Now it was Seagryn’s turn to smile. “You can speak blithely of elemental powers and take for granted the shaping of them, yet dismiss the notion of a Power beyond them, a Power whose presence can shape us?”
Fylynn chuckled, then shrugged self-consciously and let her smile die. “We’ve already talked about why. I’ve witnessed too much evil to believe there’s any real grand design to life that people haven’t imposed upon it. I don’t think there’s any higher purpose beyond our own imaginations.”
“Even when Dark speaks of such as already in motion?” Seagryn argued. “You know Dark’s always right.”
“I know Dark’s always confusing.” Fylynn smiled, and she looked behind them to see if Dark had heard and would respond. Her face froze. “Dark’s gone.”
“What?” Seagryn gasped, as he jerked on his reins and twisted around to look himself.
It was true. The boy prophet had been riding behind them for a long time, and they had no way of knowing when he’d left them. Had he left them? Or had he been taken? He’d been very quiet ever since their flight from the burning camp, but they’d both become so accustomed to the lad withdrawing inside himself that neither of them had given it much notice. Without giving his ability to do so conscious thought, Seagryn tried penetrating any magical cloak that might have been tossed around the boy, then opened his senses wide to apprehend the presence of shaping anywhere around them. He felt plenty of powers but no Dark. He glanced across at Fylynn and found her staring at him. “What are you doing?” she demanded. Only then did he realize he was shaping again, and for some reason that embarrassed him.
“There are — powers here,” Seagryn explained. “Many of them. This must have been one of the places Nebalath spoke of — a region suddenly much richer in magical resources.”
“What about Dark?” Fylynn asked, riding her anxious horse in circles.
“Nothing. No sign of his presence — nor of any other shaping nearby.” Seagryn frowned back toward the way they had come.
“What do you make of that? Has he been kidnapped? Are we being watched by Marwandian raiders, or an Arlian search party —”
“Where would they be hiding?” Seagryn asked, gesturing about them. But for the huge tree trunks, the forest floor was open and empty, like a vast cathedral without pews supported only by intermittent columns. There was no underbrush in which to hide, and Seagryn had already made certain there were no wizards active in the area. They paused a moment, listening, but all they could hear was the distant thump of an ax being laid to wood.
Fylynn looked at him, her eyes wide with worry. “He would have known, of course …”
“Of course. But he wouldn’t have told us.” Seagryn licked his lips. “He must have just left us. We’re not all that far from his home …”
“I do wish he’d warned us first,” Fylynn grumbled. “Sometimes he acts like such a child!”
Which was exactly what Dark was, Seagryn reminded himself.
“Maybe he needed to see his mother,” he said lamely. He turned his horse around slowly, peering off deeply in every direction. Nothing moved. Leafy giants towered above them as far as his eyes could see. He was struck by how evenly they were spaced, almost as if some gardener of mythical proportions had planted them here in rows …
“Where do we go now?” Fylynn demanded. “How do we get to Sheth?”
“Perhaps we’ll need to let Sheth find us.” He craned his neck, marveling at the distance from where he sat to the start of the lowest boughs. There was enough space for the dragon to maneuver about easily, and that realization made him suddenly very anxious. “We can’t stay here,” he announced, and Fylynn agreed. They rode on, uncertain of where they were going but guessing it didn’t make that much difference. “After all,” Seagryn reasoned, “if Dark says Sheth and I are to work together on Sheth’s plan to destroy the twi-beast, we have to get there eventually. I just hope you have enough food in these bags to hold out.”
For some reason his mention of the bags they carried startled Fylynn, and she quickly scanned what was loaded onto her own horse, then on Seagryn’s. She sighed with apparent relief. “Is there enough?” he asked, and she nodded. He made a mental note to check their contents once she slept.
While they couldn’t see the sun, they could tell it was setting by the darkening green of the leaves above them. When Seagryn spotted a house off to the left, he suggested that they head toward it and see if they might find lodging there.
“But it’s so tiny we’d never fit inside it!” Fylynn said. “It must be a cottage for little people, like those you met in the Remnant!”
Seagryn chose not to argue. “We’ll see,” he answered as they rode toward it. He knew it was a normal-sized house — perhaps even a large house. It just stood next to a tree trunk that dwarfed it.
Fylynn soon saw her mistake, but rather than correct herself she went on and on about how precious the cottage looked. Seagryn thought so, too. He liked the clean look of its white paint, and the bright blue shutters did bring cheer to this grand but changeless forest. The house backed up to the tree, hiding from their view, until they got right up to it, a storage shed that also leaned against the far side of the trunk. It was from this shed that a man walked out to meet them — a big man, as tall as Chaom but with less beef and more muscle. He carried the ax they’d been hearing, but he didn’t bear it threateningly, and his smile of greeting appeared genuine. Seagryn quickly concluded he was a woodcutter. Once they were close enough to see into the shed, the stacks of wood piled all about seemed to confirm that judgment. “Welcome!” the man shouted in a voice to match his height, then he turned and shouted back to the cottage. “Thaaliana! We have guests for supper!”
A pleasant, girlish face ringed by a halo of mousy brown hair appeared in a second-floor window and looked down at them in surprise. “Guests? Here?”
The woodsman looked back at them. “You must excuse my little wife. People just don’t pass through here often. I’m March, and that’s my wife, Thaaliana …” He pointed back up to the window, but the woman had disappeared inside. “Or rather, that was my wife. Thaaliana?” he called, walking in the front door and waving at them to follow him, “is supper ready?”
“We have food,” Fylynn protested, dropping from her saddle and leaning against her horse to stretch her legs. “Please don’t let us impose —”
“Nonsense,” March shouted, thrusting his head back out the door. “She can have it ready in no time at all. Come in! Come in!”
It took longer than that of course, but March had plenty to talk about as the three of them sat comfortably before his fireplace while Thaaliana scurried frantically around her kitchen. Fylynn offered to help the woman, but the woodsman wouldn’t let her. He was obviously pleased to have them as an audience, and they soon learned that it took him two weeks of solid chopping to fell one of the great giants, and that it took so long to split one up that he could only cut one tree a year — or actually two trees in three years — and that no matter how much they might look the same, each tree was different, requiring a great deal of thought and planning. He stroked his long chin and explained how sometimes he had to sharpen his ax twice a day, why an ax was far superior to a saw, how important the wind could be when it began whistling around these trunks just as he got almost through a bole, and on, and on, and on. His pale-blue eyes stared into the fire as he spoke, but at frequent intervals shot up to their faces to insure they were still listening to him. He never asked them why they were there, which was really just as well, as far as Seagryn was concerned. He allowed himself to be interrupted only long enough to introduce his two children as they made their way through the room toward the table in answer to their mother’s summons. “You’ll meet my mother tomorrow,” he informed them, adding, “She’s already asleep. She’s old, you know, has to sleep a lot. Thaaliana, is that ready yet?”
“It’s been ready,” she sang back, but something had just reminded him of a point he’d meant to
make about marketing his wood, and by the time he’d completed it the children had finished eating and been sent off to bed themselves. Seagryn guessed that eventually March decided he was hungry, for he finally moved them all to the table, where he continued his discussion between bites of bread and slurps of a delicious soup. Their host was certainly an amiable bore, but Seagryn did have lots of time to wonder to himself how the nervous little woman who listened quietly could put up with the man day after day. Seagryn began to worry that they’d be forced to listen to forestry tips until dawn …
Surprisingly, when he finished his meal, March finished his monologue as well. The big man suddenly stood up, patted a stomach that had to be full, given all they had watched him consume, then announced, “Big day tomorrow. Gotta chop some wood.” He winked at his wife, and she smiled back at him lovingly — Seagryn guessed that this was a nightly joke between them. He could see from Fylynn’s expression that she was not impressed. “I’ve got to get some rest. Thaaliana will show you where to sleep. I get up early, so if I don’t see you at breakfast in the morning, it’s been good to talk to you.” That’s exactly what had taken place, Seagryn thought to himself — March had talked to them. Now the man was clumping up the stout staircase and disappearing into the upper level of the house, and Seagryn and Fylynn could finally turn their attention to the diligent woman who had worked so submissively through the evening.
Her expression told them all they needed to know, but she spoke the words anyway. “Sorry. I do love March, but he does enjoy hearing himself talk. Did you have any trouble with the dragon today?”
“The dragon?” Fylynn asked, shocked. Seagryn almost said the same words.
Thaaliana smiled, and her obvious intelligence made her brown eyes sparkle. “Didn’t think we would know anything about the dragon under here, did you?”
Fylynn snorted and said, “Unless the beast was burning his wood, I doubt your husband would notice.”
“Fylynn!” Seagryn scolded her sharply, but Thaaliana laughed gaily, her small body twitching with barely restrained energy.
“Don’t worry, you can’t offend me. There’s not anything you could say aloud that I haven’t already thought. Are you ready to go?”
“I’d — thought we might talk before we go up to bed,” Seagryn offered, but the woman shook her head curtly.
“You’re not sleeping here,” she said, then she laughed and added, “You’d never get any sleep anyway! He chops all day and saws all night!” Fylynn and Seagryn both laughed with her but looked at her inquiringly. Thaaliana threw a glance at the ceiling. “They’re all asleep. Come on. We’ll talk there.” The woman hopped up from the table and darted toward the door. They exchanged a look behind her as they followed her out.
Neither moon nor stars could pierce the canopy above them. They might as well have stepped out into a pitch-black cave. “Shouldn’t we get a torch?” Fylynn suggested, taking a step back inside.
Thaaliana didn’t stop walking. “I’ve got light here,” she called back — and a ball of yellow flame the size of March’s head blossomed above them. “Hurry,” she added, rubbing her shoulders. “It’s chilly tonight. I’ve got a shawl stashed up in my bower.”
Deeply astonished, Seagryn and Fylynn pursued the bouncy powershaper as she scampered away with the light bobbing along above her. They found it difficult to keep up.
Chapter Seventeen: THAALIANA’S BOWER
THEY walked briskly, changing direction several times. With only Thaaliana’s ball, of fire to light the way, Seagryn found it difficult to judge exactly how far. He started estimating distances by counting the regularly spaced trees of this forest and judged that they’d passed about twenty-five before Thaaliana paused beneath one and looked up. “This is it,” she said, and by a wordless act of her will the incandescent ball floated upward along one massive trunk. When it passed the lowest boughs the leaves obscured it from sight.
Fylynn frowned and asked, “This is what?”
“Hmm,” Thaaliana grunted. “You really can’t see it from here — I’ll be right back.” The ball of flame suddenly snuffed out, and Fylynn and Seagryn realized just how much light it had been providing, despite being lost in the trees. The forest turned pitch-black again as they heard Thaaliana say, “Seagryn, if you’re as powerful as I’ve been led to believe, I’m guessing you can provide some illumination of your own.”
“Led by who —” Seagryn began, but Thaaliana didn’t answer. Instead they heard a pattering of tiny toes clawing their way up bark. “Thaaliana?” he said, and a purplish ball of flame blossomed above his own head. It appeared just in time for them to see the fluffy tail of a squirrel as it squirted through the leafy ceiling and on up out of sight.
“She’s a squirrel,” Fylynn murmured, low in her throat.
“She is indeed,” Seagryn replied, equally astonished.
“Watch out down there!” the woman called from high above them, and they stepped away from the trunk of the tree as they heard something falling rapidly toward them. The bottom of it hit the ground with a heavy thump before either of them realized it was a rope ladder. Fylynn grabbed hold of it and started climbing. Seagryn hung on the bottom of it to weight it for her and make her climb more stable; he sent the light up right beside her. Soon she, too, was through the leaves. “Seagryn!” she shouted down with obvious delight. “You’ve got to see this!”
He needed no further encouragement and started up. Penetrating that lowest level of leaves was like the reverse of slipping beneath the surface of water — much that had been hidden before was suddenly visible. As Fylynn had done before him, he paused a moment just to scan the breathtaking view, for his ball of flame had been joined by more fire dropped down by the powershaper who waited above, and the underside of the structure was now brightly illuminated.
“You see it, Seagryn?” Fylynn called down as she pulled herself up into the lowest deck. She turned around immediately to peer down at him, her round face beaming. “It’s a tree-castle!”
It was indeed. Thaaliana had a castle in the trees, anchored to the boles of four of these forest giants. From this angle it appeared to be huge. He hurried on up to get a floor beneath his feet so that he could take a closer look. Once he’d joined the two women on the lowest level, he shook his head and asked Thaaliana, “Did you build this?”
“Oh no.” She half laughed, glancing around as if she were seeing it for the first time herself. “I ran across it moments after I’d found my altershape. And I mean I quite literally ran across it — I was moving through these trees very quickly, following the sound of March’s ax.” After having listened to her husband all evening, Thaaliana seemed excited to have the chance at last to tell her own story. This was the most momentous event in her otherwise mundane life, and she related it with gleeful relish. “You see, one of my children had gotten sick in the night. I’d wanted to take her to the healer — the nearest one is in Marlest, the large village to the west of us here where March does most of his trading — but March insisted she’d get well if we’d just let her sleep, and he went off into the woods to cut. She didn’t, of course — I was right — but he’d taken our only horse! I left both children with their grandmother and ran toward the sound of his chopping — you can hear that ax of his echo all over this forest when he really starts to work.” Seagryn nodded and glanced at Fylynn. They’d both heard him working for a good deal of their day’s ride. “I was concentrating on my baby — didn’t know what to do, had to get her to the healer, needed the horse to do that, wished I could run faster — and I glanced up into these trees and wished I could run along the branches like the squirrels. Suddenly that’s exactly what I was doing! I was scratching my way up one of these trees and running along a limb as if I’d been doing it all my life, knowing precisely when to leap from one limb to the next, which branch would intersect with the next so that, while I ran a zigzag course, I was always making progress toward that sound. Suddenly I was into this thing.” She gestured
around her, and the light she provided suddenly swelled in intensity in response to her gesture, revealing more clearly this bottom floor. “I couldn’t believe it! Of course I couldn’t stop, but I resolved to come back and look it over more closely once my crisis was resolved. Moments later I ran down the far side of the tree March was chopping and suddenly appeared beside him.” She interrupted herself with a girlish giggle and added, “I think it’s the first time I ever saw him speechless! ‘I need the horse!’ I told him and, without saying anything more to him, I jumped on it and rode back home, grabbed up my daughter and got to Marlest by nightfall.”
“Was she all right?” Fylynn asked earnestly.
“Oh, she was fine-just had these little red dots all over her body. The witcher-woman told me that before my baby lost hers everyone in the house would get them, and she was right. But she also gave me some lotion to put on them when they itched.”
“My sister and I had that once,” Fylynn began, “and the healer in Pleclypsa told my mother —”
Seagryn put his hand on Fylynn’s shoulder and broke in, “So she was fine and you brought her home and then you came back here?”
Thaaliana nodded happily at her good fortune. “Not immediately, of course. It was several days before all of us cleared up, and March is a real baby when he’s sick. But all the time I took care of them I was thinking to myself, I was a squirrel! I was a squirrel!’ and wondering if I could become one again. I can’t tell you the thrill I felt when I found out I could! And naturally, this was the first place I came …”
Again she gestured around, and Fylynn and Seagryn turned to look more closely at this castle in the treetops. “How many floors?” Seagryn asked.
“Six full floors,” Thaaliana answered authoritatively, walking toward a stairway and inviting them to follow her as she added, “although towers run up the trunk of each of the anchor trees — rather like spires.” She grinned back at them over her shoulder. They followed her up to the next level, where she looked around earnestly, as if she missed something. Then she shrugged and looked back at them.
The Faithful Traitor (Wizard & Dragon Book 2) Page 27