The Gates of Night_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [78]
And it responded. Though Pierce was across the clearing, held high in the air, she could feel the changes taking place. Strength. Take strength from me, my brother.
The images dissolved in a burst of pain. She was staggering across the clearing, and fell just before she reached a writhing mass of foliage. Wet numbness spread across her right leg, and fierce pain told her that the handle of the Woodsman’s axe had cracked a rib. She tried to collect her thoughts, but the pain was too great. The Woodsman came forward, his bloody axe held high.
Pierce crashed into him, leaving a trail of torn vines and scraps of roots in his path. Grabbing the Woodsman’s wrists, Pierce forced the masked man away from Lei. Though the Woodsman had the strength of an ogre, Pierce was stronger still, and he forced the Woodsman to his knees.
The Woodsman screamed.
The cry came as a surprise to Lei; Pierce was fighting with magically enhanced strength, but he had no weapon, and was doing little more than holding the Woodsman at bay. Then she saw a flash of white bone, as Xu’sasar’s throwing wheel spun back across the clearing. The drow girl stood next to an arch of dark stone, and she caught the boomerang and prepared for another throw.
“No!” Lei said, hobbling across the clearing. “No. Don’t kill him.”
“Unhand me!” the Woodsman roared, still struggling in Pierce’s grip. “You will pay for this indignity! I will see you buried in the earth and devoured by insects, alive and aware until your bones are shards in the—”
His words dissolved into a howl of agony as Lei pressed the end of the staff into the wound on his back, where blood and sap were flowing freely. The staff shivered in Lei’s hands as power flowed through the shaft. The Woodsman stiffened and screamed again as his body stretched upward. Pierce let go before he was lifted into the sky, and they watched in wonder as the being that had once been the Woodsman completed his transformation. He towered over them, forty feet tall, his limbs stretching out across the ring of gates.
He had become a tree.
His bark was as pale as the skin of his arms, his leaves dark as the clothes he’d worn, and Lei thought she could see a face faintly traced into his trunk, the vague image of the mask he had worn. But the storm winds were gone, and his limbs did not move.
“Can someone help me down?” The trees around the clearing had fallen still, but Daine was still hanging in the air, branches wrapped around his torso.
As Xu’sasar and Pierce ran to assist Daine, Lei turned to the great gate at the center of the clearing. She could still feel the power churning within the staff. There was a sense of satisfaction, but the sorrow remained.
“What happens to you?” Lei whispered.
In answer, Darkheart reached into Lei. Her power and presence were stronger than ever, and Lei moved without a thought. She struggled with the force controlling her body, but Darkheart was too powerful. Against her will, Lei stepped forward … and drove the staff into the ground before the briar gate.
Thunder shook the world. Lei’s hands locked around the staff, and she could feel the power the staff had drawn from the Woodsman fading away, being forced down into the earth itself. And the gate before her changed. Threads of gold ran up from the ground, twining along the black briars. And then she saw the light. Sunlight, faint but clear, the first pure light she’d seen since she’d entered Karul’tash so long ago. The dark forest was all around her, but through the arch she could see the setting sun of dusk.
Free me.
The thought was clear and vivid, the voice of the woman Lei had seen in her coma. And then it was gone. Lei swayed, and almost fell. She felt as if every ounce of energy had been drained from her bones. The staff was utterly silent, physically and emotionally.
“Lei!”
Daine ran to her, Xu’sasar and Pierce behind