Forest For The Trees (Book 3) (77 page)

“Colbey!  Colbey!”

Gods, was the scout all right?  Where had he come
from?  Had he waited the entire time until he found the one opening he could
use to make an effective strike?  For the moment when the aura-shield vanished
and the enemy was laid bare?

“
Colbey
!”

The soldiers were shouting as well.  Those by the
platform were climbing over the edge.  Marik spared no attention for them, nor
for Mendell angrily issuing orders to the two armored soldiers sharing his
root.

He peered into the etheric’s depths.  What he saw…he
was unsure what he saw down there.  Two bodies were deep in the water.  Neither
moved.  The power still flowed to one.  That would be Xenos.

And yet, it increased by the moment.  The flow from
the reservoir was increasing rapidly.  It looked as if the more that siphoned
away, the faster the drain became.

Xenos’ body glowed brighter than a star within the
pool.  The surface started bubbling frantically.  Steam rose from the water
until an untamed hell spring boiled from the well.  Flames briefly curled up
through the bubbles following an intense flare from Xenos.

The spring burst high into the air.  Water rose in a geyser
a hundred feet across.  And inside, Marik could see the reservoir’s energy
streaming into the canopy.  Scalding rain drenched the men, who yelped in pain.

Energy struck the treetops.  It hesitated for an
instant.  Marik watched in trepidation.  Without warning, it exploded in waves
of raw, etheric power.  Concentrated energy that expanded up, down, left,
right, forward and back.  Its expanding wall vibrated from its sheer might as
it rushed toward the men on the platform’s sad remains.

“No!”

The shout would have startled Marik if so many
worrisome things weren’t already in progress.  He looked to the side and found
the Red Man crouching on one knee.  His scaly hand punched forward toward the
approaching energy wall.

From his claw tips spread a shield that shone in every
hue of red Marik could name.  It formed a dome around him, Marik, Dietrik and
the one-eyed Arronath.

The reservoir’s energy wall struck with deitific
force.  Tornadoes were mild.  Landslides were warm-ups.  Nothing compared to
this.

Massive swaths of the remaining decking were torn away
when the wall hammered into the platform.  They were ripped up in an
ear-splitting splintering of wood and carried into the forest.  Water flowed
over the platform in five-foot waves.  Yet it parted around the Red Man’s
protective dome.  All they could feel within was the earth leaping, making
their deck section shudder in jackrabbit jumps.

Sooner or later, too much of the platform will be torn
away.  Nothing will anchor our little piece, and then we’ll be smashed against
the roots as surely as a ship on the rocks!

The energy wall passed them.  It continued into the
forest beyond.  Marik breathed a sigh until he noticed the reservoir still
regurgitated a Euvea-thick power stream into the tree canopy.

“The ending has yet to be incepted!” the Red Man
warned.

There was no question that he might be wrong.  A
second energy wall burst from the trees, far outstripping the first.  Followed
by a third.  Soon an endless assault ricocheted through the village.

So much energy raged in a tumultuous thunderstorm that
beyond the dome the air was pure white.  A thick fog that battered everything
it could touch.  The last sight Marik beheld before the whiteness clouded all
else out were the airborne buildings raining down from their ancestral perches.

Marik yanked the wooden shrapnel from his arm during
the long candlemark of the assault.  After questioning the Red Man on the
advisability, he kicked the Arronath awake.  He helped Marik bind a tourniquet
around Dietrik’s stump fashioned from a tunic sleeve and bits of wreckage.  His
friend had lost two inches off his wrist as well as a hand.  With luck, that
would be the extent of his loss.

The entire time, his head hurt bad enough to make him
wish the Red Man had not bothered.  His previous exposure headache had lasted
days.  This one might never fade completely.  At the least it would plague him
until winter.  He hardly felt the raw wound from his missing eye over the
splitting headache.

When the white fog of energy finally cleared, the Red
Man let the dome down.  Marik stood on legs that were leaden.

He looked for the reservoir.  It was gone.  The siphon
must have drained it completely.  Seven thin lines continued on their courses
without dumping their energy anywhere.

“It is an ill reason to celebrate,” the Red Man
informed him after his ragged cheer that no one could ever tap the reservoir
again.

“What are you talking about?  It’s
gone
!  No
one like Xenos can ever try and resurrect the Earth God!”

“I concur on the benefit such an outcome has granted. 
But you little realize the cost at which it has been purchased.  Study, as you
will.”

Marik followed his pointing claw.  The two armored
soldiers were laying on a different root entirely.  One’s body had been
mangled.  His friend had survived the onslaught, though he lay coughing and
weak.  No doubt he would never move on his own without help.

“He must have a healthy constitution to withstand that
amount of beating.”

The Red Man shook his head.  “Never a physical force
would such an outpouring be.  Raw life force cannot destroy.  Only when
suitably crafted for such will it ever.  It encourages growth, or change,
only.”

“This deck looks pretty destroyed to me.”

“Only those parts already damaged.  Those parts which
were whole remain so.  As well, only those men already injured in some fashion
were further wounded.  Their wounds grew, as life force encouraged them.”

“That makes no sense to me at all.  Are you saying the
men who weren’t hurt at all made it through without a scratch?”  He searched
for Mendell.  There was no sign of the dirty bastard. 
Don’t tell me he
escaped!

“No,” the Red Man sighed.  “Change on such an order as
this would affect each individual in equally individual fashions.  Partake of
this sight, and understand.”

This time Marik found his gaze directed at a…
thing
. 
He missed seeing it completely for several moments.  When he finally did, he
jumped back in revulsion.

It was man-sized, and fairly humanoid in appearance. 
Except its skin matched the slimy green of a toad.  The body was emaciated, its
limbs even thinner.  Long fingers reached to curl around handholds on the root
it clung to.  A wide mouth split the entire lower half of its head.  Twin
nostrils in the flat face were all the nose it possessed.  Around the bald
crown, a narrow ring of stringy moss formed hair.  Pale eyes stared back at
him.

“A’ppa!” it croaked without warning.  Marik felt
nauseous.  “Kapp!  Kappa!”  Sharp white teeth glinted lethally.

Most horrible of all, visible when it dove into the
water and swam away with webbed feet…it wore the same pants the wading soldiers
had worn.  Ragged.  Torn.  Yet, the same.

Sickened, Marik tore his gaze away.  He found the Red
Man bent over what he had at first taken for a tree branch washed up against
the platform.  A second glance revealed it to be a badly charred corpse.  It
was nearly incinerated.  Across the chest was a spiky metal mess that had once
been a sword hilt until it melted and cooled simultaneously underwater.

The Red Man reared back his clawed hand and punched it
forcefully into the blackened skull.  Marik felt his gorge making a serious
attempt to race for freedom.  He watched the Red Man’s claws dig ruthlessly
through the cooked brain matter until he withdrew a handful.

Flakey ashes drifted away between the scaled fingers. 
After a moment, Marik caught a glint from the reptilian palm.  Light bouncing
off a polished black surface.

An obsidian surface.

“Tremendous life force quantities are at work in this
venue,” the Red Man said, straightening from his crouch.  “Best would be if we
departed with haste.”

“Yeah,” Marik husked.  His throat was dry.  “That
sounds like a good idea.”

*        *        *        *        *

Jide, as Marik had learned the man’s name to be,
carried Dietrik slung over one arm until they reached a resting place.  The Red
Man had done something to stop the bleeding while they huddled in their crimson
dome.  Before they left the pool, he added a bizarre suffusion of energy into
Dietrik’s inner channel network that, the scaled monster promised, would encourage
his body to replenish the blood supply faster.  Dietrik had been flickering in
and out of wakefulness ever since.

After six candlemarks, Marik dropped.  He could not
move a single inch further.  The Red Man reluctantly agreed to halt long enough
for the humans to get their wind back.  Marik fell to the ground beside his
father’s oversized sword, which they had found jammed in a distant Euvea root
on their way out, not too far from Dietrik’s rapier.  While Marik hung his head
between his knees, Jide got into a furious row with the Red Man that lasted
nearly a full mark.

In the end, the Arronath stalked away to sit with his
back against a root.  The Red Man stood several feet away, lost in thought
until Marik called out.

“What’s he fussed about?”

The Red Man considered Marik a long moment before
approaching him.  “There is a task ahead he feels inadequate to meet.”

“Bigger than fighting
Xenos
?”

“As important, perhaps so.  He must return to his
homeland.  Problems await that will be difficult to surmount alone.”

Jide could piss up a rope for all Marik cared.  What
did he know about difficult problems?  Had he ever set out on a quest to
discover a missing parent?  A quest that ended with his father’s death at the
hands of a madman?

“You got my father killed.  He never should have been
involved with this.”

“Grown men must make life decisions every day.  He
accepted risk in exchange for the chance to absolve a threat.”

“Screw that!  Don’t try to sell me a pack of lies!  I
saw what it was doing to him.  To his body.  You were killing him!”

“I will not deny the strain.  Rail Drakkson was a man
who could do no less than his best.  He pushed his limits without consideration
for depreciative cost, that he might achieve our goals.  He,” the Red Man
lofted a hand to forestall Marik’s outburst, “knew the consequences well.  In
his heart he accepted them.  Achieving the end mattered beyond the toll.”

Marik slumped back into his weary crouch.  “Yeah,” he
sighed.  “That much sounds like him.”  He kept his head low to hide his watery
eye.  “What are you going to do with that thing?”

The Red Man patted his coat pocket.  Inside rested the
obsidian shard.  His human fingers pulled it free.  It looked harmless.  A
sliver as long as Marik’s index finger.

“This I will take to a place of safekeeping.”

“Where?”

A smile lit the Red Man’s face.  “A place of
safekeeping.  Leave it as it stands.”

“Is that really the cause behind everything that
happened?”

“Indeed.  This is tainted by the madness of Turliss,
God of Earth.  Not merely His power alone stains it.  If one accepts it wholly,
as did the creature who was once a man called Xenos, then so it will pass on
memories of times it has existed through.  Knowledge of bygone days.  Secrets
coveted by the God of Earth and His sects.  Through this stone did Xenos
channel pure energy to where the God of Earth lays in ruined state.”

“S-sounds like…a bloody…diary.”

Marik looked aside to Dietrik, who blinked in pain. 
“I’ve grown to dislike diaries quite a lot.”

“People are…t-trouble enough without them,” Dietrik
agreed.

“You should rest while you can.  You’ve been through
the hells’ own grinder.”

“I am alive,” Dietrik wheezed.  “Which is better than
I expected.”

The Red Man slid the shard back into his coat.  “He
gains in strength.”

“He’ll live,” Marik agreed.  “Tell me why I should
trust you with that thing.”

“Marik Railson.  You are a man of achievement
surpassing your contemporaries.  Yet the taint on the obsidian would corrupt
any man who touched it with full knowledge of its origin.”

“And not you?  What makes you so special?”

The Red Man raised his clawed hand, displaying his
scaled arm.  “I am unquestionably other than a man.  We have progressed enough
that I might spare the energy.  Forging the way will prove the less
cumbersome…”

He trailed off.  Marik watched.  The Red Man’s face
screwed in concentration.  Sweat slicked his red hair.  His pupils dilated from
the effort.

Slowly, the scaled flesh at his shoulder shrank.  As
it did so, the red scales diminished until smooth, human flesh replaced it. 
The change moved toward his elbow.  An inch behind the reforming flesh, the red
silk shirt and coat re-grew as well.  Threads seemed to spin from nowhere off
the torn fabric ends.