by Sarah Rayne
Balor had unbuttoned his jerkin and brushed the crumbs from his front and was preparing to take a snooze. He was rather liking this bit of a jaunt, although he had not been very enthusiastic when Goibniu had ordered him to set out. Accompany a brace of Humans on a journey and not touch hide nor hair nor whisker of either of them! he had said. There was a thing to make a decent Human-eating giant shiver in his boots and think shame! Could he not deliver just one of them, he had asked, looking at Goibniu slyly from the comers of his eyes.
But Goibniu had said no, both the Humans must be taken to the Fire Court and Balor must go along with them and, after they had talked with Reflection, Balor must bring them safely back to Tara.
He dropped into a bit of a snooze, which any giant might be pardoned for wanting after so much walking and a bit of eating, never mind a sup of mead. The Humans were sitting a little way off; Balor would hear them if they tried to get away. He would be up and after them in the blink of an eye.
As Balor’s eyelids closed and snores emitted from his mouth, Floy and Snodgrass exchanged looks. Dare they try to steal away now? Floy got up, not furtively, but quite openly and naturally, so that if Balor should open his eyes it would not seem as if Floy had been trying to run away.
It was an eerie feeling to be stealing through the forest like this. Floy began to have the sensation that he was being watched, not by Balor or Snodgrass, but by other creatures, creatures who lived in this huge, dark forest, and crept out only under cover of darkness …
He glanced back over his shoulder but Balor was still sleeping. If I can just reach the horses, thought Floy, moving stealthily forwards. If I can just reach the horses and reach up and untether them, I believe we could be off and down the road and the creature would never catch up with us.
He was strongly aware of the Wolfwood all about him as he walked cautiously under the Trees. There was a stirring, a sense that at any minute the branches over his head might dip over him and brush his face, or that the roots that had thrust up out of the earth might wriggle and become alive and twine themselves about his feet. Several times he stopped and listened, thinking that there had been a movement just behind him or just to the side of him, or that something had padded after him on stealthy feet and was standing watching him. But each time there was nothing and Floy thought that perhaps, after all, it was simply the half-light of the Wolfwood and the ordinary scurryings of the night creatures. He remembered that they had forgotten about dusk and about twilight on Renascia and about the strange tricks that the shadows could play. The light was fading perceptibly now; they had set out in the full glare of the midday sun, but they had ridden for several hours and dusk was creeping across the land.
The Purple Hour, thought Floy, fascinated and a bit fearful. What had Nuadu said? The hour when magic is abroad. I refused to believe it then, he thought, but I believe it now. Magic, stealing through the ancient forest, lying thickly on the air …
The Trees had thinned out now and he could see the road ahead of him. Could it be this easy? Could they simply creep away from Balor and ride out of his reach?
The stirrings and the rustlings were louder and Floy was suddenly and strongly aware of eyes upon him. He turned sharply, looking back to where the sleeping Balor lay. Snodgrass was nearby, sitting bolt upright, watching Floy anxiously.
There was a movement within the Trees, the sudden shifting of green and gold and russet, so that Floy knew the dusk had not been playing tricks after all. There were beings, creatures, strange inHuman presences everywhere in the forest.
He stood, looking, and there was the movement again; the blurring of shapes and silhouettes that were like nothing Floy had ever imagined; inHuman and ancient and filled with wild woodland enchantment …
The Tree Spirits of the ancient Wolfwood were awake and they were creeping through the darkening forest towards them.
Chapter Twenty-five
Balor had never been so rudely awoken from slumber in his life. Atone minute it seemed that he had been having a fine old dream about Humans and banquets and the Frost Giantess frying on a spit. The next he had been jerked fully awake and found himself at the centre of a circle of strange, hostile creatures, the like of which he had never seen in his life.
It seemed to his slow, sleep-sodden mind, that there were hundreds of the horrid things and that they were all bearing down on him, a rushing curtain of green and gold and brown, with here and there wild, menacing eyes and reaching, clutching hands that were not hands at all, but nasty, skeletal twigs. He stumbled to his feet and looked frantically about him, because although no self-respecting Gruagach would run from a danger, these creatures were too many and too huge and too angry.
He scrabbled into a half run, going deeper into the Wolfwood, not looking where he was going, not caring overmuch. He would outrun the horrid things who had stood leering at him, because there was never a being yet created that could catch a Gruagach once he put his mind to running. By the seven beards of his ancestors, Balor would run, and they’d see who could run faster! It certainly would not be the sinister Treelike beings who had regarded him with such terrible vengeance in their unnatural faces!
Floy and Snodgrass stared at one another and then Floy said, ‘We’ll have to follow them.’
‘Why? Isn’t this the exact chance to escape?’ said Snodgrass.
‘No,’ said Floy. ‘Because supposing they don’t catch him and supposing he does escape — ’
‘If he came back and found we’d made off by ourselves, he’d go back to Tara and tell them we’d reneged on the bargain,’ finished Snodgrass.
‘And Fenella would be at the mercy of Goibniu and the rest. Yes. That’s why we’ll have to see what happens,’ said Floy. ‘Hurry, and we’ll catch up with them!’
They broke into a run, seeing the Tree Spirits directly ahead of them; a pouring, changing, blurring mass of russet and green; a sweep of autumn tapestry, moving and reaching and sweeping through the forest after the giant.
‘But he won’t get far,’ cried Floy, managing to keep the Tree Spirits in sight. ‘He won’t get far, because this is their territory! They have him in their own country! Come on, Snodgrass! We mustn’t lose them!’
They were going deeper into the green and blue heart of the Wolfwood and Floy felt his lungs beginning to ache and his chest pound. At his side, Snodgrass was capering along, occasionally leaping nimbly over a patch of undergrowth, one hand holding his hat on his head, his cloak flying about his ankles, but keeping pace with Floy.
‘He’s fallen!’ cried Floy, and they slowed to a walk, gasping and trying to get their breath. ‘But you’re fitter than you look,’ said Floy, with a sudden grin at Snodgrass.
‘A touch dishevelled, of course,’ rejoined Snodgrass, who was puffing a bit. He righted his spectacles which had been knocked askew and straightened his cloak.
Ahead of them, Balor was lying on the ground and they saw that the Tree Spirits had grouped themselves about him, rather in the manner of people arranging themselves to watch some entertainment, or hear some kind of cause being pleaded.
‘He didn’t get so far at that,’ said Snodgrass, as they stood rather warily on the outskirts of the group.
Floy glanced over his shoulder, trying to gauge how far they had come and in which direction the road now lay. The light had almost gone from the day now and the forest was becoming bathed in soft, subtle hues of the Purple Hour. Dark blue and turquoise light slanted in through the trees, turning the Wolfwood to a place of dark secret shadows and heavy ancient magic.
Balor had fallen headlong and was lying on the forest floor, one foot caught and held by the root of a huge old ash Tree that protruded from the ground.
The wild golden eyes and the pitiless faces of the naiads and dryads and hamadryads loomed over him, hands that were not hands but branches, reaching for him, pinioning him down.
The Tree Spirits were wild and beautiful, but rather terrible. Closer to them, it was possible to make out indi
vidual characteristics; to see that they had trailing leaves instead of hair and huge, reaching branches instead of arms. They looked what they were: creatures, Spirits of Trees, that had emerged from the ancient Wolfwood from a long, long sleep and who were alive and alert and completely without pity towards their enemies …
Floy and Snodgrass stayed where they were, standing quietly, watching from the edges of the clearing. Floy thought they probably ought to be afraid themselves, because the Tree Spirits were so inHuman and so wild and so clearly filled with strange woodland magic that once they had finished with Balor they might very well turn to the two Renascians.
‘Ought we to try to get away?’ whispered Snodgrass, whose mind had been going along similar paths.
‘I think it’s all right,’ responded Floy, warily, but even as he spoke he was wondering whether it was all right, and whether they mightn’t be better simply to walk back through the forest and on to the road. And then he thought: I suppose we shall find the road again, shall we?
The Trees had surrounded Balor; a towering wall of reaching branches and immense trunks and snaking roots, veined with the golden threads of the Beeches and the glossy green Oaks and with the shimmering, silver rivers of the Birches.
To Floy, they were beautiful and rather frightening and immensely powerful. Their eyes were ancient, filled with the wisdom of their long lives, and their shapes were not quite Tree and not quite Human, but a blend of the two.
If you looked at the Trees’ upper halves; at the streaming leaf-hair and the mischievous faces of the Silver Birches and the wise, implacable solemnity of the Oaks and the cool, wanton beauty of the Beeches, you could very nearly see similarities to Human features and Human characteristics.
The Tree Spirits’ bodies did not thicken in the way that the Trees, their homes, thickened, except for the Oaks who had sturdy, rather shapeless trunks. They had graceful, slender bodies, tapering into root-like shapes where a Human would have ankles and feet. To Floy, these strange, rootish feet were the most alien feature of all.
‘And they are fibrous-looking,’ murmured Floy, half to himself. ‘They are too graceful for claws, but they are very like claws. They can almost grip the ground as they walk.’
‘They’re strong, as well. They would break a man’s neck easily, those roots,’ said Snodgrass.
They would break a man’s neck easily, and they would break a giant’s back with hardly more effort …
Balor was still clumsily trying to scramble to his feet, but the twining roots held him firmly. His brutish, stupid face was blotchy with fear now and his eyes were bolting from his head. He tore at the roots that were pinioning his ankles, breaking his thick horn nails in the process, but the roots held and it seemed to the two watching Renascians, that the Tree Spirits swayed and murmured with amusement. Balor let out a bellow of fear and, in the same moment, the Trees closed in.
They did it singly and purposefully, as if a silent command had been given. They surrounded him so completely that, for a few moments, Floy and Snodgrass could not see him. As they moved, the Trees sent out a wailing, keening cry, splitting the quiet forest.
‘It’s a war cry,’ said Snodgrass. ‘Isn’t it? They’re angry with him.’
‘For denigrating that oak where he tethered the horses?’
‘Yes. Yes, that, and the way the Gruagach ignored the — what did Nuadu and Caspar call them? — the Tree Laws,’ said Snodgrass, his eyes intent on what was happening. ‘Don’t you remember how, at Tara, they had those huge, roaring fires and how they had baskets and boxes piled high with logs and branches?’
‘Yes,’ said Floy. ‘Yes, of course. They’re being revenged on Balor for it.’
The Trees were all about Balor now and the Wolfwood was ringing with the shrieks of their blood lust. Their eyes glittered and their branches reached out. The fearsome, fibrous roots whipped across the ground.
What happened next was rather terrible. Floy and Snodgrass, unable to look away, were sickened and awed.
‘It’s no more than he deserves,’ said Snodgrass. ‘It’s no more than any of them deserve.’
‘Oh no,’ said Floy softly, remembering Fenella and the Fidchell board and Caspar’s descriptions of how the Gruagach used Humans. ‘No, they deserve no less.’
Even so, it was terrible. The Trees reached down to Balor with their branches and spread him flat on the ground, unlashing the ground roots that had held him, replacing them with the strong, clutching roots of two of the largest Oaks. Two more Oaks lashed their roots to his wrists and the Trees watched, critically.
Balor was bellowing for help; he was calling down vengeance on the Trees and promising that Inchbad and the Robemaker and the Master CuRoi would certainly punish the Trees for this.
‘By the hairs of my ancestors’ beards, you’ll be cut into collops and burned in the chimneys of Tara!’ he cried.
The Trees paid him no heed. They simply continued to secure him, coldly and efficiently, as if this was just something that had to be done and as if there was no particular feeling in doing it.
The largest of the Oaks, who had the high-domed features of a scholar and a thinker, and who had massive powerful shoulders, made a sign and the four Oaks who held Balor captive moved.
‘Away from one another,’ said Floy, in horror. ‘They are all moving in opposite directions.’
‘They’re tearing him into four,’ said Snodgrass. ‘Each of the Oaks is pulling on an arm or a leg and pulling outwards. This is - I suppose we can’t do other than let it happen.’
‘I don’t see how we can stop them,’ said Floy, his eyes on the circling Tree Spirits and on the four Oaks who were now hauling on their claw-like roots, dragging Balor’s limbs outwards away from his body.
Balor was braying in anger and pain. As the Trees moved, both his arms and legs were jerked into taut, out-flung positions. The coiled roots bit into his flesh, dragging against the skin, so that blood welled to the surface.
‘But the roots will hold firm,’ said Floy, unable to look away.
Balor was struggling and writhing, but his limbs were held fast and only his thick, shapeless body could move. It threshed this way and that, as the giant tried, uselessly, to pull free of the Trees’ cruel grip.
They moved again, pulling away, but Floy and Snodgrass could see that it was hard work for them. But they are gaining an inch at a time, thought Floy, in horror; they are stretching muscle and flesh. The farthest of the Trees made a sudden jerking, twisting movement and Balor’s arm wrenched out of its socket and lay flaccid and limp.
As the Trees bent to their grisly task again, there was a terrible cracking, bone-against-muscle sound and Balor screeched, sweat beading on his face and running down into his thick coarse neck. His eyes bulged from his head, red-veined and ghastly, and his lips were drawn back from his blackened, stump-like teeth, as the full horror of what the Trees were doing impinged on his dull mind.
The watching Trees showed no emotion. They simply stayed where they where, circled about their prisoner, their faces implacable, their eyes cold.
The four Oaks were still hauling on their prisoner and Floy and Snodgrass could see that Balor’s arms and legs were all wrenched from their sockets now, twisted at awkward, unnatural angles. Floy felt a lurch of sympathetic pain, because surely to simply dislocate an arm was purest agony, but to have it then pulled and pulled until the skin began to split and bleed, must be the most exquisite agony ever.
The Elms had moved forward in their stolid fashion and were leaning ponderously over the tortured Balor. As Floy and Snodgrass watched in silence, the Elms stretched out their hard, lichen-crusted branches and brought them down on the prisoner’s shoulders and thighs, at the place where the skin had started to tear.
Balor had let out a screech of purest agony, but the Elms bent over him with serious, heavy-featured faces and sawed partly through each of the pinioned limbs. They did not make any hurry about it and Balor writhed and flailed helplessly and blood
began to run out on to the ground beneath him.
‘They’re making it easier for the Oaks,’ whispered Floy. ‘The Oaks couldn’t quite pull off his arms and legs, so they’re helping them.’
‘It’s like something from a medieval torture chamber,’ said Snodgrass. ‘We had a woodcut of one. Terrible things. They could wrench their prisoners’ arms and legs from the sockets. But I don’t think even they went this far.’
Balor had stopped struggling, but was moaning and panting shallowly. His face was the colour of tallow and blood and saliva ran down his chin and the two Renascians saw that his lips were bitten to shreds.
‘Dreadful,’ said Snodgrass, shuddering, but Floy said, ‘It is only what the Gruagach have done to the Trees.’
Dark, sluggish blood was running from the wounds made by the Elms and there was the gleam of whitish bone and of raw muscle. As the Oaks moved again, the wounds yawned and slowly, slowly, inch by terrible inch, they gaped wider and skin began to tear and the muscle and bone began to part with a sound that made Floy and Snodgrass both feel sick. It was the sound of flesh being rent from bone, and the sound of gristle and fat and marrow being torn apart. Floy thought, with sick dread, that it was the exact sound made when you twisted a leg of chicken from the carcase.
Balor gave a last bubbling cry and a sudden ripple of triumph went through the Trees as the farthest of the Oaks pulled free an arm and held it aloft, a bloody stump, a torn-off gobbet of flesh.
‘A trophy,’ murmured Snodgrass.
‘Yes.’
The other three Oaks had redoubled their efforts now and, one by one, the rest of the giant’s limbs were torn from their moorings and held aloft, wet, bleeding rags of flesh. The bloodied torso of what had been Balor lay twitching on the ground, moving clumsily, trying to pull itself along the ground, like a monstrous beetle which has been turned on its shelly back and cannot right itself. Thick, sluggish blood seeped from the great jagged holes where his arms and legs had been and, with them, a watery pus. A thick, too-sweet stench lay on the air.