by Dan Allen
Perhaps someday he would get up the courage to do something about his interest.
“So . . . what are you doing in the woods this early in the morning?” Dana asked. “Don’t you have any mechanodrons to build?” She hoped his master had run out of orders and given him the day off. She needed someone to talk to.
“I was sent to find you.”
Dana gulped. That was a never a good thing. “How did you find me?”
Forz pointed south. “Drew a line east from the point the trappers said they ran into you over to Coward’s Creek Canyon and then traced it down the fall line.”
Trappers. So that’s what it was about. I don’t have time to deal with this.
Forz put his hands on his hips. “What did you do this time?”
Dana climbed to her feet, putting on an offended look. “You don’t think I robbed those trappers?”
“I don’t know.” Forz ran his hand through his hair. He was in a tough spot. She had done this to him before. “But I’m sure there will be a lot of questions for you from Captain Mol.”
“You wouldn’t turn me in just for . . . for saving a nox? It wasn’t even very big.”
“I’m just here to escort you back,” Forz said. “Once the trappers accused you of raiding their traps, the chancellor sent out a party to find you.”
“You’re really turning me in!” Dana gasped. “I can’t believe this.”
“It’s not my doing,” Forz said. “I have to take you back. Chancellor’s orders.”
I can’t go in!
Forz was so idiotically honest that he couldn’t even see that “just doing his job” would land her in prison, which would be virtually the same as handing the stone over to the Vetas-kazen searching for it in the forests. She would be helpless in prison. And a few simple questions from the kazen to the civic guard would lead them straight to her.
“What’s in that purse?” Forz asked.
Oh, why did he have to notice? Dana could have punched Forz in the nose, but he would have just blocked or dodged or done something else infuriating. Dana closed a hand on the pouch at her waist protectively. “It’s money . . . for some of my grandfather’s debts in town.”
“So, you did visit his cabin last night,” Forz concluded.
“Of course, what else would I be doing?”
“Raiding traps. Why else would you be trying to sneak back to Norr on a game trail in Coward’s Creek Canyon rather than taking the trade road?”
“Well, I did hear Torsican hounds,” Dana said, scraping for something that would draw his attention away from her. “I didn’t want to be anywhere near that kind of hunt.”
Forz nodded, his considerable intellect quick at piecing together the facts. “Nobody from Norr hunts with Torsican hounds. They spook the thunder bison.”
“Dana!” shouted a voice from only few feet away.
Dana’s breath seized in her chest like glacier water had just been poured down her shirt. Then she realized it was just Brista.
Dana’s best friend was the daughter of Warv the cleric.
Brista stepped awkwardly off a large fallen tree and looked up to see Forz. “What are you doing out here . . . with Forz?” That sort of question was only to be expected. She had recently become a competitor for Forz’s attention.
Unlike Dana’s pocketed trousers, Brista wore a summer dress, although she covered her shoulders with a matching blue shawl to ward off the morning cool.
“I’m always in the forest,” Dana said. “What are you doing out here?”
“Out for a walk,” Brista said as convincingly as a kid with her hand in a bag of fresh tarberry hand cakes. In fact, she had a satchel in one hand that looked like it was full of just that. She smiled at Forz.
So, she doesn’t know anything about the search for me. She was just following Forz . . . hoping to catch him alone in the woods.
But Dana felt more relieved than annoyed. She wasn’t going to be able to keep a secret from Brista anyway.
She can help. Brista knew practically everything from the library at the chapel—everything legal, anyway.
A year younger, Brista was shorter than Dana and smaller in all things woman: chest, hips, and lips. Her hair was twice as long as Dana’s and twice as likely to have a flower pinned in it.
Wearing flowers—who invented that anyway?
Brista’s eyes turned to the coin purse tied to Dana’s waist. “What’s in there?”
“Trouble for anyone who asks,” Dana said, turning away.
At least it was true.
“Is it your time of transition or something?” Brista said tersely. “You’re being awfully snippy.”
“What if it is?” Dana said, even though her eighty-two-day cycle wasn’t halfway finished.
“Then you’re out of sync with the moons, which means you’re very sick, because all druids synchronize with the moon transits. I read about it.”
“Oh, can we please talk about something else?” Dana muttered. “Like what happened to me last night?”
Brista smiled. “Great. We can talk about it over breakfast. I brought tarberry hand cakes.”
Dana’s mouth started watering instantly. She took one right out of Brista’s satchel and wolfed an enormous bite, giving out a sigh of satisfaction.
She took another bite into the center of the sweet and warm, buttery pastry and spoke as she chewed. “You are a ka-send, Brista.” Dana reached for another.
“Not so fast.” Brista pulled her satchel away and offered one to Forz.
Forz sat down on a fallen phosphor tree trunk. Dana sat on another mossy trunk nearby. The thin fallen tree made a poor chair, but it was better than the dew-laden grass and leaves littering the forest floor. Brista sat suspiciously close to Forz, who had his eyes fixed on Dana. He hadn’t even bitten into his hand cake.
“So, what happened?” Brista asked. “You look awful.”
“Well—” Dana took a bite of her cake to give herself more time to think. There was no use trying to keep the secret to herself. Alone, she was as doomed as Sindar, the man who had brought the stone nearly to her grandfather’s cabin. It was luck Sindar had not reached it. If he had, her grandfather would be dead. Omren would have found him and killed him for the stone.
“Well . . . what?” Brista said, offering another cake—one she should have reserved for herself—as a sort of bribe for information.
Dana took it and stowed it in her jacket pocket as she finished chewing her first cake. “After my grandfather rescued me from some trappers . . .”
“She was raiding hanging traps,” Forz explained with his mouth full.
Brista nodded but said nothing. She knew why Dana did it.
Dana swallowed. “I found a dying man in the forest. He entrusted to me a bloodstone that I’m to keep away from a usurping Torsican ka.”
Brista gave a giggle and looked at Forz, whose face showed a kind of disbelief and expression of betrayal in one. “That’s a joke, right?”
“And then this kazen warlock tried to kill me. So . . . I killed him instead.”
“Dana, are you being serious?”
“I ran away.” Dana spread her hands, stretching the webbing between her fingers, and gripped her knees. “And then you found me.”
“Okay,” Brista said. “Either you are telling the truth—in which case, I’m totally freaked out—or you hit your head really hard and you need medicine, in which case, I’m sort of medium freaked out. Which am I supposed to be?”
Dana met Brista’s concerned gaze. “Well, I’m freaked out, too.”
Forz’s head turned slightly, taking in the leather pouch at Dana’s waist. Then his eyes moved further down and froze. “Hey, you’ve got blood on your trousers—a lot of it.”
“And you’ve got a cut on your nose,” Brista added, her nose wrinkling. “What really happened last night? Did you get in a fight with a tree?”
“I already told you,” Dana said.
“You killed someone—f
or a bloodstone?”
Shame, it seemed, came calling eventually, and always at the worst moment. Dana’s self-esteem plummeted. She wished she could crawl into a hollow log like the skunk she felt like.
“By the Creator . . .” Brista whispered. She reached out, without taking her horrified gaze off Dana, and grabbed Forz’s arm.
“Is that your blood or the kazen’s?” Forz asked. His face seemed to have lost what remained of its already pale color.
“Could be blood from the greeder the kazen shot with an arrow. It was carrying a man my grandfather knew from Shoul Falls. His name was Sindar. He was an enchanter.”
Brista moved closer and knelt on the ground in front of Dana. She put her hands on Dana’s and looked into her eyes, as if determined to find truth or lies in them. “You say he was an enchanter. How do you know?”
“He touched me and I felt peaceful, even though his greeder was dying right in front of me.”
“You can’t even stand it when people kill spinning scorpions,” Brista said.
“Yes, that’s because I can feel it,” Dana stated.
“So can I,” Forz added. “But I think it actually hurts her. For me it just . . . tingles.”
“Must be the same for Tyrus,” Dana said. “Killing animals never bothered him.”
“What about the person who attacked you?” Forz asked.
Dana’s voice become hollow, her eyes distant. “His hounds followed my trail.”
“A kazen?” Brista asked.
Dana nodded. She didn’t want to talk about the confrontation, but now that she was talking, it seemed almost impossible to know where to draw the line between facts that mattered and things that would merely tear her heart or get her in more trouble. “Servant of a demon named Vetas-ka,” she began at last. “He wants the bloodstone of Shoul Falls.”
Brista snapped her fingers. “Vetas-ka. I’ve read all about him. He was the one who stopped the battle at Shoul Falls—froze the entire battle field in a ka-made ice blizzard. He saved the entire city and kept the peace.”
“That was over a hundred and fifty years ago,” Forz said.
“The exalted live a long time,” Brista noted.
Forz shifted his weight forward and then back. He seemed unsettled. “Yeah, still . . .”
“He wasn’t keeping the peace last night,” Dana said. “His kazen warlock pinned me to the ground and tried to shoot me through with an arrow.”
“How did you get away?” Brista interrupted eagerly.
“A horned atter owl defended me,” Dana said, not admitting the possibility that she had prompted the act.
“An owl?” Brista said.
“Rear claws,” Forz explained, “Thrust right into the joint between his neck and skull. Instant paralysis . . . and a lot of blood.” His mouth fell slack with astonishment. “You summoned it?”
Dana forced herself to nod. “Yes.”
“And you defeated a full kazen?” Forz said. “Dana, your power is far stronger than anyone in Norr thinks.”
“I can’t eat this.” Brista put the remaining portion of her hand cake back into the satchel, her face paler than ever.
“The important thing,” Dana said, “is me getting this stone far away from Norr, before Vetas-ka’s acolytes close in. They could put the city under some kind of siege, or worse—start executing folks until somebody told them where I was.” She could try to run away, back the way Sindar had come, but she risked crossing the kazen. The food Brista brought reminded her that running away without supplies was a bad idea. The problem had to be thought out.
A warbler that had been pecking about near Dana’s feet suddenly lifted its head and took to wing.
Dana jumped to her feet and spun around.
Captain Mol, flanked by four burly rangers, pointed at Dana. “There she is.”
The men seemed to spring at her from every direction at once. Strong arms hoisted her to feet.
“Stop!” Dana cried.
The thick-mustached captain of the rangers looked away disinterestedly as she was forcibly marched back toward the city.
“Forz, I expected you a half hour ago,” Mol said. “You said you figured she was close by.”
“Er,” Forz choked on his words.
Dana cranked her head around to Brista standing beside Forz, her hands clasped contritely together.
“There were hunting dogs,” Dana called out. “Tell them about the dogs.”
“Save it for the magistrate,” said the ranger holding her right arm. “Now move.” He jerked her toward the city.
“I can walk on my own.”
“You’ve caused enough trouble walking about on your own,” said the ranger, whose hands felt like steel shackles on her upper arm.
“You’re hurting me,” she said. Her mind was racing. When they got to Norr, which was only a few hundred yards away, she could be stuck in the guardhouse for hours, or even imprisoned if they believed the trappers’ story over hers.
Which was likely.
And the Vetas-kazen would show up eventually—possibly by the end of the day. What would they find? A city without a ka. Some talk in a pub about a girl causing trouble in the forest—the same forest where Omren was chasing Sindar, the forest where they both died.
That would certainly get their attention.
They could hunt her out like a weasel snatching a helpless newborn bunny from its den.
Being trapped was the worst possible situation.
The problem was she was being escorted by four rangers. They were far stronger than she and older. Perhaps they weren’t as attuned to the forest—but what good had that done her? They had snuck up without her even noticing.
So near the city, few animals took alarm at humans approaching. It was a bad scenario for a druid adept.
It was only going to get worse.
If she could put them at ease, they would be off their guard. She might find an opening and escape.
“I don’t know why you are all so worked up about finding me.” Dana tried to sound calm. “I’m just fine in the woods, as you ought to know by now.”
The rangers said nothing, doubtless counting the number of times they had been called by thwarted trappers and hunters to find the druid who had cheated them of their fair game.
I’ve got to get out of here . . . or I’m dead.
Dana’s eyes moved quickly from one guard to the next. A ranger walked directly ahead of her, his leather boots making almost no sound as they walked briskly over the earth. His trousers were buckskin, and his jacket was fur-lined gray bison wool. His black hat was low, with a wide brim. The two rangers that held her arms were identically attired, and ostensibly the ranger who guarded the rear. All had belts securing a small hatchet, a large hunting knife, a pair of spotting lenses, rope, and several pouches, likely with flints, fishing hooks, twine, or medicines.
She couldn’t will animals to attack them, regardless of how adept she was. She simply didn’t have enough will to summon an animal large enough to overcome four of them.
Maybe a nox?—as if the white sloths that occasionally snatched napping birds from the trees would be any use.
The pouch bounced at her waist, a reminder of a source of will thousands of times more powerful.
No. Don’t touch it.
The sound of rushing water grew. Ahead, a fallen tree spanned the river. It was the only bridge for half a mile. The next crossing was the trade road.
Please take the shortcut.
The lead ranger continued in the direction of the river and finally stopped at the makeshift bridge. He whirled around and, before Dana could object, lashed her hands together with triple twisted cord from his belt.
“What are you doing?” she gasped. “Stop it! I’m not a criminal.”
“I don’t want you taking a plunge,” the ranger said. With the chance of sayathi in the water, he had good reason to avoid wanting to go in after her.
“Well, it’s not like I’m going to fall off
the log,” Dana said, fulling intending to.
Chapter 6
As Jet fell through the canopy of the dense Avalonian jungle, Angel gracefully highlighted all the branches which were about to clobber him and indicated hits with flashing icons on his armor icon—as if he couldn’t already tell that he had major contusions on his shin, shoulder, and hip.
There were shouts of panic on the tactical net from other marines calling out as their engines failed.
Pain injections commenced before he rolled to his feet on the forest floor.
“Epsilon, report,” Jet said, as he tore biting, scratching bat chickens from his armor and dispatched them with clinical precision using his sidearm.
Waste of really good meat.
“Four still in formation,” Monique reported. “Landing zone in sight.”
“Great,” Jet said. At least some of his squad had made it past the crazed bat chickens. “Monique, take the lead.” She would have to beat a path to the bunker with half the team.
“Ophelia’s gone!” Dormit raged. “She’s dead—hit a branch. I can’t even reach her body.”
“And Yaris?” Jet called, pushing back thoughts of Ophelia and memories of their time together on Rodor.
“Looks like he’s holding his breath until he can fix his visor,” Angel volunteered.
The high-pitched screech of mini-turbines overhead announced the arrival of the remaining four squads.
At least his squad had done their job of flushing out any enemies. But half his squad had failed to even reach the dropship’s landing zone.
One was dead.
Losing a squad member brought pain he knew—pain he couldn’t afford to feel.
Right now he had to secure the landing zone for the extraction of the High Council from their underground bunker.
A sudden urge to lean down and devour one of the bat chicken carcasses washed over Jet. Oh, not now.
Jet turned, trying to spot whatever was invading his mind with foreign smells.
“Jet, it appears you are standing under a netter tree. Its blossoms are fanning,” Angel noted. “You may be experiencing abnormal—look out!” She highlighted several hinge points as a sweeping branch with rake-like twigs collapsed down on him like a Rodorian with missing kneecaps—something he also had experience with.