by Ari Marmell
“An advance force?” Davro asked, gesturing at the corpses around them even as he straightened and readied his spear once more. “To test our strength?”
“Perhaps,” Gundrek conceded, “but I think maybe not. There is something …”
As if to confirm his guess, a single figure rode forward from the assembled throng. He towered high upon a mighty charger, and his armor was a monstrosity of blackened steel and polished bone.
“I drove my enemy into the marsh,” he called, though only Gundrek, Davro, and a few of the other ogres could understand his words, “in the hopes of slowing them down, so that I might run them to ground. That they have led me to you is greater fortune than I might have hoped. Otherwise, I’d have lost many days searching for your home.”
Gundrek stood tall and stepped forward, Davro a mere step behind. “And who are you,” he asked in heavily accented Human, “that you should seek us out?”
“I am Corvis Rebaine. And you,” the human added, with an expansive gesture that encompassed the vast array of broken bodies, “are precisely what I need.”
“ARE YOU SURE you can keep up?” Corvis asked, concerned.
“As long as you don’t have the poor beast galloping the entire way, yes.” Davro actually huffed. “The day a healthy ogre can’t outlast a horse is the day I hang up my sword for good.”
“Umm, Davro, you tried that already. That’s why I found you herding pigs.”
“Oh, shut up.”
Corvis, his head bobbing slightly with Rascal’s methodical gait, watched around him as the ground passed beneath their feet. The grasses glowed with a jade sheen in the light of the afternoon sun, and the grazing animals watched them pass with a minimum of alarm. Clearly the beasts of this place had few worries or concerns. The trees, though sporadic, were tall, their leaves thick in the full bloom of health. A few white clouds drifted over the mountains, casting enormous shadows upon the valley.
“This is a beautiful place you picked to live,” Corvis admitted. “I’m surprised there isn’t a settlement here.”
“Don’t get any ideas, Rebaine. I like it nice and empty.”
“Relax, Davro. I’m not moving in, just commenting. And I promise you, I’ll do my best to get you back here just as soon as possible.”
“Why, how kind of you. That’s so considerate, I could just squat.”
“I’m trying to make conversation,” Corvis protested. “To make the journey go faster.”
“I see. You know what’s even better than trying to make conversation?”
“What?”
“Not trying to make conversation.”
“Perhaps I’ll be quiet, then.”
“Miracles do happen.”
Corvis, deciding he wasn’t apt to get the better of this particular conversation, chose to watch the miles and the scenery pass in silence.
It was Davro, in fact, who finally broke the hush. Just as they reached the edges of the foothills, where even the tiny knolls tapered off into sprawling flatlands, he asked, “Rebaine … How by all the reeking hells did you even find me?”
The former warlord grinned down from his perch atop Rascal’s back. “I didn’t have to find you. I cast a locating spell on each of my officers and advisers at the start of my campaign twenty years ago. Never saw any reason to dispel the enchantment, so it’s still active. All I have to do is concentrate on you, and I’ve got an exact direction and approximate distance.”
Davro scowled, his tusks quivering. “Didn’t trust us?”
“Hell, no!” Corvis laughed briefly. “I didn’t trust anyone at the time, though, so you shouldn’t take it personally.”
“Fine. So you can find me. Seilloah and—what was that reptile’s name? Valescienn. You know how to get to them, too?”
“Well …” Corvis frowned briefly, an expression not lost on the ogre stomping along beside him, flattening the flora as he walked. “Seilloah, yes.”
“Not Valescienn?” Davro asked in mock sympathy. “Did the poor widdle sorcerer overestimate his spelly-welly?” He grinned wickedly at the disgust sliding across Corvis’s features.
“Something’s disrupted the spell on Valescienn. Not sure what it might have been, or even if it was deliberate or not.”
“Someone broke one of your spells by accident? My admiration grows by leaps and bounds.”
“It’s an old spell, damn it! And a small one! It’s entirely possible—”
“I bet one of Rheah Vhoune’s spells would have held up.”
Corvis glowered. “You’re not planning to make this journey pleasant, are you?”
Davro looked at him seriously, his single eye glaring straight into the human’s own. “Not in the slightest. Why should I be the only one who’s miserable?”
Another mile passed in silence. The terrain flattened, broken only by grasses waving in the wind and an occasional copse of fir trees.
“So where is Seilloah, O Master Wizard?” the ogre said abruptly. “You still haven’t told me where we’re going.”
Corvis, who’d hoped his companion might forget the issue for a while longer, squared his shoulders.
“Well, you know her fondness for—umm, sylvan surroundings, right?”
“Rebaine …”
“And we know that, being who and what she is, she doesn’t have a lot of the innate prejudices and superstitions a lot of the common folk are prone to.”
Davro’s jaw was beginning to twitch. “Rebaine? Where?”
Corvis sighed. “If I’m judging the distance right … Theaghl-gohlatch.”
The ogre drew back, his eye widening so far his entire face stretched. He hissed, little more than an indrawn breath, and the hand that wasn’t already clutching his spear dropped instinctively to the hilt of his newly polished sword.
“You’re mad! You’ve gone absolutely, stark-raving insane!”
“I’m as sane as I ever was,” Corvis said mildly.
“Oh, that’s reassuring! No! Not a chance! We might as well just have it out right here! I’ll have a better chance of getting home that way than I ever will in Theaghl-gohlatch.”
“I doubt it’s as bad as all that.”
“Go to hell. You humans think of my people as savage—and maybe we are—but one of the first things we ever learn, before we set a single finger on a spear or a sword, is that death should accomplish something. You want me to face a few hundred soldiers armed only with a ladle and a live turkey, well, there’s honor to be gained dying in battle, so I might at least think it over before telling you to go rut yourself. But there is no way I’d even consider throwing my life away for no purpose at all! No. I’m not going.”
“I seem to recall an oath, Davro.”
“That was before I knew about this lunacy! I said I’d help to the best of my ability. Dying impaled on a bloodsucking tree by some forest demon is not the best of my ability.”
“Fine,” Corvis snapped, exasperated with the entire affair. “Walk with me as far as the edge of the forest. Then you can make camp and sit with Rascal while I go in and find Seilloah.”
“And what am I supposed to do while I’m waiting?”
“I don’t care! Sing campfire songs, tell the horse ghost stories-whatever!” Corvis kicked Rascal into a brisk trot, unconcerned with any reply the ogre might make.
And that, with the exception of essential observations such as “We’ll camp here,” and “Snore like that again and I’ll shove a rabbit up your nose,” was the extent of the conversation for the next five days. The miles passed at a crawl—the plains alone stretched on for almost three days, draining a surprisingly large portion of the rations Corvis carried.
Fortunately for the travelers’ stomachs, the plains gradually gave way to a thin wood that, according to Corvis’s map and the tug of his spell, would eventually thicken into the nigh-impassable forest of Theaghl-gohlatch. The wood was benign, at least initially, not to mention teeming with deer, wild rabbits, and a plethora of other edible creatures�
��including the occasional owl, which Davro insisted was a delicacy among his people. Upon entering the woodlands, Corvis retrieved a short recurved bow from his saddlebag, and set out to kill something a bit meatier than a shriveled apricot or flattened fig. He hadn’t bagged anything larger than a rabbit on their first night in the woods, but it took only a few tries the second evening before he put a steel-tipped shaft into the side of a large buck. Davro broke several thick branches from the nearby trees and whittled them into something approaching Y’s. One sharpened sapling later, they were sitting beside a cheerful fire, watching the animal slowly roast.
His tongue loosened and his attitude mollified by the prospect of a real meal, Davro condescended to speak that evening. “I suggest you smoke as much of this as possible and take it with you. You won’t want to shoot anything once you actually enter Theaghl-gohlatch.”
Corvis smiled around a mouthful of venison, trying to catch the juices before they rolled down his chin. “I think you’re being just a bit paranoid, Davro. Legends and superstition.”
“You’ll change your tune quickly enough when some banshee’s sucking your soul out through your pupils.”
Corvis’s only immediate response was a muted chuckle—but when he woke Davro for watch sometime around midnight, the ogre couldn’t help but notice the heavy scent of smoke mingling with the succulent aroma of the meat.
It was roughly four hours after noon the next day when Davro’s steady pace jerked to a sudden halt, Corvis pulling Rascal up alongside him. They stared in silence at the sight rising from the earthen floor to greet them.
“I’m going to take a wild stab at this,” Corvis said quietly, “and say that we’re here.”
It appeared as though the gods had decided, on a whim, that the forest needed a wall to spruce it up. Thick and heavy, consisting primarily of trees far older than those through which the travelers had passed, it formed a solid barrier. Between and around the ancient moss-covered trunks sprouted a variety of bracken and brambles, rough-edged leaves and needle-tipped thorns visible even in the dim light. If Corvis had half a dozen men with axes, he might have carved a man-sized passage in time to do any good. As it was, it appeared impossible for even a lone man, unmounted, to make his way into the thickets of Theaghl-gohlatch.
No way except for one perfectly clear path cutting through the impenetrable mass of trees, a mountain cave transported to the forest depths. It gaped open, an ovoid orifice that Corvis firmly insisted to himself did not look like a mouth, just as the overhanging branches that protruded into the tunnel did not look like fangs. Moisture, possibly dew or collected rainwater, trickled from some of those branches to drip irregularly onto the dirt below.
“I hate this,” Corvis said simply.
“Can’t imagine why,” the ogre told him. “Legend and superstition.”
“Yes, but it’s an awfully dark legend and superstition.”
“Can’t say I’d recommend carrying a torch in there, either. Some of those branches are pretty low hanging.”
Corvis shook his head and then determinedly slid down from the saddle. “I’m not entirely without magic, Davro. I can make light enough to see.” Brusquely, he adjusted the sword at his left side to a more comfortable angle and slung Sunder’s baldric over his left shoulder to rest at his right hip.
“Armor?” Davro asked.
“Not in there. I’d rather be able to move.”
The ogre shrugged. “Your call. If you’re not here in two days, I’m calling you dead and going home. Any later, and I won’t get back to my animals before the last of the food runs out or goes bad.”
“I told you, Seilloah will take care of that.”
“Only if you’re alive to ask her to.”
“Fair point. All right, Davro, wish me luck.”
“Why?”
Taking a deep breath to steady himself—after all, there was nothing to be worried about (and that gaping, slavering hole did not look like a mouth, damn it!)—Corvis stepped inside.
If someone had simply tossed a heavy cloth over his head, it could not have grown more instantly dark. Even though the passage loomed open behind him, the light itself seemed to lose its nerve, refusing to enter the depths of Theaghl-gohlatch. Corvis wondered if it was possible for light to be afraid of the dark, and then quickly gave up the notion.
All right, Corvis, focus already. Evil warlord. Terror of the East. Not about to let a forest stop us, are we?
Shaking off his doubts, Corvis muttered the words to a minor incantation. His surroundings began, barely perceptible at first but with growing rapidity, to brighten. He kept the illumination down to a muted glow, little more than a moderately sized lantern. He wanted to see, but he also wanted to disturb as few of the denizens of this place as possible. Somehow, the thought of flooding the surrounding hundred yards with daylight didn’t seem even vaguely inconspicuous.
Now that sight was more than a memory of happier moments, Corvis studied the environment, one hand hovering within a hairbreadth of Sunder.
The earth beneath his feet was a thick, tightly packed soil that clung tenaciously to the soles of his boots as he braved the darkness. Here and there, a small sapling, a hint of brush, or a far-ranging root would intrude into his path, but by and large he seemed to tread upon a road deliberately cut through the heart of the wood. On either side, reaching into a canopy of leaves too dark to make out, the trees lined up, soldiers of a relentless, disciplined army. Only a handful were visible at any given time, briefly touched by the light he cast as he walked, and just as rapidly fading back into the permanent gloom that was their entire world.
And if the branches quivered where the light touched them, if the leaves and twigs drew back from the gleaming, well, that was just a trick of the breeze and the rustling of small animals. Right?
The roof above, interwoven branches and heavy leaves, was lost in shadow beyond the range of his meager light. Corvis felt that even had he cast his spell with all the power at his command, the weight hanging over his head would still appear as nothing more than a dark, threatening veil.
The rustling of the trees grew more violent. Corvis could hear the gentle whisper of leaf upon leaf, the scraping of twigs and branches. The shadows cast by the looming trees danced across his face and arms, phantoms that threatened to claw at his eyes, his mind, his soul.
Shadows? On his face? Corvis suddenly swallowed, his throat dry as if he’d gulped down a mouthful of desert sand. He cast the spell; he was the only source of light! The shadows should be falling away from him.
Yet the flickering and dancing continued before him. And even as he glanced in growing apprehension to either side, determined to spot the shadows he knew must be stretching away from him into the forest, his eyes could pick out nothing but a wall of gloom, a curtain of darkness hanging, impenetrable, behind the first of what must have been countless rows of the ancient forest giants. He felt each of the hairs on his neck slowly stand up, and the Terror of the East barely repressed a shiver.
Slowly, Corvis looked back the way he came. He’d walked only a dozen steps or so into the heavy, unnatural night of Theaghl-gohlatch. Still, he was not even remotely surprised to discover the passageway sealed behind him; it was simply too apropos. Where before there was a portal—menacing but perfectly functional—into the forgotten world of light and life, there stood now only more of the implacable forest: layers upon layers of trees standing between him and whatever was out there.
With little other option, then, Corvis went forward.
I’ll admit this much: If—when—I do get out of here, I’m going to pay a damn sight more attention to Davro’s legends and superstition!
Only when he’d maintained his steady pace for several moments, and had grown as accustomed to the alien surroundings as he was ever likely to, did further details penetrate his numbed mind. Sounds-quiet, distant, muted, but present all the same—slowly worked their way into his ears. The call of an owl, the chitter of a squirrel of s
ome sort—they were all there, and more. For all the fear that lurked in this place like another hungry predator, the wood apparently contained all the requisite woodland life of any other forest. He found that oddly comforting. Hell, if a squirrel could live here, the place couldn’t be all bad, could it?
But this ephemeral respite proved just another taunting phantom, as he realized that the sounds never changed. No matter where he walked or what noise he made, the calls of the animals remained unaltered, neither drawing nearer nor rushing away in sudden fear. What briefly seemed a comfort was now mocking him, mocking his foolishness in daring to hope. It seemed as though all he heard—all he would ever hear—were the echoes of life that had not existed in this place for untold ages.
There! A sudden flash of movement on the path before him, barely within the last flickering inches of his light spell’s range. Nothing tangible, nothing identifiable, just motion where before there was none, and then back to the same, featureless trail.
Corvis, one hand upon each weapon, had all but convinced himself it was merely his imagination when he spotted it again, this time vanishing into the woods on his right. With lightning speed Corvis drew his sword, sending it whistling through the air. There was no sound of impact, no blood upon the blade. Somewhere, in the depths of Theaghl-gohlatch, the chittering of one of the squirrels slowly twisted and warped itself into a hair-raising cackle of malevolent glee.
It—they—were all around him now, darting in and out on the fringes of his light: ghosts and shadows, movement without form, never remaining long enough for him to make out any detail but the simple presence of—presence. Laughter echoed from the trees around him, cloaked in the call of the hunting owl or the rustling of the leaves. Another blur of movement, nearer than before. Corvis gasped at the sudden touch of fire across his left arm. He stared in shock at the wound-three perfectly parallel gashes, deep, bloody, and already swelling with some unnatural infection—that marred the surface of his skin.