Light the Reign (The Forgotten: Book 3)

by Cole, Laura R

  The other man tapped on a cage to the right of hers, indicating the Bricrui with the missing eye. “Let’s put ol’ one-eye in there with him, having two champions will increase the bets.”

  The beady eyes tore themselves away from her gaze and he grunted at the other. “Fine, I’ll get the leash.”

  Layna watched as he slid a pole with a hook on the end through the bars to the Bricrui’s cage. The thing swatted at it with anger, but couldn’t get away in its confined environment. The handler soon had the hook clipped onto the metal ring attached to its collar and they opened the door. As soon as the cage was clear, the other man clipped on another pole.

  Even with the two of them, they had a hard time controlling the flailing of the beast as it tried to attack them. They eventually got it through the door, and it slammed shut behind them, leaving Layna with nothing more than the muffled sounds of the two poor Bricrui tearing one another apart.

  As she took a closer look around her, she noticed that in the back cages, there were several Bricrui huddled in their cages meekly, rather than foaming at the mouth like those nearest her. As she watched, one of them suddenly looked up at her and she gasped. The woman’s eyes were not yet filled with blood and they held behind them the kind of terror that Layna herself was feeling. This woman was not beyond saving.

  Layna watched the others near the woman and found that they too, were still in the realm of being able to keep it under control with the chokeroot. And certainly not beyond reasoning. They were still capable of knowing that they were soon to be facing possible death when pitted against one of those people who were too far gone. They must be petrified.

  The cage in the corner tugged hard at her heartstrings. It held a young girl, no older than little Alina back at the palace. Though the boils on her skin belied the truth of her condition, her face was still innocent and her eyes still big and round and most importantly, blue.

  Layna shook with anger now. The monsters running the fighting ring were evil in her book for pitting two animals against one another, and now they had progressed to people? How could they look at that little girl and not see her as a person? Only as the money they would make putting her in a ring with a full-grown Bricrui to be torn apart.

  Not to mention the people paying to see it and making bets on it. How could people be so depraved?

  The two men came back into the room just then and surveyed their options. The bigger of the two who seemed to be in charge was followed by a scantily-clad woman, who was busy draping herself over him. The beady eyed man strolled over to the cage with the little girl and kicked it. She squealed in fright and he laughed.

  “How ‘bout giving them a little easy one, boss, a little freebie entertainment while we ply them with some liquor for the next real fight.”

  The other man was busy groping at the woman’s chest and he didn’t even bother looking at the cage. “Yeah, whatever,” he told beady-eyes before mashing his mouth onto the woman’s.

  The little man clipped her collar with ease and opened the door, dragging her roughly to her feet. She whimpered a bit, and cried out as she stubbed a bare toe on the uneven floor. Neither man, nor the woman seemed bothered by her very human plight in the least.

  Layna’s anger boiled over and she couldn’t stop herself. “No!” she yelled loudly, immediately getting the attention of all three.

  The boss shoved the woman off him roughly and strode over to her cage.

  “You’re looking rather far gone for complaining about your lot in life,” he commented casually, leaning in for a closer look. She growled at him unconvincingly and his eyes narrowed. He reached into her cage, and though she tried to snap at him like a Bricrui would, he caught her chin easily. He poked his other hand in and rubbed away part of her make-up.

  “What the–” he began, rubbing the make-up between his fingers. He let go of her chin with a little jerk of her head and looked down at her. The beady-eyed man and the woman were now standing next to him.

  “That’s the strangest Bricrui I’ve ever seen,” the woman commented stupidly.

  “That’s because this is no Bricrui,” the boss-man said, having caught on to the ploy. He glared down at her. “Some do-gooder who thinks she can make a difference, huh?” He turned to the beady-eyed man who was still standing behind him, holding the little girl a safe distance away from them. “Put that one back in her cage and get this one out. We’re going to have to pack it up and move out, who knows who else she has coming. But I think there’s time for one last fight.” He grinned evilly at her and she held his gaze evenly as the beady-eyed man returned the little girl and came over to her cage. He poked the leash in at her and she reached up to grab it, easily keeping it away from the ring it needed to clip to.

  “Don’t bother with that,” the boss snapped, “she’s not really one of them, it’s just a woman, open it up and get her in the ring.”

  As she was being led away, another door opened and she looked up hopefully, praying that Gryffon and Sir Ruawn had caught up to her at last. Her demeanor brightened as she saw that it was two of the guards from Sir Ruawn’s Knights who had been assigned to this expedition. She smiled at them, but it faltered at the glum look in their eyes.

  Her hopes were dashed in the next moment as they stumbled forward, unable to catch themselves with their hands since they were tied behind their backs. Layna swallowed the lump that had just caught in her throat as she was roughly shoved forward.

  “And now, ladies and gentleman, we’ve got a real live one for you…” the announcer was saying as she was pushed into a dusty ring. She tumbled to the ground, barely catching herself before smashing her face into the dirt. She looked up, into the one red eye of the Bricrui she had seen earlier, and her blood ran cold in her veins.

  “Now taking bets!” the too-cheery voice rang out above the jeering crowd. “Fifty-to-one odds!”

  CHAPTER 11

  The last tribe they had to visit, aside from the Dena’ina, was called the Gwich’in people. Their territory was in a swampy region, the lush green vines hanging from the trees and twinkling of firebugs around them giving the place an ethereal feel. Katya followed in the footsteps of the person before her carefully, avoiding areas of ground that hadn’t yet been tested. Twice already she had made the mistake of stepping outside the already treaded path, and had soaked both shoes and good portions of her pant legs in the process.

  As seemed to be the custom with the tribes, they were once again greeted by the leader of the Gwich’in before even entering, though they were ushered inside before conversing. The village was housed on an artificially-made mound of earth, with many more buildings attached to the main portion by bridges and held above the swampy water on pillars and posts. The beauty of the place was stunning; the vibrant hues, lush vegetation, and intricately designed buildings so out of place within the swamp and yet at the same time seemed to perfectly complement it.

  The leader greeted them warily, not with the hostility of the Kanza, but with a definite prejudice for their status as outsiders. He listened politely to their tale of the true intention of the spell put upon the Princess Phoenix, and seemed concerned by the eventual outcome.

  “Will it affect us in our sanctuary here?” he queried at the end of their explanation.

  “I would imagine that eventually even you would be affected, yes,” the Dena’ina leader stated, “Even though you are far from the events currently transpiring, and you may even escape the spread of the curse, the aftereffects would change the very world around us.”

  The Gwich’in leader was thoughtful, and scrunched his mouth together, causing his wrinkled chin to ball together like a walnut. “This is indeed a grave situation. And you require the use of our powerstone to reverse this catastrophe?”

  “We do,” Katya answered this time, having become the one responsible for the stones – now stone, singular.

  The man stroked the walnut on his chin. “I would like to be able to give the stone to you,” he start
ed, and Katya waited for the inevitable ‘but’ that was to follow. There seemed to be a pattern forming throughout the tribes. He did not disappoint. “But, a creature has recently come to root in our swamp, one we call a gnarstal.”

  “I’ve never heard of such a beast,” Katya commented.

  “It is a magical being, a cross between a plant and an animal. It appears to be a giant tree, but it is not. Anything venturing too close to its branches will quickly discover this as they are snatched up and ripped apart to be eaten by the gnarstal’s many mouths.”

  “Has it been causing a lot of problems with the people?” Katya asked, trying to imagine a giant tree stomping through the village, grabbing and eating people as it passed.

  “Not directly,” the man demurred, “however, it has taken root very close to our abode and is poisoning the swamp around it, including the water that we use. The roots, you see, are actually its disposal system. It absorbs the nutrients out of the creatures it eats, and expels the rest, including any toxins, out through the roots. Unfortunately, a large part of its diet where it has currently settled in seems to consist of the poisonous frogs that abound in our region. Normally, these pose little problem, and can actually be very useful, but when their venom is extracted and purified, in essence, and then directly put into the water…”

  “I see,” Katya nodded, “and does your powerstone somehow counteract this effect?”

  “No,” he surprised her by answering, “But we do require that you perform the task of removing it for us before we will give you the stone.”

  “Why haven’t you just killed it yourselves already?” Hunter asked.

  “We cannot get near enough it to do it any harm,” he answered, “and being a magical creature, it has so far rebuffed any spells we have sent against it. We postulate that perhaps living so close to it, it has learned to recognize our magical signatures, as it were, and cause the magic to rebound on itself. Honestly, we do not know why our attempts have not worked. Hopefully, as outsiders, you will be able to use magic to get in close enough to physically remove it.”

  “Remove it? Not kill it?”

  “Removal would be preferable, in their place, the gnarstal are an essential part of the ecosystem. If there is no other way, extermination will have to be used.”

  “Very well,” Katya agreed, “We shall get rid of this gnarstal for you.”

  They were shown the direction in which the creature had taken root, and they proceeded carefully out into the swamp. Past the area which the Gwich’in had shaped into their paradise, it became mucky swamp water they were wading through once more. Katya tried not to imagine what each of the slimly things her hands occasionally encountered underneath the surface in the deep spots were. The Gwich’in had loaned them special waders – basically waterproof pants which connected directly into boots so that the person wearing them could wade out into the swamp without getting wet – but it was easy to imagine something getting through them.

  They could tell they were getting close when a sudden putrid smell, worse than the regular dank swamp odor, prevailed. The water turned a dark blackish color, and a shiny film formed a coating over the surface. Dead fish, bloated and half-rotted away, floated amongst the weeds. Their Gwich’in guide slowed to a stop behind an island of trees and pointed around it.

  The gnarstal stood over twenty feet tall, and its trunk would have taken three grown men to wrap their arms around it, fingertip to fingertip. The squat little tree looked fairly ordinary to Katya, until a small animal hopped underneath it. She didn’t have time to make out what it was before the tree’s branches swooped in and grabbed the creature, bringing it towards its trunk. There, the many mouths the Gwich’in leader had spoken of opened; the bark peeled back and created a cavernous space within. There were no teeth, but fumes from a greenish liquid inside suggested the creature didn’t need any. A strange squealing sound filled the air, and Katya couldn’t tell if it was the animal, or coming from the gnarstal. The many mouths were opening and closing in anticipation, like baby birds waiting to be fed in the nest, and the branch finally chose one and shoved the animal in.

  They all clamped shut at once and the branch went back to swaying in the breeze. There was nothing to betray the carnage they had just witnessed.

  “Yuck,” she commented and the Gwich’in with them chuckled.

  “The beauty of nature,” he quipped.

  “Alright,” Hunter studied the tree for a moment, “So, should we just throw a couple spells at it and see what happens or what?”

  Katya shrugged. “It’s a good a plan as any I guess. Let’s try something simple. Just in case it gets reflected back on us.”

  She hooked a hand around a root of one of the trees on the tiny island in front of her and hauled herself up onto it. She felt much better not standing in the muck. Examining the gnarstal for a moment, she gathered a bit of magic around her and readied a spell. This close to the Gwich’in, the magic was tamed, and she had no trouble controlling it.

  She was surprised, then, when the light spell she cast at the tree, blasted back at her, enveloping her world not in light as she’d intended, but in darkness. She heard the exclamations of several of the other people in their party and realized that it must have affected them as well. She drained the energy back out of the spell, ending the darkness around them.

  “That was not the spell I sent,” she commented.

  “So it can create spells of its own?” Hunter asked, looking to the Gwich’in guide.

  “We don’t believe so. In all of our observations, it has only been able to manipulate power that is used against it or that it consumes. We had never before had the need to use magic against it, so we don’t really understand how it uses it. All we know is that the spell we sent to repel it out of our region bounced back and repelled us out instead.”

  “Interesting,” Hunter commented.

  “So it changed the target of your spell, and had the opposite effect of the intention of mine,” Katya thought out loud. “Have you ever observed the effects of the magic it consumes?”

  “A few. There is a fish that would be magically poisonous to any that ate it, any but the gnarstal. It seems to be able to make it turn the thing even more nutritious by its twisted magic.”

  “Perhaps that’s just what it is,” Katya suggested, “that it doesn’t necessarily have magic of its own, but some property about it allows it to twist the magic it comes across to be used to its own benefit.

  “How can we use that to help us get rid of it? If every spell we send against it can be changed to suit its needs?”

  “We’ll have to trick it into changing it into something that will benefit us.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” Katya crouched on the root she was balancing on and stared at the gnarstal. “Let’s play around with it a little bit.”

  She adjusted her position so that she was wedged into the spot. She gathered the energy around her and released a harmless spell, but added an aura as if it were aggressive in nature.

  A giant section of bark flew off the side of the tree, and the branches converged on the spot, holding it as if in pain. The Gwich’in did say that it was part animal, perhaps it did feel pain.

  The bark flew towards Katya and she reached out a hand and caught it expertly. She examined it closely. As the Gwich’in had thought, it did not seem to have any magical qualities itself, but what it did to magic was strange. Even her magesight seemed to twist around the bark when she used it on it, making it appear invisible.

  “What kind of spell was that?” Hunter asked, squishing through the mush over to her side.

  “Just a water spell, but I made it seem as though it was something aggressive. It would seem that the creature isn’t exactly intelligent, but can recognize the type of magic being sent against it, and must have instinctive reflexes to handle each, twisting the magic into something harmless to it.”

  “Or not,” Hunter nodded towards the bark she was
holding, and she handed it over to him to examine. He looked closely at it, then stuck it in his bag.

  “I think moving it might be difficult. It’s probably a spell that is well-ingrained in its woody head to avoid, and the Gwich’in have already tried every possibility so it also is very familiar with them. Maybe we can fool it into not poisoning the place.”

  “Like send a spell that seems as though we want to be reflected back onto us in hopes that it will instead incorporate into itself?”

  “And make it filter out the toxins from the swamp instead of add to them,” Katya finished for him.

  It took them the better part of the afternoon to come up with a way to get the spell to stick once the gnarstal went for it, and into the evening to figure out how to trick the tree into absorbing it. Eventually, however, they did succeed, and the water around the gnarstal could immediately be seen to become clearer.

  “We did it,” the Gwich’in with them stated, sounding rather surprised.

  Katya smiled at him. “Can we get out of this swamp now?”

  With the threat of the gnarstal removed, the Gwich’in made good on their promise and delivered their powerstone to Katya. She took out the mangled mash of the other three stones and held this one up to where its jagged sides matched with the empty space. It jumped from her hand into place and shone brightly for a second as it healed the split between them. Now only one area remained marred, the rest a smooth surface of beauty.

  Katya held the stone out before her for a moment and took a deep breath. Just the Dena’ina stone was left, then hopefully they would rid the world of the vile curse spreading upon it.

  *

  Layna watched the Bricrui’s movements carefully, counting the number of steps he took in each direction before pacing back the other way, noting how he compensated for the lack of one eye, and horribly aware of the drool dripping from his mouth as he eyed her. The deliberate movements rather than the mindless attack she’d seen others Bricrui employ betrayed either his uncanny adaptation for survival in the ring, or that he was still enough in control of his mental facilities to be able to control his urges. Neither was good for her.