The Sleeping King

by Cindy Dees

  The great two-headed wolf lunged at them of a sudden, snapping and snarling ferociously, and Raina jumped reflexively.

  Will’s eyes opened. “Look.” He pointed at the door and she was stunned to see a wall of roots weaving across it as she watched. It was unsettling seeing the tendrils moving like sentient beings.

  “What did you do?” she asked in wonder.

  “I asked the tree to hide the door to Gawaine’s resting place. Or maybe Bloodroot asked. Or both of us. But it worked!” Will declared triumphantly before staggering against her a little.

  “You’re too weak to be pulling stunts like that,” she chided. “You heard what Gawaine said. Channeling Bloodroot’s powers speeds up your poisoning.”

  “Yeah, but that was cool.”

  She rolled her eyes as he moved off in the dim green glow of the mushrooms.

  The shock of being back in a danger-fraught cave full of dead orcs and deadly roots was terrible after the utter peace and beauty of Gawaine’s grove. “Where do you suppose the others are?” she asked in a hushed tone.

  “Outside with Balthazar, hale and healthy, I hope.”

  They crept around the margins of the ritual circle, trying, and failing, not to cringe as the two-headed wolf lunged and snarled furiously at them from a distance of only a few handspans. She searched the beast’s necks and did not spot the keys hanging on its collars. With the door hidden and its keys gone, she prayed the secret of Gawaine’s grove would be safe until they could wake his body. In the meantime, she was more than ready to get out of here. A forest full of Anton’s troops and warring Boki sounded like a pleasant stroll through a park compared to this place.

  She spied the particularly thick tangle of roots that marked Gir’Ok’s resting place. Will angled left confidently, and she did not question his unerring navigation skill, although she worried about its cost to his health. She spotted a pair of hanging roots recently tied back to make a triangular opening. That was Cicero’s work. Thank the stars. They were almost out of here. Will held the vines back lightly for her with his staff and waved her forward.

  She ducked through the opening and pulled up hard as the tip of a sword nicked the underside of her chin. Her panicked gaze slid down the length of the weapon—

  —The sword clattered to the ground and Cicero wrapped her in a quick, hard hug.

  “Thank the Lady,” she breathed as she hugged him back. “You survived!”

  “Nay. I died, all right. Rosana just finished resurrecting me.”

  The gypsy girl stepped out from behind him. “If you’d gotten here two minutes ago, you’d have seen him as naked as the day he was born.”

  Will swept forward and wrapped the healer in a hug that Raina suspected nigh crushed Rosana. Although the crushing looked mutual. Raina turned away as Will drew back far enough to kiss the gypsy.

  “Sha’Li!” Raina cried. “You resurrected successfully. Oh, thank goodness!”

  The lizardman girl took a hasty step back. “Kill you I shall, if you try to kiss me.”

  Raina fetched up laughing. Surly as always, Sha’Li was. “And Eben?” she asked quickly. “How does he fare?”

  “I am alive,” the jann replied from the shadows beyond the lizardman girl.

  “Better he is after death!” Sha’Li retorted.

  Raina was confused. “How is death better?”

  “His arm he has. And his plague he has not. Ready to go is he—”

  Cicero interrupted, “Speaking of which, now that we are all here, I think we should be on our way out of here with all due haste. The Boki die outside even now defending us.”

  The party headed out with the kindari leading the way. They dodged the vines, mushrooms, and orcish corpses almost without thought as they moved through the dim chamber.

  “What happened after you fled the draaken?” Rosana asked Will ahead of her.

  “There is much to speak of. But later, when we are all—”

  His voice faded suddenly as his knees buckled, and he toppled over without warning.

  Raina lunged for him, but Rosana was quicker and dropped to her knees beside him, hands on his chest. “Dead!” the gypsy cried out. “And I do not have enough mana to renew him!”

  “I do not think your magic would help him at this juncture,” Raina replied grimly. “He has been poisoned by Bloodroot, and it is no ordinary poison. Gawaine said we would only have a short time to heal him. But I had hoped we could at least get out of here and have a few days or weeks to make the antidote.”

  “Gawaine?” Cicero asked.

  “He’s the Sleeping King—” Raina started.

  “You found him?” Cicero, Eben, and Sha’Li exclaimed in unison.

  “Later!” Rosana snapped. “We must do something. We cannot let Will just die.”

  Raina cursed her tabard for draining herself earlier so that now she could not help her friends. If only she had a life potion in her pouch. But all she had in it was—

  She fumbled frantically in her pouch and came up with Gawaine’s crown. “Put it on him. Maybe its power will restore him.”

  Rosana jammed the crown on Will’s head, and Raina waited impatiently for something to happen.

  “Nothing!” the gypsy bit out. “We have to do something!” She tore Will’s shirt open and slammed her palm down on the wooden disk. “Help him, curse you!” she cried.

  Rosana jumped, yanking her hand away from the disk as if it had burned her.

  “What?” Raina asked quickly.

  But the gypsy ignored her and hesitantly put her palm back on the disk. A look passed over her face as if she was listening intently to something.

  “Is Bloodroot speaking to you?” Raina asked urgently. “What is he saying?”

  “There may be a way … a spark within me … I do not understand.…”

  Raina got the impression Rosana was not talking with them. “Who is it, Rosana? Are you communicating with Bloodroot?”

  “What spark?” Rosana demanded. She listened for a moment. “Oh, my. I did not know. Surely, you are mistaken.…”

  It was frustrating not being able to follow the conversation only Rosana heard in her mind.

  The gypsy muttered, “Such is the Accord that I must agree three times.… Well, ask then, and quick!” she snapped. “Yes, of course I will pay the price. Any price. Just do it.”

  Raina frowned. What price would Bloodroot demand of Rosana? Raina wasn’t at all sure that was a good thing.

  Rosana’s voice rose in frustration. “Yes, yes. A piece of my spirit. I understand. Get on with it.”

  A piece of her— “Rosana!” Raina cried “Have a care what you agree to!”

  Rosana was intoning low and fierce, “Lo, do I solemnly swear to accept thine aid, Lord Bloodroot. Lo, do I solemnly swear to give up whatever part of my spirit is necessary to save Will Cobb. Lo, do I make this agreement of my free will, without coercion, trickery, or deception. Lo, do I swear to abide by this agreement unto end of time.”

  Twice more Rosana repeated the vow in spite of Raina’s protests and pleading not to do it, to think before she leaped, to question Bloodroot more thoroughly as to what the price would be before Rosana agreed to pay it.

  Then the gypsy announced, “The deal is struck. Bloodroot will help.”

  “At what cost?” Raina demanded frantically. “What have you done?” Gawaine had described Bloodroot as a malevolent spirit. Rosana didn’t need to be making deals with one such as that.

  “I do what I must. I love Will.”

  The gypsy laid her palm over Bloodroot’s disk once more and closed her eyes. Raina actually sensed the piece of Rosana’s spirit being torn from her. The gypsy moaned in pain and shuddered, but did not lift her hand away from Will and the wooden disk.

  Raina thought she spied a faint, green aura about Will and Rosana for a moment, hovering at the very edge of her vision. But then it disappeared.

  Will’s entire body shuddered much as Rosana’s had, and he took a great
, heaving breath as life returned to him. Rosana collapsed on his chest, whether of exhaustion or relief Raina could not tell. Will’s arms went around the gypsy.

  “What happened?” he croaked.

  Eben answered, “We lost you there, for a minute. But Rosana made some sort of deal with Bloodroot and he saved you.”

  “Ahh, no,” Will groaned.

  “What just happened?” Raina demanded of the gypsy. “What did Bloodroot take from you?”

  Rosana lifted her head and helped Will sit up before answering, “I’m not sure. It felt like a piece of me I did not even know was there got taken and passed through Bloodroot to Will.”

  Will nodded, frowning. “It feels as if the three of us—Rosana, Bloodroot, and I—are … linked … somehow.”

  Rosana nodded. “Yes, we share this thing, together.”

  Will and Rosana exchanged smiles. Secret, lovers’ smiles. Raina looked away, the pain in her own heart too great to bear. She was never going to have that. Could never have the family she’d always wanted.

  She set aside her grief to ask Will, “How do you feel?”

  He took inventory and answered, “About like before. But not dead. And yet, something is different. It is as if Bloodroot rests more easily within me.”

  She did not like the sound of that. Had Bloodroot found a way to take firmer control of Will? She dreaded learning what the tree spirit had in store for him next. “Shall we be on our way before you keel over again, Will?”

  They assumed a marching order with Will in the lead. Their working theory was that the Boki outside would not kill him on sight. But they might take one of the others’ heads off before they realized the entire party was coming out of the tunnel.

  As they approached the faint light of the exit Cicero muttered from ahead of Raina, “Only the Lady knows what we shall face outside this hellhole, but it cannot possibly be any worse than in here.”

  CHAPTER

  32

  Cicero was wrong. Will pulled up short in the tunnel entrance. Dawn was just breaking through the treetops, and the carnage around the tunnel entrance was unbelievable. Bodies lay, literally, in piles in and around the scrambled boulders lining the vale, and fighting continued on top of the corpses. Humans and orcs and rakasha sprawled together, racism forgotten in death.

  A pair of figures rose up from behind the nearest boulder, ghost-like in the gray half-light. Will whipped his weapon up, as did Cicero and Eben at this new threat. He looked down the length of his staff and was stunned to recognize the face at the other end.

  “Guildmaster Aurelius?” he asked in disbelief.

  “Did you succeed? Did you find him? Is he awake?” the solinari bit out under his breath.

  “Partially. We spoke with his spirit and know what we must do next to wake his physical form and free his spirit.”

  The two elves’ faces lit in triumph.

  Will reported, “I have closed the way to the king. Even if the governor enters the cave and vanquishes its defenses, he will not find the king.”

  Aurelius and Selea looked relieved at that news.

  “How goes the battle out here?” Cicero asked.

  Selea answered, “The Boki will gain the upper hand now that they do not have to throw all their best warriors at defending this vale. But it will be slow and bloody work.”

  “Landsgrave Hyland? Did he resurrect?” Eben asked quickly.

  The nulvari answered dryly, “Strangely enough, his men have not engaged in combat near the governor for some time. I could not tell you if he leads his men once more or not.”

  Cicero snorted from behind Will, who shared the sentiment.

  Eben spoke urgently. “We must find him. We have news. Kendrick has been taken. Kidnapped and likely killed by a madman.”

  Aurelius asked sharply, “What madman?”

  Will replied, “The apprentice to the Hunter in Green.”

  “How know you that?” Sha’Li demanded sharply.

  “Bloodroot told me. He offered to help us find this apprentice guy and Kendrick if I kept his spirit within me.”

  “A spirit resides within you?” Aurelius blurted in alarm.

  They had no more time to talk, though, for Selea bit out low and hard, “Get down.”

  Everyone obeyed with alacrity, and Will spied a small rakasha force creeping silently across the far side of the vale. They moved like rogues. Or assassins.

  “Where do they go, sneaking about like that?” Aurelius whispered.

  “Shall we find out?” Selea replied under his breath.

  The two elves moved out, and without bidding, the rest of the party followed. The rakasha pack was small, only three strong, two males and a female. White tiger changelings, which marked them as Clan Kithmar. The trio paused at the top of the far ridge, scouting ahead, and then moved off through the trees.

  “I know them,” Selea breathed. “They’re slavers. Scum of the worst sort. Female’s called Mara. The big male is Gorath, and I don’t know which brother the third one is.”

  Will moved up beside the two elves as they paused in the same spot the rakasha had recently vacated. Dead bodies littered the grove before them. He whispered to the nulvari, “Do you see where the cats went?”

  “That way.” The nulvari pointed off to the left through the trees.

  “But the fighting sounds to be off in that direction,” Will questioned, pointing to the right.

  “Nonetheless, the Kithmar move away from the battle.”

  “Why would they avoid the fight?”

  “I have no idea,” Selea murmured. “Let us follow them and see what we can learn.”

  Whether Selea actually tracked the Kithmar or guessed at their path Will could not tell. But the dark elf moved unbelievably quickly through the woods, forcing the others to nearly run to keep up with his swift strides. That was, until the elf screeched to a halt and Will plowed into the nulvari’s back. Selea threw Will an irritated glance, but made no other sound. The assassin sank slowly toward the ground, and Will mimicked the movement, as did the others.

  When they were all crouching next to a heavy stand of brush, Selea breathed, “The Kithmar search for Anton.”

  Why? Raina mouthed.

  “How can you tell?” Will asked at the same time.

  The nulvari chose to answer neither question but merely continued, “The governor has broken away from his troops and moves stealthily, with only a few guards, through the forest.”

  “Does he seek the treasure horde he believes the Boki have out here?”

  Selea frowned. “If so, why would he move away from the vale the Boki led him to?”

  “Where it is hidden,” Will added.

  “Either way,” the nulvari replied, “I am curious to know what our esteemed lord governor is up to, skulking about in the woods like this.”

  “As am I,” Aurelius growled.

  Personally, Will had no desire to tangle with the governor. In fact, his impulse was to run away from Anton as fast and far as he could go. But both Eben and Raina seemed interested in tagging along with the elves. Will supposed the party stood a better chance of surviving this day and the battle raging around them with the two powerful elves than without them. Rosana threw him a doubtful look but shrugged.

  “Come,” Selea ordered. “Everyone stay low and move as quietly as you can.”

  Will’s mouth twitched toward a smile at the subtle derision Selea laced into that last remark. The party sounded like a herd of thundering oxen to him, too, these days. This must be how the forest heard the passage of humans through its green corridors.

  Cicero whispered, “Where are the Kithmar, now?”

  “They’ve split up as if perhaps they lost the scent of their prey,” Selea answered.

  Scent, huh? If that was how rakasha tracked prey, how did the nulvari do it?

  Sha’Li was staring at the ground just ahead of them. “Is that a countertrack sign, just there?” she asked no one in particular.

 
Selea looked where she pointed and responded, “The Kithmar are not erasing their tracks.”

  Aurelius added, “But Anton likely would have someone erasing his tracks if he’s up to something sneaky.”

  Sha’Li had already slithered forward on her belly to the other side of the stand of underbrush. Will gathered she was following the trail of the countertracker’s marks. After one last glance around the dim forest, Selea stood and strode forward to join the lizardman girl. They conferred in whispers and then, as a pair, moved forward quickly. Will had no idea what sign they followed, but both of them moved confidently now.

  What could the governor be up to in the Forest of Thorns, breaking away from his army secretly like this? Apparently, they were about to find out, for Selea held up a fist abruptly to signal a stop as Sha’Li froze without warning ahead of them. She looked like a hunting predator who had just spotted its future dinner. The charged stillness of explosive violence clung to her.

  For his part, Selea turned to ice. Cold concentration poured off his back like fog rising from an icy lake. Slowly, slowly, Selea eased forward. Cicero followed suit, step by cautious step. Will mimicked the elves’ achingly slow progress with care for utter silence. It seemed to take an hour, but in a minute or two he knelt behind a fallen log no more than a stone’s throw from Anton Constantine himself.

  The governor was having quiet speech with a Boki!

  Will eased up to peer over the log and all but fell over when he got a good look at the orc. There was a long, vertical scar over the Boki’s right eye. Ki’Raiden. What on Urth was that particular Boki thane doing meeting clandestinely with Anton like this?

  And then Will spied the sword hanging from the thane’s hip. The curved, milky white blade gleamed as if lit from within. Dragon’s Tooth. Will’s father’s sword! Grief and fury ripped through Will and he coiled to spring at the whoreson who’d killed his father and stolen his sword.

  Eben and Cicero literally had to lie on top of Will to keep him from attacking. The silent struggle went on until Rosana managed to breathe in his ear, “We will all die if you give away our position. Do you want me to die?”