Chapter Seventeen One Hundred Acorns #2
And the canes grew. Taller, thicker, but not any closer to them. The opening in the barrier closed. No easy way in, but no way out.
“Oh, good work,” Lorzok said.
“A blackberry hell a hundred feet in any direction is as good a shelter as we’ll get,” Saeldian said. “We have however long it takes—”
A howl, enraged.
“For that,” Saeldian finished. “If you can’t pass through the tree, do we have enough firepower to stop—”
“Maybe for the monster, but not for her,” Kell said. “We won’t have anything left if we succeed.”
“I have an idea,” Lorzok said. “But I need time.”
“You have however long it takes them to get through,” Saeldian said. “So hurry.”
Lorzok knelt before the oak’s massive trunk, one hand resting on the bark, the other holding his staff.
Timtim scrambled out of his sling and gently herded Jubilee into hopping onto the back of his head and gripping his horn with a toad’s tiny fingers.
Behind him, whatever monsters the witch had sent were getting angrier.
Nearer to him, Saeldian quietly spoke the Sylvan invocation they’d used at the Tarm job.
Osalor, my protector, I am awed by the gift of the power of your splendor in exchange for my heart—
Kell went cold as he heard the words. Power in exchange for Saeldian’s heart?
—but I ask for the touch of your gift again today. Your might preserves me, your devoted, and I use it to further my promise to you, with gratitude. Recited, not spoken. Saeldian might not know what they were saying.
He hated it. It sounded like a prayer, as if Osalor were a god. It ended in thanks that bound Saeldian’s obligation to their patron more tightly than ever. How many threads of thanks had they tied themselves with over all the years of their service?
No time for that now. He moved around Timtim and Jubilee—how were they going to fix Jubilee? It might simply wear off, but when? An hour? A day? A year?
Whatever Lorzok was doing, he couldn’t help. Kell stood next to Saeldian and touched their shoulder, tapping a rhythm against the thin skin over the bone.
“A little luck?” they asked.
“Can’t hurt.”
“I think I’ll need it.”
The oak boughs above them shook. “What is wrong with my grove? Druid? What have you done?”
Kell went still.
“We are running from danger,” Lorzok said. “Our foe made a wall of blackberry canes around your grove to trap us. I would ask for your aid to escape.”
“Something out there is ripping up the ground,” the oak said, and her boughs shook in outrage. “Saplings and sprouts cry out, even if they are from lesser plants, not so magnificent as I. It must stop!”
“They are trying to break through, great venerable lady, to get to us.”
“What business is that of mine?” the oak asked.
Before Lorzok could answer, the canes heaved violently, and the oak shouted in fury.
“Those could be my sprouts! My own acorns, torn from the loam!”
“We need help to escape,” Lorzok said patiently. “There is a way to open a gate through you to another tree I know, in a domain connected to Eightbridge, that was once—”
“Menoriath,” the oak finished. “I know the story, root and branch. A kingdom fallen, and rightly so, for what could flourish without good earth beneath it? Pure arrogance.”
“Quite so,” Lorzok said. “They should have remembered your wisdom. But we must return. I know the way, but I do not have the power unless you lend me yours.”
A scream from many throats. Too close. A smell like old blood, dead flesh…flies.
“What good will that do me?” asked the oak.
“Please—” Lorzok began, but Saeldian interrupted.
“You know the story. Menoriath fell to the earth where it belonged and broke into slivers. But it did much more than that.”
“It didn’t do anything,” the tree sneered. “It fell. It broke.”
“It flourished,” said Saeldian. “Where there was once one kingdom, dozens now rise. Menoriath is no longer one lonely place. It was the seed of a forest of places, bigger and farther than one floating place. An empire has sprouted from the seeds of its fall.”
Kell would have whistled if it wouldn’t ruin everything. Nobody could persuade like Saeldian. They could have been a bard if they’d wanted to. Kell could see what they’d woven with those words and how it landed exactly on what this oak wanted most.
“Seeds,” the oak said.
Saeldian opened their hand. A single acorn rested in its hollow.
Gods, they were so good, Kell felt warm pride watching them work.
Lorzok plucked the acorn from their palm and held it up. “I could plant this seed in the Village That Chooses Its Own, and you will live on in it. I will take a dozen seeds, and visit a dozen domains, and spread your legacy beyond this lonely grove. You will become a forest, an empire of your own.”
“One hundred,” the oak said. “I want a hundred of my acorns flourishing across the domains. The empire will be mine.”
Kell could smell more than just old blood. The smell of flesh left to swell until it smelled too much like cheese to let him enjoy any with his bread for a while. A shape struggled against the vines, enraged as the blackberries grew again, trapping it.
“Then you will carry us out of this place?” Lorzok asked.
“If you gather your part of the promise,” the oak said. “My acorns. Hurry.”
Timtim dashed across the thin grass, bent his head to the ground, and rushed back, dropping an acorn at Lorzok’s feet. Jubilee hopped off Timtim’s back and picked up another before Kell shook himself back into action. Six acorns lay at his feet. He dropped them into a pouch and kept looking.
Saeldian crouched to gather more, stuffing them into their pockets. “Nineteen, twenty—”
“Thirty-six,” Lorzok called.
Kell added his to the total. “Forty-two.”
Timtim raced up to Kell and dropped an acorn at his feet before sprinting off for another. Jubilee added another. They hunted and called out the sum as they gathered.
“Eighty-five,” Saeldian called. “They—”
Timtim thumped the ground, drumming an alarm.
“Get back,” Kell shouted, but it was too late.
The canes broke open, and a horror burst into the grove: a monster with three heads and five arms, but the heads and limbs sprouted from a lumpy torso, as if someone had stirred three trolls in a cauldron until they melted together, but they lived through it.
The creature’s third head stared off to the left. The other two glared at Saeldian, who had darted forward, bending to grab Jubilee—but the creature’s fifth arm shot out, snatching the toad up by one leg.
“No!” Saeldian cried.
Two bolts of power struck the awful creature. It screamed as the blast knocked it backward to fly fifteen feet through the air and land hard. The third face landed squarely on the ground and howled in pain. Two wounds opened in waxy, green-mottled pink flesh, which stank like old ham.
Then it sat up. The wounds knit themselves closed. The toad still kicked wildly in its fingers.
The troll-mass laughed. It considered the struggling toad in its grip, tossed the toad into the air, and the second head jerked to catch Jubilee in its mouth.