Forest For The Trees (Book 3)

by Damien Lake

  Marik let out a yell when he was pulled into the gloom. The hands swung him around in an arc. His feet stumbled. He felt his sword slide from his grip when the tip struck an unexpected obstacle in the dark.

  With a slam hard enough to knock the breath from his body, he struck a wall with his back. Dirt and wood rot rained down into his hair from the vibration. Marik struggled to master his body, which seemed to be in revolt. His hand clawed feebly at the air. Both his legs wobbled near to collapsing.

  While he struggled to regain his wind, the unseen hand snatched his tunic under his throat. The assailant was strong. He smashed Marik backward against the wall harder than the first time.

  Marik’s hands flew to grasp his attacker’s wrist. He twisted, feeling the thick sleeve of a coat. His scrabbling pushed it up the arm. Underneath was the unmistakable texture of silk, and the tight collar of a glove.

  The hand used his body to strike the wall twice more. Marik started to go limp against all his efforts to the contrary.

  Light abruptly shone on Marik’s face. The hand still gripped his tunic tight enough that it constricted into a noose around his throat. His attacker’s form was revealed when the shadows retreated.

  The light, not white but red, came from neither lantern nor torch. It glowed from the figure’s other hand. A nimbus of fiery energy formed around a blood-colored glove, shedding light only as a byproduct.

  Marik stared helplessly into the face of the man preparing to kill him with a mage-attack so powerful that the wall behind him would surely be destroyed. Only inches away, he stared into a pair of crystal eyes that shone ruby-red.

  Chapter 06

  Thomas arrived to find the storage hole vacant of its longtime resident. Quick searching led him to Ceryl, who kept a watch on Colbey from a distance. He had wandered to the spring that provided them with water. A far cry from the forest pool the villagers had spent their entire lives living above, but it granted them enough water to live by.

  Colbey’s skin had gone pallid from the subterranean dark. He looked closer to dead than alive. His bloodshot eyes, focused intently, only added to the illusion. Thomas moved silently behind the younger man to see what had arrested his attention.

  A line of red ants were dismembering an oversized frog. Large as the senior Guardian’s thumbnail, the vicious insects tore sizable chunks from their victim while it slowly died. Their venom guaranteed the frog would remain immobilized as it was ripped to shreds.

  Thomas followed their retreating line with his eyes, marking where they went. Having such creatures this close to their struggling camp would be problematic. It mattered not that they were miniscule. Their size was no hindrance to them. The little beasts were brutally efficient, able to skeletonize a young deer faster than those who had never watched such a spectacle were able to believe. A small trifle such as still being alive made no difference to them, and they would as easily attack men as animals.

  His approach went unnoticed by Colbey. Such a failure, despite the senior Guardian’s experience and skill at stealth, only reveled again how badly Colbey’s mind had been injured. When Colbey slowly reached a hand toward the ants, Thomas felt no surprise at it.

  “We’ll have to track them back to their hill. Can’t have them so close to the villagers. It’s a good thing you found them before they bit anyone.” Colbey’s hand froze inches from the swarming red bodies. Thomas added, “I think it would be best if you pulled back. Any closer and they’ll be on you next.”

  “Would that be so bad?” Colbey’s voice emerged low, soft.

  “I can think of more pleasant ways to go. I can also think of more profitable ways to spend my time rather than teaching a trainee for years, then having him throw it away.”

  Colbey’s hand hovered a moment longer before descending to his lap. Thomas waited to see if he would speak further. Those five words were the first the man had uttered since the night he had returned, confessing to his sins and baring his soul completely. He had ruthlessly held a torch to his inner darkness, letting not so much as a stray thought escape the judging eye of his fellow Guardians.

  Thomas thrilled to see Colbey’s jaw muscles working, though he kept any trace of it from his expression. “Why do you bother with me?”

  “I should think that was obvious. A Guardian always looks after a brother Guardian in need.”

  Colbey coughed out a wad of phlegm. He maintained his fixed gaze on the miniature carnivores. His throat had grown rusty from disuse. “The souls of those passed on could never accept me. How could those I knew ever accept what I have become? I am no longer a Guardian. I am outcast.”

  “That is our decision, not yours. We have yet to decide whether you are a lost cause…or merely lost.” Colbey’s eyes shut against the pained memories. “Few Guardians have ever been declared a traitor since the village’s first days. In each case, the village council heard evidence until it was proven without a shadow of doubt that the Guardian in question had abused his position.”

  “It should be…should be obvious enough. I should have received what I deserve long since.”

  “Exactly what you deserve is as unclear as your guilt, at the moment.” Thomas held back his true view. That what Colbey deserved was a second chance. Saying so to him would force a denial, and then whatever else happened, he would stand fast to the belief.

  Yet Thomas sensed Colbey might be emerging back into the living world from deep within himself. His self-view was in a fragile state. Care would be needed to coax him along, to nurture him to a stable foundation. At the same time, Colbey would respond to nothing that he perceived as kindness, gentleness or sympathy. Rather, it would only prod at him in needle jabs, making him curl back into a shell in the storage hole.

  “We’re still debating your fate,” Thomas declared in the tone he usually only used with trainees. It was sharper without actually being edged. “But until we reach our decision, it’s time you started earning your keep.”

  Colbey made no reaction until one ant severed the frog’s leg by ripping through the tendons. Chunks of amphibian meat moved away under the hanging leaves. He finally turned his head to look at Thomas.

  “That’s right,” Thomas affirmed. “Life isn’t as easy here as it was in the village. Every hand is needed to gather food, provide shelter, the basic staples. You’ve been eating what others brought you. It’s time to pay them back.” He could have said it was time for Colbey to start fending for himself, except Colbey had no interest in continuing to live.

  The senior Guardian continued. “Food will be helpful, but it’s not as pressing as when we first moved in. Many of the fruit plants we transplanted survived. We have available resources close at hand. There are plenty of other tasks in need of seeing to, however. Several of them only trained Guardians can handle. Get your sword and come with me.”

  Colbey made no move to rise.

  Thomas cuffed him on the ear. “You know better than to make me repeat my words! Until we decide what to do with you, you had better pull your share of the weight. By no means are you off the hooks you’ve been wriggling on.”

  He saw Colbey’s eyes narrow slightly for only a brief instance. Without a word he rose. His movements were closer to the ordinary villager’s, lacking the lithe grace the Guardians displayed. When Colbey returned, he looked like a boy sent to fetch a master’s blade rather than a person well-schooled in its uses.

  They exchanged no words when Thomas led the way deeper into the forest. Colbey had been here many times during his training. Thomas studied his pupil indirectly as they walked. He judged Colbey still retained partial awareness of the surrounding world by the way he avoided certain plants unconsciously. It was a positive sign.

  After half a mark, they arrived at two large trees. Large by ordinary standards. The Euvea never grew as impressively inside the sealed areas as in the outside forest.

  Colbey gazed at Thomas, interest mildly peaked. “Why here?”

  “I will show you once we pass thro
ugh. From now on, I want you to work inside. We have several problems that might affect the villagers if left unchecked.”

  “This is a conjoined seal. I cannot manipulate it.”

  “I know. The high-level seals are always the last of the Guardian lessons. Farr taught the final steps personally, and he died about a month before you were to take them.”

  Thomas moved to the trees, resting one hand against a trunk before irritably ordering Colbey to move. The younger man grudgingly followed. When he heard Thomas beginning to explain the workings of the high-level seal, he looked momentarily surprised.

  “Why are you teaching me the final lessons?”

  “Because there is enough to be done without having to shepherd you in and out every day. You’ll come and go on your own, and do your best because villagers’ lives are depending on it. Whether you succeed or fail will have little bearing on our decision regarding you. But I trust that the Guardian’s oath to protect the villagers at all cost is still important to you.”

  A flash of pain passed over Colbey’s face. Thomas had expected it might. Another positive sign.

  “Concentrate on this. It is the same as the regular seals, yet altogether different at the same time. The breach changes since this passes from one sealed area into a second, rather than from the seal into the Euvea groves. Concentration is the key, as always, but…”

  Thomas continued talking for several moments. Colbey’s eyes closed as he absorbed the words. The younger Guardian’s hands were pressed flat to the bark of the left tree. Nothing happened during the first several attempts.

  Finally, the tree responded to Colbey. The space between the trunks filled with a shimmer that rippled in liquid waves. They stepped through, and the mercurial energy swallowed them as if they had never been.

  * * * * *

  Everything, including the glowing power around the red-eyed man’s hand, was fading. The multiple blows Marik’s head had taken against the wall made his vision wane. He fumbled weakly to prevent a lethal attack he had no hope of blocking.

  Before he felt the energy destroy him, he heard a voice. His fogged mind briefly painted an image of being cast through the Abysmal Gates for an afterlife of eternal torment, landing at a demon’s feet, hearing it welcome him to the first level of hell. The man’s voice contained no demonic tones…just a voice stern enough it epitomized cold emotion. A sword might have such a voice if swords could speak.

  “Reveal to me where might be found your master, servant. Tell me what plans and hideaways the man who once was Xenos has established in this realm.”

  Marik gasped, his throat seizing from the choking death-grip the red-eyed man kept on his tunic. “Coo...w-who…”

  The red stranger knocked him backward again. He brought the nimbus surrounding his glove closer to Marik’s face. “Tarry not in your answers to me, servant! Your attempts on the behalf of your master are known well to me. This chance to speak is brief. Reveal to me willingly, less you force my hand.”

  “Y-youu,” husked Marik. His wits were slowly collecting. Why had he not recognized those eyes at once? What did—

  “So be it the outcome, then.”

  The glowing glove reached forward. Marik managed a single drumming of his heels against the wall before the hand grabbed his face across the eyes, thumb to one temple, the remaining fingers gripping the other. He felt the power in the stranger’s grip as if he held a palmful of sun.

  At times before during his mage apprenticeship, he had felt experienced mages reach into his body with their talent in order to assume control over his, always to demonstrate a working they wanted him to learn. This, though similar, effected him far differently. Rather than reaching into his mage talent, the red stranger delved into his very mind. Marik felt it, as if his head had been physically cracked open, his mind revealed as a clerk’s index to be rifled through at need. Images flashed through his mind when the other’s fingers brushed against them, yet during the mental rape he never lost sense of his body held in that powerful grip. Scenes blurred, most rushing past too quickly to identify.

  He thought he might be screaming in the dark alley. Marik could feel his body pressed mercilessly against the wall, feel the burning hand against his face. All other sensory perception was lost. It went on without end for eternity until the stranger released his grip, only seconds after assaulting his mind.

  Marik fell to his knees. Palms slid across the filthy paving stones. He heaved massive breaths. His fingers shook violently on the ground. The coldness he felt from the evening air could only mean sweat coated his entire body. Saliva and tears leaked down his face.

  “How can it be so that you are not his?” The red stranger’s voice had changed significantly, adopting a quizzical nature. “I find no marks to brand you, no chains to bind you, no connections to link you.”

  Wind slowly returned to Marik’s lungs. His body remained on the shaky side. He could only trust it enough to shift to a normal sitting position. Standing would require a few minutes longer. Looking upward at this…oddity, he snatched at one of the hundred questions spinning in a furious tornado through his brain, deciding it would do since grabbing any of the others required too much mental effort.

  “What in the bloody hells are you talking about?”

  The stranger fingered his chin with one hand while the other cupped his elbow. “For long and long, I have felt you prying at me. If you do not seek me out to aid my enemy, as I now question, then revel why you have for so long persisted in your endeavors. Only within the past day have I felt your essence renewing its fluttering about my super-conscious.”

  “Prying. Prying? You’re damned right I wanted to find you! I wanted—” Marik began while he rose, then stopped talking abruptly when he fell hard to the alleyway ground a second time. He had opened his magesight while rising, a habit grown instinctual around magic users after his various experiences. The shock of what he beheld unhinged him. “Holy gods! Wh-what are you?”

  He had expected to see the man standing there, one arm still resting atop the other, awash in the glow of his aura. Given the dominance of red throughout the man’s entire facade, he half-expected to find a brilliant crimson nimbus surrounding him despite the man’s level temper.

  Instead…this man appeared as no man should. Could. On neither man, beast nor plant had Marik ever seen an aura of purest white. Life force that perfectly matched the wild energy flowing through the etheric plane in lines deep beneath the earth. The color alone left him speechless, yet the shape…

  No ovoid hovered in a vague egg-shape around his body. This bizarre, impossible aura shone inside the man, in the form of a tree, yet like no tree that grew anywhere in Marik’s knowledge. A massive spike formed the trunk from his feet up to his hair. Branches came off at sharp angles, straight lines created by thinner spikes. Increasingly smaller spikes shot out in severe directions like nails until he resembled a mad sculpture in iron of a bramble brush.

  The pure whiteness of the aura tree shone incandescent. No sun could burn so hotly or as bright. And, surreally, in outright denial of common sense, his brilliance refused to illuminate the alley. Despite the raw energy that threatened to blind Marik, he could only see the blazing aura when he looked directly at it. Faint purple etheric illumination against the dead black walls only inches from the stranger remained unchanged.

  Marik felt his eyes water as they had from the worst case of snow-blindness he could remember. He abandoned his magesight. A faint ache throbbed behind his forehead. The only time he’d felt that particular headache had been the time he’d drawn too close to the raw power flowing through an etheric line without being properly shielded.

  The stranger ignored the wavering question. He continued to peer down on Marik. “Perchance, if you are not his, then might you be a…a hunter? Or one who seeks fortune out of rumor?”

  This entire situation was too disjointed for Marik to absorb. Briefly, the idea that he must be asleep, dreaming this encounter, passed throug
h his head. He expected to open his eyes and see the fluttering canvas walls that could shelter four within its cramped confines.

  “I don’t know who you are, or what you are! You attacked me!”

  “Yet I sought you only once I sensed your prying renew. How came you to be searching me out in the very city where I had come personally?”

  “What are talking about?” Marik barked the question. Yet a shadowy meaning from the stranger’s earlier comment, vague and nearly shapeless, occurred to him. “My essence? You mean you felt the scrye searching for you? The scrye using my blood?”

  The red stranger’s fingers left his chin, his arms cocking in a posture that looked both relaxed and battle-ready nonetheless. “You have utilized the blood from your veins to hunt for me? How can such be effective?”

  “I don’t care about you!” He rose to his feet, steady this time, his tone fierce. “I’ve never cared about you, though there are plenty who do! What I want is to find my father! You tell me where he is!”

  “Your father? I discern no meaning in this.”

  “Don’t you give me that!” Marik advanced a step, bringing him close enough to touch the man. The urge was strong but he kept his fingers clenched in a tight fist. Whatever else this red-eyed stranger might be, he was most certainly dangerous. “I saw him with you that night, over a year ago. The first time I tried scrying you. Except I was really scrying him, and you were sitting next to the fire with him!”

  Surprise lit within the stranger’s eyes. “Can it be so?” he murmured, questioning the night rather than Marik. “Might it be true?”

  Marik swept a fist across the air, not quite daring to brush the red buttons along the front of the open, body-length coat. “I know you broke that scrye! And since I haven’t been able to scrye father since then, I know he’s still with you! So tell me where he is! Where is Rail Drakkson?”

  Surely a denial would follow. Or an inquiry meant to lead him astray. The red stranger gazed at him with that same surprise continuing to flicker in his jeweled eyes.