Fissure Rock waited alone and forlorn at the peak of the little knoll. Camoe did not have to command his men to encircle it and keep a vigilant watch. Again, the thought flitted through his mind. They were good warriors and knew what to do.
Less than half a bell had passed when a soft rustle forewarned of Peers and Kerna’s arrival. Peers, the shorter of the two, carried his knives in many sheaths on both sides of his kell vest.
Kerna’s dark skin tone and shorn black hair helped hide her athletic body in the moonlight and shadows of the thick foliage. Carrying her longbow in one hand, a quiver of arrows peeked over her shoulder left bare by her uncustomary leaf dress. The flora dress surprised him until he recalled she studied under Lore Rayna and had gained the living dress only recently after bonding with the leaves.
Camoe kept his voice low. “From this point on, we travel with stealth, exercising deadly intent, considering anything moving as the enemy. If we cannot move beyond them spotting us, we dispatch them. Kerna, with her night sight, shall scout for us first. We make for the enemy’s rear camp with all haste. Does anyone have questions?”
His answer came as a mark of their training; Peers melted into the foliage after his mate Kerna. Camoe had not brought them along due to their union but for their skills. He had selected only the best of his finest warriors for this journey, hoping they were enough yet fearing they were not.
Taking a last look around, he was nearly overwhelmed with sadness. Many of the great falun trees burned including the southern outpost, the oldest and grandest. He feared the wonderful trees would all soon have the same fate of the rest, crackling as they burned or lying broken and shattered from many concerted precise strikes of Dark Flow.
The once clear and flowing Serenity Stream moved sluggishly in the moonlight, fouled by the dead and muddied by the tramp of many feet. Camoe suspected the enemy had performed some vile deed to the Silver Pools under the Misty Veil waterfall, the precious life-giving water that flowed from the heights above the Vale.
At least Kara, or worse, Maialene, was not around to view the destruction; she would not have had the strength to bear it, not his daughter. Maialene was, and always would be, a daughter of the Vale. As for Kara, he had no idea what her feelings were now. Her departure so many seasons after he returned Maialene to the one root of the Vibrant Vale still ached.
Camoe’s sadness deepened as he slipped into a patch of the few remaining greenery left on the outskirts of his beloved Vale, but he had no time for it. Someone else he cared for was in danger. This time he would ensure a better outcome than Maialene.
Taking longer than he expected, even going by only the light of the moon, he finally spotted Kerna standing motionless at the edge of the small clearing the animal trail led through, her living dress obscuring her form well beside a sapling falun tree. Peers stood a little beyond his life mate, the shadowy, too-straight lines of his swords crisscrossing at his back giving him away.
Without slowing, Camoe signaled for speed with a soft redbird call as he moved their direction. Breaking into an easy jog, Kerna’s long legs put distance between her and Peers as he burst into an easy run behind her. They slipped along the shadowy path making no sound.
Camoe did not glance behind. His warriors covering the back trail would keep up.
They ran, staying with the animal path until it veered too close to the enemy. Then, swinging north, his silent group wove among a shadowed grove of evergreen pines. Skirting the thickest patches of dark deadfall, they soon headed south and slowed. The rear command of the enemy was not far.
Peers and Kerna waited prone and motionless behind a rock outcropping. Dropping with a practiced ease to his belly, Camoe crawled the last three man-lengths to where they waited. Raising his head with care, he gazed at the enemy’s layout.
Below, nestled beside Serenity Stream, dark canvassed pavilions glowed from candlelight within, and fire pits dug in common areas provided flickering light outside. Armored soldiers grouped around the pits, and robed Dark Users clustered away from them. Every band avoided three larger, guard-patrolled tents centered at the rear.
Camoe had seen enough.
He backed away from the edge, his two scouts slipping soundlessly with him. At the trail, he looked at each of his five best warriors. They were so much more than just his elite team. Each were family. They were with him through his dark times, after Maialene. Things were about to get dark again.
How could he ask what he must of them when he suspected most, if not all, would not survive?
How could he not ask?
They were the best, and Jade needed them. Camoe knew how to ensure they would volunteer. Though he may not need to, he would anyway. “From this point forward, the danger will grow higher than any of you have experienced. I cannot ask you to go on this rescue with me, nor shall I command it. Make your way to the Lore Mother at the Southern Rim. Tell her to keep moving without me.” Camoe hated his subterfuge as soon as the words left his mouth.
“Hold on,” Peers said. “I cannot speak for everyone, yet Kerna and I are with you. Elevated danger or no, our place is with you.”
Kerna nodded vigorously, her clipped black hair hardly moving in the moonlight. “My life heart has the way of it.”
Long Draught, the largest of them all, grabbed Camoe by the shoulder and gave him a gentle squeeze for all his size. “You have but to lead my friend. I will follow.”
Girth chuckled softly with little mirth. “When is the danger not great around you? You draw it to you like shadow hiding from the sun. This is why I follow. Things never get dull. I go with you.” He folded his arms at his chest. For all his width, Girth was nearly as strong and as fierce a warrior as Long Draught. Camoe would gladly have him along.
They all looked to the last member of the group, Tarn—another druid of the order of the Green Writhe though much younger—who seemed resigned by his slumped posture. “I suppose what we are after is down there inside the enemy’s camp?”
“She is down there.”
“So there is a human life involved?” Tarn asked.
Camoe nodded slowly. “Yes, there is someone important to our entire existence and very dear to me.”
Tarn grinned. “Then how could I ever refuse such a worthy adventure? Lead on, my friend, the moon will not shine as bright this point on.”
Camoe led. Hoping to circle around and move stealthily into the camp of the enemy, he would infiltrate the two larger tents from the open ground at the rear, cloaked in the shadows of the moon’s twilight. The plan was a hasty one, and tasted sour in his mouth from working on his friends’ nobility.
Flowing through the forest with only the faint whisper of a passing breeze, he put the matter from his mind. Warriors were what he required to get this job done, not friends. The fate of Astura may depend upon it.
SOMETHING BIG IS COMING
The ground shook. The leaves on the thick, green foliage trembled darkly in the moonlight. Even the knots on the trunk the Valens had coaxed the great falun tree to grow, which Crystalyn now gripped, shuddered faintly. A dull boom in the distance heralded another approaching tremor, two counts sooner than the last. “What shakes us, Do’brieni?”
Broth’s response was immediate but laced with uncertainty. “The enemy has made way for something to pass through from the rear, a tower moving on its own power.”
Though her link mate’s thoughts raised her anxiety, Crystalyn tried to remain calm. “Everyone prepare, something big is coming,” she said aloud, wondering what it was. Something moving about the land large enough to disturb the earth a great falun tree had sunk its roots deep into was a cause for concern, but she didn’t want to frighten the others. Least of all Jade.
Three and a half meters from the bottom, the tree provided an extra-wide knot, enough for both feet. She paused and looked around while there was still some natural light. A group of Valens and warriors squatted below, eyeing the meadow. Crystalyn looked, bu
t she couldn’t make out much beyond indistinct shapes.
Another ripple quaked past, stronger this time. Her fingers were tired from gripping the knots worn smooth from much bigger hands than hers, but her legs needed a short rest. Some of the stretches to the next knot were long, almost longer than she was capable of, but she’d done it on the climb up, so she knew it was possible.
Hastel and Atoi stood vigil at the tree’s huge base as Broth had assured her. Surrounding her friends, other Valens stood guard beside dozens of druids; all faced outward, weapons readied. “Have you found many others yet, Broth? There’s too few here, I want as many as I can get when we punch through.”
“I bring nearly the same amount that is already there. We are close. Know that most have wounds, some severe.”
“Well done, I wish we could look for stragglers, but the time has come to make our move as soon as you arrive.”
“I understand. Take note, the enemy attacks as we flee. Lives are lost. The tower is gaining ground on us.”
“Stay safe, my Do’brieni. I need my link mate with me.”
“I am coming.”
Crystalyn checked Jade’s progress. Leaning back precariously, she got a better view around a gentle inward swing of the giant tree. Jade hadn’t climbed down to there yet. If her sister didn’t hurry, she’d have trouble finding the handholds by the moon’s light. Not to mention, Jade would also face the danger of the top of the great tree burning.
Afraid to call too loudly with the Dark Users so close, Crystalyn climbed up to the inward bend, feeling each shudder vibrate through her fingers, and then sent her light symbol up underneath the small, wooden landing. Jade was nowhere in sight. Alarmed, Crystalyn called out, keeping her voice low. “Jade? What’s taking you so long? We have to keep moving.”
Her calls went unanswered. Poking her head through the landing, her alarm grew to fear. The landing was empty.
“Do’brieni!” she screamed into the link.
“I am here.”
“Jade is missing from the bottommost landing. I’m climbing higher .She may have went to help Lore Rayna.”
“Have a care; the flames are spreading at the top, you may have to move those at the base.”
“I know the bloody tree is coming apart, and something is coming. I can’t find—”
The Lore Mother dropped onto the landing from the ladder, and Lore Rayna climbed down after. Above them, the feet of a robed man came into view. Her face smudged with something black, likely soot, the Lore Mother reached for a knotty handhold. “Keep going down, Crystalyn. We have little time,” she said.
“I know. Where’s Jade?”
The Lore Mother hesitated. “Keep moving. We shall talk on the ground.”
Crystalyn frowned, her anger growing. “Did you not hear—”
Broth’s thoughts sent fear through her mind. “I have seen her, Do’brieni; your sibling has flown past! Oh, no, Do’brieni, I fear!”
“What do you mean flown? How can she fly?”
“A maimwright has her.”
Crystalyn hadn’t yet encountered a maimwright, but it didn’t sound good. “What is a maimwright?” she almost shouted at the Lore Mother. “One has Jade.”
The great tree shuddered. A loud crack boomed through the shadowy moonlight above. A branch with a platform still attached fell past.
“Hurry!” the Lore Mother roared.
With her thoughts as numb as her fingers had grown, Crystalyn coaxed her arms and legs downward, scrambling awkwardly for handholds and footholds. Finally, her feet touched the ground, and she backed away from the trunk as the ground shook again. The tree shuddered. Something big is coming, she thought dully, staring at the tree’s base, waiting for the Lore Mother. The Lore Mother was going to speak to her. The Lore Mother would clarify the situation.
Crystalyn’s mind lurched. Suddenly she was afraid, afraid for Jade. Oh, my Jade!
Climbing down barefooted, the Lore Mother strode past her. “You there, get everyone together, we have to get moving. The great flor’e’falun valiantly struggles to hold but has not long before the top of it collapses. We do not want to be near when that happens. The Mighty One wishes to wait and topple on the enemy, though the fires have weakened it beyond all hope of repair. I cannot say how long our beloved falun has left.” The Lore Mother spoke the last with tears flowing openly down her face
Crystalyn went to her, clutching her convulsively with a fierce hug. Pulling away, she asked again, her thoughts in turmoil. “What is a maimwright, where is my Jade? What do we do?”
The Lore Mother’s tearful face looked down upon her, her voice cracking with each word. “If a maimwright has her, it is bad. So bad, we shall likely never see her again. I am so sorry, my daughter.”
Crystalyn gaped. Fear lanced through her. She shut it out with a thought. I’m not ready to give up on my sister and neither should the Lore Mother no matter what she believes.
“I am coming, Do’brieni.”
“No!” Crystalyn shouted into the link and then calmed, sending feelings of iron control through the link. “Track where that thing takes my sister, then work your way to where I am. Do not let the enemy see you.”
“I shall do as my Do’brieni commands, though I cannot track it from the ground if it flies from sight.”
If her commands bothered Broth, nothing of it leaked into the link; only a fierce determination mixed with fear passed through. Not a fear for himself, but fear for Jade. Crystalyn quelled her stabbing fear again.
A giant burlap-textured foot and leg squashed a bush nearby. The ground shook. Sharp cracks of breaking wood rent the air as a great body, blazing with flame, grappled with the tree.
Durandas dropped from the trunk. “Run!” he roared.
Crystalyn ran.
STOIC I STAND
Garn found it hard to curb his excitement. After months guarding the Alchemist during his rise to great lord of the Dark Citadel, they had finally left the bloody confining fortress under the plateau behind. The forest they had gated into in the late evening had come as a welcome relief even though there was an armed force, the hooded man’s army, working hard at destroying it. Right away, he’d wanted to do something to stop it. Too many ancient trees were burning, some toppling in flames, and good people were dying.
He was one man and powerless to stop it. He hated the Alchemist, the hooded man, for it. Just another reason in a long line of reasons for him to destroy the man. If only he could find his daughters. Garn would not hesitate to kill the great lord then.
The camp was set up a short distance from the base of a magnificent waterfall that added humidity and mud to the sodden, formerly grassy area the army had trampled when claiming it as a command base.
Garn kept watch as the three of them strode around the inside perimeter of the camp without challenge. The hooded man and even Kara Laurel were well recognized. As for himself, he noted several lingering glances fell upon him, though no one, not even the couple of generals the Alchemist had accosted with his demands for the whereabouts of the high commander, dared ask for an explanation of his presence. The men in this camp were all seasoned and knew him for the bodyguard he was, though they would not know how much the role scathed him.
The Alchemist found the person he sought at the western side, the side the fighting waged the strongest, though the small table they halted at was set a few rows back from the men doing the killing or dying.
“There you are, General Liam,” the Alchemist said softly, yet his voice carried through the din of battle. His words jerked the horned helm of a big man around to face them. The fact that the hooded man had emphasized the man’s title had not been lost to Garn. The man must fancy himself above his station by referring to himself as high commander.
“Great Lord, it is not safe for you here at present. The enemy has rallied for a last, desperate magical assault. Please, withdraw with me behind my iron wall. The Vale people’s arrows or
magic cannot penetrate the Flow-resistant barrier I have the black robes maintaining, nor can their arrows harm the iron.” The raspy voice behind the helm bespoke a man leaving behind his middle seasons.
Garn eyed the battle, trying to look at everything, not just the huge magical creations, larger than any other dark creations—as most soldiers referred to the things—he had yet to lay eyes on. As he watched, a red robe sent a ball of flame flying into the chest of one. Most creations owed existence to the most adept Users for menial chores in the kitchen, stables, or sewers for the necessary chores no one else wanted. He supposed having one’s head and torso lit with fire and then directed to go hug a tree would constitute a task none wanted.
The rest of the battle was mainly small pockets of resistance from behind the bigger tree trunks. Magic Users flew flaming birds and shot arrows from bows amidst those within range as they marched into a main force on the left flank pushing them slowly back. Even as daylight waned, General Liam had the battle won. The opposing side had a few hours, at most.
The Alchemist gestured for the man to lead the way to the sphere, not once taking his golden hourglass eyes off the man. Garn joined them, catching sight of poorly concealed glares from soldiers and messengers as they strode or trotted past, going about the many endless tasks of warfare. The hooded man had garnered far-reaching hatred outside his own, for reasons Garn could only guess.
They strode behind several sheets of black iron forming a wall and partial roof supported with metal that glowed with a radiant blackness, the certain sign of a magical barrier of protection. Torches had already been lit, but no glimmer had been uncovered, such light was saved for a dark night and likely wouldn’t be used this night. A full moon was on the rise. Logs hewn into crude chairs surrounded benches, and a large stump of a tree used as a map table claimed most of the space behind the iron wall and half roof.
General Liam removed his helmet and gauntlets, setting them on a bench, and indicated everyone to sit where they would. His black hair was matted and moist with sweat, and his eyes—as dark and hard as agates—did not look like he was among allies.
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