The banners did make her think, though. Was Azure following them, all the way out here? Or was he waiting to see if she turned?
Tharson reassured her this was the right place, but they did not stop right away. They rode the galhak more gently between the trees, but they kep riding into the night, stopping for a few breaks but pressing on until morning. And the deeper they went, the taller these mighty pines became, until they seemed to reach so high into the night sky that Isavel could no longer see the stars at all. These, she had to admit, dwarfed the forests of her youth.
They finally arrived in the blue light of dawn. Somebody had whistled from the trees and brought the martians to a halt. They glanced around cautiously, while Kelena dismounted alone and walked to the fore of the group. Unfamiliar martians emerged from the woods in response, all wearing strange armour that appeared to be made of pale wood bound together with white cloth straps. It didn’t look especially sturdy, but it was intricately carved with harsh, angular designs that were almost mesmerizing to look at.
The lead figure of this new group spoke in quick, quiet tones with Kelena, and Tharson nodded towards them, naming them in his tongue. “ Druitha . They tend the First Tree.”
Again with this tree. Surely it wasn’t literally the first ever tree. She could only hope she was about to find out more, as Kelena gestured for them all to dismount. Isavel let the martians lead their animals forward on foot and walked alongside Tharson, her eyes glancing between these druitha and the needle-matted forest floor where only hardy little ferns and shrubs seemed to grow. “Tharson, what is this place?”
“The oldest part of the old forest. They say our ancestors planted First Tree to celebrate hope, and the future. These are her daughters.”
“Hope?”
He nodded, and spoke quietly. “Our ancestors came filled with hope for a new life. They were not wrong. Earthlings came and their cities fell, but their children lived.”
Earthlings came? Isavel frowned at that, but she remembered what the martians had told her before. There were old fights. Earthlings had come to destroy martian cities? Why? How? And why had she never heard of this? None of the stories she’d heard, not even from the maddest old men around the dimmest campfires, said anything about war against Mars. It wasn’t even supposed to be a real place!
She wondered in silence as these druitha led them further into the forest. The trees were already of unearthly size, thick enough around the trunk that several people might need to join hands to encircle them. But just when an unusual break in the canopy appeared in the distance, the druitha came to a halt. The old man who was leading them along spoke to Kelena, and Kelena turned around and came to speak to Isavel - for the first time since their spat, she realized. “Isavel. Come with me.”
She extended her hand towards Isavel, her sword remaining fast at her hip. Isavel wasn’t sure what this was about, but the woman’s already stony face was not inviting of conversation, so she took Kelena’s long, pale hand and walked with her into the forest clearing.
It wasn’t a clearing. There simply wasn’t room for any more trees here, not so close to… this .
She didn’t have one clear word for what it was. It was the stump of a tree, bark pale like hot sand, jaggedly sheared off at almost twice Isavel’s height above the ground. Its vast width was incredible - three dozen people with their hands joined in a ring would not have been able to encompass the entire thing. Fifty might.
But it wasn’t a stump - it was well and truly alive. It was split asunder so long ago new branches had burst forth from all sides and reached towards the sky in a ring around the stump, a crown of living lumber and needles. In any other forest these branches could have been full trees in their own right; she only knew them for branches from the massive bulk they were born from. Colossal roots wove deep into the soil, thick as a human at least, and Isavel saw how they interwove with the roots of the smaller trees around the edge of the clearing - the First Tree’s eldest daughters.
Yet it wasn’t even a tree, because something more had been done to it. Someone - these druitha? - had tended these new growths for what must have been centuries, and had woven them together, and they had grown into the weave. The result was a lattice of trees, growing and connecting and spiraling up and up above the stump before bursting out across the top of the clearing, far above the rest of the forest itself. It was a living building, a shrine-tree, a garden of one, a monument. Here a great thing had been killed, and here something new had been brought forth from it.
The morning light filtering in here was rich with purples stolen from the pine needles in a way both bruised and beautiful, as though the world itself were on the verge of either rotting or healing, its final trajectory still hanging in the balance. And here stood this tree, seeming to ask her which one she would stand for. She was not surprised anyone would step into this place and immediately believe that here, in this mournfully sacred presence, things mattered . For a breathless moment, she almost didn’t care whether martian gods ever lent their ear to the place.
Kelena pulled her hand forward. “You must meet the First Tree.”
She felt herself pulled forward and stepped after Kelena, who did not release her hand. Was the tree aware? Was this that third god, Crimson? That couldn’t be - they would have said so. Was it one of the older things Tharson had mentioned?
They clambered up the side of the stump, greatly helped along by the weak pull of Mars, and stood on the top. It was scarred and knotted and gnarled, but it had knotted over in a surface that, while bumpy, was fairly level overall. Kelena knelt down in the centre, bringing Isavel down with her.
“Why are we here?”
Kelena looked carefully at her for a moment, her thoughts opaque, her steely grey eyes intent. “When a tiny insect crawls on your clothes, or your hip, or your shoulder, do you take notice?”
She considered it. “I can’t remember the last time I noticed. I would think so, but…”
“But they are so small, and we are so preoccupied with bigger things, that they often pass unnoticed. But if an insect were to suddenly step on your eye, you would notice immediately. So it is with Mars, and us, and the First Tree.”
She sighed, looking above them at the intricate weave of the tree of trees above them, at the purplish light sitting heavy in the air around them. “Kelena, you said there might be a way off. If you want me to get out of here, I’m going to need more than -”
Kelena pulled out the Red Sword and rested its tip against the First Tree. “Believe me, I know how this sounds.” Her hand flexed around its grip. “But the Red Sword, the bearer, has a place in these things you do not understand. It is truer than you think. This is a place where Mars is paying attention; not only the gods, but older things with deeper roots.”
“It’s a tree, Kelena.” She took a deep breath. “A beautiful tree, but -”
Clearly only half attentive, Kelena slid her hand down the sharp of the blade, a thin trickle of blue blood suddenly dripping down the sword. The metals of the artifact repelled it completely, such that within seconds it had all trickled down into the wood. Then she turned the sharp end towards Isavel. “I think this is unwise. Too risky. But the eyes of all the gods are here - Crimson most of all, she who blessed the First Tree. I know what Azure has promised you; but if there is any other way for you to find what you are looking for, this may be the place for a sign.”
“What kind of sign?”
Kelena shook her head. “I cannot say. But this place… things have happened here, again and again, too many to recount. And so the eyes and ears are here.” She gestured at the sword. “Your blood is stranger than most, Isavel. Offer up a little of it, and see what comes.”
A little blood was a small sacrifice, and Kelena was’t wrong about its strangeness. But she hesitated. What was she getting herself into? “The Red Sword eats people? That’s what you both said.”
Kelena smiled sadly. “That can be true. But it will not eat you unless
you wield it. And you will not wield it. You are not martian; you cannot be trusted to serve Mars.”
The finality felt a little boisterous on the surface, but Isavel remembered the one time she had seen the sword in action, directed at her, and didn’t doubt that Kelena could keep it away from her in a standing fight. She nodded. “So, what, you serve Mars by making sure nobody else can use the sword? Why not destroy it?”
The smile vanished from the martian’s frosty lips. “We carry it for a time of unimaginable need.”
That sounded like a recipe for never using the thing, but she didn’t say as much. It would be too like Ada to say so, and even that realization was more painful than she wanted. So she pressed her hand against the sharp of the blade and slid it down, just enough for some of her red blood to mingle with the martian’s blue in the cracks of the stump of the First Tree. She lowered her head and looked at that blood, the blood that had brought her so far from everything she understood. She muttered quietly, in her own tongue.
“Crimson. I don’t know you. I’ve never met you. I doubt you care. But I need to return my friends to where they are safe, and you’re the last god I can turn to. If there is anything I can do - anything - that will earn what I am asking for, please tell me. Tell me as clearly as you can. Because if we don’t find a way back -”
She glanced at Kelena, who was saying nothing.
“I don’t want to have to fight these people over their stupid sword. But my friends deserve to go home. They don’t deserve to die in a world without Elysium.”
She waited, listening to a silence swaddled in the rustle of pine needles.
This, she dared not say out loud. Mars? Is it true? Are you there, too big to notice me, too big to care? She closed her eyes. Some bugs bite harder than you’d think. I need help.
And still, silence.
After a time, that creeping uncertainty and abandonment rose further and further up her spine. Kelena was staring at her patiently, but Isavel’s own patience had frayed long ago.
“I asked Crimson for help.” She looked around them, at the branches of the fallen tree reaching towards the sky all around them in a whorl of centuries. “What now?”
Kelena raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know. What do you think?”
“What do I think?” She felt herself scowling. “I think Azure has the only means to send us home, but I can’t accept that.”
“The only means?” Kelena tilted her head. “You know nothing about Mars. How can you know there are no other ways?”
“Amber told me, in Deep Tharsis. Azure has all the ships and most of the gates, and the aliy told me the gates are -”
“Amber?” Kelena’s eyes widened. “ Amber talked to you? Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because - because they didn’t tell me anything useful! They just said they were watching and that Azure might be lying, but they had nothing -”
Kelena cast her eyes down, hand fidgeting at the sword. “Amber does not talk to mortals, even less than Crimson. They are generally quite disinterested, except…”
“What about Mars? You said - did you mean we could get Mars to notice us? What does that -”
“Crimson.” Kelena’s eyes widened. “Amber and Crimson are the closest pair of the three. Amber has ignored mortals, mostly, except when they are working with Crimson.”
Isavel frowned. “Working with? They’re gods.”
“I don’t know your gods, Isavel, but ours act on their own. Usually.” Kelena bit her lip and stared around them wildly. “I knew it. I knew I was right.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We should have gone straight to Red Rise.” She sighed, a strained and frustrated sound. “I should never have listened to Tharson. This is my fault.”
“Red what?” Isavel waved in the martian’s face, her palm still bloodied by the cut even as it healed. “Hey, hey, explain!”
The swordswoman gestured north. “If you had told us earlier, we would have gone earlier. Crimson’s work is in the fields and forests; she does not open her temples to us. But - if she and Amber are collaborating on something, and Amber appeared to you… We need to go there. That is our best hope - not only for you, but perhaps for the sword.”
“Then why didn’t we try?”
Kelena gave her a sad look. “I wanted to. But Tharson - he said we should bring you here. He said a visit to the First Tree might open new paths, that it could bring the other gods’ eyes on you. He is not wrong - it has happened before, that lives are changed here. We know this.” A sad smile crossed her martian lips. “But he has been hiding from his brother, too. His brother in Red Rise. Nothing so far has convinced him to return.”
“You’re the one with the sword. Why listen to him?”
At this, Kelena’s mouth opened silently for a moment before she found the answer. “I knew he was avoiding it. But I hoped…”
Isavel waited, but Kelena was simply frowning off into space, wincing, as though reliving some kind of memory she didn’t want to relive. Then she looked at Isavel.
“I was wrong. This has happened before - Amber and Crimson do such things, rarely. Tharson knows; he can’t refuse this. He will bring you there; you will bring him. It fits.”
Isavel hoped so, but this didn’t sound like a solution. She tried to keep her face passive, but she could feel the grimace trying to get through. “Then we need to get moving, don’t we?”
Kelena nodded, and another smile graced her lips, an unexpectedly warm one. “Of course. I want Tharson to heal his old scars, even if he wishes to keep them.”
She glanced down at the knotted, sheared-off trunk of the First Tree. “What scars?”
And in the glinting drops of her red blood, she saw a flicker of light.
Kelena was cut off by a roar of weapons, an ethereal fire from the northeast that sent birds into panicked flight all around them. Weapons the likes of which Isavel had known before - weapons that could blast villages to ash at the whim of an angry blue god. Her eyes widened, and Kelena’s hand swept up the Red Sword.
Chapter 9
They jumped from the First Tree and scampered back, finding their companions scattered. She found Tanos and Sam first, ducked behind the trunks of one of the largest trees, eyes wide. “Isavel! I thought - why is he here?”
Isavel shook her head. “I don’t know!” She pointed at Kelena. “He’s hunting that , but I didn’t think -”
Kelena was pointing at her and exchanging quick words with Tharson. He did not look happy, and his distress was not limited to the attack closing in on them. But it wasn’t long before Kelena bounded back towards her. “You are dangerous. Where is your firewoman?”
“My what? You mean Hail? She -”
“Where?”
She could hear the telltale sound of hunterfire not far from them. “Over there.”
Kelena clapped her on the back. “Go.”
She darted through the trees, Kelena following with the Red Sword drawn, and they soon found Hail peering around a thick trunk and firing into the air. Isavel followed the shots and found the flying ships, just above the canopy. There was one large, twin-hulled war barge with its village-burning weapon, and two smaller ones flanked it. She saw drones, too, and blue-clad soldiers aboard the barges firing down into the forest. The smell of pine smoke drifted between the trees.
She reached the hunter. “Hail!”
“Isavel! Where did they -”
Kelena cut them off. “We cannot let them burn the First Tree. We three are dangerous.”
“You keep saying -”
The martian gestured upwards. “Climb.”
“What?”
Kelena darting up a tree with long, grasping leaps as Isavel watched. It seemed like madness - never something she would have attempted on Earth - but the swordswoman’s fearlessness told her it was not the worst idea a martian could think of. “Hail, I think we’re climbing up a tree.”
Hail’s eyes darted up the sand-pale b
arks to the distant canopy. “I - okay. Sure. I can do that.”
Isavel gave her an encouraging slap on the shoulder. “Me first - I’ll shield.” She cast off the poncho to make better use of her pathfinder’s skin, and bounded up the tree herself, spreading a shield across her back that she tried to meld to her surroundings. Climbing was far easier than it would have been on Earth, and the threat of a fall felt less pressing; before long they broke canopy, skin and shield melded to the trees around her. The barges were circling in the distance, hovering so close that the ashen-indigo needles of the treetops rippled like water under wind.
“Hail - cover me!”
Hail started shooting, glittering hexagons zipping through the air at the barges and martians upon them. One of the smaller barges swung towards them, its movements heaving aside grasping pines with gusts of force, and starting firing back. Kelena jumped from the crown of her tree to the next in one great, easy leap, the treetop swinging wildly as she landed, and Isavel almost laughed at how absurd it looked. Then halfway through a swing Kelena jumped to the next, and suddenly Isavel needed to catch up.
Something, martians or drones or both, spotted her and fired, but the hunter in her knew where to dodge and skip, and the dragon mocked the pull of this world, so she too jumped to the next tree and clung on easily as a few needles were thrown loose by the sudden impact, drifting through featherlight Mars as though slowed in time.
Kelena advanced relentlessly, occasionally catching a shot on the blade itself - which remained oddly undamaged. The speed and prescience it allowed her was increasingly unsettling to Isavel, but at least her warrior’s shields were just as effective at warding off shots. Together, jump by jump, they closed on the incoming barge. Perhaps its crew imagined they would be easier to shoot up close.
“Isavel!” The swordswoman shouted at her, ducking behind a crown as the barge neared. “Together!”
Fourth Under Sol (Digitesque Book 5) Page 14