The Forest of Peldain

by Barrington J. Bayley

  “What happened to you?”

  “We of Peldain have no knowledge of the ocean. We were unable to guide our rafts when faced with wind and current. We were swept out to sea and the rafts became separated. One by one my companions died. As far as I know I alone have survived.

  “The rest you know. I was picked up by an Arelian ship and taken to Arcaiss. Then began my second great enterprise—by deceit and persuasion, to induce King Krassos to mount an expedition that could get men through the forest.”

  Octrago smiled crookedly as he said this, and Vorduthe felt he now understood all the irony that throughout had exuded from him.

  In spite of the hatred he felt for the man, it was impossible not to be impressed by what he had dared, and accomplished.

  “So you see, I owe everything to the brave men of Arelia, even though I was prepared to slaughter every last one of you once my object was achieved,” the prince said lightly. “You can be proud of one thing. We are the only men, to my knowledge, ever to journey through the forest from end to end, and live.”

  Mistirea had surged to his feet and now stood wringing his hands, his face a mask of emotional torment. “It is untrue!” he protested. “It is untrue!”

  For once Octrago seemed genuinely puzzled. Mistirea continued his outburst, in the same agonized tone. “You have it the wrong way round! It is not because I deserted my post that the forest has turned wild! Could I be so remiss, so uncaring? I had already lost control! That was why I left you!”

  Briefly he covered his face. “I knew long ago that I was failing. The spirit no longer listened to me. I sent acolytes to north and east, and south over the Clear Peaks. They told me the forest was spreading. And I could not stop it.

  “As for Inteke, who was to be my successor, he ceased to make contact with the spirit altogether. Neither did any of the other sensitives meet with any success. It became plain to me what was happening. Peldain has come to an end. We have lived too long within the aura of the lake, of the forest, of the whole land. It has absorbed our psyches to the extent that we can no longer influence it. Another mind was needed; a new, strong psyche that was independent of the soul of Peldain. In other words, we needed a stranger, brought in from outside.

  “I tried to explain this to the king, but he would not listen. Unfortunately, Prince Askon, your father is senile. I then broke all protocols and tried to broach the matter with you. I had to be careful with my words, for to be too open would be to sacrifice my life.”

  “Yes, I do remember your telling me some nonsense,” Octrago muttered. “I was not interested, of course—the sensitives are always too emotional and distraught. Besides—” he spoke for the benefit of Vorduthe—“this is Peldain, where nothing ever changes. Now that I have been in other lands where events move swiftly, it is more comprehensible to me.” He raised his eyes questioningly to Vorduthe. “He…?”

  “No one would help me,” Mistirea said. “No one would listen. I and my acolytes unaided could not find our way across the sea; it needed the resources of a king. Therefore I withdrew, ensconcing myself in the ancient mountain castle. I did this to force a crisis. I was trying to force the king to act and do as I had advised.

  “Now it seems my words were still not heeded—and yet matters have turned out as I planned! Despite yourself you were borne across the sea, Prince Askon. Unawares you have brought us the very man we need, if I am any judge.”

  Mistirea raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Perhaps there are other gods, mightier than the spirit of the lake. Perhaps they have guided you, so as to save Peldain.”

  “I can’t say I ever had the feeling that gods were dictating my actions,” Octrago commented. “On the contrary, throughout my adventures I have been afflicted with a feeling of desperate loneliness. The fate of Peldain rested on my shoulders alone, or so I thought.”

  He stood and paced the room, then turned to Vorduthe. “Well, it seems you are going to do some swimming, my lord.”

  “Am I?” Vorduthe replied stonily. “However noble your motives might seem in your own eyes, I see you in a different light. You have used us for your own ends. You have lied to us, betrayed us, sworn false oaths, sent an army to its death—and not an hour ago I heard you plead that I and my men be murdered. Why should I help you?”

  He had no idea what reality might lie behind the extraordinary beliefs Octrago and Mistirea had just propounded, but he was determined to wring what advantage he could from the situation. Mistirea spoke hurriedly.

  “Have a care, Prince Askon. Our future may hang on this man’s good will. When he communes with the spirit, no one will be by his side.”

  “So we have to make a loyal Peldainian of him?” Octrago said, as if voicing an impossible thought.

  “If the soul of Peldain obeys him, he can do good or wreak even worse evil than now threatens.”

  “What is it you want, my lord Vorduthe?” Octrago asked softly.

  “A ship to return my men to the Hundred Islands. Until it is built, they must walk free and unmolested.”

  “Your men may return, perhaps, but as for you.…”

  “All lies in the balance,” Mistirea interrupted. “Little as you may like it, Prince Askon, communication with the outside world could prove essential to our future survival.”

  It was clear that Octrago liked the idea not at all. “Well,” he said, looking thoughtfully at Vorduthe, “the future is long and much may happen in it. Let him prove himself first.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The day before Lord Vorduthe was to attempt his first immersion, Troop Leader Kana-Kem had approached him. The seaborne warriors were able to wander at will throughout Lakeside, on promise of good behavior. It was a minimum concession which Vorduthe had extracted in return for his cooperation.

  Kana-Kem had been sitting in the shade of an arbor with several comrades, drinking a mildly intoxicating juice that was popular here—though in comparison with the distilled essence of sea-root they were used to consuming in shore taverns all around the Hundred Islands, it affected them scarcely at all. He caught up with Vorduthe as he came within sight of the green lake.

  “I remind you of your pledge, my lord,” he said quietly but firmly. “When do we strike the treacherous snake down?”

  “Have patience,” Vorduthe told him. “I have a deeper revenge in mind. It may be that I can destroy not only Octrago but this whole rotten kingdom as well. That will be his reward.”

  He stood now on a mossy bank, Mistirea by his side. The sun shone strongly, halfway between zenith and horizon. Both men were naked. At their feet the edge of the lake rippled slightly in a strong breeze. The dull green water—which Mistirea said was not water at all—was opaque, making the lake look stagnant, though it gave off no smell.

  No stream or rivulet fed the lake. Nevertheless Mistirea claimed that it never diminished: it did not evaporate. Rainwater would float on its surface, either to dry off or to be absorbed by the containing banks.

  “The time has come,” Mistirea said. “Be confident. Let your mind be calm.”

  Vorduthe made no answer. To his military mind the High Priest’s training had seemed strange and incongruous, though he had seen Arelian physicians employ something like it when preparing patients for surgery. By fixing the attention on a steady flame, the mind could sometimes be made oblivious of pain.

  In his temple behind the palace, Mistirea had used a similar technique to concentrate Vorduthe’s mind, and then had taught him how to turn his consciousness inward. It was like diving into a deep pool, where phantasms of thought drifted. Farther and farther in he went, until thought vanished and there was only a kind of limpid darkness. That, Mistirea said, was where he might meet the soul of Peldain.

  Water or not, the substance of the lake felt like water as they waded into it, refreshingly cool to their feet and legs. Then they plunged, and swam for the center.

  Mistirea maintained his position with easy motions of his arms. They were floating over the lake
’s deepest part.

  “May the gods who guided you to us aid you now,” Mistirea said. “Dive! Dive!”

  And Vorduthe dived.

  Darkness closed in on him the moment his head slipped below the quiet surface. Not one ray of sunlight penetrated the lake. Down he went, arms streamlined against his sides as though he were diving off the coral atolls that gave Arelia its calm seas.

  As he descended he put himself into the semi-trance state taught by Mistirea. The darkness grew darker and took on the lightless clarity he had come to know.

  Momentarily his attention was distracted. The medium through which he sank became thicker with depth and impeded his motion. Soon he could thrust no deeper and came to a stop, suspended.

  Once again he turned his mind inward. Unlike the upper levels, the surrounding fluid was at body temperature. He was losing the sense of his bodily outlines. An impression of beating heart and racing blood filled his consciousness, as though he had become a creature inhabiting his own internal organs. Then that, too, faded.

  Mistirea had given him no inkling of what contact would be like, except that it was apt to be unexpected. The spirit of the forest had no solid body and manifested itself according to the mind of the inquirer.

  Unexpected it was. Vorduthe almost forgot where he was, almost forgot the need to hold his breath. He was plunged into green light and a mass of green fronds and foliage that stretched away in all directions.

  The verdant jungle was not still. It roiled and swelled. Monstrous mutational sports burst from it, quickly to subside and be replaced by others. Fear gripped Vorduthe at first; he thought he was back in the coastal forest. Then he realized that none of this actually touched him. He quieted himself.

  In that quiet, he sensed the presence.

  Like the jungle itself, it gave the impression of green: the dark, brooding green of the forest’s depths or of ancient ferns; the light green of southerly trees; the dazzling luminous green of the glassy gems found on volcanic slopes.

  And yet nothing was really visible. The presence was at his shoulder, just outside his range of vision. Now it was here, now it was there. Or he was in a new world and that entire world was alive, in the same way that a person was alive, so that the presence was everywhere and it was nowhere.

  But it was real. So real that Vorduthe found himself framing a question.

  Where am I?

  The answer came in sighs of wind, in the shush of waving fronds, in the rustle of foliage and the groan of slender tree limbs.

  Where else but here?

  Here is only illusion, Vorduthe replied.

  Is it? If it is, then everything is illusion.

  The voice was becoming strangely firmer. With each succeeding word it seemed to detach itself from leaf and stem, from fern and frond, to become a definite tone: a smooth, confident, green tone. Vorduthe could almost put a face to it, could feel a kind of personality behind it.

  Without volition on his part, he plunged deeper into the jungle, which seemed to be of endless depth. Suddenly he was in a little glade, and here a pageant was presented to him. It reminded him of the mythic pageant played out yearly in Arelia, which told how Irkwele, the sky god, made the world. But here the pictures were mind pictures; some of them one could have drawn on sketching bark, some not.

  He had already heard something of the story from Mistirea. The lake had poured itself from the sky, where it had once dwelt among the stars. It was a godlike intelligence that had created both the forest and the artifact trees. It had also placed people on the island, to live in harmony with the trees.

  For many generations of Peldainians the spirit in the lake had been cooperative, receptive to the trained minds of successive high priests. But now it was growing stronger and intractable.

  It was stretching, extending itself. It no longer wanted to be restrained. Peldain’s strange botany was its body, and that body wanted to grow. Peldain as a garden for intelligent animals to live in was an indulgence that no longer mattered. It was to become rank with life, and the mind-jungle surrounding Vorduthe boiled with eagerness.

  Vorduthe was glad to see it. This was the revenge he had spoken of to Kana-Kem. He would encourage the spirit in the lake to choke the island.

  But what was this… he had not counted on the forest being so voracious, so hungry for conquest. It had a greater lust for it than had King Krassos or any of his forebears. Vorduthe saw the forest rage unchecked and invade the sea, mutating all the time.

  It would seize the whole world. In time, it would reach the Hundred Islands.

  “So now there is a fresh mind to contend with,” the green voice said calmly. “Listen, you speak of illusions. You are troubled by dreams. Well, here is a dream.”

  The viridescent jungle faded. Vorduthe felt his eyes close involuntarily. He was falling asleep.

  When he awoke, he felt refreshed. He was lying on a low fleece-covered bed. A pleasant breeze, carrying the tang of the sea, drifted through a nearby open window.

  His gaze fell on a ceiling of gaily painted timber, typically Arelian in design. Idly he let his eyes scan the rest of the room, and everything he saw he knew.

  He was in his sleeping quarters in his villa, on the headland overlooking Arcaiss.

  He leaped from the bed and strode to the window. Far below was the harbor, with trade ships floating at anchor. Partly obscured by the headland were the naval docks, and there he recognized some of the ships that had carried his expedition to Peldain.

  The sun had not long risen, and cast dazzling streamers of gold on the flat sea.

  For long moments Vorduthe stared at the vivid scene. He did not turn until he heard the sound of the door panel sliding open behind him. What he saw then sent his heart leaping.

  The Lady Kirekenawe Vorduthe had stepped into the room. She wore a simple sleeping gown. Her hair fell about her shoulders, and she was smiling.

  She moved with all the grace and suppleness he had once known and delighted in.

  “I woke feeling different,” she said. “So I knew I would find you here.”

  Vorduthe himself had slept naked, as was his habit. Her eyes were traveling with hungry anticipation over his body, which was stirring.

  He reached out. She rushed to him, her body warm and pulsing.

  Together, they fell upon the low bed.

  The angle of the sunlight falling through the windows had dipped by the time they finished their exertions. They relaxed, luxuriating in each other’s aroma.

  Suddenly she touched his lips with her fingers. “You must go now. It is time.”

  “No,” he tried to say, but wife and villa rushed from him. He was in darkness, suspended in warm liquid. His lungs ached with the need for air.

  No more than two minutes could have passed.

  He struck out for the surface. Mistirea was floating there patiently, and he waited while Vorduthe filled his lungs and regained his strength.

  Wordlessly they swam to the shore. The two men stood dripping by the lakeside, facing one another.

  “You encountered the spirit,” Mistirea said. “I can see it in your eyes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you hold it in bounds?”

  “I do not know.”

  “You must understand how to influence the spirit,” Mistirea told him. “Its power is that of a god, but in nature it is elemental, like a young child. You must be the adult that commands that child.”

  “It no longer is so,” Vorduthe said, shaking his head. “The spirit grows. It is maturing like a living creature. It has thrown off its childhood.”

  Mistirea’s eyes blazed with alarm. “Then you must command it as one man commands another! As a king rules a subject! Impose your will!” His voice fell. “I know you have the strength to do this. I am not mistaken in my judgment.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Do not deny it. I am not High Priest of the Lake for nothing. Tomorrow you will dive again.”

  He handed Vorduthe a thi
ck-napped cloth with which to dry himself. Vorduthe did so and clothed himself. But he refused to accompany Mistirea back to the temple.

  Instead he climbed the hill above Lakeside and sat on the fringe of Cog Wood, looking down. He spent a while studying the lake, noting the way it was cupped by the sloping terrain as if it had indeed been dumped from above, supported by an embankment to the west.

  If he quieted his mind, after the manner that Mistirea had taught him, he fancied he could almost sense currents of thought running through the network of pale branches over his head. He understood Cog Wood now, since his immersion in the lake’s mind-jungle. Within the twisted boughs were what amounted to nerves, and they linked up to form a continuous skein throughout the wood. It was an attempt by the lake, at some time in the past, to create a vegetable version of a brain. Perhaps, he thought, the spirit had intended to transfer itself from the lake to this brain, but the wood had proved unable to sustain consciousness. It was like an arboreal version of some sessile creature, stupid and unmoving, but mentally sensitive to what went on around it.

  Apparently even Mistirea did not know the meaning of this past experiment. It, like the sculpted hill-maiden, created at a time when the forest had been much less extensive than it was now, had become lost in the mists of Peldain’s history. It never seemed to occur to Peldainians to make a record of events, so that after one generation all was usually forgotten.

  Vorduthe’s state of enforced calm did not last long. When it broke, his brooding feelings came tumbling through. He still burned for revenge, sickened by Octrago’s treachery—even though he could, to a limited extent, understand the motive for the tortured prince’s actions.

  He had it in his power to exact that revenge. But if he did, Arelia’s turn would come. Not immediately—not for a hundred years, perhaps. But it would come, and nothing could stop it.

  On the other hand he could exert himself to tame the being in the lake. Vorduthe was used to sizing up a newly met personality, and he sensed that the lake’s was not yet stronger than his own. As Mistirea said, it was susceptible. But then, Peldain would be saved, secure within its forest barrier, and Octrago would have triumphed.