The Forest King

by Paul B. Thompson

  “Balif? The general is here?”

  “He is near.” Because Taius was so unstable, Mathi decided to not disclose her mission to him. At that time the fewer who knew, the better.

  “I bless the name Balif,” he said, despairing, to Mathi’s astonishment.

  “What is your story, Taius?” Treskan asked. “I am in General Balif’s employ, but I did not join him until after the trial of—of the Nameless. Who are you, and how came you to be here?”

  The beast-elf relaxed his threatening posture. He had actually served in Balif’s guard during the Forest War. In those days his beastly traits were hidden by Vedvedsica’s magic. He thought he was an ordinary elf until the transformation spell worked by the magus began to fail. He tried to hide his condition as long as he could, but it soon became impossible to conceal. Dozens of others like him had mixed in Silvanesti society, serving as soldiers, scribes, artisans, and performers. Some had even married full-blooded elves and had offspring.

  Mathi was shocked. Offspring of the brethren and elves? She had not heard that before. Did Silvanos know? Did the Sinthal-Elish, the assembly of great nobles, know?

  “They know. And they will never speak of it. It is their greatest shame,” Taius said.

  There was a dimension Mathi had not suspected. What great families were mingled with the blood of the beast-elves?

  Treskan said, “How did the nomads take you?”

  Taius’s eyes glittered in the dark. “I had just brought down a kill, a yearling doe, when their dogs caught my scent. I couldn’t shake them off, so I turned to fight. I was netted like a partridge. When the humans saw what they had caught, they put me in here.”

  With sudden violence, Taius leaped upward, grabbing the cage roof with his hands and feet. He shook the willow lattice and roared. The bars held. From a distance, they heard laughter and taunts from their captors.

  He dropped lightly to the ground and retreated to the darkest corner of the cage.

  “I wonder why they put us together?” Mathi wondered aloud.

  “The centaurs they’ve taken are tied in an open pen. The freaks they cage.”

  Taius would not speak anymore. Wary of their mercurial fellow prisoner, Mathi and Treskan moved to the opposite end of the cage, where firelight made a dim haven from the darkness.

  She dozed. She could not rest. Every sound teased her awake. Passing nomads coughed, hacked up phlegm, or talked loudly, and each disturbance jolted Mathi awake. Treskan sat slumped against the bars, asleep or brooding. Taius was absolutely silent.

  Time passed. She didn’t know how much. In the small hours, something hard thumped against the back of her head. She thought a nomad was amusing himself, flinging stones at the half-breed. When the blow was repeated, she turned angrily to insult her abuser.

  No one was there.

  Daybreak was closer than sunset. Most of the nomads were asleep in their tents. She could see random hands or feet poking out of open tent flaps. The campfires had burned down to embers. Now and then an alert human loped into view with a polearm on his shoulder.

  After a watchman passed, another stone came whirling out of the night. Mathi saw it come from the deep shadows between two tents. It was a round, water-washed pebble tumbling end over end, and it struck her square on the forehead.

  Like a ghost, a lean figure bereft of color slowly emerged from the tents. It took Mathi a moment to realize it was Lofotan, wearing a long, gray cloak that reached his knees. He moved with all the grace of his race, sidling up to the cage with such calm that not even his breath could be heard.

  Starlight gleamed on a length of sharp bronze. Two strokes, and the hide lacing holding the cage closed was gone. Then, without a word or gesture, Lofotan wafted back to the black gap he came from.

  Mathi shook Treskan. He started, fists clenched, ready to fight. Mathi hissed at him to be quiet. She stood, head and shoulders bent down by the low top.

  “Up,” she whispered. Treskan obeyed.

  They braced their shoulders against the bars and pushed. The green wood lattice shifted. Treskan got his arm out and used it to push against the cage frame. They heaved again, shifting the cage top far enough to one side to allow them to climb out.

  In a flash Taius was beside them. Treskan almost cried out in alarm when he felt his furry flanks brush against him. In one fluid movement, Taius was out and on the ground, crouched on all fours. He looked back at Mathi and the scribe, staring with amazement from inside the cage. Fangs flashed in a grimace—or smile?—and the beast melted into the night.

  With far greater deliberation, Treskan and Mathi climbed out. They tugged the cage top back into place and hurried away, making for the spot where Mathi saw Lofotan vanish. Not two steps into the shadows, she felt a slim, hard hand clamp over her mouth.

  “You took your time!” he murmured in the girl’s ear.

  After he removed his hand, Mathi hissed back, “My thought exactly!”

  “It was not my plan to attack thousands by myself. Come.”

  Lofotan led them through a maze of tents populated by snoring, snorting nomads. They hid once or twice from prowling sentries then slipped through the palisade to freedom. On open ground, Lofotan broke into a run. Mathi and Treskan were not fleet enough to keep up with an elf of Lofotan’s size. Stumbling, Treskan pleaded to Lofotan to slacken his pace.

  “Do you want to linger near their camp? Their dogs may pick up our scent again.”

  With Taius free she doubted that. He smelled too strongly of beast. Given a choice, the hounds would chase him and not a human or a near-elf such as Mathi. Still, Lofotan’s point was well made. Speed would put more safe ground between them and the nomads. She jogged after the spry warrior.

  Back in the myrtle thicket, they found Balif awake, still chained to the tree. Rufe slept soundly a few feet away.

  The general greeted him courteously.

  “My lord, you seem … yourself.”

  “So I am. I cannot explain it.” Even shackled, the elf was extraordinarily poised. “You’ve had quite an adventure tonight.”

  Ruefully Mathi agreed. She related her experiences in the nomad camp, leaving out their exposure as half-breeds. Treskan let her do all the talking.

  “They didn’t question any more closely than that?” said Balif.

  “No, my lord.”

  She described the cage and her fellow captive. “This Taius claimed he had served under you in the Forest War,” Mathi said.

  “I remember a warrior named Taius. A very brave soldier of noble countenance.” His countenance was no longer so noble, but he was civilized enough not to attack Mathi on sight.

  Then, not knowing exactly why she did so, she related to Balif the story of Taius’s true nature. The general listened calmly.

  “He’s not as far along as some others,” Balif said. Sooner or later the transformed beasts always reverted to their animal origins, Balif said. Vedvedsica’s spell, though powerful, could not overcome nature forever.

  Taius retained a fading veneer of civilization, the general continued. If he lived long enough, he would forget everything and be nothing but a beast. The worst creatures were the ones who had almost forgotten their elf lives. They were beasts in every way, but their minds still held memories of their former lives. Because of that they were filled with rage over their situation.

  Vedvedsica had exploited that rage, Mathi knew, by urging them to find and kill Balif.

  Lofotan appeared. He looked haggard but alert. “We should move,” he said. “By daylight we shall be too exposed here.”

  Balif agreed. Lofotan had packed the baggage onto the horses while Mathi and Treskan were captive. All they had to do was release Balif, rouse the kender, and go.

  Lofotan unwired the links and removed Balif’s chains. Rubbing his wrists, the general stood. Mathi stooped to pick up the costly bronze links.

  “Mathani.”

  She straightened, coiling the chain in her hands.

  “Matha
ni, your gown.”

  She realized that her garment was still torn open. Mathi waited for the questions and the denunciations that would follow. She looked at Balif blankly, leaving to him the final challenge.

  Lofotan returned. “We must hurry!”

  Balif gazed intently at her. Without a word, he took the cloak he’d been sitting on and draped it around Mathi’s exposed back. He walked on and swung into the saddle. Lofotan kicked Rufe awake. Yawning, the kender scratched his ribs, got up, and walked off alone in the predawn darkness.

  Why didn’t Balif, general of the Speaker’s army, denounce her as an impostor? Did he take Mathi for a half-breed, as the nomads had? The existence of half-humans was officially denied in Silvanost on the grounds that such pairings could not be fruitful. Secretly, half-humans were subject to summary arrest, exile, or imprisonment without trial. Balif was known to be a tolerant elf. Perhaps his own condition made him more sensitive to the question of who was an elf and who wasn’t.

  Puzzling over it, Mathi got on her pony. She had just settled in the saddle when Treskan came furtively to her side.

  “My talisman. I must have it back,” he said in a low voice.

  “Forget it.”

  “One of the nomads—Vollman?—must still have it. I have to have it back, or I am lost!”

  Mathi looked around. Rufe—where was he? He was the perfect one to steal back a trinket, but where could one find a kender when the kender was on the loose, not wanting to be found?

  CHAPTER 13

  Leaders

  Balif’s party rode south, away from the nomad war band. For reputedly empty territory, they ran into plenty of people on the move—centaurs and kender, mostly. The few small groups of humans they spotted were mixed men, women, and children. The elves were unable to approach them, as the family bands fled at the sight of riders.

  Balif dictated notes to the Speaker from the saddle. He was calm, insightful, and accurate in his judgment of the situation. There was no law in the eastern province. Human war bands crossed the territory with impunity, and they were trying to drive out anyone not part of their own tribe. The wanderfolk were numerous but not a serious threat to Silvanesti hegemony. They were simply migrants, living off the land, bothering no one but belligerent nomads and hysterical officials such as Governor Dolanath.

  Mathi noticed that the general did not use the official Silvanesti name for the east, Silvanoth, and that he played down the potential problems the kender presented. She asked Balif about that point.

  “The wanderfolk are not warriors or nation-builders. They are no threat to the Speaker’s rule or the elven nation. In fact, they may prove to be a useful buffer against the humans and centaurs,” he said.

  “Those little oddlings useful?” Lofotan commented sarcastically.

  “Would you buy a house infested with cockroaches?” asked Balif. Lofotan avowed he wouldn’t unless the pests were exterminated. “Not an easy thing to do. Smoke, poison, and traps will get many, but the house may never be free of them. Do you understand?”

  Lofotan easily saw a connection between cockroaches and kender, but Mathi felt she understood better. If the east were thickly populated with kender, it would put off the nomads from settling there in large numbers if at all. They were perfectly willing to fight the elves for the land, but the kender wouldn’t fight; they would just dwell there, doing all their infuriating kender things.

  “Wanderfolk are bigger than insects,” Lofotan mused. “Maybe the humans can eradicate them.”

  Balif said, “We must not let that happen.”

  Before his majordomo could question the wisdom of that, Balif trotted ahead, signaling an end to the conversation. Treskan hurried after him, eagerly scratching down every word the general had said.

  As they drew near the forested region just inland from Golden-Eye Bay, they found signs of conflict: patches of burned grass, broken spears, and shattered arrows. The heads had been carefully salvaged, but there was no mistaking the ruined shafts of either. When the first tall trees came into sight, a delegation of kender emerged from the woods and approached them.

  “Greetings, illustrious General,” said the lead kender, holding a green sapling with a scrap of white cloth tied to the tip.

  “General? What general?” Lofotan said warily.

  “This is the storied commander of the elder folk, is he not?” The kender with the sapling pointed at Balif.

  “You have us confused with others.”

  “The Longwalker told us of your coming.”

  Balif said, “The Longwalker deserves his name. Is he here?”

  The kender wagged his head back and forth. “I don’t see him.”

  Behind the flag bearer were five more kender, all bearing wounds of various sorts. The leader said, “Where is your army?”

  “What army?” said Lofotan.

  “The army that will defend the greenwood against the horsemen.”

  A large number of kender, traveling more or less independently, had taken to the woods to escape the bands of marauding humans. Some kender had been captured, brutally treated, then turned loose as a warning to the others to leave the territory.

  “Who gives orders for you to leave?” asked Balif.

  “The chief of the horse riders, Bulnac by name.”

  “Is this Bulnac a veritable giant, seven feet tall?” Mathi put in.

  One of the silent kender stepped forward, waving a tightly bandaged arm. “Yes, yes, that’s him! Closer to eight feet, I’d say!”

  According to the kender, Bulnac had recently led an uprising against the chief of his people, the Monsha. Balif knew the Monsha, or Mon-shu as they were called by the elves. They were a populous, powerful tribe whose range was in the far northern Great Plains. Losing his fight to gain control of the tribe, Bulnac had ridden away with his supporters to carve out a new realm for himself in the east.

  Lofotan and Mathi glanced at their leader. He sat immobile, gazing over the heads of the battered kender delegation.

  “Bad tidings,” he finally said. “A failed coup makes the loser desperate. This Bulnac will be difficult to deal with.”

  “Your excellent self can do it,” said the flag-bearer cheerfully.

  Balif looked at each of the little folk in turn. “I will do it,” he said solemnly. “But you must help.”

  Lofotan started to protest, but his lord’s manner dissuaded him. Inwardly Mathi rejoiced. For reasons she did not understand, she wanted Balif to help the wanderfolk. The sympathy she felt for the race—a word she did not completely comprehend—was something new. But she was pleased to know Balif would be fighting the savage humans and defending the kender.

  He had no army. He had a single old retainer, a disguised human scribe, an unknown quantity of kender to command, and Mathi. She had no idea if the wanderfolk could be welded into an effective fighting force, but with those few words—“I will do it”—Balif had pledged himself to try.

  Balif and his companions dismounted. They led their horses into the cool shade of the woods. Born to the green, Balif glowed with happiness to be under trees again. Close on his heels, Lofotan brooded. Treskan gripped his stylus. The nomads had taken his best instrument. He’d had a spare in his gear back at camp, and he held on to it for dear life. He had been writing all morning, even when conversation stopped. Mathi supposed he was compiling impressions of the territory and situation.

  The forest was old and long-standing. Oaks and beeches predominated, interspersed with cedars so dark, their green fronds appeared black. The trees had reached great heights, growing unmolested since the dawn of time. Centuries of leaf fall had smothered all undergrowth, leaving the space between the soaring trunks relatively open. Passing through the forest was like traversing some enormous, columned hall. The air was still. Birds flitted in the high branches. Motes sank slowly through high lances of sunshine.

  Tugging the packhorse reins behind her, Mathi’s mind turned back to her mission. Since discovering the gene
ral’s affliction, she had begun to wonder if she should continue with the plan to kidnap him. Would their creator prefer they left Balif to the mercies of his curse? Then there was her growing feeling that Balif should be left alone to deal with the human nomads and protect the kender.

  Her mental juggling was halted by a small face popping up right in front of hers.

  “Rufe!” she said. “You’re here now, are you?”

  “Tall people say the strangest things,” he replied. “If I weren’t here, who would you be speaking to?”

  Mathi pushed him aside with a theatrical sweep of her hand. Rufe fell in step behind her, gently patting Mathi’s pony.

  A quick survey revealed hundreds of kender lurking and lolling in the forest. They perched on low branches, feet swinging; they dodged in and out of the columned trunks, playing tag. Some were doing tricks for the amusement of their comrades. Mathi saw one kender show how he could slip his arm out of his sleeve then leave behind a leather glove as a false hand. With his freed hand, he probed pockets, tossed rocks, and tied and untied shoelaces.

  “What are we going to do with such folk?” Lofotan said. “The nomads will chop them down like wheat.”

  Balif remained curiously optimistic. “If you must fight against a sword, and you have no sword, take two knives.” It was an old saying, but Lofotan only frowned when he heard it.

  There was no camp to speak of, no central spot around which the kender gathered. The elf party walked on, leading their horses until the Longwalker appeared. The kender chief was, for him, grandly dressed in a white robe and buff suede boots too large for him. A gilded circlet crowned his head. From ten feet away Mathi could tell that the headgear was fake. The gold leaf was peeling at the edges, and the “gems” mounted on it were murky chunks of glass. Nevertheless, the Longwalker looked something like a leader of substance instead of just another short-statured vagabond.

  “Greetings, wonderful General,” he said, beaming.