tree’s branches. They chanted phrases Mahtra didn’t understand when she appeared with Ruari draped across her arms, and repeated them as she followed Kakzim to a long, flat stone set in the ground like a bed or table.
“Put him down,” Kakzim said, and she obeyed, then retreated, also obediently.
Kakzim shouted something in Halfling, and the chanting stopped. Everything was quiet while the blood-colored sun shot rays of blood-colored sunset through the leaves of the black tree. Kakzim used the metal-bladed knife to make a pair of shallow gashes along the inside of Ruari’s shins, just above his ankles. There was a groove in the flat stone, unnoticeable in the shallow light until it began to fill with Ruari’s blood and channel it to the moss-covered ground. When the first red drops struck the moss, the chanting resumed and somewhere someone began beating a deep-voiced drum.
The drum beat slowly at first, while halflings wound more rope around Ruari’s chest, beneath his armpits. It began to beat faster when one of the halflings climbed into the tree with the rope’s free end tied loosely around his waist. After weaving carefully through the main limbs, the halfling shinnied out along one of the thickest branches, then looped his end of the rope over the branch and dropped it to the ground.
“Grab it and pull,” Kakzim ordered, his voice almost lost in the shrill chanting of the other halflings. “Both of you! Now!”
“No!” Zvain shouted back. “I won’t. You can kill me, but you can’t make me do that!”
The halflings guarding them had exchanged their sharpened prods for stone-tipped spears once they were above ground, and Zvain’s arms bloodied fast, batting the tips away as he tried to stand his ground. Though most of the halflings aimed at his flanks and thighs, trying to make him walk, one thrust high, putting a gouge just above the boy’s left eye.
Between Zvain’s shriek and the blood that flowed thick and fast down his face, it was impossible to measure his injury, except that it wasn’t what Kakzim wanted. The onetime slave screamed at his halflings, disciples—and one of them, perhaps the one who’d thrust high, threw his spear aside and dropped to one knee with his hands pressed over his eyes and ears. As he swayed from side to side, oblivious to the world, blood began to trickle from his nostrils. And all the while, Kakzim stood, tense, with his fists clenched, his eyes closed and the scars on his face throbbing in rhythm with the solitary drum.
“Mahtra,” Zvain pleaded, staring at her with his un-bloodied eye while he kept both hands pressed over the other.
Blood no longer trickled from the halfling’s nostrils; it poured out of him in a steady stream. He’d fallen on his side, already unconscious.
“Yes, Mahtra,” Kakzim purred. He turned from the dead halfling. “Take up the rope and pull.”
Mahtra was angry and frightened by the blood and dying. She was hot inside and could feel her arms starting to stiffen. The cloudy membranes in the corners of her eyes fluttered as she considered if this was the right moment to loose her protection.
“Do something!” both Zvain and Kakzim shouted at the same time.
The drum beat faster and so did Mahtra’s heart, yet her thoughts whirled faster still. She had a lifetime to look from Zvain to Ruari and finally to Kakzim. There was nothing she could do for the half-elf or the human, but she would not leave this place while the scarred halfling lived. Her protection was not a fatal magic: she’d have to kill him with her hands.
Her hands were strong enough to lift Ruari. They were surely strong enough to snap a halfling’s neck. Mahtra could imagine flesh, sinew, and bone giving way beneath her hands as she took her first stride toward Kakzim.
You will die, she thought, her eyes fixed on his. I will kill you.
Mahtra struck a wall midway through her second stride, an invisible wall, an Unseen wall of determination that was stronger and more focused than her own. It had no words, only images—images of a white-skinned woman taking the rope and pulling it, hand over hand, until Ruari was high in the black tree. The image was irresistible. Mahtra turned away from Kakzim. She took the rope and gave it a powerful yank; Ruari’s shoulders rose from stone slab. His head fell back with a moan. His long coppery hair shone like fire in the sun’s last light.