The Traitor's Game (The Traitor's Game 1)

There was no other choice.

Kestra helped me to my feet, and together we began clambering up the slope, slipping on dewy grasses or tripping over embedded rocks. We weren't yet halfway up when the first oropod reached the road directly below us. Every rider had a revolver that shot off fire pellets. I'd seen them many times before in skirmishes with Dominion soldiers. When the pellets connected with metal, they exploded in seconds. But at night, when they carried a visible glow, the Coracks had a way of dealing with them. One I rather enjoyed.

"Keep running," I told Kestra, then pulled out my sword, angling it over one shoulder.

When the spray of pellets came close, I swung out my sword, hitting them back toward the rider, where they exploded on contact, killing him. His oropod started to run free, but its reins were caught by a second rider who had arrived. It must not have known this man, because the oropod immediately bit into his arm with fangs that punctured deep into the flesh. By then, five other riders had arrived and it took all of them to rescue their companion. That gave us time we desperately needed. I'd sacrificed my ribs for that swing. Breathing hurt. Running was torture.

Kestra ran back down to me, taking my sword in her hands. "Come on." After a short run, we were beyond the reach of fire pellets, but not the oropods.

The riders wouldn't want to enter the forest, any more than I did. The remaining five slid out of their saddles, briefly conferring. Then I heard the order to their oropods: "Kill."

Kestra redoubled her efforts to pull me uphill. I did what I could for myself, but remained on my feet more from sheer willpower than physical strength. My legs were no sturdier than saplings, and my lungs couldn't draw a full breath. Since swinging the sword, my vision had blurred, making me stumble with every step. Oropods were pursuing us with jaws open wide and eager fangs. So maybe it wasn't willpower moving me

uphill, as much as it was an overwhelming desire to not be eaten.

"Keep going!" Kestra stopped and I turned long enough to see her swipe at an oropod, but I was too dizzy to see what she did next. Seconds later, I heard the animal's shriek of rage. When Kestra took my hand again, hers was wet. Blood? Her blood or the oropod's?

Then her arm went around my shoulders, bracing me and pushing me uphill again, toward the fringes of the forest. With the rising moon ahead of us, long shadows fell at our feet, spiny gray fingers cast by the burned, blackened trees. They sent a chill through me every time I crossed through one, as if each shadow stole a piece of my soul for itself. It was impossible to believe that this was the safest of our options.

On its first brush through one of those shadows, an oropod that had been following us arched high onto its hind legs, pulling back its front claws as if burned. Spitting with anger, it stopped on the exact line of the shadow, refusing to cross through it. None of them would.

I suggested we stop at the shadows. If the oropods wouldn't enter, why should we? But Kestra was still pushing us into the trees and I knew why. The soldiers were not finished.

At least one had followed us up the slope. A fire pellet hit the blade of my knife. Before I could react, it exploded against my thigh, searing my nerves. I didn't know how close Kestra was, if she had been caught in the blast too. But there was no time to think of it. Spotty lights filled my vision, brighter and brighter until everything suddenly went dark.

My body crumpled to the ground.

I awoke to the impossible. If anything I remembered from before I passed out had been real, then how could I be free of pain now? My eye that had been nearly swollen shut felt normal. I was breathing easily, without effort or thought. I felt strong and perfectly warm.

Also, I was sitting in a pool of warm water.

Where was Kestra?

My head had been resting on a mound of dirt at the edge of the pool. I raised it to look around. It was shortly past dawn, and I was somewhere inside All Spirits Forest. That much was obvious. No place like this existed anywhere else in Antora, maybe nowhere in all the world.

The trees here were thick, or had been years ago. Now all that remained were branchless black logs that stayed upright only from a memory of their past glory. The ground was scorched too, the earth refusing to regrow even a single blade of grass.

When the tide turned against the Halderians during the War of Devastation, many of them had fled into these woods to hide. Ignoring their pleas for mercy, Endrick used magic to build invisible barriers, locking in all those who had come here to hide. Then he burned the entire forest, a final act of brutality before the Dominion claimed victory in the war.

Since the war's end, nothing had changed here, nor would it ever. The spirits of those who had died still roamed the woods, forever unable to leave their borders, but eager for vengeance upon anyone with the enemy's blood, should they dare to enter the realm.

I sat fully up, alarmed. Maybe I was accepted here, but where was Kestra?

She must have survived long enough to bring me to this pool. I called her name and started from the water before I heard her voice behind me.

"You look better."

Startled, I splashed backward, then turned to see her.

Kestra stood in front of me, cleaned up from the mud from last night, but still looking more like an abandoned orphan than nobility of the Dominion. Her dress was stained with dirt and had been cut in jagged tears just below her knees. Her hair was tangled and hung loose on her shoulders. But her smile was genuine, and her natural beauty made the ruby necklace around her neck sparkle brighter. That necklace was her final link to the Dallisors.

"You're all right." I wasn't sure if it was a statement or a question.

She wrapped her arms around herself. "I'm cold, but I'm all right."

"It's warm in here." I grinned and held out a hand for her.

But she only shook her head. "I can't, Simon. You know why."