cautiously traveling through the thick underbrush that was trying to swallow the road whole.
At night, the soldiers erected a hasty fence of sharpened timbers, lit several fires, and posted four guards to watch the darkness, lest it sneak in and run off with one of their sleeping companions.
By day, they rode along the narrow road, the jungle crowding them from either side. The soldiers were wary, nervous even, but Isabel found the place enchantingly wild and beautiful. She’d always liked the untamed quality of the Great Forest, but it was slow to reclaim ground that man had conquered. Here, the thick vegetation was in a hurry, it wanted the road she was riding on and sometimes it didn’t seem to be willing to wait for her to pass.
Toward evening of the third day, Slyder caught her attention. She tipped her head back and linked her mind to his, looking through his eyes, but a moment too late. Three gorledons sprang from the lush green and pounced on the three men in the lead of the column, knocking them from their terrified horses. Then they grabbed each man by a limb, swinging them screaming over their shoulders, impaling them multiple times on the row of bone spikes running down the length of their backs. It all happened so quickly, one moment they were simply traveling, the next, three men were vanishing into the brush to become dinner for one of Karth’s more unpleasant predators.
To his credit, Lieutenant Febus didn’t give chase. He simply ordered that the frightened horses be brought back into the column, and the honor guard moved on, albeit with some grumbling from the men.
At that point, Isabel decided to take a more active role in the security of the detachment. She had assumed that these men, having grown up on Karth, living their whole lives in the jungle, were better suited to assess the dangers surrounding her, but they didn’t have her gifts. While she couldn’t control a magically created creature such as a gorledon, she could watch the jungle through Slyder’s eyes and keep any natural predators at bay.
The men treated her with a mixture of disdain, fear, and barely concealed hostility. She was responsible for killing two of their number and she was also the reason they’d had to leave the relative safety of the villages they were occupying.
Several times over the course of the journey, Isabel detected a jaguar stalking them and sent the animal harmlessly away. Once, a giant snake, easily thirty feet long, was poised on a tree limb above the path, preparing to take one of the men, but she commanded the animal to remain still and hidden. They passed by without incident.
By the fifth day, the magnificent beauty of the jungle had faded into the background. She was acting as a silent scout and protector for the men who were supposed to be protecting her. She realized that the jungle was altogether more hostile than the forest, and it required a whole different set of knowledge to traverse safely, knowledge that she had yet to acquire.
In the early afternoon, she was idly thinking about Alexander when she felt a sharp stinging sensation in the side of her neck. With a rising sense of alarm, she looked for the source as a feeling of numbing cold began to spread. Another sting, this time in her forearm, followed by more numbness. Frantically, she tried to call out a warning, but her voice wouldn’t work. Her horse went down and she landed hard, paralyzed and helpless, staring down the road at ground level.
The men of her honor guard fell quickly, their horses toppling as well. Lieutenant Febus lay on the ground several feet from her, immobile, but from the fear in his eyes, still aware. Isabel saw a small dart in his neck.
Then the men came, emerging from the jungle, as if, just a moment ago, they were a part of the brush and canopy itself. They moved with fluid grace and deliberate menace, lifting each man by the hair, looking him closely in the face and then cutting his throat while they stared into his dying eyes.
One who was dressed more elaborately than the rest picked up Lieutenant Febus by the hair, stared him in the eye and casually cut his throat. Before he dropped the Regency officer, he turned and looked Isabel in the eye, then smiled.
A moment later, the world went black.
Chapter 3
Isabel slowly started to wake, struggling to focus her