by Sam Ferguson
For a moment he almost forgot to inspect the clothing inside the packet. When he did look down, he found a set of black pants and shirt with a green leather jerkin that matched the color of the Korr’Tai warrior’s armor. Jonathan took the clothes happily. The seven Korr’Tai warriors moved in and formed a screen around him so he could change clothes right on that spot without compromising his modesty. When he was done, the warriors walked away and Koanin had another item in his hands.
Jonathan saw an exquisite recurve bow.
“It is made of several layers of wood, as well as bone and even a thin layer of the same Telarian steel from which your brother’s sword was formed,” Koanin said. “It will serve you faithfully.”
Jonathan beamed from ear to ear and thanked Koanin profusely.
Koanin smiled and then looked to his warriors. He shouted something in Taish, and all of the elves mounted their several steeds. The Svetli’Tai elves rode upon horses not unlike the ones Jonathan and the others had taken from Inghali. The Vishi’Tai elves rode upon elk with great, formidable antlers. The Korr’Tai leapt up onto the backs of large, spotted deer.
It was a strange group to be sure, but Jonathan was more than glad for the company. He was more sure now than ever that they would finally find Raven and pay Larkyn back for all of his treachery.
The group rode out at a quick pace that they could easily maintain as they took a narrow road to the south toward Tomyn. Ziegler and Koanin led the way for quite a while as the elf warriors encircled Jonathan and the others, bows at the ready in case they were attacked.
They traveled just over one hundred miles the first day, and then they set up camp for the night.
Koanin barked orders at the elf warriors, presumably setting up scouts and watch shifts, while Jonathan ate fruit and bread with his brother.
“You must have impressed them,” Jason commented through a mouthful of peach.
Jonathan shrugged. “Actually I think Koanin just likes telling the other elves what to do,” he replied with a shrug. The two of them shared a laugh and then devoured their food. They watched as the elves went about eating standing up. None of them made chairs from rocks or fallen logs, instead, they all ate on their feet and kept their eyes turned to the forest, scanning for dangers. When it came time for them all to sleep, the elves did that differently as well. The Vishi’Tai were on patrol first, so they went into the forest. The Svetli’Tai slept leaning on their horses, and the Korr’Tai climbed the trees and used their magic to wrap themselves in thick leaves.
Jonathan smiled at the Korr’Tai, admiring their command over the trees, and then he drifted into sleep.
The second day was much like the first, except that they stopped after fifty miles and had lunch near a small pond.
As Jonathan was eating his food, Koanin came and sat next to him, grinning wide and black eyes dancing happily.
“I should thank you,” Koanin said as he slapped Jonathan on the knee.
“Me?” Jonathan asked. “What for?”
Koanin pointed to the pond and then took in a deep breath. “I used to come here and fish,” he said. “But I haven’t been outside of Gwyndoltai for more than three centuries now.”
Jonathan stared at him incredulously. “You haven’t left the city for three hundred years?”
Koanin shook his head. “No. I have been stuck in there ever since…” Koanin puffed and then he looked to the pond again. “I proposed to my wife here, just on the other bank of the pond,” he said. “We came back here when we named our first child.”
Jonathan smiled, not sure where the conversation was heading.
Koanin sighed and then his smile faded away. “My wife loved the forest,” he said. “It’s special to all of us Korr’Tai, but it was different with her. She really could speak with the trees. They told her things. She used to joke that she would likely turn into a tree when she died. Told me she would rise up next to this very pond.” Koanin glanced at Jonathan with teary eyes and smiled nervously. “I wish she had,” he said. “She went into the woods one night, called away by the trees again. I was away in Gwyndoltai at the time, otherwise I would have gone with her.”
A silent pause ensued and Koanin fidgeted with his fingernail again and shook his head as he took in a few deep breaths. “She disappeared that night, never to be seen again. I came as fast as I heard. We searched for days. The other nobles gave up after a few weeks, but I kept looking. I knew that she wouldn’t just vanish. She knew the forest too well.”
“Did you ever find her?” Jonathan asked in a hushed tone.
Koanin sighed and shook his head. “I was heading southeast from here, deeper into the heart of the forest. That was when I had this strange feeling gnawing at my soul. It was as though a tree bent down and whispered to me, telling me to come to the pond. Hoping that perhaps my wife was helping me through the trees, I came back here. She wasn’t here. I found my wife’s necklace over there, right where she said she would turn into a tree. I don’t know if she placed it there, or if someone else put it there to make me stop looking for her.” Koanin took another deep breath and his head drooped downward. “Most of the Korr’Tai left Tanglewood nearly one thousand years ago. There weren’t many of us left in the forest after that. Not nearly enough to defend ourselves.” Koanin reached up and wiped the tears from his eye and sighed again. “I rushed home to tell my daughter that I had found the necklace, but when I reached the village, it had been destroyed. Everyone but the seven warriors you see with us today were dead. The only reason they were spared is because they had been with me, searching for my wife.”
“Who attacked the village?”
“I never found out. There was no sign of the attackers anywhere. Except for one thing,” Koanin said as he nodded and a smile crept back onto his face. “There were signs of necromancy in the village.”
“How do you know that?” Jonathan asked.
Koanin explained, “When you are as in tune with nature as the Korr’Tai, you can feel the abominable magic. There are also ways to check for it. I followed my suspicions and confirmed that it had been used in the attack. From that point on, I remained in Gwyndoltai searching for any clues as to who might be using necromancy in Tanglewood Forest. For a long time, the investigation was entirely fruitless. Then, about five years ago I started finding a few reports. There was nothing I could act on, or else I would have done that, but I had a list of suspects narrowed down. Then, you showed up and brought that disciplinary record. That and news of Nebenuk’s amulet were the missing pieces I needed.”
“You think it was Larkyn?” Jonathan asked.
“Everything fits,” Koanin replied. “Troll warriors, disappearing elves from other cities, and Tomyn just happens to be a city in ruins. No one lives there after the drow exodus. I had heard that Larkyn sometimes went there to visit family ruins and gravesites, but now that I know he has Nebenuk’s amulet, I am sure he is the same one that attacked my village. Besides, Tomyn is due south from here, and my village is only twelve miles to the west of this pond. It can’t be a coincidence.”
Jonathan nodded. “I should tell the others,” he said.
Koanin shook his head. “No one else needs to know. I only wanted to tell you as a way of thanking you. This has been a long time coming, and I am looking forward to finally ending the pursuit.” Jonathan smiled and Koanin stood up and stretched. He turned around to Jonathan and smiled. “There is one more thing I should say as well.”
“What’s that?” Jonathan asked.
Koanin’s eyes flared and his smile turned crooked as a spray of blood shot out from his neck. Jonathan cried out in horror as a bloody arrowhead protruded from Koanin’s throat.
“We’re under attack!” Jonathan yelled. He reached up and caught Koanin as the Korr’Tai noble fell forward. Koanin choked, his mouth moving in jagged twitches as his black eyes fixed on Jonathan.
“Larkyn…” Koanin whispered with his final breath.
“Larkyn has found us!” J
onathan shouted to Ziegler.
Captain Ziegler was up and holding his sword in his good hand. “Come over here, Jonathan!” he shouted from behind a spooked horse.
An arrow whizzed by Jonathan’s head and the boy turned to sprint toward Ziegler. If not for one of the horses that ran between Jonathan and a second arrow, Jonathan would surely have been struck, but the horse caught the arrow instead and then reared up with a shriek before darting off into the forest.
Elf warriors were up and rushing around.
Jonathan took out his bow and turned to fire across the pond, from where the first arrow had been fired. What he saw was not a drow at all, but one of the Svetli’Tai scouts walking out of the woods, with his bow drawn and aimed at him. Jonathan hesitated.
Ziegler grabbed Jonathan and pulled him out of the path of the arrow.
“It’s an ambush boy!” Ziegler yelled.
“The Svetli’Tai are attacking us!” Ruben shouted.
Just then a Korr’Tai warrior ran out onto a thick bough above in the trees and fired back on the attacker, catching him in the chest. A flurry of arrows went flying every which way and Jonathan could barely stand without running the risk of being struck by a flying missile.
He looked up to see Ziegler charging a Svetli’Tai warrior. The elf dropped his bow and shook his head.
“I am not against you!” he shouted.
A moment later an arrow struck the elf in the head and he fell over dead.”
Ziegler ran toward the elf that had shot the warrior and ran him through with his sword.
“They aren’t all bad!” Jonathan called out as an arrow zinged right by him and thunked into a tree. He spun around and fired his bow, taking down the elf that had fired at him.
Then, a tree branch moved down and scooped Jonathan up just as an elf warrior lunged in from behind. Jonathan looked down through the smaller branches as a Korr’Tai warrior rushed in behind the Svetli’Tai traitor and stabbed him in the back. The traitor looked up to Jonathan and screamed in pain.
“Master Larkyn will prevail!” the traitor said, and then he died.
Jonathan then nodded to the Korr’Tai elf below, realizing the elf had used his magic to make the tree scoop Jonathan out of danger. The elf offered a short nod and then disappeared into the forest.
From Jonathan’s new vantage point, he could easily see everything happening near the pond. He moved into position and began picking off the enemy as he found them. Soon he had dropped three hidden archers hiding in the forest beyond the other side of the pond.
Four more Svetli’Tai warriors were killed by their own comrades in the next several seconds.
Ruben was sending lightning across the pond and blasting a trio of swordsmen that were on Jason and Ziegler’s tail while Miranda was using her fire spells to attack and scare the enemy warriors’ horses. Soon she had caused a full mess of stampeding horses and she and Ruben had to take cover while the animals trampled their way back out to the main road.
Jonathan pulled back and fired upon a Svetli’Tai archer climbing a tree, and then he turned to see another sneaking below him. He wheeled on the enemy and went for another arrow, but the elf sent a blast of magic the pulverized the branch he was situated upon and Jonathan went hurtling through the air. Everything seemed to slow as he flipped end over end. He saw the last of the Vishi’Tai elves slain by the sword of one of the traitors, and he watched helplessly as two Korr’Tai took arrows to the chest. He glanced to the side his brother was on just as Jason counterattacked a traitor that jumped out from the bushes. The elf was dropped and Jason moved on to help Ziegler finish off two more traitors. Then, everything sped up and Jonathan landed smack in the middle of the pond.
The water crashed in around him as he fell deeper into the pool. A couple of arrows plunked in after him, but the water stopped them before they could reach him. As his momentum slowed and he righted himself, he came nose to nose with a very large pike. He reached up and grabbed one arrow that had somehow managed to stay in his quiver and pulled it out. Good thing too, for the pike opened its mouth and came at him. Jonathan jabbed the arrow into the pike’s mouth and up through its head. The three foot long fish jerked and twitched, and then turned belly-up and started to float to the surface slowly.
Jonathan glanced around, hoping the pond was not full of the dangerously territorial species and then swam to the top as well. Upon reaching the surface, he was reminded of the gravity of the battle raging around him as an arrow grazed his left shoulder, cutting it with a narrow gash that stung terribly. He cried out and began swimming as fast as he could pull himself through the water. He reached the bank where his brother was, and Jason reached down to pick him out of the water.
“Where’s your bow?” Jason asked.
Jonathan shook his head and ran to the nearest corpse, pulling a sword up from the dead elf’s hands. Jason then guided him to the edge of the woods where they could take cover from the onslaught of arrows that was now very much a one sided affair. Jonathan glanced up to the tree next to the one he had been in and saw the last few moments of the final Korr’Tai’s life as he leapt from the branch and fired three arrows in rapid succession while in air. His targets were two Svetli’Tai elves armed with bows. They fired back and the arrows crossed paths in the middle. The Korr’Tai flipped in the air, narrowly missing the missiles sent for him, and then spun around to watch his victory.
The Korr’Tai’s first arrow struck one Svetli’Tai warrior in the chest, but the second arrow caught the same elf in the right shoulder, causing the elf’s hand to jerk upward. This motion put his hand directly in the path of the third arrow, which had been on its way to the second Svetli’Tai traitor’s chest. Now, however, the first elf caught the third arrow with his hand and it stopped the arrow after it protruded half way through the elf’s hand.
The second elf was now free to fire again, and he did. The Korr’Tai was hit twice in the chest before he landed on the ground.
Jonathan closed his eyes and pulled back around the tree, unable to watch anymore.
“How many are left?” Ziegler asked.
Jason was quick to answer. “About ten, I think,” he said. “Miranda and Ruben are still alive, so that puts the odds at two against one.”
“We’ve had worse,” Ziegler commented.
Jonathan opened his eyes and saw his brother whispering something to Ziegler. They were planning how to attack the other elves, he knew. In that instant, his Memaw’s words came back to his mind.
“You brought him back once, and you can make sure he returns again,” she had said.
Jonathan turned and glanced out and saw one elf on their side of the pond, and seven more approaching from the other bank, with their bows drawn. He knew then that if Jason and Ziegler ran out, they would be shot. He glanced back to Jason, and then he smiled at his brother. He would make sure his brother got back home again, just as Memaw wanted.
He turned and sprinted out around the other side of the tree, drawing attention away from Jason and Ziegler.
“Get back here!” Jason snarled, but Jonathan wasn’t listening.
He charged out from the edge of the forest and into the open. Seven bows turned across the pond to aim at him. The elf on this side had already fired. Jason dropped to his knees and slid under the first elf’s arrow. As he slid across the damp grass and mud in his wet trousers, he looked up to see seven more arrows streaking toward him. He lurched forward, somersaulted and then used his momentum to leap into the air. One of the arrows bit into the side of the heel of his boot. Another drew a thin red line across the top of his thigh as it sliced over his leg, but no other arrows touched him. He came down on the ground, rolled once more to stabilize himself, and then sprinted for the elf closest to him.
The elf was pulling another arrow, but Jonathan let his sword fly at the warrior. The elf was able to duck, but in the time it took him to dodge the whirling sword, Jonathan was upon him, tackling him to the ground as another flurry of arrows f
lew toward him. Jonathan twisted to the side, using the other elf as a living shield as the other arrows came in. The elf’s eyes went wide and his body turned stiff, falling awkwardly on top of Jonathan.
Then he heard his brother shout and yell. He looked out from under the dead elf to see Jason and Ziegler rushing out of the trees close to the other side of the bank. He smiled, for they had done exactly what he had hoped they would do, use his distraction to skirt around under the cover of the forest to get closer to the other seven archers.
Jonathan pushed the dead elf off of him and stood with the dead traitor’s bow in hand. He fired once and took down an elf with a shot to the warrior’s forehead. His second shot pierced another in the upper back, and his third caught an archer who was almost fully drawn back with his own bow and aiming for Jason. A second after that, Ziegler and Jason finished off the last four in a flurry of blood-stained swords that left two of the elves headless and one without an arm.
A crackle of lightning ripped through the forest off behind Jonathan and he turned with his bow drawn. Jason had said there were ten. That meant there could be two more somewhere. That thought was put to rest when Ruben and Miranda emerged from behind a large tree. Ruben smiled and waved.
“Got the last two!” he called out.
The group all converged on the western shore of the pond and checked each other over. From what Jonathan could see, they had all managed to survive without much more than bruises or nicks and scrapes.
“I didn’t expect that,” Ziegler said as he spat on the ground and sheathed his sword. “Jonathan, what was Koanin telling you before the attack?”
Jonathan glanced to Koanin and felt a pang of sadness come over him. “He was telling me that he thought Larkyn was responsible for destroying his village and his wife’s disappearance.”
