by James Erich
She extended a hand to help him up and Koreh accepted it. “Sael is in danger!” he gasped, gingerly flexing his right shoulder and elbow. It felt as if something had tried to tear his arm from its socket.
The warrior said nothing. She merely bent to retrieve the staff Koreh had dropped.
“My tyeh-iinyeh is in danger!” Koreh tried again, hoping the word would be more meaningful to her.
She gave him a mildly offended look and held out the staff between the two of them. “Take this,” she said coolly.
Koreh was startled. “Will you let me stay, then?”
The warrior said nothing, but looked at him expectantly, until he reached out a tentative hand to touch the fighting staff. Instantly he felt a powerful force jolt his hand and then travel up his arm, through his shoulder, and on up through his neck until something seemed to explode inside his head. Koreh let go of the staff and clutched his head, crying out in pain. He collapsed to his knees and was unable to move while colorful patterns swirled and danced in his head.
Eventually they faded, leaving him panting and shaky. “What was that for?” he asked.
“It can take many months to become acclimated to a staff,” the Taaweh explained. “If you insist upon joining the fray, the process must be hurried along.” She looked annoyed with him, and Koreh suspected she wasn’t particularly sorry the process had been painful. She bent once more and picked up his staff.
This time Koreh was more reluctant to take it from her, but when he wrapped his hand around it, there was no jolt of magical energy. Instead the staff felt oddly warm in his grasp and comfortably familiar, as if he had been using this particular staff for years. Other than that, though, he was no clearer on how it was intended to be used.
“What am I supposed to do?” he asked.
The warrior replied, “You will know when you need to know. Now go and defend your tyeh-iinyeh, and return safely.”
With that, she whipped her cloak about herself and disappeared into the earth in a flutter of wind and loose plant matter.
Koreh looked about himself and discovered the motionless body of the rider he’d struck lying off to his right. A quick inspection revealed the man was indeed dead—either Koreh’s staff or the fall had broken the man’s neck. Koreh wasted no more time on him.
He gathered his own cloak to himself and, clutching the staff that he supposedly knew how to use, Koreh dropped into the earth.
HAD the Taaweh joined the fight? Sael was certain he’d ridden by someone wearing one of their black shadow robes, but he’d been too intent on escaping his pursuers to pay it much heed. Now it seemed one of the emperor’s horsemen had disappeared, perhaps stopped by the Taaweh. For a split second, seeing that black-garbed warrior, Sael had felt a surge of hope that it was Koreh. But really, that was the last thing Sael wanted. Koreh was no fighter, and this was no place for him.
Sael thought briefly of turning back on his pursuers, now that their number had been reduced, but three against one still seemed like daunting odds. Before he could talk himself into risking it, another Taaweh warrior sprang up out of the ground in front of him, brandishing a staff that shimmered with some kind of blue energy. Sael pulled on the reins to prevent his horse from running the man down. He flew past the Taaweh just as the man raised his staff as if preparing to strike.
This time Sael could see the face in the cowl, and to his horror he recognized it. It was Koreh!
Cursing, he pulled harder on the reins, forcing the horse to swing around to the left and circle back as he heard a loud thwack that reverberated eerily off the stone wall of the keep. A man cried out in pain, and Sael saw another of the horsemen fall from his horse with Koreh standing over him, pulling up his staff for another attack. The other two horsemen were prepared, however, and swiped at him with their broadswords as they bore down upon him. But to Sael’s relief, Koreh fell away from the deadly blades, disappearing once again into the ground.
Now there were just two of the horsemen left, and Sael had no intention of letting Koreh battle them on his own. He’d circled around to get behind them, and now he closed the gap, raising his sword to strike. With a loud bellow, he flew between them, cutting hard against the back of one rider’s neck. The man somehow managed to keep his head, but it did him little good, for his spine was severed from it. He toppled out of his saddle, dead before he struck the ground.
Koreh had appeared again—curse him!—in the path of the remaining horseman, even as Sael closed in on the man from his right. This was hardly a good position to strike from, since Sael would have to cut across his own body.
Suddenly the horse went down, bringing its rider with it. Neither Koreh nor Sael had had a chance to strike, and Koreh looked puzzled as Sael brought his panting horse to a halt and trotted up beside him.
The horse had fallen and rolled, crushing the rider underneath its bulk. The animal climbed back to its feet, miraculously unharmed, but the emperor’s man was screaming in agony. Sael hopped down from his own horse and held its reins in his hands as he approached the fallen rider.
He was young—really just a boy—and now his childlike face was contorted in pain, blood spraying from his mouth whenever he coughed. Most likely his ribs were crushed and one of his lungs had been punctured. His eyes looked up at the young dekan and Sael saw nothing there but fear. The boy knew he was dying, and he expected Sael to deliver the final blow.
It would be the merciful thing to do, Sael knew, though the thought sickened him. It was one thing to cut down an attacker and quite another to skewer a fallen man. But the alternative was to let him die a slow, painful death drowning in his own blood, out here alone. Sael went to draw his blade and was surprised to discover it was already in his hand. He’d forgotten to sheathe it.
“Wait,” Koreh said, stepping forward to kneel by the boy’s side.
“You can’t heal him,” Sael said. “He’s nearly dead already.”
But Koreh ignored him, setting his staff on the grass beside him and leaning over to place his hands on the boy’s chest. The boy watched him warily but was too weak now to resist. He simply lay there on the grass, watching with eyes that were already beginning to glaze over.
Sael turned away, not wanting to watch as life faded from those eyes completely. The three of them were alone, apart from Sael’s horse and the rider’s, which had wandered back to his master’s side and now stood a few yards off, watching the scene with uncertainty. A few yards back the way they’d come, Sael saw something jutting out of the ground, and he went to see what it was.
A tree root, sticking up out of the ground. Apparently this was what tripped the horse and sent it sprawling. One side of it had been gashed by the horse’s hoof, and the grass for several feet beyond was torn up by the fall. But what was truly odd was that the earth looked torn up around the root, as if it had just pushed its way up through the ground.
He heard the boy draw a ragged breath and returned to see what was happening. Had some of the color returned to his face, or was Sael imagining that? “Did you… heal him?” he asked Koreh.
Koreh sighed and stood, looking down at his patient with concern. “I can sense a little of what’s wrong in his body. A lot of broken bones and internal bleeding. I think I may have stopped the bleeding, but the bones are all in the wrong places. I can’t get them to join. I’ve done what I can to dull his pain.” Indeed, the boy appeared to have fallen asleep. Koreh went on, “But he won’t live, if we just leave him here. He needs more healing than I can give him.”
Sael growled in frustration. “He was trying to kill me!”
“I know.” Koreh looked him directly in the eye. “And now he’s your prisoner. Will you let him die? Or will you execute him?”
“I can’t do either now,” Sael complained. “Not if he has a chance of surviving. But in case you’ve forgotten, I’m supposed to be leading my troops in this battle. I have to get back to them!”
He neglected to mention the fact that “his” troops
were probably faring just as well without his fumbling attempts at leadership. Toren was far more competent on the field than Sael could ever hope to be. He went to his horse, set his foot in the stirrup, and hoisted himself back into the saddle. “What are you doing here, anyway? You weren’t supposed to be on the field.”
Koreh picked up his staff and approached him, his temper flaring. “I’m here because you needed me to save your hide again!”
Sael snorted. “I would have been fine. I was just leading them—”
His horse suddenly whinnied and danced in place as a large tree root ripped through the ground where the horse was standing. Sael and Koreh stopped bickering and stared openmouthed at the thing.
A moment later, another root tore through the grass a few yards away.
“What’s happening?” Sael asked, assuming Koreh would know if it was Taaweh magic.
But Koreh looked just as baffled and awestruck as he was. “I don’t know.”
There wasn’t time to argue. Sael turned his horse toward the battle and shouted over his shoulder. “Bring that kid to the healer’s tent and see if you can find someone to attend to him!”
With that, he dug in his heels and his horse shot out across the plain.
ORDERING me around as always, Koreh thought bitterly. But he realized Sael was right about the boy lying on the grass near him. If he wasn’t attended to soon, he would die. Enemy or not, he was helpless now, and Koreh couldn’t just abandon him.
Kneeling beside the boy, Koreh held onto his hand and dropped them both into the earth. He could feel the boy’s hand tense in his own at the frightening sensation of being suffocated, but a moment later, Koreh had found the healers’ tent and popped them up in the middle of it.
The tent was against the northern wall of the keep, guarded by a small number of soldiers. Not enough to fend off a full assault, but more than these few men could not be spared, and in this circumstance, they were there as much to prevent the healers—ömem and several female assistants from the city—from making a break for freedom. This was the first taste of daylight these women had had since the Taaweh removed their Sight and their ability to sense other ömem, and they were close to revolt by this point. But enough were loyal to the vek to aid in the battle, on the promise their needs would be addressed afterward. Those who refused to make the promise had been kept inside the keep.
Ideally the wounded would be brought inside the keep, where it was indisputably safer, but with the west gate closed there was no way in or out. The survival of the tent depended almost entirely upon the centuries-old tradition of respecting the sanctity of the ömem class—and fearing retaliation by the samöt. But the emperor had risked the vengeance of the samöt before, when he blinded Marik. Whether his army would leave the tent alone was therefore debatable, but so far the tradition had been upheld.
Koreh’s sudden appearance in the middle of the tent with the boy in tow caused quite a stir. Some of the ömem shrieked, and several guards rushed into the tent to see what had happened. In retrospect, he might have opted for a less spectacular entrance, but he’d been thinking only of getting the boy inside as quickly as possible.
“Halt!” one of the guards shouted while several of his companions brandished their weapons at Koreh. “Identify yourself!”
Koreh stood slowly and fought back a strong desire to give the man a flippant answer. But he knew it wouldn’t help the situation, and there were more important things to do right now than toy with the local guardsmen. “I was sent by the dekan. This man is seriously wounded and needs care.”
“You!” Koreh didn’t recognize the old woman advancing upon him, but she obviously had no love for him. “You’re the one who brought the darkness down upon us! You betrayed us to the dark ones and brought them into the city!”
“I’ve been sent by the dekan,” Koreh repeated tersely.
“Why aren’t you arresting him?” the old woman demanded of the guards. “You’re supposed to be protecting us!”
The guards appeared to be momentarily torn between what was apparently an order of the dekan’s and the ömem’s accusation. But when one took a step forward, Koreh decided he’d done his duty. The boy was in the healers’ tent. Hopefully the ömem would do their duty and care for him. But Koreh wasn’t going to stick around to see where the guards’ allegiances lay.
He gave them a little mock salute, then dropped down through the grass on the “floor” of the tent.
Koreh sensed Sael had rejoined the battle, so he homed in on him and practically sprung out of the ground just as Sael’s horse galloped by. Koreh turned to see where he was going, but had to duck as a sword swung at his head. He rolled to one side and then brought his staff up to strike at his attacker. The blunt head of the staff would probably have caused little damage as it struck the man’s armored chest plate were it not for the ripple of bluish flame that exploded out from the point of contact. The flame, or whatever it was, flew along the man’s limbs and caused him to convulse. Then he crumpled to the ground and lay still.
Koreh stood, but was instantly knocked to the ground again—this time by one of those odd tree roots that were beginning to spring up everywhere. He swore and rolled away, then sprang to his feet and ran in the direction he thought Sael had gone. Almost immediately he was forced to leap over another writhing tree root. He had no idea what was going on. It seemed likely this was something the Taaweh were doing, just as the clouds swirling above the valley were their work, but what its purpose was, he couldn’t say.
Then, as he watched in amazement, an entire tree exploded up through the grass off to his right, sending up a spray of dirt and plant debris as it stretched its leafless branches upward. A fireball hurtled by, blasting off the top branches and causing Koreh to dive into the grass to get out of the way. But that tree had no sooner been destroyed than another replaced it. More trees were starting to shoot up all around Koreh. He scrambled to his feet again and began running.
Chasing Sael led him directly into the heaviest fighting, and he was kept busy dodging sword blades and pikes and striking with his staff whenever he found an opening. At first it seemed as though all the warriors were too engrossed in combat to notice the rapid shifting of the landscape, but as more and more roots and trees sprang up across the plain, it became impossible for anyone to ignore. Koreh heard loud exclamations of surprise and invocations to the gods as the trees began to overtake the plain, their naked branches reaching up toward the blue maelstrom overhead. As the branches extended, buds formed and rapidly unfurled into leaves. For the first time in a thousand years, Harleh Plain was becoming a forest.
In the midst of all this, Koreh got glimpses of Taaweh warriors springing up like shadowy whirlwinds in the chaos, striking at the emperor’s men, and then disappearing so quickly it was hard to say if they’d been there at all. Probably most of the warriors they struck down never knew what hit them.
Then massive stones began to push their way upwards through the soil.
SAEL swiped at a man’s head, splintering the battered wooden shield the warrior raised in his defense. He was prevented from following this with a second blow when an enormous slab of gray-green stone suddenly rose up out of the ground like the arched back of a ghusat breaching the surface of a lake. The warrior tumbled one way while Sael’s horse was forced to scramble off in the other direction before the stone toppled it completely off balance.
The stone slid upward and leveled itself and two more slid up on either side of it. They slid neatly into place against the first stone like building blocks being stacked together. Sael did his best to bring his skittish horse under control while the frightened animal moved first one way and then another, trying to escape the stones and vegetation pushing up on all sides. Sael himself was beginning to grow frightened. If this continued, the rising stones might imprison him, or he and his horse might be skewered by a tree trunk shooting up from underneath them.
He saw an opening between two of the stones and s
purred his horse to gallop through. All around him, men were beginning to realize the enemy soldiers on the battlefield were no longer the greatest danger. Warriors began to flee the plain, scattering in all directions, many dropping their weapons and shields in their haste. Sael had no idea where would be the safest place to run—the entire plain was alive with moving plants and stones—but he saw no value in being separated from Harleh. He moved eastward, hoping his beleaguered horse wouldn’t collapse from exhaustion before they reached the walls.
And then what? Would the walls of Harleh fend off the advancing forest? Or would the keep be engulfed along with the rest of the plain?
Sael noticed something else as he rode—the emperor’s men were disappearing. In all the chaos, he would hardly have noticed, except that he saw one slip down into the ground directly ahead of him. It happened in an instant, but Sael had witnessed that particular phenomenon often enough by now to trust his perceptions. Then he caught another one out of the corner of his eye, the man stumbling over a jutting root and falling, but never impacting on the ground.
At the west gate, houses and shops were engulfed in flames, and the siege engines were still at work, one ramming the gate while the other backed off for another run, then alternating. The massive iron-reinforced gate had so far managed to hold, and the emperor’s warriors had suffered heavy losses at the hands of Harleh’s fire mages. Charred corpses littered the ground, while the men who remained staggered under the weight of the massive tree trunks. But the mages had expended most of their magical reserves fending off the battering rams, and the archers were largely ineffective against the thick hides, so Harleh’s infantry had moved in. The emperor’s infantry had moved in as well, swordsmen defending those operating the battering rams, so now there was heavy fighting going on there. Both the vek and General Meik could be seen weaving in and out of the throng on horseback, cutting a swath through the enemy with their swords. But there was no sign of trees or stones erupting from the earth. Not yet.
