Thasha said she wanted to bathe in the Ansyndra. He tried to dissuade her and got nowhere; she told him it might be their last chance for days. They found a descent, but not an easy one. Thasha looked at his leg and shook her head. “That’s all we need,” she laughed. “You at the bottom, shouting in pain, and our clothes up here by that tree.”
So he sat beside the dog and watched her creep down the broad rocks, spider-like, moving in and out of shadow. The river was a braid of murmuring darkness, and it was hard to tell when she reached it, until he realized that she had slowed, and was splashing palmfuls of icy water against her legs. The simple gesture enough to drive him mad. She moved a step deeper, staring fixedly at the opposite shore. Another step, and she was gone.
Pazel surged to his feet, terrified. Why in Pitfire had he let her go? Into that water out of Ilvaspar, a river that mixed with the River of Shadows?
His fright grew by the second. How could he have been such a fool? Thasha was gone, gone into the black turbulence he had sensed at the bottom of the temple pool. And suddenly he knew that she had been drawn to the river by more than a desire to bathe.
Then she rose and clambered for shore. Her eyes sought him, found him, and she hugged herself, and Pazel was so relieved that he never did ask, then or later, if the gesture meant that the water was freezing or that he was loved.
When dawn came the party rose and set off at once, for there was no breakfast to linger over, no tea to warm. They rounded the bluff and came back to the side of the Ansyndra, and soon the vast green crater was sprawling before them. Pazel had hoped the mystery of its nature would be resolved as they approached; but on the contrary, the place only became more alien and strange. The scrub and feathery grasses of the plain grew right up to its edge. Then the side of the hole fell straight down some thirty feet, to where the green surface began. The latter pressed tight against the rock, leaving barely a finger’s width of empty space, and often not even that.
What was it made of? How strong was it, how thick? Alyash tossed a rock onto the surface: it bounced and skittered and lay there in the sun. Not a liquid, then, and not flimsy either.
“It looks like elephant hide,” said Big Skip. “I’ll bet you could walk on it.”
Hercol stepped close to the riverbank. They could hear the sound of a waterfall as the Ansyndra plummeted into the dark depths, but even at its very edge they could not see much, for the green tissue stretched to within a few feet of the spray. But they could at least see the edge of the substance: it was some three inches thick.
“There’s a second layer below,” said Ibjen. And so there was: a second layer, slightly less green, about twenty feet beneath the first. And below that, a third? Pazel could not see it, but the dlomu (whose eyes could pierce the darkness better than human eyes) said that yes, there was a third; and the ixchel (whose eyes were better still) detected even a fourth, cracked and withered, about sixty feet below.
“And something else,” said Ensyl. “Struts, or rafters, on the underside of each layer, propping it up, maybe. But they are very irregular and thin.”
Myett peered down into the rushing void. “Those are not rafters,” she said. “They’re branches.”
There were grumbles of disbelief. “Branches,” Myett repeated. “And I would wager that those”-she swept her hand over the miles and miles of olive surface-“are leaves.”
“Oh, come now,” said the older Turach. “Leaves? All flattened, crushed together like a griddle cake?”
“Can you think of a simpler explanation?” asked the dlomic woman, Lunja.
“Pitfire, it’s true,” said Neeps, crouching. “The surface is dusty, like, but you can see veins if you look close. Those are treetops, by Rin.”
“Then we’re in the right place,” said Pazel.
“And so is Arunis,” said Bolutu. “The Infernal Forest. And he has taken the Nilstone deep within.”
“Then let us go and take it back,” said Cayer Vispek. “But there is no entrance here. We might aim for those rocks, but to my eye that is a two-day march, and who knows if the… leaves are as solid everywhere as here.”
“Something is different far off along the rim,” said Hercol, pointing east. “Perhaps the leaf is torn or folded; I cannot tell. But that too is miles off.”
“We could try to shimmy down the cliff beside the river here,” said Alyash, “but that’s a tricky wall. Very sheer, and wet with spray.”
“And dark, too, it must be, farther down,” said Dastu.
“Let’s make for that torn spot, if that’s what it is,” said Thasha. “Maybe we’ll find something along the way.”
Having no better option, they set out. The day was bright, and the dark green surface warmed quickly in the sun, and soon the heat was rolling off it with each puff of wind. For several miles there was almost no change in the surface. Here and there they could see a frayed edge, where two leaves were not quite perfectly joined. But they always overlapped, so that one could never catch a glimpse down into the crater. Pazel reflected morbidly that they still had no idea of its depth.
Slowly the thing Hercol had spotted came into view. There did appear to be a hole, but also something white protruding from it. When they arrived at last, they found themselves standing above a semicircular gap some twelve feet in diameter, opening right against the cliff wall. The edges were not torn but smooth and rounded, as though the opening was intentional.
The white shapes turned out to be flowers: enormous, fleshy blooms with dark stamens the size of bottle-brushes. They had a rich perfume, a mixture of honey and spirits. The flowers were not part of the leaf structure, but grew instead upon a woody vine reaching up out of the darkness. The vine was massive, and tightly grafted to leaf and stone. Its angle of descent was gradual, no more than a steep staircase, and indeed with its corkscrew pattern and elbow-turns it somewhat resembled a staircase, leading down to the next level.
“We could manage well enough on that, I dare say,” said Alyash.
“Look there!” said a dlomic soldier, pointing downward. “There’s another opening on the level below. And what’s that? Fruit? Am I seeing fruit on that blessed vine?”
It did look very much that way: five or six purple fruits, about fist-sized, dangling in a bunch near a second opening in the leaves.
“Beware your hopes, and your appetite,” said Hercol. “If ever I saw the makings of a trap, it is here.”
“Agreed,” said Jalantri, “but what if the entire forest is a trap? It must have done something to earn its name.”
Hercol looked gravely into the depths. “Let us descend one level,” he said. “We will collect those fruits but not taste them, for now. If we are starving-well, then we shall eat, and hope to live. But this is all too convenient.”
He went first, scrambling down the mighty vine, passing through the highest layer and stepping out gingerly onto the leaf-platform below. Pazel and Neeps went next, and couldn’t help but smile at each other: this was far easier than climbing the shrouds on the Chathrand, and a thousand times preferable to the iron ladders. Still, Pazel’s leg was throbbing again, and the wound felt itchy and inflamed.
When they reached Hercol, Neeps shouted to those above: “You can all come at once. That vine won’t break, it’s thick as a hawser!”
“Like your head, Undrabust, more’s the pity!” hissed Hercol. “Do you want to announce us to the sorcerer, and whatever else may dwell here? The next time you shout, I expect to find you menaced by something at least as deadly as a flame-troll.”
The tarboy glowered, abashed. The others descended without incident. Even the dogs managed well enough, scrambling down almost on their bellies. Pazel bent and touched the leaf surface: it was spongy, like the inside of a gourd.
When they were all on the lower level, Hercol picked the dark fruits: six in all, very juicy and soft. He placed them carefully in the pack Alyash wore. “They certainly smell delicious,” he said, “as they would, if they were meant to lure u
s down here.”
“Call me lured, then,” said Big Skip. “Your mul lasts a fair spell in the stomach, I’ll admit. But not this long.”
“You can see the branches, farther in,” said Ensyl. “And there in the distance: that may be a trunk.”
Pazel could make out a few of the pale, slender branches, piercing the leaf on which they stood and dividing overhead, to prop up the uppermost level like the beams of a roof. But he could not see any trunk. It was too dark already: about as dark as the berth deck at twilight. And this, he thought, is just the first level down. He glanced back up along the vine and saw a sliver of blue sky, and wondered what on earth they were getting themselves into.
“The vine keeps going down,” said Neda, crouching, “and there’s another hole like this one, but smaller. And more fruit, too, I think.”
Down they went. The third gap was indeed smaller, and there were but three fruits. And now it was truly dark. Since the holes were so far apart, no direct sunlight could reach them, only a dull, reflected glow, and small pinpricks of light along the cliff wall.
Pazel bent over the third gap. A mix of pungent smells, earth and mold and rotting flowers, issued from it. He looked up at Hercol. “Time we lit one of those torches, don’t you think?”
Hercol considered. “We have but six,” he said, “and each will burn but an hour-or less, if our swim in the Ansyndra has damaged them. But yes, we should light one now. We cannot go on blind.”
“We dlomu are not blind, yet,” said Bolutu.
“And we ixchel,” said Ensyl, “will not be blind until the darkness is nearly perfect. But if you light that torch it will dazzle us, and we will see no better than you.”
“Let us go first, and report what we see,” said Myett.
The others protested. “You can’t be serious,” said Thasha. “You don’t have any idea what’s down there.”
“But we know a great deal about not getting caught,” said Ensyl. “More than any of you, in fact.”
“Go then,” said Hercol, “but do not go far. Take a swift glance and return to us.”
The two women started down, with the matchless agility of ixchel. They were lost to Pazel’s sight almost at once, but at his shoulder Ibjen whispered: “They are halfway to the next level. They are pausing, gazing at the space between. Now they are descending farther. They are upon the fourth level, and walking about. But what are they doing? They are going on! Hercol, they are leaving my sight!”
“Fools!” whispered Hercol. Stepping onto the vine, he began to rush down after them. But then Ibjen hissed, “Wait! They’re returning.” And minutes later the ixchel were back beside them, unharmed.
“We saw nothing threatening at all,” said Ensyl. “But we had two surprises. First, it is very hot, and hotter as you descend. Hot and wet.”
“And the other surprise?” asked Neeps.
The ixchel glanced at each other. “We reached the fourth level,” said Myett at last. “There is no fifth. The vine merely continues into the darkness. We crawled down it a short distance, but never caught sight of the floor.”
“It can’t be much farther,” said Big Skip. “We’re down some seventy feet already from the rim. Drop a torch, I say. That’s how we’d explore the old silver mines at Octray, when I was a lad.”
“You would only soak the torch,” said Ensyl, “and announce us to anyone or anything waiting below. Better to let us lead the way, and light it when we reach the bottom.”
Now even the dlomu grumbled about “climbing blind.” Myett looked at them and laughed. “They don’t trust us, Ensyl,” she said in their own speech. “Not even the black giants want to put their lives in crawly hands.”
She was forgetting Pazel’s Gift, or not caring that he heard. Impulsively, he said, “This is rubbish. They can see, we can’t. Let’s get on with it.”
No one liked the plan, but no one had a better. They descended. After the fourth level Pazel could not even see the vine he clung to. He trod on Neda’s fingers, and Dastu trod on his. The silence was oppressive, and the heat more so. There was no breeze whatsoever, and the moist air felt like syrup in his lungs. “It goes deeper!” the ixchel kept saying, amazed.
The sickly sweet odors grew alongside the heat. Pazel’s hands became slippery. He could not judge how far they had descended (even looking up he saw nothing, now), but a point came when he knew that it was much farther than the four leaf-levels combined, and still they went down and down.
Finally Ensyl said what they had all been waiting for: “The bottom, at last! Watch your step, now! Great Mother, what are we standing in?”
Pazel heard those below him exclaiming softly, and a squelching sound as they left the vine. He reached the ground himself: it felt like a heap of fishing nets: moist, fibrous, very strong.
“Hot as midsummer in the marshes,” whispered the younger Turach.
“Now is the time for that torch,” whispered Myett. “We are almost blind ourselves. This is not the darkness of a forest; it is the darkness of a tomb.”
A scraping sound: Hercol was struggling with a match. Finally it caught, and Pazel watched the tiny flame lick the end of the oil torch. The match sputtered, nearly dying; then all at once the torch burst into light.
Pazel gasped. They were in a forest of jewels, or feathers, or cloaks of colored stars. His eyes for several moments simply could not sort out all the hues and shapes and textures.
“Plants, are they?” whispered Jalantri, wild-eyed, tensed like a cat.
“Obviously,” hissed Dastu.
The things grew all around them, some just inches tall, others towering overhead. The colors! They were hypnotic, dazzling. But the shapes were even stranger: branching sponges, serpentine trunks ending in mouths like sucker fish, bloated knobs, delicate orange fans. Bouquets of fingers. Clusters of long, flexing spoons.
“They feel fleshy,” said Ibjen.
“Don’t touch them, you daft babe!” said Alyash, smacking his hand.
It was hard not to touch them, the things grew so thick and close. Pazel tried to look through the mass of petals, bulges, braided tentacles, feathery limbs, flaring blue, purple, green in the torchlight. They were even shedding color: rainbow droplets were falling and splattering everywhere, as though the things were exuding brilliant nectar or pollen from their pores.
“Fireflies!” said Bolutu suddenly, and Pazel turned just in time to see them: a trail of blue sparks, whirling around Bolutu’s upraised hand, then speeding off to a cluster of growths beyond the torchlight, where they all winked out together. There were other insects, too: flying, crawling, wriggling, with bright reflective spots on wings or feelers. Only the fireflies, however, glowed with their own light, and they were already gone.
Pazel wiped his forehead. The hot air wrapped him in a smothering embrace. Then he felt Ensyl scramble nimbly to his shoulder. “The ground is alive,” she said. “Have a look at your boots.”
Muffled cries and curses: their feet were being embraced by pale, probing tendrils, wriggling up from the ground on all sides. They were easily broken, but relentless in their work. The scene might have been comic, if anyone had the heart to laugh: twenty figures shuffling in place, lifting one foot and then the other. “Pitfire, we can’t stay here,” said the older Turach.
“Keep close to me,” said Hercol. Raising the torch, he set off in a straight line, forcing a path through the rubbery growths. The others fairly stampeded after him. They had not gone twenty steps when Pazel realized that they were no longer pushing through so many of the weird living things. Hercol stopped and turned to look back, and Pazel did the same.
They had been standing in a thicket formed by the great vine. The growths surrounded it, grew atop it, buried it in their flesh. The vine snaked away across the forest floor, every inch of it covered with growths.
“Like a reef back home,” said Neeps, “except that it’s so blary hot.”
“It feels like the bottom of the sea,” said Pazel. �
�And this is just a clearing. Those growing things are still all around us.”
“Other things, too,” said Big Skip. He pointed away from the cliff: white, rope-like strands were dangling there, from somewhere far above. They were thick as broom handles and segmented like worms, and they ended in coils a few feet above the ground.
“There must be hundreds,” said Ensyl. “They go on and on into the forest.”
“The plants seem hardly of this world,” said Neda, gaping.
“Maybe they’re not plants at all,” said Pazel.
“Well, naturally they’re plants, Muketch,” said the younger Turach. “What else, by Rin?”
“Mushrooms,” said Thasha.
“Mushrooms?” Bolutu looked startled. “That could well be so. Fungus, molds, slimes-they all thrive in darkness. And moisture too, for that matter.”
“And heat,” said Cayer Vispek. “But great devils, a whole forest of fungi?”
“Not the trees,” said Thasha. “They’re plants, all right. That vine is a plant too, and there must be others. But most of these things-yes, I’m sure they’re mushrooms.”
“Come here often, do you?” asked Alyash. “Summer picnics and such?”
Thasha turned away, indifferent to his taunts. But Pazel touched her arm, trying in vain to get her attention. The familiar, faraway look was creeping back into her eyes.
Neeps pointed off to the left. There the growths, though tall as apple trees, were the same parasol-shapes as any mushrooms of the North. “I guess that settles it,” he said.
Hercol put his hand on Ildraquin. “Our quarry is motionless, but still far away. Let us form ranks and be off. Ibjen, bear the torch as you would bear no weapon. Stand in the center and hold it high. And to all of you: need I say that Alyash is right? You must touch nothing, if you can avoid it, and be ever on your guard.” He glanced back to where they had started. “The vine heads toward the center, and that is where we are bound. Let us follow it-safely to one side, of course-for as long as we may.”
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