Part 54 (1/2)
Soon they reached the stream. It came tumbling through a notch in the nearest ridge and down a series of flat stones like shelves or stairs, then slowed as the ground tilted more gradually toward the forest. Where it disappeared under the crowded canopy, it was little more than a rill which Linden could have crossed with a step. However, the watercourse was wider than the stream. More water often flowed there, chuckling over its rocks as it was fed by spring and summer rains. If trees and brush did not throng too closely to the stream, or spill over its banks, Linden and her companions would not be forced to walk in single-file into Salva Gildenbourne.
Linden could not guess how Anele's mind would be affected by the jungle, but the stones and sand of the streambed might suffice to keep him safe.
Mahrtiir and the Cords had already dismounted when the rest of the riders arrived in muted thunder. Carrying bundles of supplies, Bhapa and Pahni entered the trees at once to scout ahead. At the same time, Stave and the Humbled sprang down from their Ranyhyn to survey the forest and take defensive positions.
For a moment, Linden, Liand, and Anele remained on their horses. Now that she had decided to part from Hyn, Linden found that she was acutely reluctant to do so. She had learned to feel safe on Hyn's back-And the trees seemed to brood ominously among their shadows, in spite of the distant calling of birds and the glad rippling of the stream.
Liand was uncharacteristically anxious: he had heard the Elohim give warning, and had spent enough time in Anele's company to absorb the old man's horror of the skurj. And Anele himself was obviously alarmed. He tested the air repeatedly, jerking his head from side to side as if his blindness galled him. His knuckles were white as he clung to Hrama's mane.
I could have preserved the Durance! Stopped the skurj. With the Staff!
Somewhere underneath his madness, he blamed himself for Kastenessen's freedom. My fault! Behind the Mithil's Plunge, he had begged Linden to let him die. If the skurj closed on him, he would be trapped between terror and culpability.
Oh, h.e.l.l, Linden growled to herself. She could not heal the old man's mind: he had made that clear. She had no hope for him, or for any of her companions, if she did not reach Andelain and Loric's krill.
Angry at her own fear, she dropped abruptly from Hyn's back and strode over to the stream. Standing in the watercourse beside the rill, she muttered. ”Let's do this. I'm not getting any younger.
”Clyme,” she ordered as Liand dismounted and began urging Anele to join him, ”you're in the lead with Mahrtiir.” She could not bear to send the Manethrall ahead alone. ”Stave, you're with Liand, Anele, and me. Galt and Branl can take the rear.” The Cords would watch over the company from among the trees. If they were fortunate, they might avoid being caught. ”We should spread out a bit. I don't want anything”-or anyone-”to hit all of us at once.”
Facing the Humbled, she added stiffly, ”I know what Handir said. No Master will answer Stave unless he speaks aloud. This is the exception. Sound won't carry far through these trees.”
And she and her companions might easily lose sight of each other along the twisted stream. ”If you refuse to communicate with Stave, you might get us killed.”
Galt, Clyme, and Branl gazed at her without expression. She thought that they would take offense-or simply ignore her. But then Clyme joined Mahrtiir, and Branl gestured for Linden to precede him.
Apparently they had decided to obey her.
The Manethrall met Clyme with a keen-edged grin. He bid farewell to Narunal with a deep bow and a whinnying shout of grat.i.tude. Then he headed into the gloom of Salva Gildenbourne, compensating for his lack of sight with percipience.
Linden did not doubt that he could sense the shape of the sand and stones ahead of his feet, feel the weight of the boughs overhead, hear the quick scurrying of beetles and small animals, smell the tangled growth of the jungle. And she trusted Clyme to protect Mahrtiir from the more insidious ramifications of his blindness. The Bloodguard had esteemed the Ramen as much as the Ramen had distrusted them.
While Liand extricated Anele from Hrama, Linden hugged Hyn's neck.
She felt that she should say something to thank the great horses, all of them. But words were inadequate-and she was too full of trepidation. Instead she promised softly, ”I'll see you again. I'll need you. The Land needs you.”
When Liand brought Anele to her, she linked her free arm with his, hugging his emaciated limb. She walked in the stream so that he could remain on drier ground. The water would soon soak through her boots, but that would be a minor discomfort. She wanted the old man to feel as much tactile rea.s.surance as possible. Sand that was not damp and stones that were not slick might soothe his distress.
With Liand and Stave a few paces behind her, each bearing two or three bundles and bedrolls, she approached the sun-dappled obscurity of Salva Gildenbourne.
She did not understand why Kastenessen was wasting his time on an undefended forest when he could have torn out the Land's heart by attacking Andelain. Surely that would have been the most effective way to counter her opposition and ruin her hopes? Under Melenkurion Skyweir, Roger had spoken of A portal to eternity. He had told her, You've done everything conceivable to help us become G.o.ds. Yet now he and Kastenessen appeared to have no larger objective than her death.
She looked over her shoulder to confirm that Branl and Galt were ready to follow Stave and Liand. Then she secured her grip on the Staff and took Anele into the thick veil of the trees.
As her eyes adjusted to Salva Gildenbourne's crepuscular atmosphere, she found that Mahrtiir and Clyme had already pa.s.sed beyond a curve in the rill. But even if the watercourse had run straight, the Manethrall and the Humbled might have been veiled by the tangle of brush and saplings that arched over the stream. Here and there, small instances of suns.h.i.+ne filtered through the leaves; and in those etched rays-narrow shafts of light made precise and precious by shadows-gnats and other insects danced like motes of dust. At first, the plash of her boots in the risible current seemed loud. But gradually the jungle swallowed the implications of her pa.s.sage. She could not hear Anele's breathing: she could hardly recognize her own. She moved through a louring silence as if she had inadvertently crossed the borders of deafness or substance.
When she looked back now, she could not see Galt and Branl, or the place where they had entered Salva Gildenbourne. Liand's features, and Stave's, were only distinct when a moment of light touched them.
For a time, she and Anele walked down the watercourse with comparative ease. At intervals, they had to duck under hanging branches or sidestep fallen logs, but they did not encounter any significant obstructions. As they followed their gnarled path, however, they began to meet trees that had toppled across the stream. The roots of the trees had been undermined by changes in the watercourse, perhaps, or the trunks had been struck by lightning, or they had collapsed and died under the burden of too much time. Some had failed so long ago that they had sunk into the streambed, feeding moss and mushrooms with their decay. Others were more recent victims of the forest's unchecked growth, and they bristled with branches as rampant as thickets. Linden and Anele could not pa.s.s without scrambling over or crawling under the trunks, forcing their way through the boughs.
More and more, Salva Gildenbourne resembled a maze. Linden could not tell how much time had pa.s.sed, or in which direction she was moving. In spite of the woodland's naturalness, its fundamental untamed health, she seemed to wander a fatal wilderland, trackless and involuted, where she was doomed to trudge in circles until her courage drained away. She only knew that she was making progress when Bhapa or Pahni appeared suddenly to relate that they had found no hazards: no lurking Cavewights or other predators; no scent or impression of the skurj; no sign that any other sentient beings had joined the chary animals and birds among the trees.
Whenever Bhapa paused to speak with Linden, he a.s.sured her that Mahrtiir was unharmed and fearless in the distance ahead. But Pahni lingered for Liand rather than for Linden. She whispered to him privately, confirming that he was well; promising him her utmost care.
The brief visits of the Cords comforted Linden. When they disappeared back into the jungle, she felt an unreasoning fear that she would not see them again. They were Ramen, highly skilled: she did not doubt that they understood caution better than she did. Nonetheless her apprehension grew as she advanced into the dusk and misdirection of Salva Gildenbourne.
She was not worried about Cavewights now: not here, amid the ma.s.sed impediments of the forest. They would not be able to fight effectively. In addition, she suspected that Roger was too craven to a.s.sail her alone. He would insist on allies, support; overwhelming force. Nor was she concerned about wolves or other natural predators. If they were not mastered and compelled, they would instinctively keep their distance from unfamiliar prey.
And she could discern no other dangers. Riotous growth and decay surrounded her: old monolithic cedars, contorted cypresses behung with moss, broad-boughed Gilden vivid and golden where flecks of sunlight touched them, lush ferns and creepers, occasional aliantha and other stubborn shrubs. Such things filled her senses; walled her away from everything except the stream and her immediate companions. Even time faded: she was no longer sure of it. Whenever Liand pa.s.sed her a bit of cheese or fruit or bread, she was surprised to find that she was hungry.
Still her trepidation deepened like the imposed dusk of the jungle. And Anele felt as she did-or his nerves were attuned to other dimensions of hazard and knowledge. He became increasingly agitated. He flung his head from side to side, and his hands trembled. For no apparent reason, he slapped his face as if he sought to rouse himself from a stupor. Linden heard or tasted small fluctuations in his mental state; but she could not interpret them.
Then, in a crook of the stream, she and the old man began to cross a wide sandbar littered with the moldering remains of a scrub oak or a stunted sycamore. Abruptly he clutched at her shoulder. Grimaces and flinching pa.s.sed like darker shadows over his obscured features: his arms shook with the force of an intention which he seemed unable to express.
”Anele? What is it?'
At once, Liand moved closer. Stave stepped back to study the jungle.
Bhapa and Pahni had given no warning. Linden could not remember when she had last seen them.
Anele shuddered. He dug his toes deeper into the sand, or into the decayed and crumbling deadwood, Linden did not know which.
”Linden Avery,” he whispered. His voice was hoa.r.s.e with strain. ”Chosen. Hear me.”
”I'm listening.” She feared that he had been possessed again. But if some potent being had slipped through the cracks in his mind, she could not feel its presence. He may have been speaking for the sand, or the rotting wood; or for Salva Gildenbourne.
Urgently he hissed. Only rock and wood know the truth of the Earth. The truth of life. But wood is too brief. Morinmoss redeemed the covenant, the white gold wielder. The Forestal sang, and Morinmoss answered. Now those days are lost. All vastness is forgotten. Unsustained, wood cannot remember the lore of the Colossus, the necessary forbidding of evils-”
Anele broke off; wrenched himself away from Linden. With one hand and then the other, he slapped his face. Then he scrubbed at his seamed forehead, his milky eyes, his weathered cheeks, as if he were struggling to wipe away his derangement.
”Linden,” Liand murmured, ”Linden,” but he did not seem to want her attention. Rather he gave the impression that he was trying to remind her of who she was.
”I'm here, Anele.” Linden stifled an impulse to summon fire from the Staff, cast away shadows. The light of Law might enable him to speak more clearly. But she did not want to announce her location. ”Go on. I'm listening.”
Morinmoss redeemed the covenant-?
The old man threw out his arms as if he were opening his heart to the forest. ”There is too much. Power and peril.
Malevolence. Ruin. And too little time. The last days of the Land are counted.” His voice became a growl of distress. ”Without forbidding, there is too little time.”
He wedged his feet deeper into the damp sand and rot.
”Anele.” Linden reached out to take hold of his arm. She did not know how else to steady him, anchor him, except by repeating his name. ”Are we in danger? Are the skurj coming?” Anele, make sense.
Flatly Stave announced, ”I descry no threat. The Manethrall and the Humbled report nothing. The Cords are distant, but they do not convey alarm.”
As if in response, Anele urged Linden. ”Seek deep rock. The oldest stone. You must. Only there the memory remains.”
She stared at him. Memory-? Did he mean the ancient lore which had been lost when the sentience of the One Forest failed, and the last Forestal was gone? Did he believe that the bones of the Earth remembered what the trees had forgotten?
Did the sand into which he had pushed his feet believe it?