and Means requires the Anchorwood's gateway opened for trade and expansion of the Sway, though the Indwellers withhold cooperation until the outstanding grievance of the Indweller killed during Ochelby's fatal expedition is resolved - ch 48. The Indweller mask, "a piece of wood, really, barely carved, painted with faded hues," that belonged to the killed Indweller is forced onto Hegelsy as the one matter the Indwellers require resolved before reopening the Anchorwood to Palleseen traffic - ch 48. In the final chapter referenced, a new grandee is coming from the Archipelago to enter the Wood, following Ochelby's fatal path, while the Wood is equated with the forest that existed before the city and will return - ch 49. The book records that the people of the Anchorwood have "lived with the Wood and what's beyond it" since before the Advent of Perfection - ch 48. The Wood's landscapes appear, or are suggested to appear, in the paintings of Shantrov Sirovar, prompting Ruslav to wonder whether they depict real places beyond the Anchorwood - ch 4. Hellgram's people "never guessed at the existence of the Anchorwood," and its borders can be sensed as "the differential of realities"; he remembers two days wandering the Wood with his wife during the Great War, the sound and scent and darkness of battle fading at the Wood's edge, and some crooked part of himself starting to straighten out before she vanished at the border - ch 42. The Anchorwood's role as a crossing between realities is thus distinguished from the Wood as a physical place: the forest is the locale, the crossing between worlds is what the Wood enables, and the two are related but not identical - ch 42, ch 25.

House of Open Wounds

The Wood is a forested area situated outside Ilmar, a site where smuggled gods were released into the wild - ch 7. It is distinguished from the city and its institutions; it is the ground beyond Ilmar's walls into which contraband deities are set loose, unmoored from any shrine or temple that might contain them - ch 7. Jack, the former Ilmari priest and orderly travelling with the group, treats the Wood as both a completed act and a prospective one: in a later passage he considers it as a destination for further smuggling of gods, and resolves to go into it - ch 51. His decision to enter the Wood is tied to a private turn in his character; at the close of the scene in which he commits to this course, he takes Caeleen's hand - ch 51. The notes leave open what Jack will actually accomplish once inside the Wood, and whether his plan to smuggle gods there will succeed - implied, ch 51.

Pretenders to the Throne Of God

The Wood is presented in this book as an ever-present parallel realm of endless trees existing alongside the material world, accessible through the gold eye, navigable to any destination if one knows where to enter and exit, inhabited by masked people and hunting beasts, and bounded by no visible horizon or end - ch 25. It is further characterised as a magical realm underlying the whole world without borders, accessible at any point via portals - ch 28. The Left-Eye Brigade earns the nickname "Fifteen-Minute Men" specifically because of the lethal time-limit imposed on travel through the Wood - ch 25.

The Wood's first appearance in the narrative is tactical. After the breach in the wall at Eres Ffenegh succeeds, Dantell dispatches Lovern and his surviving half-dozen into the Wood on a calculated heading and step-count, their objective being to emerge at a predetermined point on the far side - ch 25. Lovern opens his gold eye and sees not Hell but the Wood; he and his men step out of the world into the endless forest, and the city becomes shadow and is lost behind them - ch 25. Within that crossing, one man is killed by a fish-lizard beast - ch 25. The squad's survival is not shown in the crossing itself, but is resolved later: the Wood is referred to as an entity whose teeth killed Lovern - ch 42 - confirming that Lovern did not survive the transit, though the full circumstances of his death beyond the beast-attack are not elaborated - implied, ch 42.

Before the crossing, Quellery had been told by Lovern of the Wood and, as a fellow Specialist and demonist, had been "out-weirded" by the account; Quellery had looked "blank and disconcerted" at what he heard - ch 25. This exchange establishes that the Wood is not general public knowledge among the Palleseen, and that even a man who routinely traffics with Hell finds the Wood's reality difficult to absorb.

The Wood's political and doctrinal significance is articulated by Dantell in a passage of reflection. Palleseen doctrine demands that the Wood be locked away, because its existence makes the Palleseen Sway "look small" and undermines the certainties upon which that order rests - ch 28. Dantell notes Lovern's absence and reflects on the dangerous knowledge that the Wood represents - ch 28. The implication is that the Wood's very ontological breadth - a realm without borders, accessible anywhere, rendering any single civilisational project parochial - constitutes a threat to Palleseen self-conception that is doctrinal rather than military.

The masked people who inhabit the Wood are noted as present but never encountered or explained within the crossing shown - ch 25. Their identity and purpose remain unknown. What else lives in the Wood beyond the hunting beasts is likewise unexamined - ch 25. Whether the portals into the Wood can be closed permanently is raised as a question by Dantell's doctrinal framing but receives no answer - ch 28.

Relationships

• Langrice - She is "Ilmar's ambassador to the Anchorwood," bound by the old covenant to answer the Indwellers' call and officiate rites of passage. She leaves thieves tied up in the Wood as "her own special offering to the monsters" - City of Last Chances, ch 27, ch 42, ch 44, ch 47. She is "someone whose place it was to live at the boundary between Wood and world," an office the Allorwen acknowledge as necessary - City of Last Chances, ch 44.

• Fleance - The Wood "was welcoming home its lost child," opening its trees to shelter him. He follows the Indwellers through the fog into "other places" and begs to be taken home - City of Last Chances, ch 20, ch 25. Hellgram declares him "not of the Wood, nor of here, nor anywhere" - City of Last Chances, ch 31.

• Hellgram - He stumbled out of the Anchorwood years ago, collapsed, calling a name, and was taken in by Langrice. His wife was lost in the Anchorwood five years prior; he believes she survives. His magic is Foreign magic... Something from beyond the Wood - City of Last Chances, ch 15, ch 24, ch 31. He remembers two days wandering the Wood with his wife during the Great War, the battle's sound and scent fading at the Wood's edge - City of Last Chances, ch 42.

• Sage-Archivist Ochelby - His death in the Wood at the hands of its beasts triggers the entire diplomatic rupture and the Palleseen military sealing of the Anchorwood. His killing is the event the Indwellers demand restitution for - City of Last Chances, ch 2, ch 6, ch 48.

• the lead Indweller - The only voice the Wood speaks with in the narrative. He frames Ochelby's journey as a "formal embassy from Pallesand," tells him "It is not our city. We do not go there" regarding Scrymisa, and proclaims the bar on Pallesand entry - City of Last Chances, ch 2, ch 6.

• the Anchorwood beasts - The Wood's own fauna, immune to Palleseen weapons, ignored by the Indwellers as fellow inhabitants. They hunt through the Reproach, kill soldiers, and pursue Ruslav and Companion-Archivist Nasely with singular determination - City of Last Chances, ch 2, ch 11, ch 18.

• the Varatsin Duke - The old nobility trafficked with things beyond the Wood and married into strange bloodlines; a symbolic marriage between the Varatsin line and the Wood was practised under the old covenant. The Duke begs entry to the Wood and is refused - City of Last Chances, ch 17, ch 47.

• Dantell - In the third book, he dispatches men through the Wood as a tactical route and reflects that Palleseen doctrine demands the Wood be locked away because its existence makes the Sway look small - Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 25, ch 28.

• Jack - A former Ilmari priest who treats the Wood as both a completed act of god-smuggling and a prospective destination for further theological work, resolving to enter it - House of Open Wounds, ch 7, ch 51.

• Shantrov Sirovar - The Wood's landscapes appear, or are suggested to appear, in his paintings, prompting Ruslav to wonder whether they depict real places beyond the Anchorwood - City of Last Chances, ch 4.

Notable Quotes

"The folk of Pallesand have shed the blood of the Wood. They are barred from the trees on pain of death. Let it be known among all your kin. You are forbidden our ways until restitution is made" - Indweller, City of Last Chances, ch 6

"Before there was the city, there was a grove in a great forest. Before there was an inn there was a lone warden, an anchorite, in a hut between the trees. And the tide of human history washed away the forest and threw up the buildings, but the grove it could not touch. And always and forever, there was someone whose place it was to live at the boundary between Wood and world" - Langrice, City of Last Chances, ch 44

"I talk to everyone. I'm the go-between. The third party. Sit down with him and make a deal. You know, if I hear it, then the Wood will make sure it's honoured" - Langrice, City of Last Chances, ch 36

"It is not our city. We do not go there" - the lead Indweller, City of Last Chances, ch 2

"The Wood's open" - Langrice, City of Last Chances, ch 47

"an entity whose teeth killed Lovern" - narrator, Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 42

"a piece of wood, really, barely carved, painted with faded hues" - narrator, describing the Indweller mask, City of Last Chances, ch 48

Tags

1. parallel-realm · #forest · #boundary-between-worlds · #anchorwood