The Queen of Blood (19 page)

Focus, Daleina,
she told herself.
Four years of training. You can do this
. A first-year could do this. All she had to do was make them leave.

Casually, the champion reached over his head and plucked a leaf from the tree.

These spirits were larger, stronger, and wilder than the ones in the city.
Go,
she told them.

They fought her command. She felt them fighting—their strength was like the core of a tree, solid and deep, and like the steady rain. She felt the press of their minds against hers.

And she had an idea.

She changed the command:
Grow
.

She invited them closer. Picturing in her mind an image of the broken branches, healed and growing, sprouting, spreading, thickening . . . she pushed the image toward them, layering it with leaves and blossoms.

Crying in triumph, the spirits soared closer. Out of the corner of her eye, Daleina saw the champion tense. His hand closed around the hilt of his sword, but otherwise, he didn't move.

The wood spirits circled around the broken branches, and the tree began to grow. New branches shot out from the broken wood. They split and spread, sprouting leaves, and the branches thickened. The spirits rode them upward, circling around, and Daleina felt her soul flying with them, reveling in the tree as it strengthened and grew.

When the spirits finished, Daleina realized her cheeks were wet. She wiped them with the back of her hand as the three spirits dispersed into the leaves.

“Since you're wide-awake now,” Champion Ven said, “how about you take first watch?” He then curled up against the newly grown branch and, as near as Daleina could tell, fell instantly asleep.

D
awn came with new sounds: birds that trilled, chittered, and warbled. Daleina felt stiffness in all of her muscles. Rubbing her neck, she sat up. Ven was already awake, having taken the second shift. He handed her a hunk of cheese and cold, leftover squirrel meat. “Champion Ven? Those spirits last night . . .” she said, unsure if she should be saying this or not. She decided she'd already started, though, so finished, “I didn't expect them to be so strong.”

“The academy shelters its students. You were never asked to control a spirit stronger than what your teacher could control, and the teachers actively monitor which spirits are in the vicinity. Out here, there aren't any restrictions like that. Any spirit can swing by for a visit. Also, you can drop the ‘Champion.' Just call me Ven. I'm out of practice with the title.”

She considered his words. “Then they weren't really preparing us.”

“Their job is to teach you the basic techniques; it's my job to give you a chance to apply them in the real world.” He efficiently rolled up their tarp roof and unraveled their rope hammock. She helped him squeeze the supplies into their packs. “In other words, I'm going to push you until you break.”

“I won't break.” She added his name: “Ven.” Daleina didn't know if she was lying or not. She suspected she was, but she was never going to admit that. Especially not to him.

All he said was, “We'll see.”

And from there it began: they traveled eastward, away from the capital. Every few hours, whether they'd stopped or not, he deliberately irritated the nearby spirits, and she was forced to find ways to deflect them. She let a rain spirit drench them and encouraged an air spirit to blow them onto the next bridge. She guided an earth spirit into shifting some rocks, and she left another flock of tree spirits in a grove, coaxing new saplings to sprout. A few times, she slipped: one wood spirit sliced her arm before she was able to shift its anger away from her, and another weakened the branch they were on, causing them to fall to the next branch. Over the course of a few days, she encountered a wider variety of spirits than she'd ever seen.

Out in the forest, the spirits ranged in size, strength, and intelligence. She saw tiny air spirits, the size of dandelion fluff, drawn to their camp and then distracted by rustling leaves. Others tracked them for days, working together to coordinate clever, vicious attacks. Once, a beaver-size earth spirit created a sinkhole to try to trap them while a fire spirit deliberately danced flames on their supplies. Another time, three air spirits held a broken bridge in the air, releasing it only when Daleina and Ven were halfway across. Even with all her history and theory classes, she hadn't fully grasped the breadth, variety, and viciousness of the forest spirits.

In between irritating the spirits, her champion also worked with her on her knife skills. He had her practice hitting targets, in between fending off spirits. Eventually, he combined the two, removing the charm from her knife hilt so that a spirit would come investigate every time she impaled a tree.

She lost her knife in that training exercise.

By the fifth day, Daleina and Ven had a trail of spirits, six or seven that kept just out of sight, watching them from the trees. Ven told her to stay aware of them as he hunted for dinner.

Waiting for him on the forest floor, Daleina kept her senses open as she extracted a burr from Bayn's paw. The wolf had had a run-in with a pricker bush. He'd been chewing the burrs out, but when Daleina started helping, Bayn had sat and lifted up the
offended paw. “You seem to be doing well, other than the prickers,” Daleina said to him. The wolf's pelt was still soft, and he'd clearly been finding food.

In response, the wolf let his tongue hang out like a happy dog.

“You're having fun?”

He thumped his tail.

“Want to know a secret?” Daleina leaned toward the wolf's ear. “Me too.”

Ven didn't ever criticize her technique. He cared about results and didn't demand that she channel her power in specific ways or use particular commands. He acted like he didn't regret his decision to pick her, and she had no intention of ever making him regret it. She scratched behind Bayn's ears. “It's nice to feel like I'm doing well.”

And that was the moment that the earth spirit tried to kill her.

She felt the wolf stiffen as she plucked the last burr out, and she twisted around, expecting to see Ven stride into the clearing. But he didn't. None of the leaves rustled. She cast her senses out, checking for the spirits—and beneath her, the earth dissolved.

“Bayn, run!”

The solid dirt shifted into a mucky sand, and she sank to her waist. Ignoring her command, Bayn lunged for her and snapped Daleina's shirt in his jaws. Daleina wrapped her arms around the wolf's neck. Bayn scrambled his paws backward, trying to yank Daleina out of the shifting sand, but the sand was oozing outward, dissolving more of the solid ground—it was going to trap the wolf too.

“Get Ven!” Daleina ordered the wolf, and then she released his neck. Her shirtsleeve tore as he refused to open his jaws. “Now!” The wolf obeyed, releasing her and bounding into the forest, as the sand pulled Daleina faster, down to her armpits.

She cast her mind down—the earth spirit was beneath her. This wasn't a tiny spirit. This one's mind felt old, smart, and aware. It extended far under the earth, embedded in the bedrock, with tentacles that reached through the stone, deep.

She knew instantly it was more powerful than she was, so she cast upward toward the other, smaller spirits.
Help me,
she
commanded. To the wood spirits, she called,
Grow the roots
. She pushed a picture toward them, thickening the roots, growing them toward her, and the wood spirits emerged from the trees. Gleefully, they pounced on the roots.

To the water spirits, she called,
Wash the sand away! Flood it!

The roots thickened and spread through the loose sand. Rain trickled between the leaves, and then fell harder. Daleina reached for the roots. As she tried to kick her legs, the sand seemed to melt around them. She sank up to her neck.

Grow faster!

More wood spirits piled onto the roots, and they continued to thicken, plumping like loaves of bread in an oven. She grabbed one. And then she felt a meaty hand clasp around her ankle and yank her downward.

She lost her grip on the root. Her mind screamed for the wood spirits as rain poured into the sand, but not quickly enough. The sand closed over her head, stinging her eyes, filling her nose, and seeping into her mouth. The hand pulled her deeper, and she flailed her arms as she screamed with her mind. Her lungs burned.

Help me!
she called to the spirits.

She felt them above her, growing the roots and flooding the sand with water, but neither the roots nor the water reached her. She sank too quickly, deeper and deeper, with the hand clutched tight around her leg, its fingers reaching from her ankle to her thigh. Her leg ached from the pressure. Her whole body felt compressed by the sand, as if it wanted to shrink her.

Ven will come,
she thought. Bayn will find him. He won't let me die.

Unless this was a test. And she was failing.

She tried to cling to those thoughts as her mind fragmented. Her mouth opened—to breathe? To scream? Sand poured down her throat. It tasted, she thought, like burnt toast.

And then she thought and felt and tasted nothing.

V
EN LINED UP HIS SHOT
:
A PLUMP SQUIRREL
,
ABSORBED IN TRYING
to crack a nut by bashing it on a branch. One flick of his wrist,
and it would have a knife through its throat. A quick death. He pulled a charm out with one hand and draped it onto the hilt of the knife. The wood spirits would ignore his blade buried in the tree, at least for long enough for him to retrieve their dinner.

“Champion Ven!” a voice boomed. Popol, the healer.

The squirrel froze, and then, clutching the nut, scampered out of range. Sighing, Ven lowered the knife. “You couldn't have waited?”

“You asked us to meet you,” Popol said, genuinely perplexed.

Apologetically, his assistant Hamon held up a bag, which Ven assumed held food. He hoped it was fresh. Ven accepted it. “I've taken on a candidate,” he said with no preamble.

Popol blinked. “You what? But I thought you were in disgrace. Oh, that's splendid news! The queen has lifted her exile? I knew her benevolence—”

“She hasn't,” Ven interrupted. “But I have my duty.”

“Oh.” For once, Popol was out of words.

“I am about to initiate the next stage of her training, and I need a healer on call. I don't plan to go easy on her, and I don't want her dying unnecessarily.”

Popol frowned. “I am depended upon by upwards of twenty villages for—”

“I'd like Hamon,” Ven cut in.

Popol's eyes widened. “Hamon? But he's just a boy.”

“Actually, I grew up,” Hamon said. “Time has that effect.” He said this without any hint of disrespect in his voice, which Ven found impressive.

“It's time to grant him journeyman status,” Ven told Popol. “Past time.”

Popol looked at Hamon as if seeing him for the first time. The boy had grown into a young man with clean-shaven cheeks and well-earned muscles. “But he's the best assistant I've ever had.”

“Exactly why you should set him free.”

“Exactly why I need him,” Popol said. “The outer villages need him. I'm—we're—stretched thin enough as it is. The demands—”

“He will also have the chance to gather and study rare plants and herbs, found only in the less-populated areas—I remember
he was interested in that. A unique opportunity.” The trick with Popol was never to let him work himself into a rant. He was a good man, but he liked the sound of his own voice and he was overly impressed with his own sense of logic. “Truthfully, it isn't your decision. It's Hamon's.”

Popol huffed. “It's the master's right to declare when the student is ready.”

“And you already said he's the best you've ever had,” Ven said, trying to stay patient. Popol should have released Hamon a year ago. “Hamon? What say you?”

Hamon bowed to Popol. “It has been an honor to serve and be trained by you, sir. You are a credit to healers, and songs should be written about you. Now it's time for me to humbly take my training out in the world, so that more can see the results of your mastery.”

Popol preened. “Well. Yes. But I'll miss you, boy.”

The goodbyes were suitably awkward, and Ven spent a while watching the trees while they each praised each other and wished each other well, repetitively. At last, Popol trundled off down the bridge, toward the nearest village.

“Laid it on a bit thick, didn't you, boy?”

“Master Popol feeds on praise the way other men feed on bread. Besides, it costs me nothing to make him happy.” Hamon attached his pack to his back. He flashed Ven a rare smile. “I trust you don't require constant compliments?”

“Just a few now and then.”

Straight-faced, Hamon said, “I'm honored to be working alongside someone with such expert woodland knowledge, superior battle skills, and an impressive beard.”

Ven stroked his beard. “Indeed you are.”

They left the path, heading back toward where Ven had left Daleina. Hopefully, whatever Hamon carried in his pack would make up for the dinner that Ven had failed to shoot. He knew Daleina would be hungry after the intense training from earlier in the day. He was working on her physical reflexes, climbing up and down the trees and practicing her knife throws—she was surprisingly adept at both, most likely thanks to her outer-forest
upbringing, but he also had to credit the survival classes. Unlike some candidates, she hadn't neglected those. With a fully trained body, she'd be free to devote her mind to her powers. Her muscles would know how to react on their own, freeing her mind to focus on the spirits.

“Tell me about your candidate,” Hamon said.

“She's too concerned with doing things perfectly, a habit from the academy. Though they'd deny it, they teach that it's more important to be strong than smart,” Ven said. “I'm trying to break down the structure they've imposed. Their training is excellent for a certain type of student, but for Daleina, she needs to allow herself more flexibility in her thinking—”

He heard branches break. Automatically, he stepped in front of Hamon and drew his knife. Crouching, he prepared to strike, as a wolf burst through the underbrush.

“Hold!” he told Hamon.

It was Bayn.

He knew instantly something was wrong—he'd never heard the wolf be anything but stealthy. Without waiting to explain to Hamon, he ran after the wolf. He heard the boy—young man—scramble after him, as Ven swung from branch to branch, leaping while the wolf ran just ahead of him below, leading the way.

The wolf burst into a clearing and then halted abruptly and howled.

Ven ran after him toward the clearing. Jumping in front of him, Bayn snapped at Ven's legs. He stopped just on the edge of a morass of loose sandy earth. The wolf howled again, and the message couldn't have been clearer if he spoke:

Daleina is down there
.

Quickly, Ven dropped his pack and yanked out a rope. He secured it around a tree and then tied it around his waist. He then sucked in as much air into his lungs as he could, and he dove into the shifting sand.

He kept his eyes squeezed shut, but felt the sand fill his ears and nostrils. It moved around him, shifting, as if he were diving through oatmeal. He kicked his legs, propelling himself downward, and his hands encountered soft flesh. Daleina!

He closed his hands around the limb—an arm—and he grabbed back at the rope, pulling on it. But Daleina didn't budge. He pulled harder—it didn't matter. Something was holding her. He pivoted and dove down farther.