by JA Andrews
It smelled like the books of the Shade Seekers. Those had more power, more whispering secrets, more lurking shadows.
When he had first read books in Sidion, the difference had struck him, and although a part of him had been wary, the larger part reached for it. He had been tired of the dryness of the Keepers’ books, had needed the power and life he could feel in the Shade Seekers’ writing.
Life. Alaric shook his head. No, it hadn’t been life that he had found there.
Alaric turned back to the first page. Kordan’s handwriting covered the page.
This valley is perfect. It is not as large as the Stronghold’s, but it will hold what I need. I didn’t stay to ask the Shield what he thought. I knew what they would think once they read the work. I have no place among them. But I will do what I can to redeem myself. Here, in this valley, I will create a new Stronghold. A place of learning and peace and—
Alaric closed the book and dropped it into his pocket. He looked around the rest of the room, feeling the echoes of Kordan’s attempted new life. Now that he was here, now that he could see the tower and stand inside it, the place was a disappointment. Just a poorly made building dressed in the trappings of a Keeper.
And the Wellstone wasn’t here. With a final look at all of Kordan’s scrolls, Alaric climbed back over the broken wall and out of the room. He joined the others, who were waiting for him by the tunnel. Not waiting for them and not returning any of their sympathetic glances, he walked out of the valley.
Alaric climbed back over the wall and set out back down the ravine on Beast, urging the horse on as quickly as he could. He was pushed forward by the image of Gustav emptying the Wellstone of Kordan’s memories. The others followed him quickly until they reached the road and turned south toward the Greenwood.
Alaric didn’t feel hopeful that they’d reach Mallon’s body before Gustav. The wizard was ahead of them at every turn. But maybe the Elder Grove would keep him out somehow. Maybe it wouldn’t let Gustav take the body away.
It grew dark quickly. After Alaric had cast out to make sure there was no one in the area, the group made camp off the side of the road.
The campsite was subdued. Ayda was unusually quiet, while Douglon kept catching himself talking about the trees around them, then clamping his mouth shut and glaring at Ayda. Sitting near the fire, Alaric pulled out Kordan’s journal and flipped through the first few entries.
Kordan had begun to build his tower, but had soon been distracted by other things. He had become increasingly obsessed with the idea of stopping death. He found wounded animals in the forest and brought them back to his valley to try to save them.
The more Alaric read, the more of Sidion he could smell in the words. Kordan had healed the foot of a small mouse, but the effort had almost exhausted him. He had poured out some of his own blood to do it and leached the power from that. The mouse had run off, but Kordan had been in bed for days.
Alaric’s heart quickened. Was this the answer to Evangeline? Could Alaric sacrifice some of his own life for hers?
Alaric read of Kordan’s elation after this success. He had stumbled onto the knowledge that, besides the spark of life that his magic could give, to really heal something, it required pulling that life from something else. He began with plants and tried to draw life from them to reanimate small bugs, but the plants provided barely any power. Alaric could believe that. The energy from the largest tree didn’t compare to that of even a small animal.
Then one day, Kordan had found two wounded beetles. He sacrificed the one to save the other. It almost worked. Almost, but not quite. The bug was partially healed, but it died the next morning.
He found another beetle and caught a large, healthy spider. The beetle wasn’t injured, so Kordan, unhappily, injured it, then killed the spider to save it.
Alaric reread the paragraph. Kordan’s reluctance to hurt the beetle was plain, but he showed no qualms at all about killing the spider.
It succeeded and the subsequent experiments grew. Soon, Kordan was healing larger animals.
The lamb has walked away! It seems fine, and yesterday, when I found it, it was almost dead. A leg had been broken and there was a terrible wound in its neck.
As I watched it prance away this morning, I felt so much joy. That tiny creature, which would have died if left alone, will now grow and live.
But then I returned to the room and saw the body of the pig.
It was old, so I don’t know why it gave me pause, but it did. When I entered the room, its vacant eyes were facing me, and for a moment, they looked reproachful.
I think I must need company if I’m feeling judgment from a dead pig. A dead pig that I would have barely thought about if I were killing it to fill my table.
I have thought about using its meat. Since I drained the blood for the magic, there’s really no reason not to, but I find that I can’t. He wasn’t sacrificed for that.
I know that doesn’t make sense. I even went to get the cleaver, but when I got back, there were the eyes again. I swear they were blaming me. Blaming me for counting the lamb’s life as more important than his.
But that is what we do all the time, right? We kill animals to feed ourselves. We judge which animals are worth money and which are pests. We rank the value of lives all the time.
I’m just doing the same.
Alaric flipped ahead in the book until an underlined phrase stopped him.
The magic bleeds away some of the life.
During the spell, the magic itself bleeds away some of the power from the life that is being sacrificed. I can feel it. It’s as though there is another force in the room. A force directing it all and taking its share of the power.
I have tried everything I can think of to stop the bleed. I have created runes to hold the power before using it. I have put the most protective spells I know around the two creatures to keep the energy between only them. But nothing works. No matter what I do, some of the power is lost.
And the greater the sacrifice, the greater the loss.
For the lamb, a larger animal worked. But for the horse last week, the large cow was not enough. He lived, but in great pain. In the end, it took an entire second cow.
I find that the Shade Seekers know this. I have visited with them and seen the creatures they have made. To make their monsters, they take a man, almost kill him, then revive him through the death of some creature. Every time they try to impart life, the source they use is… diluted before it creates the new thing. If you take a person and save him with a bear, you don’t get a full human. You get a half-breed that is not as strong as a bear but still bear-like, with some remnant of human intelligence. But it is not the sum of the two. It is much less. This, of course, makes them easier to control.
This concept is essential to their work: The sacrifice exceeds the reward.
Kordan had studied with the Shade Seekers? Alaric felt his discomfort growing. Kordan was more like him than he had thought. The matter-of-fact way he had spoken of the Shade Seekers mirrored Alaric’s own thoughts when he had first encountered their writings. Mirrored some of his thoughts still today. Yet reading Kordan’s words made him shudder. Why exactly was that? Why was it harder to justify for Kordan than for himself?
Which makes me wonder, what would it take to heal a human? If a human body were close to death, what would need to be sacrificed to save it?
Alaric’s breath caught.
What is greater than a person? It’s not so much size as…vitality. Some undefined quantity of life. A large animal wouldn’t work. I don’t even have to try it. The vitality of the animal just isn’t enough. But what would be?
I’ve thought long about this, and I think there are only two answers. The first is some sort of powerful, magical beast. Somehow, I think it would need to be intelligent also.
If one could catch a dragon, well, there’s a chance that would work.
Alaric looked up from his book.
Gustav had a dragon. Gustav c
ould raise Mallon by sacrificing the dragon.
The other answer is more difficult to accept. I believe the sacrifice of more than one person would do it. For instance, the death of two adults, I believe, could save a child from the brink of death.
Alaric drew back as he continued to read Kordan’s detached calculations on exactly how many humans would need to be killed to save another.
A Keeper, however, being more than human and having magical qualities, would certainly be worth more than a normal human. Perhaps even enough to save one. But I don’t think killing off Keepers in order to save common folk is the answer.
The sacrifice exceeds the reward. But by how much? Perhaps the Shade Seekers know.
Alaric closed the book and let it fall to the ground. Kordan didn’t hold answers to his problem with Evangeline. Kordan played with death and life like a child, with no care for the value of either.
Alaric closed his eyes and remembered Kordan’s tower. He thought of the smaller stones, the unfinished walls, the attempt to imitate the Stronghold, and the lack of goodness that had been there. When he walked into the valley of the real Stronghold, there was goodness and hope and a desire to battle the darkness, even though it would never stop coming.
But here, in Kordan’s work, he found a man who was fiddling with the edges of that darkness. Trying to pull tendrils out into the light and failing to notice how much darkness came with it.
Chapter Forty-Three
“Could Gustav really use the dragon to wake Mallon?” Brandson asked Alaric the next morning. “I mean, having a dragon obey you is one thing. Maybe you can get the dragon to like you or something. But how do you get a dragon to sacrifice itself for you? Or stay still long enough to sacrifice it yourself?”
“I don’t know,” Alaric agreed. “The instances I’ve read of in which someone was paired with a dragon, it was more of an agreement between the two, not the person controlling the dragon. And those situations rarely end well for the person.”
“I keep hoping that Gustav will annoy the dragon as much as he annoys everyone else, and that Anguine will take care of our problem for us,” Douglon said.
“But it’s possible to control it,” Milly pointed out. When everyone looked at her she went on. “Ayda did it. Ayda got it to do exactly what she wanted.”
Ayda shook her head. “When I touched its nose, I encouraged it to like me. We became friends. I asked it not to hurt us and to leave the valley, it agreed. But not hurting each other is the sort of thing friends do. I didn’t ask it to kill itself.”
“Would it have?” Milly asked.
Ayda looked off into the sky for a long moment. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine asking it to.”
“Do you think Gustav could?”
Ayda looked at Alaric.
Alaric shrugged. “I’d say Gustav’s using a form of influence on the dragon to get it to follow him. But I can’t imagine the extent of influence you would need to use to have a creature like a dragon submit to being killed.”
“Maybe he’ll poison it or something,” Milly offered.
“Dragons eat rocks and dead things,” Brandson pointed out. “It’s got to be hard to find something that’s bad for their health.”
“And he’d need the dragon healthy before sacrificing it,” Alaric said. “The whole point would be to sacrifice a strong, powerful life to provide power for the Rivor.”
Milly sighed. “Doesn’t it seem like Gustav should be easier to figure out than all this?”
Everyone nodded.
“He probably doesn’t know himself how he’s going to kill that dragon.” Douglon smiled wickedly. “I hope he’s terrified about it.”
Ayda grinned. “And he and the dragon will be communicating by thought, which means that if the wizard tries to think about the problem, Anguine will know it.”
“Still,” Alaric pointed out, “Gustav has everything he needs but the body, and he’s moving much faster than we are.” He glanced at Ayda. “Do you think it will take him long to find the Elder Grove on Anguine?”
Ayda’s smile disappeared and her eyes turned instantly to steel. “I can get us to the Elder Grove by this evening.”
She climbed on her horse and, neglecting the path, headed straight into the woods.
They followed Ayda through the trees at a brisk rate. Even though there was never a proper trail, the forest itself seemed to be obliging her as she drove a straight line toward the Elder Grove. There were never obstacles, there were convenient streams whenever they needed water, and the trees themselves seemed to lean a bit to clear a path through the woods.
Around lunchtime, Milly came down the line handing out pieces of bread and cheese.
“I didn’t ask her if she wanted to stop for lunch,” Milly said apologetically to Alaric.
The Keeper shook his head. “Don’t blame you.”
Ayda had sat straight in her saddle all morning. It was probably good that he couldn’t see the expression on her face.
They reached a wide, slow-moving river by mid-afternoon. Alaric realized it must be the Sang River, the northern boundary of the Greenwood. They had come farther than he had thought.
Ayda didn’t slow, just walked her horse directly into the river. The water never even rose to her horse’s stomach, so the others followed her in.
When Alaric reached the other side, Ayda was frozen in her saddle, her head cocked slightly. The others huddled silently a short distance away from her. Ayda’s hair blew slightly in a breeze that Alaric couldn’t feel. She reached out slowly, hesitantly, and touched the nearest tree.
She began to breathe heavily. Then, terrifyingly, she darkened. Her hair, her skin against the tree trunk, the very air around her darkened. Beast and the other horses shied nervously. Alaric leaned forward to catch a glimpse of her face. It was drawn in fury. She closed her eyes for a moment, then her eyes flashed open. They burned a fiery red.
A cry ripped from the elf, and she spurred her horse forward, tearing into the woods.
Alaric tried to chase her, but drew up, having no idea where she had gone. The others piled up around him and looked around the woods.
“Where did she—” Milly began before she was cut off by a scream of rage.
The trees around them shuddered. The horses and riders all froze and looked in the direction of the sound. Alaric swallowed hard and pointed Beast toward it. He had to prod the animal twice before he would move.
Before long, he came to the edge of a clearing. Ayda was standing in a circle of destruction, her hands at her side and her head hanging forward. Her hair fell down around her face, covering it.
The ground was scarred with deep gashes of dragon claws between tufts of grass. A few flowers bravely stood amidst the destruction. Around Ayda, a ring of seven colossal trees lay torn down and flung outward. Their roots twisted up into the air like gnarled fingers grabbing at the sky.
The Elder Grove had been destroyed.
And there was no Mallon. Gustav had taken him already and was probably on his way back to Sidion by now.
Beast had taken a step into the clearing before drawing back under the trees. Alaric pulled him back a step farther. He dismounted, but kept a firm rein on Beast, who was nickering nervously.
“Oh no,” Milly breathed.
Ayda looked up at them, her eyes burning red. They all drew back an extra step.
Ayda walked slowly to each huge trunk and put her hand on it for a long moment.
“The dragon destroyed them,” Douglon said quietly, his eyes wide. “It ripped them up by the roots.” He looked warily at the trees around him. “They’re so angry.” He closed his eyes as though concentrating. “It was beautiful here.” He opened his eyes again and they glinted with wrath. “Gustav made the dragon rip them up by the roots.”
Ayda walked by each tree again, splintering off a piece of each. Stalking in a wide circle, she stabbed them into the ground, like an upright circle of miniature spears.
Stepping int
o the middle, she held her arms out and closed her eyes again. The ground began to rumble and the sticks swelled. Before Alaric understood that they were growing, the sticks were up to Ayda’s knees. Then her shoulders, then she was hidden from view by the hedge of trees that surrounded her.
But these trees weren’t like the fallen ones. The trees that lay on the ground were green and gentle. The new trees, which were now nearing the height of the rest of the forest, had a vicious look to them. Their leaves, a malevolent dark green, had serrated edges and between them shot out thick crimson thorns.
The trees expanded, digging up the earth with roots stretching out toward the edges of the grove. The horses tucked themselves farther back into the forest. When the trees reached a height well over that of the rest of the forest, they stopped.
“I’ve never been afraid of trees before,” Douglon said quietly.
Alaric craned to see between the trunks, hoping Ayda would come out. He certainly didn’t want to go in after her.
A moment later, the thorns nearest them parted and Ayda strode out. She walked toward Alaric, and he fought to keep Beast from bolting.
Everything about her was dark. Too dark for an elf.
Her eyes still burned red and her face was terrifying. Alaric stood his ground, but everything in him wanted to run. She walked right up to him until her face was inches from his chest. It was like looking down at a fire demon.
“Yes, it is too dark for an elf,” she said. “But I think it’s time you stopped expecting me to be an elf.”
She reached up and lifted the pouch at his neck gently with her fingers. Alaric’s gut clenched as she tapped it, causing the ruby to bounce against her fingers.
“After all, I’ve stopped expecting you to be a Keeper.” She let the pouch drop. And looked into his face again. “Take me to the wizard,” she hissed.
