Chapter 18: 17. The Oak of Spring

Soon the glow in Eris’ hands was their only source of light. For the first time in a week Melitas felt as though he was in the dark, without those damned magelights following them wherever they went. Strange, how welcoming the shadow was once accustomed to its absence. He wondered if this was how the Daromese felt.

The elf stalked silently ahead of them, alert through the trees. Not even his armor made noise as he moved.

Melitas’ arms and legs ached. His head did, too. He was inclined to complain, loudly, but for the ever-brightening of their light. Like a candle reaching toward the ceiling, its form seemed to stretch now toward the trees. It yearned for something that was coming very close.

“What spells do you know, precisely?” Eris said as she walked.

He had been watching her from behind, but in the dark woodlands had tripped twice. Now he stepped up closer to the light and walked beside her.

He scoffed. “As many as you, no doubt. Perhaps more. I was on an accelerated course in my studies.”

“That would explain your accident,” she said. “And can you name these spells?”

“Of course I can. I’m an expert in White Fire. I also know how to weave incinerations, arcane bombs, and magic missiles.”

“You know Magic Missile?” Her voice was mocking; she did not seem to believe him.

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

“Indeed, I am surprised.” She nodded toward the branch of a tall tree. “Very well. Shoot it.”

“Shoot it?” Melitas echoed.

“You are running out of time.” They passed beneath the branch. She shook her head and gestured at another. “Try that one, then.”

“I’m won’t waste my Essence to impress you. There are more important things to spill mana on than my reputation with some mad sorceress in the woods.”

“By the way you have been looking at me,” she said, “I should think impressing me was among your foremost desires. But no matter. I shall take it instead that you know no spells at all.”

“Take it however you like,” he said.

He wanted to show her what a mistake she was making. He wanted to put her in her place. If he could catch her off-guard, maybe while Trito wasn’t around, after working himself up to it…

The elf came to a stop. He raised his spear in the air, the tip pointed toward the night sky.

“Troll tracks,” he said. His voice was quiet as ever, but it seemed to float along the breeze to Melitas’ ears.

Eris closed her left hand. Their guiding light went out, and they were left in darkness. Melitas heard rather than saw Eris shuffle toward Trito, as he fumbled up behind them.

“You have had dealings with their kind before?” Eris asked.

“Many times,” Trito said. “Have you not?”

“Only once. He was an ally, briefly.”

“They are sensitive to light and can see well in the dark. I can’t say beyond this what the customs of their tribe might be.”

“Might they be attracted to the Oak?”

“Perhaps.”

“I can’t bloody see!” Melitas said. He thought he found Eris’ outline, but when he reached for it, he found his hands clutching bark.

This was beneath him. He inhaled mana and conjured a bright flame into his hand. It grew brighter, until it illuminated the sorceress and the elf, and they stared back at him with confused expressions.

“That’s better,” he said. “What?”

“Were you not listening?” Eris said. “They can see well in the dark. We cannot have an open flame.”

“If they can see well in the dark, they’ll be drawn to your camp before they ever find us,” Melitas said.

“That may be so. All the more reason to hurry apace. Put out your light.”

“No,” Melitas said.

“I will let you see. Put out your light.”

“I won’t. You’ve done nothing but lead us in circles. I’ll find the Oak before you do.”

Eris waved her free hand—the golden sword hung from her belt, dangling dangerously unsheathed near her thighs—and Melitas felt a sudden breeze. His vision grew black and the wind rushed from his lungs. He stumbled backward, hitting a trunk, and gasped.

It was dark again. His flame had gone out. He still willed it to burn, but it was gone, and his hand was empty.

“You bitch!” he said. “You tapped me!”

“I did,” she said. “Now be silent a moment.”

She stood up from the track and raised her staff. The blue grooves along its haft were the only thing visible in the woods for a moment, standing out as clear as a torch, until all went dark again.

And Melitas could see clearly.

He blinked. The light wasn’t quite as it would be during day, yet the detail was as clear to him as it ever had been. He could see that all around them was in shadow—and see through it anyway. Color was drained, washed away, but not so badly that he could not tell green and brown from black.

He blinked again. The spell persisted.

Now, in his vision, Eris’ golden eyes seemed to glow. Mana trailed from her pupils and toward the sky. She glared at him.

“Let us continue,” she said. “Without light.”

They reached another cliff. Eris cast and dispelled her enchantment-seeking spell, checking it every few steps like an explorer might check the compass in his pocket for directions. Yet it was not long until she came to a stop before a huge willow tree. Its weeping, green-and-yellow leaves were like a fluffy wig around a trunk twice as tall as any other in the woodlands. They covered it entirely.

Eris stepped toward the cliff and glanced over its side. Melitas contemplated pushing her off, but it would never have worked. Instead he came to her side.

It was a very long way down. They had climbed at least a thousand feet from the levels of the plains, and for the first time that day, he felt awash with vertigo.

“There,” Eris pointed to the far horizon. “I see the tip of the Spire.”

Melitas squinted. “I can’t see it.”

“This is the place.” She turned to look at the willow. “It is as I thought. Bornimir left an enchantment to conceal the tree’s true nature. He must have been a skilled magician.”

Melitas wanted to deride this idea as ridiculous, but as he gazed on the willow, he felt what she must have, too. His skin seemed to prickle when he came close to its leaves. Goosebumps spread across his skin. He itched.

Trito reached up to run a hand across the willow’s leaves. It bristled, as normal, to his touch. He glanced to Eris.

“There is magic here,” he said. “But it is a powerful enchantment to fool every sense so convincingly.”

“I know a spell to abjure it,” Eris said. “But I will need time to concentrate.”

She drew the sword carefully and came to sit cross-legged near the tree, on the detritus-ridden ground. She placed the blade atop her thighs and brought the staff between her knees, clutching it still.

“And what would you have us do?” Melitas said. “Perhaps prepare your dinner?”

“That would be lovely,” Eris said. “I would at least take a tea.”

Melitas huffed. Everything about this trip had been humiliating, but the worst part was in knowing that she was right to be smug. He had nothing to do, except follow and hope she made no mistakes. He was a magician of evocation, of destruction and terror and death; yet this left some adventuring skills unlearned.

He was still angry. He hated her. But he also saw that, if she would be willing to impart some of her knowledge unto him, it would be very beneficial.

His ambition embraced the idea. But his pride rejected it.

She drew mana into herself and began to work. It was a silent ritual, and she did not speak or move except to breathe for minutes. Melitas watched her at first, but when he found himself staring a little too closely at her ridiculously long legs, he turned to Trito.

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Trito was gone.

“Trito?” Melitas said. “Where are you?”

No answer.

“Trito? Where the bloody hell—”

“Shut up!” Eris hissed. “Do not disrupt me!”

He did, immediately. But he didn’t stop his search. He checked the area around them, and the trees, and their branches, and glanced off the cliff.

Nothing.

He stuck his hands in his robes. Something felt terribly wrong to him. Again he checked the trees, in case the elf had climbed out of sight; but there was no sign of him.

Eris hissed in pain. But a moment later she said, “There. It Is done.”

When Melitas turned to look at her, he saw her as she had been.

But the branches of the willow were gone. So too was the reaction toward the magic in his blood. He felt neutral again.

And he saw the oak.

Its branches sprawled in every direction, like a spider’s web carved in wood. There were a dozen; some swooped down to the ground while others reached upward to the sky, and at the end of each was a gnarled, brown hand that stretched into countless twigs covered in leaves.

“This,” she said, “is your Oak of Spring.”

Eris read the blade’s inscription aloud:

“Over my domain,

Concealed within the woodlands,

Where the wall looms on the horizon;

Bury me there at last, beneath my tree against the cliff.”

She gazed up at the sprawling branches.

“What was it that was supposed to cure the ill?” she asked. “The acorns?”

“The legends say a branch,” Melitas answered cautiously. “Not an acorn. He planted a golden acorn to create the tree.”

“It does not look otherwise special to me. It is not magic of itself. Not mana, at least.” Eris frowned. “Do you think a whole branch is required? Or perhaps just a twig?”

“I would sooner not carry a whole branch back down the hills,” Melitas said.

“We are agreed, for once.” She pressed the flat of the golden sword up against her cheek. For a moment she seemed almost girlish, cute, while she was deep in thought.

Melitas was horrified at himself.

She spun on her heels. “Where is Trito?”

“I told you while you were—casting!” he said. “He ran off. I don’t know where he is. He probably fell down the cliff while I wasn’t looking.”

“It would be a shame if he were to be the one to plummet to his death and not you,” she said. “Yet I—”

She hesitated.

“Do you hear that?”

Melitas stilled his breath and stopped fidgeting. A moment, and then he listened.

Crickets. The zephyr. A distant owl. And…

A horn. It echoed through the woodlands, and once its sound was gone, it came again, growing closer.

A figure appeared in the distance, through the trees. And another. And a third. Soon there were six, and then a dozen, coming slowly toward the Oak of Spring.

Huge figures. Hulking figures.

Trolls.

Melitas prepared a spell. He had never fought a troll, nor twelve at once, but he would be ready when they reached him. His White Fire would cut them down easily.

But Eris put a hand on his shoulder. “Wait. They announce themselves to us.”

“You think they want to talk?”

“I think they may,” she said. Melitas recognized the spell she cast then; the Wisdom of the Sages, a translation charm, and she used it on herself as well as on him.

“You’re mad,” he said.

“If it should come to violence, I am confident in my abilities to escape,” she said. Then she stepped forward.

The spell on Melitas’ vision suddenly ended. His vision flared, and he found himself unable to see anything at all.

But only for a moment, because a light appeared over Eris’ head, giving her away.

She held her staff out in one hand, the sword of Bornimir in the other, and waited. She looked confident. Relaxed. Without any trouble.

Melitas did his best to do the same.

The trolls did not come forward like soldiers in formation, as he had hoped. Instead they spread out in a net through the woodlands, in ranks, with only one, a blue-skinned monstrosity with two fractured tusks, taking a clear lead.

It wore a robe and had no weapon. But the others Melitas saw were armed, with spears and axes and bronze swords.

In the blue-skinned troll’s hands was clutched a circular object split in two halves. It came very slowly toward Eris, until it was fully in light, before it stopped.

The woods around it rustled as its companions took up their places. Melitas swore. This was idiocy. It was suicide. They would be taken in as slaves, surely. He began to prepare White Fire again—

When the troll leader bowed.

“Daughter of the Great Slayer,” it said. “You have come for us at last.”

He tossed the two halves of the circle to the ground at her feet.

Eris raised an eyebrow. But she did not hesitate, and she showed off the golden sword triumphantly.

“Yes,” she proclaimed. “It is I. Eris Bornimir. Daughter of the Great Slayer.”

“How does your father fare?” Its voice dragged against its lungs like that of an ancient man, so much that it seemed pained to speak. “Is he well? He has not come in so long.”

“He is quite unwell, in fact. He has been dead this last century.” Now Eris spoke quickly. “But as you see, before his passing, he taught me your language, such was his reverence for your kind.”

She seemed to mock them as she spoke, yet her voice was so commanding, and her diction so precise, that she dominated every exchange.

The troll hung its head. “So the Great Slayer passes into the earth, where man and troll first come from, and always go again. Why did you not come to see us in our tribe? Did you fear we would not know you?”

“Yes,” she said. “And it has been so long—I did not know if anyone might recognize my father’s things. But I regret it now, for I see his allies remain. Yet—how did you know we had come?”

“The Ring was broken,” the troll said. “The Great Slayer said to us, ‘When the veneer of the Oak of Spring falls, so will break this enchanted Ring, and you will know I have returned’. And so his prophesy comes true.”

“Eris,” Melitas whispered. “Tell them how we take a branch and let’s go.”

“No, my handsome younger brother,” she said. “There is still much to learn. What is your name?”

“I am Narek, Seer of our tribe.”

“Ah, yes. I do remember now. Father spoke of you often, Seer Narek. Yet he met his untimely end in the lair of a hydra so shortly after I was born, I do not remember him well. Perhaps you could tell us the story of the Oak of Spring, so we are certain we know it in full?”

The dim-witted troll, who was likely the smartest of its kind on this hill, nodded. He gestured to the ground beneath Eris’ lights. Together they sat, and Narek traced his hand through the grass as he told them the whole story.

Melitas did not sit. He was extremely nervous and ready for a fight to begin at any moment, and he did not care about these savages and their fairytales.

But the story Narek told was not complicated. He said that Ziroslava Bornimir was a hero to his people, who had come to them in their hour of need and protected them from an arcane creature—Melitas gathered this was a demon—they had no means of slaying. Thereafter they were friends, and eventually he bequeathed them with the gift of a golden acorn, which they planted together in this place they now sat.

But thereafter they never saw it, for it transformed into a willow, and was permanently changed to be quite unrecognizable. That was when Bornimir had given them his “Ring.”

Narek had been Seer then, too. Trolls were revoltingly long-lived creatures, and capable of regenerating from almost any injury. He did not seem to realize that Eris was not even thirty, but then Melitas doubted they often met humans.

“We have tended the oak, waiting for his return,” Narek said. “We are grieved to know he has passed.”

Eris watched the troll’s withered, half-tusked face.

“Seer Narek,” she said. “We have not come to this place merely to reunite, though we are proud to have done so. We have instead come because there is said to be an enchantment on the Oak of Spring. We had hoped that we might be able to take a branch with which to cure our lord’s illness. Do you know anything of this?”

The troll nodded. “In a time of great need,” he said, “he would be buried beneath the Oak, and the men and trolls of Veshod would be well again. That was to be his dying wish.”

Eris frowned. She spoke to Melitas as though the troll wasn’t there, saying, “I do not suppose you retrieved a relic of his? Perhaps a bone fragment?”

“That wasn’t what the Boyar’s mother told us,” he whispered back. “She said the legends were all of the sword.”

“The legends seem to be wrong. Unless…” She looked back to the troll. “What would be buried? His dead body?”

“All he would leave behind, when his soul left the Earth.”

Eris thought this over for a moment. Then she jumped to her feet. She looked the sword over one final time, and said, “He did not mean his body. He meant this blade. Look: it says “Bury me” beneath the Oak of Spring. You are in luck, Narek, for your prophecy is soon to be fulfilled.”

She walked to the base of the tree and began to dig with a spell. The dirt seemed to climb out of the ground and form piles at her feet, like each grain was an insect jumping to escape flame, until a few-foot deep hole had been formed.

She tossed the sword within.

“Wait!” Melitas said. “That blade is worth a fortune. You can’t—”

But she already had begun to fill the hole.

Trolls in the forest came in closer to watch what happened next. Melitas stepped backward and found himself staring upward at the hideous face of female forest troll, angular and tuskless, yet still a foot taller than him.

He decided to watch Eris instead.

She stepped backward. A long moment passed.

Golden veins appeared at the oak’s trunk. Like ore within a mine, but encased in wood instead of stone: they traced upward, reaching the branches, and spreading everywhere. The trolls grumbled and gasped at the sight of this magic.

But when the golden tendrils reached the ends of the branches, they stopped. All fell silent.

Acorns began to grow. Pairs of them, small, and only in places; yet they did grow, swelling before Melitas’ eyes. Although they did not gleam or glisten in the light, their color was unmistakably golden.

Once they had stopped growing, they sprinkled downward like apples shaken from the tree, twenty of them in total.

Eris caught one. She looked at it closely.

“Is that it?” Melitas asked. “That can’t be it. She said a branch.”

“The day has come,” the troll whispered.

Eris traced her fingers across its rounded front. She tapped it. Sniffed it. Felt it. “We will have to experiment in camp. If not, we shall return tomorrow.”

“You must come with us, to our village,” Narek said. “We will tell you more stories. You will tell us yours.”

“I must return to my son. Your offer would be tempting under different circumstances, but I think not for today. Melitas: gather the acorns.”

“Half were to be ours,” Narek said.

“You would have nothing if not for our arrival. Do not be greedy, Seer.”

“Shall we not benefit in the harvest we ensured could be grown?”

“That is how most lords see it,” she said. “And I am a duchess.”

The trolls became agitated in an instant. A spear rose, and the female behind Melitas growled. But Eris gazed into the Seer’s eyes, and she cast one final spell. He didn’t recognize its texture, but he knew its effect well enough.

Once it had left her Essence, the Seer nodded.

“It is our payment to the Great Slayer, now offered at last to his kin,” Narek whispered. “Take the acorns and go in peace.”

Eris took only two. The rest were carried by Melitas. A single acorn might not seem heavy, but twenty of them began to weigh heavily in his pack.

They had made it out of sight of the trolls and halfway down the hilltop when Trito finally dropped out of a tree. Melitas jumped, thinking they were being ambushed, but soon realized who it was.

“You have a quick wit, Eris,” he said. “Yet was it better to use magic to enchant the Seer, than to offer half of the acorns?”

“Of course it was, you idiot elf,” she said, walking quickly. “What use do trolls have of acorns that can cure illness? They are nigh invulnerable and live for centuries. It would be greedy for them to take anything so precious.”

“Is that what you must tell yourself to soothe your conscience?”

She glanced at him, frowning. “I do not have a conscience. I tell myself this much because ‘tis true. Yet even if it were not, I would not share such a bounty with mindless, tusked apes.”

“I hope you think better than that of your companions. Are we not tuskless apes compared to you?”

Her eyes rolled dramatically. “Melitas is, perhaps. Be happy that the quest is done. Do not ask such silly questions.”

Silence fell. Melitas took the chance to ask what was obviously desperate to be asked:

“Where did you go?”

“I feared these trolls might react poorly to seeing an elf,” he said. “More poorly than they would to humans. Do not fret; I was always nearby. I would have joined battle, had battle begun.”

Melitas wondered if this was the truth. But he was exhausted, and they still had an hour left go to before they reached their campsite. He decided to ask no more questions, and instead was happy, like Eris had suggested, that the acorns of the Oak of Spring were his at last.