Asunder: A Gathering of Chaos by Cameron Hopkin (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

lazy motion that seemed to infuse everything within the swamp concealed any meaningful activity from Gamarron’s eyes. All he saw was another cursed island crowded with trees a little more than a stone’s throw away across open water. It was a larger patch of land than most they’d seen, but it was no more remarkable than half a dozen others just like it they’d come across during the miserable wetness of the last two days. The bigger islands held the great giants of the swamp – trees with trunks so wide that ten men with arms outstretched couldn’t link hands around it. These giants did not stretch to the sky as one might expect such mighty trees to do, though. They spread their boughs out rather than up, shading massive areas while only being a twice as tall than their normal-sized brethren. Limned with fire by the light of the setting sun, they looked like misshapen monsters out of a child’s tale, each with a dozen arms and wild crowns of leafy hair extending halfway down their bodies.

The island rose gently up out of the swamp to the height of a man, mud and reeds giving way to drier grasses beneath the boles of the great trees. The shore sloped away in both directions for perhaps a hundred meters before curving out of sight, and the great trees lined the perimeter like sentinels, veils of moss hanging from their lower branches. Gamarron hadn’t seen the great trees grow so close to each other on other islands as they did here. The spacing of them was almost regular. Had the things not been centuries or even millennia old, he might have suspected them of being planted by design.

Then a shadow shifted under the trees, and a Naga warrior slithered into view. Nira gave a soft gasp as she caught sight of it, and Guyrin swore with quiet fervor. Gamarron was suddenly glad of the fern that hid them all from view. Looking at the Naga, he thought at first it had been hiding in the great tree’s shade, but as the sleek-haired monster cleared the knee-high roots of the tree another came right behind it. They were coming out of the tree. What he had taken for a shadow was an exit tunnel.

“Do they live in warrens under the roots?” wondered Renna.

“No,” responded Gamarron, fascinated. “Look how high up on the trunk that hole is. They’ve hollowed out the inside.” Looking to the other trees, he could now see similar openings in several of them. “And not just that one. They live in all these trees.”

“The Naga home city is… a bunch of tree houses?” Nira whispered, incredulous.

“I would not have guessed that,” muttered Guyrin.

“Big trees,” Kest noted. “Big houses.” He rose up out of the water a little, trying to look into the distance. “How many of those huge trees are there on this island?”

“Enough,” Gamarron responded. “More than enough.” If the unseen portion of the island held as many of these home trees as the section of shore they currently saw, there was enough room for five thousand Naga, maybe ten. It was not a calculation he wished to share with his already-daunted companions.

Renna pointed wordlessly, and Gamarron saw another Naga winding its way up the beach toward them, and then another in the near distance making arrows. Everywhere he looked, Naga revealed themselves, seeming to blend with their surroundings so effortlessly that they couldn’t be seen unless one looked directly at them. There were no less than two dozen of them in sight, all engaged in everyday activities that one might do at home.

They watched for less than ten minutes before a trio of armed and armored Naga came slithering up the beach. They were hard-faced and alert, and the others that they passed moved out of their way and bowed their heads in deference. Regular patrols, Gamarron guessed. This was a martial, ordered society in with an elite soldier class. He wondered if his companions were quite as daunted as they ought to be.

They huddled in the shadows of the ferns and waited for night to fall. Gamarron sometimes thought his impatience was going to give him seizures. It clawed at his brain and never relented… and still his heartbeat would not obey him.

A flurry of motion from Kest caught his eye. The little scarlet salamander that had been riding on the boy’s shoulder since they first entered the swamps scampered up his arm and then from shoulder to shoulder. Kest looked back and forth at the little thing, and whenever his gaze landed on it the little beast would scamper off to a new spot and wait for the Beast Rider’s eyes to follow him. It almost looked like a game. Gamarron couldn’t recall the last time he had played a silly, stupid little game like that.

“Who’s your friend, Kest?” he asked quietly.

“This is Spikkt,” the boy said proudly. He held out his hand, and the bold little amphibian scurried out onto it, holding its head high. “He found me just before we started into the water. He’d never met a human that could talk to him, so he decided to stick with me for a little while.” Kest paused. “Well, ‘he’ isn’t exactly right, but neither is ‘she.’ It can change, I guess.” He listened for a moment. “He? All right. He says he’s not picky about it.”

Gamarron inclined his head to the creature, refusing to feel silly. “Greetings.”

“He says he could go scout the other shore for us,” Kest offered. “No one would notice him, and he moves fast.”

“A good idea,” Renna said. “We can’t just wander around hoping to get lucky. We won’t last ten minutes.”

Gamarron nodded, and Kest lowered his hand to the water. Spikkt shot off into the gathering gloom, minute ripples in the water the only evidence of his passing. Kest followed the salamander with his eyes, a small smile sneaking onto his disfigured face.

They waited, and night fell.