“What good will that do me?” asked the oak.
“Please—” Lorzok began, but Saeldian interrupted.
“You know the story. Menoriath fell to the earth where it belonged and broke into slivers. But it did much more than that.”
“It didn’t do anything,” the tree sneered. “It fell. It broke.”
“It flourished,” said Saeldian. “Where there was once one kingdom, dozens now rise. Menoriath is no longer one lonely place. It was the seed of a forest of places, bigger and farther than one floating place. An empire has sprouted from the seeds of its fall.”
Kell would have whistled if it wouldn’t ruin everything. Nobody could persuade like Saeldian. They could have been a bard if they’d wanted to. Kell could see what they’d woven with those words and how it landed exactly on what this oak wanted most.
“Seeds,” the oak said.
Saeldian opened their hand. A single acorn rested in its hollow.
Gods, they were so good, Kell felt warm pride watching them work.
Lorzok plucked the acorn from their palm and held it up. “I could plant this seed in the Village That Chooses Its Own, and you will live on in it. I will take a dozen seeds, and visit a dozen domains, and spread your legacy beyond this lonely grove. You will become a forest, an empire of your own.”
“One hundred,” the oak said. “I want a hundred of my acorns flourishing across the domains. The empire will be mine.”
Kell could smell more than just old blood. The smell of flesh left to swell until it smelled too much like cheese to let him enjoy any with his bread for a while. A shape struggled against the vines, enraged as the blackberries grew again, trapping it.
“Then you will carry us out of this place?” Lorzok asked.
“If you gather your part of the promise,” the oak said. “My acorns. Hurry.”
Timtim dashed across the thin grass, bent his head to the ground, and rushed back, dropping an acorn at Lorzok’s feet. Jubilee hopped off Timtim’s back and picked up another before Kell shook himself back into action. Six acorns lay at his feet. He dropped them into a pouch and kept looking.
Saeldian crouched to gather more, stuffing them into their pockets. “Nineteen, twenty—”
“Thirty-six,” Lorzok called.
Kell added his to the total. “Forty-two.”
Timtim raced up to Kell and dropped an acorn at his feet before sprinting off for another. Jubilee added another. They hunted and called out the sum as they gathered.
“Eighty-five,” Saeldian called. “They—”
Timtim thumped the ground, drumming an alarm.
“Get back,” Kell shouted, but it was too late.
The canes broke open, and a horror burst into the grove: a monster with three heads and five arms, but the heads and limbs sprouted from a lumpy torso, as if someone had stirred three trolls in a cauldron until they melted together, but they lived through it.
The creature’s third head stared off to the left. The other two glared at Saeldian, who had darted forward, bending to grab Jubilee—but the creature’s fifth arm shot out, snatching the toad up by one leg.
“No!” Saeldian cried.
Two bolts of power struck the awful creature. It screamed as the blast knocked it backward to fly fifteen feet through the air and land hard. The third face landed squarely on the ground and howled in pain. Two wounds opened in waxy, green-mottled pink flesh, which stank like old ham.
Then it sat up. The wounds knit themselves closed. The toad still kicked wildly in its fingers.
The troll-mass laughed. It considered the struggling toad in its grip, tossed the toad into the air, and the second head jerked to catch Jubilee in its mouth.
Saeldian roared in fury. The troll-thing’s second head swallowed and burped, and an arm pointed at Saeldian as it laughed.
“No! No!” Saeldian, screaming and lost to anything but rage, blasted it again, but it barely rocked backward. The wounds closed again. It clambered to its feet.
