My gut clenched. “Safar?” I called. I looked up to see him staring and dazed. “Oh, shit. SAFAR!” I gripped as hard as I could with my left arm and my legs, took my right knuckle and twisted it viciously into his sternum. I’d used sternal rubs to wake up drunks before, but it barely made the massive reyza twitch. I reached up and grabbed an ear, twisting hard. “Safar!” I screamed. “Fly, damn it!”
At the ear twist he shuddered and came back to himself, then thrashed to get his wings out to slow our descent and stop the tumbling. He bellowed in pain as his right wing wrenched back, though he managed to get us straightened out. I felt our descent slowing, but a quick glance told me it wasn’t going to be enough to keep us from crashing into the trees…and not just any trees. The splash of viridian and amethyst identified the grove. At this point the best we could hope for was a crash at slower speed, ending up merely mangled instead of a grease spot. I tucked my head into his neck and wondered if there was any chance I’d make it through the void a second time. Either way, this was going to really suck ass.
We plowed into the densely woven canopy with a shriek of snapping vines and breaking branches. I lost my grip on Safar almost immediately, crashing down through the upper branches, instinctively flailing to check my descent somehow. I remembered how tall these trees were. The ground was a long way down. Not that I had much time to think about that. A hundred smaller limbs and vines whipped past me, and a branch smacked me hard on my shoulder. Something caught at my right leg, and I screamed as the twisting snap shot through me. I felt a punch of pain in my left side, then came to a hard stop.
Silence descended, strange after the cacophony of the fall. It took me a few seconds to catch my breath, but when I did, stabbing pain accompanied each inhalation. I was wedged in a tangle of branches and vines, at least twenty feet above the ground. A few yards to my right I could see the open space of a clearing—the center of the ring of grove trees.
I tried to shift, then let out a breathless scream as pain from my side and leg shot through me. The agony from the leg was simple to figure out. Legs weren’t supposed to twist that way, and jagged ends of bone weren’t normally visible through the skin. It took me a few more seconds to process the source of the pain in my side. It didn’t make sense that the branch would protrude from my body that way. The rivulets of blood tickling my abdomen finally got the message to my screwed up head. Ah, hell, I thought dropping my head back against the cluster of vines. This is bad.
I heard a bellow and snapping of branches, then a crash of something heavy falling to the ground nearby. Two faas streaked through the clearing and into the trees in the direction of the crash. A moment later they reappeared, supporting a limping Safar. His right wing drooped, and his normally rich bronze skin had a sickly green tinge.
A shudder went through the tangle of branches holding me. Dizzy, I grasped weakly at the mess of vines, fear slicing through me that I’d fall the rest of the way. As badly injured as I was now, I didn’t think I’d survive a fall of another twenty feet.
A vine by my hand twitched as a low purring vibration filled the forest. The trees around me gave another shudder, and a heartbeat later vines shifted and slid against me. Okay. Freaky. A deep groaning of movement permeated the grove as leaves and twigs broken by my passage fell from above. A vine as thick as my wrist snaked around my torso just above where the branch had skewered me.
I heard running footsteps in the clearing. Turning my head, I saw Mzatal come to a stop near the treeline, eyes on me, assessing. More vines wrapped around me. I struggled out of panicked instinct, stopping as agony knifed through my side and leg. My eyes met Mzatal’s. I tried to call for help, but I could barely get enough breath to breathe, much less speak or shout.
Mzatal’s eyes narrowed. He stepped forward, then stopped as if he’d run into a wall. I watched as he raised a hand, testing an unseen barrier. What the hell? I wondered in barely controlled panic. Had I managed to fall into some sort of carnivorous plant? Yeah, bleed on the man-eating plant. Always a good plan.
Yet even as I fretted about being eaten, a soft ease stole through me, and my panic faded. I felt oddly relaxed…and safe. It occurred to me that if it really was a man-eating plant, it might have released chemicals or pheromones or something to make its prey nice and docile, but I decided it was more comforting to think it was simply a Nice Plant.
Vines continued to shift and move around me. The white trunks and limbs shimmered with heat-wave ripples, though the grove felt cooler than before. The green and violet of the leaves awoke with a luminescent glitter of emerald and amethyst. Mzatal stepped back as the barrier before him took on a barely visible pulsing glow. A wind whispered through the leaves, or maybe the leaves just whispered to me. Mesmerized, I stared up at the shifting beauty.
A leafy tendril touched my face, and the last vestiges of my panic ebbed away. It wasn’t going to let me fall. Everything shuddered again and the vines that had wrapped around me began to lift me off the impaling branch. I stared at the leaves above, mind screaming distantly to expect fresh agony, but it was wrong. Only a little tingle. My new Plant Friend wouldn’t hurt me. Smiling, I watched the pretty dancing lights.
I relaxed into the cradling hold. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mzatal pacing along the perimeter, eyes never leaving me. He placed a hand on the barrier and tried to push through, then staggered back a step as it repelled him. His eyes snapped to me as he stood, hands clenched at his sides. Way too tense. He needed a Plant Friend.
Whisper whisper whisper. Sparkly. Everything sparkly.
“Kara, can you hear me?”
Whisper whisper whisper.
Shimmery. Sparkly. Shimmery.
Whisper whisper whisper.
“Kara!”
“No need. To. Shout,” I managed, my voice sounding loud and unnatural to me. Vines unwound, pulling away. The pain returned, and I shuddered and whimpered low. Awareness seeped in: not in the tree anymore, on the ground. “How’d I get here?”
Mzatal crouched at my side, carefully looking me over without touching me. “The grove moved you. It was unprecedented, Kara Gillian,” he murmured, gaze flicking from the wound in my side to the mangled mess of my leg. Sudden fear gripped me. Would he even bother trying to heal me?
He looked past me at the retreating vines, then laid a hand in the center of my chest. His jaw clenched and he shook his head, then stripped the collar from me, passed it to Gestamar, and set his hand on my chest again.
“You are badly injured,” he said, in what I thought was a keen grasp of the fucking obvious. He looked up and around, expression contemplative. “The grove has stopped the bleeding.” Shaking his head, he returned his attention to me. “We will stabilize your leg here, then move you.” He pointed to a spot in the center of his forehead. “Focus here,” he said, then sketched a quick sigil in the air between us.
I did my best to focus where he indicated, though my vision kept wanting to fuzz in and out. The sigil rotated in a subtly mesmerizing pattern, and gradually it became oddly simple to focus on that and little else. Mzatal set a hand on my thigh, and I felt Gestamar pulling and twisting my leg into a more acceptable configuration, but the agony seemed to be behind a glass wall. Mzatal traced tethers of potency around my leg, then caught the sigil and placed it on my chest. A soothing warmth emanated from it, like a magic pain patch.
“Gestamar will move you now,” he told me, speaking in a calm, imperturbable voice. I barely managed a nod, feeling strangely distant from my body.