Forest For The Trees (Book 3) (58 page)

A horrible scream split the woods.  The horse reared,
its head enveloped in the thick cloud.  Its hooves beat uselessly through the
air while Dietrik was flung from the saddle with a startled shout devoid of
coherent meaning.

The vapors quickly vanished.  Marik watched with
horrified fascination as the last wisps were sucked into the animal’s
nostrils.  Still screaming, the horse fell to the ground, writhing in pain. 
Clots of loamy dirt and leaves were hurled everywhere from its thrashing.

Marik forced his attention away to search for Dietrik
after the horse’s skin began blistering.  Massive bubbling within the flesh
erupted from withers to fetlocks until the beast looked sickeningly like a stew
pot over a cook fire.

“Dietrik!  Hey, Dietrik!”  Marik found his friend
fighting to disentangle his limbs from the fir’s.  Raw scrapes were red on his
forehead and cheeks, his arms and hands.

“What sort of bloody welcome do you call that?” 
Dietrik sounded both furious and scared white.

“Good gods, you frightened me there!”

“You were frightened?  Check my bloody smallclothes
why don’t you?”

Marik shook his head and offered Dietrik a hand.  Once
extracted from the boughs, he trembled on his feet.  “Are you out of your gods
damned tree?  And what in the bleeding hells did you do to my horse?”

They glanced only briefly at the animal before quickly
averting their gaze.  The horse was liquefying, its hooves tumbling to
disparate resting places when they rolled free from the jellied meat.

“Oh,” Marik stammered.  “It’s…not because of you.  It
was…hey!  You damn near killed the wrong man!  You aren’t allowed to use any
sort of magic ever again without
my
say so!”

The city mage was too busy undergoing severe
chastisement from Lynn to pay any attention to Marik’s paltry threats.

“The wrong man?”

“Let’s move away to talk,” Marik suggested.  A plague
smell combining rotting carcasses and spoiled eggs had begun emanating from the
puddle of horse.

“Anyplace upwind,” Dietrik allowed.  “Weeping saints
on crutches, are you going to explain that?”

“It was a misunderstanding.  Sorry about that.”

“You make it a habit these days to kill every chap you
run across?”

Dietrik chose their destination by virtue of staying a
half-step ahead of Marik.  He crossed to the opposite end of the fir screen,
far away from the others.  Marik noted it silently, deciding Dietrik wished to
keep clear of the magic users and their unnatural powers.  Small surprise.

“An Arronath force went past a moment before you rode
in.  We thought you were one of them.  Lucky thing you weren’t run down by
them.”

“Luck of my own making, mate.  I’ve been riding their
traces for the last half-mark before the grass could unbend from their hooves.”

Marik felt his eyebrows crawl upward.  “What for? 
Don’t tell me Torrance has
you
working scout duties.”

“The commander has too much on his plate to worry
about as it is without botching basic duty assignments.”

“His plate?  What do you mean?”

“That deployment left Armonsfield right when I thought
I had that blighted town cleared,” Dietrik pushed on, ignoring Marik.  “It was
a wrench to get clear before they found me.  Waited them out in a wood not
unlike this one.  I’ve been following them south since.”

“You should have reported a group that large on the
move.  Torrance needs to know where all the enemy units are.”

“No point in that.  I had to move south.”

“What for?  South?”

“Yes.  I had to move south.”

Marik waited.  After a silent stretch, he tentatively
asked, “Why…did you have to move south, Dietrik?”

“I had to move south.”  Dietrik’s gaze had glassed
over.  A troublesome worm roiled in Marik’s stomach as he watched his friend. 
He moved his hand, intending to touch Dietrik on the shoulder.  Before he
could, the vacancy faded from Dietrik’s eyes.  “South.  Huh?  How bizarre.”

“What’s wrong?  You don’t sound like yourself.”

“I am not certain I feel like myself.  It seemed so
damned…
urgent
to come this way fast as I could.  Or, that is…I meant to
come down the mountains looking for you in the first place.  Except once I
found out where you were going to come out of the Stoneseams, it was the only
thing on my mind.  That is hardly like me.”

“No one knew where we would come down,” Marik
answered, feeling lost.  “
We
didn’t know until we actually got here. 
Those mountains are a deathtrap!  Forget every bard’s tale you’ve heard about
pastures and lakes and flowery valleys.”

Dietrik cleared the last vagueness from his expression
by butting his temples several times with the heel of his palm.  “I saw you
lot.  On the…whatever the name was.  An ancient road through the mountains.”

“If there are any roads through there, I would have
paid through the nose to learn about them.”  Marik kept his tone gentle,
convinced that the fall had addled Dietrik after all.

“Gods damn it, don’t be difficult!  I’ve had a right
pisser of a day as it is!”

“Keep your voice down!”  A glance assured him that
Lynn maintained the group’s attention through her continuing dressing down of
the battle-inept city mage.  But who else might be within hearing range?  “This
is enemy territory, for your patron’s sake!”

Dietrik’s concession to that was to speak through a
clenched jaw.  “What in bloody purgatory are you doing this far south, anyway? 
I never would have found you if I hadn’t run into that red wraith haunting
you.”

“There was only one route out of those fu—excuse me? 
You couldn’t possibly have said what I thought you did.”

“Oh, quite.”  His face was grim.  No amusement existed
there.  This was the same Dietrik who had greeted Marik upon his return to
consciousness in the Healer’s tent after the Rovasii battle.  “An unsettling
encounter all around.  I am not certain what to make of it.”

Marik stared dumbfounded.  Finally, he simply ordered,
“Tell me what happened.”

Dietrik spoke in a monotone.  He started with his
taking a horse from the larger herd to make his solitary search.  His progression
through the day only took three or four simple sentences.  Recounting his
unexpected meeting took far longer.

“His
hands
?”

“Yes,” Dietrik affirmed.  “Fingertip to fingertip,
like so.  Never bothered to remove his gloves.”

“That’s impossible!”

“Don’t tell me I did not see what I saw, mate.”

“But you can’t scrye with only your
hands
!  You
have to have a mirror to reflect the images you want to scrye!  And for
damned
certain you
must
have a catalyst to target the seeker!”

“How certain are you?  Are you a scrying master these
days?”

“I…no, I suppose I’m not.  I know there are other
methods mentioned in Natalie’s diary, but I haven’t studied them.”

Dietrik shrugged it away.  Matters of magical
achievement were unimportant to him.  “It brought me this far.  So in the end,
you can’t call it a coopered claim.”

“Whether his prediction was faulty is only part of the
problem.”  Marik paced while scratching each elbow.  “This entire business
makes me uneasy.  And I can’t say why.  I don’t like it.”

“I thought you decided he was an unheralded crusader
of the light.”

“Hardly!  I don’t know what to make of him.  That old
saying, the one that goes ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’.  You and I both
know that’s a load of rotten fish.  If it were true, there never would have
been a war in all history with more than two sides.”

“I would take care before picking a row with the likes
of him, mate.  We would be collecting your pieces from halfway to the Stygan.”

“As long as we don’t know what he’s after, we can’t
afford to think of him in friendly terms.”

“That would mean your father fell in with a deceiver.”

“Hmm.”  Marik stopped his pacing to face Dietrik. 
“Did you see him there?  My father?”

“No.  Funny, but the thought of him never entered my
mind.  I should have questioned him about Rail.”

“But you came south directly instead.”  Marik resumed
his restless motion, plucking a twig to chew on as he did so.  “He might be
near, then.  Close by.  Father…”

“I doubt you will have a run in with him again until
this walking tomato settles whatever score he has to settle.”

“Damn it!  What is he after?  Waiting out alone in the
rain…”

“He mentioned waiting for someone.  I expect it was
this fellow your father mentioned before.”

“The fugitive?  Wait…uh, Xenos, right?”

Dietrik shrugged.  “If that is what you say his name
is.”

“But he’s dead.  He was on the Citadel when it
crashed.  Nothing could have survived.”

“The tomato-man says he did.  Claims they had a row of
their own in the middle of our own fighting, and Xenos escaped.”

“He must have spent every drop of power he had to
destroy the overlook!  Are you saying he still had the strength to escape
certain death?”  Before Dietrik could answer, the pervasive chill from less
than a half-mark before returned.  “You mean that was him?  Was that him we
felt?”

“Felt?  Now you’ve gone and lost me.”

“In the group that passed before you arrived. 
That…power…”

This time Dietrik listened while Marik recounted the
events since the battle.  Marik searched for suitable words to describe
traversing a fragmented path several thousand feet up a mountain face.  As he
spoke, the terms ‘high’ and ‘windy’ and ‘narrow’ sounded woefully inadequate.

“Galemar has a serious problem then, mate,” Dietrik
said in summary.  “We have two magic types of unknown origin and intention
running loose.  Strong ones at that.  This on top of no-holds-barred invasion.”

“It makes me wonder how much of this Nolier might
know.  Makes for convenient timing if you want to steal a rich gold mine.  Do
it at a time when most of the kingdom’s armies will be needed elsewhere.”

“Who can say?  But this is hardly their first grab at
it.  Coincidences happen every day to countless souls.”

“It can’t be written off, though.  We’ll have to tell
Torrance about it fast and see what he thinks.  His combat experience outranks
both of ours put together.”

“How do you plan on telling Torrance any-bloody-thing
at all?”

Marik gestured in annoyance.  “I’m sorry about your
horse, but we are only about a day from Drakesfield by foot!  You’ve walked
further on a march before.”

“You can’t go back there, mate.  They would eat you
alive.”

“Me?  Who are you talking about?”

“Tybalt’s chosen cadre.  That reminds me.  Torrance
wanted me to pass a message.  He suggests it would be in your best interests to
return to Kingshome without contacting any army officers.  At least, not
face-to-face.”

Marik listened in stunned disbelief as Dietrik plumbed
the further depths before the day’s adventures.  “How can they possibly blame
me
for any of that?”

“Because they want to.  Mate, don’t fight it.  This is
your ticket out of the squeeze.”

“I never wanted the pleasure of Raymond’s deluded
ideas in the first place!  But I’ve got the responsibility for it now.  I can’t
run off because Tybalt’s showing his ass!”

“Well, you can hardly return to Drakesfield either! 
You’ll be arrested before you can adjust your groin and shipped to a cell the
knight-marshal no doubt prepared with high hopes before he left Thoenar.”

Marik halted his pacing to glare through the
interwoven tree limbs around them.  The trees were spaced, allowing gray
overcast to fill as much woodland ceiling as greenery.

“What should I do…” he mumbled repeatedly.

Dietrik cut in after the eleventh refrain.  “You
should chuck this entire affair is what you should do!  A merc has no business
poking his nose where it never belonged!  Torrance is as high up the ladder as
any of us ought to be.”

“No.”  Marik spoke the refusal softly.  “Torrance can
vie with Gibbon for leadership.  You’re right, there is nothing we can do there
any longer.  But this Xenos threat can’t be ignored either, can it?  So we will
send Wyman and the others back to Torrance with the information we have, then
you and I will follow the Arronaths to figure out what they are about.”

“
Me
?  Hoof it along after a mage strong enough
to blast a cliff to gravel?”

Marik blinked.  “Oh…of course.  I’m sorry, Dietrik.  I
wasn’t thinking.  You should go back with Wyman.  You’re right.  I’d be better
off going after that group alone.”

“Since when,” Dietrik challenged, crossing his arms
stubbornly, “have you ever managed to steer clear of trouble without me?  It
sounds as if your head is swelling.  If I must, I will lance it with my
rapier.”