The Queen of All Trees wasn’t finished with her yet. Perhaps, this august Queen had something, or someone, for her to watch because the ground dropped out from under her claws. Uh-oh, maybe she was the one who needed rescuing now. Thing, if you can hear me, get your furry butt back to Nulthir’s flat immediately. I could really use your help right now.
Then there was no more time for anything because Amal was falling, and there was no ground to land on, only blinding white light that had no end or beginning. Amal screamed, but she wasn’t the only one. Somewhere close by, Iraine also yelled something.
Chapter Four
Nulthir squinted into the white light blinding him. A few moments ago, he’d crashed into the spell barring the slit window in his flat that kept curious kits from falling to their death. That barrier spell must have shocked the demon out of him because Nulthir was alone in his skin—his rune marked skin. Oh Fate, he still had the instructions for another possession and possibly worse written on his thrice-damned flesh. Nulthir scrubbed both hands over his face.
What the hell am I going to do? Nothing unless he wanted to flay his skin off. He was stuck with those marks and vulnerable to the next demon that came a-calling. Nulthir cursed.
Other bits floated back to him as he lay their cursing Fate and the universe at large. Those memories included flashes of a strange conversation between him and that green-eyed mage boy, Sarn. But that was part of the possession. Sarn wasn’t under Mount Eredren. Nulthir shook his head to clear it.
Leaves crinkled and shifted under him, and he inhaled the loamy scent of the forest, his true home. Nulthir basked in that light shafting through the enchanted trees towering over him until said trees slid closer on their roots, surrounding him with their massive trunks. Uh-oh, now what?
Nulthir sat up. Beyond the ring of trees cutting off his escape, rank upon rank of enchanted trees stood impassively like an army ready to pounce at the slightest provocation. Each tree imprinted itself on his mage sight. But he’d always had an affinity for growing things, thanks to his distant ancestors. They weren’t called the Forest People for nothing. And that sixth sense Nulthir had inherited from them sent him scrambling to his feet with his hands up in a gesture of peace.
Giant trees hemmed him in, creating a cell twelve-feet wide and hundreds of feet tall. They were maples, oaks, pines, and more besides, all dwarfing him, the unarmed human in their midst. Their branches bristled with anger but for what?
The enchanted forest had three rules: start no fires; carry no weapons; do no harm. Nulthir patted his waist. No weapons, good. But his utility belt was gone. Hopefully, the demon hadn’t destroyed them while it had possessed his body. Both would be hard to replace.
“Why are you so angry? I didn’t break any of your rules.” Nulthir straightened his blue uniform. It wasn’t as crisp as when he’d donned it, but it was whole, and that was something to be grateful for after the demon thing.
The holes Crispin’s claws had punched in the shoulder of his tunic were gone. So was the matching wound. Nulthir felt better than he’d felt in months, and his magic had also been restored. A green flame blossomed on his palm, waiting for a rune to ignite or a spell to bring to life. Nulthir touched it to the fist-sized metal pendant hanging around his neck, and the magic passed through the metal to the fossilized piece of wood inside the curvy pendant.
“Sunless light, ignite the night. Shine dawn’s first light,” he whispered, and a rustle went through the trees. They didn’t like metal. His magic wasn’t fond of it either, but metal was more durable than wood, especially given the trouble he tended to get into. So that metal shell was necessary.
His pendant lit up with a bluish-white light again, and Nulthir fingered his pendant’s metallic curves. The dawn rune was part light source and part lucky charm. It was one of the first spells he’d mastered as a child, and he felt better with it active again even though all it did was glow.
“Why did you bring me here?” And where the hell was here? Nulthir kept that last question to himself. ‘Why’ was more important than where. Obviously, he was somewhere in the enchanted forest, but that forest covered most of Shayari, so he could be anywhere. Shayari was a huge country.
“How can you wear evil marks upon your body and still wield light magic?” one of the trees asked. But for the life of him, Nulthir couldn’t tell which. He just knew the voice had come from a tree. There was no one else within sensing range.
“So, you do speak.” Great going there, commenting on the obvious. Nulthir shook his head at himself. Enchanted trees had talked to the descendants of the original Forest People. So why were they brandishing their wickedly sharp branches at one of their descendants?
“We speak when we need to,” another tree said after a tense pause and this time, Nulthir caught a flash of movement within the tree.
He squinted at it with his mage sight turned on and spotted a green-glowing spirit of a long-dead warrior inside the gigantic tree. It had the pointed ears of the Fair Folk, the bright green eyes of a mage, and the same aquiline nose Nulthir often saw in the mirror. He touched his ear. It was more than a little pointed thanks to his distant Fae ancestors.
“You don’t just hear us. You can see us?” asked the spirit within another tree. It was an ancient warrior from the same race, but after death, it had somehow traded its skin and armor for the bark and branches of a tree.
Was every enchanted tree in Shayari piloted by a ghost of a woodland—what the hell was that word? It was short and started with a vowel. Nulthir struggled to recall it.
“How can you see us?” Another pointy-eared ghost peered out of a tree at him, and she angled her branches for an attack. She was also of the Fair Folk, but the Fae had disappeared long ago into myth and legend. Hadn’t they?
The obvious answer to her question was magic, but one glance assured Nulthir his captors wouldn’t accept that. Were they using magic to hide themselves? Was he peering through that spell at them?
It was possible. His mage sight was stronger than his gift and the equal of any mage’s. But that wasn’t the answer they were looking for, so Nulthir dug deeper, searching for a reason they would accept.
What were the original magic races? Nulthir called up the Litany of Allies, Enemies and Other Folk he’d had to memorize as a child and ran through the Allies section for the people of the northeast where he lived. If there was an answer, it would be in the Litany.
A translucent warrior leaned forward until her green-glowing head passed out of the tree she wore like armor, so she could glower at him with her eerie green eyes. They blazed like a mage’s with emerald fire, and their ire was solely directed at him. Oh joy.
All around Nulthir, branches raised to strike him down again if they didn’t like his answers. One wrong word and he was a dead man. No pressure. Nulthir mopped his brow with his sleeve to keep the sweat out of his eyes. Was it warm here, or was it just him? Nulthir loosened the collar of his uniform shirt.
“What are you doing?” the woman warrior spirit planted her fists on her hips, and her tree bent two of its branches in imitation of her stance.
Lithani? No, that doesn’t start with a vowel. Damn it. Because Nulthir had a few of those stashed in his family tree somewhere. He ran through that damned epic poem again. It had been written in an archaic version of Shayarin, so he had to keep pausing his mental recitation to translate it. Maybe he needed to check the Other Folk section because he wasn't finding a match for these spirit people, and he was running out of time.
Before he did that, he’d better give her an answer. Otherwise, he might not live long enough to figure out who he was talking to, and how to save his life. “I’m trying to find an answer to your question.” And any other information his ancestors had recorded about these spirits, like what they could and couldn’t do, and why they were haunting the trees of the enchanted forest.
“Well? Have you an answer, or do we need to dig one out of your bones?” Her lowest branch grazed Nulthir�
��s shoulder, but it didn’t leave a mark. Next time, it would puncture something important. Her intense glare promised that, so did the glowing finger she pointed at his chest. One of the branches under her control swung down until it hovered just above her index finger. It was ready to strike him the instant he displeased her.
What the hell did I do to upset them? Nothing, as far as Nulthir could figure. So why were they threatening him? “What are you? I can’t find any reference to you in the Litany, not in the Allies, or the Enemies section or the gray area that covers the Other Folk.” And how the heck did they end up as spirits animating the trees of the enchanted forest? Did every enchanted tree in Shayari have a dead warrior occupying it?
There was nothing about that in the Litany either—not a single reason for why the forestry of this country was so damned weird. Nulthir turned on his heel to keep all his captors in sight. It was creepy to see a dozen ghostly green heads turn in sync with the trees that were their bodies as they considered his question.
Nulthir took a step back, but there was nowhere to go. He was surrounded by angry trees and ghosts of long dead warriors of some type of Fae, and they were conferring in a melodic language that sounded like an antecedent of the language he’d grown up speaking. It was maddening, especially when one word in ten sounded so familiar, he could only guess at its meaning, and it wasn’t good.
“If you’re going to kill me, at least tell me why I understand some of what you’re saying, and what your problem is with me?” A theory niggled at the back of Nulthir’s mind, but it was too fantastic to be true. Then again, he did grow up with a psychic owl-cat for a best friend. So maybe that theory wasn’t so far-fetched after all.
“You have an idea, don’t you?” The woman warrior spirit aimed one of her branches at his head. She didn’t follow through with that strike, but the threat of it hung between them.
Nulthir spread his hands to emphasize their emptiness. The forest’s three rules should protect him since he hadn’t broken any. So why weren’t they? “My people, the Branchers, are descended from the Lithani, and they must be descended from you. That’s all I can figure.”
Of course, the Lithani were a magical race that had vanished a long time ago when the age of magic had ended. So Nulthir couldn’t ask them about their parentage, or where they went after they had died. Hopefully, they hadn’t joined this surly lot. Oh Fate, let that not be my fate! I don’t want to live in a tree and accost strangers after death. Nulthir had never given the afterlife much thought, but now he couldn’t help but wonder if he was staring at his own fate.
But there was one problem with that. If these spirits were related to the Lithani, then why weren’t they in the Litany? The Litany was supposed to be a complete compendium of all the magical races that had ever existed. Its sole purpose was to keep mere mortals like him out of trouble, and it was failing spectacularly at that.
At least his captors looked relieved. Their branches relaxed from their fighting stance, but one wrong move could end that détente. Could a wrong word end it as well? Because one had just sprung to mind.
“You’re elves,” Nulthir said, now certain he had the right of things. As impossible as that seemed, that’s what those spirits were—mythical elves from the distant past. “I can see you because my ancestors must somehow be related to you.” Did that help or hurt his situation?
The elven spirits considered that for a moment then they and their tree bodies nodded, accepting that rationale. But instead of shoring up the détente, it destroyed it. Branches swooped in for an attack—too many to dodge. Nulthir dropped into a low crouch and scribbled the first rune that sprang to mind in the earth as fast as he could feed power into it.
But Nulthir wasn’t fast enough. A flash blinded him. When it faded, Furball appeared wide-eyed and wearing an open-beaked expression of shock as he squeaked an unintelligible plea for help. The kit flapped his tiny owl wings.
“Furball? What the hell are you doing here?” But damn, it was so good to see a friendly face, even if its owner required rescuing again.
“Neep!” Furball shouted as gravity grabbed hold and pulled.
Nulthir lunged forward and caught Furball on the palm of his hand, and the kit’s tiny hands and feet latched onto his long fingers as he pulled the babe in close to his body. Several branches diverted their attacks to avoid the innocent kit cowering in his arms, but one razor-sharp branch grazed the back of Nulthir’s tunic and sliced through it to the repel rune inked on the back of his neck. The rune activated and pushed the branch away, clipping his ear.
Everything stopped as that red droplet fell.
Chapter Five
Too much magic crawled over every stone in Sarn’s vicinity. Not good. One wrong thought, and the kid could pull the whole mountain down on their heads. No amount of fancy flying would save them from a concussion or worse if Sarn did. Thing clenched his claws at the thought and flew toward the prison and the stairwell closest to Nulthir's flat until the kid’s magic was just a vague green glow far behind them.
“Why did we leave? That was Sarn and his brother in there. You saw them. He has so much magic the air shimmers around him. He could help Nulthir.” Crispin twisted in his grip, trying to break it.
But Thing held on. He didn’t trust his son to follow him. “No, he can’t.”
“Why not? He helped once before. I’m sure he’d do it again. He was a nice boy, so was his little brother, and you saw how he glows. He’s blinding to my mage sight.” Crispin flexed his spine and made another bid for freedom.
Thing let go, and Crispin landed on all fours on a ledge two feet below them. Thing landed beside his glowering son and got right up in his beak. “Did you see who was in there with them?” Because Thing had, and what he’d seen had disturbed him greatly.
“The man we were chasing,” Crispin said flatly as the import of that sank in. In frustration, he ran his hands through the feathered crest that ran down his back and between his wings.
“Exactly. The same man who gathered up those shards. He might even be the same man who attacked Nulthir and your mother.” And Thing had a bad feeling about all of this. “Until we know which side Sarn is on, we’re not asking him for anything.” Because that would be suicidal. Sarn made magic as easily as other people breathed. At least, it had seemed that way from their short acquaintance with him in the past.
Crispin folded his arms over his chest. “He’s probably an unwitting pawn in someone else’s game.”
“That’s the best-case scenario. Worst case, he’s a powerful mage. He could be the one masterminding all of this.” Thing paced, his claws clicking on stone as his mind raced to find answers. There were still too many pieces missing, but the ones he’d already found snapped together into an ugly whole.
“I don’t believe it. That would involve a heck of a lot more learning than Sarn had before. Where would he even get that? Magic is illegal, remember? He can’t just enroll in a school for mages because there aren’t any.” Crispin clicked his claws. He was right.
“But we haven’t seen him in many moons, possibly even a year or two,” Thing reminded him.
Time didn’t mean much to Thing. He didn’t pay any attention to its passage. That was a human thing. They liked to reckon days into months and years. Thing had never seen the point of that until now.
If he knew how much time had elapsed, he could figure out if it were possible for Sarn to have learned enough to—what? Trap a demon in a glass object? Sarn was an earth mage with a strong affinity for stones. Was glass all that much of a stretch? What was sand made from? Was it the same substance as rocks?
And why attack Nulthir? His friend couldn’t have been the goal because those inmates had been struck down far worse than him. No, as much as it pained Thing to admit it, his best friend had just been collateral damage. So, what was the real goal of the attack on the prison?
“What about those bodies?” Crispin let his hands fall to his sides, but the fight hadn't left him y
et.
“What bodies?” Thing whipped around to face his son.
Crispin shuddered. Those bodies still perturbed him. “The ones those Guardswomen were carrying to the infirmary. They were victims of the same magic that had attacked Nulthir.”
“What are you saying?” Thing raised a tufted brow at his son.
“What if they were the target? You said, ‘their spark is dark.’ What if the goal all along was to steal their vitality?” Crispin hugged himself.
“For what purpose? Sarn doesn’t need power. You saw him. He has more than enough already, and his body makes more all the time.” Thing jumped when Crispin laid a hand on his shoulder.
His son’s earnest yellow eyes sought his. “Sarn’s not masterminding this. He’s too young, too untrained, and you said it yourself—he doesn’t need any more magic.”
That was true, but there was more to this. Thing felt it in his bones. It was bad when there was a possible demon mixed in. Now, a mage was somehow part of this, and Thing still didn’t know what ‘this’ was. The mystery was evolving into something he might not be able to handle, especially if there were more players involved.
“Sarn could have found a teacher, and that teacher could be pulling the strings.” Thing turned away from the disappointed look in his son’s eyes. Crispin saw the answer to their magical problems in Sarn, but that kid was just the opposite. “That’s the more likely scenario.” Especially if his fears about possession were true.
The Sarn they’d run into in the past was naive enough for someone to manipulate, especially someone like Nulthir’s crazy mother, and she knew he existed. Thing stared back the way they’d just flown. He could just make out a vague green glow marking the cave where Sarn was.
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