Chapter Thirteen

Forest Divination

Alder Xanthos

Warded cenote cavern, Vo Forest, north of Voloi

Sixteen days after Xishlon

“Elloren is no longer under Vogel’s control,”

Alder Xanthos states before growing quiet, letting her words sink in.

Elloren’s allies surround her in the cenote sinkhole’s sheltered, belowground depths. Overcast light shines down through the circular, warded opening above. The cenote’s underground lake is mirror-still beside them, reflecting the waterfalling violet roots of the Noi Oak that rises like a sentinel from the cenote’s upper edge.

Alder slides her hand over one of the oak’s cascading roots, lifting her gaze toward the interconnected Alfsigr and Varg glamouring runes hovering over the cenote’s entrance—runes to glamour the hole to appear, to those above, like a mass of stone and repel tracking spells. To defend against Vu Trin attack.

A military hunt is underway for every possible ally of the Black Witch. Alder’s ability to summon and speak with eagles, including the small eagles of Eastern Realm, is the only thing that enabled her to evade Vu Trin and Amaz capture and quickly locate this hiding place of Elloren Gardner Grey’s supporters.

The eagles of Noilaan have proved to be far better trackers than even the most elite Vu Trin.

Alder’s Dryad rootlines abruptly seize, pulled taut, a vision from the tree root flowing in and overtaking her empathic mind, tree after tree being blasted to bits in explosions of Shadowfire as Vogel’s forces attack the last remaining league of her Caledonian Forest in the Western Realm.

“No . . .”

Alder rasps, devastation gripping hold of her lines. She shuts her eyes tight against the nightmare consuming her Forest, the Natural World being torn to shreds . . .

“Alder.”

The kindness in Trystan Gardner’s voice cuts through the agony, his gentle hand now on her shoulder. Trembling, Alder opens her eyes, the vision fading to reveal the angular green face of Elloren’s younger brother, who is down on one knee beside her.

“My Forest!”

Alder sputters to him as another vision blasts through her mind—images of terrified, burning animals, trees burning and screaming for her . . .

An aura of comfort flows in around her as the second vision fades, the energy warm and embracing. She looks up at the canopy of the cenote cavern’s Noi Oak sentinel as the tree sends an aura of invisible branches to gently brush Alder’s back and arms, the loving oak like a child caught up in a war, desperate to give comfort to a loved one. Which both shatters Alder’s heart anew and stokes her courage.

Vogel will be coming for this new kindred Forest of mine too, she knows. He’ll be coming for this very tree . . .

“Dryad.”

Diana Ulrich’s low, commanding voice sounds, the Lupine coming down to one knee by her other side.

Alder pulls in a shuddering breath and meets the alpha’s amber stare.

“Tell us what you know of Elloren,”

Diana bids, the fierce compassion in her tone a lifeline as the last screams of Alder’s Caledonian Forest rip through her. Determined to fight back, Alder holds Diana’s ferocious gaze, remembering what she overheard a Vu Trin soldier telling Vestylle and Alcippe soon after their arrival in the East—

The Lupine Diana Ulrich was a force of nature during the Battle for Voloi, ripping the heads off Mages and their broken dragons with unmatched fury. Slayed over a hundred of them. Nothing left but scattered pieces of their corpses . . .

Another Lupine kneels behind Diana—her mate, Rafe Ulrich—and Alder’s tracery of Wyvern blood stirs.

It’s strong, she scents, the mating bond that exists between these two alphas, as it always is with Lupines, like a shaft of molten-amber steel running between them, love burning bright in it. The power of that love is so compelling that when Diana places her hand on Alder’s shoulder, Alder finds she’s able to swallow back the edge of her wild grief and regain her voice.

“The Great Source Tree, III,”

she falteringly tells them, “it’s broken Elloren Gardner Grey’s Shadow fasting.”

Her eyes slide to the amber gaze of another towering Lupine, Andras Volya, his Amaz runic facial tattoos incongruous on a male face but comforting in their familiarity, being so similar to Alder’s own. “Elloren is now both Dryad Witch and Forest Guardian,”

she tells them.

Elloren’s allies trade looks of surprise.

“What is it you see?”

Diana presses. A command to answer, but kindly leveled.

Alder grips a purple root spilling down from above, the entire Forest’s mosaic of thought filling her mind. “The Forest has absorbed Elloren,”

she answers. She grows quiet once more, flooded by the sensation of a cataclysmic shifting of energy throughout the entire Forest Matrix of Erthia, all of it contracting toward a single point.

Elloren.

“What do you mean by ‘absorbed’?”

Trystan asks.

Alder closes her eyes and lets herself slip back into the Forest’s mind’s eye. “I see an image of Elloren the Forest Witch,”

she says. “Surrounded by branches. Roots flowing down from her feet. Green light sparking through her rootlines—”

“Rootlines?”

Rafe cuts in. “Has the Forest imprisoned her?”

Alder opens her eyes to find Rafe’s amber eyes glowing with intensity, his fists flexed, every muscle coiled, as if he’s ready to rip through the entire Forest to find his sister.

“No,”

Alder clarifies as she struggles to maintain her link to the Forest’s full aura, the Lupine alphas’ air of command a difficult thing to think past. She closes her eyes once more and concentrates. “I’m piecing out more. The Great Prophecy . . . it’s still written in the trees, but . . .”

Her eyes bolt open, and she looks to Elloren’s allies in great confusion. “The Forest has flipped its allegiance.”

The black-haired, green-glimmering Lupine, Aislinn Ulrich, gasps, her amber eyes widening. “But that would set the Forest against Yvan—”

“The Prophecy is rubbish,”

Trystan cuts in. “We shouldn’t be giving it any credence, whatsoever.”

“Can you read where Elloren is?”

Sagellyn Za’Nor presses, her purple-hued expression tight with urgency as she clenches her wounded hands, chains of pain-dampening runes wound around them to assuage the bloodied gashes from her broken fasting. Sage’s heavily armed mate, the Smaragdalfar monarch, Ra’Ven Za’Nor, stands beside her, his silver eyes intent.

“Elloren is in the Northern Forest,”

Alder states.

They’re all silent, trading sober looks.

The Northern Forest.

Leagues and leagues away.

Another series of images flashes through Alder’s mind, and she holds up a hand. “There is a man of fire in the Northern Forest . . . waiting for Elloren to emerge from the Great Tree . . . the prophesied Icaral the trees are aligning against—Yvan Guryev. And there’s a flock of giant ravens and two Fae’kin traveling through a Dryad portal toward the Forest Witch’s location . . . an Asrai Fae woman I know . . . Tierney Calix . . . and a Man of Death and Serpents.”

A human-size spider emerges from the cavern’s shadows, and Alder startles, recoiling as the spider swiftly scuttles toward them. Her breath caught in her chest, Alder watches as the great spider morphs into a petite, dark-hued woman with tight black curls, her posture almost demure, save for the extra six dark eyes set around her two main ones. Sylla Vuul, Alder registers, awe mingling with her fear—one of the three Wyvernguard Deathkin she overheard the Amaz speaking of.

“Viger is the Man of Death and Serpents you speak of,”

Sylla Vuul tells Alder, her voice’s subterranean thrum sending a cool shiver down Alder’s spine. “The giant crows,”

Sylla continues, “are Errilor Death Ravens. They have returned to align with the Forest Witch. I have read the reverberations of this bond-intension in the web matrix of my spider kindreds.”

“Vogel will come for Elloren,”

Alder warns. “With an army the likes of which Erthia has never seen.”

“Well, we’ll be coming for the Magedom with our own army,”

Diana Ulrich snarls, exposing sharp, gleaming canines.

The fine hairs on the back of Alder’s neck bristle.

Gray smoke abruptly tendrils across Alder’s tree-vision, Elloren’s allies whisked from sight as a more potent Forest-vision invades her mind.

Marcus Vogel—staring straight at her through her withering root connection to the destroyed Wilds of Amazakaraan. As he siphons their elemental power up into his Wand. His cruel mind touches Alder’s, his slithering Shadow winding tight around her rootlines. The images of Elloren then Yvan then Shadow wrapped around a spiraling green-glowing wand blast through Alder’s mind with agonizing force.

Alder cries out and wrests her hands from the purple root, falling back onto the cavern’s stone. The terrifying connection snaps loose, her body trembling from it.

“I briefly linked to Vogel,”

she rasps. “He’s not just going after Elloren and the Wilds.”

“What else does he seek?”

Wrenfir Harrow demands, the Mage’s kohl-rimmed, spider-tattoo-bracketed green eyes hard as granite.

Alder meets Wrenfir’s furious gaze. “Vogel seeks a Wand of Power,”

she answers. “The green Wand-Stylus crafted from a branch of the Great Source Tree, III. The Verdyllion.”

“The Sacred Wand-Stylus of Myth,”

the bespectacled Kelt, Jules Kristian, comments. “Known to every culture on Erthia by a unique name.”

He exchanges a pointed look with Mage Lucretia Quillen beside him, and Alder’s empathy is momentarily distracted by the sensation of Lucretia’s invisible water aura ardently encircling Jules.

“Elloren had possession of the Zhilin Wand-Stylus,”

Kam Vin notes from where she stands beside her silent sister, Ni Vin, lines of Vu Trin silver stars strapped across the sisters’ black uniformed chests.

“It’s unlikely Elloren has it still,”

Andras postulates, “or Vogel would have taken hold of it when he had control of her.”

“Wherever its location,”

Alder says, “Vogel is coming for this Wand-Stylus. And he’s coming for both Elloren and Yvan. He wants to force the Prophecy.”

“We need to get to Elloren and Yvan and the Wand-Stylus before Vogel does,”

Jarod Ulrich insists, his tone decided, his hand tight around Aislinn’s, unbreakable love swirling around them both.

The young Mage, Thierren Stone, steps toward her. “Vogel will go after the Dryads with Elloren and Yvan,”

he warns, his severe features drawn with an ever-present tortured look. “I’m ready to go West and fight with the surviving Tree Fae.”

Compassion rises in Alder—one touch of Thierren’s hand was all it took for her to read the unassuageable grief inside him over the capture and certain death of his beloved, the Urisk woman Sparrow Trillium, lost to him when the Vo Mountain Range exploded around her. But Alder can also read Thierren’s single-minded willingness to give his life for any Dryads that might remain in the Northern Forest, due to having witnessed a massacre of the Tree Fae during his brief time as a Mage soldier.

“Vogel’s army will be on dragonback,”

Fain Quillen, Lucretia’s brother, cautions. The powerful Water Mage exchanges a somber look with his horned life partner, the Zhilon’ile Wyvern-shifter Sholindrile Xanthile.

“That gives them a huge logistical advantage,”

Sholindrile agrees.

“You’ve dragon flight,”

Sholindrile’s nephew, Vothendrile Xanthile, offers Trystan. Vothe flexes his onyx wings, threads of lightning forking through them, the silver tips of his dark, spiked hair catching the light.

He wants to claim Trystan Gardner as his mate, Alder can’t help but scent, Vothendrile and Trystan’s mutual attraction one of the strongest she’s ever encountered.

“We’ll need access to more flight than just Sho and Vothe,”

Rivyr’el Talonir challenges, the pale Elf’s rainbow-glitter decorated eyes sparkling in the silvery light.

Alder tips her head toward the cenote’s rune-warded opening and sends out a call with her mind. Powerful wings beat down on the air above, and her kindred flock of Giant Saffron Eagles soars down through the cenote’s oval opening, Fireling in the lead, the mammoth wingeds alighting all around.

Fireling, the Great Eagle of the Agolith, steps forward and touches her forehead to Alder’s, flooding her with the entire flock’s love and willingness to fight.

Alder reaches up to stroke Fireling’s huge head, feeling the arc of destiny sweeping down to gather them all up in its arms. She turns to Elloren’s allies, readiness to do battle for the Forest sizzling through her. “We’ll give you flight,”

she offers.

Rivyr’el shoots her a wide, dazzling smile as he reaches into his alabaster tunic’s pocket and draws something out. He unfurls his pale fingers to display two sapphire-rune-marked, fully charged portal stones. “These can speed us there,”

he offers. “They’re linked into the magic of a powerful Vu Trin sky portal.”

“How in the name of Vo on High did you manage to get hold of those?”

Kam Vin marvels.

Rivyr’el jabs his alabaster thumb at Bleddyn Arterra, the tall, broad green-hued Urisk woman grinning conspiratorially at him.

“Turns out,”

Bleddyn crows, “Rivyr’el, Or’myr Syll’vir, and I have a talent for pilfering from the Vu Trin military.”

“Well, all right, then,”

Rafe Gardner says, giving them both a dangerous, teeth-baring smile. “Let’s go find Yvan and my sister.”