ROOTS
Karigan waved her hand in front of Yates’ face, but
he didn’t even blink. She placed her hands on his cheeks and turned
his head so she could look directly into his eyes, searching for
any sign of injury, but she saw nothing.
“Do your eyes hurt?”
she asked.
“No,” he
replied.
“Then how has this
happened?”
“I—” He swept his
hand through his hair. “I don’t know. Started last night. Got worse
today and now . . .” He gave a shuddering exhalation. “Karigan,” he
whispered, “I’m scared.”
So was she. Yates
stumbling blind in Blackveil decreased his chances of survival
immensely, and would slow down the company.
She grabbed his
hands and squeezed. “We’ll figure this out, Yates. Maybe the
Eletians know what—”
A clattering came
from inside the building with the skulls. Karigan gazed in—they all
did. A huge snakelike tentacle serpentined among the skulls,
pausing here and there as if to finger the air.
“Oh, gods,” Grant
murmured.
It reared, sending
several skulls clacking down the pile, then lunged through the
doorway at them. They leaped back, Karigan tugging Yates after
her.
“What is it?” he
asked.
“A creature or . .
.” It looked, insanely, like one of the tree roots.
Hissing grew around
them, rumbling through the ruins, tree branches quivering. More and
more of the tendrils rippled to life—they were tree roots. They roiled out of the shadows and
slithered toward them like thousands of snakes.
“We must go,”
Graelalea said. “Now!”
Even as they turned
to flee, a root lashed out and wound around Hana. She screamed. The
Eletians leaped to with swords to hack at the root, but it snatched
her through the air and into the woods and out of sight in the
blink of an eye. Her screams trailed behind her until they abruptly
stopped.
“Hana!” Lhean cried.
He surged after her, but Ealdaen and Telagioth caught him and spoke
rapidly to him in Eletian.
Then to the rest,
Graelalea shouted, “Follow me! Run!”
“What’s going on?”
Yates demanded.
Karigan grabbed his
arm and hauled him out of the way as a root whipped out at them.
Everyone broke into a run for the center of the
clearing.
Roots swarmed the
ruins, crushing walls and remnants of roofs. They exploded from the
building of the skulls, the skulls pouring out through broken
walls. They smashed through the house with the mosaic and Karigan
thought of the maiden and her lover shattered into millions of
tiny, sparkling pieces.
The roots surged
across the clearing after the company, hissing against bare
rock.
The companions
grabbed their packs at a run, Karigan still pulling the stumbling
Yates behind her, following at the end of the line as Graelalea
plunged into the forest on the opposite side of the clearing. One
glance back revealed writhing roots rippling across the clearing
after them. The ruins, which had abided the centuries in
quiescence, had been pulverized in mere moments.
“My pack,” Yates
said. “We need to go back for my pack.”
“No,” Karigan
replied, sickened by the image of those roiling, fingering roots
and the loss of Hana. “We can’t go back.”
She struggled to
keep Lynx in sight, but Yates constantly tripped and fell. He could
not move fast enough. Dragging him behind her and trying to keep
him on his feet exhausted her. When he fell, more often than not he
wrenched her down with him, and desperate to keep up with the
others, she’d lunge back to her feet and help Yates to rise, and
then urge him on.
The others were
almost lost to her ahead.
“Lynx!” she cried.
She was met with only the silence of the forest and the fading
footsteps of her companions.
“Lynx!”
Then there was
nothing but her own harsh breathing and the drizzle folding down on
them.
Karigan yanked Yates
after her and hastened through underbrush and branches in the
direction she’d last seen the company, her heart
pounding.
“Slow down,
I—”
“We can’t!” she
snapped. “We’re losing them.” She did not say aloud that she
thought they were already lost.
Yates bravely tried
to keep up, but there were too many roots and rocks tripping him
and he was again a force holding her back. She halted, her ragged
breaths steaming the air. As she stood there and gazed at the
sameness of the trees, she did not see or hear any sign of the
company, and she had no idea which way they’d gone.
“Why are we
stopping?” Yates asked.
She heard the fear
in his voice.
“Because,” she
replied, turning to face him, “we are—” Something snagged her right
leg, and when she looked down, she saw she’d stepped into a tangle
of thorny brambles. The thorns, which were hooked and as long as
her thumb, had slashed through her trousers and raked her flesh
like claws. It felt like a swarm of bees stinging her
leg.
“Damn,” she
muttered, pain pitching her voice high. She fought the urge to
thrash out of the brambles knowing it would only entangle her
further.
“What?” Yates
demanded. “What in all the hells is going on?”
“Don’t take another
step,” she told him. He’d stopped short, she saw with relief, of
walking into the brambles. “I’m stuck in a thorn
bush.”
Carefully she pried
away the grasping brambles from her leg, but they seemed determined
to cling to her. Finally she drew her long knife and cut them away.
The canes oozed a yellow ichor she hoped was not
poisonous.
It seemed to take
forever to free her leg, sweat streaming down her face, the pain of
the stabbing thorns sending chills through her body. Finally when
she was able to step clear of the bush, her leg buckled and she
fell to her knee with a grunt.
“Karigan?” Yates
asked. “You all right?”
“Help me
up.”
He extended his hand
and she leveraged herself back to a standing position. The stinging
pain spread through her leg again, but it held her weight. She
removed the bonewood from her pack and leaned on it.
“I think we need to
set up camp here,” she said.
“What about the
others?”
“They’re gone. We
got left behind and I don’t know if I can locate their trail again.
It’s best if we stay where we are so they can come find us.” She
wondered if they’d even try, recalling how they had not gone after
Hana. She closed her eyes and shuddered.
Whether or not the
others sought them out, Karigan needed someplace to sit and remove
the rest of the thorns from her leg. She could not go far like
this.
She limped away from
the thorn brambles, towing Yates behind her and keeping close watch
for any other dangers. Of course if a flock of hummingbirds
descended on them, there wouldn’t be much she could do about
it.
“Damn my sight,”
Yates said. “We’re lost in Blackveil and it’s all my
fault.”
“No,” Karigan said
heavily. “It’s not your fault. It’s the forest. It’s probably
affected your ability, warped it.” Their Rider abilities had been
considered an asset for sending them into Blackveil, but now those
very abilities were working against them. Perhaps they should have
known better. After all, when the wild magic of the forest had
leaked into Sacoridia last summer, it had wrought havoc with their
abilities. Was that why she was able to travel back in time last
night?
“If I hadn’t been so
eager to come, we wouldn’t be lost. You would be with the rest of
them.”
Karigan shrugged,
then remembering he couldn’t see her, she laid her hand on his
shoulder. “We can’t say what could have been. We’ll make the best
of this, and I’m sure the others will come looking for us.” But of
course she was not.
He gave a rattling
sigh and slumped his shoulders.
“Oh, Yates.” She
wrapped her arms around him and squeezed hard. “We’re Green Riders.
We’ve been through worse.”
“I don’t know,” he
said. Then smiling slightly, he added, “Maybe you
have.”
Karigan lowered her
pack off her shoulder and sat at the base of a tree she thought
looked safe enough to begin working the thorns out of her leg. She
wasn’t sure she’d been through worse, either. Tears of pain welled
in her eyes and she tried not to cry out so she didn’t worry
Yates.
Yates sat beside
her. “What are we going to do about a camp?”
“Camp?” She pried
out another thorn, its barbs tearing out flesh with it. She
swallowed back the pain.
“Yeah, since our
tent was with my pack.”
She hadn’t thought
about it. As if to mock her, the drizzle turned into pouring rain.
It at least washed away some of the blood.
“Well?” Yates
asked.
“I guess we make a
shelter.” She knew there was no we.
Without his sight, Yates was not going to be able to provide much
help.
Karigan tentatively
rose, grimacing as she placed weight on her right leg. “I’m going
to go look for sticks. Stay here.”
“Don’t—don’t leave
me!” He sounded so desperate.
“I’m not going far.
You’ll be in my view the whole time.”
Yates huddled his
knees to his chest looking miserable. Karigan limped off, leaning
on her bonewood cane and using it to tap sticks on the ground. Most
simply crumbled apart revealing writhing insects and worms. She’d
have to hack branches off trees. She returned to
Yates.
“That you, Karigan?”
he asked.
“Yep.”
“Is there something
you’re not telling me? You sound different. Like you’re not moving
right.”
Karigan picked
through her pack for her hatchet. “So now you claim your hearing is
that good?”
“Well, if I can’t
see, I can focus on my hearing.”
“I got poked by
thorns is all. Aha!” Hatchet now in hand she turned to their tree,
gazing at it with trepidation. Might she disturb something
dangerous, even deadly, by hacking into it? She shrugged. They
needed sticks for their shelter, and that was that. She swung the
hatchet, chopping at the lowest branches, which were bare of
needles. She hoped for the best—that she wouldn’t dislodge any
creatures that lived among the branches, or that the tree wouldn’t
awaken and retaliate against them in some way.
When nothing
happened and Karigan had acquired the desired limbs, she sighed in
relief. Sometimes a tree was just a tree.
“If only I had some
twine,” she muttered.
“I’ve a ball of
string,” Yates said, “for measuring. Would that help?” Despite
losing his pack in Telavalieth, he’d retained the old message
satchel slung over his shoulder that held his journal and writing
materials. He felt around inside it and pulled out a ball of
string.
Karigan laughed. “I
knew I brought you along for a reason.”
“For my string and
not my good looks obviously.”
“Obviously.”
She used the string
to bind the branches into the rough frame of a lean-to, and covered
it with her oilskin cloak. She placed it at the base of their tree,
the tree shielding them from the worst pounding of the rain. They
had to huddle close together to fit beneath the
lean-to.
“I don’t think I’ll
ever be dry again,” Yates said. “I wish we had Mara here to light a
fire.”
“I wouldn’t wish
this on her,” Karigan replied, “or any of the others. And if
Blackveil is warping Rider abilities, I can’t imagine what it would
do to hers.”
“Burn the forest
down maybe,” Yates said. “Wouldn’t be such a bad
thing.”
Karigan wrapped one
of her blankets around the both of them. It, too, was damp, but she
thought it might help insulate them from the chill. They leaned
together, their combined body heat helping.
She knew she needed
to apply some priddle cream to her thorn punctures, something she
ought to have done immediately, but getting the shelter up had
seemed more important at the time. She also thought about their
food supply. She’d have to share what remained in her pack with
Yates, breaking it into half-rations, because there was no telling
when or if the others would come for them.
The gray and damp
oppressed her more than ever. She wondered how things were back in
Sacor City, at the castle. Was the weather fair there? What was
Mara up to? The new Riders? She closed her eyes and tried to
imagine the pasture full of messenger horses, but all she saw was
shadows.
She missed Condor,
her little room in the Rider wing, and Ghost Kitty. And she missed
...
She bit her lip. The
king was probably going about his daily business not even thinking
about them—her. He walked in the sunlit world and she ached to join
him there.
“Do you think we’re
going to get out of this?” Yates asked.
“I don’t know,”
Karigan replied. “I really don’t know, but I hope so.” If for no
other reason than she could once more look upon her
king.