The Tome of Arbor (The Legend of Vanx Malic Book 9) Read online

  Book Nine – The Tome of Arbor

  M.R. MATHIAS

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form, including digital, electronic, or mechanical, to include photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the author, except for brief quotes used in reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  © 2016 Michael Robb Mathias Jr.

  Created in the United States of America

  Worldwide Rights

  This is for Mister Stubbs,

  who never fails to come sit with me

  when he hears the keyboard start clacking.

  I would also like to thank,

  Michael E. McPartland,

  for creating “Papri’s Map”

  To hear about new releases, sales and giveaways,

  follow M. R. Mathias @DahgMahn on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or visit www.mrmathias.com

  Table of Contents

  Map

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Book 10 Intro

  Chapter

  One

  Sometimes we must sacrifice a single branch for the good of a tree. For if we do not, we may lose many more, and even the tree itself. A Heart Tree is no exception.

  - The Tome of Arbor

  Vanx Malic reached the top of the hill they’d been climbing. Once he was at the treeless ridge, and could see both sides of the slope, he squatted down to scratch Sir Poopsalot, his canine familiar, behind the ears. He looked over the treetops at the lake below, and then up at the single great hawk circling high above. Even though summer was at its end, the tropical climate had the air thick with moisture and, already, his clothes were starting to stick to his skin.

  Vanx had to shade the sun from his eyes just to see them up there. Papri, the elf, was on that bird’s back and, though Vanx couldn’t see them, he knew there were two other great hawks not far away. Papri was mapping the interior of the island from a literal bird’s eye view. Vanx and the crew of his ship, Adventurer, had mapped the island’s shoreline the last time they came here. He hoped the little guy took the time to estimate elevations and depressions in the terrain, and such.

  Another glance down at the lake, and the path they would have to take through the foliage, made Vanx smile. The canopy was lush and green, but the trees were old, and the thick trunks allowed plenty of space between them. Papri was up there in the hot sun. Vanx, and those on foot with him, would be in the shade just as soon as they started down.

  Like most things, Vanx wanted to do the mapping himself, but since his group was searching for a place to smash the ruby gem-seed, he left it to the least capable of the elves. When it came to elves, Papri wasn’t the brightest ember in the firepit, but he followed Moonsy’s orders without hesitation and wasn’t afraid to do his share of the dirty work.

  “There?” Chelda, a seven and a half foot tall, blonde gargan woman, pointed at a large boulder that was about two thirds of the way toward the fresh water. She was wearing light traveling garb and had a mountaineer's backpack slung on her wide shoulders. The tree tops were open there and a mote filled ray of sunlight shone on the spot as if the heavens concurred.

  “Looks good to me.” Vanx shrugged. His best friend Zeezle was back on Dragon Isle tending Chelda’s horses and trying to get familiar with a dragon he’d been observing. Vanx wished the expert adventurer was here with them. Zeezle’s insight would have been invaluable. Master Ruuk had returned to Zyth, so his ages old, wizardly intellect wouldn’t be of use either.

  “Your tree will have plenty of water,” General Gloryvine Moonseed agreed. Moonsy, as they called her, was Chelda’s lover, and an elf. She stood waist tall to her mate and had almost the same shade of blonde hair but, unlike Chelda, she was wearing her leather uniform, which included a finely crafted, chainmail shirt. Moonsy wasn’t focused on the big rock. She looked back, past Vanx, down at the other of the three elves and the man she was conversing with. Vanx couldn’t help but look, too. But his eyes drifted past them to the sea, and his single-masted ship anchored in the bay. Ronzon was on deck in a hammock, watching a fishing line.

  Vanx was envious.

  Anitha, the elf, and Castovanti, the sea mage, had fallen behind; Castovanti because he was an unfit human, and the exertion of the slightly graded climb they were making was getting to his lazy sea legs, Anitha because she was explaining some herb lore to the man. She kept his pace out of sympathy, Vanx was sure, for she could teleport herself up the hill, or run up it, as Gallarael had done.

  Anitha was also in uniform. She keeping herself two steps ahead of Castovanti, just to stay eye to eye while they conversed.

  “Look at that!” Chelda brought Vanx’s attention back to the boulder. A sleek looking black feline creature, somewhat like a tailless panther, only with strange limb joints that didn’t bend in a normal fashion, stood on the rock now.

  “Gallarael must agree, too,” Moonsy offered.

  “Yah,” Chelda added. “Is that the place, Vanx?”

  “Yup, I guess it is.” Vanx stood up and let the dog he was scratching start down ahead of him. “It would probably be best if everyone but me stayed on the backside of the ridge, about where Castovanti and Anitha are now.”

  “Yah,” Chelda agreed, nodding at Moonsy. “All the chips and dust from the ruby will stick in your skin if you are near it. I’ve seen it.” The gargan woman looked at Vanx, who was eye level to her now, but only because he was upslope. She was a head taller than he, and he knew exactly what she was about to ask.

  “Who will sma—”

  “You can do it, Chelda.” Vanx smiled at her eagerness. Sometimes she acted like a great big, excited young girl. Other than Poops, as he called his dog, he’d known her longer than anyone with them. “But I’m going with you, Chel. Moonsy, I’ll need the Glaive of Gladiolus, just in case we get that stuff on us.”

  The glaive was an ancient elven weapon created to heal the terrible creations the Hoar Witch used to torment the elves who lived under the Heart Tree near Saint Elm’s Deep. It wasn’t needed for defense from the old crone anymore because Vanx had captured her, and Pwca had killed her, but it still healed anyone it poked. After they smashed the ruby gem-seed on the rock, one or both of them would probably need to use that power.

  Get Gallarael and return, Poops, Vanx used his mind to speak to the dog. Even though Vanx didn’t like it all that much, he was a warlock of sorts, and a few other things as well. Poops wasn’t just a pet, either. He was Vanx’s wizardly familiar.

  “Come on Chelda.” Vanx started past the two
love struck women, toward the boulder.

  “I’ll go back and stay the two laggers,” Moonsy said, handing Vanx the blade, hilt first, as he passed. The Glaive of Gladiolus looked like a sword in Moonsy’s hands, and like a fancy long dagger in his. When Chelda held it, it looked like a table knife.

  Poops was coming back up, but Gallarael was nowhere to be seen. When she was in her changeling forms, it made Vanx uneasy, and she knew it. He wouldn’t see her again until the deed was done, and then only when she decided to shift shapes back to her humanly self.

  “We are not going to Harthgar, Chel.” Vanx scoffed at the way his huge friend bent down and kissed Moonsy goodbye. “You’ll be back up the hill in no time.”

  “Bye, love,” Chelda whispered and started after Vanx. He only heard her words because he was sinking into Sir Poopsalot’s senses again. The dog’s keen perceptions were now Vanx’s, too.

  Vanx tried to ignore the strong smell of brine in the air and let the hill force his pace into a jog, but he was in no hurry. After they crushed the gem, which was some sort of magical Heart Tree seed, they still had to search the sizable island. Vanx’s Goddess had told him that only after they broke the ruby open here, would he find out where the other three seed-gems were, and where he should take them to be released.

  It was no small atoll they were on. Vanx knew that, besides the hungry, ship-sized crabs, and the red marked spiders that almost killed Zeezle, there was something else roaming this place, something that left paw prints deep enough to fill with water and bathe in. It was a big island. Far bigger than Vanx remembered. And if they had to go into the boreholes, like before, there was the deadly tentacled beast he never completely saw, and who knew what else.

  Smashing the gem-seed was the first thing they had to do, and he was ready to get on with it.

  “Let’s get this part done,” he said.

  “Yah,” Chelda agreed.

  Chapter

  Two

  He took her to the river,

  and he swore his love was true.

  And then his Molly kissed him,

  and said I love me too.

  – Parydon Cobbles

  After Vanx placed the ruby on the boulder, Chelda raised the warhammer Pyra had let them take from her hoard, high overhead, and paused there, looking at Vanx. He had an urge to make her stay poised that way for a while by ignoring her, but now wasn’t the time for pranks.

  Vanx gave her a nod and dropped to the ground. Chelda brought the heavy head-basher down so fast that he almost didn’t get under the expanding ring of jewel dust that exploded outward when it hit.

  At first, the sound of fleeing birds, cawing and flapping madly, was all that he could hear, but then the whoosh of the powerful stuff Chelda released took over and drowned out the world.

  Chelda fell beside him, her blouse was tattered, and her whole upper torso was covered in jewel dust. Some of the particles were in her skin so deep that she had blood trailing down her cheeks like tears. There was a larger chip of ruby stuck in her neck, right behind her ear. Blood ran over her shoulder and right down into her ample cleavage.

  Vanx had to shake his head when she grinned at him triumphantly. He stuck her with the Glaive of Gladiolus, and then poked the tip of the sword into his forearm, just in case. In a matter of seconds, the foreign matter was forced from Chelda’s skin, and the cuts and slices healed over.

  Above them, like a ceiling formed of raw magical power, was a pink shaded plane. The boulder suddenly cracked and half of it rolled a few dozen yards downhill.

  Where the rock had just been, roots formed. Vanx had no idea what kind of tree it would be, but he knew a massive one was growing. This was the third of these gems he’d seen smashed. Before long, there would be a Heart Tree here, and its roots would work their way down into the earth and help bind the world, as the ancient towers the Paragon Dracus recently destroyed had once done.

  It was odd that there were seven seeds, and only six towers, but who was Vanx to argue about what held the world together?

  Where? came Poops’s concerned question.

  We are fine. Vanx responded. Tell Gallarael we are going to slide downhill. Under the magic and start setting up a camp near the lake shore.

  Will, came the dog’s response.

  Vanx urged Chelda where he wanted her to go, and she complied. Before long, they were downslope enough that they could stand without crouching under the ever expanding plane of jewel dust.

  “I told them we would start setting up a camp,” he told Chelda.

  “What do you think we will be looking for?” she asked, stooping to pick up a choice hunk of deadfall. “What did your Goddess say we were after?”

  “She didn’t,” Vanx chuckled. “She said after we cracked that gem here, we would learn what we needed to know.” He pointed to a semicircle formed of fir, or maybe pine trees. Their bark was always sticky with sap, but these were so close together that they formed a natural barrier, and the carpet of fallen needles beneath them would make for a fine bed. If they put themselves between those trunks, with a good sized fire, he was certain nothing would bother them in the night. Not while a massive magical tree formed just up the hill.

  “The Goddess doesn’t say much, does she?” Chelda jested and went about making a fire pit and collecting more wood.

  A rustling in the thicket nearby caused them both to make ready. Gallarael, in her most human form, strolled out. Vanx thought she was beautiful, but still preferred her long natural blonde hair to the shoulder length black mop she’d been sporting since she’d gotten control of her shapeshifting. He wondered if she changed her hair, too? She must, because she hadn’t cut it on the voyage and it was still as short as it was when they’d left.

  She had explained to Vanx that, when she changed, her skin filmed over with a substance that she could either harden into a protective armor, or she could make the stuff become armoring spikes, or even strands of bristly fur. Vanx wasn’t sure what happened to her clothes when she was changed, but Gallarael had taken to wearing loose fitting britches and a sleeveless blouse all of the time. When she was in human form, her apple sized breasts jiggled underneath the garment. It was distracting.

  “I know I am attractive, my love,” Gallarael jested, “but you don’t have to stare.”

  “Sorry.” Vanx shook his head and saw that the power of the ruby was dissipating. The plane of particles and magic slowly disappeared and, where the boulder had been, was the base of a growing tree. Vanx thought it might be a jacaranda tree, as it had the telltale purple bell shaped blooms sprouting in the higher reaches now. The branches were spreading out as much as they were growing upward.

  One of the blooms fell and drifted slowly down. Vanx followed it with his eyes. He walked over to where it landed and was surprised to see that it was the size of a ship’s bell. Similar blooms were coming down here and there, some three times the size of the one before him.

  It was certainly a jacaranda tree, or a variation of one, Vanx decided. This tree’s flowers were turning more red than blue, though.

  He was distracted from his observations by the sound of Castovanti complaining.

  “Last time we were here, this robe almost caused me to drown.” He pointed to a cavern that opened on the water on the far side of the lake. “That hole is where Chelda and I killed those things.” He stopped and looked at the gargan woman and Vanx in turn.

  “Didn’t we decide back then, that the shore of the lake was the worst place to set up a camp? I think Zeezle’s exact words were, not there, sooner or later, every living thing on this island will come to get a drink.”

  “He did say something like that.” Vanx gave a sarcastic snort. Castovanti had a knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. “But that was before this just appeared.” Vanx paused and pointed at the still growing, hundred foot tall tree. He nearly forgot he was telling the sea mage something when he saw just how red the tree’s blooms were turning. They were getting yellowed
tips too, like the Fiery Trees of lore. “What we just did scared the turds right out of anything living in this valley, man. But even still, we will only stay this one night.”

  “Tomorrow we go a questing,” Gallarael sang one of the songs Vanx had often played when he was a simple preforming bard back in Cold Port. “A questing we will go. What we find and who survives, we won’t know until we know.”

  “Leave the singing to the bard,” Chelda said. “You’re going to call in some wild beast looking to mate.”

  “Her voice is fine,” Moonsy said as she and Poops came to stand near Vanx and take in the tree.

  I know Poops, Vanx acknowledged the dog’s two concerns. We just have to suffer the smell of the flowers. There’s naught to be done about it, and I am smart enough to keep my mouth shut about how bad she sings.

  “This kind of tree is supposed to have blue and purple flowers, not red and yellow,” Moonsy said. “It will not grow any higher than the ridge either.”

  “Why not?” Castovanti asked, intentionally cutting off the verse Gallarael was about to go into.

  “They do not like the salty air.” The elven general sounded confident in her knowledge. “The fresh water, and the way it sits, rooted in the valley will help its lower reaches flourish though.”

  “Well that’s good,” Vanx sighed. “Not knowing what sort of tree each gem-seed contains makes it that much harder to pick a place to quicken them.”

  “The bluest flower petals, when added to a hot bath, are used to treat many things.” Castovanti added as he gained Vanx’s side. “I’m not sure what one colored as red as blood would do. Do you think I can take a sample to study?”

  “Be careful,” Vanx patted the timid man on the shoulder. “Goofing around with strange plants is how Gallarael became a changeling.”

  Chapter