“You okay?” I said without turning my head.
“Got scratched,” Luna said. “It’s not bad.”
“This is like fighting fucking army ants,” Variam said.
Movement to the right caught my eye. I brought the gun up, but the thornling ducked behind a tree and I lost the shot. “The way you beat swarms,” I said, “is to take out the queen.”
“You see Anne?” Luna asked.
“No.”
“Defilers!” the voice screamed again. “Barbarians!”
“Okay, that’s definitely closer,” Luna said.
“Yeah, and it’s definitely a trap.”
“Your flesh will feed the leaves and bark!” the voice screamed. It actually sounded more unhinged, if possible. “Your blood will be drunk by the hawthorn roots! Your bones will be nests and chattel!”
“I’m really getting tired of listening to her,” I said.
“More thornlings,” Luna said. “Behind the forked tree, my two o’clock.”
“I see them,” I said. “Vari, get ready to blast them.”
“Got it.”
“Wait,” I said. “Cancel that.”
“What?”
“Just . . .” I looked ahead, concentrating. Yes. All we had to do was not screw anything up. “Don’t do anything. Hold steady.”
Seconds ticked away. “Alex?” Luna said.
“Steady.”
“They’re getting ready for a rush,” Luna said. There was an urgent note in her voice.
“Ten more seconds.”
I could see the thornlings now, creeping forward in a wide arc centred on Luna. I kept my gun up but didn’t level it, counting down in my head. Three . . . two . . . one . . .
A piercing scream echoed through the trees, cut off abruptly.
Luna twisted her head. “Wait. That was from the other side—”
I pointed. “Look.”
First one by one, then in a shower, the vampire flowers were dropping from the sky, spiralling down to plant their stalks in the ground. “The bushes are stopping too,” I said, checking the futures. “We can go near them safely.”
“The thornlings aren’t,” Variam said. “Get ready.”
The thornlings came again, rushing from cover, but oddly hesitant. Their single-minded ferocity was gone, and when Variam incinerated the first pair, the two behind checked their advance and ran. Luna’s whip took out a third, I shot down two more, and suddenly the remaining thornlings were running. This time they didn’t retreat to shelter, ready for a new attack; they just kept going, dodging between trees until they’d disappeared from sight. It was over in seconds. None of us had taken so much as a scratch.
“Guys!” Anne called from somewhere off to our right. It was the same direction the scream had come from.
“You okay?” I shouted back.
“I’m fine! Come over.”
We shared a glance and walked across the clearing, stepping over scorched flowers and dead thornlings. I was still scanning the futures, but I couldn’t see any more combat. The battle was over.
Anne was in the midst of a small thicket. The entrance was cunningly camouflaged, and we walked all the way around it twice before figuring out where to look; if we’d still been fighting, we would have skirted it without a second glance. Slipping between the branches, we found Anne in a tiny enclosed space at the centre.
Lying at Anne’s feet was a woman . . . or what could have been one, if you didn’t look too closely. Twigs sprouted from ash-blonde hair, and lichen and moss grew over skin. The fingers ended in curved wooden claws. Below the waist, the skin transitioned to bark, and in place of legs the lower half was a mass of branching roots, making her look like some strange, leafy, wooden octopus. The hamadryad’s eyes were closed.
“Huh,” Luna said, looking down at Karyos. “That was easy.”
chapter 10
“How did you figure it out?” I asked Anne.
We’d carried Karyos to the centre of the shadow realm. It had been harder work than I’d expected; it turns out roots are heavy. Thornlings were still lurking around, but they hadn’t made any move to rescue their mistress, and now Variam was working on opening the gate while Luna, Anne, and I kept watch.
“You saw how those flowers and the roses went for us?” Anne said. “Like they knew exactly where we were?”
I nodded.
“But they didn’t have eyes,” Anne said. “So I wondered how they could know where to go, and I looked and I thought I could pick up some kind of life magic. That made me think of lifesight, and that made me wonder if I could use the same shrouding spell that I figured out all those years back to stop Sagash from tracking me. That was why I asked you to check. Once you told me it would work, then I just ran straight past.”
“How’d you know where to find Karyos?”
“The plants and the thornlings all had . . . ripples,” Anne said. “Like a fish leaves in the water. I traced them back and once I got close enough I could see her with my lifesight. Then I just circled behind her. She was so focused on you that she didn’t see me, even when I slipped through the branches.” Anne shrugged. “That was that.”
“Okay,” Variam said, walking back to us. “Gate’s clear and we’re ready to go. What do we do with her?”
The tree at the centre of the shadow realm was huge, gnarled branches spreading out from a thick, ancient trunk. The four of us gathered under the branches, looking down at Karyos’s unconscious form.
“She won’t wake up for a day or so,” Anne said.
“Yeah, but what if she does?”
“I do know what I’m doing,” Anne said.
Variam shrugged. “Not saying you don’t, but why take the chance?”
“Is there something you’re hinting at?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just kill her?”
“No!” Anne said before I could speak.
“Not to get all school-playground here,” Variam said, “but she started it.”
“We’re the ones who broke into her home,” Anne said.
“Yeah, and she tried to kill us on sight.”
“Anne’s kind of got a point though,” I said. “We did break in without an invitation, and I’m not sure if she was really in a fit enough mental state to notice much else.”
“Isn’t that kind of a reason not to leave her around?” Luna asked. “I mean, if we leave her here, then isn’t she going to go right back to murdering everyone who walks in?”
“It’s not as if random innocents are going to come walking in.”
“Yeah, well,” Variam said. “All I’m saying is that she seems to be pretty much exactly the kind of thing the Order of the Shield were formed to fight in the first place.”
“I didn’t knock her out so that you could burn her to death,” Anne said flatly.
Variam got a stubborn look on his face. I knew he was about to argue, and I also knew that Anne wasn’t going to back down. “I think Anne’s right,” I said before Variam could speak.
“Oh, come on,” Variam said. “You saw those bodies.”
“Yes, but I think it’s worth remembering that we got an awful lot of help from Arachne in getting here. Now she didn’t actually make us promise to keep Karyos alive, but it was pretty clear what outcome she was hoping for. Fighting in self-defence is one thing. Executing someone while they’re helpless . . .” I shrugged. “Besides, Karyos might be the last hamadryad still on earth. I don’t want to kill her if I can avoid it.”