by Michael Mood
Otom took a few moments to check his knife, water skin, and food supply and then he was off on what would become the most painful journey of his life.
-3-
The first night felt incredibly long and Otom went without sleep, simply laying under the black sky, only the hints of stars poking through. Honest thoughts began to crash down around him. He was completely unsure if this was the right thing to do. The Dryad Tree was a sacred place; somewhere that regular men did not tread lightly, if at all. In talking with Silence, Otom's perception of the scope of magic in the world had expanded.
Even after all he'd been told he knew that he was still woefully under-informed for this mission, and that pressed on him until he knew deep in his heart that he would fail. That promise of failure sat there like a weight, tearing him down, making his blood flow sluggishly.
But the next morning he stood up and continued on anyway. Silence had been right about the Isola region; Otom had not seen a single living soul in an entire day. He had covered much ground, long strides eating away the bands that he would have to travel to reach the Tree. Supposedly it lay at a pivotal point, in a spot that was just between the borders of Hardeen, Shailand, and the North. Silence, in addition to his technique teachings, had also insisted on a vast array of subjects, one of which had been geography. It was relevant, he had said, because you needed to know where the other fighters were from. It was important to know their landscape; their way of thinking.
Otom had, regrettably, never paid that much attention to those lessons.
I think you can save me. Allura's words echoed in his mind and became a mantra. When he got tired he would repeat them and he would find a new energy in himself.
He caught animals in snares and cooked them over fires that were difficult to make. But these were the types of things he had been doing all his life. Except for fighting, Otom was basically a hunter at heart, and had been raised that way by his da.
“I love her,” Otom said to the air one night. “I would travel to the ends of the earth for her. Into the fiery mouth of hell itself.”
It would turn out that he would have to make good on that promise.
-4-
It was his ninth straight day of nearly non-stop travel when he first began to hear noises. Up until that point it had been the birds in the trees and the wind in the pines, but now it was men. These were massive groups of men whose sounds carried familiar humanity, but also a foreign energy.
Otom slowed his pace and followed the sound, cresting a hill to find an encampment spread before him. He dropped to his stomach out of instinct and began to investigate the new situation. Blue and white striped tents dotted the valley, erected with ropes and poles. Men and horses moved about them, constantly winding their way throughout the tents. Otom knew one on one fighting. He didn't understand warfare. All at once he was intimidated simply by the sheer number of people gathered in the same spot. But more than that he cursed the fact that he would have to waste time going around them.
His plan was to swing a wide berth and avoid the camp entirely, but as he raised himself off the ground he heard a voice behind him. “Who goes there?” It didn't sound good.
Otom leaped up and took off at a dead run through the snow, for he knew he had only one hope: to outrun whoever had shouted. Tracking in the snow was easier than falling out of a tree and Otom ran until his legs and lungs burned, all the while skirting the camp and trying wildly to keep himself on target towards the Tree.
Luck shone on him as he found a small stream that wasn't frozen. He ran into it and down it, his boots becoming sodden with the icy water. It branched a few times and he took them at random. He splashed through it until his legs – which had been burning just moments before – felt like stumps instead of limbs. He then exited onto the opposite bank and searched frantically for somewhere to hide himself, dry off, and recover.
Unfortunately no such place existed. There were no hollow trees or caves or anything else, only the flatness of the land covered in snow. So he simply kept going.
They won't know which way I ran in the stream.
He forced himself to keep moving despite the protesting of almost every single part of his body. He could rest later. I think you can save me, Allura echoed in his mind.
She had survived so much. Otom could survive this. Even Ris, who had been cold, starved, crazy, and shot in the back with an arrow had survived long enough to do what he had done. I can survive this. She'll wait until I get back.
The camp of men was long behind him now. If they would have caught him they likely would have thought him a Marshanti spy and Otom could only derive bad outcomes from that. He ran his hand through his beard to jar loose the snow and ice that had formed there, and began breathing a bit easier.
The feeling in his feet and legs slowly returned as he walked. It was becoming uncannily warm the further south he traveled. He had expected that, of course, but something about the suddenness of it caught him by surprise. Suddenly the ground wasn't covered in snow. Grass and weeds poked up to greet his boots with a pleasant springiness.
Otom was completely unused to bare ground. He had seen it several times during particularly warm winters, but the concept still somewhat baffled him. The north had always been his home, and he was a winter-man through and through. His body had grown accustomed to the cold, and the lack of air in the elevations of the Northern Kingdom.
It was wet going for the next few days, and insects enjoyed Otom's company, even if he didn't enjoy theirs. Otom had clung to hope as best he could, but he was starting to slip into dejection as he traveled endlessly and accomplished nothing, all the while picturing Allura slipping into death.
And then, on the horizon, just as he was about to weep with failure, he saw the top of what could have only been the Dryad Tree.
It was a formidable sight, green and gigantic, wavering just on the brink reality. As Otom concentrated, keeping his mission in his heart, he saw it solidify and vaporize over and over again as it struggled to stay real to him.
And, for the first time on this journey, he felt that he might actually succeed. A branch from this Tree must be magical – Silence had said it was, and now Otom felt to too. He wouldn't reach it until night, though, even if he sprinted the rest of the way.
It looks close but that's only because it's so gigantic, he thought. His legs wobbled. I need rest before I face whatever I find there.
The fire that he made this evening burned so brightly that he was worried of its light, afraid soldiers from some nearby camp would find him. But his plan was only to rest here for a short time, to give him the energy he needed to finish his quest for Allura.
-5-
He must have fallen asleep for he was awakened by thunder. His heart was pounding. Once he opened his eyes and got his wits about him he knew that it had not been thunder, but the massive pounding of horses hooves on the bare ground.
Otom abandoned his fire, though it still burned low, and began to run towards the Tree, his sleepy mind driving him forward on the one path that mattered to him. He had to reach that Tree and cut a branch from it before he was interrupted or killed.
He took his knife out of his sheath in preparation for what he had to do. His legs ached. The Tree grew in his sight until it was frighteningly massive, but Otom did not stop running. He was sweating profusely, his clothes becoming soaked with it, but still he did not stop. The tree wavered, solidified, wavered, solidified. Suddenly it sprouted leaves for him, bark and roots curling up and out. It was growing more alive, just for him.
And then, all at once, chaos broke out around him. The thundering sound grew louder as a wall of horses crashed in from his left. Otom ducked and rolled under them, suddenly caught in the spray of the dirt from their hooves. Miraculously he lived, and regained his footing. He ignored this army only to have to ignore another one coming from the other side. The two forces crashed together, the sound deafening.
Otom raced towards the trunk of the Tree a
nd leaped onto it, digging for purchase with his dagger. The tree was hard now, solid when before it had seemed illusion. Something whizzed by his left ear and struck into the trunk; an arrow, quivering. Then another. Otom dug his fingers and dagger into the rippling bark of the Tree and hauled himself up as fast as he could, using very nearly the last of his strength. From this vantage point he looked down at what was happening below him. The scale of it boggled his mind.
Thousands - maybe tens of thousands - of men shouted and surged below him. Arrows flew, swords struck mighty clangs, and horses screamed and fell. In the mire he sometimes caught sight of men and women in dark gowns. They held up their hands, making motions Otom didn't recognize, tracing symbols in the air.
There were definitely three forces at work here: the red colors of the Shailand army, the blue of the Hardeen army, and the hopeless neutrality of the men and women, who could only have been what Silence had called Protectors.
And then the animals joined the fight. Birds by the thousands – eagles, hawks, blackbirds, tiny bluebirds, colorful menageries - careened from the branches over Otom's head, darkening the sky with their numbers. He could see bears pounding across the ground, ripping open horses with their mighty claws. Men screamed and died at the hands of each other, and now at the claws and beaks of the new onslaught.
And there Otom clung to the side of the hulking tree, feeling very much like a terrified squirrel.
When he regained his mind he scrambled quickly up and onto one of the lowest limbs. The view from this high up made him dizzy, but he was driven on by Allura's need. He gripped his knife in his teeth now and slid out towards a branch that looked a likely candidate. He took his knife from his teeth and held on with one hand as he sawed at the branch. It popped free with a trickle of sap and he stuffed it into his shirt.
For a brief moment a thought tickled his mind, and he must have known how those that climbed the high mountains in the north felt. Upon reaching the summit, their journey was only half over. He shook the thought off.
The air was aswarm with insects now, and Otom smelled something familiar.
Smoke.
Fire.
Everything began to burn around him and his panic nearly lost him his grip on the limb. As quickly as he could he began his descent, his plan merely to run like hell when he hit the ground.
He knew, deep in his heart, that he would probably die. And that meant Allura would die, too.
His descent was harder and more awkward than his ascent had been, since he had to drive the knife below him and look down for other handholds and footholds. The entire Tree was quaking now as if at any minute it would come to life, uproot itself, and swing mighty arms at its attackers. Fire licked at its base. The armies still fought around it.
Otom's boots hit the ground and he rolled, coughing from the smoke and the scent of blood. He scampered like a strange opossum, staying low to the ground and hopefully out of sight. He rolled under a horse's hooves and they came so close to grazing his face that he could see each individual nail in the shoe. They struck like thunder next to his head as he shot up and onward again.
Otom reached for his knife, but was startled to find that he had lost it. Did I drop it or did it fall from my belt? It didn't matter. He ran, more motivated now than by any tournament he had ever fought in. He screamed then, because it didn't matter. He screamed as loud as he could as he ran, his terror bursting forth from him, but he could barely hear his own voice through the chaos.
A score of men charged from his right, another from his left, both were shouting, both ignored him as they crashed together. A man's arm fell next to Otom, severed at the shoulder, the white bone sharp and protruding. Blood spattered Otom's face, warm and sticky. He might have vomited (he wasn't sure). He ran, barely feeling his legs.
The battle was mostly behind him now, but the ground here still burned, the grass and gigantic leaves of the Dryad Tree catching like dry tinder. Otom tripped and fell, the ground rushing up to meet him, and as he untangled his leg he turned to see what he had fallen over.
It was Ris.
Ris lay face-down on the ground, his long, black hair tangled and caked with blood. The madman tried to push himself to standing but Otom – his desire to flee completely gone – grabbed the only weapon that was available to him. He drew the branch of the Dryad Tree out of his shirt and gripped it in powerful fists. The end he had cut was slanted and sharp, and the wood felt strong enough.
Purely out of instinct, and without a second thought about anything – not Allura, not his parents, not himself, not Silence, not fleeing this terrible place – Otom drove the sharp point of the branch through Ris's back with a mighty two-handed strike. Ris sank back down to the ground, blood oozing from the wound.
Otom stared down until the blood had made a large pool and Ris had stopped moving, then he turned his victim over, his intention to laugh fully in his face.
But it wasn't Ris. It was a woman.
I'm . . . a murderer!
Otom was deafened by a thunderclap that seemed to come from everywhere. Something crashed into his mind with a powerful force. He staggered back as if struck by a blow.
His mouth hung open as he stared now, his thoughts tangled and painful. I killed someone. I'm a killer. I'm a murderer. Her hair had looked the same as Ris's. Otom could have sworn . . . And all the feelings he had never known he had kept inside since his parents' murders came bursting forth.
He gripped the sides of his head, digging his fingers in. He convulsed, sobbing uncontrollably. He backed up from the scene. Everything looked blurry to him now because of the tears in his eyes.
He wandered confused for days, not knowing where he was going or how he even stayed alive, complex guilt and loss mixing together. The battle, his quest, Allura; everything was a strange memory. The thoughts seemed urgent, but Otom could not force himself to act on them. His body and mind were not his own. He grieved for the woman he had murdered, he grieved for his family, and he grieved for himself.
When Otom awoke from his stupor, a month had passed and he knew Allura was as good as dead.
He gathered what little he could of himself and limped north, vowing not to stop until he reached the farthest point. Vowing to pay to God what he never could to Allura.
All the while a new phrase echoed in his mind: You knew you couldn't save her.
-6-
Present Day
Otom had spent the next thirteen years in the Kilgane Monastery, only emerging when the mark on his arm had bid him to. Otom had lived one life, then he had lived another. Now he was on the third iteration of himself, the man who constantly reinvented himself to escape his past.
It wasn't until the Monastery that Otom had deduced, through study, what had truly happened to him on that day. The thunderclap he had felt had been the death of the Dryad Tree; it had been the magical blow that had finally ended the armies. None of them really knew what hit them, but Otom did. The battle wasn't even mentioned as major in any of the texts that made their way north. It was forgotten, written off. Few, if any, had ever known what they had destroyed that day.
And Otom had realized then just how buried the magics of the world were. After he had taken his first Vow he had developed his own powers, but there had only been one Monk to teach him, and even then not very much. He had started to wonder if he belonged at the Monastery.
Otom could have gone back to Pakken after his mind had cleared, but it would have been to Allura's unforgiving corpse, and the sad, empty eyes of Silence. Otom had chosen his path. For better or worse he had chosen his path.
And now he'd been Chosen. The faith in God and magic had led him here to be sitting in the top of a tree such as he was. An odd path indeed.
The snare Otom had set on the ground drew tight and he heard a muffled cry of surprise.
Well, he thought. Time to see who my new companion is.
He shimmied down the tree, his descent tougher by far than the climb had been.
&nbs
p; Chapter 23 – Lofty Goals
-1-
Domma was free and determined. Ormon Stipson's murder was behind her, the mystery of it no longer holding her in its thrall. The theories she had come up with, and what Potter had said to her, had twisted her mind until she had simply given up. Maybe he had been right. Some things were better left untouched.
And some things are better when they are touched.
Today she strode determinedly down the street, on her way to the hospital and her meeting with Potter. The note he had written her informed her of a hospital storeroom that wasn't used anymore, and of the stairs in the back of that storeroom that led even lower.
A secret love nest in a district hospital?
But she had heard of stranger things.
She'd tried to have a conversation with God about this last night, but it had gone very much as usual. She poured her heart out and the response she got was nonsensical and frightening. She was tired of baring her soul down that avenue.
Domma walked in the front door of Potter's hospital. She made her way to the storage room. It was filled with strong smelling herbs, leather restraints, and shackles. If one looked at it in the right frame of mind it almost seemed like a small little dungeon.
She began moving things away from the back wall in an effort to uncover whatever panel was indicated in Potter's note. She was actually becoming quite excited. It was like a treasure hunt for love! This was all part of Potter's sweet little romantic game.