Page 110 of The Tree of Spirits
“You won’t be going anywhere,” Elandra proclaimed.
She stood beside the Spirit Tree, her hand clutching the handle of a very large bottle. Her four Techno Knights stood guard in front of her. They lifted their swords in unison, and a fire cage engulfed me, Kato, and Conner. A fiery roof crackled overhead. We were trapped.
It burned so hot, steam rose from the grass, coalescing into an insidious fog that glided across the ground, melting into the flames.
“My daughter is dead, and very soon so shall all of you. Your days of galavanting across the Many Realms are over.” Elandra’s voice pierced the crackling flames. “Because I’m going to destroy the Spirit Trees. Every single one of them in all the Many Realms.”
CHAPTER 3
FLAME AND FROST
Conner laughed off Elandra’s words. “Destroy every single Spirit Tree in the Many Realms? Impossible. There arethousandsof Spirit Trees across the Many Realms, many located in places humans would never be able to reach.”
“You’re forgetting that the Spirit Trees are all connected by a single magical force,” Elandra called out through the wall of fire. “And if I poison that connection, theyalldie.”
“Is she right?” I whispered to the boys. “Can she do what she says?”
They didn’t say anything.
“Oh, crap,” I muttered.
“We didn’t say that it’s possible,” Kato said.
“You didn’t have to,” I replied. “You look worried.”
“How can we look worried? You can’t see our faces. Our helmets are on,” Conner reminded me.
“I can read body language, thank you very much.” I sighed. “And your body language, boys—” I pointed from Conner to Kato. “—tells me that we’re in very big trouble.”
“The magical ‘roots’ of the Spirit Trees bridge the realms, linking them all together,” Kato said. “By using these connectedroots, people can travel between realms. So I suppose, theoretically, if she figured out how to destroy the roots, she could effectively cut off all the realms from one another.”
And then not only would we never find that Templar and never rescue the missing Apprentices, no one would ever go anywhere ever again. Without the Spirit Trees, there would be no more Blending ceremonies and no more Knights. Elandra and her Brotherhood would get everything they wanted, and Gaia would suffer for it.
“You need to stop! Leave the tree alone!” I shouted out at Elandra through the flames.
Her manic laugh rose above the crackling wall of fire pushing closer to us. “And why would I do that?”
“Because it’s wrong.” I coughed, trying not to think about how we were probably going to burn alive.
“How naive of you.”
“If you won’t stop this, we will,” I told her.
“So then you’ve made your choice. It’s too bad. I like you, Savannah.”
I couldn’t see Elandra’s face through the wall of flames, but I could hear the disappointment in her voice. She even sounded a little surprised, which proved how crazy she was. Did she really expect someone with magic to help her destroy magic?
“Can you guys put out that fire?” I asked the boys.
“We’ll try.” Kato looked at Conner, who nodded.
Conner morphed his WAND into a bow. He pulled back on the bow string, and it lit up like a strand of diamonds. An arrow materialized in his hand, and when he released it, it became a shimmering stream of snowflakes that smashed into the fire cage. He pivoted and unleashed another arrow. And then another. In all, he shot a dozen magic arrows at the flames. Flame and frost collided, battling it out for supremacy.
In the meantime, Kato’s WAND had become a fire staff. He waved the staff through the wall of fire, using it to lap up the flames that had escaped Conner’s icy barrage.
But for every flame they defeated, the Techno Knights pumped many more into the fire cage. The flames drew together like thick curtains. They were so beautiful. But the fire’s beauty was a trick, an illusion woven to distract us from the immediate peril we were all in.
I coughed a few times, trying to clear my throat. “What are you doing, Elandra?”
