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No animals stirred in the trees or the ground within range of my sight or hearing, but an oppressive sense of leashed magic waiting pressed down on me. There was going to be some kind of ritual, and all the animals could feel it and had sensibly hidden themselves far away. I wished I could join them.
The sun blazed down, drying the sweat of fear. I wanted a drink of water but didn’t dare move to get one. The Ridden had fallen into parade rest as they waited, feet equally spread apart, arms clasped behind their backs. Yet more paranoia awakened inside of me. They had gotten the knowledge of military positions from the battlemages after possessing their human bodies? If they were able to do that, what else could they do? Force them to give up the codes from their unit? Lure their leader into a trap?
If they could do that, had they snared Rue? Was she possessed? A Judge working for the Ridden?
I shivered. Yeah. That was a horrifying thought.
The rock shimmered in the heat.
When the sun hit noon, the grav door opened, and a large, burly, and totally human-feeling security guard hurried to place a person-sized wrapped bundle on the ground by the rock. Fear radiated off him as he scuttled back into the grav leaving the parcel behind. The grav powered up, and it shot away, grass bending in the movement of air from its departure.
What the hell? This proved at least one human was in cahoots with them.
Each puzzle piece I slid together scared me more, but anger had started stirring too. This was happening with the cooperation of humans who still had their free will. Who weren’t Ridden but were working with them. The people who had come here to be helped had been betrayed to their enemies.
And who but the Administrator of the territory would have the power to set this up and hide it from investigation? Had Ross Cohen made a bargain with the Ridden somehow? From Tuuli Lahtinen’s message, he’d summoned one of the greater spirits to serve him. When that failed, had he turned to the Ridden instead?
I needed proof one way or the other. In the meantime, focus. I stared at the bundle. A bundle that I was praying it wasn’t a sacrifice of some kind, but basic common sense made it hard to pretend it was anything else. Had he given Ridden sacrifices to start communicating with them? Had he somehow summoned and used a spirit’s power to negate the Tree’s protections?
As the sound of the grav’s engines faded, another battlemage, this one obviously a Ridden, emerged from the hospital. He retrieved the bundle and carried it to the stone. Claws picked the straps apart, and the cloth fell away to reveal a girl in a hospital gown. Bandages wrapped her thigh. Her chest rose and fell evenly in the rhythm of sleep.
Fuck. I was right. Only, my heart had been praying the sacrifice was dead. Every instinct within me screamed to climb down this damn tree and try to save the girl from whatever horror they had planned for her, but I’d be dead before I got anywhere close to her.
My eyes stung. I was about to witness yet another death that would haunt me.
Sixteen forsaken battlemages gathered in a circle around her. Now facing in my direction, eyes brimming with magic, the first mage I saw lifted his hands above his head. The volume of the chirring rattled through my bones and teeth, though I could barely hear it, but I just prayed they didn’t catch sight of me.
To the girl’s left, a coil of darkness gathered in the sunlight. Emotions similar to those I normally perceived from spirits radiated from it. It could have been a tree spirit, one from a stream, or any of a horde of minor nature spirits. They weren’t very smart, but they protected their chosen place fiercely. Every once in a while, one possessed a dead body, and changed it to be appropriate to the environment the spirit protected. That was where legends of dryads and fauns and so on came from. This one felt a bit like the willow that Kara had saved, so probably associated with trees somehow.
On her right an alien yellow light glowed, shimmering like a heat haze. That light felt like the cool, calm entities controlling the battlemage’s bodies. While a spirit had a vibrant emotional signature, this light felt muted and somehow off in a way I couldn’t put my finger on.
The battlemages began to glow as well, emitting hazy red light.
Why had they called a spirit? What were they going to do with it? The yellow light must be whatever entity it was that possessed people and made them Ridden. Though in all the Ridden I’d seen rise, I’d never felt something like the yellow light either.
Maybe some of the Riders were intelligent and others weren’t? Had I only encountered their animal-equivalent?
Wait, were the Ridden using the powers spirits had to change bodies and erase the tell-tale signs of being Ridden? The teeth and claws, the changes to the face? Was that how they’d done it?
I dug my nails into the branch. I wanted to jump down, to intervene, and I couldn’t. Not if I wanted to tell other humans this story.
Tears ran down my cheeks.
Sweat. It was sweat. I was not crying from helpless frustration.
The swirl of darkness and the yellow light dove into the sleeping girl. Her body stiffened as her eyes slammed open, staring at the sky, and her mouth gaped in a soundless cry. The bones of her face shifted. Cheekbones became prominent, her teeth sharpening. Then the changes receded, the marks of the Ridden fading. She transformed to a more conventionally attractive version of the original girl, with none of the tell-tale signs.
No one would see her and think she was anything except human.
She sat up. Her nails sliced the bandages, her leg unmarred, and she inspected her hands as the talons shifted to become normal-looking fingernails. Throaty words full of clicks and stops rolled from her lips as she gazed up at the lead mage.
The taste of blood in my mouth suggested that I’d bitten my lip through. My muscles ached from their locked position, but I didn’t trust myself to move. My fingers were numb from my grip on the tree limb.
The battlemages moved away from the rock, some to the forest, others to the hospital. The newly possessed, and the leader remained. She stood, hands on her hips. A ghost of the girl’s gesture, eerie and sad.
More unknown words were exchanged, then they walked north.
I would kill the guilty party, with slow and attentive care. I would see him or her dead for this. Along with the others who had betrayed sick men and women to their worst nightmares. No one deserved this fate, especially delivered to it by the hands of people they should have been able to trust.
