by Damien Lake
“Area Fifty-Seven would have left you battling heat rarely found outside the Kello-beii desert. Area Fifty-One…best not to think on the alien horrors sealed there.”
“Wait,” the mage interrupted. “How many of these seals are there?”
“All tolled, one-hundred-eight.”
Dietrik swore under his breath. “It is no wonder that so many strange tales regarding this forest circulate through the nearest towns.”
Colbey snorted. “Few outlanders ever encounter a true denizen of the seals.”
“You can enter any of these seals?” The mage sounded confused.
“I could,” Colbey affirmed. “Yet several are strictly forbidden. They are classified as sixth level dangers. Only the most experienced Guardians enter them, and never in less than groups of eight. Others are impossible to survive. Sealed Area Seven contains toxic vapors that fill the air. It consumes clothing and flesh alike. No one has entered it in hundreds of years.”
“But who made these seals in the first place?”
“Later. Do you see that?”
Colbey pointed to a large bush sprawling in an unrestrained mass beside the pathway. The Euveas grew far enough apart that their root clusters were islands on the earthen sea, rather than the interwoven tapestry that defined the ground outside. The path they followed wound around the monoliths in the open spaces of true forest floor.
“It is a rhododendron,” Dietrik shrugged. “What of it?”
“Look closer. But draw no closer!” Colbey restrained the mage, yanking him back by the arm.
“Choose your words more carefully then! You about snapped my arm!”
Colbey ignored the mage’s ire. “See there? The blossoms are off color.”
“I assume that has a meaning?” Dietrik shaded his brow with a flat palm. “A different species, I expect. The flowers are closer to violet than any rhododendrons I have seen.”
“The dyers and cloth merchants might care,” the mage griped, “but I fail to see the significance.”
“Pay heed to any plant life displaying such colors. To an insect, purple and violet are the brightest hues. They stand out as watch fires in a stormy night.”
“I’ll keep that in mind if I decide to sprout a pair of wings.”
“In the Rovasii’s heart, any plant making effort to attract living creatures must be treated with great caution. Observe.”
Colbey pulled a branch from a separate brush tangle several steps back down the pathway. Once he reduced it to a leafless stick, he spat several times on the tip until a thin coating of foam covered it. He approached the violet rhododendron, stick outreached.
The two mercenaries gasped when the stick neared several blossoms arranged in an innocent bouquet. Slowly at first, the movements scarcely perceptible, the blossoms turned. No subtler a movement could have come from a wolf pack sensing prey, the ears pricking in interest, the muzzles lifting slightly to sample the wind.
Six inches away, the violet blossoms struck viper-quick. The petals drew back with the viciousness of lips curling away from fangs. Each stamen resembled a stiletto tongue designed to pierce flesh and drain blood.
Colbey allowed four flowers to pull the stick from his hand. Their velvety petals wrapped around the stick tighter than a mile of silk wound into a foot-width bolt. His stick was held aloft by the botanous aggressor. The bare wood swayed until an audible crack accompanied the length bending at an obscene angle.
“Animals are far from the only dangers beyond the seals.”
“That is for bloody certain,” Dietrik croaked. “How can a plant move like that?”
“Some breed of magic,” the mage supplied with equal tremulousness. “What else could make it do that?”
“I cannot say.” Colbey tilted his head quickly from shoulder to shoulder until he elicited cracks reminiscent of the stick’s. “None among the Guardians can. The rythas bush may well be as natural a part of the world as raspberries or pine trees.”
“That’s the most unnatural thing I have ever seen!”
“Make no assumptions, mage. There are countless species existing across all the lands which live only in small, secluded areas. The distortions the seals contain have wrought untold changes, yet not every inexplicable phenomenon is the rooted in them.”
“Would you bet your coin for or against the distortions in this case?” Dietrik asked. The strength had returned to his voice. “What does your gut instinct tell you?”
Against his intention, he felt a smile growing. “A bush that stalks living prey as violently as the rythas? No doubt the dice read a strange number for its roll.”
The mage quirked an eyebrow, yet kept his attention fixed on the pathway. They were shuffling around the rythas, keeping as far back as possible without departing the worn path. “Dice?”
“I am certain Kerwin could decipher the meaning in moments,” Dietrik said. “Were he present.”
“It is meaningless. Only a trainee’s jo—watch where you step, mage!”
“What? What is it?” The mage danced sideways, away from the rythas. Color had drained from his flesh instantly.
“Hold your foolish jumping!” Colbey slid around Dietrik easily as a greased eel. His sword was half-drawn from its sheath before he fully recognized the shape laying where the mage had nearly set his unwary foot.
“Keep back, mate! It’s a damned tommy!”
“It poses no threat.” Colbey rammed his sword home with finality. “Come around, you two. Look. This is the fate of any poor beast who runs afoul of the rythas.”
He waited without fear until the two men flanked his elbows.
“What is that thing?” the mage whispered.
“A stole for a woman too fond of her cook’s artistry,” Dietrik quipped.
“It is a kitsune,” Colbey identified. “The raw welts in the fur are where the rythas caught hold. It had the strength to break free, as few creatures do, but not without coast. It left too much flesh behind to survive the encounter.”
“Must have been a strong bugger to rip away with…six of those leech-flowers clamped on.”
“Six on this side,” the mage pointed out. “Could be as many on the other.”
They murmured while Colbey remained silent, gazing down on the body. It was a fox, except twice the size of any breed outside the forest. The fur shone in a lustrous golden-red as only a vast wheat field under the setting sun can achieve on a summer day. Its three bushy tails were limp in death.
That alone recalled the sadness in Colbey’s soul. A kitsune’s tails were never at rest. Such a sight embodied his village’s plight far more poignantly than any other. Forever stilled. Never to play again under the vivid spark of life.
He walked away in the midst of their murmurings, cutting short their morbid fascination with the three-tailed fox. They jogged several steps before they caught up.
“Are all the animals as twisted as that one?” Dietrik asked.
Colbey bit back the first reply that rose to mind. Kitsunes could never be called twisted! No one who had watched them move, watch them play, watch them live could ever think of them as anything short of beautiful.
“No.”
The curt reply put a bit in Dietrik’s teeth. Nothing ever stopped the mage, though. “How many are there? I don’t like the idea of sleeping in a den of fox-monsters.”
“You would be lucky to have one approach you, mage,” Colbey answered through grinding teeth. “And they do not feed on any creature larger than mice and frogs. Save your concerns for dangers worthy of it.”
Dietrik reclaimed his voice. “Things with a stranger number than the rythas?”
Colbey allowed a second, deeper sigh to escape. A headache throbbed behind his left temple, a sensation that had become all too familiar during his time in the outlands. “For descriptive purposes, yes. Yet that only stems from a foolish saying the trainees indulged in. We used to say that the seals were the gods’ playground when they grew restless. The distortions were wo
mbs through which anything could be born. It was a game where one god would roll a pair of dice. The higher the number, the stranger would be the new oddity that came through into the seals.”
Predictably, the mage grew thoughtful. “You know, that sounds like it might be tr—”
“It is the idle fancy of trainees who delight in avoiding the work set to them! A means by which they may tease each other when the least desirable duties falls to a fellow rather than on oneself. ‘It looks like you rolled a hard twelve’ is what we would say when the foulest tasks were distributed.”
“What tasks? Who trained you in all of this?”
“We are progressing too slowly,” Colbey stated flatly. “This chatter is stopping our feet from proceeding with due speed. The day dwindles, and we have miles to make.”
“If we are to get to the next entrance by nightfall,” Dietrik supplied. “Or will it be daybreak? I can’t keep track of this battiness.”
“If our new day is beginning, then their next night should be starting at the same time,” the mage mused. “At least I think that is how it works…or perhaps...”
Colbey ignored their prattling. He had never expected to lead outlanders through a seal in his life. The very idea ran counter to his training.
Except those days were no longer, nor ever would be again, he believed. Thomas had insisted no true Guardian could leave such heavy karmic debts unpaid as were recorded in Colbey’s ledger. Colbey owed repayment to the mage for the betrayals he had committed against him. The younger Guardian accepted his elder’s teachings, though privately he still felt as turbulent as a merchant ship on a storm-tossed sea.
A Guardian sees to his debts. And the gods only helped those who strove their hardest to solve their problems through their own strengths. Was this the proof of Thomas’ words? Did the gods replace him aside the mage as ultimate validation of the senior Guardian’s lessons?
Only time would reveal that. Yet this time, Colbey was determined to act as a true Guardian should. Or perish in the attempt.
There could be no other course for a man granted the chance to rearrange the Scale of Life’s balancing weights one final time.
* * * * *
Marik huddled closer to the crackling fire. It did not help. His back felt too cool for his liking while his face and arms were overheated. Beside him, Dietrik stared moodily into the flames. Dietrik’s temper was considerably frayed after being forced to march for an entire cycle of day and night. Or day and day, if one wanted to be literal. He never had mastered the stamina boosting trick that kept Marik and Colbey moving with ease the entire time.
His friend shifted his eyes without humor when Marik’s stomach complained loudly. “I am miserable enough without hearing from your quarter.”
“Tell it to Colbey,” Marik replied. “I don’t consider the fare he collected any more appetizing than you.”
“The man is a savage.” Across the stone circle containing the fire, they could still see the remains of several black beetle carapaces. The two mercenaries had made do with water.
“Hard to imagine the Arronaths are moving around in the daylight at the moment.”
“So he says. Do not forget, mate, that this is the same man who completely spun off his top only months ago.”
Marik nodded. “If he told us of this place, I would assume it was only another sign. But if this is a delusion of his private fantasies, we must have spun off the same top together.”
“That hardly means he is sharp as a tack,” Dietrik disagreed. “The truth of a single crate does not mean the entire shipment is legitimate! If he was trained to work in this living hell, it could well be this place that sent him over the edge in the first place. Waiting in Vernilock’s toilet to chinwag with a lunatic does nothing to set my worries to rest.”
“I suppose. We’ll have to wait until he finishes scattering that moss he scraped off the trees earlier before we can hear what he has to say. I don’t know what the fuss is, but he acted like that moss was important.”
“Only as important as your life,” Colbey announced, stepping into the light from the darkness beyond. Marik jerked in surprise.
“A repellant, I assume,” Dietrik commented.
“Indeed. It will keep the gerbiscuses at bay for the evening. They refuse to touch any lichen matter.”
“What sort of monster is a gerbi-whatsit?”
Colbey returned Marik’s question with a direct stare. “It is a vine, mage, not a beast. One that pulls out its roots so that it may wander the nocturnal realms.”
“A walking plant?”
“You have a severe case of hostile environment in this forest,” Dietrik mused, sounding unimpressed. “It is enough to make me swear off all vegetables.”
“As it suits you,” Colbey returned. He squatted over his carapaces, flicking them one after the next into the flames. Marik could see that they landed in a star-shaped pattern on the burning twigs. Had that been coincidence, deliberate, or an unconscious reflection of the scout’s thoughts?
Dietrik watch Colbey over the fire. “How much time until sunrise?”
“The length of a summer day.”
“Then we have plenty of time before dawn,” Marik added.
“Yes. Time enough to say what must be said.”
They waited. Both sensed that Colbey would speak without their spurring him like a recalcitrant horse. He only needed to collect his thoughts. Or his determination.
Marik considered the man who had trained him in superior fighting techniques, both physical and mental. Despite the dislocation that had bludgeoned his brain the entire day, he had noticed the strange differences in Colbey. A third man had entered his body, where before there had been two whom Marik knew of. The first had been the distant, cold and ruthlessly efficient scout who epitomized the warrior’s essence. After him, though Marik had not recognized it until much later, had been the Colbey who was rash, sloppy, brooding and excessively brutal.
What characterized this third man who resided within Colbey’s shell? There was a worn-out feel to him, although it never showed in any of the scout’s actions or movements. Marik struggled to define why that sensation seemed to radiate from Colbey. In the end he decided it was in the scout’s eyes. There was a quality there that reflected a soul who had seen far too much of the naked world without the illusions of civilization people desperately crafted.
Also, there was the simple fact that Colbey had spoken as many words in this single afternoon, or night? Which is it?, as during the entire time Marik had known him. Even during their sword lessons, or during the days in the Green Reaches when he practiced the scout’s stamina boosting technique, Colbey had delivered as few words as could be gotten by with.
Marik waited patiently, certain that the story Colbey meant to weave would likely raise as many new questions as it answered. But the answers that came would doubtless be spellbinding.
“In the center of the Euvea groves lies…or, I should say…once lay, a village. Since the days before Galemar, this village existed in the Rovasii, living secretly in the forest’s heart.”
“How can—” Marik began, incredulous, yet Dietrik cut him off.
“To what purpose? In order to remain hidden, it must have required unparalleled skill.”
“Yes. That was the third task set to the Guardians. This village was comparable to the fringe towns. It contained bakers and weavers, glassblowers and woodcarvers. Healers, herbalists, and those skilled at animal husbandry. But unlike the outlanders, the village’s welfare was always paramount. On a child’s thirteenth birthday, it was required that he or she begin a decade-long service. It could be as simple as keeping the buildings in repair, following skills to which the youth was most suited, or they could serve with the scouts. Only those with the talent would be allowed to serve, and it was a position in which those who earned it took pride. The scouts were the soul of our village’s heritage. They were held in the highest regard by every villager, for to act as a scout was to
fulfill the ultimate duty to the village.
“One-third of each year’s youths would qualify to become a scout. Three hard years of training would begin the day after the Grove Festival. The difficulties we faced…” Colbey trailed off momentarily. “I could speak until dawn telling you of those years. And they are inconsequential to you. There is no need to go into details.”
“As thrilling a tale it might be,” Dietrik interrupted, “I would be keen to know how any of it affects us in our present circumstances.”
Colbey stared into the fire without seeing either of them. “I tell you this so that you might understand how I came to be what I am, and what need pressed me to do what I did.” When neither continued interrupting, he continued.
“The duty of the scouts was explicitly clear. We patrolled the Euvea, watching for the occasional outlander who had entered the grove’s fringes, or worse, slipped between the sealed areas to penetrate deeper than we wished. Too, we were the caretakers of the ancient trees, seeing to it that the natural order remained undisturbed. Once our training fully completed, we were assigned sectors of the grove for which we were responsible. It was our duty to know what transpired in our sectors each day.
“Those proficient at scouting were allowed to test their skills in the seals classified with level one dangers. One-third of the seals are so classified, thus each scout was carefully monitored by the overseers. Watching to see who possessed skill enough to go further. The Guardians were glad for the extra manpower to assist in the less dangerous areas. Working behind the seals was their second most important duty.”
“Guardians?” Marik ventured when Colbey paused. “I heard you mention that phrase before.”
“Yes. The Guardians were the highest class of scout. Fewer than one in five scouts had the skill to advance so far. Mastering the ways of the Guardian required further years of training. Intense training, imparting the higher skills and toughness of mind a Guardian needs to survive in these,” he indicated the land around them with a sweeping hand, “the harshest environments imaginable.”