"Thank you, sire," said Havelock. "What are our orders?"

"We are nearing the barbarian, and I believe we will have him in a few days," said Laquatas. "I will draw up a pla-"

"The beast!" came a call from outside the mer's tent. "The beast has returned!"

"Havetock," hissed Laquatas, "I have a problem here. I will portal into the waterways tomorrow night to meet with you. We will formulate our battle plans then. Now I must go."

Laquatas passed his hand over the mirror and quickly stowed it back in the pack just as a corporal, now the ranking member of the Order troops, entered the tent, flushed and out of breath.

"Lord Laquatas," he said, coming to attention.

"Yes, Corporal."

"The beast entered the camp again, sir."

"I assume it is dead?"

"No, sir," said the corporal, fidgeting slightly and glancing over at the bug not more than two feet away. "It has escaped into the woods. Shall we pursue?"

"No, Corporal," said Laquatas, enjoying the man's discomfort at having to report bad news and stand next to the very beast that had killed his sergeant just that morning. "That would be foolhardy. It is merely the Cabal trying to terrorize us and force us to leave the forest. There was no harm done, correct?"

"Actually, sir," said the corporal, beginning to sweat a little along the ridge of his nose, "the beast killed a guard before the alert was raised. It was the sentry just outside your tent. It happened so quickly. We were lucky a passing guard startled the beast, or else it might have made it inside."

Now Laquatas felt uncomfortable. The mage's silvery-blue scales went suddenly dry as terror gripped him. That's twice the beast has come after me, thought Laquatas. Three times-it was after me that night in Dinell's tent.

"Sir?" prodded the corporal. "Sir? Are you all right, Lord Laquatas? Shall we post extra guards around your tent?"

Laquatas forced himself to relax and smile at the soldier. "No." he said. "No. That won't be necessary. I'm sure the beast was just crashing through the camp, inciting terror. Besides, I have our friend here to keep me safe tonight. Thank you, Corporal. That will be all."

After the corporal left, Laquatas commanded his nantuko jack to guard him with his life and drifted off into a night of fitful sleep, dreaming of poison blades, inky black letters, and an ominous, gray beast, with glowing, red, eyes peering at him from the shadows.

CHAPTER 27

The nantuko druid led Kamahl up the seemingly endless steps toward the great tree at the center of the clearing. As he walked across the tree-root platforms, taking in the grandeur of the living city, the barbarian saw many more nantuko and quite a few centaurs working, playing, and moving around the dwellings. Young, old, and even children filled the heart of the forest.

Kamahl had never thought of the forest as a civilized place with cities and structure and families living together. But the heart was no city- It was more like an enormous garden oasis in the middle of a forbidding, overgrown desert. Everything here was of the forest, and a serene calm encompassed the clearing. The heart was in total harmony with the forest and its inhabitants. It was quite a different feeling from the chaos of the tribes.

As they drew near the central tree, Kamahl could see just how truly massive it was. It dwarfed all the other pillar trees in the clearing, being at least a hundred feet across at the base and sending out limbs and leaves well past the second ring of pillar trees surrounding it. Looking down, Kamahl began to suspect that most of the root system platforms he'd been walking across came from this central tree.

The nantuko directed Kamahl to a huge, circular doorway that led inside the heart tree. The interior was dark beyond the pool of light near the doorway. Kamahl looked at his guide, raised his eyebrows, and motioned at the tree with his thumb.

"Thriss is in there?" he asked.

"You will find what you seek inside the heart," said the druid.

"Great," sighed Kamahl. "More riddles." He stepped through the doorway and entered the heart of the forest.

Inside, Kamahl found himself in a circular chamber, roughly twenty feet from side to side at its widest point and twenty feet high. Both the floor and the ceiling were curved as well, making him feel like he was standing on the lip of a huge bowl. The room itself was featureless, save for the grain of the wood running vertically through the walls and the curved lines on the floor and ceiling, which showed the growth of the tree through what must have been hundreds of years.

"Hello?" called Kamahl, but there was no answer. Kamahl produced a small ball of flame in his open palm. It sputtered a little bit before flaring to life, and the barbarian realized it was the first fire magic he'd used since he'd left the mountains with Balthor. "I must be out of practice," he said to himself.

In the flickering light, Kamahl could see no one else in the room, but there was an opening off to the left. Heading across the room, Kamahl had to bend forward and pump his legs like he used to when hiking in the mountains to maneuver on the steep side of the bowl. On the other side of the circular doorway, the barbarian found an empty room much like the last one with nothing but a doorway back and to the right that led farther into the tree.

Kamahl inched his way down into the bowl of the room and clambered back up the other side to the next doorway to find yet another bowl-shaped room.

The barbarian hiked through room after room, meandering back and forth through the tree, and each room was slightly higher than the last. This wasn't a maze, it was a corridor cut out one chamber at a time that was zigzagging its way up into the tree.

It took Kamahl nearly an hour to traverse the winding corridor through the heart tree. Finally, a warm, green glow emanated from the room beyond. Kamahl extinguished his red and yellow flame and trudged up to the doorway to peer into the chamber of Thriss.

The room was huge, nearly a hundred feet across, encompassing almost the entire width of the heart tree. But special care had been taken to ensure nutrients could flow up and down the tree through the room. Natural wooden pillars dotted the chamber as if the room had been carved out around them. A foot across, the pillars seemed to hold up the ceiling, which towered overhead.

The living pillars were moist and warm. In fact, the entire room was warm. The light came from lichen growing on the walls and ceiling that pulsed with a green glow from within. Kamahl could better see the rings of the tree on the floor in this grand room, and the circles seemed to beckon him into the center.

In the middle of the room he found Thriss, the guardian spirit of the forest, and for the briefest moment, Kamahl was terrified. Thriss was a huge mantis, easily fifteen feet tall, complete with' the razor-sharp ridges on his arms and legs, each of which was longer than the blade on Kamahl's two-handed sword.

"Thriss, guardian of the forest," started the barbarian, "I have come to… I have come to…" But Kamahl wasn't sure why he had come. Up until this point, the journey had been all he had. That and those damn druid riddles.

"You have come to find your heart," boomed Thriss, lifting his head and spreading his arms wide. "The heart of the forest champion."

Kamahl shook his head. "No, I don't think so," said the barbarian. "I have learned much about life and the forest and magic from this journey, and I believe I am finally at peace with myself and with the Mirari. But I am no champion. I have come here only to bury the orb and be done with the eternal quest for power that surrounds the accursed thing. I have come here to lay it to rest, so that I may go make peace with my sister."