Pressing her lips flat, she wove the image of a thicket of vines around him and Thiellin. She couldn’t see it herself, but she imagined them passing into it, imagined nothing but empty woods on the other side, and folded this image into the minds of their enemies. The Lathans drew rein and looked around in confusion. Thiellin thrust his sword through one cavalier while Lornk gutted the other. Wineyll winced and looked away. She’d just consummated a betrothal.
* * *
Cavaliers charged out of the trees, hooves thundering and horns blowing. Three passed them; a fourth stopped to lower his spear at Ashel’s chest.
“Lieutenant,” Vic scolded, batting at the haft, “get some spectacles! Do we look like Caleisbahnin?”
“I don’t know who you are, but—”
“This is Prince Ashel. The one you should be here to rescue?”
The man immediately raised his spear, bowing awkwardly. “Highness. Uh, forgive me.” He slipped out of his saddle, offered the reins to Ashel. “Please. Princess Bethniel will be pleased. She’s waiting nearby.”
“Is anyone not in this corner of the Kiareinoll?” Ashel grumbled, taking the reins and mounting. He held his hand down. “I need to get Wineyll.”
“I’ll find her. You find Beth and keep her safe. Can I borrow a dagger?” Vic asked the cavalier.
His gazed scraped over her. “For what?”
Ashel pulled a dagger out of the horse’s trappings and tossed it to Vic. Catching it neatly, she flipped it into the other hand. “She’s the Blade,” Ashel told the soldier. Spinning the horse around, he laced an arm under her shoulders and pulled her up for a kiss. Feet dangling, she let Woern-bliss soak into her. “Be safe, wife,” he said.
Her toes touched the ground, and she squeezed his right hand, holding the thumb and kissing the stump. His eyes tightened, but his lips stayed soft, and he brushed her cheek with his thumb. “See you soon, husband,” she said, her chest tight. Flashing her a smile, he kicked the horse in the direction the cavalier had pointed, leaving the stunned trooper behind. With a gruff laugh, Vic thanked him for the dagger and dashed toward the sounds of battle.
She spotted Wineyll cowering against a geilmor and followed the girl’s gaze to Lornk. He was hard-pressed by a pair of Lathans, and Vic’s throat closed as she watched his end approach. The cavalier jabbed her spear, spun the haft around for a swipe, thrust the point at him again. Driving him backward, wearing him down, she didn’t give him time for an attack of his own. Vic had dreamed for years of killing Lornk; it was strange to watch someone else deliver the death blow. She blew out a breath, reminding herself again that she’d given up her chance at him. Lornk was someone else’s problem—
He vanished behind a wall of leaves. The troopers hesitated. One fell backward off his mount, blood spurting. The other slid from her saddle, and Lornk appeared above her, driving his sword into her belly. Vic’s eyes snapped to Wineyll and the minstrel’s gaze, locked on Lornk. Spewing curses, Vic charged out of cover.
“Madam!” cried Etien, the old gnarled Caleisbahnin. Yelling, pirates dodged spears and hooves, rallying toward her. Lathan mounts spun and charged. “Shrine’s bastards!” She couldn’t let any Lathans see her using wizardry. Sprinting to Wineyll, she grabbed the minstrel.
“Leave me!” Wineyll tried to yank her arm away.
The Lathans caught up to Etien and Gustave. One lost his spear to the blur of the old man’s sword. The gap-toothed pirate pulled a sandy-haired woman from her horse.
“Madam,” Kelmair stumbled to a halt, panting fiercely. “With your help—”
Vic flashed the point of her dagger under Kelmair’s chin. “My help won’t go to you. Let us pass.” Battle sounds spun around them. A drop of Kelmair’s blood trickled down Vic’s blade. The pirate woman stepped back, and Vic yanked Wineyll away as a spear thunked into the geilmor’s roots. Crying, the minstrel clawed at Vic’s hand, twisting in her grip as Vic dragged her into a mesh of vines. She slapped the minstrel. “What are you doing?”
“Please, Vic,” Wineyll cried. “I’ve made my choice.”
Anger flared into a hammerstrike behind Vic’s eyes. “Lornk isn’t a choice; he’s a dead man.”
“Then I should die with him!”
“Bloody flaming Shrine!” An arm tight round the minstrel’s waist, Vic rose a few inches off the ground and darted between stands of hoarsgrout and allenver toward a cerrenil that promised enough cover she could fly unseen to the canopy.
“Leave me, leave me,” Wineyll repeated over and over. Each word knocked against Vic’s skull and churned the contents of her stomach.
“That vile bastard dies today.”
“No!”
Wineyll’s cry drilled into Vic’s brain, and she tumbled to the ground and retched. The girl vanished into the green, leaving only the cries of battle and the stench of failure.
* * *
Shouts and the clash of weapons filtered through the woods. Bethniel’s hand tightened around a spear, foreboding worming out of the box. Please keep Ashel safe, she prayed. Elesendar, please.
Febbin’s mount danced. “I’ve got to find Joslyrn. Fare well, Highness.” His horse sprang into the trees and disappeared.
“Good riddance,” Lillem muttered.
Whinnies, shouts, and the clash of weapons filtered toward them; their horses snorted and stamped in response. The noise of combat drifted closer, farther, closer again, dimmed to silence.
A scream erupted, and Bethniel’s mare reared up, pawing toward a young soldier reeling from the undergrowth, blood streaming down his face. Bethniel jerked her mount aside as a Caleisbahnin sprang after him, sword high. Flipping her spear around, she rammed the butt into the pirate’s breastbone. The blow jarred into her shoulder, but the man fell. Lillem’s stallion leapt atop him, hooves grinding his guts into the dirt.
The air stung with acid, sulfur, steel, the stinks of death and fear. “Pull back,” the lieutenant barked, and they cantered around a creeper-infested messernil and up a slippery bank of moss.
“Beth! Where’s Ashel?”
She pulled hard on the reins, and her horse spun up a spray of leaves. “Vic?”
Stumbling away from a foul mess on the grass, her sister looked sick as a drunken Weaver. “Where is Ashel?”
Pirates broke through the allenver. Bethniel leaned out of her saddle. “Get up behind me.”
Lillem’s stallion skidded in front of the pirates, and cavalier and mount held them off with a whirring spear and slashing hooves.
Vic looked up with eyes as green as grass. “Where is Ashel?”
“I don’t know! Now mount up or fly away!”
One of the pirates scrambled past the stallion’s flanks, sword high. Screeching, Bethniel kicked her horse around to face him, but Vic ordered the pirate to hold. He stopped short, the glitter in his eyes as shrill as the silver rings in his ear. “You will not harm her,” Vic said aloud. A greedy, gap-toothed smile ignited the Calesibahnin’s face, but an older pirate pointed his sword at the ground and backed off.
“Hold, lieutenant,” Bethniel cried as Lillem hefted his spear. “You look like you can barely stand,” she said to Vic.
“Then I look better than I feel.” Vic’s eyes mellowed to gray. “I lost Wineyll.”
“Wineyll?” Shoving aside her surprise, Bethniel extended her hand. “We’ll find her together.”
“Gustave,” ordered the older pirate, angling his head toward Vic. Grumbling, the other Caleisbahnin sheathed his sword and knelt, signaling that Vic could step onto his thigh. Bethniel’s astonishment mounted as Vic thanked the pirate and took hold of his shoulder for balance.
“Well,” Vic said, “are you going to move that animal closer?”
As soon as she was up, the old pirate rushed through the allenver toward the battle, but the young one touched Vic’s boot. “I’ll look for the snippet, if you wish.”
“We’ll find her. You’d better go before
the lieutenant kills you.”
The Caleisbahnin gusted a laugh and stepped back, saluting Lillem with his sword hilt under his chin. “Another time?”
Lillem nodded, his gaze murderous. “Which way did she go?”
“Try that way,” Vic pointed at a hedge.
The stallion’s ears flicked forward, and a Kragnashian barreled out of the brush and snapped its mandibles through the neck of Bethniel’s mare.
The animal shuddered beneath them. Vic’s arms cinched Bethniel’s waist, and they hurtled backward, curses scoring Bethniel’s ears. Tree trunks and hoarsgrout rushed past the edges of her vision, but her eyes were stuck on Lillem’s spear plunging into one Kragnashian as a second charged them. Vic spun around and rocketed into the canopy, her arms still locked round Bethniel. Leaves and twigs scored her cheeks; she threw her hands over her face and choked on a scream.
A hissing thwook cut past the whipping branches, the acrid stink dreadfully familiar. Vic jerked, the vise of her arms convulsing into Bethniel’s diaphragm, driving the air from her chest in a violent huff. Vic’s shriek was an awl in her ear, a terrible cry that chased their fall through crashing limbs. They struck the ground, and Vic twisted away, back arched, throat emitting an inhuman squeal. Sucking air, Bethniel struggled to hands and knees. The Kragnashian rolled toward them. Lillem’s stallion screamed. Hooves scrabbled against the creature’s armor as its legs enveloped Bethniel in shadow. Sharp spines raked her skin; the dense smell of grass stuffed desperate lungs, and then she could breathe. Turning in the creature’s wake, she saw it sweep Vic off the ground.
Cursing, Gustave sprinted after it. He leapt aboard the trailing abdomen, and the Kragnashian fled with Vic and the pirate.
“Lillem!” Bethniel shouted. The lieutenant pulled her up behind him, and his horse raced after the abductor. The stallion’s muscles surged as it leapt gullies and twisted around trees. Bethniel glimpsed Gustave fighting to hang on as the Kragnashian pulled ahead and disappeared.
Sweat foamed the stallion’s haunches; his breath grew ragged. “I’m sorry, Highness,” Lillem said, letting the horse slow to a walk. “It’s just too fast.”
Anguish squeezed Bethniel’s chest—Vic was taken! The scent of cut grass—of hope—flared her nostrils, and she pointed at a bit of pale green ooze. “It’s wounded; follow it.”
The stallion trotted along the glimmering trail to an earthwork, densely covered with hoarsgrout and crowned with a gnarled old geilmor.
“You don’t mean to go in there?”
“It has my sister!”
“Highness, I saw what she did—if the Kragnashians want her, let them have her.”
“You don’t have to come with me; just give me a spear.”
“You’re not going to fight those things.”
“No, I’m going to negotiate with them. Give me a spear.”
Lips flat and sour, Lillem pulled two from the trappings and fished a lantern out of his saddlebags. Hefting the stallion’s reins, he scanned the nearby brush.
“Let him go. If another comes, he should be free to run.”
“How will we get back?”
She studied the opening, the faint scrollwork on the supporting stones. “I don’t think we’ll be coming back this way.”
Expelling a breath, he slapped the stallion on the rump and clucked it homeward.
They descended a steep ramp thick with cobwebs. Dust sparkled like fog in the lamplight. In a chamber at the bottom, Kragnashians’ tracks swirled around the broad, shallow depression and gemstone-studded compass slots of a Device. She knelt next to the small knob stuck in one of the slots, between a pair of glowing blue gems. “Looks like it took her to Direiellene. Are you coming?”
His knuckles turned yellow around his spear haft. “What do I do?”
“Take my hand.” Murmuring a prayer, she grasped the knob, and pinpricks sizzled over her skin.
Part Two
Personal Log, Captain Franklin T. J. Wong, United Mineral Mining Vessel, Registry LSNDR2237, June 30, 2153
Barb’s report is in; nothing conclusive. We checked and rechecked and checked again all systems before launch, and I can’t help wondering whether the saboteur is on board. Morale is low—an understatement. Barb’s people are working on restoring the communication grid, but privately she told me there’s not much hope. A thousand ifs are in my head. If we had set watch differently, if we had done more background checks. If UM had put more resources behind this op. Nine hundred and ninety-seven more ifs.
What would Jason say now? Eliza and Genny will be in college by the time they figure out we’re not coming back. I wonder how long UM will wait before telling them. Lie to them and say everything’s fine for two whole years before they ’fess up. Probably. Let people move on to other jobs, up or down the ladder, to other corps, and make some poor slob who wasn’t involved deal with the inquiries from the families.
But I’ve got a planet to settle. Craig is down there learning to speak with the indigenous. Let’s hope we don’t have to kill them all. Let’s hope they don’t kill us. I don’t want us to be another Roanoke.
The Way of Trees
Carrion flies buzzed around the mare’s severed neck, dove greedily into the Kragnashian’s oozing thorax. Ashel stared at the gory feast and tried to make sense of the fieldmarshal’s words.
“No sign of them, Highness,” Greldren repeated.
He paced alongside crushed grass and scattered leaves. “There are hoofprints here, clear as day. I’m no tracker, and I can see them.”
“Highness,” the outpost commander’s voice shook. He spoke aloud. “The tracks disappear. It seems Fembrosh—”
“Don’t tell me about Fembrosh,” Ashel growled. Greldren and a pair of cavaliers followed him down the trail to a wild hedge growing across the tracks.
“There’s no trail on the other side,” Greldren said.
Ashel’s next breath stuttered past a spiraling madness like the one that had landed him in Lornk’s dungeon. “That makes no sense.”
“What can we know of the way of trees?”
The way of trees. A soldier quoted scripture to him while he battled helpless, hapless despair. “I—” he faltered. He was a prince of Latha, of this ground they stood upon, but what decree could he issue that would bring his wife and sister back? “I want them found,” he said feebly.
“Of course, Highness. However . . . we must prioritize the recapture of Lornk Korng.”
He glared at the fieldmarshal. “Could you spare two troopers to help me look for the Heir?” His sister, and Vic, his wife!
“Of course, Highness.”
They searched all day and into the evening. In the gloaming, rocks and humus melted into a gray soup of lost signs. Ashel twisted round in his saddle and asked for a torch.
The cavaliers exchanged hopeless glances before the man pawed through his gear. The woman clucked her mount closer. “You should return to camp, Highness. We can resume the search in the morning.”
Fatigue embossed circles under her eyes, and the other soldier swayed in his saddle. Ashel’s limbs trembled. He’d had a few swallows of cold tea and a flatcake that morning and nothing since—nearly sixteen hours. None of that mattered. “I asked for a torch.”
“The horses need rest and fodder too, sir,” the man said.
Throat tight, Ashel slid to the ground. “Take them back, then.”
“Highness, we cannot leave you. There may still be Caleisbahnin—”
“Go. Take the horses. I’ll return on my own.” The troopers hesitated, but when he repeated the order a third time, they handed over torch and flint and trotted off. The forest grew still. A gizzard hooted. Knees shaking, he resumed the zigzag pattern they’d followed all day, hoping the yellow torchlight would reveal a gleam of blood or other sign they’d missed in the dappled sunshine.
Don’t do this again, Geram said. Don’t let your grief drive you into madness.
> There has to be some trace of them.
You know there doesn’t. Not if the Kia doesn’t want you to find them.
Why would it hide them from me?
What can we know—
“Shut up, Geram,” he said aloud. “Geram Geram Geram.”
The other man said nothing, but Ashel could feel his elbows on his knees, Hear him debating how best to tell the queen her daughter and Vic had disappeared and Lornk Korng had escaped. He hated that Mother knew of his secret connection to Geram and hated that her knowing couldn’t help anyone right now.
A citrus draft filled his lungs, and a wealth of spring tresses blossomed in the wavering torchlight. Snuffing the fire to avoid harming the old mother, Ashel parted the flowered vines and knelt among gnarled roots. “Please lead me to them,” he implored, pressing both hands against the trunk. “You led Vic to me. Help me find her now.” He poured his fear and need onto the bark. “My sister. She came here to teach the squatters to revere you, and when she’s Ruler, her duty will be to protect you as much as to govern the human and erin peoples of Latha. Please help me find her.”
Limp branches rustled, and more citrus scent wafted over him. Elesendar winked through the leaves. His eyes soaked in the meager light, picked out a darker patch of ground snaking away from the cerrenil. A trail! Hope flushed fatigue from his limbs, and he loped down the narrow track. No stone or root hindered him; he moved swiftly, breath puffing, heart pumping, a shadow among shadows, down into gullies and up embankments, past outcroppings and meadows. He ran minutes, half an hour, an hour—the time seemed long but no weakness of heart or lungs or legs slowed him until the trail led up a rise to another cerrenil. A figure slumped among tangled roots. Heart thudding, he crept closer. It was Erik. Cold stiff fingers clutched his flask, his life long since drained from a gaping wound. Grief and disappointment tore out of Ashel’s throat.
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