by Kim Wedlock
She rose and shuffled emptily and obediently along beside him. He was pleased to see that attack hadn't yet crossed her mind. No change at all passed through her vague and subdued eyes. But while he'd initially been relieved, the reason revealed itself the moment they stepped into the trees. It was not some kind of sudden progress against the magic that battled so relentlessly down upon her, nor was it as hopeful as the naive conclusion of an isolated incident. In fact, it offered no insight at all.
Almost as soon as the shrine vanished from their reach, his lungs burned with the flood of dry heat and for a long, desperate moment breath itself eluded him. Even before the shock passed, he knew that magic was to blame. Another affectation thundered around them, one thick with an unnatural deathliness and stifling heat.
Two tainted areas; two gatherings of magic overlapping one another. This was a special forest indeed.
A forest whose canopy now grew starkly thinner with every step, and whose colour in the rush of light diminished.
Ash drifted through the air as listlessly as dust beneath a cellar's lamp; grass and weeds were indistinguishable from the roots, which themselves were as charred and brittle as the trunks and bare branches. And at the centre of the grey, scorched clearing, untouched but for a coat of soot, a stone pavilion, solemn, lonely and haunting. And so very silent.
While Rathen dashed ahead and stumbled blindly up its steps, the rest slowed restlessly. But there was nothing to be said. Garon shortly resumed his watch, Petra a moment later, Aria returned to her father, and Eyila remained in Anthis's care. And Anthis stared up at the pavilion while desperate argument filled his mind.
He chose his side. Taking Eyila first by the hand, then correcting hurriedly to her wrist, he set off towards the structure. "Sorry about this," he told her quietly as she dragged along behind him, "but I have to know..."
The pair moved around the wide stone base in circles, his fingertips trailing across its surface through the ash of the burned-away vines and roots, searching for any tell-tale bumps or crevices, anything that broke the perfect monotony of its construction; any buttons or trips or poorly-blocked alcoves. But he found nothing. Nothing to suggest at any hidden chambers. No doors. No locks. There was nothing there at all.
He circled eight times before that understanding finally began to dawn.
With a confused and beaten grunt, he stepped back and cast his eyes over the sides of the platform, up along the columns, their top arches and the sunshade they wove themselves into. Eyila sank to sit quietly upon the ground beside him.
He shook his head in bewilderment. "How can there be nothing...?" His eyes flicked quickly up towards Aria, but she didn't appear to have found anything to take her interest from guarding her father. "I don't understand...but...I suppose...it's not impossible..." Brow knotted, his hand slipped absently into his satchel and fingers immediately closed around the key. It was cold to the touch, and he could feel the etchings of long, intricate grooves as elegant as the brushwork on the Zi'veyn. But they didn't match the relic.
Even as he drew it into the reach of the sunlight, he knew there was no lock in this place that it would. He'd come to the conclusion that it was too big for a box, and too grand for a thing - especially if that 'thing' wasn't the Zi'veyn itself. No, it was to a door, one equally as elaborate, and if the key was contained with details of the Zi'veyn and locked away in a place like this, then perhaps it could be near that first site, or there could be yet more information to be found, scattered about the wilderness, needless but no less fascinating details about the relic's creation. Or maybe it concealed something else of equal power and importance, something that could help them even further - perhaps even complete Rathen's new task of removing the magic for him.
But...where was this door?
He found himself staring off to the side in thought, and jumped when his eyes refocused and met the gaze of another pair of apple-flesh eyes. He quickly found two more secreted in the trees, just as impassive as the last. He looked quickly towards Petra. Her sword was drawn. She'd seen them. And wherever Garon was, he'd no doubt spotted them, too. An assumption confirmed when he appeared a moment later, wearing the same ready expression despite his apparently calm and steady demeanour.
He pulled Eyila to her feet with apology and retreated closer towards them, tripping over a root as he went. He cast it only a cursory glare, but in that instant he couldn't help but notice how straight it was. And charred. In the middle of the clearing, it should have been burned to dust with all the rest. And it shouldn't have moved so easily.
A thought slipped in, an awful thought he couldn't overcome.
Gingerly, reluctantly, against all reason, he nudged the root with the tip of his foot, disturbing the dust that had concealed it. His lips immediately clamped to lock back his dread. A bone. He looked towards Garon and found the inquisitor looking back at him, shaking his head for silence. Something in his eyes told him he'd already made the discovery.
They waited together without even a whistle of a breath for what felt like an eternity under the inhuman green stares, watching for movement, disappearances or arrivals, and for the coming of any other forest denizen that should be unconcerned by their audiences' presence. Finally, a sigh of relief drifted from behind, accompanied by the clatter of metal on stone and a shaken little voice trying to be brave. The grievous sense of death lifted from their hearts, leaving only caution and unrest.
Garon glanced back to the pavilion. Rathen had dropped to his knee, and Aria was already helping him back up. Anthis, on the other hand, looked to Eyila when he felt her hand begin to move, and kept her wrist held tightly in his. "It's all right," he whispered, looking around rather doubtfully himself, noting the gathering of yet more eyes, "it's all--"
The sudden drop of his feet sent his heart into his throat; nothing broke the silence but a single shrill and terrified scream.
Like a trap door, the ground had snapped open directly beneath them and pitched them all into a sudden black and yawning abyss. None were spared; Aria's shriek cast above them as she and her father were thrown from the pavilion and into the chasm along with them. But their descent was short. Roots snared out from the perfectly straight walls of soil and caught them roughly as they plummeted, snatching them back and pinning them safely to the earth. But their relief was stunted. The Zi'veyn tumbled past, falling as though it was nothing more than a dislodged rock. Nothing reached out to catch it. It was shortly lost to the blackness.
Desperation turned onto the two mages, but Rathen was still struggling against exhaustion, and Eyila's furious eyes hadn't left the magic's grasp. It was quickly apparent that neither of them were responsible for the roots.
Dreadful understanding began to slip in and the roots' hold grew tighter, smothering and strangling them as they struggled, squeezing up the panic from the depths of their souls. Aria choked and sobbed.
Necessity finally forced Rathen's bearings back into place, but though he fought, his hands were bound too far and tightly to form any kind of sign, and while Eyila thrashed in a rage, she was in no state to even realise what had happened. Garon couldn't manoeuvre his sword, though who knew what he intended to do once he'd cut himself free, and Anthis similarly couldn't get to either dagger. In their frenzy, it took a while for anyone to notice that Petra had fallen still.
"Petra?" She didn't stir. "Petra!" But though Garon yelled her name, Eyila bellowed senselessly and Anthis prodded her none too lightly with his foot, she still didn't wake. Blood soon trickled down her neck and collar bone. Her sword arm was also clearly broken.
Garon hissed a string of curses, and his struggle for his sword began anew.
"Give up, Garon," Rathen snapped. "You'll cut yourself free and fall to your death."
"And you propose we wait here until we're crushed or starved?!"
"No," he growled, "I propose we just wait. Do you think these roots just decided to catch us all on their own? This is wild magic. Something saved us."
> "Or trapped us."
"Rathen's right," Anthis interjected. "Whatever the motive, something caught us. And it looks like we have no option but to wait and discover what."
Garon huffed in disagreement and continued his thrashing while the others rolled their eyes, but his struggle faltered moments later. His eyes came to rest vigilantly upon Petra instead, where he watched the sluggish trail of blood travel across her chest and its slow, faint rise and fall.
"What about Eyila?" Anthis asked worriedly between attempts to soothe her.
"She'll wear herself out. She's as bound as we are, she can't do any harm."
"What about to herself?" But he already knew the answer, and no one cared to voice it.
Rathen's grimace melted at the peep of the small, dismayed voice beside him. He turned and smiled as well as he could despite the small but sharp sting that burned in his cheek. But Aria's expression grew even more distressed as her eyes fell precisely upon that spot, and he knew immediately that the cut across his face was bleeding. "It's all right," he promised. "We'll be okay."
"There's nothing you can do, is there?" She choked. His heart grew even heavier at the fresh spring of tears in her eyes. With the deepest shame he'd ever experienced, with the greatest defeat, helplessness and impotence, he could only shake his head. "I'm scared, Daddy." Her tears fell, and his heart broke. "What's gonna happen to us?"
"I don't know, little one. But we will be okay. We were caught for a reason. As soon as whoever it is comes to get us out of here, we'll escape."
"How?"
"With magic."
"B-but you're not supposed to use it."
"If I have to destroy this forest to save you, Aria, I will do it. No decree is going to stop me, even if it came from the gods themselves." He held her searching stare for a very long moment, and for the briefest instant, she seemed about to object. But her mouth closed. She sniffled and said nothing more, accepting his determination. Her tears soon dried. And then her attention fell onto Eyila, and she watched Anthis continue trying to soothe her fit in horror. Rathen told her to look away. She obeyed immediately.
Worms wriggled out from the soil, falling over the binding roots and tumbling clumsily into the depths. Spiders proceeded with far more grace, skittering over shoulders and provoking distorted sounds of disgust, and earwigs writhed and twisted their way from one compact tunnel entrance to another. In the silence left behind when Eyila finally wore herself out, the brief appearance of a badger on the far side of the chasm denoted the interruption of a burrow system, and the hesitation of deer on the edge a disruption in a foraging route. But still nothing capable of trapping them - or freeing them - arrived.
As shadows lengthened and the sun began its descent to the horizon, Petra finally roused. Garon's eyes had barely left her. "Petra, listen to me," he said firmly as her eyes fluttered open, "you mustn't move. You've been hurt, but--" Her eyes flashed wide and panic set her into an immediate struggle against the snares, but even as Garon cursed and commanded her to still, she ceased almost as quickly with an agonised howl. She looked immediately to her arm, trapped against her body and bent into an awkward angle, swollen, bruised purple, and with one more kink than it should have had.
"What happened?" She demanded with a voice edge in fear, noticing briefly the trail of blood across her chest as her heart thumped harder, and looked up and around at their situation.
"We don't know. The magic left, then the ground opened, and then these roots caught us."
She wriggled her shoulders in an attempt to loosen the roots for breathing room, but there was no give at all, and she found that the rest of her body had gone numb beneath the restriction. "I take it we can't get out?"
"Not yet."
"Not yet? Then you have a plan?"
Garon snorted, earning a scowl from the mage. "More or less," Rathen replied. "We don't have much choice but to wait right now."
"No," she struggled carefully again, "we don't... How long have we been here?"
"Stop moving. About an hour."
Petra peered past Anthis and around to Eyila. She was staring down into the blackness with only a shadow of awareness in her barely waking eyes. She knew something was wrong, but working it out was beyond her. She frowned in concern, but said nothing. The magic had only been silenced; it was still here, and she was still struggling out of its grasp.
Her eyes lifted absently back towards the ground above them, and her furrow deepened with a thought. "The trees. If the spells were broken, shouldn't they have been restored?"
"Nothing but the atmosphere changed when the magic faded," Rathen informed her defensively, "but the Zi'veyn did work."
"The Zi'veyn..."
She looked around nervously at Anthis's crestfallen tone. "What? What is it?"
No one wanted to say it. Garon was the first to steel himself, after which everyone stared solemnly into the darkness below. No one had the stomach to ask what they were going to do next.
Dusk was falling when a magical presence finally invaded Rathen's senses. Carefully, he nudged Aria awake, who had fallen asleep in exhaustion and worry, hushed her and gestured towards the surface with a nod of his head. Her eyes widened in immediate understanding.
He then looked down the line to the others and spoke barely above a breath. "Ready?"
Garon and Anthis each nodded, while Petra looked back indignantly. "Don't make me sit this out."
"Just guard Eyila and Aria. Don't do anything you don't have to."
"My left arm is just fine, Garon."
"Even so, we don't know what else you suffered. I'd rather you didn't injure yourself further."
"You?"
"We."
"Shh..." Rathen listened more closely. Footsteps, soft and easy, approached from above. "They're coming..."
Wrists flexed, hearts raced, hearing sharpened. Seconds, at first racing, stood still. The footsteps stopped. No one moved to look up.
The roots that coiled around their chests suddenly came to life, tightening and lifting them away from the dirt, suspending them over the endless chasm where, for a heart-stopping moment, terror chased away their voices and they stared paralysed at what they were certain was their doom. But Rathen had been correct. While their hearts thundered like the hooves of a thousand horses, the chasm rushed away from beneath their dangling feet and ash-smothered ground drove in to replace it.
Among relief, two points of colour immediately stood out, neutral browns, greens and white, bleak but evident. Had grey wastes not surrounded them for fifty feet, the two figures would have certainly been mistaken for part of the landscape. But, as things were, they were exposed, and their six hostages patient and prepared.
The roots uncoiled and tossed them carelessly to the ground. They wasted no time in executing their intentions.
Rathen rolled immediately onto his back while Garon and Anthis each leapt to their feet, the latter with much less grace, and Petra, despite her inflamed injury, quickly gathered Aria and Eyila behind her, sword ready in her left hand. Rathen's fingers twisted and contorted with practised ease, releasing in a fraction of a moment a spell to stun their two advancing captors. Garon was already surging forwards to disarm them, while Anthis darted off to the side to search for anything hiding in the bushes. It was executed perfectly.
Until the three of them hit the ground.
Eyes glazed, they staggered and dropped to their knees, blades and spells rapidly forgotten as their hands rose to grasp their heads as if to stop them from spinning. In that moment, Petra, too, found herself unable to rush to their rescue, and though Aria had drawn her wooden sword, she didn't use it. Neither of them were able to shout despite their vehement attempts. It seemed that whatever had dazed the others had nullified them, too. Instead they felt only the helpless flood of dread.
The two figures, clad as part of the forest, continued towards them unerringly. They paused for only a moment beside the dulled inquisitor, from whom they took the sword without re
sistance, then Anthis, whose dagger had already been dropped. Rathen, they didn't approach, but Petra saw yet more roots sprout from the ground, wrap about his wrists and pull them apart, dragging him face-down to the ash.
Then they made for her.
Panic rose in her throat. Her fingers tightened desperately about the hilt, and while she tried to reassure the deathly-silent child, her own voice still wouldn't co-operate. Instead she focused all the strength she had into her grip and dropped her gaze to the ground in concentration, aware all the while of the nearing of the mottled, brown feet.
Those feet came to a stop before her. Still Aria didn't peep. And despite all of her effort, her sword was taken from her hand as easily as had she been asleep.
Petra turned up a scornful gaze. She locked with the apple-flesh eyes. The eyes that observed. That were empty of anything human. Empty of anything at all civilised.
Chapter 32
Three more figures emerged from the thriving forest as a frightful strength hauled Petra to her feet, and a sharp push to her shoulder gave the wordless command to march. Able at last to put one foot in front of the other, Aria made an impulsive dash for her father's side. Despite Petra's successful cry for her to stay, their captors permitted it - but not for Rathen to embrace her. All he could do while he was dragged to his feet and his wrists were wrenched apart was repeat his weak and failing promise that they would all be all right, and march on with a breaking heart while she clung desperately to his side. They were led sullenly away into the forest, and the ground rumbled closed behind them.
"What happened?" Anthis dared to whisper some minutes later while his eyes scoured the trees for traces of more wild adversaries.
"They reversed the spell," Rathen growled.
"Oh. Wonderful."
"Sarcasm doesn't help."
"If you would just be quiet," Garon snapped, "perhaps I could think."
While the inquisitor thought, Rathen turned his attention onto their captors. Vakehn, forest guardians - the eyes were unmistakable. But their form was chillingly human. A form they'd chosen on purpose for this encounter rather than any number of others - but why? Had they sought to intimidate, a bear would have been a wiser choice. So what did they have in mind? Empathy? Did they intend to negotiate for their release? Or was it simply for the ease of walking upright and opposable thumbs? It would be no trouble to change that the moment it was no longer convenient and devour or dismember them at their den.
