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Help me,I pleaded.Save them.
For a long moment I felt nothing in return from the slow, thick wood. Frenel was still howling, unsoothable, and it seemed all was lost.
But then I felt a shiver, and a crack. Branches shook, leaves dropped, and there was a sound like a falling axe as somehow, behind Shayla, a split opened up on the stoic tree’s trunk, like a giant woman holding her skirts open, revealing a hollow place inside for them to hide.
She gawked from the newly made space to me. “Will we be safe in there?” But she got into it without waiting for my answer, hunkering down slightly.
“Remember, I have always loved you,” I told her.
She placed her fingers atop my lips, and I could feel their terrified tremble, even as she teased, “Don’t let your mistress hear.”
The kaorak sealed back shut without me even asking it to, which was good, because there were men in the grove now, as I turned around. Each of them was wearing thick armored leathers and carrying blades.
“Who are you?” one of them demanded.
“Wyrval the Green.” Naming myself a mage, even though I hadn’t yet Ascended, was the only ploy I had that might make them turn.
“No, you’re not. If you were, you would’ve portaled, rather than let us chase you.” The same man snorted and spit on the ground. “Where’s the girl? Where’s the baby?”
If Frenel was still crying inside the kaorak, I could not hear him. “I portaled them away from here.”
“More lies,” he said, shaking his head in savage disapproval. “I don’t have anything against you or your master. That said, however, I don’t have any problems with killing you, either.” He waved one of his men forward, to do so, as another of the men started howling, far louder than Frenel could.
He was howling because his neighbor had had his head twisted off.
“Did you think I was only good for making baskets?” Xelrim shouted, coming into the grove, eyeing the situation at once.
Another one of the fighters’ heads popped right off as Xelrim’s gaze passed over him, flying up into the air in an easy arc, hitting the low bough of a tree, and then falling to the ground to stare blankly at everyone as the body it’d belonged to crumpled and fell to its knees, blood pouring out of its neck hole.
A different fighter screamed at this, and started running—Xelrim felled him, too, then whipped his attention back.
“I only need one of you to take your highborn lord a message—who should it be?” he asked, then killed the next two tallest men without waiting for their answer.
“I’ll do it! I’ll do it!” the last living fighter swore as Xelrim grunted.
“Well, go on, then,” he said, and when the man didn’t move fast enough, he shouted, “Get!”
The fighter ran off like a frightened dog, as Xelrim finally faced me. “Where are they?” he demanded, still ridden by his anger.
“Safe!” I swore.I hope!I added mentally, setting my hands to the kaorak’s trunk.Give the ones I love back, please,I asked, more nicely than I had for anything in my life. The trunk parted slowly, shedding splinters as it cracked, and my little family was revealed.
Shayla ducked out into the circle of my arms, beneath the forest’s dappled sun. She was streaked with golden kaorak sap and covered in the downy dry material that comprised its innermost core. Whatever had needed laundering or combing before could now be safely blamed on the situation, and as she looked at me—
“You saved us, Val,” she said in quiet awe—but I couldn’t easily move my hands to hold her.
They’d become pressed to the bark, as things that were plant-like began to weave through me. I could feel the tree and myself exchanging essences—the price of my plant magic clearly being me, merging with one.
I yanked myself back, feeling small intrusive tendrils tear my palms, but I didn’t let anything show, other than the end of my fear and my highly reasonable deep exhaustion.
“You are great, boy.” I felt the unexpected touch of Xelrim’s hand on my shoulder, his fingers firmly clasping me with a shake. “See?”
But all I saw were Shayla’s eyes, and in their reflection, the final death of the man I’d never become.
The fire hadn’t injuredour home all that much, but it’d taken out a wide swath of the fields and much of the barn, and it took us days to set things right and scrub out all the smoke. No one came for the bodies of the fighters, so we’d just left them in the grove—the forest floor would claim them all in time.
Xelrim was omnipresent, understandably, hovering, concerned that so much had befallen us on his first time away—and he was doubly hard about my studying now, chasing me off to green places every chance he got—which meant I had precious little alone time with Shayla.
At least I knew this fact pained her, too—I could tell from the longing looks she gave me, and how close she came any brief time he wasn’t around.
