Even wounded, he had proven powerful. Perhaps it was the staff he clung to, brimming with the life-force of the wood. Perhaps his blood had saved him, as it had saved his sister. Twice now, the kin of Auror had survived the First's death touch, and even he could not guess why.
That power had made Phage the ultimate ally. It had made her brother the ultimate foe.
"Kamahl will die," the First told himself.
Swollen, the sun sank toward the sea of sand. The First's shadow lengthened, crossing the desolation. It grew until it stood like a titan on the Krosan head wall. Soon the whole world would be swallowed in shadow, and the First would stalk the Krosan. Soon Kamahl would die.
The First stood and waited, dark magic tingling on his fingers.
It could no longer be called simply a mound-the swollen ground where Kamahl had stabbed Laquatus. Rampant growth had changed it. It was now a veritable mount. Some called it the Gorgon Mount for the snaky growths across its emerging head. The tumulus rose a hundred feet from the forest floor. Dreadlocks of wood and vine draped its sides. The cycles of fecundity, sprout to blossom to fruit to seed to sprout, ran in daily loops. The forest wove flesh out of air, soil, water, and sun and blanketed the ground in a foot of new humus each day. Among the burgeoning boughs trundled beasts like swollen ticks. They ate and rutted, dropping their vasty broods amid the roots.
Kamahl stood in the literal shadow of the Gorgon Mount. He squinted against the sun, which brought its fiery bulk down upon the rioting branches. A similar sunburst covered the bandage across his waist. The poultice had been unable to heal him, and the milkweed packing was unable to stop the bleeding.
The druid healer and the honor guard of mantis warriors stood around him. Suspicious, they watched Kamahl. "No one ventures onto the Gorgon Mount except the druid elders," said the captain. "It is a place of wild spirits, sacred and vicious."
"That's what I need. Wild spirits," Kamahl said, "a whole army of them."
"You see what that place does to the creatures on it," the captain said. 'They are grotesque. The same will happen to you, my friend."
Kamahl smiled, his face red with the setting sun. "No. I'm already grotesque. You can't parody a parody." With that, he left them and strode up the mount.
Kamahl forged forward like a man against the tide. His staff split the currents of growth that poured past him. Fecundity made the air curdle and boil. It hurt to breathe. Vitality burned Kamahl's lungs and tingled through his bloodstream.
"Move aside," he calmly told a roiling thicket.
Its thorns ground against each other as if a pair of giant, invisible hands dug into the patch and parted it. Kamahl stepped within. He marched up the passage. Thorns on all sides proliferated. If the wood so chose, he could be trapped and picked apart. The forest spared him. He emerged from the hedge of briars, but the forest ahead had braided itself into an impenetrable jungle.
Kamahl did not bother asking the branches to part. Instead, he hung his staff from his belt and climbed. Hand over hand and foot over foot, he ascended the wall of boughs. Near their summit, the way flattened, and the branches thickened. He walked atop their twisted backs. As the tentacles of a sea monster lead inevitably toward the thing's mouth, the tree boughs led toward the spot where Laquatus lay pinned. While the mount had risen, its heart had sunk. This was no simple hole but the vertical mouth of a twisting cave.
"The spirit well," supplied a stump sitting by the edge of it.
Kamahl glanced in surprise at the stump, noticing only then that it was a nantuko woman. She hunched beneath a gray cloak and stared down into the black pit. Her eyes reflected the darkness-wide, empty, and unblinking.
"It holds a wicked spirit. Its blood transforms the wood."
Kamahl's hand strayed to his own bleeding wound. He then reached for a fat vine at the edge of the pit and set his foot on a ledge within. "I'm going."
"You're gone," said the sentinel. She breathed once and grew as still as a stump.
Kamahl descended. At first, he found footholds down the slick side. Soon, though, the cliff sucked in its belly, and Kamahl had to climb down with hands only. The vine ended before the drop did. He let go and fell through the swirling cold. His feet struck ground in a shallow creek, and Kamahl rolled and rose.
Before him, the creek wended downhill into darkness, seeking the lowest level. It would find Laquatus and the Mirari sword. Kamahl followed it.
Darkness deepened, and cold reached to his bones. Occasional fists of stone struck his head. Kamahl would reel, wait, and let the waters lead him on.
At last, in the deep heart of the ground, a cavern opened. Its lowest reaches were filled with a lake, which centered around an island. There the corpse of Laquatus lay. Even it had grown. Pallid and swollen, the merman seemed a skewered manatee. The Mirari sword cast a steely glow across the scene.
Kamahl waded through shoulder-deep water to reach the island. He arose, streaming water. Waves of energy bled from the bluish corpse, and Kamahl trudged through them. He stared at the wound that pierced Laquatus-the same one that pierced him, his sister, and the forest. All the wounds were one.
"To save them all, I must save myself," Kamahl said even as he placed his hand on the Mirari sword.
Power surged into him. He recoiled, but the energy held him fast. A voice came with it. This wound will kill us, but until it does, it empowers us. Do not draw it.
Kamahl shuddered. He still clutched the sword, an envious hand against a jealous world. An evil one is coming.
Yes. He enters Krosan on the flood of night.
Kamahl could sense the follower's fell presence. How can 1 fight without this sword?
I will form new beasts through you. They will be your foot soldiers and your command corps. Build an army from the abundance within me and shape them from the abundance within you. Make your army and march them to war. Heal yourself and heal the land…
The contact broke. Kamahl staggered away. The darkness around him was profound. Though the revelatory moment was fleeting, it had changed all. Kamahl brimmed so full of power that it poured from his eyes and nose and mouth.
"I will gather my army," he said, flames standing on his tongue. "I will make new warriors. I will heal the land."
Swathed in night, the First sat beyond the Gorgon Mound. Around him spread a riot of dead boughs. Kamahl had descended into the pit and communed with a very god. He was its champion, just as his sister was the champion of the First.
A bleak smile cracked the man's face. He would soon descend to commune with that same god, but not yet. The forest was still too vital, but a great evil ate into its heart. The evil gave the Krosan power for the moment, but it stole power for eternity. Once the forest was weak enough, the First would touch its heart.
He withdrew into deeper shadows. He would test the forest's champion, and when the man was found wanting, he would strike to kill.
Kamahl emerged into a benighted forest. He was its only light. His face beamed with power, and he stood-lantern-bearer and lantern both-atop the spirit well.
Beside him hunched the druid sentry. In her gray robes, the nantuko woman seemed a stump, but her eyes glistened with hope. Prior to this moment, she had seen only darkness in that cave-tomb, but now she saw light incarnate.
Kamahl descended the hill. He was not truly light incarnate but only a vessel that held the inestimable power of the forest. The perfect place within him had grown until it verged on his very skin and would flow out at a single touch. His tattered boots left glowing footprints, and in them rose the tender shoots of new life.
He walked, refulgent, focus of this once-chaotic power. The fecund force that had lashed mindlessly, warping plant and beast into grotesqueries, now would emerge mindfully.