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“Some repair first, zharkat,” he said, and I felt his focus like a flow of warmth over me as he assessed my injuries. “I have sent word to Elofir and await his confirmation that he has readied his plexus chamber for monitoring our activities and those of the Mraztur.” Elofir, another of the eleven demonic lords, was a frequent visitor and one with whom Mzatal was damn near friendly.
“I’m okay,” I insisted. “I can walk. We don’t want to lose them.” Though even as I said it, I had to admit that being mobile was way smarter.
Unruffled, he lifted his head, fixed his eyes on mine. “Precisely. With your information, Elofir may well be able to isolate Idris’s strand and lock onto it. Invaluable in the event we do not recover him now,” he explained.
It was what we’d been seeking for months, yet every time we grew close, the Mraztur used the vile potency rakkuhr to thwart our efforts, and moved Idris—much like how I’d used the arcane-nullifying cuff on Earth to avoid being summoned to the demon realm. For Mzatal to leave such an important task to Elofir spoke volumes of the trust he placed in the other demonic lord. Trust, or an airtight agreement.
Searing heat blossomed in my knee and thigh as Mzatal worked an intense and rapid healing. I sucked in a breath, bit down on a curse as he shifted his hands to my arm and eased the pain of the gash.
A syraza passed overhead, made a tight circle then swooped down to land gracefully. Steeev, whose name—with the drawn out eee sound—had quite amused me the first time I heard it. Slightly larger than Eilahn, he crouched beside her and waited silently for Mzatal to finish his work on me. A few seconds later Gestamar swept down and settled behind Mzatal. Our strike team, ready to go.
A message sigil of glowing gold and amber appeared beside us, and I recognized a twist of potency at the bottom as Elofir’s signature. Mzatal lifted one hand from my arm and touched the sigil, but a heartbeat later his implacable intensity degraded into a dark scowl. He dissipated the sigil with a violent sweep of h
is arm. “He has isolated Idris, but there is interference again, and he cannot get a lock.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, flexing my knee experimentally. “We go as is?”
Mzatal stroked his hand over my arm in a final gesture of healing, then stood, traced out a message and sent it off. “We have no other option. If we can determine the source of the interference and eliminate it, Elofir may still be successful.”
“But if we get Idris back now, it’s a moot point, right?”
He took my hand, strode toward the center of the grove with long strides that made me thankful my knee only muttered now rather than screamed. “You are correct,” he said. “Having a link to him through a strand lock is valuable should he slip from us. Best to assure he does not.” He released my hand and prepared to make the potency offering to the grove, then stopped and looked to me. “It is more expedient if you make the transfer.”
Right. Other than myself, only the lords and the demahnk could activate the grove transportation. However, the grove required no offering from me—yet another part of my lord-confounding grove connection.
I gripped his hand again, found the destination we sought, then asked the grove to take our group there.
The trees around us shifted subtly in position. Different trees, different grove. Soft light of an overcast sky filtered through the purple and green leaves, and warm, humid air carried an acrid tinge.
Mzatal lifted his chin, assessing the area nearby for signs of activity. A heartbeat later his grip tightened on my hand, and he strode toward the tree tunnel, anger flashing in his eyes.
“What’s going on?” I asked as I tried to keep up.
Vehemence laced the word as he spoke it. “Ritual.”
“Wait!” I tugged him to a stop halfway down the tunnel while Eilahn, Steeev, and Gestamar continued on. “We need a plan,” I told him. “Or at least I need a plan since I can’t go in throwing potency spikes.”
Mzatal laid his free hand against my cheek. “Forgive me, beloved,” he said. “You are correct. Steeev has gone to gather what information he can, but while we wait for his return I can share what I have assessed of this.” He caressed my grimy cheek with his thumb. “Rhyzkahl and Jesral are with Idris, approximately ten miles from here, and are stationary. The other you sensed but could not identify is Katashi.”
Isumo Katashi. Once Mzatal’s marked summoner, and now a traitorous ally of the Mraztur. And no way had they walked ten miles in the few minutes since they arrived, which meant either Jesral’s ptarl agreed to provide transport or they had syraza with them. The demahnk could teleport multiple people long distances, while a mature syraza had the ability to make short teleportation hops with a single person. Now I understood why Mzatal had asked Steeev to come with us. “What kind of ritual?”
He took my hand again and continued down the tree tunnel. “It is odd. I sense a nexus that should not be here, and therefore suspect they have located a natural potency confluence and created a rudimentary nexus.” A nexus was a focal point of power—like a massive arcane generator that could supercharge a ritual laid atop it. Mzatal’s eyes went briefly distant as he continued to monitor. “A dual ritual.” His mouth tightened. “Possibly to conduct an Earth transfer.”
To send Idris to Earth. Far easier to hide him there. “And they developed a nexus out here to keep you from finding out what they were up to,” I noted.
We stepped out of the tree tunnel, and the source of the acrid tang became apparent. The grove stood in the center of a charred area the size of a football field. Though verdant rainforest hugged the perimeter, not a single blade of grass or touch of color broke the blacks and grays of the sea of ash. Remnants of potency writhed on its surface like dying worms, and a graceful pavilion of pale stone columns glimmered at the fringe, as if uncovered by whatever had nuked the forest.
Could this be a remnant of the cataclysm? A few hundred years earlier, a summoner by the name of Elinor had performed a ritual with the demonic lord Szerain. For reasons still unknown, the ritual collapsed and global catastrophic destruction ensued—earthquakes, volcanoes, rains of fiery acid, tsunamis, you name it. Moreover, the ways between the demon realm and Earth slammed shut and had remained so until early in Earth’s twentieth century.
But I had a personal stake in all that ancient history. During the ritual, Szerain stabbed Elinor with the essence blade Vsuhl, killed her, and trapped her essence in the blade—again, for reasons still unknown. Yet somehow, a chunk of her memories and emotions latched on to my own essence, and during my first months in the demon realm I experienced a number of odd dreams and weird déjà vu experiences, all of which stopped when I retrieved Vsuhl. Perhaps coincidence, but still, another mystery amongst so many others.
I’d been around remnants of the cataclysm before. At Szerain’s palace a crater the size of a small city lay not far to the northeast, and a rift still spewed gouts of arcane flame. In Rhyzkahl’s realm, part of a mountain range looked as if a planet-devouring monster had taken a ragged bite. But the devastation before me now felt newer . . . and disquietingly familiar.
I licked dry lips. “What happened here?”
Mzatal’s grip tightened almost imperceptibly on my hand, but he remained silent.
I searched his face. “Mzatal? What is it?”
