The Great Tree of Avalon (5 page)

Ouch!
He winced from the louse biting his forearm.

With a scowl, he flicked away the little scoundrel. Some explorer he was! Why, today he’d ventured all the way to the topmost rung of Lott’s rickety ladder. And even battled some man-eating lice.

His legs kicked at the air by the roof’s edge. Truth was, the life he was leading couldn’t have been any more different from that of Krystallus. Or from his own shadowy beginnings. He bit his lip, recalling his very first memory—those vague, confused images of a fiery mountain, an old man with the wings of an eagle... and a woman’s warm embrace.

He shook his head. How could he even be sure that memory was real? More and more, that night on the fiery mountain seemed just a dream. A twisted dream. He hadn’t even dared to talk about it with Scree, not after everything they’d been through, although it hovered between them like a ghoul—always present, yet always invisible.

Not that this unspoken memory had spoiled their time together—no, far from it. Scree and Tam (as his brother called him) had ranged widely, exploring much of Fireroot’s volcanic lands. They’d climbed peaks, crawled through lava tunnels, slid down glass-smooth slopes of black obsidian, hurled fistfuls of ash at each other’s heads, wrestled among spouting flame vents . . . and so much more. Just as long as the boys avoided any contact with the warlike flamelons, and returned home to their cave by dark, they’d had plenty of freedom. And they’d also had a genuine family, thanks to the woman who was mother to them both: for Scree, by adoption; for Tamwyn, by birth. She had always been there to welcome them home, her orange eyes aglow.

Until the day she died and left them with nothing but each other.

And then, seven years ago, they had lost even that.

Tamwyn blinked at the stars, which seemed suddenly blurry. What good did it do to think about that? Scree was gone now—maybe even dead. And even if he was still alive, he’d been impossible to find.

Still, Tamwyn couldn’t keep himself from wondering . . . or searching. That was why he’d spent most of the last seven years wandering across Stoneroot—over rocky hills, meadows, marshes, forests, and snow fields—looking for any sign of Scree. Though he’d found nothing yet, hope still burned inside him. If he just ran enough trails, however remote or dangerous, maybe somehow he’d—

“Eehee, eehee, look there. A real live man made of charcoal! Darker than a dead torch on a moonless night, he is. Eehee, hoohoohoo, ahahaha.”

The raucous laugh cut short Tamwyn’s thoughts. He looked down from the roof platform to see someone standing on the broken bale of thatch, peering up at him. It might have been a man—except this person stood only half a man’s height and was as thin as a ridgepole. He had very large hands (almost as big as his head), long arms, and circular eyebrows that went all the way around a pair of silver-colored eyes. For clothes, he wore just a sack-shaped tunic, a belt with a slingshot, and a woven red headband.

A
hoolah
, thought Tamwyn, shaking his head grimly. Just what he didn’t need right now. Hoolahs had no sense of decency—and basically no sense at all. Wherever they went, they brought mischief.

Tamwyn moved to the edge of the roof and waved his hand, as if shaking off some lice. “Go away, hoolah. I’ve got work to do.”

The skinny little fellow waved his own oversized hand in return. “What’s your work, grimy man? Taking a bath in a tub of soot? Eehee, eehee, just to get yourself cleaner? Eeheeyahahahaha.” He slapped his thighs in laughter. “Soot. Cleaner. That’s how dirty you are! Eeehee, ha-ha-ha.”

Tamwyn growled, his temper rising. “Get out of here, I say.” He grabbed Lott’s heavy wooden bucket and waved it above the hoolah’s head. “Or I’ll drop this and more right on top of you.”

Before the hoolah could reply, someone else stepped out of the deepening shadows beside the house. It was a girl, very young—and very portly. Round as a boulder she was, with at least two chins and fleshy jowls that spilled over the copper bells sewn onto her collar.

Tamwyn caught his breath. Lott’s daughter!

As she waddled over to the base of the ladder, the hoolah jumped off the bale and slipped into the shadows. Not far away, though. Tamwyn could still see the silver gleam of his eyes by the corner of the house.

The girl slapped the broken ladder with her chubby hand. “My papa says to warn you that, that...” She stopped to suck her knuckles for a moment. “That he’s ...” Suck, suck. “Comin’ back soon. Just as soon as he finishes...” Suck, suck. “Eatin’ his brambleberry pie.”

Tamwyn’s eyes narrowed. He was just about to tell her exactly what her papa could do with his pie, when a pair of new voices rasped from below.

“Well, well, now. See here!” Hic. “A cutesy li’l girl.”

“Aye, an’ she’s out here,”
hic-cic
, “all alone.”

Tamwyn’s heart pounded. Gobsken! Half drunk, too, from the sound of it—probably from stealing someone’s barley beer.

Sure enough, as he watched from the rooftop, two hulking figures with hunched shoulders and very long arms approached the empty house. One of them, the bigger of the two, was rubbing his hands together and making a throaty, cackling sound.

“C’mere, li’l girl.” The gobsken stretched his arms out toward her. “Lemme see yer pretty face.”

The girl shrieked. She backed up against the stone wall of the house, quivering in fright. “Leave me alone,” she whimpered, sucking her knuckles. “Or my papa will . . . ” Suck, suck, suck. “Will come.”

“Ooh,” said the big gobsken in mock fear. “I’m muchly scared.” He cackled and took a step closer.

“Meself, I’m just,”
hic
, “feelin’ hungry,” replied his friend. “An’ this girl could make us a tasty meal.”

Tamwyn leaped up and grasped the top of the ladder. “Back off, you two!” he shouted.

Surprised, the two gobsken froze. Just as they looked up, Tamwyn started to descend. Swiftly, he stepped on the top rung. Except there was no top rung. With an agonized cry, he lurched backward, his arms flailing. Off the ladder he fell—

Right on top of the bigger gobsken. They slammed into the ground, sending up a cloud of thatch and soot. Tamwyn rolled off and regained his feet—just as the other gobsken roared and hurled himself at this attacker from the sky.

But as Tamwyn struggled to get his balance, he tripped on the broken bale of thatch. He sprawled sideways. The gobsken flew right past, and crashed headfirst into the stone wall.

Terrified, the girl shrieked again. She kicked at one of the gobsken, but her blow landed smack on Tamwyn’s shin. The kick hurt, to be sure . . . but not as much as the hysterical laughter from the hoolah still hiding by the side of the house.

Tamwyn whirled around, just as angry at the hoolah as he was at the two attackers. But as he turned, his shoulder struck the ladder, which slid along the wall and bumped against the wooden bucket sitting on the edge of the roof. The bucket wobbled for an instant, then came tumbling down.

Right on the girl’s head! She promptly fell over, unconscious—hitting the dirt, facedown, with the force of a fallen tree. Seeing this, the hoolah laughed harder than ever.

Meanwhile, the two gobsken rose on shaky legs. The bigger one grimaced, clasping a limp arm to his chest. Having found much more of a fight than they’d expected, they traded glances and staggered off into the fields beyond the village. Soon their dark forms faded into the shadows.

“Say, now! What goes on here?”

On hearing Lott’s booming voice, Tamwyn’s knees felt weak. How was he going to explain this? He knelt beside the unconscious girl, who lay flat on her belly, arms splayed, like a sleeping hog.

Lott rushed over, still limping from the hammer Tamwyn had dropped on his foot. But his look of pain deepened dramatically when he saw his daughter. Angrily, he shoved Tamwyn aside. “What have you done to her, you lame-brained lout?”

“I . . . I, well—”

“He hit her, he did!” called a voice from the shadows beside the house. “Clonked her with a great big bucket.”

The voice paused a few seconds, sounding as if it were choking—or stifling laughter. Then it added, “Brutal that was, terribly brutal.”

Even in the dim light, Tamwyn could see Lott’s flabby face turn pink, then red, then dark purple. His whole massive body shook like an oversized dumpling about to explode. Tamwyn sprang to his feet and backed away.

The girl moaned. Lott turned back to her and pressed his thumb against her wrist, feeling her pulse. At last, satisfied she was alive, he faced Tamwyn again.

“Go!” he bellowed. “Leave this village, you horrible hooligan. And never, ever come back, do you hear? Never!”

Tamwyn swallowed, then stepped slowly away. As he disappeared into the deepening night, he heard himself sigh. And then he heard something else—something like raucous laughter from the shadows.

3
•
A Pale Hand Beckons

Hidden by the shadow of the great stone tower, a lone figure prowled. His hooded cloak blended so completely into the darkness, he seemed just a layer of black upon black, no more visible than a raven against a starless sky.

Except for his hands.

Pale white, with perfectly clipped fingernails, the hands sometimes rose briefly out of the shadows. Not even a callus, let alone a scar, marred the smooth flesh of the long slender fingers. They grasped the cloak at its neck, holding down the hood, whenever a fierce gust of wind whipped across the land, piercing even the slim cracks in the tower.

Such gusts blew often here in the northernmost reaches of Waterroot—the region the bards called High Brynchilla. For here, in this land where few creatures ever visited, wind and water were the only constants. Both flowed freely, just as they had done since the very birth of Avalon. In the words of the old saying:

Where long wind blows
And water flows,
High Brynchilla
No one goes.

Where currents soar
And torrents roar,
None but wind and
Water knows.

As the cloaked figure looked out from the shadows, he peered down at an enormous, high-walled canyon—and clasped his hands in triumph. For he had now nearly accomplished what no one else in Avalon’s history had even dared to try. He had changed forever the face of this remote canyon, and the magical water that it held.

For ages, water had flowed down this redrock canyon at the far northern edge of the realm—so much water that it fed almost all the rest of Waterroot. From the thinnest rill to the widest lake to the lowest depths of the Rainbow Seas, which were so vast that they seemed to have no shore and no bottom, water from this canyon could be found. Some of it even plunged back down into underground rivers that flowed to the neighboring realms of Stoneroot and Woodroot. But whatever the water’s ultimate destination, every drop that ran down this canyon first began in one single place: the White Geyser of Crystillia.

Slowly, the cloaked figure turned to face north. There, at the very top of the canyon, was that tower of spray, the legendary White Geyser. So powerful that none but the wind dared to approach its foaming crest, it made a ceaseless rumble that rolled like everlasting thunder down the high cliff walls. And yet, because of its remoteness, almost no one had ever visited the geyser—just as almost no one had ever gazed down into its canyon. People knew about them only through the journals of the explorer Krystallus or through the songs of wandering bards.

Straight up shot the White Geyser, spurting water from unknown depths to the height of a hundred oak trees. Just as it had done day and night, season after season, year after year, through all the ages of Avalon.

“But now,” rasped the voice beneath the hooded cloak, “you are mine, mmmyesss. Not Avalon’s. Not Waterroot’s. Not anyone’s but mine.”

His pale hands clenched into fists as he thought of all the ballads he’d heard that sang the praises of the Canyon of Crystillia and the White Geyser whose water filled it. Ballads that gushed as much as any fountain, celebrating the eerie glow of this water—a glow that came from
élano
, the magical sap of the Great Tree. Those ballads also celebrated the sheer quantity of water that erupted here; its whiteness that split into the seven colors of the spectrum when the water reached Prism Gorge at the lower end of the canyon; and its destiny to flow southward, carrying colors everywhere in the realm, all the way to the Rainbow Seas. But most of all, they celebrated this water’s freedom, its permanence, its unstoppable power.

“No more,” said the figure with satisfaction. “For I have stopped you. Mmmyesss. I—the greatest sorcerer of all time.”

Gleefully, he rubbed his hands together. From this vantage point, in the shadows of his tower on the canyon rim, he could see the gigantic stone dam that now spanned Prism Gorge. Above the dam, an enormous white lake, still and somber, filled the canyon almost to its rim. And below the dam, no more water flowed, and no more colors danced, down the seven lower canyons to the lands and seas beyond.

He chuckled to himself. In just a few more weeks, the dam would be done, the lake would be full, and his long-awaited moment of triumph would arrive. All he lacked was one more thing—his prize. And now, at last, he knew just where to find it.

Clutching the hood of his cloak against the wind, the sorcerer paced excitedly along the rim. Why, only a few months ago, the fabled Canyon of Crystillia had smelled of fresh water, mixed with élano from deep within the Great Tree. But now this canyon—his canyon—had a different smell. It wafted from the open-pit quarries, from the stumps and shards of trees hacked down in the bordering forest of Woodroot, and from the blood of hundreds of paws, hooves, and wings. The dam reeked of this smell, a smell unlike any other in Avalon.

It was the smell of slavery.

He stirred, seeing someone approach, and drew back into the shadows. It was a man—a warrior who stood as thick as an oak, with a wide slab of a face that looked as hard as the dam itself. Around his waist he wore a wide leather belt that carried a broadsword, a rapier, two daggers, and a spiked club.

The warrior stopped to peer down into a quarry pit beside the tower. “Move!” he shouted at the half-dozen horses and oxen straining to pull a pair of enormous stones, just chiseled loose by a team of somber dwarves in shackles. “We needs them stones afore the end o’ time!”