The Forest of Peldain

by Barrington J. Bayley

  “You say Peldain is not a warrior country, yet that is not the impression I received in the mountain fortress,” Vorduthe commented.

  “Fighting skills are preserved among the acolytes of the cult, traditionally to protect the High Priest, and the nobility learn swordsmanship mainly for sport. You can form your own view as to how the acolytes performed as compared with your own men. And my cousin Kestrew will no doubt have gathered a band of ruffians about himself. How great an adversary that will present at this stage is hard to say. Do not despair—we have two great advantages. We have a band of disciplined fighting men—my previous followers could not really claim to be that. And perhaps even more important, we have the High Priest.”

  “And where was Mistirea at the time of your departure?” Vorduthe asked.

  Mistirea kept his eyes downcast and did not speak. “He had already taken himself off to the retreat in the mountains, probably to avoid the civil disorder, or else to avoid taking sides,” Octrago said dryly, and Mistirea did not gainsay him.

  “If everything you say is true, he could probably have decided the issue and saved you much trouble,” Vorduthe observed. He pondered. “Tell me about this religion of yours. What gods do you worship? And what is the significance of the lake, ‘the eye of Peldain,’ as you call it?”

  Octrago looked at the High Priest as though expecting him to answer. But Mistirea only made a small gesture indicating that he should speak.

  “The lake has more than one title,” Octrago said to Vorduthe. It is known as ‘the eye of Peldain’ because the human eye is like a pool that reflects the soul, and so the phrase really refers to its surface. In the depths of the lake dwells the soul of Peldain. That is our god, if you like, but it has no other name.

  “The High Priest has a special duty. He must regularly dive into the lake and commune with the presence there. Only he can do this, for only he is familiar with the spirit. By this propitiation the affairs of the realm are kept in good order. If it is not done, or not done successfully, all will be chaos. Peldain will be destroyed.”

  “And the populace believes this?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Vorduthe nodded. This he could understand. Superstitious beliefs were a reality for the less sophisticated inhabitants of the Hundred Islands, too.

  “Then the absence of Mistirea is cause for considerable unease, I imagine.”

  “You are correct. And there lies our strength.”

  Continuing, they found themselves walking through open countryside with no hint of a road or trail. The air became warm and balmy, the scenery like some other-worldly paradise with numerous little lakes and streams, strange trees and plants.

  Habitations also came in sight, in the form of hut-like houses, always accompanied by a small grove of the unfamiliar trees, of which there seemed to be an extensive variety. Human figures were also sometimes visible, watching the passing procession with curiosity, but Octrago ignored them.

  He kept well away from any houses until, near the end of the day, they came to a fair-sized village. At first Vorduthe did not recognize it as such and thought they had entered a spacious wood in which people walked. But, spread out between the trees, there were dwellings of various kinds.

  “Do not announce me,” Octrago warned the Hundred Islanders. “Remember, I am incognito.”

  At the column’s approach the villagers drew back, though they seemed more bewildered than afraid. Mistirea broke ranks and stepped toward them, raising his hands in greeting.

  “Do not fear, good people. These men are not here to work you any harm.”

  “It is the High Priest!” someone exclaimed wonderingly.

  “Have you returned to us?” pleaded another.

  Vorduthe wondered why Mistirea was recognizable while Octrago, a claimant to the throne, was not. Then he remembered that the High Priest’s cloak bore the identifying cult emblem. He might, even, be a more famous personage than Octrago.

  “Will all now be set right?” a middle-aged woman in a purple gown asked anxiously.

  Mistirea lowered his head. “I am here, am I not?”

  A mood of relief and merriment flitted over the gathering at these words. The villagers lost their nervousness and flocked around the serpent harriers, but received only noncommittal replies to their questions as the warriors had been ordered. Octrago led the way to a spacious arbor laid out with tables and chairs. This, it turned out, was a place of public relaxation where refreshing drinks were served. As many of the soldiery as could found places in its shade; the rest settled themselves on the moss outside.

  A beaker made of a very hard and shiny dark-brown wood was set before Vorduthe. From a large green gourd was poured a cool amber liquid.

  He drank, and found the delicious fluid running down his throat almost of its own volition. It had a tangy, acid flavor that was quite irresistible.

  Octrago laughed, then quenched his own thirst. Vorduthe idly examined the beaker. It was a fine piece of work, its polish brilliant and perfect, with only one blemish on the outside of the handle. It must have taken many hours of work to produce.

  “You have expert craftsmen here in Peldain,” he remarked.

  “Craftsmen? We have very few craftsmen at all.”

  Octrago pointed through the open side of the arbor to one of the smaller trees growing just outside it. At first Vorduthe did not know what he was trying to show him. Then, looking closer at the tree, he suffered a shock of understanding.

  Hanging from the tree, after the manner of fruit, were dozens of beakers identical to the one he had just drunk from.

  Octrago again laughed to see his astonishment. “My lord, some facts relating to my country I confess I have not told you. In Arelia it was a matter of amazement to me to see how much labor was involved in everyday life. Practically every item of use had to be painstakingly made by hand—even providing food cost endless time spent in cultivating or fishing.

  “Here life is more commodious. Know, my lord, that the interior of Peldain is a garden where human needs are all provided by nature. Look about you. Our trees give us more than our food and drink. Clothing, utensils and dwellings all are grown for us by some type of tree or other. That beaker you just drank from, the platters on which our supper is shortly to be served, the table and chairs we are using—all are grown to shape by our trees. Even the knife to cut your food is tree grown, complete to its edge of tough wood.”

  He pointed to the blemish on the beaker’s handle. “See, that is where it was plucked from the branch.”

  Vorduthe looked at the beaker again, then at the table. He remembered Mistirea’s desk in the castle.

  “Clothing,” he echoed.

  “Well, only the simplest garments are actually grown complete and to size. The clothing trees produce fabrics in shapes which may be easily stitched together. Observe, they are of excellent quality. It is easier than weaving grasses, is it not?”

  The garments worn by the village Peldainians were not elaborate: loose tunics and breeches for the men, simple flowing gowns for the women. Only two colors were represented: purple and green. That trees could produce the silky material, perhaps as the lining of pods, was not hard to grasp.

  That rough furniture might be cut from suitably selected trees was also comprehensible. But the furniture he had seen was anything but rough. And household utensils? The vision of the green-leafed tree yonder was beyond belief. More credible would have been if the beakers had been tied in place as a piece of trickery.

  As for houses… Vorduthe let his gaze wander to the dwellings within view. They were tidy little cottages, some with several rooms, solid and shapely.

  “They are obtained thus-wise,” Octrago said when Vorduthe questioned him. “A single house-tree grows only one room—though the type of room differs according to variety. The trunk develops a hollow, then expands and takes the shape of walls, floor and roof. Doors and windows develop, the doors on bark hinges and the windows filming over with transpare
nt resin. When mature, the trunk’s connection with the root withers. The leaf-bearing branches also fall off. It may then be moved to wherever it is needed. If several rooms are placed together they bond into one structure in a few days, and the rooms also root themselves to the ground. Meanwhile, the roots left behind generate new trees.”

  “So no one has to work,” Vorduthe said, as he mulled over Octrago’s extraordinary revelation.

  “Not as people in the Hundred Islands work. Life here is pleasant and easy-going. You will soon grow accustomed to it.”

  Vorduthe grunted, far from pleased by the suggestion. Though he had never thought the three or four hours worked per day by most islanders particularly arduous, it was what distinguished civilized life from the habits of primitives, who before coming under the rule of Arelia had preferred to laze around all day and would not work at all unless forced to it.

  A more disciplined sense of social organization would doubtless be of benefit here, he thought.

  “But you have some craftsmen, I presume.”

  “We have metal-workers. The craft goes by family and brings great esteem. But there are not many such. Also there are a few people who work in stone, but not nearly as many, as in ages past when the mountain stronghold was built.”

  “Someone must tend these marvelous trees. Indeed, someone must have bred them in the first place.”

  Octrago shook his head. “They have always been here, and no one tends them. They are a natural feature of the country.”

  That was not possible, Vorduthe told himself. They could only be the result of some extraordinary art of tree culture practiced in a forgotten past. It was peculiar to hear a man of Octrago’s intelligence aver otherwise.

  “Is there not a drawback to being so dependent on nature?” he said. “How many different kinds of appurtenance can the trees produce? What if a new type of utensil is wanted? It would not be available.”

  “Almost anything can be provided,” Octrago said with a smile. “It will sound strange to you, but the trees are sensitive to our thoughts. If something new or different is needed, then after a while—a quarter of a year, perhaps—a tree begins to grow it.”

  “Incredible,” Vorduthe muttered.

  “Even weapons,” Octrago added. “We have trees to grow bows and arrows.”

  “You do? Just the same, I can see why you say Peldain should be easy to conquer. People who are not used to hard work do not fight well. They become soft.”

  He brooded. There was something almost sinister in this idea of trees which responded to thought and thereby sustained an entire society. He felt an urge not only to find a way of wiping out the coastal forest but to cut down every other tree as well, if he managed to gain possession of the country.

  But he was forgetting. King Askon would be ruler, subject only to the will of King Krassos.

  Well, there might eventually be room for much alteration there.

  The villagers were mingling with the seaborne warriors, who had begun to take liberties with the young women, to the displeasure both of parents and the young men of the village. Vorduthe intervened before there was bloodshed—his men were in no mood to tolerate hostility. Once they were fed, with a generous hospitality he now realized was no more than normal behavior here, he separated them. Not far away was a pleasant pool, fed by a clear stream, which the villagers used for bathing. He ordered the men there, so they could wash away the sweat and grime of their long ordeal.

  It was an opportunity every man used with enthusiasm, including himself. After he had enjoyed himself in the water he returned to the bank where he had left his weapons, armor and garments. He found Mistirea standing there, watching him sharply.

  “You swim well,” the Peldainian High Priest remarked.

  Vorduthe grinned. “Everyone in the Hundred Islands swims well.”

  “Of course. Here it is not a necessary attainment… for most. Can you dive?”

  “Naturally.”

  “How deep? How long can you stay under?”

  “Long enough to find pink shells in the coral shallows,” said Vorduthe, still grinning. Mistirea frowned. Shells and coral were foreign words to him.

  Suddenly he stripped off the purple cloak he wore, followed by the shift-like robe beneath it. Naked, he stood on the edge of the pool, and Vorduthe could now see more clearly how magnificently muscled he was about the shoulders and torso.

  With barely a pause the old man plunged into the water, then swam strongly to the middle of the pool, keeping his distance from others who still disported there. It was evident he was a much-practiced swimmer. He floated for a moment, then flipped himself over and disappeared beneath the surface.

  Vorduthe kept his eye on the center of the expanding ripples where he had been. Time passed; the ripples smoothed over. More time passed. He scanned the pool: Mistirea had nowhere reappeared.

  Alarmed now, he called to the serpent harriers in the pool, urging them to dive in search of the missing priest. As they were about to obey him Mistirea suddenly surfaced, in the exact spot from which he had vanished. He spent a moment or two filling his lungs. Then still swimming easily with vigorous strokes, he returned to the bank to stand before Vorduthe.

  “Can you stay down that long?” he demanded.

  “… I am not sure,” Vorduthe confessed.

  “You will dive. You will dive deep and long.”

  To his vast surprise the dripping High Priest placed both hands on Vorduthe’s shoulders and stared with an almost insane intensity into his eyes.

  “You are Peldain’s salvation,” he said in a low, urgent tone. “I and I alone am able to recognize you, and this I know.”

  His hands dropped. He stooped to retrieve his garments, then turned and strode away, leaving Vorduthe gazing after him in bemusement.

  Chapter Eleven

  Several times during the night Vorduthe and Octrago were called on to intervene in disturbances where the serpent harriers, conscious of past and coming dangers, recklessly sought to enjoy themselves with the village’s women. It was a sullen set of local folk who early next morning gave the strangers a filling breakfast of crunchy nut-flavored cobs, quite unlike any fruit they had ever seen, and with relief bade them farewell.

  The day proved idyllic. The Hundred Islanders marched leisurely through an enchanted landscape carpeted with the soft mosses and waving grasses of Peldain. There were clear streams, hillocks, villages and hamlets—always set amid groves of the magical trees that gave the country its magical economy.

  They met no resistance, and Vorduthe began to wonder if the Peldainians were akin to savages, unable to organize themselves effectively or defend their territory.

  “As we shall soon enter Lakeside, our strategy must be decided,” he said to Octrago during the midday halt. “What is your intention?”

  “First let me hear your proposals,” Octrago countered.

  “Well, do you think it is conceivable that a force like ours could actually take possession of the kingdom? If the center is seized, is all done? And can the center in fact be seized?”

  “It is the same here as in the Hundred Islands,” Octrago told him. “Strength is what counts. The difference is that here one needs little strength, since the opposition has little. Very well, then. Come, I will draw a map of Lakeside. We shall infiltrate by night and converge on the king’s palace. There we shall give Kestrew and his band of ruffians their desserts. Tomorrow morning Mistirea will proclaim me king—and you will deal with dissenters, first of all in Lakeside and later throughout the land.”

  “This is easier than you made it sound in Arcaiss.”

  “There was the forest to deal with,” Octrago said blandly.

  Vorduthe became accusing. “So you admit deception.”

  “Deception? No, more a case of altered emphasis. One must marshal one’s arguments carefully when speaking with kings. Arelians have a horror of Peldain’s coastal forest. Overcoming that horror was my first difficulty.”

&
nbsp; “Clearly you have some kingcraft yourself,” Vorduthe said bitterly. It was hard not to feel hatred when he thought of his destroyed army.

  “My motives were honorable.”

  While speaking, Octrago was sketching on a boulder with a piece of sharp stone. “Here is the lake and here is the palace—though ‘palace’ is your word. We call it the king’s tree. The approaches are through these avenues, thus and thus—it is straightforward enough. I will draw this map again when I find a convenient piece of tree bark, and your men can all study it. What do you think?”

  “How many armed men may we expect to find within?”

  “That I cannot say. Neither do I know whether Kestrew will have any stationed on guard round about, but no doubt we can find out. At any rate I am certain your men will give a good account of themselves.”

  “How shall we find out about the guards? By sending scouts?”

  Octrago sucked his lower lip thoughtfully. “I will go into Lakeside ahead of you. I must take Mistirea into a place of safety among friends. There I will make inquiries, and return to you.”

  With a sour smile Vorduthe shook his head. “You and the High Priest remain with us. You are our guarantee that all is as you say.”

  “How sad to find you so distrusting,” Octrago sighed. “I hope this mood will disappear when we rule Peldain together.”

  “I am sure it will since, as you agreed with King Krassos, I shall have military command. You must then trust me.”

  “Well, I know you for an honorable man,” Octrago murmured.

  Contemplating the coming action, Vorduthe realized that the whole enterprise would now hang on one stroke.

  Still, that was the kind of situation he liked.

  Late in the day the terrain began to rise and to break up into a region of knolls and ridges. It was a bare and dusty landscape interspersed with clumps of verdure. Octrago led the party up a ridge and into a curious wood, the like of which they had never seen.