The Tome of Arbor (The Legend of Vanx Malic Book 9)

by M. R. Mathias

  They didn’t have that much time to finish quickening the remaining gem-seeds, so that their roots could find each other in the core. And now, Vanx and Poops were tied to the little blue spider, called the Goss, and it was making sure they sensed the full need for urgency. The webbed lens had only showed him what he needed to know. It didn’t have to tell him that three more seeds still needed to be found, but he hoped the book, or the Goss, or the looking-glass, would know, and show him. But before they could even start, they had to fix Vanx’s ignorant mistake.

  If the jacaranda tree died, it was all for naught.

  And with that thought, the full weight of Castovanti, Papri, and Anitha’s lives weighed on Vanx’s heart, for they were senseless deaths and Vanx felt responsible for all of them.

  Chapter

  Thirty

  They’ve eyes like cats and skin that sheds,

  and golden hair upon their heads.

  They live forever I swear it’s true,

  no telling what they’ll do to you.

  – A sailor’s song

  The six Zythian spell casters Master Ruuk rounded up, took turns focusing the wind on the Adventurer’s sails. They ranged in skill level from novice, to master, and just about all stages between. Though there were two that seemed as powerful as Master Rukk, or at least they seemed his age.

  The elder Zythian, Master Beriinga, stayed behind, to make sure the refugees relying on he and Master Ruuk’s rebuilding efforts didn’t suffer, but he gladly helped round up this group. Vanx could only hope it would be enough.

  The Zythians seemed well prepared to rid the trees of the webs. They’d brought down long, spear-like poles, rigged to hold a torch at the end, and A-frame ladders, but that wasn’t all they were here for. Vanx laughed at the trickery Ruuk had resorted to. Of course the group knew they would be attempting to relocate a grown tree, as well as rid a forest of tree spiders, but the lake dragon that might try and eat them while they did so was never mentioned. Nor was the lazing stone, or the strange light-colored wyrm who lived there, but Vanx didn’t remember if he’d even told Ruuk about that wondrous creature.

  Vanx waited until long after dark, when, Ronzon and a younger Zyth were the only two on deck. Gallarael had brought two wreaths to the ship for him, and he had them now, one in each hand.

  Poops followed him to the rail and watched curiously. The ship lifted slowly with the swell of the waves, and then slid down into the trough smoothly. Vanx spoke a prayer for his mother and dropped one of the woven floral rings into the dark cobalt sea. Next, he said a prayer for his father and tossed the other.

  He stood there for a few long moments, thinking about the visions of his father the Hoar Witch had shown him. That was the only time he’d ever seen the man. He didn’t know if he’d have the stones to willingly go down with his ship, as his father had, and wondered who would.

  Oddly, he wasn’t afraid of such a happening, just unsure how he would face it. Obviously, he was pledged to the Goddess’s task, and more-or-less bound to it all now, by the bite of the Goss, so he couldn’t just willingly die until all of that was done.

  The little blue spider must have known someone would eventually read the note that contained the words to unlock the box, Vanx mused. He wondered how long the little spider had been sealed out of its home in the handle of the looking glass. He knew it had to have been a while. It was glad to be back in the handle, but Vanx could feel the Goss’s irritation over having bitten someone that wasn’t fully human, too. He was just as irritated as the spider about it.

  According to Zythian lore, the bite of the Goss would keep a man tied to the thing for his lifetime. Vanx was no mere man, though. He was half-Zythian, a fact he’d heard the full-blooded Zythians mumbling about earlier. It was strange to hear some of them whispering back in awe of the reputation he’d gained fighting the Paragon, not fear or racial hatred. This made him smile. Now only some of the Zythians despised him for being part human.

  It was a start.

  He wasn’t sure if the Goss would willingly tie itself to a Zythian, or a half-Zythian, for how long would such a being live? Even Vanx had no idea, for no mixed blooded human-Zythian child had ever survived birth until him.

  The idea that the Goddess had sent him into this relieved his worry a little. The Zythians were all sharing his cabin, so he decided to go to the galley, where he had a hammock. The strange box was in the satchel there and he wondered if the Goss had spun another web yet, for there was more Vanx wanted to see. He had to know if the book would tell him where the rest of the gem seeds were, for as soon as they fixed what he’d bungled, they would have to continue what they’d started.

  Vanx lit a lantern, trying not to wake Gallarael, Moonsy, or Chelda, who was snoring softly in a rhythm that followed the slow rising and falling of the Adventurer as it carved through the waves.

  “Kalzafranta Murr,” Vanx said, and the lid to the box popped open.

  He was disappointed to see that the spider hadn’t spun a web yet, but he did feel the sickness slide over him again, if only long enough for him to understand that it was the forest he was feeling. All of the forests.

  The feeling left him as fast as it came and the lid to the looking glass case slapped shut, causing Chelda to jump out of her bedroll and hit her head on a beam.

  The whole room came alive then as Poops entered and started barking at Chelda’s curses.

  Vanx couldn’t get them to go back to sleep, which was just as well. He was feeling guilty in a way he’d never felt before. Not only had he gotten a handful of his companions killed, a whole forest was wailing in agony because of him. And the Heart Tree, well, the Heart Tree’s pain made the rest of the forest’s agony seem like little more than agitation.

  Chapter

  Thirty-One

  Old Master Wiggins,

  was dancing at the fair.

  He did a flip, but then he slipped,

  upon his homemade hair.

  – A Parydon street ditty

  They made it to the Invisible Island in the early morning, and Vanx knew the only reason they could see it was because he possessed the original map the crazy wizard had given him. Without it, they would have had to rely on the Adventurer. His magical ship would have found it, though. It had before.

  Two of the Zythians had been to Harthgar and knew the globe, and the trade routes, well enough to know the land mass before them shouldn’t be there, but it was. Ronzon anchored the ship where they usually did, for the longboat was already ashore, and that landing afforded them the quickest route to the tormented Heart Tree. Vanx decided that, while Moonsy and the Zythians went about relocating it, he would get Gallarael, Chelda, and the two Zythians least proficient in arcanery, started burning the tree suffocating webs out of the branches. He hoped the Zythians would join them soon, for the island was infested with web wrapped limbs, even wholly covered trees. Clearing the island could take days.

  “Cast all the wards you think you’ll need, General,” Vanx emphasised Moonsy’s title to the older Zythian spell casters. “She is thrice your age,” Vanx told them. “Don’t let her childlike appearance fool you. And she knows right where to go. When you re-sit the tree, the top has to be below the wind line. I’d say, put it right on the shore of the lake opposite the grottoes.”

  “Yes, sir,” Moonsy replied, and Vanx had the thought that she’d never acknowledged him as ranking over her until that moment. He’d heard her respond to Thorn in such a way before, but Thorn had ranked over her.

  Thorn had died for her.

  Moonsy and the older Zyths disappeared from the deck of the ship and reappeared at the ridge top. A moment later, Vanx heard Poops yelping, and Ronzon cursing the land. They were on the beach, near the longboat, and Vanx saw that Poops and Ronzon had appeared in a tangle of leafy vines at the edge of the treeline.

  Vanx also saw that the web covered limbs were not just spider webs, they were full of the same red glowing larvae, or maybe worms, he’d seen thr
ough the looking glass. Vanx felt the vehement repulsion of the Goss burn through him and he was compelled.

  He dropped to his knees, right there, and didn’t even mind when Gallarael shifted into her black, hard-skinned, humanoid form right beside him. He spoke the words to open the box and, when it was, he let out a frustrated sigh. After feeling so much emotion coming from the Goss, he’d expected to find a web on the looking glass, but there was none.

  Instead, he heard a click, and felt the Goss leap to his hand. He was shocked when he saw it burrow right into his skin. The familiar, sickly feeling came over he and Sir Poopsalot, both.

  “Chelda, get them started burning webs.” Vanx indicated the dozen or so trees that were fully webbed over. They were scattered sparsely across this side of the ridge. Vanx knew the other side of the hill, the next two valleys really, would be worse. “Even get the small webs.” He got the attention of one of the two Zythians left to help Chelda. “Watch out for those red worms. Burn them to ash, but don’t set the whole forest aflame doing it.”

  “Uh, Yusser,” he stammered.

  “Here.” Chelda had already unbundled some torches and was rigging them to the poles they brought.

  “Vanx,” a hissing voice called. The sound grated up Vanx’s spine, for it was Gallarael’s mutated call. The sound was chilling, and he remembered a freezing cold night in Cold Port when she found him in an alleyway and scared him so bad he’d nearly shit his pants.

  “Come. Look,” she beckoned, and he went. They didn’t get far, for what she showed him filled his blood with ice. Some of the worms in the webs were growing wings. A few had even ripped their way out of their confinement and were fluttering around like eight-legged dragonflies. These were finger-sized, and had a stinger like a hornet. They seemed to have noticed Vanx and Gal peering at them from a shrub.

  The Goss wanted him to get to the section of island they hadn’t explored yet, but Vanx didn’t know why. He was determined to get the Heart Tree relocated first.

  “Burning them isn’t going to work Chel,” Vanx called before they got too far away. “One of you cast a shielding, one that will keep those away from us.” Vanx pointed at one of the bright red things fluttering and zipping about and urged Poops to get as close to the Zythians as they could.

  “We have to go keep them off the others so they can relocate the tree.” Vanx hated to concede anything, but he saw no other choice here. “Once the tree is moved we can regroup on the Adventurer.” We can sail to the shore of the unexplored section of the island. The Goss thought for him.

  Once we save the Heart Tree we will go, Vanx agreed with the little blue thing that had gotten under his skin. As if it concurred, a spell formed on Vanx’s lips. It was a spell he’d learned from the Hoar Witch’s books, but it wasn’t he who dug it out of the back of his mind and caused him to cast it.

  His hand pointed up at a web, and a jag of wicked lightning sizzled across the span of air between them. The web burst into flame, and several red worms fell to the ground. Chelda squashed them with her boot as she started the charge up the hill.

  The Zythian’s shielding was effective, for the frightening looking, elongated, flying spiders couldn’t pass the dome shaped field of energy that had surrounded them. There was no telling what sort of venom those stingers would inject, and Vanx didn’t want to find out. Poops had an instinctual urge to avoid the things, too. It could be webbing, or pure poison. It was all beyond Vanx’s comprehension.

  Vanx was glad to find that Moonsy and the Zythians were protected from the score or so of the bugs that buzzed around. Vanx saw that more of the strange things were taking flight every moment. He watched as one of the nasty red things was scorched to sizzling pop when it contacted the elf’s shielding.

  When they contacted the shield around he, Poops, Chelda and the others, they only bounced off.

  Gallarael wasn’t inside the protection, Vanx saw, and panic got a hold of him.

  “Gallarael!” he yelled. “Gal!”

  Out of sheer frustration, Vanx blasted the little flying bastards with the spell the Goss put in his mind. He felt the Goss inside him, getting some sort of satisfaction from the deaths of all the red glowing things, but he didn’t understand why.

  The ground shook violently then. It sounded as if the fabric of the world was being torn apart. Moonsy, the Zythians, and the whole barn-sized trunk of the jacaranda tree, disappeared from in front of him, and Poops nearly tumbled into the hole that was left behind.

  Chapter

  Thirty-Two

  As we sail across his sea,

  we honor Nepton’s rule.

  For if you cross old Nepton,

  his waves will swallow you.

  – A sailor’s song

  Moonsy and the Zythians had been circled about the tree when it moved from one place to the next. When it appeared at the lake shore, two of the Zythians ended up waist deep in the lake. One of them started wading to shore immediately. The other stood there a moment, taking in what they had just accomplished.

  There was a quick splash, and a long grey-green tail swirled out of the now crimson stained water where the Zythian had just been.

  Moonsy started out into the lake to try and look for him, but she stopped cold when another, larger splash resounded. This one sent a wave rolling back. It was powerful enough to wash her off her feet and into Vanx.

  Some of the Zythians sent streaks of flame up at the lake dragon. Their magic was hard to see in the bright daylight, and they caused more steam to form than damage. Then one of the older Zyths hit the creature with a magical fist, that caused another roar to fill their skulls, and rattle their teeth.

  Behind them, Vanx heard the trees rustling, and Gallarael’s feral, feline roar. It was feble in comparison. The lake dragon darted down at another of the Zythians, but Vanx had had enough. He cast the first spell that came to mind and was brought to his knees by the potency the tiny little spider inside him added to his casting.

  The whole valley dropped in temperature when Vanx’s spell unleashed. It took the water wyrm by total surprise. Not freezing the Zythian that the dragon was about to eat, was a hard thing, but Vanx managed it.

  Once the water wyrm’s exposed upper section, and part of the lake’s surface was frozen, it fell over sideways. Chelda sloshed out and pounded the wyrm’s neck and vitals with her heavy war hammer while the Zythian that had cast the fist of energy, helped her with his arcanery.

  Around them, the trees exploded with cries of shock and terror. Gallarael came bounding through, only to turn and make a stand amongst them. She’d led a whole mess of the ring tailed tree-coons right into the hornet’s nest, so-to speak.

  “There is no way to burn out all the webs, Master Malic,” one of the Zythians pleaded. Vanx knew he was right, and the Goss wanted them to go immediately to the unexplored section of the island, so Vanx made a decision. He cast his icy blast again, this time all around them, in a great arc.

  Several ring-tailed coons and more than a handful of the nasty little red spider-hornets fell from the air. Many a tree’s screams went quiet, as the sudden chill sent them into a merciful dormancy.

  “Get to the longboat, or go straight to the ship, whichever you can manage.” He looked to make sure Gallarael heard him.

  The way the venom caused huge, pus filled blisters to swell up on the tree-coons that were bitten, Vanx knew that they were injecting the same wicked stuff that had almost killed Zeezle, or something just as terrible. This part of the island was now little more than a swarm of angry flying spider-hornets and web wrapped trees.

  Once he, Poops, Ronzon, and Gallarael, ran to the longboat and Chelda was rowing them toward the ship, Vanx felt the Goss relax. It wanted back in its handle. Just to be rid of the sickly feeling it caused in him, Vanx would have gladly obliged it, but the Goss, as relieved as it was, was already directing Vanx where it wanted them to go.

  The Adventurer responded as soon as Ronzon cranked the anchor chain in. Moon
sy and the Zythians had teleported to the deck, and had the boarding nets and block and tackle ready to bring up the others and secure the longboat.

  “Leave the boat on a tether,” Vanx told them all. “It is time to see what the last part of this place holds. I’d wager there are plenty of those damn spider things in the trees where we are going, so ward yourselves, and each other, well.”

  They didn’t have to sail long. By the time Moonsy took the Glaive of Gladiolus around, and offered its healing power to them all, the ship was coasting to a stop around the southern tip of the island.

  Vanx looked at the map and sipped deeply from a flask of watered brandy. He didn’t want to be inebriated, but he thought he might need the extra courage the stuff might afford him for there was no telling where the Goss wanted him to go.

  In his head, he saw himself standing before something huge and powerful, and the fact that he couldn’t tell what it was only served to make the vision that much more intimidating.

  This section of the island was the smallest, at least as far as the magical barriers were concerned. In fact, this section was tiny compared to the other two. Still, it was large enough to sustain larger creatures. Some unexpectedly dangerous beast could be waiting as the Goss led he and his friends to it. And even from the sea they could see that there were plenty of the familiar looking webbings choking the trees in this area.

  “Go secure us a landing and we will come when it is clear,” Moonsy said, handing him back the ancient elven sword.

  “We will.” Vanx looked down and grasped her by the shoulders. “Take Poops below. He isn’t coming this time.”