He growls deep in his throat. Steps closer to Enna, until the space between them is as narrow as his little finger. Enna tenses. He stoops low, letting the base of his horn press against the highest point of her forehead. His hands slide around her neck—softly, but he can feel her pulse hammering under his thumb. Is it for fear, or something else?
“Does it still think I’m not dangerous?” he murmurs. His nose hovers just above hers. He thinks about the way her lips feel, warm and willing—
“M-Maekallus,” she croaks.
Two heavy footfalls sound ahead of them. “Am I interrupting something? Maekallus, I wasn’t expecting you. Ah, you’re missing a tail.”
Maekallus straightens, letting his hands fall from Enna’s neck. She backs away instantly, a small squeak escaping her when she beholds Attaby.
He looks as any rooter will—about eight feet tall, with hard, dark skin that resembles the bark of a tree. His head is broad and rectangular, and if he closes his eyes, his face will be nearly indistinguishable from the rest of it. He has long arms and skinny, wood-like legs. Thick, flat fingers on each hand. In a place like the wildwood, a rooter can stand stationary and never be noticed by a mortal.
“It’s been a while.” Maekallus bends his head in greeting.
“Indeed. You are not one to traipse the wildwood.” He studies Enna. “Especially with a mortal. Has this anything to do with your tail?”
Enna glances at her stone, then back at Attaby. She pulls her sleeve over the bracelet.
“In a manner of speaking.” Maekallus gestures to the thin stream of light emitting from his chest.
“At least you didn’t lose your horn. Narval horns make for excellent sorcery.” Attaby moves closer, ungracefully, crushing vegetation underfoot as he goes. He squints at the red light. “Ah, that’s a terrible chain to have.” He looks to Enna. “And you can’t untie it?”
Enna blinks. “I, uh, I’m not the one who bound him here. It was a gobler. I hired Maekallus to eliminate him, and it . . . didn’t end well.”
She opens her right hand and pulls back the bandaging on it, showing the weeping red cut.
Attaby chortles. “Trouble with a gobler? Really, Maekallus?”
“There were two of them,” he growls. “The second crept up on me.”
“In a forest, no less? Hmm. Follow me. I’ve a nicer spot to chat.” He turns, far too slowly, and stomps back through the forest. It isn’t hard to see where he came from. Rooters leave clumsy trails. At least the mellow pace will be good for Enna.
They don’t go far. Attaby brings them to another glade, much smaller than Maekallus’s cage, the grassy ground littered with leaves green and yellow. Dogwood—Maekallus thinks that’s what it’s called—springs up in patches around it like the claws of a fergshaw. The rooter has set up a sort of table, a long split log propped up on other logs. Speaking of sorcery, atop it sits a collection of things: a hare’s foot, leaves and needles from various plants, gemstones, ash, a bowl of slop from the River of Blood in the Deep. Enna takes an immediate interest in them, toeing behind Attaby to investigate. No doubt she wishes to sketch the lot in her book.
“And the girl?” Attaby asks, as though they’d been conversing this whole time.
“We’re bound by the bargain. She . . . has an ability to break up her soul.”
“Truly?” He turns about and looks at Enna, who takes the opportunity to look right back. She doesn’t seem afraid. Granted, Attaby is hardly terrifying.
“How do you do it?” the rooter asks.
“Uh”—she glances to Maekallus—“I don’t know. It’s . . . something I was born with.”
Maekallus groans inwardly at the obvious lie, but Attaby accepts it. “Interesting. And you’re keeping him alive. But of course, the bargain spell is simply—”
Maekallus clears his throat loudly. Gesturing to Enna, he says, “We’ll worry about the bargain. What we need help with is breaking this.” He juts a thumb at the binding spell.
“Hmmm.” Attaby considers for a moment before walking to Maekallus and grabbing his jaw in his wide, rough fingers, turning his head this way and that. Maekallus resists the urge to knock the rooter away. Like it or not, he needs help.
Attaby releases him and looks him over, possibly studying the spots of black growing like mold over his body.
“You’re not corrupted,” Enna says, drawing the mysting’s attention away. “You’ve obviously been here a long time, but the mortal world doesn’t consume you.”
The rooter chortles. “Oh, it does indeed, young one. But a dip back into the Deep is all I require to return renewed. It is not hard to linger here if one visits home on occasion. That is why so many of our kind haunt uncultivated places like this wood. The weather here really is more pleasant, as is the food.”
“Truly? What is it like in the monster—”
“To the task at hand,” Maekallus interrupts. Even as he says it, black oozes out from the slice across his hand, eating up his palm. It stings.
“I’ve no mystium blood to unbind it,” says Attaby. “I’m surprised it lets you come all this way. Binding spells tend to have short leashes.”
“Can you break it?”
Attaby frowns. He places his large, woody hand against Maekallus’s chest. The thread of red light passes through it.
Then he digs in all four of his jagged fingers, and the tips begin to glow blue.
Attaby is an old mysting, well versed in the workings of both worlds and the sorcery between them. It’s why Maekallus sought him out. This time, and the last, though he’d been too late, then.
But Attaby’s workings are never pleasant.
Heat like a thousand suns pulses through the rooter’s hand, and it takes everything Maekallus has to stay standing. Air storms from their connection. Something beneath Attaby’s grip cracks and sizzles. Maekallus’s knees give out, but he doesn’t fall. The power holds him up.
It pierces him, and he screams.
“Stop!” Enna’s cry is muffled by the surge of Attaby’s power. She grabs the rooter’s other arm and tugs, as if she’ll ever possess the strength to move him. “You’re hurting him!”
The gusts and the light die down, as does the strength holding Maekallus upright. He drops to his knees, palms against the earth.
Enna runs to his side. His chest smokes and smells terrible. “Are you all right?”
He trembles. Grits his teeth to stop it, but his body is repelling the workings of the rooter. It will take a moment.
“Maekallus?” She grabs either side of his face, searching his eyes. Is she going to kiss him, like she did after the grinlers’ attack?
He reaches up a hand and grasps her wrist. “It’ll leave a mark,” he rasps.
“Hmm.” Attaby strokes his wide, flat jaw, completely unmoved by Enna’s screams or Maekallus’s . . . whatever. “Alas, this binding is absolute. It wavered for a moment, but that is all I can do without killing you.”
Maekallus looks down. A strange circular burn mars his chest, the skin there gray and waxen. The glimmer of the binding spell beams bright in comparison.
He spits the vilest curse the Deep had taught him.
“Interesting,” Attaby says, but when Maekallus lifts his head, he realizes the rooter isn’t referring to the spell. His dark eyes shift back and forth between Enna and Maekallus, a flat finger pressed to his mouth.
“Attaby,” Maekallus warns. The name scrapes up his throat.
Attaby turns to Enna. “You should know, little mortal, that there’s been more activity in this place than usual, closer to the heart of the wood. Magic quakes through the air. Mmm, yes. Mystings all about, sniffing something out. Not all are as tolerant of humans as I am. Or, apparently, as Maekallus is.”