Keystone: Gateway Chronicles Book 1

Chapter 3

Sami snatched her backpack and leapt down from the wagon to kneel by Cleason's unmoving form while Phoedri trundled onward, oblivious to the chaos. A shaft of wood thicker than her thumb was sticking out of his back, the origin of a dark stain that was slowly spreading out on his shirt. She gingerly rolled him over far enough to see that his eyes were open and staring, his lips covered in blood. When he coughed abruptly, startling her and sending droplets of blood splattering into the dirt, she gave out a yelp and jerked her hands back.

"S... something... hit-" he tried to say, but his eyes rolled back, his body tensed, and he exhaled a thick gurgle of foamy blood.

"Oh my God," she sobbed, fighting back tears. He was dead. She'd never seen a dead person before, and certainly hadn't watched someone die right in front of her. What was worse than that, she felt certain he had died because of her, because he was helping her. Now who would give Phoedri a "krispyleaf" and unhitch the wagon? Who would tend to the bovern and deliver their milk to town? Then she remembered the cloaked figures and that she was next. Fearfully, she looked up to see them on the strange, dinosaur-like mounts coming toward her at a run. She didn't know how they found her, but she knew they were there for her, and they were getting closer by the second. She brushed a bit of dirt away from Cleason's face, choking back tears that threatened to blur her vision, and jumped to her feet. Her only hope for escape was a nearby copse of woods that Phoedri was nearing at her steady, ground-eating pace.

Sami had an idea. The Xedosian's were on mounts, which gave them an advantage on open ground, but they would be at a disadvantage in the trees. That's what she hoped, at least. She ran to catch up to the wagon and leapt up long enough to snatch the strange lantern Cleason used to pass through the groves of trees. She tapped it twice to turn it on and darted into the forest moments before the lead Xedosian reached her. She heard him growl as he yanked his raptor mount to a stop just beyond the reach of the trees.

"She went inside," he shouted. She didn't wait to hear any answering calls. If they dismounted to follow her, she needed every second of head start she could get.

The trees were thick at the base but quickly tapered to a thin pinnacle where hundreds of slender stalks sprouted dandelion-like to form a canopy of bright orange leaves twenty feet overhead. The branches of each tree intertwined with the ones around them, as if the canopy was a single cohesive unit instead of being composed of individual trees. There were no bushes and no ground cover, but some of the branches hung low and laced together as far down as ground level forming tangled barriers that turned the woods into a labyrinth.

The eerie witchlight cast stark shadows that danced and played along the trunks. It was a bright, unnatural, eye-straining light that made her squint when she looked at the lantern. But as the light fell on the tree trunks, they groaned and creaked and bent subtly away from her. The low, interlaced limbs pulled apart in front of her, then knit back together behind her. She didn't know what would happen if she tried to enter the trees without the witchlight, at the very least it would have made it slow going as she had to claw through tangled branches. She also didn't know how long the lantern would last. It didn't seem to have any fuel or energy source, simply a tin bottom and glass top with a little latch on one side. It was too bright to see inside the glass so she couldn't see the light bulb or determine what was producing the light. She knew it lit up when she tapped it twice and turned off when she tapped it again, hopefully that was enough.

She delved deeper into the grove, her footsteps crunching strangely in the dirt, hoping against hope that the Xedosian's didn't have a witchlight, too. Even if they did, it would be difficult to track her in that forest. The way it moved and reshaped in front of and behind her would surely obliterate any tracks she left. That meant, if she could stay in the trees for awhile, they might give up searching and leave. It was a slim hope, but the only one she had.