Thorns #2
He ignored the voice of doubt that questioned why he thought any of this was a good idea. He buried those feelings deep, exactly the way he’d trained to do for years.
She could probably feel his emotions, anyway.
Kaiataris gave him a flat look.
Huraiik called out: “Math, come on. Don’t drag matters out like this. You’re embarrassing yourself. She’s a necromancer! What would Tanxi say?”
The look Kaiataris gave Huraiik was pure hatred. If she’d had power enough, she would have turned Huraiik to ash.
“Go!” He pushed her toward the cottage ruin.
She didn’t resist. The leaves rustled as she climbed over a low section of broken stone wall.
Math turned around.
He circled a light spell, but it was largely unnecessary; Huraiik’s sword blazed brighter than any torch. That light revealed that green pus oozed from a gaping hole in Huraiik’s chest—an injury that should’ve been fatal.
Evidently, he either didn’t have a heart, it wasn’t in the right place or, like many trees, “heart” had a completely different definition. His eyes wept something silvery and metallic.
Neither of the two remaining Queens or their servants had followed. As Math had hoped, the former Idallik Knight had been the only one fast enough to keep up.
“Huraiik, I’m giving you one last chance. This time I’m aiming at your face. Turn around and go back.” He raised the black-powder weapon again.
Huraiik didn’t know Math had no way to reload it.
Huraiik raised a hand, forming a shield of vines. “Not falling for that again. Unless you’ve finally manifested your weapon, you’re out of tricks.”
Math lifted his chin. “Did you really try to convince the Queens that I was useless?”
The plant man smirked. “What was I supposed to tell them? You’re fantastic with the kids?”
“What did they say?”
Huraiik’s expression turned vacant again. He looked up and past Math. Math didn’t hear his words—but the Queens answered.
As it was, so it shall be. The time of the Green grows, as do her children.
Huraiik blew out a long, frustrated breath. “You know, honestly, it’s kind of hard to understand them sometimes? Not their fault, it’s just that they were never human. It doesn’t help that everyone’s talking all the time.”
“Everyone?”
“You know: the plants. Chatter, chatter, chatter, constantly. They do not ever shut up. Berry bushes are the worst.” He dismissed the sword for just long enough to mime a flapping mouth.
Then Huraiik frowned as he glanced around the small clearing.
“… that’s it. That’s what’s so weird about this place.
It’s quiet. None of the plants are saying anything. ”
“They haven’t decided whether they like you,” Math explained.
Huraiik threw him a confused look. “What?”
“You can’t just barge into someone’s house and expect a warm welcome.” Math made a face. “How does that work, anyway? If you’re all plants, shouldn’t you go dormant when the sun’s down?”
Huraiik chuckled. “We’re more than just plants, you realize. Just like your race are more than just animals.”
“Yesterday, you weren’t a plant at all.”
“Strange, isn’t it? A day makes such a difference.” Huraiik seemed amused by the thought, rather than horrified. “So I guess this is the place you wouldn’t shut up about when you were a kid. Where your parents died.”
Math flushed. This thing knew everything Huraiik had ever known—and Huraiik had known a lot.
“Yeah,” Math finally said. “Maybe you should’ve paid more attention.”
An elm branch slammed into Huraiik, knocking him sideways. Huraiik retaliated immediately, but for every branch cut, three more appeared.
Another branch strike hit harder, forcing Huraiik to lose concentration on his manifested sword. Roots erupted from the ground and buried themselves again, wrapping around him, pinning him in place.
“Math!” Huraiik roared, again unleashing magic. It wasn’t a flaming sword this time, however. He channeled lightning through his fingers, the air crackling as he launched the stroke at Math.
It was too powerful for Math to deflect.
Kaiataris grabbed Math’s hand, and a white wall of energy shimmered into existence around them both.
The lightning slammed into the barrier and dissipated into weak sparks.
Immediately after, the wall of white light faded into nothingness.
A necklace around Kaiataris’s neck turned black and flaked away.
Math made the mistake of half turning in the necromancer’s direction.
It was all the opening that Huraiik needed.
One of Huraiik’s whips lashed out, but not aimed at Math. Instead, Huraiik attacked the one target the local plants wouldn’t protect: Kaiataris herself.
A vine lash flew past Math and buried itself straight into Kaiataris’s chest. Their eyes met, and a stunning wave of pain radiated from her to him.
Kaiataris collapsed.
Math knew just how much pain she was in. He felt it all. He felt everything.
Math whirled back to Huraiik, furious and helpless, weaponless and desperate—
The forest moved first.
The plants of the glade wrapped around Huraiik’s arms, his legs, his neck. Then they pulled in different directions.
There was a moment of tension, then sudden, violent release. The plant man tore apart, dismembered as surely as if he’d been tied to racing horses. Huraiik didn’t scream, but made a sound like the cracking of tree limbs brought down by too much snow in winter.
Math dropped to his knees beside Kaiataris.
She was pale and blood pooled beneath her. His own chest burned with pain, even though he wasn’t injured.
“Why did you do that? Do you want to die?” Math pulled off his shirt and pressed the fabric to the wound. “Don’t move, damn it! I need to stop the bleeding.”
She was losing too much blood.
Kaiataris gave him a weak smile. “Do you still think me undead?”
“No,” he snapped. “I think you’re a fool. I told you to hide!”
“You would have died.”
“You don’t know that— Okay, yes. Fine. I probably would have, and then Huraiik would’ve really gotten it from the damn Queens because he wasn’t supposed to kill me.
” Math cursed at her injury. “I can heal skin. That’s easy.
But if I do that and you’re bleeding internally—which you are—you’ll still die. ”
“But I shall leave such a fair corpse,” she whispered.
“That is not funny.”
“’Tis so.” She coughed, winced. “Heal me, my beautiful knight.”
“I can’t.”
“You can,” she said softly. “You are a wild mage. And we are bound.”
“Apparently so. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I hate it!”
“It means that you should … you should gather plants. Bring them back. Lay them on my wound, and then … you shall … imagine, truly believe, that this is healing me. See it in your mind as reality and you will … make it so.”
She lay back, brow slick with sweat, as though that speech had taken everything from her, most especially her ability to stay conscious.
“That’s not how magic works!”
She scoffed and then winced. Math felt the sharp stab of pain as she’d stifled the instinct to laugh. “No. ’Tis not how my magic works.”
Math pushed himself back to his feet and stumbled away. He searched near the cottage, plucking leaves, petals, vines, and weeds, at random.
He returned to the woman and kneeled beside her, layering those same plants over her wound.
She had closed her eyes. Her pulse was rapid, her breathing shallow. Math tried to let his own confusion distract him.
She was so fragile, so delicate, so mortal.
Now he understood her fear of Huraiik. She’d known she wouldn’t be able to protect herself.
Math set his hands on the wound and thought about Kaiataris being healthy and whole.
He concentrated on the lack of pain, on the connection between them.
He told himself pretty lies: that if this magical bond between them meant that they could feel each other’s pain, it also meant that neither of them could die while the other still lived.
And if that was true—and it was true, he knew it was true, it had to be true—then she couldn’t die here.
Math had a few scratches, but nothing life-threatening.
He was fine; thus, so was she.
Math believed. He had to believe.
It was only when that was done—when Kaiataris’s chest rose and fell with peace instead of pain—that Math understood what he’d done in spite of the fact it went against everything he’d ever been raised to believe.
What he’d done without hesitation. Without thinking.
He’d just saved the life of a grim lord.