“Osmund?”
Ziary blinked. When he opened his eyes again, they were Osmund’s steel grey. It only lasted for a second before they blazed to light again.
“This place belongs to Aniel and his like. You do not belong here.”
Jez’s mouth went dry. His fingers danced as he started to weave Ziary’s binding, but he hadn’t anticipated the scion being so close. Ziary’s sword pressed against Jez’s neck, and Jez’s hands froze. The fires surrounding the blade singed his neck. Jez resisted the urge to cry out.
“None of that,” Ziary said. “I should run you through. You trespass on the lands of a high lord of the pharim.”
Jez took a deep breath, and moved a fraction of an inch back. Ziary should’ve killed him. The scion had no comprehension of mercy. There was no reason for him to hesitate. All he understood was that evil had to be destroyed, and he saw even the slightest infraction as evil. “Why haven’t you?”
Ziary blinked. “What?”
“Osmund, don’t let him do this.”
“I am not Osmund,” Ziary said, but his sword winked out of existence.
Lina stood quietly and raised her hand as she gathered power. Ziary’s gaze shot toward her. A gust of wind blew her off her feet. She flew into a tree and wind held her there. Flame erupted around Ziary’s hand and he pointed it in Lina’s direction.
“They are welcome here,” Galine’s voice came from the trees. A second later, the lion man stepped out of the underbrush. “There is no crime.”
“No,” Ziary said, his voice sounding desperate. “Authority is given to you to guard this place against intruders, not to welcome them in.”
“Osmund,” Jez said again. “There is nothing here for you to kill.”
The flame reached for Lina, and Jez prepared to bind him, but after a heartbeat, the flame vanished. Ziary’s robes dimmed and the fire in his eyes went out. His form shrank as he sank to his knees. When he lifted his head again, tears streamed down a face devoid of any sign of Ziary.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
His last word was drowned out as the animals of the jungle renewed their cry. Jez offered him a hand up. Osmund took it, though he refused to meet anyone’s eyes.
Galine led them away from the ruined village to a spot by the small stream Jez had heard before. The beast man went off to hunt while the others continued to plan. Jez and Lina spent nearly an hour trying to comfort Osmund before he was willing to say anything that wasn’t an apology.
“I almost killed you.”
Jez wasn’t sure which of them Osmund was talking to, but in the end, it didn’t really matter. He knew Osmund wouldn’t be comforted by the fact that it hadn’t really been him, so Jez needed to try something else.
“Osmund, you can’t be blamed for what you almost did.” Osmund shook his head, but Jez went on. “Did you see anything?”
Osmund nodded. “I think so. There were lines of...something. I don’t know. Power maybe. They were running toward a large lake near the northern edge of the valley. The energy was clumped together there.”
Jez looked to Galine, but the lion man just stared at him without saying a word. Jez took that as confirmation and looked back at Osmund.
“Can you lead us there?”
Osmund’s expression hardened. “We just need to follow this river. We’re only a few hours away.”
CHAPTER 25
To Jez’s surprise, Galine went with them. Ravous, however, led the snake people and returned to the new city of the beast men, worried that the damaged working on their minds would allow them to be controlled. Jez tried to engage Galine in conversation. The beast man was willing to talk about most things, but anytime Jez’s questions strayed too close the nexus of the valley, he stopped talking and refused to say anything for several minutes. As they followed the river upstream, Osmund seemed more and more uneasy. He would jump at every sound and kept looking over his shoulder. Lina was nervous too, though her unease seemed to be due to Osmund, and more than once, Jez caught her rubbing at her scar.
“We’re being watched,” Galine said.
“By who?” Jez asked.
Galine growled. He lifted his nose and sniffed at the air. Jez did the same, searching for any sign of demons, but he just smelled the earthy scent of trees and grass. Galine, however, tensed his body and looked ready to strike.
“Galine, what is it?”
The trees on the other side of the river began to shudder. Jez drew his sword, but before it was all the way out of its sheath, the trees just behind them started to shake as well. The birds in the trees had gone silent.
“How many are there?” Jez asked.
Galine sniffed. “Six on the other side of the river. Seven behind us.” He waved his hand away from the river. “Five a few yards that way. There are more in the branches, but I can’t tell how many.”
“You mean we’re surrounded.”
“Completely. Come, we can’t let them come at us from all sides. There’s a rock face a hundred yards ahead of us. It’s the only defensible area we have a chance of reaching.”
“Lina, hide us,” Jez said. “Don’t forget smell.”
She nodded and murmured under her breath. The jungle darkened a little as her working hid them from sight. The sounds around them became dull.
“Let’s hurry,” Lina said. “This isn’t very effective.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t just have to hide us. I have to hide the plants we move aside and our footprints in the ground. There’s a lot more happening than the last time I did this.”
Jez nodded and they tried to hurry through the trees. They hadn’t even covered half the distance when a wolf howled. They couldn’t see it, but it couldn’t be more than a few yards away. All around them, others echoed the call.
“Keep going,” Galine said. “I’ll try to lead them away.”
Before Jez could respond, the half lion bounded into the jungle. He roared, but it was cut off a second later. Jez rushed forward, leaving the area shrouded by Lina’s illusion. He found Galine on the ground.
The thing that stood over him might’ve been a wolf, if wolves grew to be six feet tall and had jaws big enough to snap a man in two. Osmund and Lina joined Jez a second later, though Lina had dropped her illusion. Galine struggled to get up, but the massive paws of the wolf held him to the ground. Jez raised his sword and moved to help, but before he had gone a single step, another of the wolves stepped out of the trees and bared its teeth. Two more appeared behind him. Once again, Osmund got to Jez’s back and tensed as he prepared to fight. Lina’s eyes glowed and Jez almost gagged on the smell of rot that filled the air. The wolves began to whimper and Jez smiled.
“Good job, Lina. You should hide.”
She shook her head. “The fewer illusions I have to maintain, the better.”
Jez was going to argue, but the wolves stepped forward, and Jez breathed deeply. Beneath the illusion, he caught the faint smell of sulfur.
“I guess that answers that.”
He dropped his metal sword, and summoned his crystal one. His flesh started to tingle as he tapped Luntayary’s power. As if sensing what the blade meant, the wolves drew back. Even the one standing on Galine retreated a little. The lion man got to his feet, and moved to stand near Jez and Osmund. Blood mingled with the fur in his chest, dripping from a shallow gash just below his shoulder blades, but he seemed otherwise uninjured. He eyed Jez’s sword, and gave him a toothy smile.
“Now, that’s an interesting tool. Can it stop them?”
“Not all at once.”
“Can you do that thing with the water?”
Jez shook his head. “Not if they’re half as tough as they look. I could barely handle the snakes.”
They were surrounded now. At least twenty pairs of eyes looked from the trees, but they were held at bay by Lina’s illusion.
“Lina, how long can you keep this up?”
She grinned. “It�
�s only one sense, and I don’t have to vary it at all, so it’s not difficult. I can hold it for hours.”
“Look.”
Galine pointed to the wolf that had knocked him down. It took a single step and sniffed. Then, it gave a growl that made Jez took a step back. It moved forward a little more.
“It bothers them more than it bothers us,” Jez said, “but it’s not actually stopping them.”
The others started closing in and Osmund pulled a six foot blade off of his back. His eyes glowed orange and fire wreathed his blade.
“It’s not Ziary’s blade, but it’s better than nothing.”
“Four against twenty,” Jez said. “We’ve faced worse odds.”
Other sets of eyes appeared behind the wolves, but the creatures that stepped out of the forest stood on two legs. They were far smaller than their four legged counterparts, but they too had the head of wolves, and their growls shook the leaves. There were at least as many of the two legged wolves as the four legged ones. The lead one was Welb, and he stared at Galine with an almost tangible rage.
Jez glanced over his shoulder at Osmund. “How about four against forty?”
The wolf that had attack Galine let out a howl and leapt at Jez from twenty feet away.
CHAPTER 26
The wolf soared through the air, but Jez’s sword darted forward, cutting a slash across its flank. As one, he and Osmund moved aside, and the wolf landed right where they’d been standing. Red blood spurted from its wounds, and Jez froze for a second, shocked. He’d thought these things were demons, but demons didn’t bleed.
The wolf threw back its head and howled. A cloud of smoke and flame erupted from its mouth, and the blood running down its side became burning embers. The wolf collapsed to the ground, and the cloud became a pile of ash. The wolf returned to normal size and didn’t move. A mortal being did not easily survive a strike from a pharim’s blade.
“They’re not demons,” Jez said. “They’re possessed!”
Galine grabbed another wolf out of the air. Using its momentum against it, he threw it over his shoulder into another of the creatures.
“We’re too badly outnumbered. Does that make a difference?”
“Not really.”
Another wolf leapt at him, but then a two legged one crashed into it, knocking it to the ground and holding it there. In spite of his smaller size, the newcomer had no trouble holding the animal to the ground. The wolf man looked up and grinned at Galine.
“Welb?”
The other wolf men had engaged the larger creatures, and the one under Welb snarled. Welb’s muscles tensed and he bared his teeth at Galine. “I’m not going to let you die here.”
“Capture them if you can,” Galine cried out. “They can still be saved!”
Jez knelt down to draw the demon out of Welb’s prisoner. When he looked up, three of the wolves were already on the ground, bleeding and probably dead. Lina was distracting a pair of them by causing bright lights to appear in their eyes. Osmund held them back with wide swings of his burning blade, while the wolf men engaged their larger counterparts. It took four of them to hold one down. Jez banished his sword and rushed to the captive wolf. He ran his hands down its body, drawing the demon out. He nodded at the wolf men, and they released their captive and engaged another.
Jez lost track of time as he ran from one downed wolf to another. Most tried to snap at him, but held down by the wolf men, they couldn’t focus their attacks, and Jez avoided them easily.
Out of the twenty, only eight were taken alive. Each demon was harder to draw out and even harder to disperse. He was getting more practiced at it, but he was nearing the limits of his strength. By the time he freed the last one, it was all he could do to remain standing. As smoke came out of the last one, Jez tried to disperse it, but his power slammed against a wall. He tried to seize the demon, but it slipped through is fingers and began to congeal into the form of a large spider.
“Osmund, help.”
A ball of fire shot forward, hitting the spider just as its glossy black carapace solidified. Its squeal sent chills down Jez’s spine. The fire expanded as it consumed the demon, leaving an oily smell in the air and a blackened mark on the ground.
“Lotheen,” Jez said between heavy breaths. “Web weavers.”
“Those are the most common possession demons, aren’t they?” Osmund asked.
Jez shook his head. “You’re thinking of the lothine. They’re both spider demons, but the lotheen can make the creatures they possess stronger. I’ve never heard of so many gathered in one place.”
Welb growled and stalked right up to Jez. “You did this!”
Jez almost rolled his eyes, but thought better of it at the last second. With Welb in such a mood, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to antagonize him. Still, after the demons, he just couldn’t bring himself to be afraid of Welb. “How could this possibly be my fault?”
“It didn’t happen until you got here.”
“Yes, it did,” Galine said. Welb bared his teeth, but Galine snorted. “You know as well as I do that most of our people went mad long before he got here.”
Welb glanced south before narrowing his eyes at Galine. “That’s no excuse to take him...there.”
“I’m not taking him there. He’s taking me.”
“It’s forbidden!”
“It’s forbidden to lead them, not to accompany them.”
“Send them away,” one of the wolf men said.
Jez blinked when he realized it was a woman, though she looked much younger than the rest. Something in her eyes prickled his memory, and his eyes went wide. He’d never really met her as she’d spent most of her time in the beasts district, but he recognized the girl from the trial.
“Grita?”
She stared at him for a second before shaking her head. “No. Grita is gone. I am Rouwglar. Grita was a killer. I’m not.”
Jez looked around at the wolf men surrounding them before returning his gaze to Grita.
“Are you sure?”
She yelped and glanced at Welb.
“Stop confusing her. She hasn’t shaken off the influence of your world.”
“She seems closer to being rid of it than you are, Welb,” Galine said.
Welb gave him a hateful glare. “When Aniel hears of this—”
“It will mean we know where he is. If he wishes to punish me, he’s welcome to.”
“I won’t let you do this.”
Galine’s back straightened. His hybrid form towered over the wolf man, but wild fury showed in Welb’s eyes. Most of his companions encircled him and Galine, though a few hung back with Grita. Galine looked around and growled.
“This is not how things are done. In a challenge, we fight one on one.”
Jez could barely understand Welb through the growls. “You have no supporters here, Galine, and wolves hunt in packs.”
Jez tried to call water out of the air, but freeing the wolves had taken all he had, and he slumped against a tree. Lina raised her hand and her eyes glowed violet, but Galine waved her off.
“No, I will not betray our ways,” he said without taking his eyes from Welb. “Humans alone choose to go against their nature.”
The growl Welb let out made the leaves shudder. Jez could feel its vibrations in the air. Welb bent his knees slightly as he prepared to jump at his opponent. Galine sneered.
“Will you fall to the beast mind again? Will you forsake balance?”
“I don’t need to prove myself to you. I know what I am.”
“A wolf.”
“Yes.”
Others howled in agreement. Even Grita was caught up in it, but they all went silent when Galine raised a hand. A few exchanged glances, as if surprised that they had obeyed the gesture.
“Before we are man or beast, we are servants of Aniel, Welb. You would do well to remember that.”
“Aniel commanded—”
“He commanded nothing about stopping humans from reachi
ng the nexus. He only said we were not to lead them there. I would not presume to speak for him. Would you?”
The wolves looked at each other. Much of their confidence had drained away. Welb’s muzzle dipped so slightly Jez barely saw it, but it was an acknowledgment.
“When Aniel returns, my followers will tell him of this.”
“When Aniel returns, I’ll tell him myself.” He turned back to Osmund. “After you.”
Osmund nodded and walked toward one of the wolves. The creature growled, and its fur bristled, but at a bark from Welb, it moved aside. Jez and Lina followed him, and Jez could feel the eyes of the wolves watching him as he passed. He met Grita’s eyes for a second, but she turned away, and Jez sighed. He turned his back to her and followed his friend into the jungle.
CHAPTER 27
“I was sure they were going to attack,” Jez said as he cut away a low hanging branch in his path.
Galine shook his head. “There was no real danger of that. Even if Welb would have, he never could’ve hidden the fact. One of his followers would’ve talked.”
Jez remembered the look in Welb’s eyes and shuddered. “Do you really think he would care about that?”
“A challenge for leadership is done in single combat. So many against one would’ve been disgraceful, and he never could’ve held the position. It might even have been the end of him.”
Osmund looked over his shoulder at them. “You know, it wouldn’t have been just one.”
“I’m afraid you don’t count.”
Osmund’s nostrils flared. “Really?”
“Take no offense. You are not of Aniel. My leadership of the tribe may be weak, but without the support of the traditions set down by the Beastwalkers, his would be nonexistent.”
“I thought he didn’t want leadership.”
Galine shrugged. “Maybe he changed his mind.”
“We’re almost there,” Osmund said.
Jez blinked at him. “How do you know?”
Beastwalker (Pharim War Book 3) Page 9
