A Champion Falls, page 6
Another branch swung toward him, and this time Gavin rolled into the trunk. Because of how close he was to it, the branches couldn’t strike him.
That had to be the key.
“Stay close to the trunk!” he hollered.
Two of the strange trees turned toward him. They swept their branches at him, whipping at him at the same time. Gavin drew on his stone skin enchantment, adding power through the El’aras ring and letting that fill him.
There was a flicker of something that hadn’t been present before. He could feel nihilar blooming within him, and he borrowed that energy, tracing that sense as it came through him. That was what he needed to focus on.
It was a difficult power to call on, though he could use that as well. He prepared to strike. Instead, the branch struck him, sending him staggering off to the side.
Gavin stumbled and landed near Tristan.
Tristan glanced down at him. “You need a better style than that.”
“I don’t see you faring any better.”
Tristan chuckled, and he spun out of the way of two branches before landing almost in a split in front of Gavin. “Just have to avoid them.”
“It’s not so much a matter of avoiding them as it is stopping them,” Gavin said.
“I thought your plan was to force them toward the bralinath trees.”
“Has that been working for you?”
Tristan frowned, and he danced out of the way of another branch, which swung toward Gavin’s head. Gavin brought his sword up, powering the El’aras ring and mixing it with some of the nihilar, and the blade blazed with a gray light.
As the branch swung at him, he hacked at it. There was no form, no technique, no grace in the style, but as the blade struck the branch, the tree whipped back, withdrawing as if it were in pain.
Gavin smirked. “See?”
“All I saw was you hitting a branch,” Tristan said before twisting away.
Gavin needed to use the sword, and he needed to use the nihilar power within it somehow. But what was that going to involve? The only thing he could think of was that he had to find some way to dart toward these trees, and he had to figure out what it was that he could summon.
The power of nihilar flowed within the blade, which he could use against the trees. They withdrew from that power, not his El’aras abilities.
Gavin ducked underneath another blow, and he got close to the trunk of one of the strange trees. Branches sprouted out from the ground, and he realized they were roots meant for it to walk on. The tree pulled its roots free and lumbered forward.
Somehow, Gavin needed to immobilize the tree. Then it couldn’t attack. Better yet, if he could cut through the roots, it might kill the thing.
He laughed to himself.
Gaspar grunted. “I hear you, boy. What’s so funny?”
“Oh, just the idea of trying to kill a tree. Can you imagine what Wrenlow would say if he were here?”
“I can hear you,” Wrenlow piped in, coming through the enchantment as clear as if he were standing right next to them. “I can’t believe you’re fighting trees. What kind of enchantments are those?”
Gavin ducked below a sweeping branch, and he landed near the trunk again. He hacked at a root, but he missed. It pulled free and swung toward him, like a foot trying to kick him. He rolled away.
“I’m not even sure they’re enchantments,” Gavin said, jumping to his feet near another tree.
“If they aren’t enchantments, then what kind of trees can walk?” Wrenlow asked.
“The dangerous kind.”
Gavin stabbed his blade into the trunk. He pushed the power of both the El’aras ring and the nihilar into the blade, and it exploded into the tree.
The sword hummed and trembled for a moment, as if it were trying to figure out what it was going to do. Gavin pulled his blade free, and the tree swung its branch toward him, but it was slower this time. He stabbed again, barely avoiding the blow. His sword struck the tree, and he forced as much power out of himself as he could, sending the El’aras energy, along with that of the nihilar, into the tree.
The blade vibrated again.
Another branch came toward Gavin, but this one was slower still.
It’s working.
He ducked out of the way of the branch, and he jabbed his blade into the tree again and again. Each time he did, it felt as if the tree fought against him. How many were here?
And what of the others?
He ignored those thoughts.
He stabbed the tree again. Now the branch swinging toward him slowed further. A few more blows, and more pressure built from him, both El’aras and nihilar. Each time it did, Gavin could feel the tree slow even more.
And then it stopped.
The tree trembled and shook as if it were trying to move, but it could not. One of the roots that popped out of the ground caught Gavin’s attention, and he brought his sword up, then down in a sharp arc. He hacked at it as if he were taking an axe to a log.
When he cut through it, there was a strange low-pitched shriek that built from deep within the tree, and then it spread out. The branches shuddered and fell still.
Gavin looked up at the tree, searching for any sign that would tell him why trees were able to move like this, but he saw nothing. He rumbled forward, getting out from underneath the branches.
All around him were other battles.
He found Rayena and Brandon backing away from another tree. Gavin darted forward, using their distraction to get beneath it, and he drove his blade into the trunk.
The tree shrieked, and it turned toward him. He spun again and shoved the blade into it. With one jab after another, he could feel the tree slow.
Then something swatted him from behind.
Gavin tumbled, coming to land in a clearing near one of the bralinath trees. Thankfully, he hadn’t landed on it, as he didn’t know whether the bralinath tree would allow him to get close enough to touch it. But whatever had attacked him didn’t come nearer.
He got to his feet and started forward, when branches swept down, creating a cage around him.
Gavin brought his blade up.
“No!”
He looked up at the shout. Brandon was hollering at him while running and pointing. A branch swung down and slapped Brandon, sending him splaying out on the forest floor. As soon as he crashed to the ground, he looked up at Gavin, eyes wide, shaking his head.
Gavin glanced up. It was only then that he realized why Brandon was yelling the way he was—Gavin was within a cage of the bralinath tree. He lowered his sword, not wanting to attack the tree, though it held him in place.
He turned back to the enormous trunk. It was easily twenty paces around, and the tree towered over the rest of the forest. The branch that had come down to block his exit was as large as some of the other trees near him.
“I don’t know why you’re holding me, but I need to get out to help my friends,” Gavin explained. “If you can release me, I would appreciate that.”
He felt foolish talking to a tree, but given what he had seen with the way the other trees moved and attacked, Gavin thought that maybe this was exactly what he needed to be doing. The tree trembled as if it were answering.
Thump, thump, thump.
It was the same steady thumping he had felt before, but there was a different characteristic to it. It seemed to be slowing, fading.
Thump, thump, thump.
It was quieter than before.
Gavin frowned.
Someone shouted, and he turned his attention back to the main part of the forest. As he did, he realized why the sounds were fading.
The trees were moving. Not toward Arashil—they were retreating. All of them were leaving, except for the ones Gavin had stabbed.
And the bralinath tree had prevented him from stopping their retreat.
Gavin was only able to watch through the branches hanging down around him as the other trees retreated. When they were gone, the bralinath tree’s branches lifted and freed Gavin. He stumbled forward, looking for his friends and trying to understand what had just taken place here.
All around him, the forest was quiet and still.
CHAPTER FIVE
“I don’t suppose you have any explanation as to what just happened there,” Gaspar said to him.
Gavin shook his head. “Not at all.”
The forest had fallen quiet, though there was an occasional tremble from someplace deep beneath him. Gavin could feel that strange energy, but he didn’t know if it was from the trees or some power that echoed around him.
He stood in front of one of the trees he had stabbed, which hadn’t retreated. He could still feel the energy and tension from within the tree that suggested it was trying to move, but whatever he had done to it had prevented it from being able to.
Brandon got to his feet and dusted himself off. Rayena stood near one of the other injured trees, talking quietly with Tristan.
“The forest moved,” Gaspar said.
Gavin glanced over to him, nodding. “The forest moved.”
“And we fought trees. Trees.”
“I’m aware of what we fought.”
“I’m just trying to get a point across that this wasn’t anything normal.”
Gavin chuckled. “I think that if you stay with me, you will find that more and more things are going to be quite different than what you expected before.”
“Trees, boy.”
“I know,” Gavin said, clapping Gaspar on the shoulder.
He touched the wounded tree. He wasn’t sure if it was going to fight him or try to hurt him, but it didn’t do any of that. A tremble came from within the trunk, almost as if it were afraid. The trunk was warm as well—certainly warmer than any tree Gavin had been around. He could feel the energy coursing within it.
He focused on his core reserves, on the El’aras side of him, and he drew power up through him, through the ring, and pushed it into the tree. He wasn’t sure what he was doing or why, only that it felt right. But more than that, it was his way of trying to understand. As he continued to push that power through him, he could feel something build. Some part of him echoed up into the tree, and he could feel the tree’s injury.
“What are you doing?” Tristan asked, coming over to stand across from him.
Gaspar eyed Tristan warily. Rayena stayed a step behind Tristan, glancing from him to Gavin, almost as though she couldn’t decide who she needed to be following. Gavin would’ve laughed at that if they were not dealing with something else so ridiculous.
“I’m just trying to understand the tree,” he said.
“You’re trying to understand the tree?” Tristan said. “I think the tree made its intentions with you quite clear. If you want to understand it, maybe you should—”
“The tree didn’t make its intentions clear at all. It was only attacking.”
He looked over, and there was at least one other tree that he’d stabbed, which couldn’t retreat either, but he hadn’t cut through the root like he had with this one. It was able to move, though it was doing so incredibly slowly, retreating only about a foot every ten minutes or so.
“Somebody sent these at us,” Gavin said.
“Or they decided to attack,” Tristan said.
“Have you heard of trees like this before?” He looked to Tristan, then to Rayena, and finally to Brandon, who had joined them. “The bralinath tree didn’t want me to harm them any more than I had to.”
Was the bralinath tree angry that he had cut through the root system? Gavin didn’t know if the tree could be angry, but given that he didn’t know much about these trees in the first place, he would have to be careful.
“These are seeker trees,” Brandon said. Some of the cheerfulness had returned to his voice. “Though I wouldn’t have expected to see them out here. They’re quite a ways from their home.”
“You’ve heard of them. Can you tell us anything about them?” Gavin asked.
“All I know is that they’re called seeker trees. They’re not usually found in this forest. It’s possible this place is hard on them.”
“Good,” Tristan muttered.
“The other trees will choke off their sunlight,” Brandon said. “Over time, the trees won’t survive. That is, unless the others around them give them space to grow.”
“Have you ever heard of seeker trees moving?” Gavin said.
“Well, they are known to migrate. We generally stay away from them. They leave us well enough alone, so we leave them well enough alone. They don’t move very far, and they surely don’t move very fast, so this is a bit surprising for me.”
“They marched toward us. And they were moving quickly.”
Not only moving quickly, but they were attacking quickly. Why now? Had somebody known they were here and decided to target them?
They had come out here to test whether the nihilar would follow and attack, so presumably this served as answer to that. But why use trees here and not in Yoran?
Gavin ran his hand along the surface of the tree, feeling the energy within it. It was trembling still, as if afraid of his touch. Then again, he had stabbed it and cut through one of its legs, making it impossible for the tree to escape. He felt a little bad about that.
He frowned. “Where were they going?”
“They were coming after us,” Gaspar said.
“But why?”
He focused on his core reserves and the ring, and he let the power flow up through him, through the tree, wishing there was some way for him to understand just what it had been trying to do. As he concentrated on the magic and pushed it out through him, there were no answers for him.
He could feel the energy of the trembling tree, the power so distinctly different than his own. And he could feel something else—a connection that traced away from the tree.
Gavin focused on it, trying to feel for that connection, and when he realized where it was going, how it was flowing, he turned to the others.
“The seeker trees are connecting to the bralinath tree,” he said.
“Well, if they are both sentient trees, then maybe that makes sense,” Gaspar said.
“None of this makes sense.”
Gaspar snorted. “Nope. I’m sure the kid has some explanation for it.”
“Any thoughts, Wrenlow?” Gavin asked through the enchantment.
“Actually, I haven’t heard of seeker trees,” Wrenlow said through the enchantment. “I haven’t heard of bralinath trees either. I have a few books here that I’m going to look through, but I don’t know if I would come up with anything fast enough to help you.”
“So we have just been attacked by trees,” Gaspar mumbled once Wrenlow fell quiet. “I don’t suppose this is what you would have expected?”
“Not at all,” Gavin said. “I figured we would face enchantments. Maybe the nihilar. Maybe sorcerers.” He shrugged. “To be honest, I didn’t really know what we might encounter, only that I was ready for the possibility that we’d have to deal with something magical. Something to give us an idea about what they were after at the temple outside Yoran. None of this makes sense to me.”
Gavin had considered plenty of different possibilities of what they might find, but nothing had included trees. The idea that they had come across trees that attacked them still felt impossible. But he was perfectly willing to acknowledge some of the impossible things that he had encountered these days. Now that his power had continued to grow, it made sense that he was dealing with increasingly challenging things.
But why would everything be accelerating like this?
He turned to Tristan, who was talking quietly with Rayena. He stepped away from the tree and moved to stand in front of his old mentor.
“What exactly were you expecting to happen?” Gavin asked.
Tristan looked up and locked eyes with him for a moment, then nodded to Rayena. She backed away to join Brandon.
Gaspar stood alongside Gavin, and when Tristan glanced in his direction, the old thief shrugged. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m here for the boy.”
Tristan sneered. “The boy is not your responsibility.”
“He is my friend,” Gaspar said, glowering at Tristan.
Gavin found himself chuckling inside. Tristan’s fighting styles were such that he should be able to handle Gaspar with ease, though maybe not. Gavin continually told himself that he wouldn’t have any difficulty with Gaspar, but the old thief had made it very clear that he would never bring a direct confrontation with Gavin. If they were to fight, he would do it discreetly. And that was the same way that Gaspar would deal with Tristan.
Gavin stepped forward. “You’re still keeping things from me. Whatever it is, I think we need to know. You were training people to become Champions. Why?”
“Because of the prophecy,” Tristan said.
Gavin shook his head. “The prophecy that you didn’t believe in. There’s more to it. And for whatever reason, you’re still trying to keep it from me, and you want to shroud your intentions.” He looked around the forest, his gaze settling on the tree that had attacked him. The other one had retreated deeper into the forest and had made it far enough away that Gavin couldn’t see it easily, though he doubted it had gone all that far.
Tristan frowned at him. “What do you think you’ve been doing all this time?”
“I’ve been training to fight, but not to fight trees.”
Tristan looked up at the tree, his gaze narrowing for just a moment. “No. You have not been training to fight a tree, but you have been training to handle yourself, mastering every bit of your physical powers, and then your magical powers.”
“My magical powers? You haven’t done anything with that. In fact, I wouldn’t have known that I have any magical powers had you kept me with you.”
“But did I keep you with me?”
“This isn’t something you’ve been in control of,” Gavin said. As much as Tristan had tried to play it up as if he were somehow in control of events, Gavin couldn’t see how that would be possible here. Tristan certainly had ways of influencing him, but not like this.
“No,” Tristan agreed. “At a certain point, I had to release you and give you an opportunity to prove yourself. I could not control all of it, though I wanted to.”
