“What about Ustril?” Pyke said. “Any sign of her?”
Shogrel looked at Dervla. “Is that your missing companion? I have heard nothing about a solo intruder, apart from those that have been accounted for. However, the further and higher we go the more impression I shall be able to gather.”
Pyke nodded thoughtfully while gazing around him. “Right, if Ancil and Moleg are still out there, we can’t afford to waste any more time.” He paused to feel and prod at his jacket at chest level, hastily jammed his hand inside, then began frantically patting all his pockets. Dervla cleared her throat loudly and held up the leather-cased crystal shard. Pyke went from bug-eyed panic to slumping relief. “How?” he said.
“You were waving it around and shouting like a mad ganger when we found you,” she said. “Didn’t have time to be gentle so we wrestled it off you then dragged you back here. You want it back?”
Pyke started to reach out but then hesitated, as something like dread showed in his expression. He gave a little wave and let his arm fall back.
“Nah, you hold onto it for a spell—just promise me that you won’t open it or touch it, ever, okay?”
“I promise,” she said. “Last thing I want is some homicidal machine-mind walking around in my skin while I’m not there.” She shuddered, then offered Pyke a hand to help him to his feet. He swayed a little and leaned against the wall.
“You need to rest for a little while longer?” she said, but he shook his head.
“We’d better crack on—who knows what kind of trouble that pair have got themselves into?”
With Shogrel leading the way (and frequently sending her hand-and-eye scouts up ahead), they left the turmoil of the red corridor behind them. With care and attention they managed to manoeuvre their way through passages overgrown with orange-and-blue leaves as big as platters, or littered and criss-crossed with yellow-and-brown striped vines. The key was to break or crush as few roots, stems and stalks as possible. A succession of odours laced the air, sometimes a sugary sweetness, other times a chemical acridity so sharp Dervla felt as if the hairs in her nose were shrivelling up in protest. All in all it was a demanding route and after nearly an hour she could tell that Pyke was struggling. Neither she nor Kref had any rations left so she moved up next to Shogrel and summarised the situation in a low voice.
Shogrel nodded and, when they paused at the next crossing, she went round everyone’s blue-flower circlets, inspecting them for any wear or damage. When she was finished she gave a small nod to Dervla as she went out to one of the three passages ahead of them to pick up her “scouts.” On her way back she whispered, “He will receive strengthening nutrients for a time but he must rest properly soon.”
Same goes for the rest of us, Dervla thought as Shogrel faced them all, clearly with something to say.
“My hand-and-eye scouts have returned with news about the crossing’s other three passages. One is blocked by debris from a structural collapse, another is a death-red corridor where some kind of war of extirpation is going on—no one can enter and my blue flowers would be no defence. The third was known to have been passable but is now obstructed by a large and dense outgrowth, or possibly a barrier created from warped branch bark of a shape on which my scouts could not agree. As you may surmise, I am going to have to go and see for myself.”
“Could I accompany you?” said Dervla.
Shogrel gave her a considering look. “That would be acceptable, although I would ask you to leave all weapons here.”
Dervla nodded, took out her blaster and passed it to Pyke, who smiled and slipped it away inside his jerkin. Then, side by side, she and Shogrel strode to the crossing and turned along the right-hand corridor. It was shadowy here. Light sources like tubers and honeycombed blooms were sheltered behind screens of fleshy leaves or lattices of creepers. As elsewhere, most doors were choked with growth and impenetrable to the eye.
“Do you know who is in charge of this section?” Dervla said quietly.
“I remember him from long ago,” Shogrel said. “He was a songmaker, saved from the fall of the Imperial homeworld by a noble who liked his versing. Once, these passages were full of melody.”
Dervla listened intently for a moment, heard only the usual susurrus of the Steel Forest.
“And since then?”
“Now I feel only undertones of grief and painful memory.”
As they walked Dervla could actually sense a rising ambience of unwelcome sourness shading into hostility, as if their very presence was resented. She began to hear curious sounds, the desolate sigh of wind through branches, the high-pitched call of a startled creature, a flap of wings, a beast’s wail made faint by distance. Clever sound-staging, she thought. You’d think we were traversing the wild outdoors rather than the decrepit interior of a crumbling shipwreck.
Dark brown roots became visible among the wall foliage, growing thicker the further they went. Then, at last, they turned one of those S-corners and slowed to a wary trudge. Directly ahead was a barrier, a convergence of these same dark, heavy roots or perhaps the spot from which they sprang. It was as if a tree stump had filled out to completely block the corridor, and sent thick tendrils snaking across the ceiling, deck and walls.
Several paces from that dark, obstructing mass, Shogrel halted. “Perhaps you should wait here while I try to converse with the presence,” she told Dervla.
“Is there danger? Should I have brought my gun?”
“There is always peril, but you have a better avenue of escape from back here.”
For a second she thought that Shogrel was actually cracking a joke—but only for a second. She shrugged and nodded, taking a step backwards as the humanoid went up to the wrinkled, bark barrier and pressed her hand against its surface.
“Kimisuru,” she crooned. “Kimisuru—are you there? Please, speak to me.”
Back along the corridor there was no change, then, just at the edge of perception, Dervla could make out a deep bestial growl. Then came a voice, a low and ominous mutter.
“I knew a Shogrel once, a just and heartful friend who would never consort with barbarous interlopers …”
“Kimisuru, not all interlopers are the same—”
“Interlopers who seek only to burn and destroy and murder. Murderers, Shogrel! You seem to have forgotten but I never shall.”
A thick, dark root erupted from the wall foliage near Dervla and before she could react it coiled around her and slammed her against the wall. Two narrower roots with finely tapered ends snaked up to her face and positioned themselves about a finger’s length from her eyes.
“Shogrel!” she yelled, struggling against the roots and her panic.
“Kimisuru, I beg you, please …”
“How kind of you to bring a sacrifice,” the deep whispery voice went on. “Although it scarcely amounts to a meaningful recompense …”
“These people mean you no harm, Kimisuru,” said Shogrel urgently. “Only I deserve your bitter recriminations—only I could have stopped the marauder who carried off Kelani. Leave my companion alone.”
The root tips hovering before Dervla’s eyes withdrew and the large root crushing her against the wall, relaxed but not enough to release her. At the same time, the main area of the tree-wall twisted and writhed slowly into a definite form, that of a figure seated in a chair. Eyes opened in the figure’s bark-textured face as he leaned forward.
“You are offering yourself in place of the barbarian? I accept!”
From nearby masses of foliage more dark roots lashed out towards Shogrel, spearing into the densely woven parts of her body. She cried out, and Dervla watched in horror as the impaling roots savagely, piece by piece, ripped her apart. Hands and feet were flung away like jettisoned rubbish while all the individual features of her head were one by one plucked out and tossed aside. It was a hideous, deliberate and up-close display of violence which left Dervla shaken, and she was no stranger to brutality. The final affront was the discarding of Shogrel�
��s torso, hurled the full length of the corridor where it hit the wall and fell to the deck with a sickening thud.
“Now let us see this primitive outsider.”
Dervla felt the roots tighten around her chest, then she was dragged through the undergrowth and brought to a halt before the figure sitting in its tree-throne, part of the throne, part of the wood. Before she could say anything the denizen Kimisuru spoke:
“Savages you were and savages you remain. Your kind is only capable of rapacious plundering and thoughtless destruction. Mindless brutes …”
“So, who was Kelani?” she said. This Kimisuru was clearly one of those loner, grudge-nursing types, lives so empty that even the recycling of old, bleak grievances could provide excitement and purpose. And they always had speeches ready, bombastic declarations that they’d worked on for ages, slaving over them in their cramped little minds. Dervla took great satisfaction in disrupting the flow of their grandstanding oratory.
“Do not sully that precious name with your putrid mouth and its putrid tongue!”
“Hey, look, I don’t know who Kelani was, what she meant to you or what happened to her, but I’m guessing it was all a long time ago so don’t you think that maybe it’s time to let it go?”
“She died in torment at the hands of brutes!” snarled Kimisuru. “Brutes and exiles from the Mosaic … it does not matter to me what gulf of time has passed. There must and will be retribution for the bleeding wound left in the face of existence by Kelani’s murder!”
“And let me guess,” said Dervla. “Lucky old me gets to spill her blood and/or guts in memory of the dearly departed. Is that your plan? Well, screw that! I’m not your sacrificial lamb and I won’t be playing it meek and compliant. I’ll be fighting you every step of the—”
She paused, words fading away as she noticed a trail of tiny blue flowers winding right across the ridged bark and over the woody figure of Kimisuru seated upon his throne. Having dismissed her fighting retort, he was now reasserting his dominance with gloating descriptions of the eviscerations soon to be visited upon her helpless body. Dervla, however, tracked the line of blue flowers over to where one of Shogrel’s hands was traversing the dark brown wall, pausing regularly to poke the bark with its index finger, and at every poked spot a tiny sprig emerged and unfurled to reveal a blue flower.
She glanced down at the flowers around her wrists—the miniature face-blooms were smiling and swaying in unison. Their minuscule mouths were all humming as one, along with those encircling her forehead and the ones growing right across the rugose bark of Kimisuru’s wall-throne. It was an ethereal sound, growing to a volume that Dervla’s captor could not ignore. He ceased his verbal drooling over imaginary tortures, listened for a second, then let out a deafening howl of rage which turned into a stream of slurred invective involving words like “liar” and “lies.” Some of his dark lashing roots were being directed against the blue flowers but by now they were spreading quickly and numerously to survive any attacks.
Without warning Dervla was tossed lightly aside, fetching up against the corridor wall. Foliage and mossy growth cushioned the impact a little, yet still she was left feeling winded. But she remembered seeing blue flowers scattered all along the root just before it released her.
“Lies, lies, lies! Vicious, treacherous lies … scum from the lips of crawling fiends … hah, and now the she-fiend is no more—why persist in planting her degenerate untruths?”
A voice, wavering and faint, emerged from the ethereal blue-flower chorus. “Oh, Kimisuru, you have tried to cover up your pain with illusion, tried to numb the lonely anguish with a story, a little scrap of make-believe …”
“Cease this loathsome contagion of deceit! … breeder of pretence, sowing falsehoods throughout the Steel Forest, poisoner of the webs …”
“The worst lies, Kimisuru, are the ones we tell ourselves.”
The wooden figure of Kimisuru clenched its fists and bellowed in a wordless fury. But the chorus of the flowers continued to strengthen, and as the tiny blooms spread like an unfurling carpet up and down the corridor, the lashing strikes of the dark roots became sluggish and hesitant. From where she crouched, halfway along the corridor and partly concealed by a thick bush, Dervla could see that the flowers were winning, yet where was Shogrel herself? Her voice seemed to be part of that now-omnipresent mass-chorale. And then she spotted a familiar five-fingered shape pulling itself through the foliage with one of Shogrel’s eyes cradled by its fourth and fifth fingers. It appeared to be stealthily creeping in the direction of the corridor’s far end.
“Insidious and shameless … your mendacity … how far back … shadows of guile … tricks and … and … hollow words …”
Kimisuru was scarcely making any sense, and seemed to have lost the ability to speak in whole sentences. Meanwhile, over by the other wall and further back along the corridor, Dervla saw the pale shapes of Shogrel’s body parts gathering together. The light in the corridor had dimmed, and the guardian roots seemed to have lapsed into a kind of torpor. Dervla left her spot and crept down to the far end where Shogrel’s torso had come to rest. It felt solid and heavy in her arms and seemed to be bleeding from several minor wounds. Anatomically, it seemed very human, apart from a couple of enhancements, but such similarities were superficial—the semi-autonomous existence of appendages and facial organs was an entire biological development branch away from Humanity.
Clasping the torso to her midriff, Dervla waddled over to the congregation of Shogrel’s body parts. Now resting amid a loose weave of roots, stems and flowers, she looked up at Dervla with a single eye, smiling.
“Thank you,” she said in frail, papery tones. “It is always pleasant to unite the components in common cause.”
Carefully, Dervla laid the pale, naked torso down on a bed of entwined creeper vines whose tendrils quickly knitted themselves around it protectively.
“What happens now?”
“It is already happening—look.”
Dervla turned to see that the seated figure had disappeared from the wooden barrier. The long dark roots had ceased their vicious lashing and now lay cracked and shrivelling in the gloom. The rough wooden barrier was growing pale, visibly crumbling away in flakes and splinters with large cracks spreading up from the base. Dervla was almost mesmerised by the sight and didn’t hear the approaching footsteps until they were quite close. One was a heavy trudge, the other lighter, more agile, and then—weapons drawn—Pyke and Kref rounded the corner in a combat-ready crouch.
“What’s the state o’ play?” Pyke said.
“Worst is over,” said Dervla. “I think.”
“Kimisuru no longer poses a threat to our quest,” said Shogrel. “This place is now safe.”
Working from the torso shoulder and hips, the foliated tendrils had reformed densely interwoven legs and arms to which Shogrel’s hands and feet were smoothly attached. A newly woven neck and head were easily repopulated by the ears, eyes, nose and mouth, which slowly moved into formation. The colour of the webby tendrils was darker than the original construction, and a proliferation of tiny green flowers was visible throughout the lattice, giving it all a different meld of earthy colours. Shogrel sat up and stretched her arms, clearly pleased.
“We heard it was all getting a bit noisy,” Pyke said, watching Shogrel nervously. “And me and Kref had just decided to hurry along and crash the party when a whole clutch of big fat roots burst out of a wall vent and blocked the way.”
“I kicked at ’em and tried to pull them out the way.” Kref shook his big craggy head. “They were tough, Derv, real tough. I wanted to shoot ’em but the captain says not a good idea.”
“I kinda guessed that you might be at the mercy of some mad root monster hellbent on assaulting your dignity, and that blazing away at its rooty tentacles might make it madder.”
“Good call, actually.”
“Right, so we kept our eyes on it and when the roots got feeble and shrivelled we got stuck i
n and kicked our way through.” Pyke and Kref exchanged a grin. “Can’t go wrong with a solid pair o’ boots!”
“Thank you for not using the energy weapons,” Shogrel said to them. “The forest has become very sensitive to that kind of destruction.” She looked at Dervla. “The way is open so we can continue, if you are ready.”
The whole of the wooden barrier had now collapsed into a heap of splintered debris. As they shoved some of it aside to get through, Dervla found how desiccated and brittle it was.
“How did you do that?” she said. “Is he dead?”
“Kimisuru is not dead,” Shogrel said. “I managed to force him to withdraw to his burrows, his lair, in most of the rooms along this and nearby passages. His consciousness has become unsound over the long stretch of time, clouded by at first remorse and guilt then by a consuming need for those feelings. He forgot that the deep science of the Steel Forest, the biologic and the mindforming, which allowed him to create his treebark aspect is the same science that helped me to subvert his biomass with mindforms of my own devising. They caused a limited die-back, which disabled those terrible roots and his ability to fully perceive.”
Pyke nodded, peering back at the shadowy corridor. “Not much in the way of beasts and insects, I notice.”
“All of his dominance-desire went into the animated roots,” said Shogrel. “Any creatures from neighbouring demesnes were treated very harshly.”
“Did you see into his thoughts and memories?” asked Dervla. “Find anything useful for our journey?”
“Some of his memory pith was distributed among the primary growth, and there was a knot of recent remembrances. I shall quickly see if they contain anything of interest.”
A few clumps of wall tubers here and there pulsed with soft light then faded. Shogrel’s eyes narrowed. “It appears that he was interested in the conflict up on the … the supervision deck … more than just curiosity, he had sent a few creature-scouts to be his eyes and ears! So he did gestate some beastforms.” She looked sombre.
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