Forest For The Trees (Book 3) (72 page)

His hand clenched.  Fingernails dug into his palm. 
That damned monster!  Nothing was taboo to him.  He glared at where he knew
Xenos waited.

And was unable to find the harvester.  Where had he
gone so quickly?  He could not have escaped during the few moment’s Marik’s
attention had been diverted!

Dietrik thumped him atop the head at his started
exclamation.  Marik glared back before re-studying the scene at their feet.  He
found Xenos standing exactly where he had been before.

Marik nearly exclaimed anew.  What was going on? 
Curious, he invoked his magesight.  Xenos vanished.  Utterly.

There was no explanation for
this
.  Every
living thing, from plants to people, generated an aura.  How could it be that
Xenos emitted no life energy at all?  Unless…no energy bled-off from him.  Then
he would be completely invisible from the etheric.  He would leave no trace
whatsoever on a plane composed of naught but raw energy.

Except that could hardly be true.  Rocks were black
voids in that other plane.  As were buildings and water.  If he generated no
aura, there should be a Xenos-shaped void in the etheric where he blocked the
mass diffusion from forming.

He must have every last ounce of life energy inside
him under tight control.  All he allowed to escape was exactly enough to match
the surrounding diffusion.  Naturally he would be loath to sacrifice power he
had gained to the etheric plane.  Or at least any beyond what was necessary.  Marik
remembered Dietrik’s warning while they fled the campsite alarms.  Dietrik had
seen Xenos plainly with his eyes whereas Marik, using his magesight, had seen
nothing at all.

A shout arose from directly beneath them.  Dietrik
pushed down hard on Marik, falling atop him until both men were flat.  Marik
heard the arrow whistling by.

The gods damned bow had survived long enough to plague
them once again.  Marik quickly located an armored figure atop a root raising a
second arrow.  Xenos must have instructed them to search the trees for enemies
as well as the ground.

“Back,” Dietrik husked.  Marik offered no argument. 
They separated from each other and sprinted back along the walkway encircling
the town hall.

Except, they both realized after mere yards, they could
find no escape this way.  They had shimmied down Colbey’s line a good thirty
feet from a higher branch to reach this level.  The walkway ended in a pirate’s
plank, a sheer drop to doom with no means to reach the branch they had arrived
from.

“Around the other way then.”  Dietrik dashed back. 
Marik ran after, leaping the second arrow that would have skewered his knees.

Ten feet further from where they had knelt they
stopped.  The deck was shattered as if a ten-ton boulder had dropped through
it.  Leaping the gap would require athletic ability beyond what any man was
capable of.

“A copping dead end!” Marik swore violently.  “What
was Colbey thinking!”

“Bait, I expect.”  Dietrik hammered on the doors. 
Marik could see it would be useless.  A small window was set nearby, and
through it was visible a gigantic table leaning propped against the door’s
opposite side.

“I can’t believe—”

A saw-blade orb sheered through the wall between
them.  The furious buzzing drowned his words.  Both dropped to a crouch, arms
over their eyes while a fog of sawdust exploded around them.

Marik glanced furiously between his forearms.  He
could feel his immanent death.  What possible escape could they find?  A dive
into the shallow waters from this height would be suicide.

“I expected that our paths would eventually cross,”
called the amused voice of the monstrous life harvester.  “Indeed, I would have
been disappointed otherwise.  Our first meeting clearly demonstrated the
benevolence of god.  I had but to wait.”

Xenos stood at the festival platform’s edge, hands
resting easy, folded over his chest.  Marik stood and faced him boldly.  He
refused to die cowering before the likes of such filth.  “I wouldn’t say your
heathen god had anything to do with it,” he shouted back.  “But I understand
it’s only natural that a madman would think so!”

Mendell advanced to the water’s edge in a fit of
righteous anger.  Xenos ignored him to continue in his pleasant tone.  “I found
your escape suggestive.  Your presence is valid confirmation.  God wishes
witnesses.  God wishes the next generation of converts to begin on this
glorious day, where His awesome presence is revealed anew to man.  And what
better servant is there than a former enemy who abandons his misguided ways
after beholding the glory of god?”

Dietrik stood beside him.  They looked briefly at each
other, reading the other’s thoughts easily after their long years of
friendship.  Together they looked down their noses at Xenos and said, as one,
“You’re out of your barking tree!”

Xenos found humor in that.  He laughed heartily. 
Still laughing, he raised a hand.  Six saw-blade orbs formed around his palm. 
“It is the simplest choice any living creature has to make.  You may choose to
die so your life force contributes to the Day of Glory.  Or you may choose to
descend and stand at my side, and witness the riverbed of world history alter
in its course with this long awaited resurrection.  Which shall it be, leader
of the king’s army?”

Colbey watched from the tallest reaches of the Euvea. 
He kept his hearing tweaked, using the Guardian’s technique for enhancing
individual senses.  The technique overcame the distance where he crouched off
center from the central pool, enabling him to barely hear the words exchanged.

What would the mage do?  Refuse to bow and die like a
man?  Or hope to find opportunity for a sneak attack if he could close with the
murderer?  Either course offered benefits.

At last, a decision was reached.  Following directions
from Xenos, the two mercenaries dangled from the shattered boards until they
grabbed hold of the old suspension walkway that hung limply against the trunk. 
It had once been the main path leading to the council hall.  During the attack
an outlander mage had destroyed the anchoring point for the bridge in order to
send dozens of Guardians plummeting.  Colbey had read the battle’s progressions
in the ruins during the search for survivors.

Except the Arronathian mage had managed a poor job of
it.  He had only broken one of the thick ropes forming both handrail and
support.  With all the weight dropping to one, the remaining rope had snapped
at midpoint.  Both halves still hung facing each other across the water.

The mage and his mercenary friend cautiously navigated
the makeshift ladder.  They alternated between finding footholds where boards
had broken away, and using the thin ropes which had run between the planks and
the thicker supporting lines.  Colbey watched with mild curiosity.  Those ropes
had lain exposed without maintenance for years.  Would they hold long enough
for the two men to reach the ground?

When they finally stumbled off the hanging walkway to
the root it lay jumbled upon, the Arronath soldier shouted at them, holding the
bow drawn with an arrow ready for flight.  The mercenaries could read the tone
in the alien language.  They raised their hands.  Together they started the
uneven journey over the roots toward the Ivy Platform.

Colbey studied the men surrounding Xenos.  Their body
language spoke volumes to the trained eye.  The soldiers and the Taurs were
predictable.  Also the white-robes would pose little in the way of a challenge
if he attacked without warning.  But the man serving as Xenos’ right hand might
be tougher.

He stood with the bearing of a man accustomed to
bloodshed.  Murder was a tool he would employ without qualms.  In fact it would
be his preference over more amicable resolutions.  The way he acted must mean
he stood as a key figure in the organization crafted by Xenos.  It might well
have been he who led the assault on the village.

Colbey felt his blood heating.  The furious rage that
had dominated him so completely stirred behind his cold control.

No. 
I
am
the master of my actions.  The manner of this man’s death will be at the hands
of my training, and not my emotions.

The longer he watched, the greater his conviction
grew.  Mendell and Xenos were perhaps the two men whose contribution to the
village’s destruction was greatest in all the world.  It was a crime without
adequate punishment.  Nothing he could do to them would equal what they had
stolen from him.

He was a Guardian.  Emotions were secondary.  Once
before he had lost sight of that.  No longer.

Colbey knew he would kill these two as quickly and
efficiently as he could.  If he survived to continue the fight, first he would
slay the white-robes.  Since there was no longer anyone to kill in the village,
the Taurs could run wild as they liked while he fought the soldiers.

If he survived…

The effort was all that mattered.  Succeed or fail, it
was only important that he try.  Death was inconsequential.  It did not effect
the decision in the least.

He was resolved.  And with that resolution, the calm
demeanor returned.  The stirring rage ceased.  Colbey studied the enemy to find
the weakness in their structure.  One crucial weakness that would be their
deaths.

When he felt the cool, phantom hand of departed
friends resting on his shoulder, he knew it was no longer a sign of his mental
deterioration.  Only confirmation that he strode the correct path of the
Guardian.

*        *        *        *        *

Mendell divested them of their weapon belts once they
climbed onto the platform.  Marik kept his eyes averted.  He had noted, and
wished to avoid drawing attention to it, that Dietrik’s dagger sheath yawned
emptily.  Only his rapier clattered to the wood flooring behind the
white-robes.

Marik returned the colonel’s hostility openly.  After
a sneer, Mendell voiced an opinion in Arronathian to Xenos.

“Because we have always been on the search for
valuable assets, have we not?” Xenos answered in Galemaran.  “You were brought
into the fold in much the same fashion if you will recall.  With the
crown-appointed general as a member of the faithful, restoring the true faith
throughout Galemar will proceed marvelously.”

“You’re pretty confident about me,” Marik spat.  “But
I’ve seen power before.  If you think that will impress me into thinking you
are an agent of the gods, then you’ve spent too much time believing your own
fairytales, Xenos!”

“I see,” the harvester replied.  A gleam sparkled from
his eye.  He reached a hand to caress Marik’s jaw line.  His fingers were hot
to the touch, nearly reptilian in their repulsiveness.  “There is no question
you were drawn to me.  Have been for untold months as we approached this day
together.  God has set you to know me in order than you stand witness to His
rebirth.”

Marik pulled his chin from Xenos’ grasp.  Mendell
looked no less displeased.  He spoke in quiet animosity using the alien words
incomprehensible to the Galemarans.

Xenos nodded.  Yet Marik sensed that the monster had
little interest in whatever the colonel held forth so adamantly on.  He faced
the two mercenaries toward the water, standing between them and placing a hand
around each man’s shoulders.  His fingers were uncomfortable iron bars against
their cheeks.

“Good Mendell is concerned, both as colonel and as my
archbishop.”  Xenos’ voice floated softly on the forest air.  “He, and indeed I
as well, have not forgotten your brash interference in Archbishop Harbon’s
mission.  No one who sets themselves against the faithful is permitted to
continue existence.  But the will of god is the will of god.  Should I be
mistaken in this, I am prepared to carry out your judgments upon His word.”

“Then you had better start praying so you can get your
answer.”  Marik filled his insolent bravado with as much acid as he could.  If
he could get Xenos’ full attention, Dietrik could use the opportunity to stab
the harvester.  “Far be it from us to distract you from the voices in your
head!”

Xenos smirked with one corner of his lips, his eyes
lidded in serpent amusement.  “Do you realize where you stand, leader of
armies?  Above what your feet perch?”

Marik leaned closer to the water as much to escape the
fingers stroking his ear as to add to the sarcasm.  When he straightened to
address Xenos, his voice matched the laconic rhythms his old friend Hayden had
been partial to.  “A pond?”

“It is no less than the very lifeblood of this world
we call home.  Have you realized the honor bestowed upon you yet?  No?  I
promise you will.  From this worldly womb will be given life anew to our god.”

“I doubt…what?”

“Yes,” Xenos hissed.  “The time of His long exile is
finally ended within these next moments.”

In horrified understanding, Marik realized what this
madman had meant to do all along.  The night in the Queen’s Head with Rail
echoed in his ears, the words restarting before they finished until they
reverberated awfully without end.  He had asked his father, “
Can a god
actually be killed?  It seems incredible!  Man shouldn’t be able to kill a god.
”

To which Rail had responded, “
I don’t expect man
can.  Not truly.  The gods aren’t mortals, so even if you shred them to pieces
and jump on the remains, they’re stuck enduring it all.  Or so I believe.
”

How it might be done lay beyond Marik’s
comprehension.  But Xenos intended to use the massive power in the reservoir
to…  Was it possible to resurrect a god?  It must depend on the deity’s
condition, he decided.  What happened to a god when He was cast down by His
brethren?  What did generations of having no followers offering their faith as
divine sustenance do?

Was there truly a method by which a mere mortal could
take what remained of the desiccated Earth God and restore Him to His former
power?

Of course there was.  Xenos was no simple mortal man. 
A piece of obsidian, once part of an anchor for the Earth God’s being, granted
him all the guidance Xenos needed to perform the resurrection.  The only
component he had lacked was the tremendous energy it must require.

A keg of black powder?  No.  Colbey’s ancestors had
sown a cataclysm equal to an entire kingdom twenty feet deep in the alchemist’s
product.

“Do you feel the new dawn breaking?” Xenos whispered
to them.  Marik’s pupils had dilated while he struggled with his revelations. 
He forced his blank stare to focus.  “Tell me, leader of armies.  Do you not
feel the
excitement
coursing through you?”

Xenos’ fingers cracked loudly next to his ear.  Marik
rolled his head to see, in horror, the harvester’s fingers twisting.  The
fingers bent at unnatural angles.  Two curved backward without stopping until
they ground against the back of his hand.  They stretched until they were a
knuckle’s-length longer than before.  Veins pulsed grotesquely in the flesh
like carnivorous vines.  His fingernails lengthened, darkening to gray,
sharpening to razors.

In only a moment the fingers were inhuman talons. 
They returned to their usual positions beside each other, the sharp nails
tracing patterns lightly along the skin under Marik’s eye.  He could see the monstrous
digits quivering from Xenos’ anticipation.

What in the hells was taking Dietrik so long?  Xenos
was concentrating his attentions on
Marik
!  Dietrik could have stabbed
the blood mage’s heart a dozen times over by now.

Except he could not, he saw with a sinking heart. 
Xenos had placed his other arm around Dietrik’s back in a posture that looked
casual.  But the hand rested on Dietrik’s upper arm.  Marik could feel the
tremendous physical power in the reconstructed hand.  The arm held Dietrik as
securely immobile as a heavy chain.

Marik could feel sweat squeezing through his pores. 
Xenos used his malformed hand to direct Marik’s gaze out over the pool.

“It will be now.  You have arrived at a feast with the
tables set, the wine poured, the candles aglow.  There is no need to stand on
pointless ceremony.  Over two-thousand years have passed since the world fell
into darkness.  Let god be brought back to lead our lost flock again into the
light.”

And he nodded to the four men in the water.

*        *        *        *        *

Marik could hardly believe he was watching it.  The
wading soldiers did not hesitate in the least.  Each withdrew an obsidian
knife.  Each grabbed a handful of hair.  Each stabbed the nude women in the
belly before eviscerating them.

Screams pierced the quiet forest.  They were unlike
any death cry Marik had heard on battlefields.  The men sliced up with their
sharp daggers.  A long incision from their belly to between their breasts
opened up.

Red stained the clear water.  Intestines spilled out
in an awful splash.  The slaughter stretched interminably in Marik’s sense of
time, yet was over far too quickly for it to have been real.  Four innocents
could not possibly have been slain in an instant.

Eight innocents…

His senses were blurred.  Marik felt cut off from
himself.  The splashes from the bodies falling into the water when the men
released them were muffled.  His breathing sharpened until he trembled.

Dietrik made an exclamation Marik could not decipher. 
Peripherally he noticed his friend’s feet kick out uselessly.  Xenos’ iron
grasp held him firmly in place.

The density in the air shifted.  Marik saw Xenos’ aura
blaze into ferocious life beside him when he opened his magesight.  Xenos had
released the tight control over his aura.  What for?

So he would be free to work with his talent, of
course.  Triumph blazed on his face while he reached out.  Marik could see the
life energies that had once belonged to the women.  They had been severed at
their deaths.  The glowing, shapeless masses moved toward the platform where
they stood.

Marik could not see why until he forced his magesight
to a higher level.  The channels Xenos drew the energy with became visible to
him.

They were no different than the type he used when he
drew from the mass diffusion.  The slippery life force slid along the channels
until they were absorbed by Xenos’ aura.  It flared at the additional energy. 
His aura shone brightly enough that Marik was forced to avert his eyes.