by Shannah Jay
She blinked away a tear as she thought about the old days when the blue-robed Sisters were everywhere and people could just be happy and mind their own business. She remembered her own Festival of Choosing, when she had been named as an Elder. It was a bit hard to be an Elder when you never stayed in a town for longer than a few days, and even harder with a man like Giff chivvying you around. Still, he was a good provider, Giff was, give him his due. She missed the festivals, missed the temple ceremonies, too, the music and the dancing and above all, the beauty. Life was ugly now.
She called out to Bree's wife Marsa to bring her some warm water to sponge the stranger down. Then she sat still and sighed with quiet pleasure as she looked at the sunset reflected in the water and listened only to sounds which were peaceful and happy. It would be nice to have even a couple of days resting by this lake, and that transcap thing should keep Giff amused and out of her way for most of the time.
'You'll be all right, dearie,' she murmured in her soft voice to Soo. 'I'll look after you.'
* * *
Up on the satellite, Robler had been following Soo's progress with feverish interest, for she’d taken a tracer with her. He scowled at the scene in the viewing area. 'Where did all those people come from?'
'I don't know. They're traders, by the looks of them,' said Met. 'Pity they found Soo so quickly! We can't send a life-ship down to bring her back with them around.'
'I'm very tempted. There's only a small group of them at the moment. No one would believe them if they said anything about flying ships. In fact, they'd probably turn tail and run away at the first sight of us. You know what primitives are like. If they take her into one of those towns, we'll have no chance of getting her back quietly.'
Met stared at him in horror. 'But you can't let them see our flying vessels! It's against all the Confex regulations for non-intervention on new planets!'
'What use are regulations just now? And anyway, these people have already seen the transcap flying around, so what does it matter? This is a State of Emergency and Soo is by far our best com-engineer.'
'It's still not right.' Met shook his head very firmly. 'I couldn't be a party to it.'
'But we need her, dammit!' And I need her, too, he added mentally. And will have her soon, one way or another.
'I will not comply with such orders,' Met repeated stiffly. 'Whatever our circumstances, we have no right to risk damaging those people's culture and development. Soo made her choice when she left the satellite and she must live with the consequences of that. It's not for us to make a bad situation worse.'
With a huge effort, Robler refrained from telling him not to be such a rule-book robot, but only because he still needed Met's support. Some of the crew weren’t happy with the risks he’d taken to keep Soo on the satellite, but Met had shown himself solidly behind his Exec, and that had convinced some of the waverers.
'And what about Mak?' Met asked. 'What's happened to him?'
Robler shrugged. 'His com-unit seems to have stopped broadcasting altogether. Who knows where he is?'
And who cared? That fool would be no loss. 'Of course,' he added smoothly, 'we'll keep a watch out for him, but I'm afraid, I'm very much afraid, that we're helpless to rescue him, if we can't find him. He could be anywhere in the Twelve Claims. Perhaps I'm a little over-eager to rescue Soo, but I can't help hoping that without Mak's influence, we could get her to see reason again.'
Met nodded. 'Yes. You're probably right there. Do you want a watch kept, in case they leave her on her own and we see a chance of helping her?'
'Yes, I think so. You arrange that, will you, Met? It's the least we can do for poor Soo.' He wouldn't try pull her back by force now. He needed Met’s help for that. But he wasn’t waiting much longer to do something, and if Met didn’t like that, it was too bad.
CHAPTER 20 RAKMAR'S HOLDING
Two days after their meeting with Marek, Rakmar welcomed the exhausted Kindred warily. The village headman was clearly expecting them to claim asylum and be a burden on a community whose continual struggle to survive showed in the inhabitants' pinched faces. He showed a particular reluctance to approach Nim, but the kit just growled in her throat and pressed close to Katia, equally reluctant to approach so many strange humans.
Rakmar's attitude changed, however, when Herra proved to be a Healer and he became positively effusive after she held a group healing session and cured several villagers of debilitating afflictions. After that, the Kindred were welcomed wholeheartedly by everyone and anything they asked for was theirs. Even Nim was tolerated and offered scraps of food - though she scorned to accept anything from a stranger.
Marek's sour predictions of trouble were ignored or laughed at, so after a while he returned to keep watch over the pass.
When they’d spent a few days resting and enjoying the simple comforts the village of little wooden houses could offer them, Herra decided that it was time for the group to move on.
'I shall be reluctant to leave,' Katia said, smiling. 'It's been wonderful to have my two terrors taken off my hands. These people absolutely dote on babies, don't they? Perhaps it's because they don't have any of their own.'
'There are far too few children here,' agreed Cheral, 'considering the ages of the villagers. I shouldn't be surprised if those deleff were regulating the births. They seem to control everything else in these strange lands.
Shall you tell Rakmar we're leaving, Elder Sister, or do you want me to do it for you? I don't think he'll be pleased. He may even try to stop us.'
'I think we'll tell him as a group, so that he can see we're all of the same mind.'
Rakmar's face fell when he heard of their decision and he clutched Herra's arm, as if to hold her back by force. 'You mustn't go!' he said earnestly. 'It's too dangerous and besides, we need you here.'
'We have our own path to follow,' said Herra, smiling but firm, as she gently removed his fingers.
'But no one has ever returned from the Tanglewoods! You'll be throwing your lives away!'
'People keep telling us no one has ever escaped from places, and we keep managing to do it!' said Cheral sharply.
'We can’t stay here, hospitable as you have been,' Herra said, more diplomatically.
'Please, please, Elder Sister, think again! You'll be putting those fine children of yours in danger, and for what? For nothing. I tell you, the deleff allow no one to go past this point. No one! We're the farthest outpost from Dsheresh, the people who couldn't settle to the life there or in the Sandrims.'
'We follow our Brother's Quest,' said Cheral sharply.
'But it just doesn't make sense for you to face any more perils when you could have a comfortable life here with us.'
'Rakmar, we have to go and that's that!' snapped Cheral.
'Yes, but those babies are the ones who're going to suffer for your obstinacy. Have you thought of that, eh?'
'Those babies belong with their parents, who are needed in the world outside!' insisted Cheral.
Rakmar turned to Katia. 'You're taking them into danger. Think of their safety, even if you don't care about your own.' He lowered his voice and glanced over his shoulder before adding, 'Those who try to go through the Tanglewoods and return shudder even to think of it. And people say that there's even worse beyond the Tanglewoods - monsters and who knows what.'
'Nonetheless, Rakmar, we're leaving tomorrow. So instead of wasting your breath trying to make us change our minds, why don't you tell us all you know about the Tanglewoods? How do they get their name? What are they like once you get into them? What particular dangers shall we be facing? Tell me everything you know about them.'
He sighed and shook his head, but obeyed her light Compulsion. 'You'll see why they're called Tanglewoods the minute you get into them. They're nothing but wild tangles of plants. Impassable!'
'Nothing's impassable,' rumbled Benjan.
'The Tanglewoods are. There are trees with roots above the ground and shrubs that twine around everything i
n sight, and if you do manage to chop your way through, they grow back so quickly that your path closes behind you and you can't find which is the way back. Some of the plants have thorns that hook into you, thorns with barbs on the ends. Just try getting one of those out! You'll rip your clothing to shreds, and your flesh too, if you're not careful.'
'We'll be careful, then,' snapped Cheral, impatient at all these tales of gloom. 'What else?'
'There are vines that hang nets downwards from the trees to catch things in, sticky nets with tendrils that twist into your hair and glue themselves to your skin. They haul up anything they catch, those things do. I saw one of them on the edge of the Tanglewoods take a baby nerid once that had strayed into the shallow part of the river. The wind was in the right direction and the net just floated out across the water to pick it up. And the nerid never came down again. Never.'
'Plants don't eat nerids!' said Cheral scornfully.
'Well, why did the net take it, then?' demanded Rakmar.
'By accident, probably.' Cheral's expression dared him to argue with her.
Herra stepped in. 'How do you keep the Tanglewoods back from the village, then, Rakmar?'
'We don't. We couldn't. The river does it for us. Don't know why they don't cross it, but they don't. Even the seeds from the Tanglewoods don't blow our way, thank goodness! I daresay the SS'Habi manage that with one of their magic stones, or the deleff. Those deleff can do anything. They're determined we shall stay here in their lands, and no one, no one at all, can get around that! That's why they're called the Lands of Nowhere, because there's nowhere to go. Those deleff have powers no one else has. It's a waste of time to fight them, a pure waste of time - though it took some of us longer than others to realise that. That's why we wound up here, on the edge of nowhere.'
'Do you have much to do with the SS'Habi and the deleff, then?'
'Not if we can help it! Those of us who escaped from Dsheresh Kashal don't want to go back to their silly piddling ways, so we just live quietly here and mind our own business. It's a hard life, but at least you can keep your wife to yourself. It's better than the Sandrims, too. You're not always looking over your shoulder for Rimrascals.'
'Hmm. And is there no way to avoid the Tanglewoods, no way around them?'
'Not unless you want to go back to Dsheresh. There's only one way out of the village and that's the road you arrived on, the one over the pass. And even that's only clear in the summer. You could go back that way, and live in the Sandrims again, I suppose. Some try it. We've never heard what happened to them, though.'
Herra shook her head. 'No, Rakmar. We shall not return.'
Jonner, who had been listening, cleared his throat. 'If what he says is true, just how are we going to get through these Tanglewoods, then, Elder Sister?'
'I don't know, Jonner. First we must see them for ourselves.'
'But what if we can't get through them? What if Rakmar's right?'
'We shall have to trust in our Brother to guide us.'
Jonner shut up. He knew that look. Was he the only one in the group who didn't share this blind faith in their Brother the God? Was he the only one who worried about their future? He fretted about it all the time. If they had any future. Which he very much doubted. He sometimes wondered if he should just have stayed in Tenebrak, found himself a quiet little trading spot, stuck to local produce and kept as clear as he could of Those of the Serpent.
No, that wouldn't have worked. No one could stay clear of those fiends. They kept an eye on everyone and insisted that everyone make sacrifice in their shrines. He shuddered at the memory of the whipping he had received in the shrine at Setherak once. Sex and pain just did not mix, as far as he was concerned - in fact, he could never understand why Those of the Serpent were so keen to hurt themselves and others. Perhaps there was something in the fumes of that incense they kept burning all the time in the shrines that softened the willpower of their followers. It had certainly made him feel queasy for days.
He slouched off to sit by himself near the river that supplied water to the village and growled at anyone who came near him. He was fed up with all these adventures, fed up to the back teeth with this Quest. He wanted to go home!
The following day, the villagers filled the Kindred's packs with food and Rakmar himself escorted them to the far boundary of his holding. As well as food, the villagers gave them several big curved knives to chop away the undergrowth.
'This is generous indeed,' said Herra, knowing how short they were of metal tools.
'Not really,' Rakmar said gloomily as he showed them how to use the knives, 'you'll probably be back, so we won't really be losing these knives. Or not all of them, anyway.'
Jonner opened his mouth to worry aloud about what they were doing, caught Cheral's eye and shut it again.
They had to cross the river at the far end of the pastures, beyond the village. A group of villagers came with them, carrying planks to make a temporary bridge. Only at that point was the river narrow enough to span with planks, running swiftly between high banks. Rocks jutted up from the rushing water and sent white spray to blur the air. Or was there something else that blurred the air? Certainly, it was no use trying to see what the Tanglewoods were like from here. Benjan and Quinna had attempted that the previous day.
Katia stood by Herra's side and stared across the churning water. 'That's the densest vegetation that I've ever seen. It looks,' she shivered, 'threatening, somehow.'
Herra frowned. 'It's just vegetation. Do you think you can guide us through it?'
'I can always tell the direction we need to travel in, but I don't know those plants, so I can't guard against other dangers, Elder Sister. Some of the plants are bound to be poisonous, and Rakmar didn't paint a glowing picture of what we'd meet, did he?'
'Hmm. Benjan!'
'Yes, lady.'
'I think you and Katia should go across the river first, push into the woods for a few paces only, and then come straight back and report what it's like.'
'I could do that on my own, Elder Sister,' said Benjan.
'No. I think you'd be safer with Katia. She has the Gift of Location, after all. We daren't risk anyone getting lost and we rely very much on your strength, Benjan.'
Davred was standing by Herra's other side. 'I feel totally useless,' he said bitterly. 'Katia, be careful, my love.
Take no risks.'
Her smile was reply enough, but she also laid a hand on the kit's head. 'Will you keep Nim with you, my Davred? This sort of territory is as alien to her as it is to us.'
Rakmar cleared his throat. 'We'll set the planks across the river now, shall we, Elder Sister?' He signalled to his neighbours and then turned to make a last plea. 'If you find the woods too much, if you wish to return, don't hesitate. Always remember that you’ll be welcome to stay here with us.' His eyes slid again to the three babies they carried and his expression was more than sad - it spoke of sheer anguish.
Jonner shuddered as he watched Katia and Benjan run lightly across the makeshift plank bridge. 'I don't know how they can do that,' he muttered to Narla. 'It makes my stomach churn to be up in the air looking down.' He looked back towards the village and sighed. 'But who'd want to stay in such a small place? There'd be no opportunities there for a man like me, none at all! I'd go mad with boredom.'
Once the two of them were across the river, Benjan began to hack at the foliage and Katia stood behind him, watching.
'Try hitting low on the stems,' she suggested after a while, 'so that you cut off the whole plant.'
He did as she suggested. 'Yes, that's better.' He frowned at the curling brown shreds at his feet. 'These plants fade very quickly, Katia. I've never seen anything like it.'
'Nor have I. They fade far too quickly. It's not natural - quite bizarre, in fact.' As she followed in his footsteps, she had to hack at tendrils that crowded towards them from the sides, tendrils which tangled in any fold of clothing that presented itself.
After about ten paces,
Benjan turned round. Even after such a short distance, he couldn’t see the river for foliage. 'Is this far enough, do you think, Katia?'
'Just go a little farther. Make for that tree over there. I want to see it from close up.' The tree in question was gigantic, with a near-black trunk, smooth shiny bark and no branches at all until far above their heads.
'It's like permanent twilight in here.' Benjan wiped the sweat from his brow and gestured at the mass of foliage around them. They could see the bush he'd just hacked away growing again before their eyes, growing so fast that it made them exchange uneasy glances.
They looked upwards towards the flickering of sunlight through the forest canopy. The massive tree stretched out huge branches, and at intervals they could see other giant trees thrusting up through the tangles of low foliage. There were no plants of medium height, which was also strange. Indeed, apart from the trees, nothing they’d met so far had been much taller than Benjan.
'Which is the way back, Katia? Rakmar was right. That stuff’s grown so quickly you can't tell where you've come from.'
'I can still tell the direction, but another few minutes and I won't be able to distinguish the new plants from the old.' She shivered. 'That rapid growth is unnatural, Benjan. I usually enjoy being in woods and feel at home in them, but here - well, I don't feel at ease here at all. I feel as if I'm in hostile territory.' She took a deep breath and pointed to a tall bush with vivid pink flowers which had just grown to maturity before their eyes. 'Let's go back and report on what we've found. It's that way.'
Benjan chopped the bush down for a second time.
When they arrived back at the river, the others were sitting around, looking worried, all except for Davred, who was pacing to and fro along the riverbank with Nim at his side. He saw them first and ran towards the rough plank bridge, followed closely by the kit. 'Katia! Where in all eternity have you been?'
When she reached the other side, he pulled her into his arms and hugged her convulsively. 'We've been so worried! What took you so long?'