He stopped on his heel and spun to see Josef, his swordsman, sitting twenty paces back in the middle of the path with Nico, Josef’s constant shadow, sitting beside him. Beside her, Josef’s famous sword, the Heart of War, stood plunged into the hard-packed dirt, and beside it lay the enormous sack of gold they’d liberated from Mellinor’s sadly destroyed treasury. Despite the fine weather, none of them looked happy.
Eli heaved a dramatic sigh. “What?”
Josef stared right back at him. “I’m not taking another step until you tell me exactly where we’re going.”
Eli rolled his eyes.
“I didn’t ask what we were going to do when we got there.” Josef folded his arms over his chest. “I asked you,
“I am not.” Eli threw out his arms, taking in the scant undergrowth, rocky slopes, and slender, white-barked trees of the small valley they were in the middle of climbing out of. “We’re in the great north woods, which the Shapers call the Turningwood, and the Council of Thrones doesn’t have a name for because we left the Council maps a week ago. Specifically, we are in the Thousand Streams region of the Turningwood, a name you might appreciate, considering all the valleys we’ve had to climb through. Even more specifically, we are in the northeast corner of the Thousand Streams, where the streams are slightly less numerous. A little farther north and we’d be in the foothills of the Sleeping Mountains themselves, and a little farther east and we’d hit the frozen swamps on the coastal plain. So, as you see, I know exactly where we are, and it is exactly where we are supposed to be.”
Despite such a grand display of navigation, Josef did not look impressed. “If we’re where we’re supposed to be, why are we still walking?”
Eli turned and started up the hill again. “Because the house of the man we are looking for isn’t always in the same place.”
“You mean the man isn’t always in the same place,” Josef said, making no sound of following him.
“No.” Eli panted as he reached the crest of the valley. “I mean the house. If you don’t like it, complain to him.”
“
Eli shook his head and started down the other side of the hill, wishing that the swordsman would apply his stubbornness to something useful, like being a perfect gold carrier, or finding them something tastier than squirrel to eat. By the time he’d reached the bottom of the next valley, Josef had still not crested the ridge of the one before. Eli grimaced and kept walking, though more slowly and with one ear out for the sound of jingling gold, which would tell him if this was just a Josef bluff or if he was actually going to have to go back and push the man up the hill. Fortunately, the decision was rendered moot when he took another step forward and found nothing but air.
He yelped as the world spun upside down and sideways. Then, with a sharp pain in his ankles, it stopped, and he found himself hanging high in the branches of a tree. Blinking in surprise, Eli looked down, or up, depending, and saw he was strung up by his ankles in the branches of a large oak. That much he’d been prepared for, but how he was hanging took him by surprise. Instead of ropes, a knot of roots with dirt still clinging to them bound his feet, ankles, and lower legs. They moved as he watched, creaking with a sound very much like snickering. He was still staring at the roots and trying to figure out what had just happened when he heard Josef come over the hill. Eli craned his neck and started to yell a warning, but it was too late. The second Josef was off the rocky ravine, a snaking cluster of roots erupted from the ground and grabbed his feet. The swordsman flew into the air with a lurch and came to rest neatly beside Eli.
“Well,” Eli said. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Josef didn’t answer; he just scowled and bent over, wiggling his foot. There was a flash, and a long knife dropped out of his boot before the roots could tighten. The swordsman caught it deftly an inch from Eli’s face and bent over, reaching for the closest root.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Eli said, glancing up, or down. “It’s a bit of a drop.”
Josef followed his gaze. The ground swung dizzyingly a good thirty feet below them, but the drop was made even longer by the enormous hole the roots had left when they’d sprung. Josef shook his head in disgust and stuck the knife into his belt. “I thought you were friends with trees.”
“For the last time, it doesn’t work like that,” Eli said. “That’s like saying, ‘I thought you were friends with humans.’ Anyway, don’t be a grouch. We’ve found it! This is the Awakened Wood that guards the house.”
Josef sighed. “Wonderful. Fantastic welcome. Is your friend always this friendly, or are we a special exception?”
Before Eli could answer, a woman’s voice interrupted.
“Eli Monpress.” The words were heavy with laughter. “I wouldn’t have thought we’d catch you.”
Both men craned their necks. Directly below them a tall young woman in hunter’s leathers stepped out from behind the tree they were dangling from, a smug smile on her tan face. She was very young, not more than sixteen, and lanky, as though she hadn’t quite grown into her limbs yet. She crossed her long arms over her chest and stared at them as though daring Eli to try and talk his way out of this one. Eli opened his mouth to oblige her, but he never got the chance. From the shadows behind the girl, a pair of white, thin hands in silver manacles shot out and closed around her throat. The girl’s eyes bulged and she dropped to her knees as Nico flickered into sight behind her.
“Release them,” Nico said in a dry, terrifying voice. “Now.”
“No, Nico!” Eli shouted. “She’s not going to-”
The rest of it was lost in the girl’s roar as she ducked and tumbled forward, using Nico’s own iron grip to take the smaller girl with her, slamming them both into the ground with Nico on the bottom. As soon as she was on top, the girl elbowed Nico hard in the ribs. Nico gasped, and her grip faltered. The girl shot up, rolling gracefully to her feet. When she turned around, she had a long, beautiful knife in her hands, the blade glowing with its own silver light.
Nico was back on her feet in an instant, and for a breathless moment the two watched each other. Then the girl in the hunting leathers shook her head and slid her knife back into the long sheath on her thigh.
“I begin to understand why you needed that coat,” the girl said, not taking her eyes off of Nico. “Let them down, gently please.”
The tree made a sound like a disgruntled sigh and lowered its roots, releasing Eli and Josef just a little higher than would have been a safe drop. The men landed hard in the dirt, and while Josef was on his feet almost immediately, Eli took a bit longer to get his breath back.
“Hello, Pele,” he coughed, trying to discreetly determine if his back was broken. “Always a pleasure.”
Pele arched an eyebrow. “Can’t say I feel the same.” She glared at Nico, who was still watching her from a crouch. “Must you always bring such trouble?”
“Trouble is my element,” Eli said, sitting up. “And is that any way to greet a customer?”
“Your custom is usually more trouble than it’s worth,” she said with a frown. “Get up. I’ll take you to Slorn.”
“Wait,” Josef said. “You mean Slorn as in Heinricht Slorn? The swordsmith?”
“He makes a lot of things besides swords,” Pele said crossly. “But yes, that Slorn, and he’s going to be testy if you make him wait. Now follow me, quickly. We’ve wasted enough time rolling in the dirt.”
“And whose fault was that?” Eli muttered, but the girl was already disappearing into the woods, slipping between the trees like a passing sunbeam.
“You never told me you knew Heinricht Slorn,” Josef said, walking over to where he’d dropped the Heart of War. He almost sounded hurt.
“I couldn’t,” Eli said, picking the leaves out of his hair. “Not talking about him is part of knowing Slorn. He’d never sell me anything if he thought I’d been spreading his location about, or the fact that he really exists. Most people think he’s a myth made up by the Shaper Wizards to sell more swords. When that tree sprung, I was half afraid he was going to have the Awakened Wood toss us out altogether because I’d brought you two. But, seeing he sent his daughter out to greet us, I think it’s safe to assume we’ve captured his interest enough to at least get our pitch in.”
