"That orc was going to murder us in cold blood. Good riddance, I say," Eben added. The basso humming undertone of his race was more pronounced than usual in his voice.

"Angry you be at him, why?" Sha'Li interjected. "I did the deed." She slid over toward Eben's side as he nodded his agreement with her.

Will looked back and forth between the two. A jann and a lizardman allies? Now there was an unlikely pair.

A foreign rumble of humor bubbled up within him at the notion and Will jolted. How much was the entity within the disk manifesting himself? Was that why Will's senses had been so extraordinarily sharp recently? What else would the thing do to him? Would the entity drive him mad? Take over his mind ... or worse?

The thought chilled him to the marrow of his bones.

Sha'Li spoke into the heavy silence in a low, urgent murmur. "Go we must. Now. The noise of battle Anton's men will have heard. Investigate they will."

Only now, after the heat of battle faded, did Will feel remorse for harming the orcs he had in the fight. He would never grow used to killing any living thing. As it should be, he supposed.

There was a brief argument while Cicero and Sha'Li disputed who could best erase their trail, and it was decided that both of them would cover the party's tracks. The group set out with Will in the lead, the countertrackers bringing up the rear.

For the first few minutes their only goal was to get away from the site of the skirmish. But then Rosana murmured from behind Will, "How do you know where to go at night?"

Will did not. But he closed his eyes for a moment, probing within his mind for Bloodroot, who lay quiescent at the moment. Then a single, overwhelmingly joyous thought suffused Will. Home.

Dead certain of his course all of a sudden, Will angled slightly to his left and strode confidently into the blackness. Toward a home he'd never seen before, which was not his, but in which he knew every stream and stone and tree and could picture each as clearly as if he stood beside them. He could all but smell the familiar sweet-sharp scent of pine sap and oak tannin.

His steps lengthened until Rosana called out for him to slow down, and even Sha'Li complained that she and Cicero could not erase their trail that quickly.

Impatient with his frail human body, Will's urge to race for home was nigh unto uncontrollable. But when he promised that other, foreign part of him that he would get him home as soon as humanly possible if he would but let Will set the pace and manage his own body, the tree spirit relented. Will slowed to a more reasonable pace and that other awareness retreated, only reasserting his presence to make minor course corrections now and again. Exhausted without Bloodroot to goad him, Will stumbled along on sheer willpower.

Soon now. Soon he would be home, and all would become clear. The human boy would understand why he'd been dragged halfway across the northern colony and endowed with skills few mortals ever mastered. The human would also understand what was required of him in return. No matter that it would likely cost the boy his life. Given what was at stake, the boy was entirely expendable.

CHAPTER.

23.

Will grumbled as a twig or mayhap a root poked him in the back, and he shifted in his bedroll. It had been a long, cold hike, and he was delighted to be hunkered down, warm at last, in his bedroll. Something poked him again. It felt like a finger jabbing in his ribs. Okay, he hadn't been moving. If that was another dryad- Something slithered past his nose, fast, and he lurched upright, grabbing for his staff. Where is it? The weapon was not at his side where it had been when he lay down. He groped frantically for it as another something long and sinuous, the thickness of his wrist, whipped past his head. The flying thing impacted something large behind him, wrapping around it with a solid thwack.

"Oww," someone complained.

"Who goes?" Will bit out sharply. Curse it, he still hadn't found his staff! His dagger came to hand and he scooped it up as he leaped to his feet to face the intruder.

"Call off your blasted weeds," the voice complained again.

"Sha'Li? Is that you?"

"Yes!" the lizardman girl hissed. "Off me get them!"

Will stepped forward in the gloom, peering at what confined her. Vines. Thick and green, they looked like the giant serpent his father had shown him once in the Southwatch market. The vines constricted around her much like the snake had around the hapless rabbit its handler had tossed it.

"What happened to you?" he asked the lizardman girl.

The others were rousing, sitting up sleepily in their bedrolls behind him. Kendrick charged back into camp from where he'd been sitting watch a little ways out in the wood.

Sha'Li snarled something unintelligible, sibilant and angry.

Although he didn't understand the words, that other awareness within Will reacted with sharp caution. Will circled around her to have a better look at the twining vines. As he moved behind her his foot kicked something hard. He glanced down, startled to see his staff. He bent down and scooped it up. How had that gotten way out here behind Sha'Li?

In front of him, she gave a violent heave, using her strength to attempt to rip free of the entangling vines. Another vine streaked out of the darkness from his left and whipped tight around her waist. What on Urth- Rosana burst out, "You tried to kill him!"

Will's gaze snapped to the gypsy in surprise and then back to Sha'Li. To Rosana, he demanded, "Why do you say that?"

"Why else forest attack her? Trees and plants, they protect you."

Will stared at the gypsy. Her statement was preposterous. And, yet, it made perfect sense. He looked back and forth between Rosana and Sha'Li. Cautiously, he asked the lizardman girl, "How did my staff come to be behind you?"

"There I threw it, moron."

He stared, shocked. "You did try to kill me, then?"

"Mine is that disk, and tired am I of waiting for it. Want it back, I do."

"I told you. It has grown into me. It cannot be removed."

"If you live, maybe not. But remedied that can be."

Will drew back sharply from the venom in her voice. "You would kill me over a stupid piece of wood?"

"Anything but stupid is that disk. This, both of us know."

"That's not the point. Is it really worth murder?"

She hissed, and he took a prudent step closer to a tree he could duck behind if she chose to spit at him.

Sha'Li snarled, "Not for you was that meant! For the shamans of my people was it taken. Who are you, Will Cobb? Why hunt for you do Boki, and doing their best to kill you are Imperial soldiers? Why fear you do the dryads, and why giving you messages about the Mythar are they?"

"I have no idea."

"You lie, human."

He stared at Sha'Li, who stared back accusingly. She was right, and he respected her for her blunt honesty. But he dared not tell any of them the truth. It would make all of their lives as forfeit as his. No, ignorance was their best protection. Reluctantly, he conceded, "You may be right. But for your good, I must not say more."

Kendrick, to Will's surprise, interjected, "Why mustn't you? Why shouldn't the lizard know what she fights for?"

Sha'Li snapped at him, "For myself I fight, human!"

Kendrick snorted. "Now who lies?"

Sha'Li's only answer was to fling herself against the vines.

The living ropes visibly tightened themselves even more snugly around her. Mildly, Will commented, "You'd better stop fighting those vines or they'll crush the life out of you."

"Call them off!"

He looked at Sha'Li in surprise. "How?"

"Talk to them."

"Talk-to plants?"

"To everything else you talk in these cursed woods."

Eben and Cicero snorted behind Will in what sounded suspiciously like laughter. He glared at the lizardman girl. "That's not funny."

"Yes, it is," Rosana responded in undisguised amusement from behind him.

"Just because I'm immune to dryads doesn't make me some sort of freak."

"Yes, it does," Cicero disagreed. "And then there's the way you suddenly know which direction to travel. And the way the tree limbs move aside for you to pass by-"

"They do not!"

All his companions answered simultaneously, "Yes, they do."

He stared at them in dismay. He cast his mind back to their pell-mell flight from the scene of the earlier fight, and then the long march through the night to this hidden glade. He didn't remember ever having to dodge a low-hanging limb. And now that he thought about it, how had he known this tiny clearing was tucked behind that seemingly solid wall of brambles? How had he known just the right spot to lift the tangled vines and slip into this protected place?

He'd just ... known.

Rosana was speaking quietly. "... if I didn't know better, I would say that disk of wood has possessed you."

He frowned. "But I'm me. I'm not him. He doesn't possess me."

"Him who?" Sha'Li demanded.

Will scowled at her. "I told you, it's better if you don't kn-"

"Bloodroot," Cicero answered from behind Will. "That was the name the golden dryad called you. Lord Bloodroot."

Will whirled to glare at the elf. "You know nothing of it."

"I know Lord Bloodroot belonged to the Great Circle, and that his companions turned on him. I know his tree got cut up into little pieces and scattered all over the continent. And I know the Boki have been running around trying to collect the pieces of him and restore him for as long as my ancestors have lived in these forests."

Will reeled. The Boki searched for the pieces of Bloodroot? Was that why they were chasing him? Did it have nothing to do with his father's quest to find the Sleeping King, then?

Rosana asked Cicero, "What is the Great Circle?"

"A council of elder nature beings in this land. Tree spirits. They guard-or at least they did in the old legends-the land and all living things upon it."

"One of those is stuck to Will's chest?"

"Well, the spirit of one at any rate."

Sha'Li struggled fruitlessly, and the vines tightened mercilessly until she was forcibly stilled, gasping for breath.

Will bit out in what he now knew to be a small version of the Dragon's Roar, "Let her breathe, for stars' sake."

The vines slithered, easing their hold somewhat, and a cold feeling spread outward from Will's gut. The vines had just obeyed his command. What was he turning into? His companions stared at him with varying degrees of wonder and fear. He could hardly blame them.

"What else do you know of Bloodroot?" Will asked Cicero soberly.

"Is it safe to build a fire?" the elf asked.

Will cast his awareness outward. The forest for a league all around was at ease, free of intruders. "Aye. It is safe." But why did the elf want a fire? To hold back the forest should it decide to attack the rest of them?

Cicero nodded briskly and went about the business of laying and lighting a small fire. The others drew near it, holding out their hands eagerly to the heat. For his part, Will felt none of the night's chill.

"Hey! Cut me loose. Attack you I will not again."

Will eyed Sha'Li warily. "I would suggest you keep your word, or else the trees will tear you limb from limb."

Rings of white showed around the dark slit irises of her eyes as she stared at him, frightened. She nodded her understanding.

"Release her!" Will ordered in the roar.

The vines unwound themselves in a wriggling mass, falling to the ground to lie there motionless, as innocent as any other forest vine. He stared at them in dismay as Sha'Li bolted out of the circle they made. What was happening to him?

This lizardman girl spoke hastily. "Look, Will. Nothing have I against you, personally. Just business this is. That disk I need back. Before kill us all your enemies do."

"Why do you need it so badly?" he asked curiously.

"To prove a task I have completed."

"To whom? And for what purpose?"

Sha'Li balked at saying any more. She shook her head, but Will caught the fear and determination in her eyes. Whatever she had planned for the disk, she was dead set on having it. She fired back, "What seek you in these woods, Will?"

It was his turn to balk.

"Tell her," Rosana urged him.

"Yes. Tell her," Raina chimed in.