The Forked Path

by T. R. Thompson

  There are other hungers.

  Biore’s words brought his mind back to the present. He was right; the call of the depths and his other, darker form had been getting stronger each day, and it was becoming a burden to resist them. Why fight it, especially here, where he could do no harm?

  Why else was he here at all? The Tangle was where he had thought to find answers to his some of his many questions—the true nature of the shadow form Wilt and Biore had both shared, the source of the still darkness beneath the chaos of the depths, the power that lay there, waiting for him.

  He rubbed the strange lenses Higgs had formed that covered his black eyes. They itched.

  Delco?

  Yes, Wilt?

  Any luck getting Rawick to open up about where in this place we should start looking?

  It’s … not that simple. The trees are troubled, that much I can say. But what causes it is … concealed. I am trying, Wilt. But their way of thought is so alien. South. There is a pull in that direction.

  Biore?

  Just another reason to give ourselves free rein, at least for a while. Let us see what the shadow realm can show.

  Higgs?

  I prefer our animal form, but if you must. Just be sure not to spend too long. You know the dangers.

  Wilt rocked to his feet, his mind made up. He kicked at the fire, scattering the coals and banishing the flames back into nothingness. A moment later and all that remained was a black scorch on the rock floor. He looked around the cave for any other signs of his presence. It was empty and still, already waiting for its next occupant.

  Very well. We should pick up the pace anyway.

  Where are we going, Wilt? What is our destination?

  South. Delco is right; it’s calling, drawing me toward it. Something that knows the depths as I do. Something that waits for me.

  With a whisper Wilt’s human form was gone and a dark shadow blew out of the cave, cutting down through the forest. It snaked through grey shadows, ignoring the curved animal track that marked the forest floor, slicing straight through any tree or barrier that blocked its path.

  There was nothing to mark its presence, just a thick bubble of cold silence that moved through the forest, stifling all animal noises as it passed. The trees themselves seemed to bend out of its path, and no life stirred in the cold earth left in its wake.

  2

  Shade ran through the forest, flickering in and out of the sunlight that filtered through the trees high above, dancing between and around the roots and branches that reached playfully into his path. He was fast, faster than any of the Others. He was just as Nurtle said he was: fast as a shadow, just as fast as his name.

  Shade felt a smile stretch across his face as he moved, forgetting everything but the rush of air past his cheeks, the smell of the packed dirt forest floor, the whisper of the wind in the leaves. Suddenly the sound changed, and a muffled laugh from the Others cut across his thoughts.

  He reached out his senses to identify the threat. He flew around the next tree, and there it was: a thin wire line stretched at neck height across the path. Shade didn’t slow, he merely dropped his body to the ground and dived into a skid, leaning back as he moved under the glistening thread. He kept his eyes locked on the wire as he slid beneath it, feeling the forest floor against his back, seeing the ground through his own body as the physical world disappeared into grey shadow.

  No fair!

  A voice protested from off the side of the path, then was silenced by other whispers. Shade lay still on the path, the world dark around him, the light and heat of life in the bushes to his side showing him where the Others hid, watching. He reached for them, something inside him yearning to stretch out and grasp them, then he shook his head and the shadows retreated as the light of the forest returned.

  A hurried scuffle of footsteps in the bushes and the whispers and laughter returned, fading from hearing as the Others moved farther away. Shade listened to them, trying and failing to picture their smiles. Then a leaf from high above drifted across his vision as it spiralled through the air, and he forgot about everything else.

  The leaf swayed back and forth as it sank, until it cut across the waiting wire line, the sharpened thread slicing through it easily, and the leaf became two, each half falling faster now, in a race to the bottom.

  One becomes two,

  Sliced right through.

  Shade stared up at the wire, running the simple rhyme back and forth in his mind, watching the sunlight glint along the stretched, thin metal. Just staring at it like this brought forth many different thoughts. Many different possibilities.

  Finally he sighed and pulled himself to his feet, reaching into his pocket for the small folded blade he always carried, the one Nurtle had given him. He cut the wire at both ends, enjoying the humming twang as it snapped loose, then wound the metal thread into a tight loop and slid it into one of his many pockets.

  For the Guardian, a gift,

  To help heal the rift.

  Then he was moving again, racing through the shadows, gliding on the breath of the trees.

  Hours or perhaps days later Shade followed a well-beaten trail through the trees, a wide path made for more than one man to pass along, as close to a main thoroughfare as the trees ever allowed to form. Usually these trails curved around the few villages spotted along the edge of the forest, and Shade kept off them, not liking the heat and scent of human life that swamped them, knowing that Nurtle had warned him to be careful not to be seen. Humans didn’t understand. And what they didn’t understand, they feared. And what they feared, they hated.

  Shadow and silence both were made,

  Safe for little wandering Shade.

  This path, though, this one was different. It was cold, with no recent life marking its surface. Even the trees on either side had bent in toward each other, beginning the process of closing it off, erasing it from existence.

  He felt lightheaded and satisfied, his belly still warm from the treeblood he’d taken from one of the Elders that morning. It wasn’t stealing, not from the old ones. Not when it was just a little taste. It filled his belly and helped to silence the Others for a time, letting him enjoy the morning air in peace. He wouldn’t tell Nurtle though; she was always warning him not to take too much.

  She was always warning him about everything. Stay hidden. Watch out for the Others and their tricks. She warned him about the trees themselves sometimes, when she could tell he was really listening. He liked to please her, even though he knew she couldn’t understand it. She was only human after all. He was something more.

  He looked down at his hand as he walked, trying to will the change on, to sink down into that silent grey world that opened around him all too rarely, all too fleetingly. He could never hold on to it, like a pool of water pouring out of his palm. The tighter he gripped it, the quicker it faded away.

  For a moment he thought he saw his hand fade, but then the wind shifted and the leaves above him swayed with it, and a bright glitter of sunlight brought him back to the surface.

  The morning light shone down on his matted black hair, his grime-coated face. His clothes were a muddy mix of greens and browns that smeared into each other and merged with the surrounding forest, almost completely concealing him. He was short, four-foot tall on tiptoes, and as his cloak swayed and folded around him in the breeze it revealed there was nothing to his body. He looked like he was in danger of the wind lifting him away were it to get any stronger.

  All that marked him as anything more than a mischievous young boy were his eyes. They were dark, too dark on closer inspection, as though the whites themselves had become stained a dull grey. They darted around as he walked, like those of a wild animal, flitting from point to point, always on the lookout for the next danger, the next threat.

  Shade froze as he realised he had reached the end of the trail and was standing at the edge of a large clearing, at the border of a village. He slid off the trail into the trees, melting into the
shadows. He almost turned and fled, but something in the air held him in place. A silence. A burnt silence. And something else. Death.

  He slunk further back into the forest, keeping his eyes locked on the village, but there was no movement. No threat. All was still.

  His boot crunched on something and he looked down to see a small pack lying in the undergrowth. He crouched and flipped it open, eager to discover new treasures.

  Something sharp sliced into his finger and he jerked it back out with a hiss, thrusting the bleeding finger into his mouth and sucking the metallic warmth back into himself. With his other hand he pulled the bag upside down and poured its contents onto the ground in front of him.

  A small glass statue—that was what had cut him. It looked like it had once been shaped into a tree, or something like it perhaps. It was beyond repair, not even a shard large enough to form into a blade, or perhaps a necklace. Shade sighed at the waste of it, the possibilities all shut off with one careless crunch of his boot.

  Beside the scattered glass was a small hard biscuit. Trail food, the sort that humans often took with them when travelling. Shade had tasted its like before. It filled the belly but made the mind slow, stopped the ears, and dulled the senses. He left it where it lay. Some other forest creature would find it and enjoy a feast.

  He pulled his finger out of his mouth and studied it. A single thin line cut across the tip of his finger; it darkened and filled, then pooled into a round droplet of black blood. He shoved the finger back into his mouth.

  Why was the pack left here, in this bundle of bushes?

  Shade looked around and noticed it immediately. The tree here, just next to where the pack had lay. It was different. Silent.

  He stood up and studied the wide trunk, walking slowly around its base. There. Just above his head on the far side. Something horrible.

  Shade held his breath as he watched it, and the wounded finger dropped out of his mouth. He’d never heard of such a thing, not even from the foolish villagers that Nurtle suffered to live with. Someone had wounded this tree.

  He reached out and traced the outline of a rectangular gash in the trunk of the tree, not even just in the bark but cut into the timber itself, inches deep, a handhold or foothold. And above it another one, then another. Shade leaned back and followed the path of steps that had been cut into the trunk, all the way to the first thick branch that thrust out ten metres above the ground.

  Why would someone do this? To climb it? Why couldn’t they use their hands and feet?

  He placed his whole hand inside the horrible thing, feeling for any sense of life underneath the silence. Nothing. Then his wounded finger scratched along the rough inner surface of the foothold, a single drop of blood streaking across its ridged surface, and the world dropped away.

  Ache. A sick ache. Deep within the roots. Pulling on it, pulling on all its brothers and sisters, calling for it to sink back down into the soil, pull into the past, into safety.

  Night. Still and calm, the forest silent. One of the humans who had hurt it perched up in its limbs, cradling a bow. Arms wrapped around legs in the chill air, eyes staring out into darkness.

  Then the scratching ache again. The spreading stain as the dark things came. Leaking out of the night itself. Passing through the weakened barriers no longer strong enough to hold them back. Pouring into the village and snuffing out every life they met in an instant.

  The human stands and looses its first arrow with a terrified scream, but all it does is advertise its presence. In moments one of the dark things is upon it, silencing it forever, leaving it to drop to the forest floor and drain its life into the waiting soil.

  Familiar, these dark things. From a time long past. A sickness that should not be suffered inside these borders.

  Brothers and sisters. So weak. So distant. Retreating down into the roots, away from the light and dark of the world.

  Shade pulled his hand back with a gasp and fell onto his back, his mind still reeling from the vision that had swamped it. His heart was racing. Dark things. Evil things. Spider-shaped and impossibly fast. Here, inside the Tangle.

  He rolled to his feet and stuttered up into a run, gaining pace with every step, leaving the dead village behind. He ran faster than he ever had before, faster than thought, his mind dropping into the grey world of shadow, fleeing the dark wake of the past.

  3

  The shadowed world drifted by; now and then a bright flash of life illuminated the grey fog, the sign of an animal too foolish to heed the unnatural silence of the forest. Some were ignored, spared and left shivering in the sudden cold that seemed to drop over them from the sky. Others were not so fortunate. They flashed briefly as he touched them, their final memories filling his vision as their life burned out in the cold depths.

  The voice of the Tangle spoke to him as he went, the whisper clearer in this form, though his conscious mind was too distant to understand its words. Its heavy, ancient voice rumbled through his core, the burning flashes of life and deep silent pools of shadow adding to the strange language he swam through.

  He forgot all else, letting the voice of the Tangle carry him onward, deep into its heart and out the other side, the air warmer now, thick with a jungle scent. The flashes of life became more frequent. He found his pace slowing as he allowed the endless hunger that swirled within him try to sate itself, but no matter how many times he let himself turn from the path, no matter how many bright flashes of terror and sudden silence he encountered, the hunger stayed the same. Always turning, an endless whirlpool roaring within him, too deep to ever be filled, to ever be contained. There could be nothing else.

  Wilt.

  The grey trees shot past, each shape the same as the last. Even the voice of the Tangle seemed muffled and distant now, lost in the depths.

  Wilt. Stop this.

  He could spend eternity haunting these shadows, snuffing out any life he found. He could become death itself, and still nothing would change. Nothing would alter the flow of the great vortex surging within him.

  At the edge of his vision a small glowing spark drifted, catching his eye, leading his mind back from its contemplation of the dizzying brink.

  Wilt. Come back.

  That voice. He knew that voice. It wasn’t the Tangle; it was a part of him. Within him. He was human.

  Wilt.

  Higgs.

  The grey world bled away and Wilt found himself standing in a small forest clearing, the flickering sunlight glowing down through small breaks in the tree cover, reflecting off tiny mites of dust that floated back and forth in the fresh breeze. He took a deep breath, his first in days.

  Well, it’s about time. We were beginning to worry.

  Biore? How … how long have I been gone?

  Too long, boy. Days at least. Far too long for any to spend in the shadow realm. Any who still wish to return. It was only through Rawick that we could lead you back at all.

  Rawick. Wilt saw again the spark floating past his vision, dancing before his eyes, leading him away from the sucking depths.

  I … I asked him to help find you. I think he understood me.

  Delco. I saw him, I think. At least, some manifestation of him. He helped me—

  Helped you back from the edge, from the lure of that which turns in the depths of the welds, that which calls all of those who draw on its powers. You lost control of your hunger, and it led you away. It is much stronger in that form. I should know.

  Yes, Biore.

  Perhaps we should take things a little slower now. It was foolish to go as far as we did, especially here. This forest shares an ancient connection with that which lurks beneath—you can feel it in the air itself. The stillness and silence. We will need to be more careful.

  Besides, we’ve travelled a long way. Look around, even the trees are different here. We’re near the southern edge of the forest, I believe.

  Biore was right. As Wilt looked around, he realised he was in a whole new world from the one he had
last seen. Great pines no longer towered above him; now thick vines twisted around themselves to form a jungle of vegetation, a solid green wall that funnelled him down a thin forest trail out of the small clearing. The air smelled different, heavy with moisture and heat, sticking his shirt to his back. He slung off his worn old cloak and dropped it to the ground.

  Won’t be needing that anymore.

  Above him the trees still closed off the sky, reaching out to wrap their branches around each other in a protective shell, only allowing the smallest slivers of sunlight to leak through. The forest floor was thick with rotting leaves, the cloying scent of death undercutting the fresh breeze that forced its way through the walls of vegetation around him. Even the sounds of the forest here were different, louder. More filled with life.

  A human voice called out, followed by the sound of something heavy moving through the undergrowth, and suddenly the cat was high above the clearing, perched on a thick branch, peering down into the space where Wilt had stood a moment before.

  ‘You could at least try to move more quietly,’ a gruff voice called from further down the path. A soldier appeared under the cat’s tree and stopped when he saw Wilt’s cloak lying on the ground. ‘Emaus! Look at this!’ The man crouched down and examined the ground around the cloak as his companion huffed into the clearing.

  ‘What is it, Gul?’

  ‘What’s it look like? Someone’s been through here.’ Gul picked up the cloak and weighed it in his hands. ‘Still feels warm.’

  Emaus stood panting, resting his hand on his sword hilt, peering around the clearing. ‘Well, you’re the tracker, Gul. What does the trail tell you?’

  Gul was still examining the ground around the discarded cloak. ‘I don’t know, it’s strange.’ He walked further into the clearing then turned around again. ‘There are footprints, but they appear out of nowhere, then disappear again just as suddenly. Into thin air.’