“Tell Renthrette I’m sorry about her dress,” I said.
I was already grabbing my things and running for the door. He stood where he was, asking quietly, desperately, as if this would make everything clear, “What did you do?”
SCENE XVII The Dead Forest
You may have noticed that running away is not a frequent feature in the lives led by the heroes of literature. You may also have noted that running is something I do rather a lot of. The fact of the matter is that dying, which is rather more popular in heroic tales, has never especially appealed to me, particularly when it involves pain and humiliation. I wasn’t sure which method of slow torture the so-called “fair folk” preferred, but I was pretty sure that I would rather be otherwise engaged. I’m not particularly stoic when it comes to pain and, since I’m far from sure what may or may not lurk in the hereafter, I have learned to spot danger before it spots me and move away from it very, very quickly. Not particularly honorable or even dignified, I admit, but I can live with that. At least I’ll live with something.
So I ran from Phasdreille, from its handsome book-burning soldiers, from that poisonous Aliana bitch and the valiantly murderous Sorrail, like a rabbit from a greyhound. The bridge sentries were still searching the palace, so I clambered into the back of a wagon of empty soap boxes packed in straw, and tried to still the hammering of my heart as we moved out over the bridge, through the barbican and out of the city at last. Garnet’s warning had, it occurred to me, saved my life. I suddenly wished I had told him that his beloved Lisha was alive and only a few miles away.
Well, too late for that now.
I waited a few minutes and then slipped down from the wagon, rolling into the ditch by the road and lying still till I could hear no sign of life. I moved quickly into the woods to rest. I was not in the best shape, and my exertions, augmented by a stifling panic, had left me breathless and just about incapable of action. I was lying on my stomach and staring back toward the city while I tried to figure out what to do next when a company of horsemen came charging over the bridge and out of the barbican. There they clattered to a halt, divided into two, and set off in opposite directions on the road. This was not encouraging. I didn’t actually hear them distributing my portrait, but their mission seemed clear: Find Hawthorne and put one of those carefully polished lances through his gizzard.
I wasn’t sure what my gizzard was, but I was fairly confident that I had other plans for it, so I lay in the bracken and did my best to stop breathing for about ten minutes. Then another group of soldiers, this time on foot, came out of the city and my blood ran colder than Renthrette’s eyes on a frosty day. At the head of the company, yelping and lunging forward with disturbing eagerness, was a pack of hounds.
It seemed about that time again. So I ran, straight into where the forest seemed deepest, diving through bracken and bounding over fallen trees like. . well, like someone with a company of soldiers and a pack of dogs at his heels. I figured it would take the dogs a moment to pick up my scent, but once they had it, my days, and-for that matter-my seconds, were numbered. I knew that I should be thinking up some brilliant ruse, but my legs had taken over and my brain was trying to keep up. I knew that even if I climbed a tree (presuming I could do that without killing myself) or hid in some conveniently positioned hollow, the hounds would track me down and I would gain nothing more than another minute or two to reflect upon those teeth and lance tips. So I kept moving with nothing more in my mind than getting as much distance between me and my pursuers as possible. Far behind me, the barking swelled and became unified: They were coming. And suddenly, as I blundered through a screen of hemlock, the stench hit me.
It had probably been growing with each footstep, but I had been too preoccupied with my footing to reflect upon the sweet and fragrant aromas of the forest. These aromas had now become a good deal less sweet and fragrant as a sour note overpowered the resin scent of the pines and brought me to a nose-wrinkling halt. The dogs answered, right on cue, with a bloodthirsty baying, so I silenced my offended nostrils (if you know what I mean), and pressed on. A huge spruce barred my path and I had to press blindly through its pale extremities. I shielded my eyes from the needles as I did so, and then, as I broke free, found myself gaping at my feet. One of my boots had sunk into the earth up to the cuff at the knee. I plucked it out with a long, sucking draw and the smell broke upon me like a cloud. Looking up, I found that the trees here had fallen away. Across a few yards of dark and stinking mud was the river, black, oily, and still as death.
I remembered the winding river instantly, of course, how it divided the fair woods and Phasdreille from the foul realm of darkness on the south bank, and as I stared across, it was all perfectly self-evident. The trees which sprouted from the stagnant water or stuck up at wild angles from its surface were blackened poles stripped of leaves, with branches like ragged claws, and on the far side of the river the woods were reduced to a thicket of the same dead pikes stabbing at the sky from dank and swampy beds. The air was chill and heavily silent for a second, and I could smell the evil through the decay. But then the silence was broken by the voices of the hounds and their handlers, and my dilemma hit me between the eyes like a pickaxe. Should I stay on the bank and wait for the soldiers to drag my bleeding remains from their dogs for formal torture and execution in Phasdreille, or should I brave the horrors of the water and whatever lay beyond it? Put like that, I seemed to have only one option. The stinking waters might even throw the dogs off my scent.
I took three more gurgling strides through the struggling reeds and mud and then felt the chill of icy water rushing over the tops of my boots. It was an inconceivably unpleasant sensation. Another step, and the bottom, which was treacherously slick with what I took to be rotting leaves and branches, shelved sharply. The water rose up to my chest, driving the breath from my body as the surprising cold overcame me. I stood there gasping the noxious air and gazing, stricken, at the far bank, which looked about a mile away. I had just remembered that I couldn’t swim.
There was a rustle in the vegetation behind me. It could have been a deer or a rabbit, but I assumed the worst and took another hurried couple of steps. The water rose and its frigid and viscous surface closed about my neck, so thick and dark that I could barely see my own body beneath it. I tipped my head back and closed my mouth, almost retching at the thought of this stinking fluid getting on my face, in my nose, in my mouth. The surface was curdled with a foul-smelling scum, unnaturally white and clotted with bubbles like oversized frog spawn. My every movement roused a thick cloud under the water, black and heavy as blood.
Luckily, it got no deeper. I could hear the soldiers and their pack through the birdless trees, but their calls were of confusion. I might make it yet. Indeed, perhaps I didn’t need to venture into the haunted forest, or whatever it was, on the other side at all. Perhaps I could just stay where I was, freezing quietly, until they left. But how long would that be, and how could I hope to reemerge from the woods onto the road without being seen and apprehended? So I continued to wade across, slowly, being careful not to slosh the heavy water which congealed about me, my joints beginning to seize as the cold shrank my sinews and froze my muscles. But then, quite unexpectedly, the river bottom seemed to swell and the water receded from my throat. The shelving was almost as steep here as it had been on the other bank, and it took both hands digging into the mud and clasping hold of stray logs before I could clamber, filthy and stinking, out of the water.
I say I got out, but in fact the water never really went away. It just turned into shallow stagnant pools and broad, still basins from which the dead trees emerged like some ruined palisade. I knelt shivering on the edge of one such pool and gazed back the way I had come, but I could see nothing. A heavy silence had fallen like a blanket of snow over the entire forest. For the moment, I was safe, but this was hardly prime picnicking territory. A brooding gloom suffused the place, filling me with slow dread. Out of the frying pan, as they say, and into
the demon-infested swamp. .
For what seemed like a long time I did nothing but wonder what to do. If I was trying to get to Lisha, I should follow the riverbank west; but if I was headed for the mountains where we had entered this hellhole, I should go east. Both routes would take me on a several-mile stroll through the sinister expanse of death that lay stinking all around me, and I did not doubt that there were goblins and things still fouler lurking throughout the forest on this side of the river. But if I crossed the river, the “fair folk” would take one of their fair axes and remove useful parts of me. The world, apparently, wasn’t my oyster.
I had almost decided to head west for the village tavern where Lisha was staying when I caught sight of smoke from the direction of the mountains, which would have been upstream if there had been any movement in the water whatsoever. It seemed close by, though I couldn’t tell which side of the river it came from. Without thinking further, I began walking toward it, following a winding track around water-filled pits and shifting earth.
I came upon the source quite unexpectedly. Rounding a bend in the river I found myself no more than fifty yards from where it spanned the river: a great building, half-dam, half-mill, and constructed of what looked like new but stained and blackened brick. Chimneys spouted along the length of its roof and each belched thick and sulfurous smoke into the sky. As I stood there, the wind caught the smoke and it drifted, sagging toward me like some overweight and drunken cow. The smell was appalling. It was like both the air of the dead forest and the stagnant water of the river and pools; but it was, if anything, stronger, and touched with a rancid edge like butter left in the sun for days. I clutched my stinking hand over my nose and mouth to shut it out and fought to keep my gorge down. Then, driven by the curiosity which kills more than cats, I approached, skulking through the gray reeds.
It was a graceless structure, windowless and devoid of ornament. Along its side, about two yards above the level of the stopped-up river, was a series of five pipes, each a foot or more in diameter, and each trickling some yellowish filth into the water below. It congealed, this effluent, into greasy pools, sometimes collecting on the surface, sometimes sinking and drifting for a while until it settled elsewhere. One look at or sniff of that putrid glaze as it slopped out of the pipes and I no longer wondered why the river and forest were dead and stinking.
Right beside the bank where I crouched, a chute crudely constructed of heavy lumber emerged from the building and emptied into the marshy shoreline. As I edged closer to peer into this, a hatchway somewhere inside opened and I heard for a moment the sounds of boiling, churning fluid and clanking pans. Then there was a clatter and a heap of objects came tumbling down the chute and into the river. Some sank without a trace; others missed their mark and fell around me like the rain that falls in nightmares. There were bits of armor, pieces of fabric, the broken hafts of weapons and fragments of metal, but mostly, there were bones: ribs, thighs, fingers, skulls, some almost human, but most ridged and heavy set. These were, there could be no doubt, goblin remains.
What the hell?. .
I looked toward the mountains. Since the river ran fairly straight for about a mile, I could make out two similar structures straddling the river. There were sounds from inside the brick building, but it never occurred to me to see if the people within might protect me. Whoever-or whatever-they were, I did not want them to see me. I glanced across the river as I moved away, and there I glimpsed the wagon in which I had sneaked a ride from the city, incongruously bright and clean, painted elegantly in cream and trimmed with purple and gold. A man, tall and dressed in a buff leather jerkin, was loading crates onto the straw-packed back of the wagon. I knew what went into those boxes and recalled Garnet’s words on how proud of their cleanliness were the citizens of Phasdreille. Through the stink of the smoke and the stuff which was pumping out into the river, I thought I caught a distant whiff of rose petals.
So, this is how they make their soap.
I wasn’t sure if it was this realization or the sickly sweet aroma which finally pushed me over the edge, but I vomited quietly into the reeds where a cluster of pale bubbles puffed fat like fungus.
Being sick got rid of whatever lingered from the previous night’s drinking binge, and though I was now thirsty and hungry, I felt better, clearheaded and ready to think. Of course, it didn’t take much detailed analysis of my predicament to see that I was like a man who, coming home after a night on the town, finds that what he took to be his bedroom has become a cage full of tigers. The only thing more bewildering than how I had got into this insane situation was how I was going to get out of it.
Staying where I was would clearly be as dangerous as it was offensive to my nostrils, so I moved inland, if that is a fair term for the quagmire which stretched back into the blasted forest. I was still wet, and a cold wind had picked up and was coursing through the dead trees like a thousand sighing phantoms. I kept moving, for warmth more than to get anywhere specific, though after a close encounter with some quicksand-or its black and slimy equivalent-I picked up a stick and probed the earth before each step. Thus, with slow and uneven strides, I inched my way back from the river and into the dead forest.
I had been walking no more than ten minutes when my finely tuned adventurer’s ears picked up movement behind me. In fact, my three-quarters-deaf aunt could have heard the clomping around in the reeds behind me, and she’s been dead several years. I stopped and considered my options. Either whoever or whatever was behind me wanted me to hear them, which was not necessarily a good thing, or whatever it was was so immense and hulking that this pounding through the underbrush was what passed for stealth among its kind. Since neither option was particularly optimal, I decided to get my weapon ready and turn slowly. I hadn’t had time to arrange my pack as I would have liked, but my sword, now muddy and probably rusting, hung by my hand. I dragged it quietly from its sheath and wheeled rapidly as if I was ready for anything.
I wasn’t, of course, but things could have been worse: a good deal worse, in fact. Behind me was a small woman, olive-skinned and with narrow black eyes and small features. Her long, raven-black hair was held back by a silver pin. She leaned on a silver-shod staff of ebony.
“Lisha?” I gasped.
“You’re deaf as a post, Will,” she remarked. “I’ve been following you for ten minutes, trying to make sure it was you and that no one else was tracking you on this side of the river. I thought I was making enough noise to wake the dead.”
“I heard you,” I replied, guardedly. This was not the first friend I had met wandering in these woods and the last one had turned out to have been dead some time. “How did you find me?”
“I heard from Rose that the city was up in arms looking for you.”
“There’s no way she could have gotten word to you that quickly,” I replied, keeping my sword raised and level. “I’ve only been running from them for an hour or so. It would take her three times that just to get back to the inn and give you the news.”
“She didn’t have to,” said Lisha, unoffended by my skepticism. “I came with her in the carriage, hidden, of course. I was concerned that we hadn’t heard from you, and then one of Rose’s other clients mentioned your behavior at the banquet. . ”
“I was set up!” I exclaimed. “I could drink all those tarted-up clowns into the middle of next week, especially with that gutless rubbish they call beer around here. . ”
“I know, Will,” said Lisha, smiling her small and cryptic smile. “That’s one of the reasons I thought you might be in trouble. Someone was obviously trying to discredit you, or worse.”
“Exactly,” I agreed, huffily.
“So I hid in the trunk under the carriage seats and came down with Rose to the city gates. We arrived just after the soldiers had come this way looking for you. Everyone was talking about it. I guessed that your only possible escape would be on this side of the river, though I’m still not clear why they wouldn’t cross over and continue to
search on this side.”
“Why aren’t you wet? How did you cross the river?”
“I used the dam where that building is-”
“Yes, all right,” I interrupted, reluctant to talk about that ominous and disquieting structure for fear of articulating what went on inside it. She fell silent and watched me and as I looked at her closely, I realized that I no more expected her to start falling into dead bones and powdered flesh than I expected her to sprout another head and sing a duet. Relief and pleasure crept over me. “God, it’s good to see you,” I exclaimed.
“You, too,” she answered, smiling. “Now we must move. You can tell me your news while we walk.”
“Which way?”
“It doesn’t matter, so long as we get away from the riverbank and those search parties. They may yet cross the water. The way you were heading seems as good an idea as any.”
“But this takes us deeper into the haunted forest,” I said, trying not to whine.
“Haunted?” she said. “Will, are you all right?”
“I know, I know. But I’ve seen things here that, well, don’t make sense. I don’t know what’s real. My gut says that you are Lisha, and I’m trusting to that because I want you to be Lisha. I’m making some kind of leap of faith. Or maybe it’s a leap of desperation. Can you make a leap of desperation? I believe you are you because if I allow myself to think that you are really some tentacled demon in a cunning disguise, I’ll probably go mad, and I’d prefer not to do that just yet, thank you.”
She extended her hand. “Here, Will,” she said. “Take my tentacle.”
I started and gave her a look of alarm.
“A joke,” she said with only the smallest crinkling of her lips. “Come on.”
I took her hand and it felt real enough, small and warm. She led me through the paths of the swamp like a child leading an indulgent adult. Still, it occurred to me again, I had rarely been gladder to see anyone in my life.
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