The Sleeping King (58 page)

In front of him, she gave a violent heave, using her strength to attempt to rip free of the entangling vines. Another vine streaked out of the darkness from his left and whipped tight around her waist.
What on Urth—

Rosana burst out, “You tried to kill him!”

Will's gaze snapped to the gypsy in surprise and then back to Sha'Li. To Rosana, he demanded, “Why do you say that?”

“Why else forest attack her? Trees and plants, they protect you.”

Will stared at the gypsy. Her statement was preposterous. And, yet, it made perfect sense. He looked back and forth between Rosana and Sha'Li. Cautiously, he asked the lizardman girl, “How did my staff come to be behind you?”

“There I threw it, moron.”

He stared, shocked. “You did try to kill me, then?”

“Mine is that disk, and tired am I of waiting for it. Want it back, I do.”

“I told you. It has grown into me. It cannot be removed.”

“If you live, maybe not. But remedied that can be.”

Will drew back sharply from the venom in her voice. “You would kill me over a stupid piece of wood?”

“Anything but stupid is that disk. This, both of us know.”

“That's not the point. Is it really worth murder?”

She hissed, and he took a prudent step closer to a tree he could duck behind if she chose to spit at him.

Sha'Li snarled, “Not for you was that meant! For the shamans of my people was it taken. Who are you, Will Cobb? Why hunt for you do Boki, and doing their best to kill you are Imperial soldiers? Why fear you do the dryads, and why giving you messages about the Mythar are they?”

“I have no idea.”

“You lie, human.”

He stared at Sha'Li, who stared back accusingly. She was right, and he respected her for her blunt honesty. But he dared not tell any of them the truth. It would make all of their lives as forfeit as his. No, ignorance was their best protection. Reluctantly, he conceded, “You may be right. But for your good, I must not say more.”

Kendrick, to Will's surprise, interjected, “Why mustn't you? Why shouldn't the lizard know what she fights for?”

Sha'Li snapped at him, “For myself I fight, human!”

Kendrick snorted. “Now who lies?”

Sha'Li's only answer was to fling herself against the vines.

The living ropes visibly tightened themselves even more snugly around her. Mildly, Will commented, “You'd better stop fighting those vines or they'll crush the life out of you.”

“Call them off!”

He looked at Sha'Li in surprise. “How?”

“Talk to them.”

“Talk—to plants?”

“To everything else you talk in these cursed woods.”

Eben and Cicero snorted behind Will in what sounded suspiciously like laughter. He glared at the lizardman girl. “That's not funny.”

“Yes, it is,” Rosana responded in undisguised amusement from behind him.

“Just because I'm immune to dryads doesn't make me some sort of freak.”

“Yes, it does,” Cicero disagreed. “And then there's the way you suddenly know which direction to travel. And the way the tree limbs move aside for you to pass by—”

“They do not!”

All his companions answered simultaneously, “Yes, they do.”

He stared at them in dismay. He cast his mind back to their pell-mell flight from the scene of the earlier fight, and then the long march through the night to this hidden glade. He didn't remember ever having to dodge a low-hanging limb. And now that he thought about it, how had he known this tiny clearing was tucked behind that seemingly solid wall of brambles? How had he known just the right spot to lift the tangled vines and slip into this protected place?

He'd just … known.

Rosana was speaking quietly. “… if I didn't know better, I would say that disk of wood has possessed you.”

He frowned. “But I'm me. I'm not him. He doesn't possess me.”

“Him who?” Sha'Li demanded.

Will scowled at her. “I told you, it's better if you don't kn—”

“Bloodroot,” Cicero answered from behind Will. “That was the name the golden dryad called you. Lord Bloodroot.”

Will whirled to glare at the elf. “You know nothing of it.”

“I know Lord Bloodroot belonged to the Great Circle, and that his companions turned on him. I know his tree got cut up into little pieces and scattered all over the continent. And I know the Boki have been running around trying to collect the pieces of him and restore him for as long as my ancestors have lived in these forests.”

Will reeled. The Boki searched for the pieces of Bloodroot? Was that why they were chasing him? Did it have nothing to do with his father's quest to find the Sleeping King, then?

Rosana asked Cicero, “What is the Great Circle?”

“A council of elder nature beings in this land. Tree spirits. They guard—or at least they did in the old legends—the land and all living things upon it.”

“One of those is stuck to Will's chest?”

“Well, the spirit of one at any rate.”

Sha'Li struggled fruitlessly, and the vines tightened mercilessly until she was forcibly stilled, gasping for breath.

Will bit out in what he now knew to be a small version of the Dragon's Roar, “Let her breathe, for stars' sake.”

The vines slithered, easing their hold somewhat, and a cold feeling spread outward from Will's gut. The vines had just obeyed his command. What was he turning into? His companions stared at him with varying degrees of wonder and fear. He could hardly blame them.

“What else do you know of Bloodroot?” Will asked Cicero soberly.

“Is it safe to build a fire?” the elf asked.

Will cast his awareness outward. The forest for a league all around was at ease, free of intruders. “Aye. It is safe.” But why did the elf want a fire? To hold back the forest should it decide to attack the rest of them?

Cicero nodded briskly and went about the business of laying and lighting a small fire. The others drew near it, holding out their hands eagerly to the heat. For his part, Will felt none of the night's chill.

“Hey! Cut me loose. Attack you I will not again.”

Will eyed Sha'Li warily. “I would suggest you keep your word, or else the trees will tear you limb from limb.”

Rings of white showed around the dark slit irises of her eyes as she stared at him, frightened. She nodded her understanding.

“Release her!” Will ordered in the roar.

The vines unwound themselves in a wriggling mass, falling to the ground to lie there motionless, as innocent as any other forest vine. He stared at them in dismay as Sha'Li bolted out of the circle they made. What was happening to him?

This lizardman girl spoke hastily. “Look, Will. Nothing have I against you, personally. Just business this is. That disk I need back. Before kill us all your enemies do.”

“Why do you need it so badly?” he asked curiously.

“To prove a task I have completed.”

“To whom? And for what purpose?”

Sha'Li balked at saying any more. She shook her head, but Will caught the fear and determination in her eyes. Whatever she had planned for the disk, she was dead set on having it. She fired back, “What seek you in these woods, Will?”

It was his turn to balk.

“Tell her,” Rosana urged him.

“Yes. Tell her,” Raina chimed in.

He whirled on the two of them. “Maybe you two should tell me, since you seem to know so much. Why are both of you out here running around the woods with me, risking your lives for no apparent reason?”

The healers stared at him with matching guilty looks on their faces.

“At least Sha'Li's been honest with me from the start. She's here for the disk and she's never made any secret of it. But what of you two? What do you want from me?”

Rosana confessed first. “Truly, Will, Matriarch Lenora told me only to look after you. Nothing more.”

“But why?” Will demanded.

She looked him in the eye and said seriously, “I swear by the burning of my gypsy blood, I would tell you if I knew.”

As Sha'Li settled by the fire well away from him, Will turned his gaze on Raina. “What of you? Why are you here?”

She answered reluctantly, “I seek a source of olde magick, and I have reason to believe this Mythar fellow might have the magic I need.”

She sought the Sleeping King as well? Will stared, shocked. She looked back at him defiantly.

He spoke slowly. “It seems we work toward the same end. Mayhap our reasons are different, but it would appear our goals are one.”

He nodded at her, and she nodded back. They were agreed, then. They would work together to find her Mythar who was also his sleeping king.

Cicero had made it clear he was here purely to protect Raina. Kendrick and Eben were with the party only until they reached Talyn, but in the meantime they sought sign of Kithmar slavers having passed this way, stars forbid, with Eben's sister. And the pair had been generous with their swords in defending the party.

Will looked around the circle, making eye contact with each of them in turn. An odd bunch, they were. All outcasts in their own way. Mostly without family or homes. Brought together by chance and circumstance—
or maybe not chance at all
. The idea exploded across his mind with the force of a revelation. Was it possible that this inexperienced, fractious bunch was not random?

They hardly struck him as a band of heroes. More like the scrapings at the bottom of life's barrel. For better or worse, though, they were the only ones in a position to find the Sleeping King if it was possible at all. Will was certain the fates could have chosen better. But who was he to argue? He was just a nameless boy from the outer lands.

And he did have to admit, despite their squabbles, when blades had been swinging, these people had risked their lives for one another. And they seemed prepared to go forward into the Forest of Thorns, each for his or her own reasons. If they might have to die for him, he supposed they had a right to know why he was here. Or at least a piece of it.

He sighed and chose his next words carefully. “My father entrusted me with a quest and asked me to finish it when he could not. It's based on a ridiculous tale and common sense says it's not even real. But, it was his dying wish and I swore to do this thing. I'm likely out here on a fool's errand that could get us all killed.”

Rosana asked, “What this quest?”

He shook his head. “I cannot tell you. My father swore me to silence.”

Cicero leaned back, stretching his feet out toward the fire. “But he did not swear me to silence. Care if I make a guess at what you are about?”

Will shrugged.

“It has something to do with Bloodroot and the Great Circle, or else that disk would not have chosen you to stick to. Sha'Li, you said you had it in your possession for several hours, and it never stuck to you. Correct?”

The lizardman girl nodded, looking distinctly surly.

“Perhaps Bloodroot wants your help in reconstituting his body.…”

As the elf trailed off, Rosana piped up, “I think no. You say Boki try that for very long time already and it no work.” She looked intently at Will. “What quest interest Bloodroot enough to latch on to Will?”

Kendrick stared at the gypsy and then at Will in dawning shock. He blurted, “Surely not.”

Will blinked at him. “Surely not what?”

“You do not seek the Sleeping King, do you?”

Where on Urth had Kendrick heard of that?
Oh, wait.
The son had heard it from the father the same way Will had from his own father. “Landsgrave Hyland told you of him, I gather?” Will asked in resignation.

“Actually, no. I eavesdropped on my father when I was a boy. I heard him talking about it once with a solinari.”

“Aurelius,” Will declared.
Of course.
The son of a landed noble was too valuable to risk on a quest for the Sleeping King. But Will, the son of the disgraced and outlawed Dragon, was not.

Eben chimed asking, “Who is this sleeping king?”

Kendrick answered eagerly, causing Will's ingrained sense of secrecy to wince. “He was an elf. The king of a great elven nation called Gandamere that spanned most or all of this continent. He fell in battle against a troll and nearly died. A mysterious lady came along and saved him, barely. He fell into an endless sleep somewhere between life and death, and there he has remained ever since.”

Will stared. What Kendrick described
exactly
matched Will's dream a few nights back. How was it possible he'd dreamed of events he'd never heard of until now? The answer was sour in his mind.
Bloodroot
. The tree spirit had given Will that dream. The whoreson must have waited until Will's mental defenses were down in sleep and slipped the dream into his mind.

Will asked, “Does legend say how this guardian will wake?”

“Or when he is supposed to wake?” Rosana chimed in.

Kendrick shrugged. “The legend is vague about those things. It goes that the Mythar will awake when the land would perish without him. As for the how of it, I have never heard anything.”

Will asked soberly, the other one within him radiating certainty that this other tale was the key to everything, “Who is the keeper of the knowledge of how to wake him?”

Kendrick answered heavily, “The Boki.” The other members of the party, save Raina, squawked in dismay.

Kendrick continued, “My father and Aurelius spoke of how close they'd come to finding the Sleeping King in a grove deep within the Forest of Thorns. The grove was guarded by powerful Boki warriors. If you want to find this sleeping king, you will have to ask them. Assuming they let you live long enough to even speak to them and do not kill you the second they hear your question.”

Which was to say, they were all doomed.