Traitor (29 page)

I instantly remembered that name. Those were the carnivorous trees Kiran had warned me about. I’d even read about them some during my dragonrider training. No one had ever mentioned them having fruit, though.

“And exactly what the hell does that mean?” Jace sounded nervous.

Araxie flashed him a glance, as though she were silently trying to assure him that it would be all right. “They are very deadly. And their fruit is no different.”

“Is it poisonous?” I asked.

“No.” She shook her head. “But it will explode if you handle it too roughly.”

Jace swallowed hard. “Explode?”

Kiran came over to grab my shoulder and pull me back farther away from them. “Yes,” he answered. “Quite forcefully. One is enough to blow a man’s head clean off.”

“Great.” Jace sucked in a slow, tense breath. “And I picked a bouquet of them.”

“It’s all right,” Araxie insisted in a firm tone. “Stay calm. Don’t make any sudden movements. You made it this far with them. They must not be very ripe. The ones you find on the ground that didn’t explode on impact are far more dangerous.”

“Or I’m just cashing in on every bit of dumb luck I’ve got left,” he muttered.

She smiled, although I could tell it was forced and probably just for his benefit. She gently took the last two pieces of fruit from him and went to place them with the others that she’d neatly stacked well out of our path.

I let myself relax. Next to me, I heard Kiran let out a sigh of relief. Crisis averted.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had to take fruit so seriously—” I started to joke.

Araxie tripped.

She must have been too focused on the fruit to mind her footing. Her toes snagged on a vine, and she started to fall forward. In an instant, Jace snapped a hand out and grabbed her to keep her from falling. She didn’t hit the ground. But we all watched in quiet terror as the two pieces of fruit she’d been holding in her hands went flying through the air. They sailed past me, over Kiran’s head, and straight off the limb.

There wasn’t time to run. We only had seconds. The fruit fell, and Kiran grabbed the back of my neck and forced me to hit the deck. Araxie tried to do the same for Jace, but it was too late.

Explosions rocked the jungle around us as one piece of fruit set off another … and another … and another. The tree we were in shuddered dangerously. I caught a glimpse of Jace as he threw his arms around Araxie like he was trying to protect her.

I could hear wood splitting and limbs groaning and cracking in two. The branch we were standing on began to buckle under our feet. At first, I thought it was just breaking off, but then I saw the trunk splitting right up the middle. Not good.

Chaos erupted around me. A riot of branches, leaves, and explosions that made my ears ring. There was nowhere to run. My stomach lurched with the sensation of falling.

And all of a sudden, everything went dark.

When I woke up, I was lying on my back on the jungle floor staring up into the glare of fresh sunlight. Dust and debris hung in the air like smoke. Splinters of wood and leaves were piled on top of me. I couldn’t hear anything for the ringing in my ears, although it seemed like the explosions had finally stopped.

I was completely disoriented. I didn’t know what had happened. One look around answered that question, though. The enormous tree trunk lying on the forest floor, crushed and splintered from the explosive fruit, was a pretty good clue. Huge branches and leaves lay everywhere, and the new opening in the canopy overhead sent bright sunlight showering down over the jungle floor.

I could still feel everything, which was a relief. Sitting up, I dusted off my clothes and did a quick once-over to make sure everything was still intact—arms, fingers, legs, toes. I was bleeding from a few fresh cuts, but nothing serious.

“Jaevid!”

I looked up when I heard Kiran’s voice. He was running full speed toward me over the debris, leaping from one fallen branch to another.

“I’m all right,” I called out to him.

Apart from a deep gash on his arm that was bleeding out onto his clothes, it looked like Kiran had made it safely through the collapse of the tree, too.

I was still trying to get my ears to stop ringing as he grabbed the front of my chest plate and roughly started tying a strip of fabric over my nose and mouth. He ripped another strip off the end of his robes and did the same thing to himself, then began dragging me after him. “The air is filled with spores. We must find the princess!”

I didn’t need any more encouragement than that. We fanned out across the rubble, looking for Araxie and Jace. We called out to them over and over, but got no reply. There was nothing but eerie silence.

My panic turned to dread when I found Blue lying halfway under a huge limb. Most of his body was crushed. I could sense that his spirit was gone. There was nothing I could do for him now.

When Kiran saw what I had found, the color drained from his face. He started calling out even louder, scaling the fallen tree trunk like a squirrel while he searched for Araxie.

I could only assume he was thinking the same thing I was—that our friends had met a similar fate. They could have been buried so deeply under all this rubble we might never find their remains.

A new surge of adrenaline made my senses clear. I dipped into my subconscious, summoning a bit of Paligno’s power to try and feel for the spirits of my friends. It worked. I could feel them, their energy, resonating from the wreckage.

They were alive.

I found them together, tangled up amidst branches and vines that had shattered all around them. I yelled for Kiran, but didn’t wait for him as I started digging them out. There wasn’t time.

The energy coming off Jace was very weak.

When I moved the last few branches, I saw why. He’d been impaled through his chest and abdomen several times. The crude, bloody ends of splintered limbs were sticking out of his chest. Araxie was lying on top of him, shielded from the worst of it thanks to his efforts.

As I pulled her off him and rolled her over, I was relieved to find that the blood on her clothes wasn’t hers. She’d taken a pretty stiff blow to the back of the head and was barely conscious, but her injury wasn’t anything life threatening. Gray elves were a little more durable, after all.

I could see her eyelids fluttering and hear her groaning softly. She’d probably just have a nasty headache.

Jace was in worse shape. His eyes stared up at me, glazed and distant. I’d seen him look at me like that before. There was blood running out of the corners of his mouth and out of his nose. I could sense the severity of his wounds as if they were my own. Each second, each heartbeat, brought him closer to death. He’d punctured a lung and several crucial organs. He’d also broken his back in several places. I knew he wouldn’t last much longer unless I intervened.

“Help me pull him off,” I commanded as Kiran sprang over to observe. Together, we heaved Jace off the branches that had impaled him. It was hard, gory work that left us both spattered in blood. Thankfully, Jace was too far gone to even cry out. I doubted he could feel much at all because of how his back had been broken.

When we laid him out on the ground, I got to work right away. Healing was second nature to me now, so I didn’t even have to think about it. It came more easily than any of my other abilities, even now that I’d received Paligno’s blessing. I placed my hands upon his head and willed my power into him, mending his broken body piece by piece.

Familiar, soothing warmth spread through my mind, over my skin, and out through my palms. It must have hit him with greater force than ever before because I felt his body flinch and heard him make a hissing, gasping sound. His chest rose with a deep breath and he grabbed one of my wrists almost like he wanted to stop me, but I didn’t let up.

I knew my work was done when I heard Jace’s gruff voice mutter, “I’m gettin’ really tired of almost dying whenever I’m around you. No wonder you don’t have any friends.”

“I have friends.” I scowled as I sat back. He was obviously all right if he felt good enough to make wise cracks.

“What about her?” I noticed that his voice took on a much gentler, concerned tone as he gazed at Araxie. Even his demeanor changed as he moved closer to where she was lying nearby, still unconscious, but very much alive. “Is she …?”

“She’ll be fine. Might have a headache when she wakes up,” I assured him. “Looks like you get to live to be the hero this time, after all. You’re welcome.”

Jace just snorted. He was getting to his feet, feeling his chest and torso as though he were making sure I’d actually healed him. Maybe it was still a little hard for him to believe I could do that. He didn’t seem to dwell on it long, though. He bent down, slipped his arms under Araxie’s limp body, and picked her up. There was a worried furrow to his brow when her head lulled against his shoulder. She was totally out of it.

“Can’t you just heal her now?” He gave me a forceful look.

“There’s no time. We must go,” Kiran urged. “The trees will release more of their spores.”

With Jace still carrying the princess, we ran away from the scene of the carnage as quickly as we could. Kiran took the lead, although I had to wonder if he actually knew where we were going—especially when I began to notice the trees all around us looked eerily familiar. It was hard to tell which ones were greevwood unless you looked at the ground. It was riddled with a network of roots that played out like a spider’s web, looking to ensnare and devour anything that didn’t move fast enough over them. It made running difficult and tripping was not an option. Tripping meant being crushed to death by the roots and sucked dry of your fluids.

I did what I could to clear the way for us. I could reason with some of the trees, commanding them to let us pass without interference. That only worked for the trees that hadn’t been infected with Paligno’s curse, of course. The ones who resisted my authority released their spores anyway, which were invisible and basically undetectable. Every breath was a gamble.

Jace hadn’t stopped to protect himself from inhaling the spores. I noticed his steps were starting to slow. He stumbled and staggered, almost dropping Araxie several times.

Suddenly, his knees buckled. I caught him as he toppled backward. Beneath our feet, the roots began to writhe hungrily.

“My legs feel strange,” he slurred. “I can’t feel them.”

Kiran gave us both a violent shove forward. “Do not stop! Keep running!”

But Jace wasn’t going to last much longer. So I decided to try one of those crazy, amazing things again. Too bad Felix wasn’t there to see it.

I cut my eyes toward one of the trees nearby, stretching my will out to it and summoning forth a familiar ally. The vines that hung off its trunk all began to groan and shift. They twisted together, morphing into the shape of a staircase that led up into the tree.

“Go!” I shouted at my friends, who were just standing there watching in amazement.

I ran with them toward the staircase, continuing to weave it as we climbed higher and higher. The vines grew, forming new steps right in front of us, until at last we could step out onto one of the tree’s large branches. I was hoping that as long as we were up higher, the spores wouldn’t be as much of a threat anymore. We could pass through without falling victim to their paralyzing effects.

Unfortunately, Jace had already breathed in too many of them. His legs buckled again as soon as we started out onto the limb. He dropped Araxie and then fell on top of her.

Kiran and I didn’t have to speak. One glance and we both knew. If we were all going to make it through this, then we were going to have to work together. He was smaller than I was, so he grabbed Araxie and flung her over his shoulder. I picked up Jace and did the same.

Together, we walked the crooked branches carefully. It was risky when we had to cross from one tree or limb to another. Fortunately, I could manipulate the branches enough to make it possible, though they were a great deal slower to respond than the vines. Trees don’t typically do a lot of moving on their own accord. It made our progress frustratingly slow.

We didn’t dare stop until nightfall. We made a pitiful excuse for a camp and sat down to rest. It was too risky to go down to the ground again or start a fire since either would make us an easy target for a hungry predator. So instead, we found another broad, flat spot on a branch that was a good ten yards across. It was mossy and there wasn’t any exploding fruit in sight, so we agreed it would have to do.

Lucky for Jace, the effect of the spores didn’t last long. He was already coming out of it while we were unpacking what remained of our supplies and unfurling the bedrolls. He could already sit up, talk, and move his legs again. Kiran kept insisting that he drink lots of water to help flush the rest of the spores from his system.

Araxie was waking up, too. She’d been even luckier. Well, at Jace’s expense, anyway. She only had a good-sized knot on the back of her head and a fierce headache to show for all our near-death adventures.

I offered to heal her, but she cast me a scathing glare of warning. “I’m fine,” she hissed. I guess being hurt and carried around like a damsel was all her pride would allow for one day.

I let Kiran fill her in on what had happened … and explain to her that we weren’t sure where we were now. We were away from the greevwood trees—which was the most important thing.

She wasn’t happy. But considering that we were all alive and more or less intact, she didn’t complain. It could have been much worse.

Normally, not having a fire would have left us sitting in the darkness cringing at every sound. But we were high enough in the trees that a little moonlight managed to trickle down to where we were all sitting. Lying on her sleeping pallet, I could see the faint glimmer off Araxie’s multicolored eyes. She was staring at Jace—who was sitting dutifully beside her with a somber expression. He looked like some kind of guard dog, keeping watch over her without saying anything.

Kiran had told her, in a very abbreviated and unflattering way, how Jace had shielded her from what likely would have been her death. Of course Kiran wasn’t going to pass out any extra credit to someone he viewed as a rival. But credit had to go where it was due, and Jace had definitely earned it.