Traitor (19 page)

“I agree.” I smirked.

“Hush!” Araxie hissed, raising a hand and calling her warriors to attention.

We stood frozen, listening to the forest around us. At first, everything seemed normal. I started to wonder if it had been a false alarm, although I didn’t know what we were looking for to begin with. Then I felt it.

Weight settled over my chest, squeezing at my mind uncomfortably. It was a burning, stinging sort of pressure, and it offended that part of my soul that was now fused with Paligno. The balance was compromised. The wild was turning on itself.

The jungle at the far edge of the temple grounds began to move, shuddering violently a few seconds before the monsters burst through it. Two primate-like beasts with stumpy hind legs, huge muscular front arms, and wooly hides mottled with crystalline-looking growths and moss stormed the clearing. Each one was at least fifteen feet to the shoulder, and I could sense the raw brute force of their strength.

Whatever they were, they were possessed by the sickness—the rage that was also infecting animals in Maldobar. Their gaping, toothy maws foamed. Their eyes were so bloodshot that they seemed to glow red. They wouldn’t be deterred. They had come for blood.

Araxie never flinched. She tilted her chin down toward her chest, her eyes never leaving her enemy, and gave the command to open fire. Arrows hummed through the air, but even I could tell that wasn’t going to do much besides make these animals angrier than ever. Their hides were bound to be too thick for an arrow or a sword to pierce.

I was trying figure what to do, or if there was some way I could help. Without my dragon, I wasn’t sure what use I would be. All of a sudden, I felt something—something new. It was like a tugging on the back of my mind, like someone was poking me repeatedly to get my attention. It wasn’t Mavrik or any other presence I was familiar with.

I turned my focus to it. Tingling heat swept over my skin, and thoughts started whirling through my brain almost faster than I could comprehend. They were a flurry of pictures, of scenes like from my dreams. I saw someone else fighting a creature like this, wielding power over the jungle. Then I remembered something my mother had said to me before. My dreams weren’t dreams. They were memories.

I knew what I had to do. I sheathed my blade and glanced at Kiran. “Watch my back.”

He nodded.

While Araxie led her warriors in an assault on the monsters, I let my mind retreat to the fountain of power bubbling up from inside me. I flexed my will, calling on the jungle to observe my place as Paligno’s chosen one—just like the figure from my vision.

And this time, it obeyed without question.

The ground rumbled. The trees groaned. Before me, the earth split and a fissure opened up. It spouted roots and vines by the hundreds. They surged skyward like a living tied, twisting together and taking on a humanoid shape.

My golem lumbered forward at my command, bigger than both the simian creatures that bellowed at it in fury. They charged, and I braced for impact.

The golem moved when I moved, driven by my gestures, and I managed to grab the first of the creatures by its scraggly neck. It pounded its giant fists into my golem’s head, snapping vines and roots with each blow. It was much stronger than I anticipated. But I felt no pain, and neither did my elemental creation.

I grappled with it, flinging the beast to the ground just as the second one mauled me. My golem stumbled under its weight, and I pitched to try to fling it off.

But I wasn’t in this fight alone.

Araxie was incredibly fast. And her aim with the bow was flawless. She fired a shot straight into a weak spot under the primate’s arm, piercing softer skin and making the beast howl in pain. It fell off my golem, giving me a chance to wheel around and pin it.

The first monster was getting up, dazed but undeterred. It began thundering toward the fight again, slinging foam as it roared. One golem wasn’t going to do it.

I needed to try something else. Something new. I tapped into those memories again, searching for something more powerful to try.

I drew my scimitar again and raised it skyward, pressing power into the metal until it glowed with energy. Then I plunged it into the ground. A shockwave went out around me, spreading like a ripple on a pond. It made a low, concussive sound and for a few seconds, there was silence.

Suddenly, a chorus of screeches went up from the trees around us. Shrikes descended like a flock of ravenous crows, blurring through the air and attacking the first monster mid-charge. Maybe it could have handled one or two shrikes without a problem, but the primate wasn’t able to deal with thirty or so. Jaws laced with venom bit at the creature from all sides, overwhelming it and bearing it to the ground. It pitched and flailed, trying to beat them off. But there was no escape.

Without my will to drive it, the second beast was ripping my golem apart like a scarecrow. At least it was distracted. I turned just in time to see Araxie pouncing fearlessly from an overhanging limb, her bow drawn taut with three arrows notched. She fired all three at once, finding yet another soft spot on the back of the simian’s skull—just like she had with Ghost.

The creature froze instantly. Its bulky arms drooped. It made a sad, gurgling sound and fell face-forward onto the ground … and it didn’t move again.

Standing over her kill, the gray elf princess looked wild. Her formal dress was tattered some, and her hair was falling out of its intricate braided design. She looked at me, and I understood why Jace had had such a hard time fighting her. She was truly a force to be reckoned with.

The gray elf warriors rallied quickly, falling back to the front of the temple and forming a line in front of me. Araxie strutted proudly in front of them, her shoulders back and her chin tilted up with pride. She wasted no time putting them to work. Injuries had been minimal, so there were plenty of hands at her disposal.

I watched them split off. One group formed a scouting party who left to secure the perimeter of the village and make sure there weren’t any more surprise monsters coming to visit. The rest began cutting the dead animals apart.

“Nothing will be wasted. Meat is too hard to come by not to harvest everything we possibly can.” Araxie glanced me up and down as she sauntered over to stand with her arms crossed, an authoritative scowl on her face. “I suppose I owe you my gratitude. This is the first encounter in years where we haven’t had to bury any of our own.”

I wished I could have felt happier or more proud about that. “So this sickness isn’t just affecting the animals in Maldobar,” I realized aloud. “How long has it been here?”

Araxie and Kiran exchanged a glance like they suspected I might be out of my mind.

“Jaevid, it began here.” Araxie cleared her throat. “It seems there is much more you don’t know.”

Araxie tried insisting that I should stay in my own hut. I guess it was strange for the stonespeaker not to be staying with the royal family, and the hut in question had been cleared out especially for me. But I couldn’t accept that. I wanted to stay near Jace. I knew when he finally woke up he was probably going to be confused and afraid of our hosts. That was totally understandable. And I definitely had a lot of explaining to do. Poor Jace knew basically nothing about my past or anything I’d been through before he became my instructor.

Boy was he in for a surprise.

The gray elves brought back all our armor and gear, fixing up the stuffy little room in the temple as comfortably as they could with another bed and soft fur pelts on the floor. The villagers still wouldn’t meet my eyes for more than a second or two, though. I wondered how long that would last. It was beginning to make me uneasy.

The morning after those simian beasts had attacked, I stepped out of the room Jace and I were sharing to find a heap of stuff piled all around the doorway. I almost tripped over it. There were pots, bits of jewelry, weapons, and portions of food wrapped up like presents.

“Gifts from the villagers.”

Kiran was standing off to the side, just out of sight. The sudden sound of his voice about scared me to death.

“Gifts? Why?” I squatted to pick up a dagger made of strange white material. It wasn’t bone. In fact, it almost felt like some sort of wood.

Kiran smirked. “Word has spread of what you did—singlehandedly bringing down two graulers. You saved many lives.”

I rolled my eyes. “Technically, Araxie killed the second one.”

“It seems she’s willing to give you the credit if it will help smooth things over.” He shrugged. “So now everyone is thankful to have Paligno’s blessed one among us again. It is the first time in a decade they’ve had anything to celebrate. A small victory.”

“I’m still waiting for someone to explain that to me,” I reminded him.

“Soon,
caenu
. King Erandur has emerged from his mourning to announce there will be a great feast tonight. I suspect you’ll get all the answers you can stand there.”

I studied him carefully. “So why won’t you call me by my name? By now I’m sure you know what it is.”

“Does it matter what I call you?” He arched one of his eyebrows.

“Calling me a piece of filth isn’t exactly a pet name,” I pointed out.

Kiran grinned devilishly, almost like he was hoping I would want to fight about it. “You misunderstand. Gray elf men must never be too friendly unless they are family.”

“Oh really? Why is that?”

“Because we compete for the same thing,” he said as he made a curvy outline of a feminine shape in the air with his fingers. “We are rivals until one of us takes a mate.”

I chuckled. “I’ve already chosen mine. And I doubt very much she’d be someone you would want, unless you’re interested in human women.”

He furrowed his brow, but didn’t look quite as disgusted as I’d expected he might. “Oh.”

“So call me Jae.” I started moving some of the gifts around to make a path so I could at least get out the door.

Kiran wandered over to help me. I noticed he was also examining every gift, like he was trying to decide if it was something he might want or not. He picked up the dagger I had been examining earlier, testing the point by pricking his own finger. It was definitely sharp.

“See anything you like?” I decided to give him that invitation, since I didn’t see myself trying to haul all of this stuff out of Luntharda anytime soon.

He flicked me a disbelieving look. “You don’t know what this is, do you?”

I could only make a pathetic guess. “A nice knife?”

“A greevwood blade,” he corrected me. “Very rare. Very difficult to harvest. Greevwood trees only grow deep in Luntharda. Once you cut away their flesh, you only have a few hours to shape it before it hardens. Then it can never be cracked or broken. Blades made from it will never go dull.”

I studied the blade with a new appreciation. “I see.”

“No, you don’t.” He twirled the blade over his hand as though he were testing its balance. “That is not what makes them so rare. Greevwood trees are flesh-eaters.”

That struck a chord. All of a sudden, I remembered reading about these in my studies as a fledgling rider. There were trees in Luntharda known to be carnivorous, and they were considered highly dangerous.

“The roots grow out over the ground like a spider’s web,” he continued. “They are covered in many tiny hairs. When touched, they release a dust in the air. I forget the human word for it.”

“Spores?”

He nodded. “Yes. When you breathe it in, it makes your body go numb. You become paralyzed and very easy to digest by those hungry roots.”

I shuddered and looked at the blade more carefully as he offered it to me. The idea of a tree eating anything was downright creepy. I didn’t like the visual at all.

Kiran smirked. “You see? This is not a trinket. It is a valuable gift.”

“Understood.” I took it from him and slipped it into my belt.

He finished helping me sort through the gifts, moving as many of them into my small room as we could fit. The commotion must have been louder than I realized because it woke up Jace, who started groaning and rolling over. He appeared delirious at first, like maybe he thought we were still at the tower in Northwatch.

Then he bolted upright and his eyes shot to me with utter terror. He spotted Kiran and scrambled off his sleeping pallet, snatching up the nearest thing he could use as a weapon—which wound up being one of his own boots.

“It’s all right, Jace.” I tried to sound comforting. “Relax. Everything is fine.”

He clearly didn’t believe me, not that I blamed him. He snarled at Kiran, brandishing that boot threateningly as he backed himself into a corner. His hands were clenched until his knuckles were white and his chest was heaving in frantic breaths.

“Kiran, can you give us a few minutes?” I decided it was probably better to do this without a gray elf looming in the room. Once he was gone, I shut the door, which wasn’t much more than a curtain strung over the entrance, and started to explain.

It took a long time, even though Jace knew I wasn’t exactly normal to start with. After all, he’d seen me heal people before. But there was still a lot to tell. Starting from the beginning, with my encounter with the slavers, my nightmares and visions, my discovery about my father, how Sile was involved in everything, and the fact that I was apparently the chosen servant of an ancient forest deity … it would have been a lot for anyone to take in.