The Chosen (The Compendium of Raath, Book 1) (31 page)

“I'm going,” Otom said.

Silence nodded, staring off into nothing.
“It is a risk. But your choices are simple. Go and have a chance to
save her, or stay and watch her die. The problem with Isola region
is just that. Isolation. The inability to call on others. Here, you
must do things yourself or not do them at all.”

“Yes, Silence,” Otom said.

“Did you memorize the way that I showed
you?”

“Well enough. Will you watch over her?”

“I will.”

“Then I guess this is goodbye.”

“Wait,” Silence said, catching him by the
wrist in a powerful grip. “The power of the Dryad Tree is great. It
has a Guile on it, making it difficult to perceive for those that
do not seek it. Keep your mission always in your heart so you will
not miss it. You must also remember that there is a war going on.
The armies fight along that border constantly. Don't get mixed up
with them. Soldiers are not fighters. They've no honor, even though
they claim they do; they're killers dressed in noble uniform."
Silence gripped Otom's arm. "I would never wish this onus on
anyone, but if you are to save the woman you love, you must be
strong, smart, and quick, Otom. I have run out of options here as
you well know. Your connection to Allura will allow you to access
the Dryad Tree, to see it for what it really is, to get what you
need from it. You are her last hope, Otom. Make haste."

Otom took a few moments to check his knife,
water skin, and food supply and then he was off on what would
become the most painful journey of his life.

T
he first night felt incredibly long and Otom went without
sleep, simply laying under the black sky, only the hints of stars
poking through. Honest thoughts began to crash down around him. He
was completely unsure if this was the right thing to do. The Dryad
Tree was a sacred place; somewhere that regular men did not tread
lightly, if at all. In talking with Silence, Otom's perception of
the scope of magic in the world had expanded.

Even after all he'd been told he knew that
he was still woefully under-informed for this mission, and that
pressed on him until he knew deep in his heart that he would fail.
That promise of failure sat there like a weight, tearing him down,
making his blood flow sluggishly.

But the next morning he stood up and
continued on anyway. Silence had been right about the Isola region;
Otom had not seen a single living soul in an entire day. He had
covered much ground, long strides eating away the bands that he
would have to travel to reach the Tree. Supposedly it lay at a
pivotal point, in a spot that was just between the borders of
Hardeen, Shailand, and the North. Silence, in addition to his
technique teachings, had also insisted on a vast array of subjects,
one of which had been geography. It was relevant, he had said,
because you needed to know where the other fighters were from. It
was important to know their landscape; their way of thinking.

Otom had, regrettably, never paid that much
attention to those lessons.

I think you can save
me
. Allura's words echoed in his mind and
became a mantra. When he got tired he would repeat them and he
would find a new energy in himself.

He caught animals in snares and cooked them
over fires that were difficult to make. But these were the types of
things he had been doing all his life. Except for fighting, Otom
was basically a hunter at heart, and had been raised that way by
his da.

“I love her,” Otom said to the air one
night. “I would travel to the ends of the earth for her. Into the
fiery mouth of hell itself.”

It would turn out that he would have to make
good on that promise.

I
t
was his ninth straight day of nearly non-stop travel when he first
began to hear noises. Up until that point it had been the birds in
the trees and the wind in the pines, but now it was men. These were
massive groups of men whose sounds carried familiar humanity, but
also a foreign energy.

Otom slowed his pace and followed the sound,
cresting a hill to find an encampment spread before him. He dropped
to his stomach out of instinct and began to investigate the new
situation. Blue and white striped tents dotted the valley, erected
with ropes and poles. Men and horses moved about them, constantly
winding their way throughout the tents. Otom knew one on one
fighting. He didn't understand warfare. All at once he was
intimidated simply by the sheer number of people gathered in the
same spot. But more than that he cursed the fact that he would have
to waste time going around them.

His plan was to swing a wide berth and avoid
the camp entirely, but as he raised himself off the ground he heard
a voice behind him. “Who goes there?” It didn't sound good.

Otom leaped up and took off at a dead run
through the snow, for he knew he had only one hope: to outrun
whoever had shouted. Tracking in the snow was easier than falling
out of a tree and Otom ran until his legs and lungs burned, all the
while skirting the camp and trying wildly to keep himself on target
towards the Tree.

Luck shone on him as he found a small stream
that wasn't frozen. He ran into it and down it, his boots becoming
sodden with the icy water. It branched a few times and he took them
at random. He splashed through it until his legs – which had been
burning just moments before – felt like stumps instead of limbs. He
then exited onto the opposite bank and searched frantically for
somewhere to hide himself, dry off, and recover.

Unfortunately no such place existed. There
were no hollow trees or caves or anything else, only the flatness
of the land covered in snow. So he simply kept going.

They won't know which way
I ran in the stream.

He forced himself to keep
moving despite the protesting of almost every single part of his
body. He could rest later.
I think you can
save me
, Allura echoed in his
mind.

She had survived so much.
Otom could survive this. Even Ris, who had been cold, starved,
crazy, and shot in the back with an arrow had survived long enough
to do what he had done.
I can survive
this. She'll wait until I get back.

The camp of men was long behind him now. If
they would have caught him they likely would have thought him a
Marshanti spy and Otom could only derive bad outcomes from that. He
ran his hand through his beard to jar loose the snow and ice that
had formed there, and began breathing a bit easier.

The feeling in his feet and legs slowly
returned as he walked. It was becoming uncannily warm the further
south he traveled. He had expected that, of course, but something
about the suddenness of it caught him by surprise. Suddenly the
ground wasn't covered in snow. Grass and weeds poked up to greet
his boots with a pleasant springiness.

Otom was completely unused to bare ground.
He had seen it several times during particularly warm winters, but
the concept still somewhat baffled him. The north had always been
his home, and he was a winter-man through and through. His body had
grown accustomed to the cold, and the lack of air in the elevations
of the Northern Kingdom.

It was wet going for the next few days, and
insects enjoyed Otom's company, even if he didn't enjoy theirs.
Otom had clung to hope as best he could, but he was starting to
slip into dejection as he traveled endlessly and accomplished
nothing, all the while picturing Allura slipping into death.

And then, on the horizon, just as he was
about to weep with failure, he saw the top of what could have only
been the Dryad Tree.

It was a formidable sight, green and
gigantic, wavering just on the brink reality. As Otom concentrated,
keeping his mission in his heart, he saw it solidify and vaporize
over and over again as it struggled to stay real to him.

And, for the first time on this journey, he
felt that he might actually succeed. A branch from this Tree must
be magical – Silence had said it was, and now Otom felt to too. He
wouldn't reach it until night, though, even if he sprinted the rest
of the way.

It looks close but that's
only because it's so gigantic,
he thought.
His legs wobbled.
I need rest before I
face whatever I find there.

The fire that he made this evening burned so
brightly that he was worried of its light, afraid soldiers from
some nearby camp would find him. But his plan was only to rest here
for a short time, to give him the energy he needed to finish his
quest for Allura.

H
e
must have fallen asleep for he was awakened by thunder. His heart
was pounding. Once he opened his eyes and got his wits about him he
knew that it had not been thunder, but the massive pounding of
horses hooves on the bare ground.

Otom abandoned his fire, though it still
burned low, and began to run towards the Tree, his sleepy mind
driving him forward on the one path that mattered to him. He had to
reach that Tree and cut a branch from it before he was interrupted
or killed.

He took his knife out of his sheath in
preparation for what he had to do. His legs ached. The Tree grew in
his sight until it was frighteningly massive, but Otom did not stop
running. He was sweating profusely, his clothes becoming soaked
with it, but still he did not stop. The tree wavered, solidified,
wavered, solidified. Suddenly it sprouted leaves for him, bark and
roots curling up and out. It was growing more alive, just for
him.

And then, all at once, chaos broke out
around him. The thundering sound grew louder as a wall of horses
crashed in from his left. Otom ducked and rolled under them,
suddenly caught in the spray of the dirt from their hooves.
Miraculously he lived, and regained his footing. He ignored this
army only to have to ignore another one coming from the other side.
The two forces crashed together, the sound deafening.

Otom raced towards the trunk of the Tree and
leaped onto it, digging for purchase with his dagger. The tree was
hard now, solid when before it had seemed illusion. Something
whizzed by his left ear and struck into the trunk; an arrow,
quivering. Then another. Otom dug his fingers and dagger into the
rippling bark of the Tree and hauled himself up as fast as he
could, using very nearly the last of his strength. From this
vantage point he looked down at what was happening below him. The
scale of it boggled his mind.

Thousands - maybe tens of thousands - of men
shouted and surged below him. Arrows flew, swords struck mighty
clangs, and horses screamed and fell. In the mire he sometimes
caught sight of men and women in dark gowns. They held up their
hands, making motions Otom didn't recognize, tracing symbols in the
air.

There were definitely three forces at work
here: the red colors of the Shailand army, the blue of the Hardeen
army, and the hopeless neutrality of the men and women, who could
only have been what Silence had called Protectors.

And then the animals joined the fight. Birds
by the thousands – eagles, hawks, blackbirds, tiny bluebirds,
colorful menageries - careened from the branches over Otom's head,
darkening the sky with their numbers. He could see bears pounding
across the ground, ripping open horses with their mighty claws. Men
screamed and died at the hands of each other, and now at the claws
and beaks of the new onslaught.

And there Otom clung to the side of the
hulking tree, feeling very much like a terrified squirrel.

When he regained his mind he scrambled
quickly up and onto one of the lowest limbs. The view from this
high up made him dizzy, but he was driven on by Allura's need. He
gripped his knife in his teeth now and slid out towards a branch
that looked a likely candidate. He took his knife from his teeth
and held on with one hand as he sawed at the branch. It popped free
with a trickle of sap and he stuffed it into his shirt.

For a brief moment a thought tickled his
mind, and he must have known how those that climbed the high
mountains in the north felt. Upon reaching the summit, their
journey was only half over. He shook the thought off.

The air was aswarm with insects now, and
Otom smelled something familiar.

Smoke.

Fire.

Everything began to burn around him and his
panic nearly lost him his grip on the limb. As quickly as he could
he began his descent, his plan merely to run like hell when he hit
the ground.

He knew, deep in his heart, that he would
probably die. And that meant Allura would die, too.

His descent was harder and more awkward than
his ascent had been, since he had to drive the knife below him and
look down for other handholds and footholds. The entire Tree was
quaking now as if at any minute it would come to life, uproot
itself, and swing mighty arms at its attackers. Fire licked at its
base. The armies still fought around it.

Otom's boots hit the ground and he rolled,
coughing from the smoke and the scent of blood. He scampered like a
strange opossum, staying low to the ground and hopefully out of
sight. He rolled under a horse's hooves and they came so close to
grazing his face that he could see each individual nail in the
shoe. They struck like thunder next to his head as he shot up and
onward again.

Otom reached for his knife,
but was startled to find that he had lost it.
Did I drop it or did it fall from my belt?
It didn't matter. He ran, more motivated now than
by any tournament he had ever fought in. He screamed then, because
it didn't matter. He screamed as loud as he could as he ran, his
terror bursting forth from him, but he could barely hear his own
voice through the chaos.