The Immortal Chronicles | | b o o k 2

28. great big trees

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IMMORTAL CHRONICLES : BOOK ONE : neox

. . .

Neox spent three days coming up empty handed. On the second day, a few miles out from the border, the Great Forest road was suddenly exposed to the sky and the land. She stopped her horse to explore, realizing then how free she felt out in the open, without a soul in sight. As she walked out to the plains, her horse trailing after her, her feet caught on a lump underneath the fallen twigs and the grasses. She cleared the mass of hard flat ground and found the makings of a tree stump. She stood atop it and looked out over the plains, gaping at the sight of so many similar bushels of grass disguising the fallen trees. As her horse grazed at the torn-up grass, she climbed the nearby hill, marking all the places the trees were cleared and cut and taken away from the land.

Why would anyone do this? she thought, approaching the cusp of the hill, and the prairie that stretched out ahead. Where the Great Forest ended, she saw sprouts of baby trees growing, but in the center of the prairie, there was no hope for regrowth. She sat for a long while atop the flat crop of a dead tree. The trunk's width expanded past the length of her legs.

After a long while, Neox swallowed her sorrows and continued onward, taking her horse by its reigns and guiding it back to the road.

She met the troops on the Valens border, and asked around to see if anyone heard of her Master. His name came up blank in their minds, so she asked to see their superiors, anyone that would listen to her. They saw her as a strange girl, someone who couldn't, exactly, be trusted face to face with the people commanding their posts. It didn't help that when they patted her down, they plucked out Attus' sword and deemed her dangerous.

There are plenty of men who walk around with swords and they get to meet with their superiors, she muttered grudgingly as she snatched back her sword from one of the men. His eyebrows raised at her, but she ignored that as best she could.

The post she stopped at was a military-run toll, a gate into Valen territory. The gate itself stood several stories taller than her, framed on either side by massive walls, walls that disappeared to the north and south for as far as she could see. She wondered just how long it took for them to build such grand structures with their bare hands.

Beyond the gates rose the post where she assumed the leaders of these men sat, sipping tea or ale, or anything in between. She was so incredibly close—perhaps the reason these men never heard of her master was because he was keeping a lower profile than she initially suspected.

Surrounding the Matalivens side of the toll were travelers and refugees camped on the sides of the road, gathered in rows to cross through the gate. Neox skipped the line to talk to the military men standing with swords at their wastes and rifles on their shoulders. It was a surprise to see the men armed with guns, but after seeing the deforested prairies, she found it easy to quell her shock.

"Are you planning on crossing the border, miss?" the man asked, his eyes straying down—it took her half a second to realize he wasn't addressing her sword.

She pursed her lips, realizing she hadn't even considered crossing. She glimpsed back up to the towers, and through the crack in the gate that betrayed the city of sorts on the other end. "Yes," she admitted, wary of the line of people waiting to cross through the toll.

"Well, tell ya what," he said, "I can slip you in now, miss, you just have to pay the toll."

It was the fourth time she cursed herself in the past two days for not snatching money from Vene—she seemed well off, at least, enough to spare a few dimes on her. The expression of Neox's face must have said just what she was thinking, and the man exchanged a look with his comrade. They were both dark-haired and soldierly, and she noted the peculiar way their eyebrows raised when she said she didn't have any money.