Final Solstice by David Sakmyster

his own. No one looked toward Solomon, but he didn’t expect them to.
    A few more seconds ticked away.
    And then he sighed. “I guess that’s it then,” Solomon said. “The Green Kingdom dies.…”
    “No,” said Palavar. “Only you.”
    He pulled his arm back, straightened his grip and turned the staff lengthwise, then slammed it down hard upon the floor.
    Morris clenched his eyes and flinched as the others looked away. And at Palavar’s command, a mass of writhing vines shot out from the ceiling just as the dirt floor erupted with a battalion of roots. His legs encircled, and another thick root lassoed Solomon’s waist and dragged him back into the chair as a huge vine whipped around his staff and yanked it hard from his grasp.
    As he sat with a thump and offered no struggle against the roots and vines wrapping around his body, pinning him to the chair, Solomon followed the vines that stripped him of his weapon and deposited it cleanly into the arch-druid’s free hand.
    One vine snared his throat, snake-like, and squeezed.
    “I’m sorry,” Palavar said quietly in the aftermath, as the ceiling swayed with dozens of vines at the ready, as the floor rippled and the walls churned with thorn-riddled branches preparing to defend or attack, whichever the case should be. “But you knew the consequences. You were unprepared, and now …”
    “Now,” said Solomon, barely managing enough air in his windpipe. “We get back on track.”
    O O O
    Palavar frowned, mouth open. He cocked his head, trying to fathom why his adversary—seconds away from death—still seemed so confident. Then he frowned and glanced at the new staff in his left hand.
    The staff he assumed was Solomon’s—and his right to destroy as befits the winner in this challenge. Solomon would have known he’d take it. Solomon would have known … known that he couldn’t win such a vote. Not with this council …
    Palavar looked up sharply. Saw the smile, the glint in Solomon’s eyes, and he dropped the staff, just as he raised his own and focused his energies on the roots and the vines and the branches. Attack— he started to command, but there wasn’t time.
    Solomon had it all planned too well.
    The staff—the hollow cylinder packed with C4 and a timer—detonated at that exact moment, with such force that Palavar and half the council table exploded in a mass of smoking splinters, blood, bone and gore.
    O O O
    Solomon was ready, and the instant Palavar’s control vanished and his brain was blasted into nothingness, he assumed control. His chair blew backwards in the force of the explosion, but was held in place enough by the roots and vines to protect him from the blast.
    The others—most would not be so fortunate. But Solomon couldn’t take that chance. He wriggled free of the smoking restraints, at the same time feeling out with his mind, caressing and controlling the vegetation’s, seeking into the very cellular structures of the roots and the branches and overgrowth; he felt the vegetation screaming in agony and shock, and he soothed where he could.
    But first, he stood up and raised his hand, and through the smoke and the flames, he felt it: the arch-druid’s staff. It was smoking and burnt, but such a thing was tough, thrown across the room. He sought with his mind, found it and called it to him, and it came, hurled across the flames and over mangled bodies. It came on the winds and landed in his right hand.
    Solomon breathed deep, then exhaled, harnessing the connection he now forged with this staff, this ancient thing carved from a tree more ancient than any still standing on the planet, a weapon and tool passed down through the millennia, from a time when wizards had shepherded the ignorant and brought them out of caves and taught them fire and astrology and ways to harness the elements, and were thought of as gods in their own right.
    He gripped the staff tightly, then waved it twice across the wreckage of the council room.