Traitor (22 page)

Jace eyed the bow like he wasn’t impressed. “Never in a million years did I think I would be learning archery this way,” he muttered.

“From a gray elf?” I guessed.

He snorted and rolled his eyes. “No. From a woman.”

We weren’t alone as we began our dangerous trek away from the temple grounds. A few other curious warriors were following us—including Kiran. It was obvious they had a much easier time keeping up with the princess as she climbed over the railing of a high terrace and began running along the mossy, broad limbs of the trees. She moved like a jungle cat. She was sleek, quiet, and quick as a shadow as she stepped lightly through the trees with her weapons strung across her back. There was something dangerously beautiful about it.

I heard Jace cursing wildly under his breath as he eased out onto each limb, his legs wobbling at first. “Had to be heights,” he grumbled through clenched teeth.

That sounded weird to me, coming from Jace. He didn’t strike me as the kind of guy to be afraid of anything. “You’re afraid of heights?”

He shot me a dirty look. “Shut up. Usually there’s a dragon between the ground and me.”

I snickered and looked away. I was trying my best to keep up with the rest of the warriors. Amidst the sea of vibrant jungle all around us, the brightly colored clothes the gray elves wore made more sense. They blended in with the wild colors of the foliage, and the silk was light enough that the humidity and heat didn’t make me feel stifled as we moved.

We passed through the trees, going from bough to bough like a bunch of squirrels until Araxie froze. She called the rest of us to a halt with a raised hand. Everyone stopped and immediately dropped into a low crouch against the limb where we stood. Jace and I did the same.

Far below, I saw the reason we’d all stopped.

There was a herd of creatures moving through the tall ferns. They were peaceful, I suppose, because no one drew on them. They seemed content to move slowly through the underbrush, nibbling on the green ends of fronds. We all just kept quiet and observed.

The creatures below looked like some species of elk or deer, although each of them was roughly the size of an eight hundred -pound bull. They were muscular, more so than a horse, and yet somehow graceful looking with their long legs and thick necks. Their pelts were a ghostly white color, mottled with gray stripes. The males had long white antlers sweeping back from their heads. I counted about ten sharp points on each horn.

As the herd moved on, Kiran shuffled closer to me. “Faundra,” he whispered. “They are very strong and swift, and can jump a great distance even with a rider. Once we could tame them. Now they are the most likely to turn on us. It is too dangerous to go near them.”

I watched the last of the faundra disappear into the jungle. I could imagine how much damage even one of those beasts could do if it were possessed by Paligno’s curse. A whole herd would be deadly. It gave me a new appreciation for them.

Once the herd had moved on, Araxie gave a whistle and we all got back to our feet. She led the way through the trees to a place where we could climb down and there was a wide, open area between the trunks. The undergrowth wasn’t so dense there, thanks to the thickness of the canopy that blotted out most of the sunlight.

We waited while she descended first and paced the clearing like a cautious doe. She was scanning for any potential threat, and she checked the ground thoroughly before she signaled up to the rest of us.

Climbing down was harder than going up—especially without a staircase. I wasn’t sure Jace was going to make it. The other warriors were trying to help him some, but it didn’t make much difference. He was cursing wildly until I heard a cracking sound, which I supposed was his boot breaking off a ledge of bark he’d been standing on.

He beat us all to the ground because he fell the last few feet.

When the rest of us got down to meet her, Araxie was already busy setting up targets. She squashed a few red berries between her fingers and painted circles on big leaves before hanging them on the tree trunks. I didn’t have to ask what those were for.

Araxie wasted no time getting down to business. She instructed us to get ready, so Jace and I took off our bows and quivers. Elven bows were different from the human ones I had dealt with before. The string was made of some kind of thick resin, and the draw was incredibly difficult. The bow itself was almost as tall as I was, and had been painted to blend in with the jungle.

I had a difficult time drawing back the string until Kiran came over to show me a trick. “You start facing down. Use the strength of your legs, stomach, and shoulders.” He demonstrated the motion for me as he explained, “Chest out. Shoulders back. Now, twist up as you draw.”

I nodded and tried it. He was right. Using my whole body to draw the arrow was much easier. However, once I had the string drawn, my arms started to tremble under the strain. I clumsily fired an arrow toward one of the targets, but it just sailed away into the jungle. I didn’t even hit the tree.

Kiran laughed. “A good try. Now, do it again.”

Lucky for me, Jace wasn’t doing any better. Some of the other warriors were trying to show him the same drawing technique Kiran had taught me. Unfortunately, Jace didn’t have the same advantage of size that I had. I was several inches taller than he was, and he didn’t have the benefit of a gray elf’s unnatural strength.

It took all morning for us to get a beginner’s grasp on gray elf archery. By noon, we were both able to at least draw and hit the target—albeit not in the center. When we stopped to rest, my arms had gone from aching to being entirely numb.

But I was determined. I had to get the hang of this.

It took hundreds of shots and several days before I was able to get anywhere near the center of the target. Once he figured out how to draw, Jace actually did better at it than I did. He was too stubborn to give up, and I had to give him credit for that.

The gray elf warriors teased him in their native language while he struggled to fire shot after shot. They taunted him when they thought he wasn’t looking. And still he never gave up. He clenched his teeth and narrowed his eyes. The muscles in his arms and shoulders went solid, and the veins in his neck stood out against his skin as he drew back each arrow.

He was the first to hit the bullseye.

After that, the warriors quit teasing him.

Araxie wasn’t so easily impressed, though. She paced back and forth between us while we practiced, barking out orders and corrections. When Jace made that shot, she walked right up to him and commanded him to draw another arrow. I stopped to watch.

He obeyed, and she immediately began tweaking his position with a scrutinizing glint in her eyes. “Arms like this. String always at your cheek.” She talked in a quiet, sharp voice as she moved his body into the proper form. “Feet apart. Don’t flinch when you fire. Take a breath as you draw. Hold it until you release. Keep your eyes open.”

Jace gave a slight nod and stood firm, holding his position and his breath until he fired again.

It was another bullseye.

“Good.” Araxie gave him a satisfied smile. “Now do it again.”

They were standing awfully close. Even I noticed it. She didn’t seem quite as disgusted by him now. Or at least, she was so preoccupied with our training that touching him apparently didn’t disgust her anymore. Either way, it made me grin to myself …

… mostly because I could have sworn Jace was blushing.

Every morning Araxie took us out into the jungle to train. And each time, I saw more of my mother’s homeland for the wild, beautiful, and dangerous place it truly was. Being immersed in it was sharpening my senses. It quickened a part of my soul that had been lying dormant my entire life.

My power was growing stronger by the day, although I was hesitant to show it to anyone. The villagers were already wary around me, and I wasn’t sure how Jace would respond if I showed him some of the new things I was capable of. It wasn’t just the plants and birds that responded to my will, now. Tapping into those memories was awakening new abilities almost daily.

Moreover, I could sense the spread of Paligno’s curse throughout the jungle. It was all around us, looming like an oppressive heat in my mind that made me nervous. I was beginning to question if simply putting a stone back into its resting place was going to fix all this. It seemed a little too easy.

That’s why I felt compelled to seek out Paligno’s counsel every night. I’d been trying it for almost a week. After Jace and everyone else went to sleep and the village was quiet, I found a place in the atrium of the temple where I could sit and meditate. I was hoping that the usually silent god would somehow give me a helpful hint about how I was going to fix all of this. But I never got any answers.

And then I got another reckless and potentially life threatening idea.

The temple compound was pitch black as I slipped out into the night. Everyone except for a few warriors who were watching the perimeter was sound asleep. Overhead, oil lamps burned in the huts strung about the tree trunks. They glowed with a warm orange light through the slats in woven grass blinds or on the swinging rope bridges. Frogs and insects sang an eerie melody in the foliage, and the ground was wet with dew.

I walked to the edge of the pit where I had seen Paligno for the first time—the pit that had haunted me in my nightmares. It looked even more daunting in the dead of night. I could see the staircase winding around the edge, carved into the earth and overgrown with moss and vines. It delved so deep into the dark I couldn’t see the bottom. The air rising up from inside the pit was bitter cold and it smelled of rich, moist earth.

I took a deep breath and started down the spiraling staircase. The deeper I went, the less I could see. It was like being swallowed by the earth. I had to keep a hand on the wall just to make sure I didn’t accidentally wander too far to the side and fall to my death somewhere far below.

Once I reached the bottom of the pit, I could barely see the opening overhead anymore. All around me was pitch black. I decided to try using some of my newfound power.

Pulling a large, walnut-sized seed from my belt, I cupped a hand to my lips and blew gently onto it. The seed began to glow brightly, piercing the dark with radiant green light. Holding it out before me, I got my first good look at the cavern.

Directly ahead was an opening leading farther into the gloom like a tunnel. It was tall and circular, and by the look of it, no one had come down here in a very long time. The walls and ceiling were nothing but hard-packed dirt. Roots from trees and plant life hung down like spider webs and brushed against me as I started forward. Looking down, I saw only one other set of footprints in the soft soil apart from my own. But even they appeared to be old because dust had settled into them so that they were nearly unnoticeable.

When the tunnel came to an end, it opened into a massive circular chamber. I willed the seed to glow brighter. It filled the open air with more and more light, revealing something I’d only heard rumors about: Paligno’s tomb.

The ceiling itself must have been forty or fifty feet high, but there was no manmade grandeur about this place. There were no gilded adornments, gifts, burning incense, or indications that this really was a tomb. All I saw was a single slab of white stone about four feet high standing in the very center of the chamber. On it were the skeletal remains of something that looked like an animal. The bones were clean and pale like alabaster. The sight of it made me suck in a sharp breath.

I walked toward the makeshift grave, wary of the bones that lay there. The way the skull seemed to be staring at me through its eyeless holes was unsettling. My pulse was pounding in my ears as I dared to go a few steps closer to it.

As I drew nearer, I could see more clearly what it was. Or at least, what it sort of looked like. The skull had sweeping, elegant white horns on it, exactly like the vision of Paligno I had seen when I received his blessing. Before it was a small, bowl-shaped indentation in the white stone. It was empty now, but instinct told me this was the place where the god stone had once rested.

I let my fingers brush over that empty space, wondering at the irony of finding myself standing here. Years ago, my father had stood in this very spot to steal the stone. Thinking about that filled me with bitterness and anger. How could he be so foolish? Had he really thought there wouldn’t be consequences for taking it?

“
Do not judge him so harshly, dulcu
,” my mother’s voice spoke to me.

I turned around to see her ghostly image flickering before me again. Her eyes were shining like stars and her robes and hair flowed around her as though they were blowing in the wind. But there was no wind down here.

I can’t explain why I wasn’t surprised to see her this time. Maybe part of me had been expecting to find her here, waiting for me where this had all begun. The sight of her was no less difficult for me, though. It still brought back all those distant childhood memories, and it made me miss her terribly.