Madness of the Horde by Zoey Draven

Chapter Forty-Two

The ancient groves were darkly beautiful. Eerie. Quiet. Yet, there was a calmness, a sense of peace that weaved around the towering black trees, that threaded through the black vines hanging down from their branches, and gave that seemingly endless place a strange warmth that was entirely unexpected.

Only, it was warmth I couldn’t quite feel as I urged my pyroki into the ancient groves’ depths and darkness. I had been riding since the early hours of morning and now the moon was hanging overhead, a constant reminder that I was dangerously close to failure. To death. Death that I had felt begin to creep up on me as the day dragged, as my furious heart seemed to pump and thicken the poison running through my veins even faster.

The pain had started, a couple days earlier than I had anticipated. Though it was night now and I could barely see a few feet in front of the pyroki guiding me through the groves, I knew that the veins in my right arm were completely blackened and were steadily trailing up to my shoulder, across my neck.

As I’d always known, the symptoms of the vovic would come on fast. It had been weeks since my last dose. So, in reality, the pain was right on time. It was me that was late.

I trailed my fingers over the pyroki’s scaled neck, feeling the muscles underneath shift with its gentle but hesitant trots.

“There is nothing to fear here,” I whispered down to the creature. I didn’t know how I knew that but I did. Perhaps it was Lokkaru’s own knowledge. Perhaps it was the knowledge that the heartstone kept this land cleared of threat, of danger.

It was not the groves I feared.

My body was aching all over. I had pyroki burn between my thighs where I straddled its back. My back was tight and sore. My arms shook from holding onto the pyroki’s thick neck.

The burning in my arm had started, making the muscles seize tight, a hotness that scalded me, though I shivered from cold. The vovic was trailing across my neck and soon it would lodge in my chest, in my belly, my womb, my legs. I would feel it in the strands of my hair, in the tips of my toes. It was merciless and unyielding.

“Draki,” I urged the pyroki, repeating words I’d heard Davik speak, and the beast’s trots quickened, weaving around trees that I only saw as they passed us by.

I steered the pyroki by nudging its neck and I guided it in the direction I knew the heartstone lay. I knew these groves like the back of my hand. Lokkaru had to have spent an ample amount of time here to give me such a map. I wished that I had asked her about her life more, about why she’d lived in the wild lands, alone, for so long. If she’d ever been scared. If that fear was perhaps why she’d chosen to journey to Dothik, to steal fruits from the Dothikkar’s garden to sell on the streets…which was how she’d inevitably met Davik.

I wondered if she’d ever been in love but then I pushed that thought away with force when it brought another prickling of pain to my chest.

My pyroki and I traveled through the ancient groves for most of the night and I knew that we were drawing near when I heard the familiar trickling of a small stream. A stream that we followed, a stream that my exhausted pyroki drank from, a stream that I wanted to drink from but feared I was too weak to climb onto her back again once I finished.

Pain spasmed in my wrist and arm, making me bite my lip, making my eyes water. It was a throbbing kind of pain, but it was manageable. Soon, it would come in waves, each more intense than the last, until those waves would end and then it would be constant…building, building, building until my heart gave out.

The closer we came to the tree, the more the ground seemed to hum underneath us. My pyroki paused every now and again until I urged her back into motion, as if uncertain what we were about the stumble upon, as if her instincts warned her away.

But my instincts pushed us forward and soon, I felt relief pierce me when I saw blue light glowing in the distance. Soft at first, just a hint that there was something hidden there. As we drew closer and closer, it grew brighter and brighter, until I could actually see the trees around us, massive trunks so wide I was surprised I could see around them, their skin black with age.

There was only one tree I was seeking, however, and a few moments later, as my pyroki passed underneath a heavy curtain of vines hanging down from branches…I found it.

A sob tore from my throat, relief so potent and bright that it briefly banished the pain.

It was just like in my dream. Just like in Lokkaru’s memory. It had changed, however. It was wider, taller, its branches fuller and laden with white leaves whose veins glowed blue. That was where the blue light was coming from. Its leaves. Thousands of them, spread across its black, strong branches. The stream ended at its trunk.

Nourishing it. Feeding it until it grew strong.

I patted the pyroki’s neck as we stopped in front of it. With great effort, I managed to swing my leg over its back and slide to the ground, though I fell to my knees on the moss-covered earth. It was soft and cushioned my fall. I had the stray thought that I could just curl up in the moss and sleep forever, that I could die in this place and no one would ever find me.

A sense of loneliness hit me, so hard that I almost gasped as my eyes filled with tears. I didn’t think it was all my own. This clearing, as beautiful and safe as it felt, cut off from the outside world, felt sad.

Had Lokkaru’s emotions lingered in this place? Had her mother’s? Or perhaps they were her father’s?

On shaking legs, I walked forward, sensing that my pyroki lay down on the moss to rest behind me. I craned my neck up but the tree was so large that it blocked the night sky and any hint of the moon I’d come to hate.

The bark looked like skin, papery and thin, but dark and weathered with age. And beneath that skin, the trunk seemed to glow not only blue, but gold. I swore I could see the individual layers of the bark underneath, each as thin as the last.

When I pressed my hand to the trunk, it felt warm. It throbbed like a heartbeat as I snatched my hand away, surprised, disturbed.

The heartstone was inside, or so I assumed. I could see its glow, its beckoning, its taunting. An unseen wind picked up in the clearing, rustling through my hair and chilling me to the bone, though my skin felt clammy and hot. I grappled for the dagger I’d stolen from Davik, peering down at it in the blue light that glowed from the leaves.

Its handle was made of black bone, intricately carved in swirling words of Dakkari that I couldn’t read, but I swore that those same words were tattooed into Davik’s skin. Longing made my heart squeeze tight. I smoothed my fingertips over the words, just as I had over Davik’s flesh, tracing those tattoos though I hadn’t known what they meant.

He would know I was gone by now. Night had fallen long ago. He would come after me if he hadn’t already. And I needed to be long gone from this place by the time he did. If he found me again, he wouldn’t let me go. I wouldn’t have the willpower, or the mental strength, to leave him again if I felt those arms around me.

With that thought in mind, though every part of me wanted to wait for him here, I wedged the dagger into the tree, grunting with the effort. The trunk was sturdy and hard, despite its appearance, and I felt my strike reverberate up my arm and ring in my brittle bones until I thought they might shatter.

My grip wasn’t strong enough, however. My arm was weakened from the vovic and my long ride on the pyroki. The dagger fell to the ground. That small action had winded me and I gasped for breath as I stooped to pick it up.

When I raised my arm to strike again, I paused, my lips parting as I saw liquid began to drip down the wound in the tree.

Blood.

Golden, shimmering blood that ran down its papery thin skin like a caress.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, my mind yelled.

Frozen, I could only stare as more dripped from it, weeping down that old tree in that ancient place.

A thought came to me and slowly I lowered the dagger. My gift hadn’t worked on Nillima, Davik’s pyroki, but I needed to understand this.

Gathering the energy of my power before me, I slowly pressed it forward, reaching out my hand towards the blood to ground it. It was hot, seeping over my hand, and I wanted to recoil in horror but I held my palm firm.

As always, my gift felt like dipping my hand into a cool stream. There was slight resistance and underneath the surface, it always felt a little strange, hushed and quiet and hazy.

I imagined doing that now as I closed my eyes. I pushed forward, seeking, scared but determined to find something.

My gift touched on something.

Something powerful, something ancient.

Oh gods!

Intense pain made my body contort as that connection sizzled in my mind. I might have screamed but I heard no sound, only the beating of a heart that I knew came from this tree, this creature. But that beating heart suddenly turned into thousands, no millions, billions of heartbeats, and I heard every single one pound in my veins, filling them, heating them until I thought I would die from this and not from the vovic after all.

Lokkaru had said the heartstone was dangerous. Now, I knew why. It was because Kakkari was alive in it. It was her pain, billions and billions of pains from billions and billions of souls, that I felt.

Then, all at once, that pain left me.

That connection softened. For a moment, I couldn’t remember anything at all. Who I was. What I was. Why I was here. As if it had been seared from my mind.

When that knowledge returned to me in a rush, I saw everything. I saw my family, our old home in our village, I saw the canopy of trees of the forest behind our village, light dappling between the leaves. I saw my father, my mother, my grandmother, my siblings. Strong Maxen, kind Eli, and beautiful Viola. I saw my life as it had been and then I saw my life as it had become. The Ghertun, the darkness of the Dead Mountain, the bitter taste of the vovic as it slid down my throat, coating it thickly, my sister’s haunted, sightless gaze, my mother’s desperation, and my brothers’ anger.

Then I saw Davik. His red eyes burning, that dark grin curling, those wicked hands touching me and making me feel too many things. I saw him watching me as I slept. I saw him frowning, looking at me like I was this thing he couldn’t figure out. He touched his chest, rubbing it as if it pained him, and then he pulled me closer to him as I slept.

Then I saw Devina, forever tied to him, watching us both from a place that we could not journey to. Not yet. A place in between, neither here nor there. I felt her sorrow, felt it choke me until I couldn’t breathe. Then, underneath, I felt her love and it helped pull me away. It was that love that pierced the veil that I had somehow found myself wrapped within, like the veil that had covered Lokkaru’s face in death.

With a choked cry, I wrenched my hand from the tree. The world around me seemed to whoosh against me, enclosing me. I heard the trickle of the stream. I heard the pyroki’s calm breaths as she slept. My fingers shimmered gold, the blood of the tree trailing down my palm.

That was the last thing I remembered seeing before blackness, like a curtain closing, shrouded my vision.

I collapsed against the tree, the heartbeat of the heartstone throbbing in my ears.