Pathways
Math found himself lost in a mental maze for the third time in his life.
This time, it was one of his own creation.
Math’s life appeared before him in disjointed flashes that moved so quickly, he could barely place the location, the event, the feelings involved before events had already moved on to the next scene.
After a time, he came to realize that the scenes were not haphazard but followed branches of experience—the last time Math held a sword, followed by all the times he’d held one before that, all the way back to him as a child, holding a practice blade for the first time.
How one weapon had led to many weapons, to armor, to horseback riding.
The same pattern followed for every skill he’d ever known, for learning to speak, learning to read, learning to walk.
Then followed emotions: jealousy, pride, ambition, hate, anger …
fear … except here, things did not follow through to the beginning.
The path ended in a snarl, a tangle of impassable bramble and thorns.
Love and a whole slew of more positive emotions swirled around Kai before gliding across multiple friends, the children, his sister, but eventually this, too, moved too quickly from his path.
The Queen of Oaks was tracing along the pathways of his mind as if they were roots, digging into all his thoughts and experiences, each time stopping at the unassailable tangle of his earliest memories.
Was she trying to understand humanity? If so, he wondered why she hadn’t tried this with any of the others she’d absorbed.
Then he thought: maybe she had.
Again and again, they returned to the briar. Math knew what lay beyond it and he had no desire to see it, to remember it.
His opinion meant nothing.
With each dead end, Math felt her frustration grow. Math found himself detached from the experience, from the emotions involved, viewing it all as if these were a stranger’s memories.
Last, she traced magic. Every spell learned, every manifestation of belief. Here, too, he felt her frustration, her annoyance at every time the Idallik Order had taught him to apply arbitrary rules to something they didn’t comprehend.
And it was here, when she reached the same tangle, that she was not stopped, because it was the tangle she was tracing, and not what lay beyond it.
The whole twisted knot untangled and fell apart.
His detachment went with it.
Math remembered everything: a childhood riddled with pain and terror. He remembered parents who had been too angry and frustrated and ultimately afraid to see him as something worth protecting. He remembered beatings and so-called discipline and punishments meted out at the barest of excuses.
He remembered his only solace being the woods, the flowers that would bloom for him, the trees that would press their branches against his hair. The woods had loved him, even if his parents …
Even if his parents had not.
He couldn’t remember what had provoked them the last time. Probably he’d never known. Just that his parents had both been too angry and too loud, animalistic in their savagery. He’d been thrown against the anvil of the forge so hard he’d broken his arm, and his mother had grabbed a hammer and—
The plants had saved him.
All his plants and more. Every plant in the garden, the roses, the jasmine in the window boxes. Trees had grown in seconds, tearing back the roof of the house and the back of his father’s skull with equal ease. His mother had bled to death, impaled by foot-long rose thorns.
Math hadn’t understood what was happening—except part of him had understood exactly what was happening.
His parents had convinced themselves that he was a monster, a grimmock, a horror ultimately responsible for all their suffering.
Maybe they hadn’t planned on killing him, but the result would’ve been the same.
His sister was wrong. He appreciated her faith in him, her adamant belief in his innocence, but it had never been about guilt or innocence.
It had been about survival. Even if Math had been too young to understand, the part of him that resonated so strongly with trees, flowers, and every other kind of green and deadly thing had understood the lesson perfectly.
That part hadn’t hesitated.
The rest of him had hid under his bed, sobbing, until two days later when an Idallik Knight—a much younger Izhiik Talu, in fact—had coaxed him out and returned with him to the cenobium.
Do you understand? The Queen of Oaks almost sounded tender.
No, he told her honestly. He blinked open his eyes to find himself still sitting in the park, underneath her branches. Tears slid down his face, dripped from his chin.
They’d reached an equilibrium. They spoke each other’s language with perfect comprehension.
History never repeats, but certain shapes, certain roles, certain seasons come in cycles.
I still don’t understand.
She was being very patient with him. In another cycle, you did not exist. Instead, we did.
That seemed like an obvious statement. So obvious that he felt sure he was missing the point.
He tried to work it out. So if I’d been born in your cycle, I would’ve been…?
One of us.
I’m not … He swallowed.
We thought it would not matter if we used the animals of this time to remake our species. What were they except flesh? Parts of us are as well, or something close.
But it does matter.
It does matter, she mournfully agreed. The lives of this age cannot be taken whole into our forest. They do not stay. They become puppets, and we did not want puppets. We wanted our children back.
You can’t force … He inhaled deeply. What did you expect? You can’t force people to love you.
He scowled to himself. She didn’t understand.
Maybe she couldn’t understand.
You, though … you are what we could have been.
If we’d been born here, now, in this age.
You would be a father of trees, instead of a mother.
Awaken whole forests, give life to countless young.
You might still. The plants you left behind in your sprouting place are no longer simple plants, and their intelligence does not fade.
Why … why me, though? Why am I like this?
Do not assign rules to children of the Green. Perhaps it was proximity to where we slumbered. Perhaps every Green cycle will contain something like us. The random seed that finds fertile soil.
Just a new variety. Pure wild luck. No doubt there would be more people like him in the years to come.
He laughed harshly, thinking of the absurdity of thinking of himself as some new strain of vegetable.
You know what grim lords are. I know you do. And there’s one who is trying to … tie you … to what you call the Green. Shape you into a kind of avatar. Except it’s a trap. I’m not sure exactly what kind. I only know he wants to absorb the power of wild magic—of the Green—or destroy it entirely.
He’s a fool.
The danger is real.
I know it is. But you cannot remove death from life, or life from death, without destroying both.
Name for me one being, one creature, one blade of grass that has not required something else to die so it might live.
All that lives, kills. All that dies, gives life.
We grow in soil made of corpses and decay, we return to that soil with our own deaths. This grim lord is a fool.
The certainty in her voice was comforting. It also made him fear she was underestimating the problem.
Except she wasn’t done.
That does not mean he cannot do it. Fools can cause great harm.
Math grimaced. He has some of your branches. He said he would use them to put a curse on you, so you’d have to go to him or die. And I don’t know what to do.
Yes, you do. You’ve known for some time.
He really couldn’t hide anything from her, could he? Is killing you really the only option?
You don’t need to kill me. I’m already dying.
Math honestly didn’t know how he felt about that. Disturbed, certainly.
It didn’t feel like victory.
That won’t stop him, the Queen of Oaks said. Nothing in your memories tells me that I alone must become this avatar. Sanistral himself said it didn’t have to be me. The end of a branch brushed against the top of his head.
He shuddered. So if you die before he finishes the ritual, then he just switches targets, and if you die after, he wins.
Yes, the Queen of Oaks agreed.
If we keep you from dying …
You cannot. And I am overdue.
Math turned over, sat down with his back against her tree trunk. The park was lovely, and in the distance, he could see the rest of Bashan.
Parts of the city were on fire.
I can think of one possible solution, the Queen said.
He turned his head toward her trunk. Yes?
I am one of the mothers. What power and nourishment I have is shared with my children, and they feed me in turn. He can give me this power, but he cannot make me keep it.
Math let his head fall back against the tree. You think you could pass along the position to one of your children?
No. I told you. These are not …
He felt her grief. Worse, he felt her loneliness. Each new mind leached of its personality and memories had torn at her like an open wound. She hadn’t thought she was killing humans. She’d been trying to adopt them.
Oak had not saved her people, Kaiataris had told him. Only herself and her sisters.
Now she was full of the most bitter regret.
None of these sprouts are my children. We even tried your sprouts, but they could not find good soil.
Math shuddered. It wouldn’t have been difficult for her to take human children. He forced himself not to think about it.
They all leave me, their minds falling away like leaves. None of them could handle that much power. None of them are strong enough. They would burn.
Math exhaled, remembering his own experiences in that area. If your sisters were still alive …
They are not.
I’m sorry. The grief of knowing they’d been so close to a solution tasted bitter in his mouth.
Sorrow is unnecessary. One hope remains.
As no other names had come up during their entire conversation, it wasn’t difficult to connect those dots. You can’t mean me.
You have the potential.
I’d burn too, he protested.
Not if you stood proud at the center of the forest. Not if you became my child, my heir. Not if you took my place when I am gone.
But I’m not one of your children. You said I’m not.
You could be.
He didn’t understand, and then he did. All he had to do was let her in.
This time, there would be no force—only consent.
A willing version of what she had done to Huraiik, to all the others.
Let her in and let her remake him into something inhuman, a Parnathi.
A child who would not fight her, who loved her as much as she would love him.
And who she would love enough to die for.
But it would also mean …
Math had told himself this was about stopping Sanistral—and it was.
But that wasn’t the whole truth. Some foolish part of him had clung to the hope of a miracle: that he might somehow win not just the day, but a future.
That if he fought hard enough, was clever enough, brave enough, the world would reward him with more than survival.
That Math wouldn’t have to lose Kai. That they might somehow walk away from the wreckage, hand in hand, toward something better.
But this?
There could be no happy ending here.
He wouldn’t just be someone who looked human most of the time, a few wayward weeds and flowers notwithstanding. He would be a Parnathi, and every single time Kai looked at him, she’d be looking at her family’s murderers.
If Math took the Queen’s deal, then he’d be saving Kai at the cost of never being able to be with her. Even if she survived Sanistral, even if he stopped the ritual, at the end of it he would truly be something alien.
Not human, not even a grimmock.
If he wanted to save Kai, he would have to give her up forever.
He made his choice.