“Do you…like him?” I asked doubtfully.
A somewhat pained grimace came over his face. “Well, um, he’s an awesome teacher.”
“It’s cool,” I said, grinning. “I get it.” Likeable wasn’t a necessary requirement for a good teacher.
He cocked his head to one side. “I mean, it’s hard to explain. He’s always about ten steps ahead of me, so I really really have to stay on my toes.” Then he shrugged. “He always tells me when I’m doing it wrong, but he always tells me when I’m doing it right, too. And he’s never stepped outside of our agreement, that’s for sure.”
I pursed my lips, considering that. He did sound like a good teacher, but I’d probably think more kindly of him if I wasn’t constantly worried about him killing me. “Agreement? Some sort of official contract?”
Idris nodded. “Yeah. Katashi’s already Mzatal’s sworn summoner, so anyone else the lord works with would have an official agreement with the terms laid out.”
My rising questions derailed as an odd vibration went though the tower. I started to ask Idris if he felt it too, but the frown on his face told me he did.
“Shit,” he murmured. His eyes widened as a much stronger vibration shook the tower. “Holy shit!”
I reached for the wall. “What the hell was that?” I asked. “Earthquake?”
In the span of a heartbeat his face shifted from insecure teen to intense and serious arcane practitioner, far closer to how he was in the midst of the purification ritual. “Anomaly,” he said, intaking breath at the sharp sound of cracking rock. “Not safe here. Safar! Take her up!”
With that he turned and ran for the door.
Chapter 7
“Wait! Idris!” I yelled. Had he considered that the tower wouldn’t be safe for him either? I ran after him, then let out a squawk of surprise as Safar grabbed me around the waist and leaped into the air. I yelped and clutched at his arms as we cleared the tower and gained altitude. “Shiiiiiit!”
“The tower is not safe until they seal the anomaly,” Safar said, with a rumble I felt in my bones. “It will not take long.”
“Will Idris be all right?” I tightened my grip on his arms as he climbed higher.
“He goes to the summoning chamber to support the syraza,” he replied, deep voice calm. “There is a small anomaly within the wall of the tower. They will seal it before anything untoward happens.”
A bright flash from above followed closely by a crack like thunder pulled my attention. But there isn’t a cloud in the sky. “Safar? What was that?”
“Another anomaly. Above.” He snorted and beat his wings harder, gaining altitude quickly. “And a syraza falls.”
I risked a peek down, biting down on a very un-brave whimper upon seeing how really fucking high up we were. I looked back up just in time to see Ilana streak by and up.
“Kara Gillian, turn around and hold tightly,” Safar said as he continued to climb. With his help, I complied, clinging to the trust that he wouldn’t let me slip out of his grasp. As soon as I was fully turned, I wrapped my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck, then hung on for dear life while my heart threatened to pound out of my chest.
Safar abruptly stalled in flight, then did a stomach-churning wingover and began to free fall. “Hold tightly,” he repeated. Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. I was pretty darn solid on that point. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a syraza falling. Ilana and Safar paced him in the fall as they both eased closer.
Safar reached a hand out to the syraza, then jerked as he made contact. His hand dropped away, and a weird dizzying shock passed through me, as if he’d touched a live wire. I nearly lost my grip before recovering and clinging hard again. The reyza shuddered, then went limp, beginning to fall in a very different way.
My gut clenched. “Safar?” I called. I looked up to see him staring and dazed. “Oh, shit. SAFAR!” I gripped as hard as I could with my left arm and my legs, took my right knuckle and twisted it viciously into his sternum. I’d used sternal rubs to wake up drunks before, but it barely made the massive reyza twitch. I reached up and grabbed an ear, twisting hard. “Safar!” I screamed. “Fly, damn it!”
At the ear twist he shuddered and came back to himself, then thrashed to get his wings out to slow our descent and stop the tumbling. He bellowed in pain as his right wing wrenched back, though he managed to get us straightened out. I felt our descent slowing, but a quick glance told me it wasn’t going to be enough to keep us from crashing into the trees…and not just any trees. The splash of viridian and amethyst identified the grove. At this point the best we could hope for was a crash at slower speed, ending up merely mangled instead of a grease spot. I tucked my head into his neck and wondered if there was any chance I’d make it through the void a second time. Either way, this was going to really suck ass.
We plowed into the densely woven canopy with a shriek of snapping vines and breaking branches. I lost my grip on Safar almost immediately, crashing down through the upper branches, instinctively flailing to check my descent somehow. I remembered how tall these trees were. The ground was a long way down. Not that I had much time to think about that. A hundred smaller limbs and vines whipped past me, and a branch smacked me hard on my shoulder. Something caught at my right leg, and I screamed as the twisting snap shot through me. I felt a punch of pain in my left side, then came to a hard stop.
Silence descended, strange after the cacophony of the fall. It took me a few seconds to catch my breath, but when I did, stabbing pain accompanied each inhalation. I was wedged in a tangle of branches and vines, at least twenty feet above the ground. A few yards to my right I could see the open space of a clearing—the center of the ring of grove trees.
I tried to shift, then let out a breathless scream as pain from my side and leg shot through me. The agony from the leg was simple to figure out. Legs weren’t supposed to twist that way, and jagged ends of bone weren’t normally visible through the skin. It took me a few more seconds to process the source of the pain in my side. It didn’t make sense that the branch would protrude from my body that way. The rivulets of blood tickling my abdomen finally got the message to my screwed up head. Ah, hell, I thought dropping my head back against the cluster of vines. This is bad.
I heard a bellow and snapping of branches, then a crash of something heavy falling to the ground nearby. Two faas streaked through the clearing and into the trees in the direction of the crash. A moment later they reappeared, supporting a limping Safar. His right wing drooped, and his normally rich bronze skin had a sickly green tinge.
A shudder went through the tangle of branches holding me. Dizzy, I grasped weakly at the mess of vines, fear slicing through me that I’d fall the rest of the way. As badly injured as I was now, I didn’t think I’d survive a fall of another twenty feet.
A vine by my hand twitched as a low purring vibration filled the forest. The trees around me gave another shudder, and a heartbeat later vines shifted and slid against me. Okay. Freaky. A deep groaning of movement permeated the grove as leaves and twigs broken by my passage fell from above. A vine as thick as my wrist snaked around my torso just above where the branch had skewered me.
I heard running footsteps in the clearing. Turning my head, I saw Mzatal come to a stop near the treeline, eyes on me, assessing. More vines wrapped around me. I struggled out of panicked instinct, stopping as agony knifed through my side and leg. My eyes met Mzatal’s. I tried to call for help, but I could barely get enough breath to breathe, much less speak or shout.
Mzatal’s eyes narrowed. He stepped forward, then stopped as if he’d run into a wall. I watched as he raised a hand, testing an unseen barrier. What the hell? I wondered in barely controlled panic. Had I managed to fall into some sort of carnivorous plant? Yeah, bleed on the man-eating plant. Always a good plan.
Yet even as I fretted about being eaten, a soft ease stole through me, and my panic faded. I felt oddly relaxed…and safe. It occurred to me that if it really was a man-eating plant,
it might have released chemicals or pheromones or something to make its prey nice and docile, but I decided it was more comforting to think it was simply a Nice Plant.
Vines continued to shift and move around me. The white trunks and limbs shimmered with heat-wave ripples, though the grove felt cooler than before. The green and violet of the leaves awoke with a luminescent glitter of emerald and amethyst. Mzatal stepped back as the barrier before him took on a barely visible pulsing glow. A wind whispered through the leaves, or maybe the leaves just whispered to me. Mesmerized, I stared up at the shifting beauty.
A leafy tendril touched my face, and the last vestiges of my panic ebbed away. It wasn’t going to let me fall. Everything shuddered again and the vines that had wrapped around me began to lift me off the impaling branch. I stared at the leaves above, mind screaming distantly to expect fresh agony, but it was wrong. Only a little tingle. My new Plant Friend wouldn’t hurt me. Smiling, I watched the pretty dancing lights.
I relaxed into the cradling hold. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mzatal pacing along the perimeter, eyes never leaving me. He placed a hand on the barrier and tried to push through, then staggered back a step as it repelled him. His eyes snapped to me as he stood, hands clenched at his sides. Way too tense. He needed a Plant Friend.
Whisper whisper whisper. Sparkly. Everything sparkly.
“Kara, can you hear me?”
Whisper whisper whisper.
Shimmery. Sparkly. Shimmery.
Whisper whisper whisper.
“Kara!”
“No need. To. Shout,” I managed, my voice sounding loud and unnatural to me. Vines unwound, pulling away. The pain returned, and I shuddered and whimpered low. Awareness seeped in: not in the tree anymore, on the ground. “How’d I get here?”
Mzatal crouched at my side, carefully looking me over without touching me. “The grove moved you. It was unprecedented, Kara Gillian,” he murmured, gaze flicking from the wound in my side to the mangled mess of my leg. Sudden fear gripped me. Would he even bother trying to heal me?
He looked past me at the retreating vines, then laid a hand in the center of my chest. His jaw clenched and he shook his head, then stripped the collar from me, passed it to Gestamar, and set his hand on my chest again.
“You are badly injured,” he said, in what I thought was a keen grasp of the fucking obvious. He looked up and around, expression contemplative. “The grove has stopped the bleeding.” Shaking his head, he returned his attention to me. “We will stabilize your leg here, then move you.” He pointed to a spot in the center of his forehead. “Focus here,” he said, then sketched a quick sigil in the air between us.
I did my best to focus where he indicated, though my vision kept wanting to fuzz in and out. The sigil rotated in a subtly mesmerizing pattern, and gradually it became oddly simple to focus on that and little else. Mzatal set a hand on my thigh, and I felt Gestamar pulling and twisting my leg into a more acceptable configuration, but the agony seemed to be behind a glass wall. Mzatal traced tethers of potency around my leg, then caught the sigil and placed it on my chest. A soothing warmth emanated from it, like a magic pain patch.
“Gestamar will move you now,” he told me, speaking in a calm, imperturbable voice. I barely managed a nod, feeling strangely distant from my body.
The reyza lifted me with amazing gentleness. Around me the grove shimmered, and I smiled, feeling its touch like a caress.
I must have drifted off for a few minutes, because the next thing I knew, Gestamar was gently setting me on my bed. Mzatal entered, removing his suit jacket and draping it over the chair before rolling up the sleeves of his pristine white shirt. He moved to my side and ran his hands lightly over my torso.
“How…bad?” I asked, the effort of those two words exhausting.
Before Mzatal could respond, Idris entered. He stopped and gave a gasp of shock—inadvertently answering my question of how bad—then flinched at the reproving look from Mzatal. I wanted to laugh, but I knew it would hurt too much.
Mzatal returned his attention to me. “Your right leg is broken. You were impaled through and through on your left side and there is damage within. If you are not healed, you will die.”
“Oh…okay.” Well, he didn’t pull any punches. But at least, at this point, I was pretty sure he was going to do what he could to keep me from dying.
Idris audibly gulped and proceeded to edge around the room and out of Mzatal’s direct line of sight.
A faas hopped in, and Mzatal took the mug that was offered. In a smooth motion, the lord slid his arm under my shoulders and lifted me to a partial sitting position, supporting me fully. Pain flared behind the shielding wall of the sigil.
“Drink, Kara,” he said as he held the mug to my lips.
I suddenly realized how thirsty I was and did my best to drink. It tasted pleasantly sweet and refreshing and felt as if it permeated beyond the physical. It took some doing, but I drained the mug. “What was that?” I managed to whisper.
Mzatal set the mug aside and eased me down to the pillow again. “Tunjen juice. Replenishing both for the physical and the arcane.”
The demon realm version of a super sports drink, I thought with detached amusement.
I watched Mzatal as much as I was able, though between the pain and the sigils he was using to dampen it, I tended to drift in and out. He looked seriously fucking intense as he readied himself to work on me.
“What do you know of the groves?” he asked, placing a hand next to the wound in my side.
I frowned. He was going to get blood on a really nice shirt. And how the hell did he get tailored for a suit that nice in the demon realm? And what sort of cuff links did a demonic lord wear? And had he washed his hands?
“Kara,” Mzatal said with an undercurrent of command in his voice, reminding me of the tone cops used when trying to get and keep attention.
Oh, right. He’d asked me a question. “Trees. Lords travel…” Muzzily, I realized he wanted me to stay awake and interacting. Likely for my own good or something. Damn it.
Mzatal said a few words in demon to Gestamar. The reyza grunted and bounded out.
He looked back down at me. “You have never been in a grove before.” It was a statement, not a question, so I didn’t waste energy trying to answer it. He lifted my shirt above the site of the impalement. “Idris, lay support.”
The young man jumped at the sound of his name. “Y-yes, my lord,” he said, flicking a worried glance my way before beginning to sketch a complex pattern using nothing but shimmering threads of potency. I watched, fascinated, in a dreamy sort of way. This was the first chance I’d had to really see things happening without the collar on.
Idris finished and ignited the pattern. Instantly, I saw it dim as Mzatal drew upon it. A low warmth spread through my side. Now I understood Idris’s worried look. If the demonic lord needed a support pattern for additional potency, that meant I was well and truly fucked up. Then again, it wasn’t news to me at this point.
I pulled my unsteady attention back to Mzatal. His hair was braided in a complex weave that looked like it needed at least seven or eight strands. Did he do that himself? Or did he have a demon valet do it for him? And where did he get the tie that was currently tucked partially in his shirt to keep it clear of his work? And for that matter, where was I going to get new clothes? Especially bras. I knew the one I had on was pretty well soaked in blood.
“The zrila Anak fashioned the tie, and the faas Jekki braids my hair,” Mzatal said as he slid a hand beneath me to reach the entry wound. Pain flared at the movement, and I hissed a breath. “When we return to my realm on the morrow,” he continued, “the zrila circle will create what garb you require. They are quite skilled.”
I managed a slight scowl. “You’re reading…me.”
Mzatal looked from the wound to my face. “Yes, of course.”
“Rude.” I swallowed, breathing shallowly. “Stop.”
“That I cannot do,” he repli
ed. “It is as impossible as stopping the taste of wine upon my tongue, or the feel of your skin beneath my hands.” In the next instant heat flooded the wound, and I gasped, hands tightening in the sheet. Gradually, it subsided into a warm pulse, spreading in gentle flows from the wound to the rest of my body. I exhaled in relief as the pain faded, noticing that it was already far easier to breathe.
“The sigils fascinate you,” Mzatal said almost conversationally, “but it is clear you do not know many of them. What training have you had?”
“My aunt,” I replied. It was a lot easier to talk and breathe now, but I was as tired as if I’d run a marathon uphill. Not that I had any intention of ever finding out how tiring a marathon was. “She taught me protocols…rituals. I summon demons…to learn…ask questions.” I caught myself drifting and dragged my focus back to him. I didn’t want to sleep. Too much chance I might never wake up. “I’m…getting better?”
Mzatal drew in a deep breath. He looked damn near as tired as I was. He shifted and placed a hand on my solar plexus. “Yes, better,” he said. “Gestamar will splint your leg. I have done much work with the impalement and the internal damage.” He gave me the barest ghost of an actual smile. “You will not die this day, Kara Gillian.”
I smiled weakly, then slid my hand over his. “Thanks,” I mumbled as I allowed my eyes to drift closed.
Chapter 8
I came awake abruptly. “Eilahn?” I called groggily, before realizing where I was and what had happened to her.
“Eilahn is not here, little one,” came a rumbled response. I blinked to focus and saw Gestamar crouched beside my bed, carefully knotting a splint around my injured leg.
“You know Eilahn?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“She was killed on Earth.” My brow furrowed. “Yesterday, I think. Is today the same day as when we fell?”
“Yes, it is the same day,” he replied. “You have been asleep for several hours. And yes, she has returned.”
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