TST (55 page)

“You can add another item to my list of things that I hate,” Borik grumbled, “tree houses.”

Maude ignored the dwarf’s griping. “What do you think they want with us and where did they take Kar’Rok?”

“I don’t know on either counts,” Malek replied shaking his head. “But it sure looked like they were pleased to see Kar’Rok though not in a good way. I know he did not appear at all glad to see them.”

“Great, we hired a criminal wanted by his people as our guide and now we’re guilty by association,” Borik moaned.

“We don’t know that, Borik, so just keep calm. If they were very concerned about us, they would have taken our weapons. So far, they have been rather polite,” Maude told the sour dwarf.

“Like it would be hard to just toss us off the edge of one of these platforms. We’re like a fish out of water up here,” Borik pointed out. “Look, here comes a couple of the dwarf throwers now. Probably going to place bets on which one of us bounces the highest. My money is on the rubber headed elf,” he said, jerking a thumb in Tarth’s direction.

Three elves were approaching bearing several green leaf wrapped packages and a couple gourds. The elves set the items down in the middle of the group then disappeared back along a walkway and into the foliage. Maude reached for one of the leaf wrapped parcels and was surprised to feel that it was warm. She exposed the contents of the package and a pleasantly spiced aroma of thinly sliced meat and vegetables wafted up from the opened bundle.

Borik grabbed one of the gourds and felt the contents slosh about as he picked it up. A broad smile crossed his bearded face as soon as he pulled the stopper and smelled the contents. He lifted the gourd to his lips and drank deep from the contents.

“Now that’s what I call hospitality!” Borik exclaimed as he wiped away a trickle of wine that ran down his beard.

“I thought they were trying to kill us?” Malek asked as he picked up another of the food parcels.

“If this is the way they’re going to go about it then I greatly approve of their methods,” he said as he raised the gourd back to his mouth.

Malek looked quizzically at the contents of the package in his hands. “What are these things?”

Maude leaned over and took a closer look at what the cleric held pinched between his fingers. “Looks like a big grub.”

Malek screwed up his face in disgust, set them back down, and found another bundle that contained more of the spiced strips of meat. Tarth sipped wine from the second gourd and passed it to Maude. Maude tried to engage the wizard in conversation but the elf proved to be unusually withdrawn. It was obvious that Tarth held some sort of enmity towards the jungle elves. She did not know whether it was a racial issue commonly shared between the two different types of elves or if he had a more personal problem with them.

Borik leaned over towards Malek. “You gonna eat your grubs?” he asked, his eyes already showing an inebriated glaze.

Malek slid the parcel of roasted larva over to him. “Help yourself.”

Borik rubbed his hands together and plopped one of the morsels into his mouth. “Hey, these are good!” he exclaimed with a smile. “Crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside.”

Borik was plopping roasted grubs in his mouth while the others were eating meat, roasted vegetables, and drinking the rather potent wine when two elves approached and took a seat on the platform the outsiders were currently occupying. One was an older male, strong and regal in appearance despite the bone armor and leather loincloth. His hair was long and black with a thin streak of grey running the full length of his waist-long locks. Several feathers and beads of polished stone adorned his hair while wide gold bracelets or bracers covered both wrists. Like nearly all the elves here, tattoos covered most of the exposed skin on his muscular body.

The female wood elf was equally imposing in bearing and stature. Maude always considered herself strong even compared to many men, but she knew without a doubt that this woman in front of her was capable of stripping the armor right off her body with her bare hands and beating her black and blue if she was of the inclination to do so.

These jungle elves, or wildlings as Tarth referred to them, were far different from the elves that had spawned Tarth and what anyone even vaguely familiar with elves expected from the race. They were powerful and direct, not like the lithe, haughty, and often oblique elves that most humans were vaguely familiar with.

The female elf stood as tall as her companion and also bore a heavy covering of tattoos on her body though not quite as all-covering as his. She wore thin gold bracelets on her wrists, a gold choker set with a large piece of amber that rested in the hollow of her throat, and a gold snake wrapped above her upper left arm set with small emeralds for its eyes that nearly matched her own in color and brilliance.

“I hope you have been enjoying our hospitality,” the male wood elf said in a surprisingly high and clear voice.

“We are, thank you,” Maude replied. “Once the wine made Borik realize that you were not going to throw us out of the branches, even he began to enjoy himself.”

The elf threw back his head and laughed with a rich melodious tone. “We are not as savage as many may think we are.” He looked pointedly in Tarth’s direction as he made the statement. “Though we will defend ourselves and our territory with brutal swiftness and efficiency if we feel threatened. Fortunately, we did not find you or your companions sufficiently threatening. I am Terr’Ma’Nok and this is Tar’A’Lon.”

Maude made quick introductions, but from the facial responses she received from the two elves, she figured that Kar’Rok had already told them much of what he knew.

“What happened to Kar’Rok?” Maude asked the pair. “I gathered that he was in some kind of trouble.”

“That is a personal matter between him and one of the families of our tribe. A matter of a personal contract to be fulfilled but more than that is not my place to say.”

“What will happen to us now?”

Maude was taken by surprise once more at the deep and husky voice that Tar’A’Lon answered her question with. “That depends on exactly what your purpose in our jungle is. Though we do not find you dangerous in and of yourselves, we still do not care for outsiders tramping through our lands.”

Maude thought about how much she should reveal of their mission. She was unsure how much Kar’Rok told them and whether or not the elves would take offense at their plan to invade what may be a sacred tomb or monument. She decided withholding information or lying would only sew contempt and more resistance between them so she answered the question truthfully.

“We hired Kar’Rok to guide us to an ancient ruin. Our king sent us on a quest in search of an ancient lost artifact of our people and he believed that part of it might be found there.”

The wood elves nodded in unison as they listened to the human’s explanation though it was Terr’Ma’Nok that answered her.

“I am afraid you will have to make the rest of your journey on your own. Kar’Rok is beholden to other commitments at this time,” the elf informed them.

“Then you do not oppose our quest in your land or of our entering the temple?”

“We know of the temple of which you speak, but such stone relics hold no importance to us. If you wish to enter and risk your lives in such cold and lifeless constructs we will not stop you,” Tar’A’Lon told the human woman dispassionately.

The party breathed a sigh of relief, fearing that they were going to be kept from completing their mission. Although the odds of a successful completion of that mission was now even more stacked against them without their guide.

Maude pleaded with the wood elves. “Is it possible for Kar’Rok to finish his service to us first then fulfill whatever obligations he has with your people? If not that, then can someone else take us to the ruins?”

The elves shook their heads. “No to both requests. While we will not oppose your mission but neither do we have any interest in your completing it. However, the ruins you are searching for lie only a day from here. If you have been paying attention to what Kar’Rok has shown you then you should be able to make it there, and if you are extremely careful and very lucky you may even make it back to the human town.”

The elves considered the conversation concluded and left the adventurers to sit and ponder their fate. Maude did not like the idea of traveling through this dangerous jungle without a skilled guide but she was not a fatalist and was determined to make the attempt.

“I want to be on the ground by first light,” she told her crew in a tone that implied there would be no arguing the decision.

The others accepted the decision and nodded their compliance but the festive mood was gone and none felt like talking much. They finished off the wine then fell asleep in hammocks of woven wool slung under heavy tree branches.

They felt well rested having slept comfortably and without fear of predators for the first time in days. A slight brightening in the level of the surrounding darkness was enough to wake Maude in time to leave within the established timeline. She roused the others from their slumber then began donning her armor and the others soon followed suit.

They made their way across the swaying walkways to the lift. Despite the early hour at which they woke, the treetops were already bustling with activity as elves went about their own routines. Maude bribed a few of the elves with coins of gold to lower them to the jungle floor after they looked disinclined to help the strangers.

Fortunately, the elves performed the task for which they had been paid although the ride down was at such a rate that the lift actually bounced on the vine when it was brought to a sudden halt a few feet above the ground before being lowered the rest of the way. Maude led the way through the jungle just as the sun’s light began filtering through the canopy enough to give them some measure of visibility.

Just as Maude was thinking that they should be drawing close to their goal, bright rays of late afternoon sunlight shined through the trees just up ahead. Thirty minutes later, the party stepped out of the jungle and into a circular grassy clearing. Stepping out from under the oppressive weight of the dark jungle was akin to having just been freed from a dungeon in Maude’s mind.

The amount of open ground was as impressive as it was mysterious. It constituted a wide strip no more than two hundred yards deep that ran parallel to where they stood as if an incredibly wide road had been cut through the jungle. On the far side of the grassy road, the forest resumed its domination of the land. The only thing that captured their attention more than the highway was the stone monolith that jutted just above the tops of the trees about two miles away.

“I think we found our ruins,” Maude informed her group.

“Do you think this road was made by someone?” Malek asked. “It’s awfully straight. And if so, why does it run parallel to the temple and not to it?”

“It ain’t a road,” Borik blurted out. “It curves very slightly and by the same degree in both directions. It’s a circle, like a big grass moat and the ruins are the castle right in the middle.”

Maude studied the clearing more and saw that Borik was right. She could just make out the minor curvature and only because the dwarf had pointed it out to her.

“Let’s go, the temple’s not going to come to us,” Maude commanded.

The adventurers crossed the open ground in minutes then felt the suffocating gloom wash back over them as the trees and the late afternoon stole away the light like a miser hording his gold. It took another thirty minutes of walking before the object of their search came within view. A hundred yards ahead of them lay not a jumble of ruined buildings as they had expected but a massive step pyramid that occupied a huge patch of ground and rose hundreds of feet high.

A thick carpeting of leaves crunched under their feet as they approached the massive pyramid. Even Borik stood in awe at the construction of such a colossal structure made from gigantic carved stones, each as big as a carriage. Dark green creepers climbed the outside of the pyramid in a quest to reach the top and bask in the light that shone above.