Keith Baker - The Shattered Land

He slashed through a final patch of dense vines, and they stepped out into a long, natural corridor running east to west. The path was almost twenty feet across; the ground was covered in brambles and vines, but clear of trees.

Daine stepped out of the forest and felt stone underfoot. “A path?”

“A road. Older than your species, most likely. Though if you want a history lesson, I’m sure one of your friends can do a better job than I.”

Daine glanced back at the others. Lei was talking to Pierce, and she was smiling for the first time since their fight aboard the Gray Cat . The unexpected conflict had momentarily pushed the tension aside-but for the moment it was probably best to let it lie. Lakashtai was walking just behind Daine, her hood pulled low to hide her eyes. Judging from past experience, Daine was sure she’d heard them-if she wanted to talk, she would.

“I always preferred swords to books,” he said to Gerrion. “You want to tell me where we’re going, exactly?”

“No, not really.” Gerrion spun his dagger in the air, as they walked along the ancient road, deftly catching it and setting it in motion again.

“You’re going to, anyway.”

“I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

“I hate surprises,” Daine said.

“Give it a chance,” Gerrion replied cheerfully. His dagger was a web of steel flowing from one hand to the next, remaining in constant motion.

“Then let’s talk about something else.”

“Oh, let’s.”

“You want to tell me what a Sulatar is?”

Gerrion froze, and in that moment of shock, he failed to catch the spinning dagger. Daine caught a glimpse of steel flashing toward his eyes, then the blade stopped, suspended in midair. Lakashtai reached up from behind them, plucking the dagger from the air.

“An Elvish word,” she said, handing the weapon back to Gerrion. “It means ‘bound flame.’ In the older dialect, you could interpret it as ‘one who binds fire,’ I suppose. Why is this significant?”

Daine glanced at Gerrion, but the half-elf had returned the dagger to its sheath and picked up his pace, pulling ahead of them. “The spirit on the water called our friend Gerrion a ‘child of the Sulatar.’ Seems to be a touchy subject.”

“Child of the bound flame,” Lakashtai mused. “Child of the firebinders. It is a shame I did not see this spirit myself.”

“How did you manage to meditate through the boat being tipped over, anyhow?”

“It’s … not that simple. My soul was submerged within, leaving the body temporarily unattended.”

“It also mentioned a ‘season of flame.’ Does that mean anything to you?”

Lakashtai ran a finger across her perfect lips. “Interesting. I don’t see why it would be relevant, but it is-”

“We’re here!” Gerrion called. “I told you it wouldn’t be far from our path, and trust me, it will be worth the time.”

There was a clearing up ahead almost two hundred feet across. A long, flat mound stretched across the space, rising up six or seven feet from the road.

“Who built this?” whispered Lei, coming up behind him.

“Built what?” Daine said.

“Look around you.”

He did. A long mound, surrounded by trees. Trees with no branches. Trees with strange inscriptions winding around their trunks.

“Look up.”

There was a roof over the clearing. Nearly forty feet from the jungle floor, it was now falling to pieces-but its original purpose was perfectly clear. The trees weren’t trees at all; they were pillars carved from the trunks of massive densewood trees, set around the mound. The mound itself-dirt and weeds had risen up around it, but it was a platform of light stone.

“Daine, Lakashtai!” Gerrion called down to them. “Come up here-I’ll show you why we made the trip. As for you, Lei, you should study the notched pillar in the corner. For a scholar like yourself-well, I think you’ll be fascinated.”

Daine shrugged and climbed up the steep edge of the platform, then reached down and helped Lakashtai make her way to the top. “What’s so interesting …” He stopped as he saw what he was standing on.

It was a map.

Two hundred feet long, one hundred feet wide, it seemed to have been carved from a single vast slab of stone-though Daine couldn’t imagine how such a thing could be quarried or transported. There were craters across its surface where chunks of densewood had fallen from the canopy, but much of it was still intact. The serpentine shapes of rivers wound down from the edges toward the center, and mountain ridges rose up a few inches from the base. He could see the spires of towers surrounding tiny cities.

It was as if he were a god, straddling the entire continent.

“Why are we here again?” he called, making his way over to Gerrion. The half-elf was examining a small castle that seemed to have been painted in black enamel. “It’s something to see, I’ll give you that, but I thought we already knew where we were going. It’s too big to be useful anyway-the only way I could make any sense of it would be from thirty feet in the air.”

“I suspect that wasn’t a problem for its creators,” Gerrion replied. “Besides, just think: years from now, you’ll be telling your grandchildren about the time you saw the biggest map in Xen’drik.”

“I trust you have a better reason than that,” Daine replied.

Lakashtai had been studied their surroundings intently, illuminating the map with the eerie light radiating from her eyes. “There,” she said, pointing to a massive densewood boulder a few feet away. “Our destination is in that crater.”

Gerrion smiled. “I hope that’s not a bad omen, but, even if we can’t get there directly, we’ll still be able to save a few days’ travel.”

“What are you talking about?” Daine snapped. “You drag us through the snow to see a map just to show us a place we already know how to get to? How does this save us time?”

“Patience, captain,” Gerrion replied. “Allow me to demonstrate.” He dropped to one knee and reached for the tiny castle.

Before Gerrion’s fingers reached the carved tower, there was a burst of motion on the treeline. There was no sound, no burst of fire or smoke, but a patch of vines vaporized as if caught in an intense explosion. Five people strode into the clearing. Four were identical: warforged scouts, duplicates of the hunched creature they met on the frozen beach. These scouts were spread in a semicircle around a huge cloaked figure at least nine feet tall and with the build of an ogre.

“Be still.” The voice was like a rush of sand or metal particles thrown against the wind. It seemed to flow all around them, carrying across the clearing with no need for volume. “Throw down your weapons, and you may yet live .”

Daine’s blades were in his hands in an instant, and he was charging, ready to leap from the platform and join up with Pierce and Lei on the ground. Then Gerrion placed his hand on the dark tower, and everything changed.

The forest was on fire. The temperature had jumped, and the emerald green that cloaked the trees was a blaze of orange. This sheet of fire had swept forward, and Pierce, Lei, and the strangers vanished beneath the fiery curtain. Daine cried out in wordless anguish, barely halting his progress before he tumbled into the flame.

No. Not flames-tall grass, weeds painted in red and orange. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he realized that their surroundings had completely changed. The trees were draped in the colors of autumn, and the trees and shrubs themselves were clearly different. The clearing was far smaller than the last one had been.

Daine could see Gerrion out of the corner of his eye, and he turned toward the half-elf, his sword still in his hand. Lakashtai was even swifter. She lashed out with her foot. The kick caught Gerrion in the side of the head and slammed him to the broken earth. Lakashtai brought her knee down in the small of Gerrion’s back, pressing him into the ground. Her right fist was poised above his head, wrapped in a halo of baleful green energy.