Forest For The Trees (Book 3)

by Damien Lake

  The Red Man looked displeased. “Adrian Ceylon, and Jide Cray, I seek to battle a power far beyond what you, using your experience with Armed Forces mages, comprehend. This is a power that flourished when the followers of the earth god were at their apex.”

  “Which is why,” Jide stated, sitting back down obstinately, “we ought to make damned sure we put an end to it.”

  Adrian looked at him with the slightest quirk raising the corner of his mouth. He sat beside Jide, crossed his arms, and glared back at the Red Man.

  The Red Man likewise folded his arms. They stared at each other. A contest of wills had begun.

  Chapter 20

  “Wait a moment.” Wyman ranged ahead as silently as he could, which was far less ghostly than the average scout. Clearly Wyman had never studied woodlore.

  Marik waited with the other magic users. Everyone shivered terribly in the darkening gloom, soaked to the bone and with a chill breeze kicking up. It would be typical, he reflected, to finally escape the mountains in time to die from exposure.

  Though full dark remained a candlemark off, it already seemed to be night. Thick woods had sprouted around them while coming down the trail Caresse’s senses had located. They stood near the tree line as Wyman attempted to discern possible enemies. Shadows robbed them of what little warmth remained in their bodies as surely as the wind weaving through the trees.

  Marik stood under a white oak, contemplating moving no further until dawn. They were exhausted both physically and mentally from the hard journey. It seemed ludicrous to push on further in the dark.

  His legs trembled. Whatever the current situation, they had endured too much to go on. He slowly slid down the oak’s trunk until he sat on the inundated ground. A small comfort was gained since there was no mud to squelch through his breeches. Thick layers of leaves and twigs covered the mossy roots. They were firm, if damp.

  The city mages stood apart now that there was room to do so. They looked forlorn, alone, the last survivors of a group who had never thought to face anything more horrendous than the aftermath of an unsolved crime. None had spoken beyond what was necessary the whole way. Marik suspected their minds where wholly bent on returning home.

  “How far are we from civilization?” he called to Caresse. “It’s only trees here. No solid walls.”

  “T-there is n-nothing close by, s-so far as I c-can t-tell,” she answered through chattering teeth. “N-nothing at all, s-so there i-isn’t.”

  “Then after it is full dark, we need to build a fire. They won’t see the smoke. I don’t think we should leave the trees until we—”

  Wyman dashed back into the small clearing. “Arronaths. A copping lot of them!”

  “Are you…damn! Where?”

  “A force. Coming south along the mountains.”

  Marik shot upward through the etheric plane. He briefly sailed over the woods abutting the Stoneseams until they abruptly vanished, replaced by open grassland. There were no foothills to ease the transition into the mountains, only the sloping path into the peaks within the trees.

  Immediately he could see the vast glowing pool formed by multiple auras huddled together. Or rather, on the move. Enough blue auras mutated the overall color that he could tell this group traveled on horseback. Overhead he could gain a better evaluation of their numbers than Wyman, who had only seen them from a distance.

  They were larger than any patrol force he had encountered thus far. He estimated they were about thirty riders. Wyman had seen nearly their entire force from his vantage beneath the trees yet assumed he only saw the outriders, or the enemy group’s edges.

  “It is—” he began the moment he reentered his body except Lynn was already saying, “—small group. If we stay still in these trees, and do nothing to draw attention, they will likely pass us by.”

  In a most irksome manner, they scattered to individual trees. Who was in charge here, anyway?

  Marik’s tree was the most open, with the branches further up, too high to conceal him. He rolled over the lumpy roots, which jabbed hard into his weary muscles until he lay on the far side away from the tree line. A half dozen trees separated his white oak from the open. Under his body he felt scores of hard, pointed acorns pressing into him. Several moments would be little concern, but having to lay like this on the unexpected torture bed for however long it took the riders to pass would be excruciating.

  After two minutes, which felt like candlemarks, they could see the figures passing the furthest trees. Their armor left no doubt whatsoever that they were black soldiers from Arronath. Marik’s consciousness was halfway outside his body when an overwhelming sensation made him slam it back in.

  He had no idea why, possessed no solid reason for doing so…yet he felt unsettled about drifting closer to the enemy unit. Perhaps, if he did so…perhaps… Perhaps what? It might give their presence away? Nonsense. Even if another mage traveled with the group, the self that he projected through the etheric mists was utterly insubstantial. No mage could detect it because there existed nothing to detect. Tollaf had said so when Marik specifically asked about it. In the Forest of Green Reaches he had drifted around a magician, and only later did it occur to him that it might have been a serious blunder.

  Marik nearly forced himself to send his mind toward the Arronaths in order to prove his sudden jitters were baseless. They needed to know as much as they could about the Arronaths’ field composition and positioning. No one could detect his extrasensory presence in the same way that no one could tell if they were…being scryed…

  A cold sweat trickled across the corner of his right eye. Marik watched the figures move past where the eclectic mage collective cowered. His skin trembled. Drift out or not drift? He scarcely dared breathe. The slightest motion of a finger seemed a guarantee of their immediate deaths.

  He kept staring hard at the grassland long after the Arronaths moved on. The space between his shoulder blades shivered uncontrollably.

  Caresse crept to his side. “Did you…feel funny? Looking at them?” Her voice was slightly unsteady, but the chilled teeth chattering had vanished.

  “Yeah. But I don’t know why. I thought I was jumping at shadows.”

  “I have never felt like that before, so I haven’t!” she hissed in whisper. “You were closer. Could you see anything?”

  Lynn scurried over at a huddled crouch. Before she could get the first word in, Marik stormed her defenses with an angry demand. “What in the hells was that? I know you felt…whatever it is we all felt!”

  She returned his hard glare with one that suffered from an undertone of worry. “Animal instinct. Every living creature has it, though we humans tend to overshadow ours with our capacity for intelligent thought.”

  “I was thinking clearly until…that hit us!”

  “Exactly,” she pointed out, the worry replaced by her usual superiority. “Your instincts cut through your thoughts in order to save your life. I expect you were about attack, or were contemplating a similar action.”

  He felt his mouth tighten in annoyance. “I get enough shifty answers from Tollaf! If you know what is happening, say so. We need to decide if we are going to stay put or move on before nightfall.”

  “Most animals have the ability to sense the…well, strength is the best word.” She folded her arms sternly under her breasts. “If your power could be described as a ten, and you met a mage whose power was twenty, then you would be a fool to start a fight. That is how animal societies work. They instinctively sense the strength of other animals. The weak do not prey on the strong. The weak avoid those stronger than they at all costs.”

  “Doh-ah?” Caresse wore an expression of innocent comprehension. “It is like a frog looking into a snake’s eyes?”

  “Yes,” Lynn agreed with softer tones than she would have gifted Marik, he felt certain. “A frog can only be eaten by a snake. It has no power to avoid that fate. What we experienced is exactly the same.”

  “Except frogs don’t sweat, to the
best of my knowledge,” Marik acidly commented. He wiped the lone trickle off his face and flicked it at Lynn, who winced with one eye. To cut off her angry retort, he called to Wyman, “Hey! Wyman, where are you going? Stay back!”

  The mercenary had boldly moved several trees closer to the open. He looked back with evident surprise. Marik shot a quick glance to the city mages, finding them in a small cluster matching the Crimson Kings magic users; spooked and speaking in quiet voices.

  Apparently Wyman had missed out on whatever dark miasma had poisoned the rest of them. “Don’t go out there, Wyman! Stay back!”

  Wyman had halted beside a larger white oak. He made a hand gesture Marik assumed meant the other man cared little for having his judgment questioned.

  Marik felt his teeth ache from clenching them too tightly. He leapt to his feet in order to sprint after Wyman, forcing strength into his limbs, shouting in as restrained a manner as he could. “You’re going to get us spotted, damn it! Something is wrong with those Arronaths! We can’t afford to tangle with them!”

  A second gesture, far more violent, accompanied a guttural word Marik could not hear clearly.

  “What?”

  Wyman’s eyes burned furiously at the single, ringing word. When Marik reached his side a moment later, he growled in imitation of a grizzly awoken from its hibernation by a drunken fool petting its fur and crooning about puppies. “Shut…up!”

  A large grizzly.

  Marik heard it an instant later. The soft noises made by hooves picking their way across sodden ground. Grasses laden with lingering raindrops. Firmer ground coated by fallen leaves. A snap from a fallen twig breaking under the horse’s weight.

  Wyman turned his head to meet Marik’s. “It’s only a guess, but I would say whoever it is heard you.” Venomous sarcasm dripped from the observation.

  The sounds grew louder. Yes, Marik reflected bitterly, cursing himself thoroughly for acting so amateurish in front of Wyman, the unknown horse moving through the trees was definitely moving closer to their position. He strained his eyes to pierce the surrounding leaf-laden spaces. Drifting through the etheric to easily locate auras no longer felt safe, let alone wise.

  He hardly felt any pain from his ribs as he gripped the hilt of his daily sword. The loss of Sennet’s unique labor still chafed, yet he admitted the heavy weapon would be a hindrance in present circumstances, with his body still on the mend. Marik half-drew the blade and held his breath along with Wyman until they could locate the threat.

  The mages held statue-still, reading danger in the two men’s postures. Wyman found the rider first. Marik knew it when his eyebrows narrowed, the pupils locking on a screen of firs to their left. Portions of the rider flickered through the interwoven branches.

  Marik’s heart thundered at double speed. His sword rested lightly in hand. It felt far less comforting than it had before. Sweat slicked the grip.

  Lightning flickers made him jerk his head sideways against his training, which demanded he never divert his attention from an enemy. Caresse had formed a small etheric orb which hovered two feet in front of her chest. Lynn had crafted…something. It must use the sorcery half of her esper class since he could see no mage energy at work. Her lips muttered too softly for him to distinguish her speech and her fingers were twisted into knots as if roots from two trees vied for the choicest soil. A hazy nimbus smaller than her head bobbed in the air before her. Across the way, the city mages did likewise, constructing a second etheric orb, a fist-sized fireball whose flames curled upward like a candle, and a purplish-green fog that roiled furiously in a bucket shape.

  He felt his apprehension spike. The city mages were excusable, but Lynn and Caresse fully understood the oddity of what they had felt only moments before! How could they possibly make use of their powers this soon after? Those Arronaths were still uncomfortably close, not to mention their drogue rider, who could escape the trees and gallop away to bring the main group back!

  This situation…it made his skin crawl worse than any battle he had fought in where his life could be sliced away before he could blink. Too much magic was involved. If the rider charged through the trees, Marik would take him on with his sword ninety-nine times from a hundred.

  But that one time out from all the rest…only magic could effectively take on magic. Whatever the talent, the opposing forces could grapple where naked steel would be swept by the wayside. The last quarter-mark had already been pregnant with alien doings. Could this be any different?

  The dull light glinting off his sword matched Wyman’s. Together they moved toward the firs. They could see the figure passing the far side. Only thirty yards separated them.

  From behind the last branch, a mud-colored muzzle emerged. He and Wyman charged without war cries. They raised their swords so each could deliver an angling downward slash, Marik’s from the west, Wyman’s from the east. The distance closed to ten yards when the rider came into view. Marik could make out the whites of his…

  A terrified yelp from a city mage made Marik whirl and cry, “Wait! Don’t do—”

  The toxic cloud flew forward in total solidity. Marik rocked back on his heels to avoid it. He lost his balance as he saw, from the corner of his vision, the noxious vapors strike the horse’s head.

  A horrible scream split the woods. The horse reared, its head enveloped in the thick cloud. Its hooves beat uselessly through the air while Dietrik was flung from the saddle with a startled shout devoid of coherent meaning.

  The vapors quickly vanished. Marik watched with horrified fascination as the last wisps were sucked into the animal’s nostrils. Still screaming, the horse fell to the ground, writhing in pain. Clots of loamy dirt and leaves were hurled everywhere from its thrashing.

  Marik forced his attention away to search for Dietrik after the horse’s skin began blistering. Massive bubbling within the flesh erupted from withers to fetlocks until the beast looked sickeningly like a stew pot over a cook fire.

  “Dietrik! Hey, Dietrik!” Marik found his friend fighting to disentangle his limbs from the fir’s. Raw scrapes were red on his forehead and cheeks, his arms and hands.

  “What sort of bloody welcome do you call that?” Dietrik sounded both furious and scared white.

  “Good gods, you frightened me there!”

  “You were frightened? Check my bloody smallclothes why don’t you?”

  Marik shook his head and offered Dietrik a hand. Once extracted from the boughs, he trembled on his feet. “Are you out of your gods damned tree? And what in the bleeding hells did you do to my horse?”

  They glanced only briefly at the animal before quickly averting their gaze. The horse was liquefying, its hooves tumbling to disparate resting places when they rolled free from the jellied meat.

  “Oh,” Marik stammered. “It’s…not because of you. It was…hey! You damn near killed the wrong man! You aren’t allowed to use any sort of magic ever again without my say so!”

  The city mage was too busy undergoing severe chastisement from Lynn to pay any attention to Marik’s paltry threats.

  “The wrong man?”

  “Let’s move away to talk,” Marik suggested. A plague smell combining rotting carcasses and spoiled eggs had begun emanating from the puddle of horse.

  “Anyplace upwind,” Dietrik allowed. “Weeping saints on crutches, are you going to explain that?”

  “It was a misunderstanding. Sorry about that.”

  “You make it a habit these days to kill every chap you run across?”

  Dietrik chose their destination by virtue of staying a half-step ahead of Marik. He crossed to the opposite end of the fir screen, far away from the others. Marik noted it silently, deciding Dietrik wished to keep clear of the magic users and their unnatural powers. Small surprise.

  “An Arronath force went past a moment before you rode in. We thought you were one of them. Lucky thing you weren’t run down by them.”

  “Luck of my own making, mate. I’ve been riding their traces for
the last half-mark before the grass could unbend from their hooves.”

  Marik felt his eyebrows crawl upward. “What for? Don’t tell me Torrance has you working scout duties.”

  “The commander has too much on his plate to worry about as it is without botching basic duty assignments.”

  “His plate? What do you mean?”

  “That deployment left Armonsfield right when I thought I had that blighted town cleared,” Dietrik pushed on, ignoring Marik. “It was a wrench to get clear before they found me. Waited them out in a wood not unlike this one. I’ve been following them south since.”

  “You should have reported a group that large on the move. Torrance needs to know where all the enemy units are.”

  “No point in that. I had to move south.”

  “What for? South?”

  “Yes. I had to move south.”

  Marik waited. After a silent stretch, he tentatively asked, “Why…did you have to move south, Dietrik?”

  “I had to move south.” Dietrik’s gaze had glassed over. A troublesome worm roiled in Marik’s stomach as he watched his friend. He moved his hand, intending to touch Dietrik on the shoulder. Before he could, the vacancy faded from Dietrik’s eyes. “South. Huh? How bizarre.”

  “What’s wrong? You don’t sound like yourself.”

  “I am not certain I feel like myself. It seemed so damned…urgent to come this way fast as I could. Or, that is…I meant to come down the mountains looking for you in the first place. Except once I found out where you were going to come out of the Stoneseams, it was the only thing on my mind. That is hardly like me.”

  “No one knew where we would come down,” Marik answered, feeling lost. “We didn’t know until we actually got here. Those mountains are a deathtrap! Forget every bard’s tale you’ve heard about pastures and lakes and flowery valleys.”

  Dietrik cleared the last vagueness from his expression by butting his temples several times with the heel of his palm. “I saw you lot. On the…whatever the name was. An ancient road through the mountains.”