by Tad Williams
It was a snake, a crossed adder, bigger than any he had ever encountered in the Kynswood or the fields around Erchester. Its gray, black-laddered body was as thick as his forearm and it was almost as long he was tall. The snake was headed toward ReeRee with surprising speed, gliding through the leaf mulch as smoothly as a loose thread being pulled out of a garment. Morgan shouted a warning but ReeRee only looked up at him for a startled instant, then returned to her meal. The serpent stopped and drew its head back, bending its body like a curving mountain road. Its tongue snicked in and out. ReeRee finally noticed it and froze, the remains of her mushroom still held in front of her mouth.
Morgan jumped down from the branch. He landed badly and rolled hard against the log, but was up almost immediately, reaching over his shoulder to find the hilt of his sword. He managed to pull it free while the snake drew itself back in a threatening arc, its raw, pink mouth open to bite. He had not grasped the sword hilt properly, but he swung it at the attacker as hard as he could, catching the adder mostly with the flat of his blade. ReeRee gave out a little squeep! of terror and bolted up into the nearest tree, but Morgan did not take his eyes from the snake. It had a bloody gash on its side where he had hit it, but was otherwise uninjured, and it darted its head at him again and again.
Now he had his hilt properly in his hand, he lashed out backhand to keep the snake from striking. Its head bobbed as it tried to find an angle to lunge, so he kept swiping. Finally, on his fourth or fifth swing he caught it with a full cut. It flew to one side from the strength of the blow, landing in two pieces, both of which continued to writhe on the ground.
Disgusted and frightened, he hacked at it until he had made it into several smaller pieces, and they had all finally stopped moving. For a fleeting instant he wondered if he could eat it but decided that it must be full of venom. He lifted the truncated pieces on the tip of his sword and, one by one, flung them away into the underbrush, then plucked a handful of poplar leaves and wiped the blood off his blade. His father had been far too modest and practical to name a sword he used only for one ceremony, but Morgan thought it deserved a name now.
“Snakesplitter it is then.” He was surprised at how strange his own voice sounded to him, how loud and unfamiliar. He sheathed the sword and scrambled back into the tree, although he discovered he was so shaky that even the short climb was difficult. ReeRee, Stripe, and the rest stared at him and chattered in quiet awe as he reached them, as though they were humble townfolk who had been menaced by a dragon and Morgan was the great Sir Camaris. And in that heady moment, he almost felt as though it were true.
* * *
• • •
More days passed by in stripes of shadow and sun. Morgan had long since lost track of what month it might be in the world outside. Anitul? Septander? Even those names had nearly lost their meaning. His time was measured instead in movement and sleep, in the soft murmurs of the Chikri as they settled in at night and the excited squeals of the youngest who woke him from his tethered sleep every morning by climbing onto his chest to share the apparently astonishing news of the sun’s return.
The troop kept moving steadily northward. One happy result of their pilgrimage was that they finally seemed to move out of the disturbing dreamworld of the Sithi. Morgan could trust the shadows now, and read directions from them, but he no longer had any idea where in the great wood—a forest as big as an entire country—he might be, so he continued following the Chikri, while they in turn followed whims Morgan could not understand. A few times he tried to change the troop’s direction, or simply set off on his own, but within a few hours ReeRee would find him and chatter at him in heartfelt distress until he followed her back to the rest of the troop and what she obviously considered the safety of their shared journey.
The forest lands they crossed were changing too, from the gentle hilly slopes at the edge of the Thrithings to steeper hills, heights crowned with pine trees and firs, most with branches too close together for Morgan to climb. He began to wonder where this long march would end. If he stayed with the little beasts long enough, would he finally reach the end of the forest, or—as he had long feared—were they only on some long, roundabout trek that would eventually return to the forest’s southern edge again when the seasons had turned? He no longer feared starvation, but it was neither a diet that satisfied him very much, nor a life he wanted to live forever.
I’m a man, he told himself again and again, as though he did not completely believe it. I’m not a squirrel or a bird. I can’t live in the trees forever. People are missing me.
Foremost in that imaginary group was his sister Lillia, of course, who had never known their father and who, like Morgan himself, had a mother who did not overflow with doting kindness toward her children. He owed it to his small sister to try to get back home. But how? Such thoughts came and went every day, but increasingly seemed to be matters of philosophy, like what the stars were made of, rather than real problems like feeding himself and keeping up with the Chikri.
He could not follow the troop across every stand of trees and often had to walk a good part of a morning or afternoon before being able to join them again in the heights. But his comfort in the trees was growing. His body was becoming strong in places he had not realized he was weak. His back, shoulders, thighs, and even hands grew knotted with muscle from the constant climbing. His hands, once barely callused, the rigors of youthful arms practice undone by hours spent in taverns or in soft beds, were now almost as tough as tree bark. He could hang by one arm far above the ground for long enough to find just the right place for his other hand before pulling himself up onto a limb, when only a few short weeks ago he had struggled for each upward span. Now, though he still could not match the Chikri, he would fling his loop of rope upward each time, so quickly that he barely paused on his way up the trunk in a vertical hopping motion not that different from a climbing squirrel. The Chikri, who had once watched his efforts with a worried interest that looked much like pity, had stopped paying attention, and this was perhaps the thing that made Morgan most proud.
Still, he asked himself, what use was it to be a prince who could climb trees better than any other? Especially when he was the only prince—in fact, as far as he could tell, the only person—trapped in the heart of the great forest.
They’ll find my bones in a tree one day, he sometimes told himself. I’ll be a puzzle for the philosophers, that’s all. That will be my legacy.
It was a disheartening thought, which was why, some days, it was best not to think too much at all.
* * *
• • •
Morgan did not hear Likimeya’s voice in his dreams any more, although he often wondered about her. He could not understand how the sleeping Sitha— if it was indeed her, and not just a phantom contrived by his own madness—could speak to him, and why she had chosen him of all people. Was it because he’d touched her? But surely others had done that too. Because he was a prince? But the Sithi had made it all too clear that they thought little of his grandparents, mortal rulers of all Osten Ard, so how much less did his own title mean?
One night he fell asleep early after a long, exhausting day and woke in darkness, still safely trussed to the linden’s trunk and supported by a basket of branches. The moon had risen while he slept, and sat full and fat atop the trees like an enormous yellow egg, though the branches around him, which had been loaded with Chikri grooming and eating when he fell asleep, were now empty. He was alone.
Morgan sat up and was unknotting his rope when he heard a deep, rumbling drone drift down from above, as if a bumblebee the size of a wild boar hovered not far away. The moonlight was strong enough for him to see that the branches near the top of the tree were bowed with the weight of almost every Chikri in the troop, a bountiful harvest’s worth of rounded, furry fruit. Those he could see were motionless and silent, though the low drone persisted, and he wondered if they had been driven farther in
to the heights after spotting some predator. Curiosity and concern overcame weariness, and he climbed up the trunk toward them, not even bothering with the rope because the branches made such useful steps.
When he had gone as high as he could without overtaxing the increasingly slender limbs, he saw that the troop members were all crouched along a pair of branches, and that above them, like a priest saying the mansa, sat a single Chikri, one that Morgan called Grey since most of his fur had gone that color. Grey moved with greater deliberation than most of the others, and the youngest ones liked to tease him sometimes until he drove them off with angry chiks. But they weren’t teasing him now. Like their older relatives, the young Chikri watched with what looked like reverent attention as Grey continued to make the deep sound Morgan had heard. It had something of the feeling of a loud cat’s purr, though it rose and dipped in a way no cat’s purr ever did. In fact, it had a cadence almost like song or prayer, which made him think again of a priest blessing his congregation.
Then Grey paused and, after a long moment of silence, the rest of the Chikri began to purr back to him, almost in chorus, nearly startling Morgan into losing his grip. It felt as if he had stumbled onto a well-hidden secret, as though the Chikri had only been pretending to be simple forest creatures but now were unmasked as something much more subtle.
Grey began to buzz and murmur again. The others responded. After watching and listening for no little time, Morgan decided that he would never know what it was or what it meant. A few Chikri looked at him again as he made his way back down to the tree, but only briefly. All their attention was on Grey and his song of moonlight and forest.
The troop’s murmur drifting gently from above, Morgan secured himself and fell asleep again. He dreamed of a place on the moon where only Chikri lived, feeding on moon moss and moon berries in a land of plenty, where they were never hunted, and where Morgan himself was happily one of them.
* * *
• • •
As if to remind him that even such a strange summer as this could not last forever, the mists began to creep across the forest. Each morning he woke to a world of murky gray beneath the treetops, and some days it did not disperse until well after the sun had reached its peak. Deer and other animals appeared as if summoned by magicians, then vanished again just as quickly and completely. Some days, descending to the misty ground when he could not follow the Chikri from tree to tree, was like diving into a colorless sea.
Is it getting colder because autumn is almost here? he wondered. Or because we are moving north?
The longer they traveled, the more hurried the Chikri seemed to be: the troop stopped less often these days and scarcely ever slept more than once in the same place before moving on. Some nights Morgan could hear the young ones complaining softly because there had been little time during the day’s progress to look for food. Nothing seemed to be pursuing them, and as they traveled increasingly in high hills the food became more and more scarce as evergreens replaced the other trees, but still something drove the Chikri onward.
Or leads them, he told himself. He, on the other hand, was beginning to wonder whether it might be time to go his own way. He had learned much from the little animals, but if they were bound for the white wastelands of Rimmersgard, Morgan knew he would not survive. Unlike the Chikri, he had no furry coat, only his now tattered and threadbare cloak and the clothes he had been wearing since everything had gone wrong. His boots were beginning to rub through where he tied on his climbing irons, and the idea of still being lost in the woods when the cold rains came, let alone in winter’s snows, filled him with dread.
The Chikri had begun a long climb through a part of the forest dominated by steep, rocky hills, and each day brought new hazards for Morgan. There were no roads, of course, and in most places not even animal tracks to follow, so when he had to leave the trees he was forced to make his way as best he could. Many times when he caught up to the troop he had the distinct feeling that Grey and the other Chikri were growing tired of waiting for him. Only ReeRee still seemed to think his presence was important, and when he staggered down from whatever rocky obstacles had slowed him and climbed wearily into the tree where they had stopped for the night, she would come to him and groom his hair and eyebrows, muttering softly the while, as if scolding a beloved but daft old relative.
* * *
• • •
They finally came to a place where Morgan knew he could not follow them, a narrow valley that stretched south to north, with high slate walls. Morgan did not much like the look of it: it was so full of mist it might have been a gateway to the netherworld, and the western side of the valley was mostly sheer stone cliffs. He hoped the troop would find a different route, but Grey and the others headed right for it. Worse, instead of simply traveling through the valley itself, or going past it to find an easier way north, the Chikri seemed determined to make their way up onto the towering eastern edge of the valley where, unlike the far side, trees grew along the steep, rocky walls. As Morgan watched in dismay, the little animals clambered through the evergreens that grew in tiers along the valley’s nearly vertical walls, leaping from one tree to the next. Morgan knew that climbing through the close-knit branches of the pines would be almost impossible for him, and that the journey would only grow more perilous as they made their way through the trees along the valley’s wall of crumbling slates. Even if he managed to go directly from tree to tree, Morgan could see that he would be high enough above the ground that a slip would drop him a killing distance down to the mist-cloaked valley floor, and he had no idea how long the valley was. They might be climbing along side it for days.
As the rest of the Chikri scrambled up the vegetation of the steep wall, Morgan turned away. He would have to make his way through the valley itself, which he felt sure could not be as deadly as the climb, even if the valley was inhabited entirely by hungry bears.
To his surprise, the Chikri troop took notice of him retreating to the forest floor and began to chatter and chik at him in alarm, but he ignored them, scrambling down the last yards of the slope. Just as he found his footing back on level ground, something ran up his back and became tangled for a moment in his cloak, making him trip and fight for balance before tumbling to the damp ground.
It was ReeRee, and when he unwound her she had a look on her strange little face he had never seen before, lips pulled back, eyes wide.
“Chik, chik chik!” She hopped around him as he picked himself up, her every movement a clear expression of fear and unhappiness.
“Leave me alone,” he told her sternly as he climbed back onto his feet. “I can’t climb that cliff. You go. I’ll meet you and the rest on the other side.” He pointed, but she only redoubled her scolding, and he realized he was arguing with a creature that could not understand him. He bent down to reassure her, but she leaped into his arms and clung, little claws scratching him through his thin clothing.
“Stop, ReeRee!” But she would not let go, only gripping him more tightly. He pulled her loose and dropped her to the ground, a bit more roughly than intended, but he was tired and worried about going into a place that the Chikri were so obviously avoiding, and he wasn’t going to take the little one with him.
“You go back,” he told her. The little animal crouched, eyes wide, looking at him in a way that filled him with shame, as though he had just knocked over a small child in the street. “I promise I’ll see you on the other side, ReeRee. Go with the others.” He turned his back on her and walked into the swirling mist. The last he heard was a single, distressed squeal—“Reeeeee!”—a final warning, he assumed, or perhaps a cry of misery.
* * *
• • •
It was only late afternoon, but within a few hundred paces into the valley he had left the sun behind along with the Chikri; darkness fell sudden as a blow and the air lost its late-summer warmth. The mist, thicker now with his every step, formed strange, gho
stly shapes that billowed around him as he headed into the gorge. Nor was that the only thing that set his heart speeding and made him decide to draw his sword from the sheath on his back. The valley was also preternaturally silent—no bird’s cries, no hum of insects, not even the noise of wind rustling the branches. Even the broad river in the center of the valley floor flowed as smoothly as molten glass, without a burble or splash. Except for the occasional dull glint in the moving water and the dancing mists, the whole vale seemed still and empty as a plundered tomb.
Once he thought he heard a soft noise behind him and looked back, half-hoping and half-fearing ReeRee was following him, but though he stopped and stood motionless he saw nothing and heard nothing but his own heartbeat, a muffled drumbeat of blood throbbing in his veins.
The jagged valley walls looming over him were made of near-vertical bands of slate, like a stack of parchments set on end. The clifftops were jagged and broken slates piled everywhere: the valley was so narrow that it almost seemed as though giant hands had reached down and pulled the earth apart like curtains. Even the trees on the river’s banks seemed unnatural, trunks growing at bizarre, tortured angles, roots spreading in interlaced webs over the damp, dark ground, and the branches of neighboring trees tangled, as though they fought each other in some impossibly slow, impossibly ancient battle. Most of the vegetation was strange to Morgan’s eyes, black grasses topped with nodding gray catkin puffs, pale yellow moss that hung from the trees in clumps like the fleeces of sickly sheep. Some trees had blotchy, silvery bark and fruit as dark and shiny as lumps of tar. Morgan could not imagine ever being hungry enough to try one of those gleaming things, even though an unsatisfying meal of nuts early in the day no longer sustained him.