The Crowned (The Blood and Brotherhood Saga, Book 6) by Jeremy Laszlo Read Free Book Online Page B

Standing in a crouched position
as the cart clattered, bounding down the path, Sara reached through the bars
with the key in hand, careful not to drop her only hope for escape. It took
four attempts with the cart bucking and bouncing, but finally mating the key to
the oversized locking mechanism on the cage she turned it quickly, producing a
loud click.
    She flung the top open just as the cart veered roughly to
one side. She looked ahead and saw as one steed attempted to turn off the
trail, straining the leather harness that secured the two beasts together. Ahead,
it appeared the trail came to an abrupt end, and both horses struggled to turn
the cart in opposite directions.
    Again the cart veered left, the steed upon that side being
stronger than its kin. This time it was too much. Sara attempted to leap out of
the cage as the corner of the cart struck the trunk of a large aspen, but only
half succeeded. So forceful was the collision that the cart came to a near
complete stop, before rolling over to bounce and land upon the two steeds that
had previously pulled it. The cage was flung from the cart as Sara launched out
of it, her foot catching between the bars just before she exited. Careening end
over end through the air with Sara entangled, the cage came to rest a full
forty feet from the collision, with Sara crushed underneath.
    She screamed in both, rage and pain, her bones broken,
organs punctured, ligaments and muscles torn. They tried to mend, but with the
crushing weight upon her it was impossible. Only her head and one leg was free
from beneath the cage, neither giving her the leverage she needed to extract
herself.
    Looking around for anything useful she found herself just
feet from the point where the trail ended. Except that it didn’t end.
    Watching in disbelief, Sara clung to consciousness as the
trees ahead began to uproot, heaving upwards to rain soil down in all
directions. Once unsecured, they came at her slowly, in strides like those of
men, but without joints to bend with. The nearest, an oak bare of leaves,
loomed over her a moment before slowly leaning down, revealing a face upon its
withered bark.
    The tree had deep black eyes that appeared hardened sap that
bored into the trunk. Odd knots formed its ears and a peculiar growth split the
tree horizontally creating a mouth and chin. Moss and lichen clung about the
face, creating the appearance of both eyebrows and beard, but it was the eyes
that held her attention. In the deep dark pools an inner light shone that hinted
of wisdom and experience.
    It bent slowly lower and lower, and coming face to face it
inhaled through its small knob of a nose deeply.
    “It smells like poison and death,” the living tree said in a
mournful voice that reminded Sara of the hollow sound of wind blowing through
the trees. “Bramble, you take it and bring it with us.”
    Slowly righting itself once again, the giant tree creature
moved aside as another took its place. This one was smaller, with peanut shaped
leaves of a dark emerald green and smooth gray bark. The new tree leaned down
as well, exposing a face similar to the previous, but with far less moss and
lichen and smoother, less wrinkled features. A multitude of branches bent down
towards Sara as the cage rolled aside. Instantly her wounds began to mend but
even so she was already pulled up and off the ground, branches bending around
her, forming a new cage to contain her. The branches ranged in size, some only
as thick as her wrists, yet others as big around as her thigh. Upon them,
thousands of thorns as long as her forearms pointed inward at her from all
directions except the floor.
    Leaves created a barrier that blocked all visibility beyond
the branches and thorns, but Sara could feel the tree creature rise and turn
before stalking off into the forest.
    Exasperated, she plopped to the bottom of her new cell as
her last wounds mended themselves within minutes. She had traded one captor and
one cage for another.