Chunth’s answer hit like a dagger in Glissa’s throat. She couldn’t speak. She could hardly breathe. She leaned against the hide-covered wall and wrapped her arms around her chest. “Why?” she asked finally in a quiet, rasping voice.
“We do not know why,” replied Chunth. “We only know it will happen tonight and that you are the target.”
Glissa straightened, rage and pain playing across her face. “No,” she said. “Why save me but leave my family to die? What are you playing at?”
“You have a destiny,” replied Chunth. “They do not.”
“Well, my destiny includes my parents,” spat Glissa and dived toward the bed.
Chunth rose and turned to cut her off, Glissa but rolled past him and came up behind, pulling the sword out from the bedcovers as she stood. She pushed the tip of the sword up under Chunth’s flat nose, snarling, “If you want to see another convergence, old one, you’ll open that door and call your guards back in here.”
Chunth made no resistance. The two walked to the hidden door, and Glissa watched as the troll lifted back the hide, reached in, and with a grunt of distaste pulled down on a small extrusion of metal. The door unseated itself and began to move slowly inward. Glissa stepped behind the door, keeping the sword pressed hard just under Chunth’s ribs.
“Call them,” she hissed at him, “but remember, I’m the greatest warrior in the Tangle and I have a sword just inches from your heart.”
Chunth called out, “Sentinels. Come take our guest to her quarters.”
Glissa pushed a little harder on the sword. “Now move back and let them come into the room,” she said.
The trolls arrived and Chunth waved them into his quarters. As soon as the fourth one passed the door, Glissa shoved the old troll into the others. The five trolls crashed to the floor, flattening the chairs and table, and sending the gelfruit globe flying up into the air. The globe splattered on top of Chunth’s head, plunging the room into near darkness. Glissa turned to the door and smashed the sword pommel down onto the metal Chunth had pushed to open the door. It broke off and clattered to the floor.
The elf flitted through the door, but one of the sentinels grabbed her ankle as she passed the mass of troll bodies on the floor. Glissa pulled back, but the troll had a strong grip and she lost her balance, sprawling to the floor. She kicked out with her free leg and slammed it into the sentinel’s sloping forehead. He grunted but held on. The other trolls were crawling from the pile. She kicked again, harder, into the troll’s upturned face and heard something crack. The troll yelped and grabbed at his nose with both hands. Glissa was free.
She scrambled to her feet and ran from the room, pulling the door closed behind her. A large hand shot through the narrowing opening. Glissa pulled as hard as she could, but the troll was stronger and the door began to open. Without thinking, Glissa shoved the sword through the widening crack. She heard a yelp, and the hand was gone. She slammed the door and turned toward the tunnel.
Glissa counted the steps as she ran, and stopped when she got to 139. That was the number she had counted on the way up to Chunth’s room. She looked at the wall beside her and ran her hand over the metal, searching for an extrusion like the one in Chunth’s room.
After an agonizingly long minute, the elf felt something irregular on the wall near the lower step. She pulled down, and a doorway formed and began to open, scraping against the metal step. Glissa didn’t wait for the door to open all the way. She squeezed through and ran back out into the Tangle.
I know this place, thought Glissa as she came from the Tree of Tales onto a small terrace. It was a dead end, the same dead end where they had cornered the vorrac earlier that day, which now seemed an age previous. Glissa ran over to the place from which she and Kane had jumped down and was about to pull herself up when a horrible sound filled her ears. A horn was blaring in the Tangle-the horn of warning. The levelers had entered the Tangle!
CHAPTER 3
Glissa froze, one hand on the ledge above her, the other still holding the sword she had stolen from Chunth. She waited for what seemed an eternity for the responding horn, hoping that the first horn had been a mistake or a trick of the wind. She was terrified of the levelers. They had tormented her dreams since childhood. Her father assured her over and over that the family was safe in their home, so high in the trees and so close to the Radix. Nevertheless Glissa woke screaming any time the horn of warning invaded her dreams.
Now that fear paralyzed her. She knew they were coming for her this time. Chunth had said as much. But they wouldn’t find her hiding in her bed, shivering under the vorrac hides. They would find only Father, Mother, and Lyese.
She wasn’t far from her father’s tree, but there was no easy route between the two trees. Earlier that day, it had taken her and Kane at least five minutes to work their way down to the vorrac carcass. She didn’t have that kind of time. Her family needed her now, yet she couldn’t move.
A second horn blared. In her mind, Glissa could see the gleaming levelers scrambling up the Tangle tree toward her father’s house, just as they had in her childhood nightmares. But this was real and she was no scared little girl. Glissa forced the fear from her legs and allowed her warrior instinct to take control. Dropping back down onto the terrace, the elf broke into a run. As she approached the spot where she had caught the vorrac, she took three long strides and launched her body off the terrace.
Glissa ran through the air, her legs pumping furiously as she arced up and away from the terrace. Thirty feet out she passed the level of the dead-end terrace and began to fall through the Tangle, edging ever farther away from the Tree of Tales. As she fell, the elf warrior twirled the sword around and brought it over her head, point forward. She clutched the pommel. Arching her back and spreading her legs to slow her descent, Glissa fell toward a terrace on a nearby tree.
The swordpoint struck the trunk of the Tangle tree and dug into the metal. As her body whipped around, Glissa brought her legs in to absorb the impact. Her feet slammed into the tree, and she bounced, but the sword held, cutting a jagged line down the trunk as she continued to fall toward the terrace. Glissa marveled at how easily the sword cut through the Tangle tree metal. She’d expected it would slow her fall, but the terrace was coming up fast. Far too fast.
She kicked at the tree hard with both feet, pulled the sword free, and flipped into the air again as she passed a spire. Catching the spire in one hand, she rotated around it once, hung for a moment, then released to fall the last twenty feet. She rolled and came up running. She had cut precious time from her journey but was still two trees from home.
The next jump was far easier. She had made this leap a hundred times. When she came to the end of the terrace, she sprang out as before, but at the top of her arc she kicked her legs back and flew facedown for a moment before tucking in her head, legs, and arms and rolling slowly head over heels toward the oncoming terrace. She would hit on her shoulders and roll with the blow, but she hadn’t counted on the sword.
Glissa hit and rolled, but the sword blade cut into the terrace, throwing her off balance. She slammed hard into the trunk of the tree before slumping down onto the terrace. Turning onto her hands and knees she tried to push herself back up to her feet, but her head felt thick, and she had a searing pain between her shoulder blades. She looked up and tried to focus on the next tree. She was nearly home, but the dim light from the gelfruits was swirling in circles in front of her.
Glissa shook her head and rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes. With a long groan, she forced her body off the terrace and looked again. She could see the dark opening into her father’s home just above her, but she also saw several gleaming forms crawling up the side of the Tangle tree. The levelers looked like huge, silver bugs. They were slightly larger than vorracs, but instead of horns, they had blades that were half again as long as their body. These spearlike pincers sliced back and forth ahead of them as they moved, while several rows of razor-sharp blades twirled just below the levelers’ mouths. They could level anything-or anybody-that got in their way, leaving behind nothing but a bloody stain.