“Why do you not approach the islands?” Khara asked.
“The sentient islands are gods to many. Others think they’re home to foul beasts and monsters. Still others believe that anyone who sets a foot on the islands will be eaten, consumed by the very trees.”
“Wonderful,” Renzo muttered.
Khara nodded. “Thank you for your information. We’re moving on. You had best hide until the knight has passed, if you want to live.”
“Good luck,” Renzo said as we departed. “You’ll need it,” he added under his breath.
“Not as much as we will,” Khara said.
57.
Deep in the Forest
With the few coins Renzo had managed to “collect,” we bought more food from the villagers—who were already carrying their belongings toward their boats: baskets, pots, what food they could gather, and the simple tools of their professions—dried codfish and seaweed and a few stunted potatoes. For the horses we could only offer scrapings of moss that they did not relish but could eat.
Two leagues north we stopped, looked back, and saw Zebara burning bright, as whips of fire lashed the buildings and the beached boats. No matter how fast we traveled, it wasn’t fast enough.
We turned into a wood made up of tall firs. They stood in tight ranks that blocked any sunlight, which was already in short supply. To make movement harder still, the trees were covered with invasive weeds that spread in black vines along the ground, then wound themselves around tree trunks. Some trees were almost invisible beneath the weed wrapping.
Belligerent tuskers, huge wild pigs, threatened us but withdrew when they caught sight of Gambler. The few birds we saw were skimmers and foam-walkers. We saw only a single raptidon, an aging bird who showed no interest in us.
The peninsula narrowed until we could see water to our north and south. But the one-eyed man had directed us to the end of the peninsula, to a place he’d called Landfail.
“We are on a peninsula with a Knight of the Fire behind us,” Renzo said to Khara. “Just how do you propose escaping?”
“I assumed you would have a brilliant plan,” Khara replied. “You seem to have no problem pushing your way into conversations and even making deals.”
“Not I,” Renzo said. “When I am someday caught, it will be a T they brand on my forehead, not an R for Rebel.”
Khara studied the landscape, mentally judging distances as the spit of land grew ever more narrow. She stopped. We all stopped. Then, with obvious reluctance, she motioned Renzo close.
“What theurgy do you know?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Burglar’s tricks. I can dazzle with a bright light, I can fill a room with fog, I can coax a recalcitrant lock—but only if I use my picking tools properly. And I can make a noise at a distance, you know, to distract.”
“None of that will help us with this.” Khara considered. “All right. Here is our line. It’s only, what, two hundred feet from the north side to south? Here’s where we lay our trap.”
“Our what, now?” Renzo asked, head cocked.
“We are going to weave a trap,” Khara said, projecting confidence I doubted she felt. “We’re going to use these vines, these weeds we keep stumbling over. We’ll use them to weave a net.”
“He’ll burn right through it,” Renzo said.
“Mmm,” Khara said. “Yes. Now, let’s get to it!”
Frantically we hacked at roots and dragged them into place. Tobble supervised the task of weaving long strands of vine into a net stretched between trees across a fifty-foot span. It was exhausting and almost certainly a waste of time, as Renzo kept pointing out. Still, he worked as hard as anyone.
I was skeptical. I doubted. But as we worked, I started to sense Khara’s strategy. The net we were weaving with such care was a diversion. Just a few feet past the net, a steep gully cut across the peninsula. It was no more than three or four feet deep and would certainly not stop the knight or his horse—if they saw it.
Khara hacked down branches with her sword, choosing strong, straight limbs and cutting each into six-foot lengths. When she started sharpening the sticks at both ends, I knew what she was planning.
“Byx,” Khara said, wiping sweat from her brow. “Climb this tree and see if you can spot the knight.”
We are good climbers, we dairnes. But felivets are better, so I wondered why she chose me. I climbed easily—I have no fear of heights—until my head rose above the canopy of trees. It was an eerie sight: leagues of gray-green trees with a blanket of mist upon them.
I searched the horizon for signs of fire or smoke. I strained my ears and breathed deeply, scanning for smells. But the wind cut across us, north to south, and bore me nothing but the scents of salt water and pine sap.
“I don’t see anything,” I called. “I’m coming down.”
“No! Stay,” Khara ordered. “And whatever happens, stay up there and stay silent.”
I realized with horror what she was doing: keeping the precious dairne, the endling, as safe as she could.
I did not wish to be safe. I wished to fight, and if necessary die, with the others.
“I can’t let them die for me,” I said aloud.
As I began to descend, I checked around me one last time. I could easily see the end of the peninsula, a five-minute walk away. We were at the edge of the world, it seemed to me. The ocean stretched forever, dotted with whitecaps. I noticed a patch of trees—not gloomy firs, but trees alive with color, blazing reds, vivid yellows, soft greens, like a tiny, forgotten orchard at the edge of the forest.
A wave of loneliness washed over me. The little spot of color reminded me of the only home I’d ever known, the gentler, warmer, more fertile south where my band had always wandered.
A home I would probably never see again.
I’d begun my descent—Khara would have to accept my decision—when I noticed something odd.
The colorful stand of trees was moving.
Not swaying and fretting in the breeze, but moving.
Moving!
I had been ordered to stay up in the trees and stay quiet. Well, Khara had not specified which tree, precisely. I spread my glissaires and glided between the branches, alighting on a nearby fir.
Yes: The patch of color was moving.
I glided to the next tree, and the next, and suddenly I was at the end of the peninsula, the very end, and there before me was not an orchard.
There before me, across no more than a hundred feet of water, was an island.
An island floating past with surprising speed.
Moving like a living thing.
58.
The Final Battle
How I wished I had the eyes of a raptidon.
I stared and strained, leaning as far out as I dared. Was that a nest I saw? Was that a hint of a lean-to?
Just as I opened my mouth to yell down to Khara, I heard the sound of a great beast, a horse, charging through the woods.
The knight was coming at full speed.
I froze, unsure what to do. And in that moment of indecision I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a shape on the island.
It was in the trees.
I watched the distant, indistinct shape move.
I watched its familiar grace.
I watched it spread its glissaires and glide.
Heedless, I ran out to the end of a branch. It bowed and creaked under my weight.
One hundred feet of water. Surely from this height I could glide one hundred feet!
I yearned to do it. Needed to do it.
The island was moving with remarkable speed. If I didn’t leap now, I’d miss my chance.
I braced for the glide. I tensed my muscles.
And that was when I heard a wobbyk’s cry.
I tore my needy gaze away from the island and looked back to see a jet of flame lancing through the woods.
A simple glide.
A doomed battle.
Something that looked like a dairne. Might be a d
airne. What I had come so far and wished for so fervently.
All I had to do was push off and spread my glissaires.
I kicked off. I soared down and down and landed.
I was just short of the gully, now filled with the sharpened sticks Khara had driven into the ground.
I drew my ridiculous sword and waited, heart hammering, breath rasping in my throat.
Through the net I saw him. He was dirtier. His horse looked shaggy and weary. But his lance still spit the sentient fire.
It shot past Tobble and I yelled in fury, “I’m the one you want!”
Gambler dropped from a high branch, his claws out, his teeth bared, but the horse reared and Gambler missed the knight, clawing red lines down the charger’s flank.
Khara, screaming, attacked the knight from her concealed place on his left, opposite his fire lance. But fire wasn’t the knight’s only weapon. He had drawn his own broadsword. Khara’s sword bit first, cutting into the plate armor on his left thigh. The knight, unable to stab her, instead slammed the pommel into her face. Khara fell back, her nose spraying blood.
Gambler was up, with Renzo and Tobble at his side. They leapt from behind the horse, but the charger was ready and surged forward.
“I’m the one you want, Knight of the Fire!” I screamed. “I’m the endling you’ve come to kill!”
My mind was no longer my own. Some terrible beast of fear and hate was inside me, using me, screaming threats as I brandished my sword.
The knight twisted and lashed the ground behind him with fire. Gambler danced away, but his tail was smoldering.
The knight aimed his fire lance at the net that separated us.
An inferno erupted. Flames seemed to eat, rather than burn, our pitiful net of vines.
But Khara had guessed rightly that this knight was arrogant, used to easy victories, and would charge straight ahead.
The knight and his charger ran at the burning net, and to my amazement, the fire moved aside. He crashed through the crisped and weakened vines.
I heard him cry out in triumph.
But only the fire had moved. The smoke of the fire had not.
The smoke that concealed our trap.
The knight raised his visor and laughed at me, just as he tumbled into the stake-filled gully.
59.
The Thief’s Pledge
I hope never again to see anything as awful as the sight of the fearsome Knight of the Fire and his charger, pierced through with sharpened sticks. The knight had died instantly. His horse, impaled by five spears, still lived, whinnying and kicking, but it was clearly doomed.
Khara looked at Gambler, who understood. He leapt down into the pit, carefully avoiding the spears as only a felivet could. Maneuvering behind the huge animal, he sank his ferocious teeth into its spine, instantly ending the horse’s pain.
Once the horse was no longer flailing, Renzo slid down into the gully. He removed the knight’s helmet, revealing a face that was human after all. Just a man. A dead man.
Renzo stripped off anything of value and tossed it up out of the pit, though an impressive ring on the knight’s right hand went directly into Renzo’s pocket. He searched the charger’s saddlebags, throwing us food, a water bottle, a map, a blanket, a spare horseshoe, and a grinding stone.
Khara, Tobble, and I watched, not quite approving, but not willing to stop him, either. We had need of food. Even food taken from a dead man.
“Did you see anything from the tree?” Khara asked me.
I considered lying. It was a newly discovered concept for me. I could say no, I’d seen nothing. If I told her what I knew, I was dooming us all to continue our quest.
With a simple lie I could, perhaps, set my friends free.
But what was friendship worth if it was built on lies?
Xial renarriss: In truth lies strength.
“I saw an island,” I said. I looked at them all, one by one. “Moving.”
Tobble squealed. “I’m so excited for you, Byx!”
“Moving in which direction?” Khara asked, ever practical.
“North,” I said.
“North of here means Dreyland,” Renzo commented, climbing up and wiping his hands on his thighs. “Crossing into it means getting past the Murdano’s border guards, then managing not to get killed by the Dreyland border guards. Keep in mind it gets very cold up in those mountains. Very, very cold.”
“Scared?” Khara asked derisively. “No problem. You aren’t invited, anyway.”
“No?” Renzo cocked an eyebrow at her. “Have you crossed the Sovo Ridge? Do you know the passes? Do you know the beasts that prowl those passes?”
Khara said nothing.
“I thought not,” Renzo said. “Well, I have crossed the Sovo. I know at least some of the trails. And I’ve fought and survived an attack by snoworms.”
“Aside from the fact that the knight roasted you and we rescued you, I’m not sure why you’d want to be with us,” Khara said. “Why would a thief join an almost certainly doomed expedition with a high likelihood of death and a very low likelihood of plunder?”
“Plunder is not the only way for a thief to profit,” Renzo said. “There are other ways. For example, one might sign on to follow a warrior who can promise reward later on.”
It was clear that Khara couldn’t help but be flattered by Renzo’s casual reference to her as a “warrior.” But she was not buying his reasoning, and she was definitely not ready to trust him. “I have no reward to offer.”
“Hmm,” Renzo said, unimpressed. “Do you understand that I have been shadowing you since before the isle?”
Khara gasped.
“But why?” I asked. “And please, don’t embarrass yourself by trying to lie.”
Renzo shrugged. “Here is the truth, my brave dairne: I saw the sword. The true sword. A thief learns useful theurgy, specific spells. One of the many talents I possess is the power to penetrate spells meant to conceal objects of value. When I first spotted Khara, I knew she carried something very valuable, although I didn’t know the history of your sword immediately. There are many enchanted swords hidden by theurgic spells. You may recall that I tried to buy it. When that didn’t work, I followed, in hopes of stealing it.”
“You tried to buy Byx, too,” Tobble said.
“Also very valuable.”
“You knew she was a dairne?” Khara asked.
“Of course.” Renzo smiled.
Khara drew her sword and pointed it at him. “Any attempt to steal this will end with it in your heart, not your hands.”
Renzo seemed unimpressed by her threat, his eyes savoring the glittering, glowing sword. “Dairne, bear witness that I speak the truth.”
I nodded.
“I am a thief. And I would happily have stolen any other sword. Any other sword in all the world. But even a despised thief like me has honor. And I am not without learning. I know the legends. I know the epic poems. I know who you are, Kharassande Donati, and I know that the sword you wield is the Light of Nedarra.”
Khara lowered her sword slightly.
“Most of all,” Renzo continued, “I know the stories of my own clan. We’ve always been foes of the Murdano, living on the margins. But my great-grandfather fought in the Long-Ago War, just a humble foot soldier who found himself on the point of death when his attacker’s head was neatly removed by the Light of Nedarra.”
Khara shot a look at me, and I nodded. It was the truth.
And then Renzo did the last thing I would have expected of the glib thief. He dropped to his knees and bowed his head.
“I am a mere thief, untrustworthy, unreliable, and sadly”—he gave a wry grin—“incapable of behaving myself properly. But I offer my humble services to the living heir of the Donatis, the wielder of the Light of Nedarra. Your servant, if you will have me.”
Khara then did the last thing I would have expected from her. She did not laugh or mock. Her face was more serious than I had ever seen it outside of comb
at. “Do you swear to obey me in all things?” she asked.
“Mmmm,” Renzo said, “how about . . . most things?”
Tobble snorted a laugh and quickly slapped his hand over his mouth.
Khara took a deep breath. “Let’s try this a different way. Do you promise to do all in your power to guide, protect, and defend Byx, Gambler, and Tobble?”
“I do.”
I had no way of knowing whether he would do so, but he was telling the truth that he meant to do so.
“Will you do the same for me?” Khara asked.
“Even when you don’t like how I do it, Kharassande Donati, I will be faithful. I will be true. And there’s a, oh . . . better-than-even chance that I will follow your orders.”
Khara moved her sword. She placed it on his shoulder, where a mere twitch would send his head rolling on the ground. “I have no power to dub you ‘knight,’” she said. “But I accept your pledge and your service.” She touched the blade to his other shoulder, then tapped the flat of it on his head.
The tap was a bit harder than strictly necessary. Renzo winced. I might have believed it was an accident, but I had seen Khara wield her sword, and nothing she did with that blade was an accident.
“All right, get up off your knees,” Khara said.
Renzo jumped to his feet, grinned, and said, “Let’s get moving.”
Khara and I exchanged a glance. “There’s one more thing to do,” she said.
And she smiled at Tobble.
60.
A Certain Ceremony
We all fell quiet, and in that lovely moment, I felt I could almost hear the gentle pounding of our dear wobbyk friend’s heart.
“Tobble,” Khara said, “we have need of your guidance.”
“Mine?” Tobble asked, clearly surprised.
“Yours,” Khara confirmed. “It seems that none of us knows how to perform a certain ceremony.”
Tobble frowned. “What?”
“I understood the stibillary is a ceremony elevating a wobbyk to adulthood in recognition of, well, of being worthy. We see before us the smallest of our group, who, despite lacking Gambler’s teeth, claws, and speed; despite lacking a fabled sword; despite being from a race too long dismissed and treated as lesser, leapt on not one but two soldiers of the Pale Guard, in addition to many other acts of courage and loyalty.”