God Stones: Books 1 - 3

by Otto Schafer

  “Do you know who I am, Garrett Turek?” she asked.

  “Let me guess, the queen.”

  She clasped her hands and nodded. “Yes, but allow me to rephrase the question, Garrett Turek. Do you know what I am?”

  “A fifty-thousand-year-old clonal tree?”

  The queen clapped her hands together. “Ah! Lovely!” she said, with a delighted smile that Garrett didn’t trust for one second. “Close! Very close. Much older. Much, much older, but clonal, yes, and not one tree. I am the entire aspen grove,” she said with a wave of her hand. “All the white trees with golden leaves you see surrounding you and all the ones you saw on your way to this clearing are part of who I am. The rest is below your feet, Garrett Turek. The roots of all the clones you see make up the rest of me. I clone both the trees and roots from the very center of my ancient roots, deep below this very clearing. My ‘human name’ is Pando the Trembling Giant. But you may call me Queen Pando.”

  “Why do you go by human names?” Garrett asked.

  “Ahh, well, your limited vocal cords could not pronounce our true names.”

  So David’s theory had been right. He knew the tree language now, but he couldn’t make the sounds to speak it.

  Pando continued. “I knew you would have figured out much of this by the time you arrived.”

  “How?”

  “Why, Peter, of course,” Queen Pando said, looking past Garrett. “Peter!” she called, in the tone of a mother calling them in for dinner. “Peter, you knew, didn’t you? You did an extensive project on me in the seventh grade. You got an A, of course. We heard you telling the Bowman children, Quinn and Reese, all about it on your way home from school that day.” She looked back to Garrett. “Such a smart boy. Shame about the lisp, though. The other kids gave him such a rough time. Peter figured out Governess and Jurupa too,” she said, looking back past Garrett. “Did you not, clever boy?”

  “How do you know about—”

  The queen held up a hand. “Garrett Turek, we know everything. Everything you have ever talked about in front of a tree or a shrub… we know. Your entire life is on record.”

  Garrett’s mind flashed to the things he and his buddies had done or said around trees, but it was impossible to think of them all. He shook his head. None of it mattered. “Why am I here, Queen Pando?”

  “You mean to say you have yet to conclude your worth to me, Garrett Turek?” Queen Pando asked with a disappointment Garrett knew wasn’t real.

  Behind Queen Pando, a small mound of dirt pushed up again, but this time it was not snakes. Instead, hairy red spiders bubbled out of the earth. Again, an outline formed, only not like before. Before it was a human silhouette, but Garrett didn’t know what this was until the spiders finally changed into branches and a throne took shape. The throne was rooted to the ground like a large gnarled stump. Up the back of the stump, crooked branches twisted this way and that, only to end randomly like the claws of some monster’s hands. Tiny vines of gold traced every edge of the throne and then spread across the outside like lines from an artist’s pencil, creating the outlines of ornate leaves and flowers.

  Pando stepped backward up the steps of the throne and sat down. “Do you know what this world is for, young mage?”

  Garrett was puzzled at the question, his face showing his confusion. What the world is for? He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t understand a simple yes-or-no question? Do you know or do you not?” She tapped a green fingernail on the golden trim of her throne. “No, clearly you do not. Allow me to explain. Long ago, this world was a dumping ground for the gods. They practiced creating life here, taking their favorite creations back to Karelia while leaving the rest of us here. Or, if the gods were especially disappointed in their creations – they simply destroyed them.”

  Garrett noticed that the bottom of Pando’s dress covered her feet, but rather than ending in a pool of material, the dress transitioned into roots that connected to her wooden throne.

  Pando leaned forward. “This is the interesting part, Garrett Turek. This current version of your kind was never meant to be here. You were meant to be on Karelia, a larger planet that would control your growth with a balance of like creatures. Before you think it, no, it does not mean you are superior to us. It just means you should never have been here to begin with. So what happened? Why are you here?”

  Her face seemed to harden. “I will tell you, young mage – Turek happened. He brought a group of you here from Karelia. I worried because you had the knowledge of fire. But you were so few, and we were so many. And Turek came to me and showed me respect. He stood right here were you stand now, and he spoke to me. Of course, back then I could not change my form. There were no God Stones here then – no magic. Our creator never intended us to be walkers or shifters. We were left here, to live in peace and harmony with all the things of this planet, and for countless millennia that is the way it was. But your Turek spoke to me that day, and when I answered, he heard me! He actually heard me!

  “‘I need a place for my beloved humans,’ he said. ‘Karelia is no longer safe for them. They will live in harmony with you,’ he said. ‘But they have fire,’ I said. ‘What if they burn us?’ ‘They will not,’ he promised. ‘They will only burn dead wood,’ he promised. ‘They won’t fell us?’ I asked. ‘No, they won’t fell you. They can live under your great canopies or they can climb you and live in nests like the squirrels, but they won’t fell you,’ he promised.”

  Queen Pando sneered. The roots still binding Garrett’s feet twisted and tightened, forcing him to cry out in pain. With a quick jerk, his feet went out from under him and he fell back into the leaves and began sliding forward, pulled by his ankles. Roots from somewhere captured his wrists again, and he was yanked back onto his feet and lifted toward Pando, suspended once again by wrist and ankle, his face only a foot from hers.

  “This was a treaty, Garrett Turek, descendant mage of Turek! A verbal treaty, broken billions of times over! But did your Turek ever return to me once in a billion times to apologize? No! Did he ever punish his people for breaking the decree? No! Nothing! Instead, we are violated again and again!” The queen stood atop the dais and leaned down, placing her face an inch from Garrett’s. “You owe me, descendant! You owe me a pound of flesh for every pound of wood your kind has taken from us!” Pando reached forward and grabbed Garrett’s face between her thumb and fingers, her long green fingernails biting into his cheeks. “Are you ready to bleed? Are you ready to watch as I cleanse this world of humans? Are you ready to bear witness as I fix the wrong that has been done to our kind? Is still being done?” She shoved Garrett’s face.

  Garrett’s head snapped back so hard pain shot down his spine. He was sure she was about to kill him, and he couldn’t think. His whole body shook with terror as he tried to get it together. He blinked back tears. His feet felt like they were about to be squeezed off and his neck hurt. Think! Focus! Fix the wrong? Was that it? Was this the wrong he is supposed to fix? The wrong from the prophecy? Think! Why the snakes? Why the spiders? Think, dammit!

  “Ah!” he shouted as the vines continued to twist, sure his ankles and wrists were bleeding. Think! Why snakes and spiders? Garrett blinked, trying to focus through the pain. Because humans fear snakes and spiders. She could have bubbled up from the ground as butterflies. Her throne could have been a throne of flowers. She didn’t need to start off fifteen feet tall and shrink. If she simply wanted to kill him, why the production? Because she didn’t want to kill him. Not straight away, anyhow. No, she wanted him afraid. Okay, but why? Because she wanted something, or else why bother with all this? He drew in a deep breath and did his best to swallow his fear and force his shaking body to stop. “How… how can I help you?” he asked through gritted teeth.

  “Help me?” she asked. “How can you help me?”

  “You need something, Pando. You want the God Stones, don’t you?”

  “You will speak properly, flesh sack!�
�� Jurupa shouted. “Refer to your queen as Queen Pando or Your Highne—”

  Pando held up her hand, silencing Jurupa. The green flames of her emerald eyes softened as she settled back onto her throne. “Apep opened the gate twice before with the help of those vile nephilbock creatures. Once, twelve thousand and eight hundred years ago, then again when he tried to leave a thousand years later. His last debacle thrust the world into an ice age that imprisoned me under a glacier. But still I endured, and when the ice melted, I found something glorious had happened.” A slow smile crept across Pando’s perfect features. “I learned some trees could walk! I could walk! Even more incredible, a smaller number of trees could change their shape! I could change my shape! For our kind, it was a new world. We were unbound! We were free! Free to walk! Free to choose! Free to lift our roots from the ground and explore this world in a new way, not through the shared vision of others but in person!” The smile slipped from her face. “But we were naive! We thought our freedom was forever! We did not know! We should have! We should have paid attention! We should have kept our eyes on Apep!” Her eyes, widening with every word, burned bright once more, washing over Garrett’s face.

  “Apep opened the gate to return to Karelia, and it became unstable. His folly incinerated the ice cap and flooded most of the world. Still, we survived and still, we had our freedom! But then, little mage, Turek ordered the God Stones sealed in a lead box and hidden from the world. That was when we knew we had made a horrible mistake. Almost immediately, we felt the change coming as our fibers grew stiff. We scrambled to find habitable climates where we could root before it was too late. Many of us did not even have time to get to a place that would be suitable for eternity before our grains froze. Just like that,” she said, snapping her wooden fingers with a fierce crack, “our freedom was stolen and once again we were bound!

  “But we had tasted freedom. We had felt what it was like to be unbound! We spent the next ten thousand, eight hundred years rooted in place – prisoners! If that were all, if we were to simply go back to the way it was, that would have been tolerable. But that was not the worst of it.” She shook her head sadly. “No, little mage, that was not the worst. We were forced to watch silently as your kind multiplied at an infectious rate. A cancer on this planet. A cancer on us. Most recently, we have watched you increase your murderous rampage on our kind in the Amazon, all to make way for your insatiable need to eat meat and to build these ridiculous homes from our bones. Do you hear me, descendant? You kill us so you can have ‘really neat’ log cabins! The bigger the beams, the better! And if this were not enough, your constant need to burn fossil fuels has ruined the climate, creating unpredictable weather and wildfires that slaughter millions of my trees every year!”

  The tree queen leaned forward, her nails digging into the arms of her throne. “Is there a word in your language that better describes what you have done, and what you continue to do to the trees of this world, than genocide? I think not!” she screamed.

  Garrett flinched but forced himself to look at her. He didn’t want to. He wanted to run, to hide, but he forced himself to hold her hateful glare.

  “You know, before the Moores freed the stones, I had a different plan,” she said, her head nodding slowly, her gaze becoming distant. “Yes, quite different, and we were working diligently on carrying it out – all of us. You see, little mage, we were planning our deaths.”

  Pando gazed distantly toward the white forest and thus toward herself. “I was dying, and within twenty years, all the trees of this planet would have been dead along with me. It was to be a mass suicide that would have killed us all and taken down every human on this planet. No trees – no oxygen. A last laugh. A sweet revenge. An unspoken word conclusive in its silence,” Pando said, forcing a smile. Then she whispered, “A final voiceless scream into the night.”

  Garrett hung there by wrists and ankles, finding no words.

  “Do you see? Do you understand? No, of course not. You are the age of a blink.” Her eyes found Garrett once again and bore into him. She raised her voice. “You will know pain before this day is through. You ask me what I want. I will tell you, little mage,” she said, leaning in close to his face once again. “Call forth your god, Turek, or the entire world will feel my wrath!”

  38

  Leadership 101

  Friday, April 29 – God Stones Day 23

  The Band of Holes, Peru

  Jack sidestepped as Mivras rushed forward, nearly trampling him. He sneered up at the big blue beast, knowing damn well he’d done that on purpose.

  “Divide them into five hordes, my queen?” Mivras asked.

  Mivras the Blue was a dick, and there was just no getting around it. He clearly hated Jack, which was fine. Jack didn’t give a single solitary shit what Mivras thought of him. But Mivras didn’t seem to like Cerb either, and that worried Jack. He would need to keep an eye on the big dragon.

  “My queen,” Ahi the Silver said, “we have only four elders. We strongly advise against you leading a horde into battle. Please, we urge you to stay here.” He glanced at Mivras.

  “Of course, very wise to protect your queen, my elders,” she said, her eyes seeming to bore through Jack.

  Jack shifted uncomfortably, unsure why she was staring at him like that.

  “Select one hundred to stay with me here. But you will still need five hordes, Ahi.”

  “My queen.” Ahi bowed. “But who will lead the fifth horde?”

  “Cerberus will lead them,” Azazel said, her eyes still locked on Jack.

  Mivras was standing next to Jack, and the asshole’s disapproving look did not go unnoticed. Not by Jack, and apparently not by the queen either.

  “Is there a problem, Mivras?” Azazel asked.

  “No, my queen,” he said unconvincingly.

  “Good,” she said, closing her eyes. Hear me, my children! The time has come for legends to be born! Your first battle awaits! Come home to your queen!

  The queen’s voice resonated in Jack’s mind as clear as if she were speaking aloud, and he knew instinctively it must be the same for all the dragons.

  “Go now, my elders. Our boys are coming home. Rally your hordes.”

  Juvenile dragons had been flying far outside the valley, raiding towns and villages for humans to feed their seemingly insatiable appetite. Every day that passed required the dragons to fly farther from the valley to find food. Though it wasn’t only the food they traveled for. As far as Jack could tell, young dragons were a lot like cats in their curiosity, always snooping about. Some groups were exploring as far south as the southern tip of the continent and as far north as Mexico. It would probably take a full day for all the dragons to gather.

  This didn’t stop the elders from taking flight to begin hand-selecting their hordes.

  “Cerberus and I should start gathering our own horde,” Jack said, turning to Cerberus.

  “No. Your horde shall be selected for you,” the queen said.

  “So, what, we get the leftovers? We get the losers no one wants?”

  “Being the one no one wants should be comfortable for you, Jack,” Azazel said.

  Jack frowned at the smart-ass remark, but he held his tongue.

  “Do you know anything about leading, Jack?” Apep asked.

  Jack nodded. “Sure, the leader gives the orders. The followers obey or suffer the consequences.”

  Azazel began laughing. “This should be entertaining.”

  Jack didn’t care for being laughed at, especially by a woman. He didn’t care if she was a dragon or not. Danny wouldn’t have put up with it, that was for damn sure. Why the hell did these dragons let a girl boss them, anyway? Didn’t make sense to Jack.

  “Jack, walk with me,” Apep said.

  Jack kicked dirt as he walked past the queen.

  Out of earshot, Apep said, “You are not exactly wrong, Jack, but you are not right either. Leading is about giving orders, yes. And it is true that demanding obedience is important
, but there is more to it. Fear will only get you so far.”

  “It works for you. You have them so afraid of you that they’ll do whatever you say,” Jack said.

  “That’s what you see now, but they also know I am capable. There are many factors you don’t understand. I have something they want. I hold their freedom hostage, I hold their God Stone, and besides, the dragons and I have history, Jack. They tried this their way in the past, and it didn’t work. Now, it’s true, I hold a bigger stick, but in the stick is the carrot, and it too is great.”

  Jack hated when he talked like that. It was damn stupid to talk fancy! Why couldn’t he just speak plain!

  “Do you understand?” Apep asked.

  “Well, if I shouldn’t threaten them or kill them when they don’t listen, then how am I supposed to lead them?”

  Apep stopped and turned to face him. “You can do all those things, Jack, but first you have to earn the right to. You must show them why they should follow you, prove you’re worthy. Then and only then will they follow you because they want to or because they are scared not to, and not because they are told to.” Apep narrowed his eyes. “What Queen Azazel has given you is a chance to prove your worth not only to her but to her people. I need you to do well in this. Do you understand?”

  He understood enough to know Apep didn’t care one bit about him. “Why?”

  “As you will soon learn, alliances never last. Partnerships, loyalties, commitments – these are fleeting concepts used to manipulate the weak for the benefit of the strong.”

  Jack stared blankly.

  They were far down the ridgeline now, walking between the rocky holes of hatched dragon eggs. Apep looked back over his shoulder in the direction they had come. “Partnerships, Jack! They are ephemeral. They don’t last. My alliance with the dragons will expire when I’ve finished with them. I need you to do more than just lead the horde. Win their trust. Show them you and your three-headed monster are worthy to follow! And when the time comes, you will lead them against their own! You will use the horde to protect my kingdom! And for this you will reap glorious rewards!” Apep placed a hand on his shoulder, his long bony fingers pressing into the leather.