Gareth Thornwood's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

Constantine moved fast. His wand snapped up, and vines burst from the floor. They wrapped Evangeline's arms before she could step back. She twisted hard, but the vines only tightened. "Gareth," she said, calm and flat. "Don't give him anything." Constantine dragged her toward the stairs. "She stays in my tower," he said. "You want her back, you leave the blade on my floor. Then you walk out. Alone." He climbed, pulling her with him. A door slammed high above. Gareth heard the lock turn. Gareth stood alone in the round room. The machete was the only thing that killed the vines without waking them. Without it, sixty people had no way forward and no way back. But without Evangeline, the woman who had crossed every road on her father's land, who knew these vines by name, he would be leading them blind. He could not spend one to save the other. He looked at the wand Constantine had left resting on his open spellbook. The sorcerer commanded the vines through it. Gareth had watched him lift it, and the thorns had risen. He set it down, and they had slept. The wand was the leash. Gareth did not lay down the blade. He grabbed the wand instead. Constantine's magic answered his hand, raw and wrong. Gareth did not know the words. He only knew what he wanted. He pointed the wand at the tower door and thought of a wall. Red thorns exploded from the stone. They coiled and stacked into a huge crimson barrier, brambles thick as his arm, spikes longer than his knife. It sealed the doorway floor to ceiling. Boots pounded down the stairs. Constantine reached the room and froze. His wall of thorns blocked his own exit now. "Give that back," he said. His voice cracked. "Bring her down," Gareth said. "Or I bury your door and take this with me. See how you like your forest without a leash." Constantine stared at the barrier. He understood he had lost his grip on it. He turned and climbed. The lock scraped. Evangeline came down the steps, rubbing red marks on her wrists. Gareth kept the machete in one hand and the wand in the other. He backed toward the wall of thorns and swung the blade. The brambles blackened and fell open, clearing a gap wide enough for two. "Move," he told Evangeline. She went through. He followed, then swung once more behind them, sealing the gap shut with living thorns Constantine could not command. Outside, the gray trees waited. Evangeline looked at the wand in his fist. "He'll come for that," she said. "He can't grow another." "Good," Gareth said. He had the blade, the woman, and now the sorcerer's power in his hand. But he had left Constantine alive and furious behind a wall that would not hold him long. He started back toward the caravan. The race was only who reached the refugees first.