“I’m afraid I must insist,” Rondelo said, cutting Jason’s bindings. He waited until Jason put his hands in front of him and snapped the cuffs on Jason’s wrists. There was a flash of light and a shock of cold, as if the metal had been dipped in liquid nitrogen before being put on him. “Ow!”
“It stings,” Rondelo said.
Jason shot an accusatory look at Darius. “Thanks for the warning. You didn’t even flinch.”
“They’ll do worse than this to us, Jason. Be prepared.”
Rondelo stood and walked away, but Jason called his name. The Elenil paused and looked back at them. “I gotta say, buddy, I’m a little disappointed you would break someone else’s fashion norms, especially given you Elenil with all your gloves and high collars and weird hats.”
“War and fashion are hard companions,” Rondelo said.
“Exactly. That’s why I want you to know that before this is all over, I’m gonna see you in jeans and a T-shirt and a baseball cap. It’s not personal, it’s just that this is war, and that’s what’s going to happen.”
Rondelo smirked. “I shall take this warning into account. I have seen the strange fashions of the humans, and I do not wish to be humiliated in such a way.” He walked off, stopping to talk to the other Elenil warriors.
“That guy is the worst,” Darius said. “But you are one strange little dude.”
“One, Sochar is the worst. But Rondelo is too pretty, and it makes you want to like him. Then he’s all nice, which makes you want to like him more. But then it turns out he’s also a bad guy.” Jason paused. “He’s a bad guy, right?”
“Clearly.”
Right. Of course he was. He had captured them and stood by and done nothing while Nightfall had been killed. “So he’s a bad guy, but I really want to like him. Madeline practically had a crush on him. She’d go all weak in the knees and have trouble talking straight when he was around.”
Darius frowned. “We’ll kill him soon enough.”
Oh yeah. Darius was Madeline’s boyfriend. Or had been once. Jason probably shouldn’t have said that about the crush. On the other hand, he was committed to the truth and had to say what he thought. But killing a guy because your girlfriend had a crush on him was next level. “You’re so dark, man. With all the killing and everything.”
Darius looked uncomfortable. “Yeah, well. Only the people who deserve it.”
“Who decides that?”
“The guy holding the sword.” Darius shook his chains. They made an almost bell-like tinkling sound.
The guy holding the sword. Or the bow. Jason couldn’t help but think of Nightfall, and how was that any different? Sochar had decided for some reason that the Scim kid was deserving of the death penalty. Some weird combination of fear and anger had driven him to feel threatened by a child. This wasn’t the first time either, because he had done the same thing to Mud. If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Raymond and Hanali taking Mud in and healing him, the kid probably wouldn’t have survived. Jason’s teeth ground together. Mrs. Raymond and Hanali hadn’t been around this time, which meant Nightfall hadn’t been so lucky. He had been murdered because Sochar was so afraid of the Scim that he would kill a kid.
It didn’t look like there would be many consequences for that, unless Archon Thenody was way less terrible than Jason thought he was. Which seemed unlikely, because Jason knew the Elenil ruler, and he was the sort of guy to dangle you over a cliff and threaten you for no reason. Jason had to admit thinking about Darius stabbing Rondelo only gave him the barest tinge of bad feeling, nothing like the raging tidal wave of grief which kept threatening to engulf him because of what had happened to Nightfall. He wasn’t sure he could run Rondelo through with a sword himself, but if Sochar were here in front of him, Jason thought he could pretty happily choke him to death with the chains of his manacles.
Jason sat up straight. “Did you hear that?”
Darius shifted, his eyes searching the camp. “No. What was it?”
“There it is again. That chirping.”
Darius leaned forward. “It sounds almost like . . . a cell phone.”
Jason grinned. “Yeah! It’s a cell phone bird.”
Darius’s brow wrinkled in consternation. “I knew there were messenger birds in the Sunlit Lands, but they don’t usually ring like cell phones.”
“No! Well, sorta.” Messenger birds could speak and carry messages, which, according to the way Elenil magic worked, meant they must be getting those voices from someone else . . . a chilling idea Jason tried not to dwell on. But the cell phone bird was a bird whose chirp sounded just like a cell phone ring. When he and Baileya had been on the run in her homeland, the Kakri territories, he had heard them often. Baileya could do this spot-on impression of them. He hadn’t heard one his entire time in the Wasted Lands. Which meant that it wasn’t a Kakri bird but a Kakri warrior making that sound. Jason grinned. “Baileya’s here.”
The booming voice of Break Bones came bursting through the darkness and into the camp. “You have broken the treaty between the Elenil and the Scim! Return with us to the Wasted Lands or there will be blood. I have spoken, and my words are binding upon all who hear me.”
Rondelo was already on his white stag, Evernu. “To arms, Elenil! Sochar, take the prisoners and make haste for Far Seeing. We will join you if we can.”
Darius and Jason scrambled to their feet, standing with their backs to the tree. Sochar was heading toward them, his massive tiger close behind. “How will he fit three of us on a tiger?” Jason asked.
“Split up,” Darius said. “It should slow him down for a minute. Every second gives us a chance that the Scim will recover us from the Elenil. Run toward Break Bones’s voice.”
“But where’s Baileya?” Jason asked. “If I can find her, we’ll be safe.”
Breep-breep! The sound of a cell phone bird came again, this time directly above them. Through the branches he could see her, the beautiful Kakri woman who had somehow become his fiancée, crouched near the trunk fifteen feet above them. Her dark hair fell around her face and to her shoulders, and he couldn’t understand how she managed to avoid being seen in a tree while wearing the loose-fitting cream-colored pants and flowing blue blouse-thing that she favored. In one hand she carried her favorite weapon, a sort of spear with a curved knife on one end and a straight blade on the other. She grinned at him and gave a cute little wave with her fingers.
Sochar unsheathed a sword as he ran. “Do not move, either of you!”
A shower of leaves and branches poured down between them, and Baileya stood in the center of it, her weapon in hand. The startled Elenil didn’t have time to slow before Baileya pivoted on one foot and brought the other up in a savage kick directly to his chin. His head went backward, his body still moving toward her. She sidestepped and set her foot on his chest, the point of her blade under his chin. “Do you yield?”
Sochar’s tiger came flying into her, knocking her onto her back. The tiger’s maw opened wide over her face, and she whacked it in the teeth with the shaft of her spear.
Jason jumped onto the tiger’s back, throwing his chain around its face right as Baileya pulled her spear away. He got the chain under the animal’s mouth and yanked back, hard. The gigantic cat bucked twice, rolled over onto its back—Jason nearly lost his breath—then scrambled up and ran into the forest, Jason still choking it as hard as he could.
They crashed through the bramble. The tiger knocked him against tree trunks and brushed him through branches. More than once it shook its back to try to dislodge him, but Jason, terrified, just tightened his grip around the tiger’s neck. Between Jason’s choking and its frantic behavior, the tiger passed out in less than a minute, though it seemed like a hundred million minutes to Jason. He lay beside it, arms still wrapped around its neck. At this angle it was hard work to get the animal’s head up so he could unwrap himself from it. He finally got free and stood, legs shaking. There was blood on his face. He reached up, touched it with his fingers.
They came away wet. The blood was getting in his eyes. Must have been from one of the branches.
Baileya came flying to him out of the trees and wrapped her arms around him in a colossal hug. He almost fell over. She grinned at him with that look in her eyes that always made him feel light-headed, but he really was feeling light-headed and started to pass out. She helped him gently onto the ground. “It is only a scratch,” she said.
“I don’t like the sight of blood,” Jason said. “Well, not my blood, anyway.”
“You bested a tiger!”
Jason looked at the sleeping giant. “On the other hand, he’s not bleeding, and I still might faint.”
She sat beside him and let him lean on her strong shoulder. “Rest a few moments, brave warrior. What a story you have made for us today! ‘Wu Song Bests the Tiger’!”
“Hey, that’s a famous story where I come from.”
Baileya loved stories. For her people, stories were much more than entertainment. They were life, they were money, they were used in trade and matrimony and celebrations and passing on knowledge. A new story was worth a great deal. “You are a wealth of stories, and you have not told me this one yet.”
“I’m actually named for a famous tiger slayer.”
“You are full of unexpected wonders,” Baileya said affectionately, patting him on the hand. “Now come. We brought many Scim, and the Elenil will be in retreat soon. We do not want them to come upon us in their exit.”
“Where’s your brother?” Jason asked, getting to his feet with a slow, careful effort.
“I tied him, unconscious, to his steed and gave the creature a hard slap. It will be a day or so before he is on our trail again, and by then we will be hidden deep in the heart of the Aluvorean forests. We are not far from them here, on the outer edge of the Wasted Lands.”
Jason leaned on her as they stepped over a fallen log. “Did you beat him too badly?”
Baileya snorted. “There is a reason the Kakri women are the more highly regarded warriors.”
She stopped, her hand on his forearm. He could hear it too. Shouts and the crashing movement of animals and people running forward through the undergrowth. The floating orbs of the Elenil sped ahead of them, casting strange shadows as their varied steeds leapt and ran behind. Rondelo led the way, his white stag bounding out of the darkness. The remnants of his party came after him. Sochar rode with a second Elenil on a pearlescent horse.
A Scim war party followed close behind, stone axes at the ready, and their harsh battle cries filled Jason with delight. “They want to kill me, too, you know,” Jason said. “But I’m glad to say they hate the Elenil more than they hate me.”
The tiger flinched, and though they were a little bit away from it now, Jason couldn’t help but flinch as well. Then, to Jason’s amazement, the tiger shrank from gigantic-terrifying-tiger size to regular-tiger size. Baileya stiffened, and her hand tightened on his.
“Did you see that, Baileya? That tiger just shrank.”
As he said it, the floating lights of the Elenil flickered and fell to the forest floor, dead. “Zhanin,” Baileya whispered, then yanked on Jason’s arm, hard. “We’ll have to hope they inspect the Elenil first.”
“Zhanin? Aren’t they the murderous seafaring people who also want to kill me?”
“Yes,” Baileya said, pulling him down a narrow track through the trees. “Some of them can negate magic. Only the fiercest of their people, though. The ones who are both judges and executioners.”
“Wait,” Jason said. They could barely see the Elenil and Scim through the dark.
“It is not wise, Wu Song.”
“If they’re coming after me, I should at least see them first.”
The Zhanin came through the woods, four lean but muscled people with bare copper-colored arms and long pants and shirts that looked to be made from leather the color of seaweed. A pale phosphorescent light seemed to emanate from them. The Elenil were in disarray, their magical mounts gone feral. So many things about the Elenil required magic. Without it, they looked helpless. One of the Zhanin dragged an Elenil from a bucking horse, forced him to his knees, and shouted, “Where is the human boy?”
No one answered, and the Zhanin shoved a long knife into the Elenil’s body. He fell to the side, motionless.
“Where is the boy?”
Jason’s stomach turned over, and he felt faint. He was no fan of the Elenil soldiers, but to see one so casually tossed aside made him sick. These Zhanin might be more brutal in war than the Elenil. “On second thought,” Jason said, “let’s run away fast.”
Baileya gripped his hand in hers and led the way.
10
UNDERWATER
He made good, sweet water to flow upon the land.
FROM “THE PLANTING OF ALUVOREA,” AN ALUVOREAN CREATION TALE
Madeline knew she was dreaming, because she was underwater, and she could breathe. It didn’t feel quite right—there was a labor to it. She had to work hard to pull the water into her lungs and then almost shout to expel it. But she was breathing.
She could see the sunlight above, piercing the green-tinged water and sinking down to her. There was a glow coming from her. From her wrist. A bright green-white light that came from inside her skin, from a point of light the size of a sunflower seed, too bright to look at directly.
A school of silver fish swam toward her, then turned like they were one animal, disappearing into the murk beyond. She dove further down, toward the bottom of the ocean or lake or wherever she was. She tasted the water on her next breath. Salty. It didn’t taste quite like the sea, though. But it must be . . . It wasn’t fresh water, that much was certain.
There was a strange statue, about twice the size of a man, standing on the bottom. He had a thick, reptilian tail, like a crocodile, that dragged on the ground, trailing beside his stocky legs. She swam around front to get a better look at him. His hair was long and green, growing like ivy from his head. He had a thick beard made of leaves, which undulated lightly in the gentle movement of the water. His broad shoulders had something almost like scales on them, which ran down both his arms. Rising from his head like antlers were two great tree branches.
The statue was so lifelike, Madeline wanted to touch it. She reached out and touched his face, then jerked away from the supple texture of his cheek. His eyes opened in surprise. “How did you come to be here?” he asked.
“I’m dreaming,” she said. Speaking was easier than she thought it would be.
“But you are not of my people,” he said, studying her face. “You are made of dirt and wind and fire. I am of sticks and moss, leaves and branches, water and mud. But what’s this?”
He reached for her arm, pulled her close. He studied the shining seed in her arm. “An Aluvorean put that in me,” she said, “using a stone flower.”
“It is not the seed of a stone flower,” he said. When his face came close to her arm, she could smell a floral aroma coming from the moss growing on his antlers. “It is . . . the seed of a Queen’s Tree.” His face, so sad. “And you but a child.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that when you come to Aluvorea—”
“I’m not coming to Aluvorea. I’m staying home. I need to take care of Yenil, make sure she’s safe. I need to figure out the thing with the principal and make sure she has a guardian, make sure Shula can stay with her.”
The tree man did not look away from her, his eyes still sad. “It means that when you come to Aluvorea, you must ask for Patra Koja.”
“Patra Koja,” she repeated.
“What is your name, girl?”
Something about the way he asked her . . . she didn’t want to say. “It’s a dream. You should know.”
“You are the annaginuk in waiting, the enalanok, the emes esutol. But you are not an Elenil.” His eyes focused on her face. “You are not an Elenil, are you? What does this portend? Surely they would not turn to the humans again, not a second time. What strang
e times I have lived to see.” He dropped his head. “These are times of great sorrow. Oh, annaginuk who is to come, what betrayal has brought you to this path? Or what noble intent of your own heart? You have agreed to help them, but have they warned you of the price?” He looked up, gazing at something over Madeline’s head.
Madeline turned. A wooden crown floated in the water above them. It was intricately carved and carefully polished around the base . . . as if it were braided branches. But then, up from the base a series of living branches grew. Some of them stretched out, wild, while others massed together to hold what looked like shining jewels. It floated toward her, and there was a feeling of great power in it, but also heartbreaking loneliness and loss. Madeline instinctually swam backward, and into the wide chest of the antlered man.
“It is the Heartwood Crown,” he whispered.
She screamed and sat up in her bed, gasping for air. Like always, gasping for air. Her chest ached, and she saw a glow coming from the seed in her arm, a light that lessened and then went away even as she noticed it. Tears streamed down her face.
It was then that she realized it had not been an ocean she had been in. It had not been the briny water of the sea. It had been a lake of tears . . . whether her own or Patra Koja’s or someone else’s, she did not know.
11
OLD FRIENDS
In those days the whole of the Sunlit Lands was covered in forest, and magic was everywhere.
FROM “THE PLANTING OF ALUVOREA,” AN ALUVOREAN CREATION TALE
They came to the edge of Aluvorea on the second night. Baileya kept them at a fast pace. Break Bones had found them, and Darius eventually caught up too, holding Delightful Glitter Lady in the crook of his arm. He had found her while looking for Jason. The terrible Zhanin warriors in their strange seaweed leather had harried the Elenil, chasing them toward Far Seeing. The arrival of the Scim had caused enough distraction for the Elenil to slip away, and the Zhanin had set out after them. It appeared the seafaring warriors thought Jason was still with the Elenil. Baileya had been cheered by the news, but she immediately demanded that they choose a destination and “make haste.”
The Heartwood Crown Page 10