Heartwood (Tricksters Game) (37 page)

None of the other horrors were as bad as that, not the forest of snakes that sprang up around him or the bats that swooped down to peck at his shielding arms with their curved beaks.
Fear is the enemy,
he told himself, and he endured, wondering if his ability to control his fear was his greatest strength.

After all he had witnessed, the giant buttercups looked beautiful, though a shiver ran down his spine when he realized the huge yellow heads dipped down to follow his progress. He wondered if they rejoiced when he lost the star-path, if they enjoyed the sight of him on hands and knees, scrabbling through the knee-high grass, without finding a trace of it. What he did find was a cluster of leaves, green and gleaming atop a spiky brown tussock.

He looked around for a holly, but the giant buttercups obscured everything. Perhaps one of them had been a holly before transforming into a flower. Then he examined the sprig more closely. The twig had been sheared off with a dagger. He scratched a dark spot on one leaf with his thumbnail. Blood.

He crawled forward and found more blood spots, fragments of leaves, a scrap of doeskin. It had to be some cruel trick of Chaos. He rose, spotted the trail of crushed grass, and followed it, measuring the stride.

Fellgair had promised. They had sealed the bargain with a handshake.

He shook his head, willing the signs to disappear, praying for them to be an illusion. Knowing that they were not.

Cuillon was in Chaos.

“You fool. You damn fool!” His voice rose to a shout. The heads of the buttercups reared back, then bobbed closer, as if intrigued by his outburst.

The path through the long grass was straight and clear. Cuillon had to be following the Oak’s energy. All he could do was follow Cuillon. He would not allow himself to think about the meaning of the holly leaves and the blood.

He flinched when he heard the familiar whining. A buttercup tree shuddered, petals drooping. One hairy, lobed leaf shook, as if caught in a gust of wind. As the center of the leaf grew filmy, Darak could have sworn he heard the sound of chanting.

Although the edges of the leaf were still rimmed in green, the center turned transparent. He could see sky and scudding gray clouds, but he couldn’t make sense of the odd latticework that framed them. Had the portal opened in the intertwined limbs of birches?

He heard the dry clatter of a rattle, smelled the scent of burning herbs. He recognized the chant now, the one they sang during burial rites. Standing on tiptoe, he peered through the portal.

A long, narrow shape swung into view. It sagged toward him, swaying a little as if suspended. It took a moment to determine that he was staring at a woven mantle, another to recognize the distinctive colors. Other tribes sang the death chant, but only his had those strands of green running through the dusky grays and browns.

Details fell into place with horrifying clarity. The shape of a body encased in the sagging mantle. The pale things around the mantle’s edges—fingers. And the lattice of branches that weren’t branches at all, but arms and legs, blue-white and frozen.

“Merciful Maker.”

The chanting died. The mantle rocked from side to side. A face appeared over one corner. Sweet gods, it was Nionik. The chief stared back at him, eyes widening with horror. More faces appeared. Jurl. Gortin. Red Dugan. The mantle swayed violently as hands dropped away to make signs of protection. A woman screamed. The mantle tilted and a body spilled out.

Darak stared into Mother Netal’s sightless blue eyes. Only when her body twitched did he rear back, clutching his bag of charms. Two white hands dug through the tangle of arms and legs in the Death Hut. Lisula stared at him, her expression as horrified as Nionik’s.

“Lisula. It’s Darak.”

The whine intensified and Lisula winced. Gortin’s face appeared over her shoulder. His mouth moved, but the portal’s whine drowned out his words.

“I am in Chaos. Lisula! Gortin! Can you hear me?”

The edges of the portal were blurring. Gortin’s fingers dug into Lisula’s arm as he tried to pull her away. She turned her head, snapping something that made him drop his hand. Then her eyes met his again. Slowly, she extended a trembling hand.

Home was an arm’s length away. He had only to grasp Lisula’s hand and he would be there. As if his hand had a will of its own, he saw it reaching past Mother Netal’s wrinkled face, reaching toward Lisula’s wavering fingers, pale as moonlight, formless as fog.

He clenched his traitorous fingers into a fist and stepped back. The whining crescendoed, then abruptly ceased. Lisula vanished and he was staring once again into the green leaf of the buttercup tree.

His legs wobbled and he collapsed. Try as he might, he could not control his shaking, any more than he could will away the images. Nionik’s face, as lined as one of the tribe’s elders. Jurl’s, shrunken and sagging. Red Dugan’s hair, streaked with white. And what about those he hadn’t seen? What of Krali and Sim? Why had he heard no children’s voices? There had been some fifty men, women, and children when he had left. There had to be more than these pitiful few.

They had been standing too far away for him to see. They were back at the village, too weak to attend the rite. He’d only been gone a moon. They could not be dead.

“It’s not true. It’s not real.”

“The world is dying,” he had told Fellgair. Grand, impassioned words, but empty. His people were dying. People he had seen every day. Faces that were as much a part of his life as the air he breathed. Gone. Lost.

The very old and the very young, they would succumb first, just as they had during the plague. How many more stiff, frozen corpses lay in the Death Hut with Mother Netal? How long would the others last, weakened by hunger and hopelessness? Nionik, Jurl, Red Dugan—they were all dying. And there were more, many more—not just in his village, but throughout the world. If he did not find Tinnean and the Oak soon, they would all die.

He stood up. On shaking legs, he followed Cuillon’s trail. He found a circle of dented grass where he had rested, scattered fish bones where he had eaten. And then, like the star-path, the trail disappeared.

He tore through the furry undergrowth, slapping aside the leering faces that snapped at him, mocked him, whispered that he was lost. He stumbled through gelatinous roots and man-high spiderwebs. When he spotted something gleaming on the far side of a sinkhole, he raced toward it, only to watch green wings open and carry the thing skyward with a shrill screech.

He staggered away from the sinkhole, through a thicket, and onto a starry, black beach. Waves of light arced overhead—green, white, red—shimmering like the Northern Dancers. They rippled across the sky, foaming and hissing like real waves when they broke upon the beach.

He would find the trail again. He would find Cuillon. He would find Tinnean and the Oak.

Fear is the enemy.

Fear was the pounding of his heart and the pounding of the waves. Fear was the light streaking across the sky like fiery spears flung by the Lightning God. Fear was the flashing sparks that flew up as they pelted the beach.

“I will find them!” He screamed his defiance at the sky, at the spears, at the Lord of Chaos and all the gods who watched his people die and did nothing.

Fear was a spear, plummeting toward him.

White.

Blazing.

Merciless.

Fear was an icicle, piercing his heart.

G
RIANE OPENED HER EYES to find the tree-folk clustered about her. She was sure she had convinced them of her need to return to the First Forest, but she had no idea how they would manage it.

You can’t worry about that, Griane. Worry about what you can fix.

She tugged Rowan’s hand, pointing in what she hoped was the direction of the pool. Rowan frowned, pointing in the opposite direction, but after a long, silent discussion with the others, finally nodded. Griane lingered long enough to lay her palm against the great oak and whisper a prayer of thanks. She hoped the tree understood her when she told it that the Oak’s spirit would return, hoped with equal fervor that it wasn’t a lie.

They reached the pool at midmorning. She filled her waterskin, then pointed at the magical plants. She tried to explain her need to Rowan, but in the end, she made a small cut on her wrist. Their leaves fluttered wildly when the blood welled up. She plucked a silvery leaf and pressed it to the wound. This caused more fluttering. She pretended to cut other sprigs from it and the one with the heart-shaped leaves. She looked around the circle of worried faces, a question in her eyes.

This time, the discussion lasted much longer. Perhaps it was forbidden to take anything away from the Summerlands. With an effort, she curbed her impatience. If the tree-folk refused permission, she would obey.

Please Maker, let them understand.

The sun had nearly reached its zenith when the tall oak-man stepped forward. He pointed to each of the plants and slowly nodded.

“Thank you.” Griane flung her arms around one thick leg. The grooves around the oak-man’s dark eyes tilted upward ever so slightly. Perhaps oaks were simply more reticent than other trees or perhaps he was older. There was so much to learn here, so many things she wanted to know.

You could stay. You would always have the tree-folk for friends.

Griane shook her head as if beset by deerflies, wondering if the Trickster had put the thought in her head.

She cut sprigs from each of the plants, careful to leave more than she took. She wondered what they were called, if they even had names. Heal-all, she decided for the silver-leafed one and heart-ease for the other. Imagine being the first to name a plant. Even Mother Netal had never done such a thing.

She whispered a prayer of thanks to the plants and sprinkled water from the pool around their stems. Belatedly, she realized she had no way to carry them back with her. Finally, she hacked off the bottom of her mantle, but try as she might, she could not tie the thick ends of the bundle together. The tall oak-man touched her shoulder. With signs, she showed him what she needed. He nodded gravely and entered into another silent conversation. Again, Griane waited. She could understand why the gift of the plants had taken a long time, but how could tying up her bundle possibly spark such a protracted discussion?

Finally, the oak-man unwound a long strand of ivy clinging to his chest. Griane smiled up at him. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”

Their pace was more leisurely now. Perhaps the tree-folk wanted her to enjoy her last impressions of the Summerlands. When she lingered beside a fat bush heavy with berries, they watched her with the same wonder they had evinced when she’d filled her waterskin. Rowan nodded when she pointed to the berries. Griane’s stomach growled, but she recalled one of the Memory-Keeper’s tales about a shaman who had feasted on the fruits of the Forever Isles and returned to his village the next morning to find that ten years had passed. Reluctantly, she contented herself with gathering berries. When she was back in the First Forest, she would allow herself to enjoy one.

After that, they took pains to point out other foods to her. Soon her arms were overflowing with mushrooms and berries. What a bounty to bring to her folk.

The sun was low in the sky when they reached a shore fringed with reeds and grasses. Perhaps the legends were true, then, about the Summerlands being an island. Certainly, they were right about the mist, although it was nothing like the giant fleece Old Sim described. It rose straighter than the walls of a house, the boundary between mist and water as neat and clean as if she had sketched it in the earth with a twig.

Griane gaped at the mist-wall, wondering how Rowan or any of the tree-folk could possibly breach it. The pine-man looked tall enough to walk right through it without wetting his spiky green hair, but surely, tree-folk took to water as well as Cuillon had to climbing.

She was still gazing at it when oak-men unwound the ivy that clung to their thick torsos. Willow-women lifted curving feet and sent long, slender shoots flying from their ankles. The shoots fell in perfect lines at the water’s edge. The ivy twisted under and over them, binding them together. The other tree-folk shook their branches. Green leaves showered down—birch, rowan, alder, ash, hazel—arranging themselves on top of the framework of willow and vine.

A raft, Griane realized. A raft to carry her back to the First Forest.

A smaller cascade of shoots and vines and leaves landed at her feet. Hot tears came to her eyes when she realized they were offering her a basket to carry her food and healing plants. Before she could wipe them away, Rowan touched her cheek. She raised her finger to her lips and her eyes widened. Whatever she told the others made their leaves flutter. Perhaps they expected a tear to be thick and tangy like sap.

Bark-encrusted fingers caressed her hair, drooping catkins brushed her arms. All of them wanted to touch her and in turn, be touched by her. Griane patted grooved arms and leafy fingers. Whatever happened on this quest, she must live to tell the tale so future generations would know of the kindness and generosity of the tree-folk.