The ground came up very quickly and punched Andover Lashk in his right side. Since he was much smaller than the ground, and softer besides, he came off worst from the impact.
It was a long time before he dared move. Every part of his body seemed to ache and his head felt broken. He took a few experimental breaths and decided he could still manage to gulp in air, but breathing was all he could manage for several minutes.
Each of the mountains, each of the Hearts of the Gods was different. He’d known that, but somehow Wheklam seemed more determined than the other mountains he’d visited to make sure he never reached his goal.
How long had he been climbing? He could not say. He knew only that he was cold, and that the sun had set and risen a few times since he’d lost his hammer. He still had his axe – he had finished locking together the obsidian he had been given by Durhallem and the iron rings he’d been offered by Truska-Pren. The axe the pieces made was incredibly sharp, perfectly balanced and currently jamming into his side. Happily the thing was sheathed properly or he’d have been cut in half instead of merely beaten severely by his own weapon.
Andover very carefully rolled himself over and began the slow process of standing back up. There was a time he’d have stayed where he was for a while, but he knew better now. He suspected Delil might well come down and beat him senseless if he let himself remain in the same place for too long.
He looked up the side of the steep slope toward the distant spot from where he’d fallen. He found the spots where he had bounced before finally rolling to a stop.
“On the lighter side of this, nothing seems broken,” he murmured to himself. Bruised and strained, yes. Broken? No.
Delil did not stop for him. He was on his journey, she was on her own. They were merely going in the same direction at the moment. Even so, part of him was almost certain that she might yet come down to beat on him if he waited too long. That alone was enough motivation. He started climbing.
Rather than let himself think of where he hurt or what lay ahead, he focused on putting one hand in front of the other. It was the distractions that kept getting him in trouble.
The ground was hard, and if he paid attention there were handholds. He had hands made of iron. They were more than capable of gripping the rock and supporting his weight. Delil did not have his advantages and yet she seemed to be managing well enough.
He started again, looking only as far ahead as the next potential area where fingers could find purchase.
The sun had almost set by the time he reached the top of the volcanic mountaintop.
The area was nearly as wide as the city of Tyrne, it seemed. The vast hollowed-out bowl of the great forge glowed with a warm light, but clouds of gasses rose from the depths stinking of molten metal and worse.
They were scents he knew well enough and in his way appreciated.
Far away from him, far enough that she was merely a speck in the distance, he thought he saw Delil sitting on the edge of the great pit. She had clearly decided not to concern herself with his condition after his fall.
He mirrored her action. He was not supposed to be with her. This was a personal quest, a private discussion between mortal and god.
Andover’s body shook from exertion, and he drew in deep breaths of the foul air. He had endured worse in the Blasted Lands.
Below him the glow of Wheklam’s Forge seemed to fluctuate. He looked down into the distant fire, and the smoke and gasses seethed, rising upward.
No. Andover frowned. Not smoke. Water. As he looked down into the heart of the forge he could still see the raging inferno that glowed below him, a literal lake of fire and molten stone, but above that, impossibly, water rose toward him, a greater body of water than he had ever seen before.
The waters seethed, forming waves that thrashed against the sides of the crater as if trying to escape. The scent changed; a potent odor came to him, and all he could think of was the stench of fish he’d smelled a few times at the river’s edge. This was different, but close enough that he felt a sense of familiarity.
Then the waters rose up in a vast wave that caught Andover unawares, washing him into the depths before he could even catch a breath.
In his entire life Andover Lashk had seen no body of water greater than the Freeholdt River and while that river was a substantial one, the most he had ever done was wade into the shallows and wash himself.
Put another way, he was not a swimmer. He thrashed madly for several moments, trying to find his way to any purchase at all. Ultimately he failed.
The water filled his lungs and he felt himself choking, fighting for breath.
He felt the darkness at the edges of his mind as surely as he saw the darkness stealing away his sight.
And then, beyond that dread, he felt the presence of a god.
He had already met with two gods, and in both cases the sheer power of those entities had overwhelmed his senses. This was no different. Wheklam moved through his body, a power impossible to deny. At that moment, as he was drowning in impossible waters, he had caught the attention of a deity.
He wasn’t sure precisely how he would make his point with Wheklam. He had been told to offer himself to each of the gods and he had done so before by speaking his piece. That was impossible here so he held his arms wide apart and did his best to bow underwater, as his body was cast this way and that by the tides.
On the left side of his face, at the very edge of the jaw line, he felt a searing pain and forced himself not to scream. A finger’s width of fire boiled across his skin. There was no light, no source for the pain, but it was real and he knew what it meant. Another god had accepted him.
Now all he had to do was live through the experience.
Far above him he could see the light from above the crater.
Far below he could see the light of Wheklam’s Heart.
In between there was water in endless supply and no air to breathe.
The burden of leadership was a constant thing in her life. From the moment she’d accepted the crown placed on her brow, Queen Parlu had felt the weight of more than a few ounces of silver.
Trecharch was burning. Far in the distance she could see the light on the western horizon. The sun was above her, barely noticeable through the rain, but she saw the light as bright as the most magnificent of sunsets on the western horizon.
The view from her tower had always been spectacular. It allowed her an uninterrupted examination of the end of her world.
Trecharch had been her home since she was born, and that had been a very long time ago.
Trecharch was not like the other kingdoms. She allowed the citizens a say in how things were run. Not a large say, true, but still they had a voice that she listened to.
Now all she could hear, as the day grew older, was the sound of screams.
Her world burned.
There had been a time, when she was younger, when the citizens of the nation had considered overthrowing her rule. Not because she was a bad ruler – at least she tended to think she was not, but suspected many might disagree – but because they wanted change. They wanted less taxation and more freedom to decide for themselves how the world should work. Some had claimed that the forests were too full of trees and that cutting down a portion of them would make Trecharch a better place. That the wood from the trees had great monetary value was merely a coincidence, of course.
Frah Molen, one of her finest advisors, knocked politely before entering the chamber. In the past he had been her lover. Now he was much more than that. He was her friend. He was beyond the age where the notion of rutting meant much to him. She was just as old, but her connection to the great forest had, as always, left her feeling invigorated.
“Frah.” She sighed his name. “The fires are coming. I thought the rain might offer us salvation, but the fires are growing again and the Mother-Vine is sickened by whatever they have done to her.”
Parlu was not a delicate woman, though many might have thought otherwise if they’d seen her. Her frame was thin, and her limbs were long. Her hair was graying from the deep browns it had been in her earlier years, but the gray only accented her mane these days. She was conscious that many men found her beautiful still. She saw the same beauty in her daughter, Lemilla, who would rule in her stead when she died – assuming there was anything left to rule.
“They come, Parlu. The invaders.” Frah’s voice was still as strong as ever. It was the rest of him that had weakened over the years. His back was bent by the decades and his magnificent red hair had first gone white and then fallen out completely. Still, she loved him.
He was one of the finest men she knew and it hurt her to think that he’d be dead before the day was over.
“I could hardly fail to notice them, Frah,” she chided him softly. “I’ve never seen the likes of the creatures they ride. Are they Pra-Moresh?”
“No.” He stepped closer. “They are smaller, but almost as deadly, and the people who ride them must surely be knights. I have never heard of fighters as brutal.”
“Desh Krohan says they do not have knights. He says that all of them are like that. Deadly and filled with hatred for all of us.”
“What a misery then.”
She did not look away from the window. Far below her, she could see the first of the invaders crossing the Field of Remembrance, where the likenesses of each past ruler looked out toward the forest.
“I suppose it is time, then, yes?”
“Parlu…You don’t have to do this.” He placed one hand on her thin shoulder. His flesh was cold now, not as warm and lovely as it had been once, and she could feel the swelling in the joints of each finger.
“Of course I do, Frah.” She settled her fine and strong hand over his gnarled paw and smiled softly. Far below, the archers fired volleys of arrows but the invaders kept coming. They wore armor, and they carried shields, and they sported heavy furs and helmets. The arrows struck but few seemed to do any real damage.
The people of Trecharch were renowned for their archery skills. For decades they had won archery competitions throughout the Twelve Kingdoms. When someone from a different country took the winning purse it was usually amid claims that they had cheated in one form or another, simply because the people of Trecharch were archers before they were soldiers.
The Sa’ba Taalor held their own with ease. The ones who were mounted rode with confidence and used great bows that had apparently been designed for use when riding. Most of the people in Trecharch could barely ride horses. They simply were not common among the great forest.
The enemy fired and nearly every one of their arrows found a home and maimed or killed.
“Parlu, please, don’t do this.”
“I accepted my crown, Frah. I knew the risks then, and I have long since reaped the benefits.” Still, she thought back to her earlier days and the lovers she had known, the friends she had known. Many of the other nations claimed that marriage was a sacred thing. They swore by the notion that one man and one woman were required to make a life and that they should be together for all time. Trecharch had never held to that notion. There were exceptions, of course. Many chose one lover and stayed with them for life.
Perhaps that was for the best. In hindsight, she rather liked the idea of having someone she could hold onto one last time before she climbed the last steps in Orrander’s Tower.
Frah was in the room with her. He had always been a wonderful friend. Ultimately he was enough.
“Watch over Lemilla. See her safely away, my friend. It is time.”
He would not question her orders. It was not his way.
The wooden stairs barely creaked under her weight as she started up the final flights to the chamber of the Mother-Vine, but far below her, the great doors of the tower shook with the impact of whatever the invaders used to attempt access.
Pella woke in a small room, on the covers of a bed filled with goose down.
She did not wake slowly or gently, but rather all at once and with the knowledge that she was in danger.
The Sa’ba Taalor had come. They were below her and attacking the tower, she knew that as surely as she breathed. The knowledge came from outside of her, sent as a gift from Tataya.
Goriah was dead. She knew that, too.
Her stomach twisted on itself at the thought. Her Sister had been a beautiful person and she loved her and missed her and always would.
Her grief, however, would have to wait.
Pella closed her eyes for a moment and cast her senses outside of her body, taking in the whole of the tower with ease. She was near the base of the great tower, on the third level.
Parlu was ascending into the Mother-Vine, at the apex of the tower, where it was swallowed by the Mother-Vine. She had no choice but to reach Queen Parlu’s personal chambers, where the final doorway into the Mother-Vine’s sacred interior was located. Pella’s abilities did not allow her to look into that final chamber. That was blocked from her by the power of the forest itself. All gods have their secrets, it seemed.
She had recently learned more of gods than she had ever wanted.
The guarding soldiers were preparing as best they could, setting barriers between the queen and the invaders. They understood exactly how bad the situation was.
Orrander’s Tower was a great feat of architecture. The stones and mortar that built the place had been carefully sculpted along the side of the Mother-Vine over the decades and centuries, and might well have never lasted if not for the fact that the Mother-Vine had accommodated the addition. Seen from outside, the tower was only remarkable in its height, but from inside it was easy to see how much of the tower had been swallowed and protected by the great vine. Chambers that were far larger than they appeared had been absorbed by the vine and become a part of the whole. They were not crushed, they were not broken; they were simply made stronger and protected. Those chambers held a large portion of Trecharch’s army. The soldiers had been called to protect their queen and the Mother-Vine alike and they were ready to die if necessary.
Fifty men with braces held the doors at the entrance. Thick logs had been cut and well seasoned, their bases shaped to fit slots in the stone floors. Metal gratings were pulled aside and the logs locked into those hidden slots, and then set against the great doors, bracing for any possible attack. A hundred men battering the doors would only be able to break through if they could shatter those logs, and the wood in question was carved from the Sentinels and as hard as stone.
Put simply, the Sa’ba Taalor would not gain access that way.
That didn’t mean they weren’t trying. A dozen or more of the brutes held on to a battering ram cut from one of the trees nearby and used it against the massive doors. The wood and metal of the door was damaged. Great gashes had been torn from the surface, and shreds of wood from both the ram and the doors fell to the ground as they continued the assault.
The doors would hold. The rest of the structure was a different case.
Pella could sense the other attackers. They were harder to find because they were so very high off the ground and she did not initially think to look for them there.
A dozen soldiers battered at the doors of the keep, with a gathering ready in case they got through. The rest climbed the walls, scaling the rough stone in some cases, climbing the Mother-Vine in others.
They were like ants, methodically swarming their way up the surfaces available to them and moving along similar lines. One or two found the pathways to climb and others followed after.
Far below, the battering ram knocked again and again, and a gathering of soldiers prepared for in case they got through. Most of the windows in the tower were small, and set high in the walls. They were more for ventilation than for looking out at the trees beyond. Most of the exceptions were high enough up that few would consider using them and those that did would not be able to see the attackers until it was far too late. The angle of Orrander’s Tower followed the curvature of the Mother-Vine and did not allow for an easy examination of the ground below.
Pella rose from the bed and moved toward the door, fully aware that she was far too late to call the alarm. The invasion had already begun.
The door to her chamber was unlocked. She would have been surprised to find otherwise.
To her left a hallway turned slowly toward the center of the tower, moving along a natural progression and deeper into the Mother-Vine. To her right a stairway angled up and down.
She took the stairs and moved upward, closer to the domain of Queen Parlu, hoping she could reach the woman in time to be of assistance.
Even as she moved she once more carefully spread her senses, seeking information that could help her and others deal with the attack of the Sa’ba Taalor. The people from the Seven Forges were above her and below her as well. As she climbed she saw the slender body of a young man sliding through one of the narrower windows just ahead of her.
She blew him back through the window with a thought. A portion of the wall crumbled away as well, but his screaming body sailed a great deal further from the tower. With luck his death screams would warn others of their plight before it was too late.
Pella called out to Desh and to Tataya alike, praying for assistance. A brief flash of sorrow cored her soul as she instinctively started to call for Goriah as well before memory returned. How long had passed? How long had her Sister been dead? Where was the murderous bastard that had driven a blade through her skull? She would find him if she could. She would destroy him.
The stairs continued in their long spiral and she moved as quickly as she could, alert for any sounds around her.
There was nothing, no one that she could see, at least.
By the time she reached the queen’s chambers her heart thudded at double the normal rate and her lungs burned with a demand for more air. None of that mattered as much as reaching Parlu before the Sa’ba Taalor.
The chambers were much as she remembered from previous visits. Parlu was a solitary woman at the best of times and she preferred to see visitors in private when she could. There had been several visits both formal and informal over the years. Once, long before she was apprenticed to Desh Krohan, she had come from the area and she had known Parlu better than most. She remembered the vast bed to the side of the chamber. She remembered the balcony that let Parlu see most of her kingdom with ease.
Frah Molen’s corpse lay on the floor near that balcony. He had been cut in half by one savage stroke of a blade. His death had likely been very fast. A small blessing, to be sure, but a blessing just the same.
The heavy door that led to the only part of the tower Pella had never seen before lay open. The wood was wrecked, shattered by several powerful blows. An axe lay broken at the side of the door, bespeaking the force needed to hack through to the area where Parlu communicated with her god.
Just inside that doorway, the corpse of Lemilla, Parlu’s only daughter, lay broken and bloody. Like Frah Molen, she had died quickly.
The stairway was narrow and barely allowed for one person to slide through easily. The wood of the Mother-Vine was exposed here, directly fused with the stone of the tower, and had swollen outward as if to seal the passage.
Bloodied footprints showed that whoever had passed had managed to get through easily enough, and that somebody was a very large figure.
Pella stared at the entranceway for a moment, uncertain if she should follow.
The laws of the people, of Trecharch, stated that none could enter the chamber save the queen. If she followed she was not certain if she would help or hinder the situation.
That hesitation very likely saved her life.
Viewed from outside, in the daylight, Orrander’s Tower was an amazing sight. It climbed so very high into the air, mating with the Mother-Vine in the process.
On previous occasions, Cullen had stared at the structure with awe, oftentimes spending several minutes examining the minutiae of the fusion of manmade tower and nature at its very finest. The Mother-Vine enveloped the tower, sheltering the structure within her embrace.
According to legend. Orrander, the first modern queen of Trecharch, had offered herself as a sacrifice to the Mother-Vine to save them all from the Wellish Overlords. She had cut herself and offered her blood to the roots of the Mother-Vine, and in response the great vine had moved around her, embraced her, and healed her wounds before moving to force the Overlords from the area.
The Overlords were nightmares of the distant past. The Mother-Vine was still here, still real, still pervasive in the lives of everyone in Trecharch.
And the Mother-Vine was dying. Madness lay where that thought wanted her to go.
Cullen stared at the massive trees around her, saw that they were still strong, and that the Mother-Vine was weakened and changing color as surely as autumn changed the trees. The leaves of the Mother-Vine were enormous here at her base. The shade from them was enough to cover wagons or, according to a few jests she’d heard in the past, large enough to work as the sails of ships in a crisis.
They were browning quickly, withering even as she watched. They were dying and the same death seemed to be creeping along the great vine itself, moving toward the heart of the Mother from several different strands that were all heading for the central core of the great plant.
The Mother-Vine was dying.
Cullen barely noticed on a conscious level any longer. She had run along the ground seeking to reach Orrander’s Tower. She had fought her way past the devastation in Norhaun, all in the hopes of reaching the tower in time to offer some form of assistance.
Too late.
Cullen stared in horror, her heart frozen deep in her chest, and looked at the invaders as they climbed over the tower and the Mother-Vine alike. In the distance a gathering of the enemy battered at the Great Gate. They would fail, of course. That was inevitable. It also did not matter. The door held, but the enemy still found a way. As she watched a portion of the wall high up along the tower crumbled outward and spilled a body into the Field of Remembrance and crashed into the likeness of King Corranst, the last of the kings to ever rule the area. The body and the statue both shattered on impact.
In her soul she hoped it was one of the enemy that died that horribly. From her distance Cullen could not say with any certainty.
A handful of the enemies climbed into the tower. Most focused on the Mother-Vine, cutting and hacking with their weapons. Alone none of those wounds would have affected the great vine, but who could say what so many small wounds would do? Her father had told her stories of the Overlords and their countless tortures. Some had been long ways to kill a soul that would take days or even months. A few had involved cutting tiny pieces away.
From one location a horn sounded and then from others. Two of the horns came from the Mother.
Moments later the cutting stopped and the vermin who wounded the Mother-Vine descended from her sides. Cullen would have wept in relief at the notion if their sudden mercy didn’t scare her so much. From what she had seen the grayskins did not believe in any form of kindness.
The notes from the horns had only started to fade away when the enemy stopped assaulting the Great Gate. Was it possible that all of them had decided to retreat? Had Queen Parlu managed to negotiate a peace with the enemy?
Cullen didn’t know, but she moved back and into the woods without waiting for an answer.
The ground trembled. Or perhaps that was her legs. She could not say for certain.
Since she was twelve and took the crown, Parlu had climbed the stairs to the room where she now stood at least once every season to make her offering to the Mother-Vine. It was symbolic, of course, a mere drop of blood placed against the thick hide of the great, eternal protector. A remembrance of promises made and kept.
The sliver of a blade made the cut on her left palm as it had every season for decades, and she placed her bloodied hand against the Mother-Vine. Instantly she felt the connection that had revitalized her countless times before.
Life flowed into her. Not merely the life of the Mother-Vine but the life of everything connected to the Mother.
She felt the trees, the forest, and the animals. She touched the energies of the soil, the insects crawling on the trees and in the dirt. Every person in the whole of Trecharch was there for her to sense.
And, like a cancer, she felt the Sa’ba Taalor.
Her mother had once told her that everything in the universe was connected. She had felt that for herself the very first time she had shared herself with the Mother-Vine. That connection fed the Mother-Vine, fed Parlu, and colored every decision she had ever made. There had been peace in the area for a very long time because of that awareness of the lives around her and connected to her through the Mother.
The Sa’ba Taalor were not connected. There was no peace within them. They did not accept the world around them. Instead they were connected to something else. Something dark and powerful, and as alien to her as the notion of being left without the Mother’s touch.
She could sense them, true enough, but they were a blight, a disease that moved among the strands of the Great Mother and killed her connection to everything else. Where the Sa’ba Taalor touched, there was a growing darkness that burned into her very soul.
She almost pulled her hand away from the Mother-Vine in an effort to escape the horrible chill left behind after each burning step the invaders took, but knew that to do so would be to abandon all she loved and cared for.
The Mother was injured and she had to guide the great plant in order to save them all.
Some of the horrid creatures must have sensed her, for they called to their brethren with horns and as a unit the vile presences started away, scurrying down from the Mother in an effort to escape the wrath she would cast upon them all.
The fingers of her left hand sank deep into the Mother-Vine as if into water, and she felt the potent energies of the Mother respond, filling her, offering her control of the Mother.
Parlu flexed her fingers and the world outside the tower moved, responded. The Mother-Vine shifted, but it moved slowly, without the usual liquid responses. For an instant she wondered if she had lost her connection to the Mother, but she knew better. It was the invaders. They had wounded the Mother and in so doing had weakened her as well.
Still, she would end them and the disease they brought with them.
Cullen felt the ground move again, and saw the great extensions of the Mother-Vine shift and break free of the earth. The ground shook, the dirt exploded, the vines seethed and whipped through the air, countless tendrils extending as they prepared to cut the enemies of Trecharch apart.
Cullen’s heart soared. She had heard of the Mother-Vine moving, of course. She understood that the Walking Trees did not walk without her; still, this was a different thing, a far greater challenge.
Several of the grayskins jumped and ran as thick vines thrashed and whipped toward them. As she watched one of the bastards cleaved a tendril away as if cutting a snake in half. Another was not as lucky and grunted as the vine captured him and squeezed. Bones broke, flesh soon followed and the attacker died without uttering another noise.
The Mother-Vine moved again, and more of the earth broke as the roots slipped from where they had rested comfortably for centuries, spraying dirt and rocks and anything else in their way through the air.
Cullen allowed herself a moment to smile.
The Mother-Vine provides, indeed.
The rain of arrows that came down initially was impressive. Tusk felt them thud against his shield and bounce off his helmet in a clatter that nearly deafened him. Beneath him Brodem roared and growled and ran harder, faster, covering territory in leaps almost strong enough to unseat him.
Brodem was wise. He ran hard and soon they were away from the worst of the volleys of arrows. Tusk’s arm was pierced in two separate spots where the shield was not enough. His helmet, made of bone and good steel, held up better.
Behind him his people returned fire, sending their own hail of arrows toward their enemies. That was what he commanded and that was what they did.
And through it all, his heart soared.
The Daxar Taalor had given him a command and he would obey or die trying. Durhallem said to kill a god and so he would go and kill a god. It was not for him to question how the deed would be done. He would take care of that when the time came.
He could see the god. The great “Mother-Vine” of the local people. He could also see that the vine was already dying. Glo’Hosht was a gifted murderer. The King in Mercury was moved on already, going toward the next stage of the Great Wave, leaving Mother-Vine to Tusk. Tusk was not a merciful man any more than Durhallem was a merciful god.
When he approached the vast tower he saw the gates had been sealed. He did not have time to batter down the gates himself, and he did not much care for the odds. The trees here were on a scale he had never seen before and the wood was likely as hard as iron.
That left him only one option. He muttered a command in Brodem’s ear and the great mount turned, charging toward the Mother-Vine and climbing quickly. Perhaps for the locals the notion of scaling a nearly sheer surface was something unheard of. Surely he saw no trails along the side of the mountainous column of green, but both Tuskandru and Brodem had scaled the side of Durhallem a thousand times, and while the texture was different, the climb itself was not so far from what they were used to. Brodem extended his claws and dug deep into the hard vine. Tusk clung to Brodem and called encouragement as the mount rose higher and higher into the heavy green foliage.
Further up he could see where the poisons were having their impact on the great vine. Here it still seemed healthy enough.
He would do what he could to handle that matter, though if he were completely honest Tusk had troubles deciding which of his weapons would serve him best.
Brodem let out a grunt and slid back a few paces. Tusk saw the arrow in his mount’s shoulder and sneered. A cowardly attack. His eyes surveyed the area and he saw the archer easily enough. He was suspended on one of the branches above them, and had already drawn another arrow.
Tusk rolled from Brodem’s back and caught himself on the angle of the vast plant’s surface. “Go, Brodem! Kill him!”
Brodem did not hesitate, but instead charged, moving faster than before now that he was unencumbered. The arrow the archer fired would have hit if Tusk had stayed with his friend, but unburdened, the mount was fast enough to dodge the bolt and, more importantly, clear the distance before the archer could draw again.
While the fool screamed and Brodem killed, Tusk looked at the stone wall not far away.
The Mother-Vine and the tower were mated. That was not an accident. He understood that instantly. In each of the Seven Forges the Daxar Taalor offered a place where their followers could join with them to communicate freely and feel the pure presence of the deities. That, too, was not an accident.
Tusk assessed the tower and the vine and moved, sliding sideways at first and then reaching the great tower itself. Where vine and stone met there were many footholds. He took advantage of them and began climbing in earnest.
Far below archers and warriors fought and died. Not far away Brodem killed and then ate and would have come to him if he’d called, but when a god makes demands it is often a personal challenge and best faced alone.
The climb was hard, but there were no challengers.
Below him his people climbed the tower and the vine alike and followed the orders they had been given. They cut the vine and made it bleed its clear sap. Then they descended again. He did not see Brodem. He did not look. The mount would do his part.
When Tusk climbed to the highest of the few balconies, he felt in his heart that this was the way, the right choice. It was not instinct alone that drove him, but the sure knowledge that Durhallem guided his actions. He was the King in Obsidian, Chosen of Durhallem. He was the divine sword of his god until such time as his god chose another.
He did not believe today would be the day his replacement was found.
The stone balcony held his weight with ease and he stepped inside a chamber filled with lovely decorations and exactly two people. There was an old man, who was currently aiming a spear at him, and a young girl who looked at him with terror in her eyes.
The situation was simple: the old man would die for the girl. He would fight and he would die in an effort to see her safe and protected.
Tusk moved quickly, drawing his heaviest axe in one swift motion and dancing past the spear thrust the man aimed toward him. It was a good attempt, but the man was old and unpracticed. He was soft in a way that Sa’ba Taalor had never been allowed to be soft and it cost him dearly.
The axe came down on the side of the man’s face and through him as if he were a log to split. The spear fell from a lifeless hand and clattered across the ground.
The girl opened her mouth to scream and ran for an open doorway.
Tusk followed her and struck the back of her skull with his axe. The blow was not perfect, but it was enough She fell atop the stairs with a hole in the back of her head. Just to be certain, he drove one of his daggers through her neck.
After that he headed up the stairs.
Durhallem told him which way to go and he obeyed.
The view was not remarkable.
A woman in a white gown stood in the small room and shuddered; her body twitched and danced as if she were poisoned and dying of fits.
Her arm was lost in the wood of the Mother-Vine and Tusk understood all he needed to know in that moment. This was the god he was meant to slay. The vine and the woman were one, at least at this time. He felt vibrations moving through the ground beneath his feet and knew that his time was limited.
Durhallem spoke to him, made clear that the God-Vine was attacking, would kill his people if he did not strike.
When he spoke, it was not with his tongue. Durhallem said, “We end this now. You die as you should have so long ago.”
The woman looked toward him. Her eyes were the same color green as the Mother-Vine’s most perfect foliage. There had been a time when he was younger that Durhallem had awarded him with an obsidian blade. The sword he’d made with it had killed many foes and had even helped him kill a Mound Crawler in his youth. It was that blade he used to hack the woman apart. His first blow cut her arm away from the rest of her body. The rest of his strikes severed her head, her arms, her legs, and her torso.
Each cut was directed by Durhallem.
Tuskandru was the Chosen of the Forge of Durhallem and King in Obsidian. He was the instrument of his god’s fury.
Durhallem was called the Wounder because of his lack of mercy.
Tusk was a perfect instrument.
Cullen felt the earth shake again and her smile fell away. This was not the same. This was so very different. The ground shook and seized and the great roots of the Mother-Vine tore free of the earth and shredded themselves in the process. Those roots had rested in the same spot for centuries, since before the fall of Korwa, since before the Cataclysm.
The mountains were constant. The rivers were eternal. The Mother-Vine was immortal.
And then, suddenly, the Mother-Vine was dead.
There could be no denying what she saw. The roots split as they came from the earth and pulled down structures and smaller trees alike. The other trees, the Sentinels, might well have fallen down, too, had they not been so deeply rooted themselves.
Above Cullen the trees screamed as the Mother-Vine that had fed them and provided, always provided, died. The great trunk blackened and rivers of sap flowed from the areas where the grayskins had cut her before.
The Mother-Vine died before her eyes.
Cullen watched it all with unseeing eyes. She stared at the impossible and her mind refused to accept it. A tree fell to her left and would have crushed her had it not rebounded off another tree instead.
The great storm clouds grew darker as the sun set and still Cullen did not move.
In the darkness of a night too impossible to believe, Cullen heard the sounds of the guards within Orrander’s Tower screaming as they died. When the gateway was opened it was not the guards who came out, but the grayskins. A hundred of them spilled out, likely the very ones she had earlier seen scaling the sides of the tower.
She should have helped her people.
She should have tried to save them.
Instead Cullen had merely watched as her god died and her people followed suit.
She was still watching when the grayskins dragged barrels of oil from the tower’s supplies to the base of the Mother-Vine. The fire did not take long to light.
She was still watching when the Mother burned.
She was not certain if she would ever move again.