Thinblade (48 page)

“I never even imagined a place could be so pretty,” Abigail said with a little bit of giddiness in her voice.

The stand of trees was three miles long and two miles wide at the widest point. A variety of evergreen trees stood all around it but within the borders of the Pink Forest there were only fluffy, pastel pink, blooming trees packed in close together but not so close that each tree couldn’t get ample light.

“I must say, while the forest is not my favorite place, I believe I could just sit here and look out over this particular patch of trees all afternoon,” Jack said with a smile as he sat on his pack next to Abigail.

They spent the next hour preparing and eating lunch. As much as Alexander felt a sense of urgency, he didn’t really want to leave this place. It was so soft and peaceful, calm and serene. He closed his eyes briefly and took a deep breath of the fragrant air. He released it slowly and felt a sense of calm soak into him. He took another breath and within moments he felt as if he were drifting on an ocean of infinity. He was no longer inside the limited confines of his body. He felt his essence extend to the farthest corners of the world and beyond.

With a start that nearly brought him out of his detached state, he realized that he’d felt this before. Twice in fact, once at the end of the mana fast and again when he’d seen Phane. He started to feel his awareness draw back into his physical body and with an odd kind of effort he let go of his thoughts, cleared his mind, and simply allowed the experience to happen for a few moments while formulating his real intent in the quiet recesses of his mind. It was a strange way of thinking. He had to keep his consciousness calm and undisturbed like the surface of a pond while carefully forming an image of his intent in the depths without causing so much as a ripple.

When he knew what he wanted to see, he simply willed his awareness to coalesce at the location of his chosen target rather than within his own body. Time and space didn’t seem to matter here. There was no substance. All things for all time sprang from the singular, infinite nature of this place, and Alexander found that he could be where he wanted to be simply by willing himself to be there.

Sitting on his pack with his eyes closed, Alexander could see clearly, but his awareness was no longer in the Pink Forest. He was floating thirty feet above the road that ran through the Great Forest. On both sides he saw armed men hidden behind trees. Then he saw his target. Wizard Rangle was standing on a giant log near the road. Beside the log were three other men. Alexander recognized Truss immediately. The little rodent had apparently escaped intact and managed to join forces with Rangle and his men. The next man he saw made him uneasy. He had to be seven feet tall and easily weighed over three hundred pounds. His head was bald, his face was clean-shaven, and he wore a heavy metal breastplate. On his back was an oversized quiver filled with javelins and he was leaning against a giant war hammer with its spiked butt jammed into the ground. He looked bored.

The third man was even more unsettling but for different reasons. He was short and almost pudgy, but not quite. He wore all black and didn’t appear to be carrying a weapon. The thing that most caught Alexander’s attention was his aura. He could see in a glance that this man was a wizard of great and terrible power. Alexander had never seen a wizard such as this before. He had the color of focused and coiled power just waiting to be unleashed. Alexander had looked at wizards’ auras before and he could always tell that they had a special connection to reality. He could see their relationship to the firmament but it was always tenuous, even with Mason who was a Master Wizard of significant power. All the wizards he’d ever looked at with his second sight had given him the sense that they could tap into the firmament but they were also guarded against it, as if they feared to stare openly into the vast infinity of possibility for fear of losing themselves to it.

The man in black had no such restraint about him. His colors told Alexander that he had looked fully into the firmament and retained his sense of self. He was dangerous. Alexander suddenly wondered about Phane’s aura but when he started to draw on his memories, he found his vision of the scene before him start to fade. He quickly let go of his thoughts again and simply allowed himself to float above the road, taking in his surroundings. It was a strange feeling to have his awareness separate from his body.

Then he heard horses coming up the road. He swung his point of view away from Rangle and his friends and looked down the road to see a company of Rangers riding fast. Erik was in the lead and he and his men were charging right into an ambush.

At the realization of what was happening, Alexander felt his awareness slam back into his body. He stood so fast that his feet came an inch or so off the ground. A dreadful, helpless fear for Erik and his men washed through him and left him with his knees trembling. He wanted to use his clairvoyance to go back and see the outcome of the ambush but didn’t think he would be able to make it happen again. He stood there trying to breathe through the tightness in his chest.

Anatoly was up with his axe at the ready, looking around for the threat. “What is it?” he asked quietly but intently as he surveyed their surroundings for any possible enemy.

Alexander started pacing. He put his hand to his forehead and ran his fingers through his hair. By this time everyone was up and looking worried. It was Isabel that pulled Alexander to a stop and took him by the forearms to make him look at her.

“What is it, Alexander? What’s wrong?”

He felt a wave of misery flood through him when he looked into her worried eyes. He could hardly make himself say the words. “It’s Erik. He’s riding into an ambush.” His voice broke from guilt and helplessness.

He shut his eyes against the stricken look of desperate fear that filled her face. When she let go, he opened his eyes again. She stumbled back a step or two with a look of pure anguish. Alexander would have given anything in that moment to have not seen what he’d seen.

Then Lucky was there alongside him as Isabel sat down hard on her pack and put her face in her hands. “What did you see? Was it like the experience with Phane? Tell me everything, Alexander; the details are important.”

He nodded while he fought back the sick feeling welling up in the pit of his gut. How could he be the one to send others to their deaths? Who was he to decide? How would Isabel ever forgive him if Erik was killed on his order?

“I was feeling a deep sense of peace.” He snorted bitterly at the thought of how the beauty all around him had been the catalyst for his clairvoyance. “Then I felt myself adrift like I did at the end of the mana fast. I wasn’t here anymore, I was everywhere at once and yet nowhere at the same time. For a few moments I just floated, trying to get a feeling for it. After a bit of a struggle, I decided I wanted to see Wizard Rangle. Everything came into sharp focus in an instant. I was floating over a road with men to either side waiting in the trees. Rangle was there and so was Truss.” Isabel looked up at that. “There was another man who looked like a giant and then there was the one who scared me. He wasn’t very big, but his colors were like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

“How do you mean?” Lucky broke in.

“He was a wizard who was comfortable looking into the firmament without fear or restraint. The power pent up in that man was unnerving. Then I heard horses and I turned to look up the road. That’s when I saw Erik and his company of Rangers riding hard right into the ambush. Then I was back here.”

He looked at Isabel and saw the fear in her beautiful green eyes, and his blood started to boil at the thought of the pain she would endure if her brother fell. He knew the ongoing anguish it would bring her all too well. The thought of it kindled a rage within him that he’d never felt before.

Before anyone could speak again Jack called out, “There!” and pointed off in the distance.

Far to the east, across the Pink Forest and many miles farther, a plume of smoke rose into the sky. Alexander felt his heart sink.

Isabel looked toward the slowly rising smoke, then tipped her head back and closed her eyes. A moment later, Alexander heard the shrill call of a forest hawk as Slyder took to wing.

He wanted to go to her, to take her in his arms but he was responsible for the danger to her brother. He’d sent him into harm’s way. He stood struggling with his rage, fear, and despair when Anatoly cried out in warning.

Chapter 40

The gorledon came fast. Alexander pushed Isabel to the side. The thing crashed into him and knocked him flat on his back. It took a step and pinned him to the ground with one giant clawed foot. He felt the crushing weight of the unnatural beast press the air out of him and the edges of his vision started to close down, when Anatoly’s war axe caught the monster on the front of the leg it was using to pin Alexander to the ground.

The creature screamed in pain and backhanded Anatoly, sending him flying toward the edge of the sheer rock face of the hillock. He hit hard on his back, then somersaulted backwards, sending him sliding over the edge of the cliff. Just before his legs went over, he pulled a dagger free and buried it into the ground, stopping his slide toward a forty-foot fall. Jack scrambled to take hold of his arm and pull him to safety.

The gorledon lifted its foot slightly when Anatoly hit him, releasing Alexander just enough to roll quickly to the side. He found himself lying flat on his back between the feet of the giant monster. Anatoly’s axe was buried to the bone and jutted at an awkward angle from the creature’s knee. Blood flowed freely but the beast didn’t look too concerned about it.

Everyone was scrambling. Abigail snatched up her bow, swung her quiver onto her back, and drew an arrow in one fluid movement, while backing away from the creature and circling to get a good angle. Isabel dove for her sword. Lucky snatched up his bag and got some distance from the beast even as he rummaged around for the potion he wanted. Jack was pulling Anatoly back from the brink of a deadly fall when the gorledon tipped its head back and let out a call that Alexander had heard before. It was a cross between a growl and a scream. Off in the distance, but not nearly far enough for Alexander’s taste, he heard another and then another return the call. Gorledons always hunted in threes.

Alexander slipped his long knife free and drove it into the beast’s leg just below the knee, then pulled down hard, cutting a deep gash into its lower leg. It leapt straight back a good ten feet with a terrifying scream of pain. Alexander scrambled to his feet, flipped his long knife to his left hand, and drew his sword. Calm settled on him when he felt the weight of the blade in his hand. The balance and purpose of the thing steadied his nerves and gave him focus. His troubles faded into the distance. Right here, right now, he was in a fight and he had a blade in his hand.

An arrow whizzed past him and sank deeply into the soft green underbelly of the beast right where its heart should be. In the distance, Alexander heard the other two beasts crashing through the forest. He made eye contact with the gorledon. In that instant, he saw the torment of the creature. It was a made thing, unnatural at the very essence of its being; an abomination created to serve the purpose of a long-dead wizard. Under different circumstances, Alexander would have felt sorry for it.

It lurched forward, hobbled by its injuries. Alexander charged, slipping easily under the wild swing of its powerful clawed hand, and drove the point of his blade into its underbelly, through the beast and up against the inside of the hard armored scales that lined its back, but he didn’t stop there. He slipped to his left to give himself leverage. The moment the point of his sword slammed to a stop against the inside of its back plate, Alexander pulled to the side with all his might, ripping out the side of the beast as he rushed past. Viscera spilled out onto the ground. The gorledon gurgled in an attempt to call out to its hunting partners but couldn’t manage more than a sputter. It wobbled slightly for a moment before crashing to the ground on top of a pile of its own entrails.

A moment later, Anatoly rushed up with his short sword in hand and drove his blade deep into the eye socket of the dying creature. Alexander remembered one of Anatoly’s lectures from a time that seemed very far away. “Always confirm your kill,” he had said. “Your enemy isn’t dead until you make sure he’s dead.” Alexander was glad to see that Anatoly lived what he taught.

He was brought back to the present by the sudden appearance of two more gorledons at the base of the little hillock. Thoughts in the back of his mind mocked him. He’d found such peace here just moments ago and now he stood on a blood-soaked battlefield. Two nine-foot-tall, thousand-pound monsters that looked like the most dangerous parts of a giant gorilla and a giant lizard crammed together were rushing up the steep grassy ramp.

Alexander set his stance to meet the charge. An arrow sailed past him and sank deep into the throat of the oncoming gorledon on the right. The beast flinched and let out a yelp of surprise but didn’t slow its charge.

A glass vial flew past Alexander on the left and broke against the arm of the other gorledon. The caustic black contents started to eat into the flesh with smoking and sputtering ferocity. The monster’s charge faltered as it shook its arm in a desperate attempt to escape the pain of Lucky’s acid vial. The contents of the vial worked quickly. Only moments after it shattered against the monster’s elbow, it ate through the flesh and down to the bone. The beast howled in pain. The bone melted through and its arm flopped over at a sickeningly unnatural angle. Still the acid ate into its flesh until the forearm of the monster broke free and thudded to the ground, smoldering and sputtering as the caustic magical liquid continued to do its ugly work. The beast stopped in shock, pain, and confusion and rammed the stub of its arm into the ground in a frantic effort to stop the burning pain. When that didn’t work, it turned and ran off into the trees, howling in pain and fear.