Nightfall (Book 1) (27 page)

I slunk back on all fours until I was a safe distance away, at Sendoa’s side, and then we hurried through the forest to where we had again left the others. When we got back we quickly grabbed our packs of provisions and headed out, not wanting to stay in the area for long, if the Guards were capable of tracking us.

The rest of that day was appreciatively eventless and we camped down for a somewhat quiet night, the only sounds were those of nocturnal animals on the hunt, faraway and muffled by the forest between us. I fell asleep to the quiet sounds of Izar, Alaia, and Eskarne conversing over I-had-no-idea-what. When I awoke the next morning they were fast asleep and they were also the last to wake, even after the dwarf—whom Alesander said was of a nocturnal clan.

~ ~ ~

Throughout the course of that day I actually came to like the dwarf. He was tough and had great stamina; the only way we could have left him in the dust would have been to run at a human, or faster, sprint the entire distance. The small dwarf actually hinted at being a great warrior, though he would not say much about it, only that he had been in a few fabled wars.

The main of that day went without any excitement, except for a small clan of hobgoblins who tried to interrupt our noon meal. It was nearing evening that we again smelt the aroma of cooking meat, though that time it carried the stomach churning scent of rotting flesh. Along with the smell of meat, came a deep-throated chanting; I asked again what the cause of the smell was and, more particularly, the chanting. The answer was goblins—and the real kind at that, not just the small subspecies.

Again I tried to go toward the point of interest, but that time everyone else attempted to keep me from going any closer. I argued that I had never seen a goblin before and that I really wanted to know what they looked like—after all, that knowledge might come in handy in the future. In the end I was talked out of spying on the goblins and I immaturely chose to mope about it for a while afterward.

It was too bad that their convincing had overridden my curiosity, because it would have been the opportune time to rid us of an opposing goblin clan, and Zigor. It would have been easy to kill the King at that time—far too easy actually—but I was not to know that for quite some time, and at the time I learned of it, I was also learning a number of others things which outweighed its importance to me by a great deal.

Sendoa and I knelt facing each other, a little way from the campfire. The rest of our group stood in a circle around us, listening and watching, as a small picture developed in the patch of dirt beneath the hands of the older elf. In the past sixteen days that it had taken us to get within distance of a half day’s march of the mountains—at the far side of the continent from Baso Argi—we had run into quite a few messes, and lost a single pack of provisions, the absence of which we had not come prepared for.

~ ~ ~

After the goblin encampment we decided to send two scouts ahead of the main group, and on one particular day the selected two were Izar and Alaia. The first tangle we caught ourselves in happened on that day.

I heard a terse comment from my sister’s mind, telling me that she and Alaia were in need of a little assistance; she ended by telling me to bring weapons. I dropped my pack and explained the call for assistance as I took off, followed sporadically by those who did not already have their weapons in hand.

I had never heard of trees attacking people—actually I had never even heard of anyone hearing of anyone being attacked by trees—so I was surprised to find (when I did) that the two ladies’ attackers were trees, and they seemingly were just the average (though very small), black oak commonly found in the shade of the Oihana’s vast reaches. I ran into a small clearing and did not see either of the two I was after, but shortly I heard a noise, behind and above me, so I swung around, barely bringing my sword up in time to fend off an attack from an old, gnarled branch.

My sword went clean through the branch and the old bit of wood flew across the clearing and landed snugly in the thick pillow of another tree’s branches. The next branch to come at me, I sent flying straight up through the canopy of taller trees which overhung the clearing. When that happened, the tree (whose limbs I had been separating from it) attacked with all fury. My arms became a blur to human sight as I deftly maneuvered to defend against the impossible opponent. Another tree approached from behind and I was unable to hold off the attack of two creatures, each gifted with millions of limbs; the second tree snatched me from the ground by my arms, and the first latched onto my feet, its limbs winding up my legs for a better grip.

My right arm, which grasped my sword, was held tightly out of the range of any and all branches belonging to both trees, so I had to wait and see what would happen, hoping it would not take long for the trees to decide their next move. They did not keep me waiting long—suddenly my entire body was pulled taught, the strength of each tree pulling from opposite ends. I did not enjoy the feeling of being stretched out, and sincerely hoped that that would be the last time it happened. I called on Lietha and the tree holding onto my arms burst into an inferno, which I quickly caused to die down, so that none of the sane trees above it would catch fire.

When the grip of the second tree was released, I flew toward the first as if I had been shot out of an enormous slingshot. I thudded full-bodied against the stone-hard surface of its trunk and my sword sank lengthwise into the thick bark on the far side of the tree, my arm having swung partway around it. The tree reared—or fell forward, I truly could not tell which—and I was flung backward through the air, about
thirty feet, ‘til I collided with the first tree in my path.

I groaned as I slid toward the ground, letting my knees buckle beneath me, just thankful that the new tree was actually a tree, not one of the frenzied monoliths. “Izotz,” my sister’s worried call brought me to attention, I quickly looked in the direction from which it had come and saw that she was being buried deep in a cocoon of writhing, vine-like branches. All I saw of her, before she disappeared in the mass, was her bloodied face and an outstretched hand. I launched myself through the air toward her and her captor, and brought my sword out in front of me so that I could hack away at the vines that wrapped themselves around her.

As I supposedly brought my sword in front of me, I realized that I did not have it; it was still stuck in the rough hide of one of the many other trees attacking the rest of my companions. I landed ten feet before the tree in which Izar was buried, and quickly checked the situations of everyone else. As a completely heartfelt gift, I sent each of the thrashing trees—that did not have any of my companions entangled in their deadly embraces—an inferno of blue fire. The fires were stenciled with blinding white, as they bloomed on the dry bark, and left the trees to crumble to ash on the ground, as the flames wilted from existence.

I turned around again and decided to do something I had never even dared try before; I turned myself into an essence which had no physical form. It (more-or-less) worked so I filtered easily into the innermost layer of the tree—its heartwood. When there, I transformed myself into an arrowhead of molten iron and climbed steadily upward, or at least in the direction I took for such (I was a bit disoriented—being in a form that should not have sustained intelligence).

The entire frame of the tree shivered in pain and the vibrating caused my liquid hot form to lose its shape; I refocused myself into the form of an arrowhead and continued on my upward path, leaving a sizzling tunnel of burnt wood behind me. The sap hissed as it burnt, and the liquid evaporated. I had not gone very far, from what I could tell, before the entire tree just gave up and every inch of it exploded into sticky slabs and slivers, all blasting from the innermost layer of the tree—and me. With a lack of anything holding me up, I dropped to the ground and, glad my plan had worked, I transformed back into my natural form.

I stood and looked around for Izar; she had landed fifteen feet away from me and was curled up in a ball. I walked over to her and touched her shoulder.
“Izar?” I asked.

“Hmm?”
I sighed, the knowledge that she had survived my little attack on the tree, and its explosion, took a great weight off my chest. “Did we die?” she asked. I chuckled and replied that we had not, so she relaxed out of her curled up position and stood, taking my offered hand. “You are smoking,” she said. I looked down and saw that the tree’s sticky blood, which I was covered in, was still sizzling from the heat I had given off as a molten spearhead of iron.

I chuckled again and said, “Smoking hot.” My sister’s smile was short lived, as she yelled at me to move, her sight having been directed over my shoulder. We leapt out of the way of a falling tree, headed in opposite directions; the ground trembled from the power of the impact and I turned to get a sight of the fallen beast. The branches of the fallen tree writhed weakly in its final moments. As it finally went still, I cast my eyes along the trunk toward the foot of the tree and saw, to my great surprise, the dwarf, Kepa.

As our sights connected, I nodded my head in congratulations to the small dwarf who brandished his enormous battle ax, in both a sign of victory, and a welcome to any other enemies to battle. I looked around the clearing again and set fire to a few more trees, after which I scanned the others for my missing sword. At first I could not find the sword, and hoped I had not melted it in one of my infernos, but then Alesander called my name, distracting me from my task. As I approached, the elf held my broadsword carefully by the blade, I accepted the hilt, and thanked him. The white runes reflected the funneled sunlight filtering down through the forest canopy, as I took the weapon back in my hands, and Alesander’s dropped away from it.

The clearing seemed almost silent with the lack of thrashing branches, and people yelling and hacking away at wooden limbs, but if I paid attention I could hear the normal forest noises playing out as a backdrop. I looked around the clearing yet again, that time counting the faces I recognized, some stained with dirt or streaked with blood, but all still alive, their bodies still moving as they willed them.

Izar’s face was smeared with blood, but after she washed it off I could tell it was not all from the small scratch on her left cheekbone, most of it had dripped from a gouge on the back of her hand, which must have been suspended above her head while she was being entangled in the cocoon of branches. Alaia, when we found her, was alright, other than the excess of scrapes and bruises that she sported all over her body. No one else was hurt as bad as Arrats, and though I felt sorry for him, I was glad that no one had been hurt worse than receiving a broken arm. My friend’s arm, and any other wounds that were bad enough to be worth the time, I healed, before we left the clearing and went back in search of our packs.

We had not lost either of the two packs up to that point, because the contents of the two belonging to our scouts had been divided up, for the rest of the group to share the extra weight. The scouts were needed to be lightly packed and fleet footed for their purpose.

When we got to the space where the packs had been deserted, the thought occurred to me that Sendoa had been traveling through that way before, but had forgotten to mention the existence of the lively, moving—and more importantly, attacking—trees of the area. I posed the question for Sendoa and his reaction came also as confusion. “Last time I came through here, which was only a few months ago, these tree-demons were not to be found within seven days of Baso Argi. I felt no need to inform any of you yet, seeing as we should not have run into any until at least three days from now. Obviously things have changed.”

~ ~ ~

One pack was nearly lost the next day, as we crossed a wide, swift river just above a towering waterfall. There were enough boulders in the river that an elf could have easily made it, if not for the spray of the river which left a treacherously slick film on their surfaces. Erramun had flown across the river a few times, and taken the packs which carried food, or other items that would be destroyed by the water, and waited for everyone else to cross. He had offered to carry people, but I did not want to exhaust him, the packs of each elf were incredibly heavy, and his wings were not meant to carry too much more than his own weight. Kepa was small and I thought he might be light enough without his armor, but he had stubbornly refused to be flown over the river, so the dwarf was seated on my shoulders and had a death grip on my shirt, which I was sure was not going to survive the trip.

Alaia and Izar had just made the trip across the river and were being pulled onto the bank by Sendoa and Erlantz, who were already there with everyone but Arrats and Mattin, who were in the middle of the river, and Kepa and I, who had been the last to enter the river’s raging torrents. Kepa seemed to think that his pack had inherited his fear of heights, and would not allow it to be flown across the water, so it was on his back, adding to the things I had to ensure made their way across. We were near the middle of the river, which was also the deepest—right up to my chin—and the swiftest, when one of the straps securing Kepa’s pack snapped.

I reached out and grabbed the second strap, which was then the only thing holding the pack in place, and it too, snapped; the next few moments were ones of confusion, as I gave up my footing and dove after the pack, which carried a thirteenth of all our provisions that we would be needing for the remainder of the trip, and seemed to carry something that Kepa did not want to let out of his sight. As I was buried under the water, Kepa was dragged under as well, and I did not take notice of him until I had just caught hold of the pack again. Kepa still clutched a portion of my shirt, his cheeks bloated with captured air, and his eyes filled with terror. It would have helped if he had not torn off the piece of fabric he grasped, for the river’s current was whisking him away toward the waterfall and after that, certain death.

I threw the pack onto the nearest boulder and, amazingly, it stayed there. I dove under the water to get into the fastest possible current and propelled myself toward the small dwarf held hostage by the rushing river. At the same moment that I caught hold of Kepa’s foot, the boulder on which I had left the pack was swamped and it continued its own merry ride toward the waterfall. I did not make much headway up the river until I finally made it out of the middle current, and then I slowly made my way to the nearest boulder, which I managed to hang onto long enough to make sure my passenger was alright. From that point I realized that the pack had disappeared, and when I looked toward the waterfall I saw Erramun swooping down in the hopes of retrieving the pack, before it was broken into thousands of pieces of useless refuse.

I still clung to the boulder when Erramun flew back over the top of the falls, pack in hand. Kepa had not said a word and clung to my neck, and his teeth had been chattering nonstop. The dragonman deposited the rescued pack with the others and came to fetch my growth. The dwarf was either too cold, or so incoherent, that he did not mind being flown the rest of the way across the river—that is, after we finally broke his grip on my neck. As soon as the dwarf was gone, I easily made my way through the remainder of the restless waters and to the thickly grass-matted bank of the far side.

I grabbed hold of the thick sod on the bank and hoisted myself up, with a bit of help, and flopped onto the ground like a dead fish. I soon noticed that my human friends were shivering from the chill of the water that had soaked into their clothes and was being cooled by the wind at the top of the cliff, from which the river descended in its grand fall. Kepa’s pack was the only one to get swamped, so blankets were pulled from the others and draped over those who needed them until we had gone further into the cover of the forest, where we started a good, warm fire.