by Mary Auclair
This is bad. What is happening to those stalks?
Khal’s hand closed hard around her wrist as a white root came to hover just in front of her face. It rocked drunkenly in the light breeze, clear mucus seeping down its tip, its long body shriveled-looking and smelling strongly of sulfur.
“Get behind me,” Khal ordered in a low, steady voice.
“Something is wrong with it.” Hazel obeyed Khal’s order and let him face the root as they both stared, fascinated. From the corner of her eye, she saw Yalko approach, his yellow eyes peering out as wide as saucers from under his hood.
“The Mother Forest is sick.” Yalko’s voice was filled with horror as he inspected the white root.
“It’s like she’s been poisoned,” Khal offered, his tone matching Yalko’s.
Yalko shot Khal a fast glance before returning his attention to the root. He lifted his gloved hand to it, his finger softly resting on the long body. His slight touch made the root sway dangerously, then it fell to the side. Its body seemed to deflate as it touched the ground, fluid seeping through the pores and disappearing into the dirt.
“This cannot happen.” One of Yalko’s Muharee warriors spoke, his tone one of outrage and panic mixed together. Khal’s warning came back to Hazel’s mind as she looked up to meet the yellow gaze. “The outlanders are killing our Mother. We should cleanse them all. We should start with—”
“We need to know what’s happening, not act like the primitive fools Knut thinks we are,” Yalko cut his warrior off, a hiss on his tongue. “Hazel and Khal have been on Muhar for three days. They’re not responsible for this.”
“This is a curse.” The same warrior continued to speak despite Yalko’s hissing warning. He took a step forward, opening his mouth to reveal his fangs, poison already dripping. “The Mother Forest wants us to cleanse our lands of all outlanders.”
“Hazel and her mate are under my protection.” Yalko’s voice was lost in a reptilian hiss, full of fury and warning. “We will not lose our precious time fighting this nonsense.”
“Maybe you should join them in the Mother, then.”
The Muharee warrior moved, fast as a snake. His cloak fell to the floor and he leaped, fangs at the ready, aiming straight for Hazel. Khal moved in a fluid, efficient motion, talons shooting out, slashing through the air.
But Yalko moved even faster. The Muharee’s slender body bent at an impossible angle, his jaw opening wide—too wide—the bones dislocating as his fangs embedded in his opponent’s throat. The other Muharee fought, fists hitting Yalko’s sides, but he was losing his strength fast.
A few seconds later, he lay unmoving, yellow eyes staring up without seeing. He was dead.
As Yalko got back to his feet, he turned his attention to the remaining four warriors.
“I am chieftain.” His voice was a high-pitched hiss. “There will be no killing of those under my protection.”
The four Muharee stared, their faces expressionless, as white roots lazily wrapped around their fallen comrade’s body. Smoke rose in the air as the roots pulled him under the surface, his flesh melting from his bones until he was gone. It all happened in under a minute.
Hazel was still watching the bare spot on the ground where the Muharee had disappeared when Yalko resumed walking.
“Come,” Khal whispered in her ear.
Hazel walked, Khal close by her side, dread in her heart.
As they advanced, the stench changed from rotting flesh to something more like vegetation, green spoilage and sulfur. The previously pristine, vibrant green trunks were being eaten by long veins of pale yellow, rising from the ground in a sickly pattern.
Hazel kept close to Khal as they walked, the Muharee in front of them as silent as corpses. Even from a distance, she could see the lingering gazes of the Muharee as they turned their heads to the yellowing tree trunks.
Another hour later, and Hazel wished she could go back to the yellowing trunks and the drooping roots.
The Medina Forest wasn’t dying here. It was dead.
All around them, the Medina Forest was as silent as a tomb. The chirping was a long gone memory, the still air above the grass only trapping the absence of sound. Trunks lay on the forest floor like sleeping giants, their green color faded to a sickly brown. Everywhere, the white roots were stretched out beside the trunks, flat and lifeless. The stench of death permeated the air, powerful and unshakable. As far as the eye could see, trees lay dead.
The Medina was dying at a speed that confused Hazel. How could such a healthy, enormous organism perish so suddenly?
Hazel stayed close to Khal but she couldn’t ignore the distressed, almost desperate look on the Muharee’s faces as they pulled back their hoods, no longer needing the protection of their green cloaks.
After another hour, they arrived at what seemed like the end of a tall canyon. The rocky outcrop was bare, but it was easy to see that the Medina had reached all the way to the end of the cliff, with trunks hanging loosely down the abyss where the rocks didn’t cover the ground.
The Muharee silently lay down flat on their bellies, Hazel and Khal joining them. As they lay there, the Muharee stared in mute horror at the view below.
They had just found Knut’s Ilarian guard factory. And the monstrosity of it was beyond words.
“He is killing the Mother Forest.” Yalko’s voice had the depth of a hollow skull. “This is no accident; he is poisoning her.”
Fifty feet below the edge of the cliff was a large flat building made of what appeared to be gray stone. It stood on the bank of a flowing river, and leading to that river was a tube at least six feet tall, spewing a thick yellow ooze into the water. The sludge flowed downstream toward the Medina, giving the water a sickly shade as it carried death further and further away.
As far as they could see, the Medina downstream was dying, poisoned by the water.
And wherever the Medina was dying, the Muharee died, too.
“What is this blasphemy?” Yalko’s voice was filled with revulsion, with a religious kind of horror.
“This is an Ilarian guard factory,” Khal answered. “The clones are hatched into a broth, then grown in synthetic wombs. The liquid you see is the waste from their births. To have poisoned so much of your Medina only tells us he is producing more and more of the Ilarian, a number great enough to wage war on the Ring.”
“This much poison is destroying the entire Mother Forest. She cannot heal herself fast enough.”
Yalko dug his claws into the rock as he spoke, the tips splintering under the force. His eyes were wild and wide as he stared at the devastation below.
“What happens to your people if the Medina is gone?” Khal spoke without mercy, forcing Yalko to look back at him.
Yellow eyes full of hate and pain turned to Khal and Hazel. “We die.” Yalko spoke with a hollow voice that echoed the emptiness in his eyes. “All of us. There are no Muharee without the Medina.”
“You have no choice.” Khal kept going as Yalko’s face twisted with grief and anger. “Knut will never leave and he will never stop. Once he considers something his, he won’t abandon it. He will destroy your Medina until none of you are left alive.”
Yalko’s eyes went to the gray building down the cliff. As he looked at Knut’s factory, a savagery Hazel had never seen before spread over his reptilian features, a depth of hatred and bloodlust that sent shards of ice through her bones.
“Are there more tribes downstream from this?” Khal asked with death in his voice.
“Yes.” Yalko’s tone was hollow, pain suffusing everything he said. “Many tribes live by this river, deep in the Medina Forest, and have done ever since we were pushed out of the grassland.”
“You cannot stay hidden in your forest anymore.” Khal spoke without mercy as Yalko stared at the great death below them. “Death is out there, and it’s coming to get you. Your only chance is to help us stop Knut.”
Yalko turned his yellow eyes to Hazel, then to Khal. “You g
et your wish, Eok. We will attack this Knut together and destroy him, once and for all.”
Hazel stared at them, allies despite all that pitted them against each other.
“How many Muharee warriors can you summon, and how fast?” Khal asked.
“A thousand warriors.” Yalko shook his head as Khal cursed. “But we will not need more. The Medina is our Mother and she will fight for us—what is left of her, anyway.”
Khal stayed silent as both he and Hazel frowned.
“But the Medina is dying, how can she help?” Hazel finally asked.
“With great sacrifice,” Yalko answered softly. He turned to exchange a long, meaningful look with his warriors, who all nodded somberly.
There was so much they didn’t know about the Muharee, so much they didn’t understand.
Finally, Khal nodded, his face grim. Hazel had no idea if he knew what sacrifice Yalko was talking about, but it didn’t matter. They had to act.
“I will stay here to keep track of Knut. Send Hazel back to your village, she cannot stay for the fight.”
Hazel opened her mouth to protest, but Khal shook his head. With dread in her soul, she remained silent. She was no warrior, she couldn’t fight.
Still, leaving Khal behind to risk his life seemed impossible.
“We have to act fast,” Khal interrupted her thoughts. “Or there will be no more Muharee or Medina on Muhar.”
A series of small scuttling noises had them all turning around. Hazel’s stomach filled with horror as she stared at two pale blue eyes.
“That’s exactly the plan.” Gerkin’s mouth stretched into a wide, devious grin. At his side, four more Eoks stood, stone faced and dead eyed, pointing the barrels of ionic guns straight at them. “And it looks like you’re following it perfectly.”
“You!” Yalko spat the word.
“We meet again, snake.” Gerkin chuckled, the sound as evil as anything Hazel had ever heard. “You’re hard to kill, I’ll give you that, but I’m going to try my best.”
Yalko moved, faster than Hazel’s eyes could focus. His Muharee warriors followed suit and the sound of ionic detonations filled the dead forest.
Then the world faded into a blur of violence and death.
* * *
Khal
Khal’s training took over. His body moved in fluid motions as his mind analyzed the tiniest bit of information. The first ionic detonation came from his right as one of Gerkin’s warriors took a shot at a Muharee.
“Down!” Khal barked the order as his own body reacted, moving in front of Hazel as she screamed in fear. She fell behind him on the forest ground, her weight crushing the decomposing tree trunk, spreading a deeply penetrating fog of rotten vegetation as the soft tissues of the Medina stalk broke apart.
A quick glance to his side confirmed what Khal already knew. The Muharee warrior was dead, his yellow eyes staring at the red sun without seeing, his chest torn apart in the middle.
More ionic detonations filled the air, the smell of iodine momentarily overpowering the decomposition of the Medina. Khal covered Hazel with his body, turning to meet Gerkin with his talons at the ready, his fangs out in a furious hiss.
“Don’t.” Gerkin’s face had lost all traces of a smile. The barrel of his ionic gun was trained straight on Khal’s chest as the commander of Garana took a step closer. “Knut wants you alive, but I won’t hesitate to shoot you if I have to.”
Khal hissed at Gerkin but retracted his talons. The traitor wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him, and he was of no use to anyone if he was dead.
“That’s better,” Gerkin sneered, a perverse joy showing briefly in his too-pale eyes. “I have waited a long time to put your family in its place. Your brothers, your father, you all think you’re so high above the rest of us. So honorable, so selfless. So weak. Now you will all see what an Eok does when he is not afraid to wield power, true power. When all this is over, I will be the new chief—not only of the Erynian tribe, but of all the Eoks. I will bring back the old ways, and our nation will once again be the feared warriors we were in the past.”
“You want us to go back to pillaging, slaughtering villages across the Ring and stealing females, mating them by force?” Khal shook his head and chuckled without humor. “The Eoks will never accept that. We’re not the savage beasts we once were. If you hadn’t spent all your life lost in violence, you’d know.”
The four other Eoks accompanying Gerkin stared at him, their faces still and unexpressive, but Khal saw the glimmer of doubt in their eyes, in the way they lifted their chins slightly at his words.
They are not like Gerkin. He must have something on them to make them obey these orders.
“Yalko!” Hazel shouted from behind Khal as one last ionic detonation sounded to his left. He turned to see a green clad figure, clutching his side heavily, slithering between the dead tree trunks.
“Let him go, Affek,” Gerkin ordered the Eok warrior who had already started to pursue the injured Muharee. “He’s not going to make it, and even if he does, he won’t make it far into his precious Medina before being eaten alive.”
The Eok warrior paused, staring at the figure of the Muharee as he fled through the dead forest, hunched over and clutching his wound. Khal knew Gerkin was right. Even if Yalko survived long enough to make it to the Medina, he was never going to get back to his home in time to receive the medical help that would save him. The Medina would sense his blood and kill him as surely as she would have done to Hazel.
There would be no alerting of the other Muharee tribes. No reinforcements to fight off Knut’s Ilarian guards and Gerkin’s Eok.
They were truly alone.
“You won’t get away with this,” Khal warned Gerkin as he got to his feet, cradling Hazel protectively against him. Her small fingers grabbed desperately to his green clothing. “Knut always betrays those closest to him. You should have learned that by now.”
Gerkin took a step closer, the barrel of his ionic gun inches from Khal’s chest. Hatred and sickness exuded from him like a second skin, deforming his Eok features, turning him into the monster he was inside. “And who says I won’t betray him first?”
“You’re a monster.” Hazel spoke from within Khal’s protective arms, her small face twisted in fear but her green eyes fierce and shining. “Monsters always get the ending they deserve.”
Gerkin blinked at Hazel’s words then his pale eyes gleamed with another kind of hatred, one that was a thousand times more perverse. “And you will soon wish you had died on Garana when you first defied me.”
Gerkin took a step back and made a jerky motion to the Eok closest to him.
“Chain him up with Allurium.” Gerkin stepped to the side as Affek came forward, pulling seemingly fragile hand and ankle cuffs from his uniform. Khal knew better, though. Allurium was the one and only metal alloy that was strong enough to contain him. The metal alloy was made from a particularly rare element found on only three planets in the entire known world, both inside and outside of the Ring.
Muhar was the biggest source of Allurium in all the known world. Only its riches were never exploited to their fullest potential because of the savage natives who inhabited the planet—those savage natives who protected the surface from any mining operations necessary to extract the costly metal.
And with that, Khal understood what he had been missing all this time. Why Prime Councilor Aav had been so keen on keeping this mission a secret, why she wanted him to retrieve Knut and the bomb and not to destroy both.
She wanted the Allurium for herself. She needed to know how Knut had finally defeated the native Muharee and extracted the Allurium from the planet’s soil.
She was going to keep the operation going, was going to destroy an entire civilization to assure her hold on power.
Too much power corrupts the soul. Prime Councilor Aav and Knut are one and the same. They both have to be stopped.
Hazel screamed and kicked, bit and scratched as one of the Eoks grabbed he
r and Khal watched, proud to see her so fierce. She had the heart of a warrior, and that was going to be her salvation.
Gerkin followed his gaze as Khal looked at Hazel, then he smiled. He grabbed her by the scruff of her neck like a helpless animal, immobilizing her by twisting one arm behind her back like he had done to Celaith on Garana.
“Don’t worry about your bloodmate, Commander. Knut promised me she would be part of my payment.” Gerkin brought Hazel closer to him and laughed when she tried to bite him, spewing insults that would make a hardened pirate blush. “He said she was too unruly to sell to a rich client. It seems no one likes a kitten that bites as well as has claws.”
Gerkin twisted Hazel’s arm painfully and she cried out in pain. Rage tore at Khal’s insides, but he refrained from moving. The Eoks were only looking for an excuse to get rid of him. If he died, then no one would be coming for Hazel.
“I look forward to removing her claws, one after the other.” Gerkin brought Hazel closer again, this time with a dark hunger twisting his features. “Because I do very much like a kitten that bites back.”
“You’re going to die.” Khal spoke softly, his voice as measured as the beating of his heart. Years of training had taught him well. “I will remove your heart and cast you away in front of the Midnight God. You will never walk the Night Lands with your ancestors. Mark my words, Gerkin, son of Jahley of the Hunnyon tribe. I will drink your blood from your still beating heart before this day is over.”
The Eoks blinked, their faces full of dreadful awe as Khal spoke the ancient words of the Eokian death promise. Even Gerkin lost his countenance for a second, but then he laughed again.
As the Allurium cuffs locked around his wrists and ankles, Khal had reached a decision.
He wasn’t going to retrieve the bomb, or Knut. He was going to destroy them—and Gerkin first.
Chapter 23
