No one expected me to do anything. No one waited on me to give orders, which was a vast relief, since I had not a clue what such orders should be. Another Kirpis vané woman rushed forward, pottery-blue dress fluttering like butterfly wings over gleaming sharantha armor. She gestured into the gap between this giant tree and the one across the way. As she did, shining silver plates of metal appeared out of nowhere, interlocking into a tile mosaic stretching forward in a straight line. The bridge she formed might have seemed ancient, a glorious work of art, but there were no supports, no joists, no mortar. The only explanation for why it didn’t all tumble into the darkness was the correct one: magic.
“Nock!” The next order sounded.
Everyone had light-colored skin and hair—a pastel rainbow of flower shades, in combinations wholly unnatural on a human. In this murky jungle, they nearly glowed in the dark, and often literally glowed as spells triggered for protection or attack. Nowhere did I see the enemy we faced; Manol vané arrows fell from nowhere. Spells materialized with no clue as to their origin.
One group of Kirpis vané with shields stayed behind to protect the archers and the sorceress maintaining the bridge. The second group marched forward with Sir Rabbit and myself. I was meant to follow: we marched forward.
“Mark!”
Sir Rabbit put a hand against my chest, a silent plea for me to bide for a moment.
“Draw!”
The whole world held its breath.
“Loose!” A wall of light sailed up into the air. The Manol vané’s arrows had been poisoned.
Ours were on fire.
Sir Rabbit and my guards began running.
They used the arrow fire as cover, hoping to make more distance in the moment the other side was forced to raise their own shields. There was a long way to go, and we had an enemy that was still in the fight.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I hesitated too long. Presumably this was a practiced maneuver, but I hadn’t practiced. I lagged.
A black-hafted Manol vané arrow took me in the shoulder, cutting right through my mail. The pain was extraordinary, a burning fire spreading out through my arm as the poison coursed through me. I dropped to the ground as my heart seized, like being kicked in the chest by a horse.
A bright flash of light followed.
I was back at the start of the bridge. Sir Rabbit put his hand out to make sure I didn’t start the run too soon.
What had just happened?
“Draw!”
I looked around. No one acted like anything was odd or unusual.
“Loose!” The Kirpis vané arrows flew into the night.
They started running.
This time I was ready. I started the run in time with the others, careful to keep myself under the shields. The Manol vané didn’t have the Kirpis vané’s organized, regimented groups of archers who made orchestrated volleys of attacks. They had free agents roaming the trees, archers who could be silent and attack when and if the right opportunity presented itself.
Assassins, I thought. Naturally.
Another group of Kirpis soldiers waited for us on the next tree support, although more of them were dead than alive. The bridge had been cut, even as they had won the day, leaving them to hold the position on their own until reinforcements arrived. They had fought valiantly, and very nearly to the last man or woman.
All of them, no matter how injured, went down on one knee as I passed.
I wanted them to stop. If the Manol vané archers hadn’t realized I was someone important before, they sure as hell knew now.
A mass of twisted plant matter burned in front of us, hacked at with some weapon. Sir Rabbit nodded at it in a way I think was supposed to be meaningful.
That’s when the Manol vané attacked.
It took a while to realize the things moving in the shadows were not forest animals. Their dark colors blended, helped by clothing that was not a single color but slices of green and gray and bitter violet. Teraeth once told me the Kirpis vané want to be seen, but the Manol vané don’t want to be seen until it’s too late. I wondered how the Kirpis—with their rigid formations and their bright colors and their visibility—could possibly win enough to make a final push into the heart of their enemy’s defenses.*
Then I saw how.
If the Manol vané attacked with silent precision, each nick of their weapons a deadly touch of poison, they rarely drew close enough to deliver that threat. Every Kirpis vané on the platform was a sorcerer. As the Manol vané attacked, our side summoned dancing blades crafted from violet fire, or called lightning. A figure ran toward me, coming to within a few yards before he dissolved into bright yellow pollen and scattered on the winds.
But I didn’t see the figure behind me. A cry alerted me and I turned, but I didn’t even have my sword out. I was wearing one. It had banged against my leg as we ran across the bridge. I fumbled to free the damn thing before one of the Manol attackers closed with me.
I failed.
I looked up in time to meet a pair of wine-colored eyes and feel the icy coolness of a sword slicing across my throat.
Light flashed.
I was back at the start of the platform, the Manol vané seconds from revealing themselves.
“Ambush!” I called out as I drew my sword.
This time I batted my attacker’s sword out of the way so she missed the deadly strike. While she was out of alignment, I made a clumsy swipe across her middle that made her scream. It did not, however, stop her from lashing back at me with a dagger that pierced glove and flesh. Fire screamed up my arm before darkness and that bright flash of light started everything over.
I died three times getting past that Manol vané assassin, and another five making it out of the ambush. Every fatal misstep was followed by a bright flash as I restarted far enough back to figure out where I’d gone wrong. A swing of the sword this way, a step to the side, the realization that being too timid in the wrong circumstances was as bad as rushing forward in others.
I learned by dying, and every death carried me further forward.
Then we were moving, running, driving our enemies back with spell, bow, and sword. We crested a platform strung between two giant branches.
Before us lay the Mother of Trees.
I didn’t understand what I was seeing. I couldn’t comprehend. It just seemed like a humongous wall at first, one that had been built up with palaces and verandas, graceful pavilions, and stained-glass windows glittering like jewels. Only when I looked up could I perceive the sweep of branches, the distant velvet of green leaves. This was a tree to hold up the whole world, the sort of place where Galava must live, if any place were consecrated to her. It seemed ageless and immortal, a tree that had always and would always exist.
Naturally, we were setting it on fire.
I swallowed bile as I saw the fires scarring its bark, the signs of violence burning those beautiful forms. The metal bridge formed in front of us, making up for the one that had been cut away in a last-ditch effort to defend this bastion.
But we could not be stopped.
I wanted to ask questions. I wanted to say something. Could I order them to turn around? Who was right here? Was anyone right? I felt my sympathy sliding toward the Manol vané purely because I found myself flinching at the destruction of their homeland. I didn’t know what the Manol vané’s Khaevatz had done to so upset the Kirpis vané’s king. She had never, as far as Surdyeh had taught me, sided with Quur or aided Kandor. She had slain the Quuros Emperor, not helped him.