Chapter 27
Lexi
They found the tunnel that led up and out of the forest, but getting back up the thick tree trunks was difficult. Lexi was exhausted, and even though there were plenty of hand- and footholds, she had to force herself to keep moving. Tiberius, on the other hand, was unstoppable. He didn’t rest, even though she could see in his movements that he was just as tired as she was. What was worse, he wouldn’t talk to her. He responded when she asked him a direct question, but his answers were short, his voice emotionless. She wasn’t sure what had happened when he touched the Emerystone, but she knew it had frightened him.
The climb back up through the gnarled trees was strenuous. They had run out of water, and it seemed to Lexi like her throat was full of dust, dirt, and tree bark. Swallowing was painful, and she couldn’t keep from chewing her tongue. Eventually they saw light far above them, and Lexi felt a glimmer of hope. She didn’t know what would happen in the days ahead, but she knew there was rest and comfort in the war ship that was waiting for their return.
“How much farther?” she asked, still in shock that she was more tired than Tiberius.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Lexi looked up. There were no leaves on the twisted branches, the canopy overhead was made up of barren branches, and judging the distance they had to climb was almost impossible. To Lexi, it felt like the tunnel would never end. The gloom around them was growing lighter, and she could make out darker shapes among the shadows.
“Can we stop for a minute?” Lexi asked.
Her hands were raw from the rough bark on the trees, and her legs burned with the effort she exerted as she climbed. She was strong, but the darkness and lack of water were taking a heavy toll. She never thought she would hate the darkness, but her adventures with Tiberius across the blighted lands had changed her. She wasn’t just a survivor anymore. She didn’t need darkness to hide in, nor did she feel the need to keep her distance from the people around her. All she wanted was for Tiberius to confide in her, but after their conversation in the camp—which seemed like years ago to Lexi, even though she knew it had only been a few hours previous—he refused to talk. He was angry, and she couldn't understand that. She was so proud of what he’d accomplished. Getting the Emerystone had been the caper of all capers. Not even Lexi could have taken it without his powerful magic. And he had been incredibly strong, too, holding her with the rope and pulling her back up all by himself. She wanted to praise his amazing feat, to revel in their success, but he wouldn’t hear it. The Emerystone had no power, and he felt betrayed.
They rested, but Tiberius didn’t talk to her. He looked up, and then he looked back down the tunnel, as if he expected something to come chasing after them if they didn’t get to the top fast enough. She was more than ready to get out of the forest, but for different reasons than Tiberius. He wanted to get back to Avondale and to find a way to stop his brother from destroying the kingdom. She just wanted to eat and sleep.
“Let’s get going,” he said.
He didn’t wait for Lexi to agree, and she made a face at him behind his back. She didn’t like being left out of his thoughts and plans. But she knew what it was like to be angry, to feel betrayed, so she gave him the space she knew he needed.
As the light around them grew brighter, Lexi’s spirits rose. She could see light shining though the boughs above them, and the feeling of being close to the top of the tree tunnel gave her a boost of confidence. Tiberius was climbing faster, too; they were grunting, and Lexi felt sweat rolling down the back of her neck, but she didn’t care. She just wanted out of the darkness, out of the twisted trees and dirt and the constant smell of decay.
She reached her hand out for a thin branch that curved across the tunnel, but as soon as her hand touched it, she knew she was in trouble. She tried to recoil, but the brown snake was too fast. It coiled around her arm, its body so strong that Lexi’s cry of surprise soon turned into a wail of agony. She felt as if the creature were going to pull her arm out of its socket.
The snake—if that’s really what the beast was—had skin that, in the shadowy canopy of the twisted forest, looked exactly like the brown, rugged tree bark. Lexi fought to pull herself away from the creature, leaning back dangerously over the chasm below, but another coil shot out and wrapped around one leg.
“Lexi!” Tiberius shouted.
The light from his simple illumination spell flared brightly, and Lexi had to close her eyes. Another coil shot out and encircled Lexi’s waist. It slithered up her midsection and across her chest. The coils squeezed so tightly that Lexi couldn’t breathe. Her screams were cut off, and she felt an awful pain in her back as her lungs burned and her vision swam.
The forest was dark all around her, but Lexi thought she saw two black eyes staring at her. They weren’t round, but slivers of oblivion that seemed to call out to her soul. She felt an icy gust of terror and heard Tiberius screaming from somewhere above her.
Specula Fulsi!
She knew she was losing touch with reality. Not even Tiberius’ words made sense. It was just gibberish to her. She could hear a hissing noise, and the pain was getting worse. She caught sight of a gaping maw, dripping with clear, viscous fluids. There were no teeth, just a dripping beak-like pincer that was open wide in greedy anticipation.
Specula Fulsi!
The hissing grew louder, and Lexi smelled a horrible stench. The coils tightened, and Lexi saw bright spots floating in the dark forest. She was on the verge of passing out when the creature relaxed its hold on her. Lexi took in a deep breath of air, and her vision snapped back into focus. She saw what looked to her like a wand of light coming from above her. The light touched the thick coils around her leg, and the tough, scaly hide blistered then split apart.
Lexi was hanging over the chasm, suspended by one arm that was still held fast in the creature’s tentacle. The fear, fatigue, and lack of oxygen that had paralyzed her just moments before were gone. Adrenaline flooded through her veins, and she realized that she had to do something to get away from the monster that was intent on making her its next meal. She kicked her legs and swung her body, ignoring the wrenching pain in her shoulder. One foot caught on a branch, and she pulled herself up, taking hold of another tree trunk with her free hand.
The coil around her arm tightened, causing Lexi to scream again. The fat, snake-like tentacle was wrapped around her upper arm and onto her shoulder. It pushed against her neck, and Lexi was sure it was going to rip her arm off. If it couldn’t eat all of her, it was going to take whatever it could get. Then came the blinding beam of light again. Lexi looked away but heard the sizzle of flesh and blood being burned. She could smell the char of the creature’s flesh, felt the tentacle around her arm shaking but not letting go.
Then came a huge roar. The sound was like a roll of thunder. The beast’s tentacles were everywhere in the twisted mass of branches and curving tree trunks. Wood cracked, and the entire tunnel shook as the beast raged, but finally it let go. The relief was immediate, but Lexi didn’t wait to enjoy it. She immediately began climbing, trying to get as far away from the monster as possible. The branches and leaves were shaking so violently that Lexi had trouble keeping a grip as she scrambled upward.
Then there was another roar, this time accompanied by a hot blast of putrid air. Lexi looked over her shoulder and saw the creature slithering out from the twisted maze of tree trunks and gnarled branches, into the tunnel. It was a huge worm, with a long, thick body and grasping tentacles reaching out from all along the brown, scaly body. It had two large black eyes, and in the center of one stubby end of its tube shaped body was the pincer mouth. Lexi spotted black blood and severed tentacles, but the creature was still hungry and hadn’t given up on making a meal out of Lexi.
“Climb!” Tiberius shouted. “Come on!”
His hand was reaching out for Lexi, and she hurried forward to grab it. Tiberius wasn’t a big man, and Rafe had handled all the heavy lifting when they were in the blighted lands, but Tiberius pulled Lexi’s body up quickly beside his own. And then they were scrambling upward. The creature below them shook the trees hard, hoping to shake them loose so they would fall into its open mouth.
Lexi struggled to hang on, but she was determined not to fall. After a moment she even continued upward. Tiberius stayed right beside her, occasionally looking down at the terror below them. The creature was gaining on them. Lexi guessed it could have reached out with its tentacles and grabbed hold of them, perhaps even pulling them down into its ravenous mouth, but Tiberius’ magic had made it cautious. Lexi thought it must be waiting until it was close enough to snatch them quickly back down.
“We have to stop it,” Lexi said. “It’s going to catch us.”
“I know,” Tiberius said. “Keep climbing.”
Lexi hadn’t bothered to look past her next hand hold. Her mind was on the verge of panic, expecting to feel the squeeze of the scaly creature’s tentacles at any moment. When she finally glanced ahead, she was shocked to see how close they were to the surface of the forest. She knew if they could just get to the war ship they would be able to escape. They only needed a few more seconds, perhaps a minute.
She was out of breath, and sweat was stinging her eyes, but Lexi didn’t stop, even though every muscle was burning and there was blood on her hands and legs from scrambling so quickly up through the wooden tunnel. One glance just before she made it out showed that the creature wasn’t afraid to chase them right to the top of the canopy. In a normal forest, the treetops would have bent and broken under the giant worm’s weight, but the twisted forest was different. It was much more than a group of trees, almost like a gigantic brush pile where dead and uprooted trees had been tossed along with those still growing. Some of the trees were upside down, and others were sideways, with all the trunks, branches, and roots snarled together.
Lexi felt a thrill of excitement as she scrambled up through the roots of an upturned tree and out onto the top of the forest. The sky overhead was a bright amber, and a breeze was blowing that felt magical as it cooled her sweat-dampened skin, but Lexi’s relief was short-lived. She could hear the creature coming up, even as she bent down to grab Tiberius’ hand and help him up.
“The ship!” she shouted. “It’s gone.”
She watched Tiberius look up, turning his head around and shading his eyes, but the ship was nowhere in sight. His face, red with the frenzied effort of their climb, hardened with anger. Then he looked down, and the anger turned to fear. Lexi looked down, too. The monster was still coming.
Chapter 28
Leonosis
The demon wasn’t surprised when Earl Ageus didn’t send Tiberius to him as promised. When the ship from Avondale had sailed toward them, Draggah knew the Balestone wasn’t on it. He paced the command deck, and Leonosis, still a prisoner in his own mind, felt the demon’s curiosity. He knew that the ship sailing toward their fleet was a trick of some kind, and he could have ordered his own ships to blow it out of the sky or to sail out of harm’s way, but instead he just watched.
When the crew abandoned ship, it became quite obvious that the earl meant to blow up the opulent vessel. Leonosis felt a pang of regret as he watched the ship that he’d always coveted explode. And just as he’d guessed, Draggah was prepared for the carnage. It wouldn’t have surprised Leonosis if Draggah had only used his power to protect the sky ship, leaving the war fleet exposed. There was no doubt that the demon would have reveled in the panic and fear of the soldiers as they died, but instead Draggah contained the blast and sent the destroyed vessel dropping harmlessly to the ground far below. He watched it streaking down and disappearing into the bank of clouds that covered the blighted lands.
What Leonosis hadn’t expected was the thrill of magic as the demon conjured it. Leonosis still felt every physical sensation in his body, even though he was no longer in control. He felt the constant, gnawing hunger, the fatigue of Draggah’s relentless pacing on the command deck. He felt the weakness from lack of sleep and even the way his body stirred with lust when Draggah watched Queen Ariel in their private quarters. Yet in all the time the demon had possessed Leonosis’ body, he had only used magic sparingly. Ariel had done most of Draggah’s dirty work, but now the demon summoned great power. Leonosis felt it swirl around him. It was completely mental, but it felt as though the magic were flowing around and even through his body.
The sensation at first was sweet, like the first fragrant aroma of honeysuckle. But then, as the spell the demon cast took hold, Leonosis felt the raw power of magic as if he were galloping on a powerful war horse. The sense of power built as it flowed so that Leonosis, even though he was completely impotent, felt almost god-like as Draggah surrounded the sky ship from Avondale in a bubble of magical power.
The explosion nearly knocked Leonosis senseless. The kinetic force of the blast seemed to travel up through the flow of magic and to Leo it was like the war horse he’d been riding so confidently had suddenly run straight into the walls of Avondale. His body didn’t move, Draggah held him steady, but Leonosis had trouble regaining his senses.
The next thing he knew, they were almost to the city. Draggah had ordered the sky ship to fly up and over the city, while the war fleet spread out and surrounded the city. Leonosis felt a sense of pride when he saw Avondale. The city was truly magnificent, and he had missed the beauty and symmetry of his old home. Sparlan Citadel was a cold, craggy fortress, and the city existed mostly underground. Avondale was a wide, expansive city and well planned.
Anger shot through Leonosis as he felt Draggah’s excitement over the prospect of waging war against Avondale. The demon had no appreciation for Avondale’s greatness or the years that had been spent building the magnificent city. Instead, Draggah merely wanted to see it all destroyed, like a toddler who can’t resist knocking down a tower of blocks.
They circled the city, with Draggah’s powerful eyesight taking in panic that was occurring in the city streets and the placement of soldiers and armaments on the city walls.
“Your orders, my liege?” asked the captain after their second pass.
“Prepare your signalmen,” Draggah said.
Sailors with special flags would be used to communicate the demon’s battle plan. One signalman stood on the command deck to relay Draggah’s orders to the other signalmen arranged on the ends of the ship’s long masts that protruded out from both the starboard and port sides of the ship. Another was stationed at the vessel’s long prow.
“They have artillery,” Ariel said. “We should raise our fleet and bombard them.”
“And what good will it do us if we destroy Tiberius in the process?” Draggah asked, as if he were speaking to a child.
“We need the stone, not the earl’s son.”
“I want the boy,” Draggah said. “I want to know what he knows. I want to make him suffer for ruining my plans. I want to see the one you found so irresistible and yet let slip through your fingers.”
Queen Ariel looked away. Draggah enjoyed teasing her. Leonosis got the impression that Ariel had been attracted to Tiberius, but she had never admitted as much. Draggah loved that it incited Ariel and hurt Leonosis, too. She had preferred his brother over him, and that fact galled Leonosis, who was now desperately in love with a queen he could never possess.
“He was nothing but an apprentice, and I thought I had dealt with him,” Ariel said, her voice tight with anger.
“And now see how troublesome he has become,” Draggah said. “We shall make him pay for his insolence. We will enjoy his pain.”
Leonosis raged for a moment, even though he knew getting angry and letting his frustrations show only made Draggah want to torment him further. But Leonosis couldn’t help himself. He was surrounded by people and facts that were beyond his control. The last thing Leonosis wanted was to see Tiberius fall into Draggah’s hands, and yet he hated his brother more with each passing day.
“What we must do,” Draggah said, explaining his plans to Ariel, “is show them our power and make them fear us. We don’t need to destroy them completely, but rather bend them to our will. We’ll make them bring the wizard to us, and the Balestone. Then our conquest can truly begin.”
Leonosis wanted to somehow sabotage the demon’s plans, but he was helpless. Ariel leaned over the ship, using her own magic to inspect every part of the city.
“We could land our troops in the fields,” she said. “Once they take out the earl’s war band, then they’ll have no choice but to give us the boy.”
“That is one possibility,” Draggah said. “Give me another?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“First we’ll soften them up a bit,” Draggah said. “We didn’t bring all those lovely fire bombs for nothing.”
“I thought you didn’t want to destroy the city?” Ariel said.
“I don’t—that’s why we’ll target the walls. The earl has the wizard hidden deep underground. I can feel the Balestone now. It’s so close.”
For a second the demon let his guard down, and Leonosis felt the dark creature’s desire for the Balestone. The magnitude of Draggah’s need for the magical gem was enormous. Leonosis was left breathless as Draggah hid his thoughts and desires from Leonosis once more.
“But if our ships are in range of the city walls, they’ll be able to fight back with their armaments,” Queen Ariel explained.
“True, it should be an exciting show.”
“They could shoot down our ships,” she said angrily.
“We don’t need the ships anymore, my sweet,” Draggah said. “They may force several of the ships down, but they can’t destroy the war ships with their projectiles, only force them to land. The mountain won’t be far below them at any rate. We won’t lose too many troops. Then we can invade the city, wipe out any resistance, and take what is ours.”
“Then do it. I grow weary of waiting,” Ariel said in a haughty tone.
“Patience, my dear. First we must distract our enemy with a show of force,” Draggah said. Then he turned to the signalman. “Prepare to launch fire bombs against the city walls on my command.”
The flags snapped as the signalman waved the colorful banners. Draggah stepped close to the rear railing of the command deck. Through Draggah’s enhanced vision of Leonosis’ own eyes, they could see that the wall on the opposite side of Avondale from the palace appeared to be unmanned. Leonosis realized that Draggah wanted to see the war. The destruction of the city could wait. First, he wanted to see the fighting, the desperate struggle as men fought for their lives.
Then the thrill of magic once again took hold. The spell cast to contain the explosion of the earl’s sky ship had seemed protective and light, but the magic Draggah summoned this time was exactly the opposite. There was no giddiness to the sensation, only a lust for power and destruction. The magic was hot and ferocious, almost threatening to sweep Leonosis and the sky ship away before Draggah directed it down at the abandoned section of city wall.
Avondale’s walls were built with massive stone blocks, and Leonosis had always thought of them as indestructible. Perhaps if a sky ship sailed straight into the wall, it might fall, but Leonosis couldn’t really picture that happening. The sky ships were incredibly expensive, and the walls were so tall and sturdy he wasn’t even sure that a suicidal run into them would shake them. He had walked on those walls, run and played there as a child. As a man he had inspected the walls, watched the soldiers practicing with the large ballistae that were used to repel any kind of monstrous creatures that climbed up from the blighted lands below. The walls were invincible, he thought.
Then, to Leonosis’ utter amazement, a section of the wall almost opposite from the earl’s palace suddenly collapsed. Leonosis could feel the magic causing the destruction, but he still could hardly believe it. The magic didn’t just knock a hole in the wall—it destroyed an entire section of wall all the way down to the cobblestone street. Dust and debris filled the air, and Leonosis could see the king’s soldiers cheering in their war ships, even though they were too far away to hear the shouts of acclamation.
It took nearly twenty minutes for the dust to clear, but when it did, Leonosis could see that the wall was down and the city was vulnerable for the first time in Leo’s life. Houses and businesses had been destroyed by the falling stone. Had wall merely been knocked over, the huge blocks would have caused much more damage, but the wall had blasted apart, with as much stone flying outward and down the mountain as what flew in. Most of the stone was no larger than a grown man’s fist by that time, and while the blast did plenty of damage to the city, even killing dozens of citizen who were near the wall, it only really paved the way for Draggah’s invasion.
“Signal my ships,” Draggah announced after soaking in the carnage he had created, “to fire at will.”