Page 93 of Into the West

Mother was giving off enough heat that what came from the sky now—at least directly overhead—was actual rain. Superheated steam rose from her in clouds, and the mages got the bright idea to send it straight down the Forest’s throat, with a wind.

The Forest definitely did not like that. And it fought back, the rearmost trees moving in coordinated waves now, to create a counter-wind.

Despite the fact that the branches burst into flames as soon as they touched Mother’s surface, the trees kept thrashing at her, tearing bits away from her body. Kordas felt her pain as if it was his own.

And fear closed his throat as he realized that they could still lose.

Then the fireballs started again; they rained down on the rear of the Forest, disrupting the trees back there, and then began stitching a line of destruction right up the middle. The weather mages saw what was happening and directed their lightning strikes to follow up the same pathway.

Kordas felt Mother’s eruption of pure glee. Then he saw it for himself.

They had cut the Forest in half. And the fireballs began falling on the right-hand half, while the lightning kept the division open, and Mother reached upward with all her appendages and fell on the left half. For an instant her entire body liquefied and splashed yellow-hot stone and metals a furlong wide on each side of her. Heedless of the rocks still being torn out of her, Mother reformed and slashed and burned with her titanic, white-hot talons, while fireball after fireball punched more holes in the other half of the rage-quickened Forest.

He sensed, rather than saw, the moment of victory. When the Forest ceased to be able to protect itself, to think, if that word really applied to the monstrosity, and all the trees thrashed in uncoordinated chaos and the pain of approaching death.

“Open door!” cried Pebble, and the guards didn’t even pause to question Kordas; they unbarred gates slashed deeply and scorched black, and Pebble elongated and sprouted what must have been a hundred stubby little legs, and flowed down to its mother like a millipede.

“You may rest,” he heard in his mind, and he did not question the order, or the source. Apparently they all heard Mother give the word, because Jonaton slid down the inside of the parapet to slump bonelessly onto the top of the wall, and Kordas did the same. A little away from him, Sai pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his face on them for a moment.

Within the wall, all was quiet. Outside the wall, there was nothing but the sound of splintering wood.

Finally Sai turned his head toward Kordas, in clear exhaustion and pain.

“Am I missing—an eyebrow?” he groaned.

“Not—entirely,” Kordas replied. “Trim the burned bits off and no one will notice.”

“Good,” Sai said, and put his face back between his knees.

Someone came and put hands over both of Kordas’s ears, and after a while he realized he was hearing normally again. Which was a relief; he had not entirely been certain that a Healer could do anything about the damage. Some time after that, he sensed Isla approaching up the stairs—he was acutely sensitive to all the mages in the Vale right now, and probably would be for a little while longer, until the connections faded. He raised his head and blinked blearily at her.

She was carrying a pail and a cup. She dipped the latter in the former and shoved it toward him; he took it, and noted absently that it was sticky. She didn’t have to order him to drink; he was parched, probably had been for some time, and had shoved that aside along with every other nagging physical problem.

He gulped the contents down. It was some sort of herbal concoction, with a touch of salt, but at least half honey. Under most circumstances he would have gagged; now he wanted a second cup, and got it.

A little more revived, he saw that other people and Dolls were moving along the wall with pails or pitchers and cups, making sure everyone up here drank their fill.

He wanted to know—and dreaded to hear—how many people, how much they had lost. But he had to know.

“Not as many as you’re afraid to hear,” Isla said, anticipating him. “Not more than two hundred; probably closer to one hundred than two. No one we actually know.”

But they are still my people. They trusted me, and I led them here to die.

“There are a couple of the weaker or older mages who are going to be touch-and-go for a little, but the Healers seem confident they’ll pull through,” Isla continued. “We lost very little stock. There is no damage inside the Veil, and the only property damage is the spare barges down by the river. That monster ate them.”

He nodded wearily, too tired to speak.

“The Hawkbrothers came down out of the woods; they want to talk to you,” she continued.

Well, I want to talk to them, he thought with a ghost of anger. I thought they said we didn’t need to worry about the Forest.

Rose and Isla helped him to his feet and steadied him down the stairs to the still-open gate. He glanced at the spot where he’d last seen Mother savaging the Forest. She and Pebble were both down there; the raw, burning spots where great chunks had been torn out of her hide were healing, and the two of them seemed to be—grazing.

Good. I hope they devour every speck of that thing so it can’t regrow.

But he didn’t waste much time on that, because the Hawkbrothers, led by Silvermoon, were waiting for him. And “sheepish” did not even begin to describe the looks on their faces. Also “chagrin,” “regret,” and “how-could-we-have-been-that-stupid.”

That cooled his anger a little.