She guided the image back to Tulana's chain, this time focusing the map in so that a relief of each island filled the entire table. Yet more figures appeared beside each of the images, showing the strength of the islands' fortifications and garrison, information updated regularly by her so-called merchants.
Gradually the plan started to form.
With a wave of her hands, the image on the mapping table disappeared. She touched her communications crystal.
"Inform my guards and first battle team to prepare for an immediate departure," she commanded sharply. "They are to report to me in one turning."
Without waiting for a reply, she snapped the crystal off.
First, though, she'd have to tell Gorgon about the delay. As she contemplated the promises and lies necessary, she had another long drink, but the trembling would not go away.
Chapter 11
Mark looked around suspiciously, feeling a tingle of discomfort running down the back of his neck. Back in Landra, he had become accustomed to the open friendliness of the people; after all, the "offworlders," as they were still called, were acknowledged heroes of the realm. He realized now he had become spoiled by the treatment.
While serving with the occupation force in Sarnak's old realm, he had also known a wariness and sullenness that was to be expected from a conquered people, and had gone out of his way to show the common people there a certain understanding. Perhaps it was being an American, he thought. Even when they'd beat a people, they'd wanted to be liked by them. But it was different here.
It seemed as if these folks, at best, simply didn't give a damn who they were. They just wanted to fleece them of their money and make life as difficult as possible.
The only positive thing about this was that the city of Portus, an independent city-state bordering the druid's forest realm, was unsurpassed in beauty.
They had flown in the evening before and the first sight of land from over a hundred miles away had been the high snow-capped mountains catching the golden-red hues of the early evening sun. The city flanked both sides of a narrow fjord, and the mountains beyond the town were covered with a forest which had left him awestruck.
The trees would have dwarfed the towering redwoods he had once seen north of San Francisco. Some rose over half a thousand feet into the air, their trunks nearly fifty feet across. The town itself was actually part of the forest, living trees supporting a spindly latticework of buildings that arched from trunk to trunk.
The tavern they had stayed in had actually been carved into a trunk with rooms suspended around the outside like barnacles on a rock.
"I hope this one pays off," Ikawa growled, his bad temper starting to show.
"We've got to be patient with these people," Leti replied, trying to smile.
Mark looked over at Ikawa, who was still bristling from their last rejection, the fifth of the day. The last merchant they had talked to in hope of obtaining equipment and a guide into the druid's realm had laughed them out of his office, calling Leti a spoiled brat of Jartan's who had no business in the area to start with. It had taken all of Ikawa's self-control, along with a restraining hand from Saito, to keep him from decking the man.
Leti paused for a moment, looking around as if lost. There were no streets in the traditional sense in this town, since the town was actually part of the forest, each trunk a building unto itself.
A burly man walked by, a heavy pack on his shoulders, and Leti hopefully stepped up to him.
"Excuse me, I'm looking for the traveling merchant Deidre."
"How come?" the man replied, as if annoyed at the interruption.
"We have business with her."
"What kind of business?"
"Private," Leti said quietly.
"Then she should have made better arrangements for you to find her," the man said, stepping past Leti.
"We'll pay you to take us there," Mark said, stepping in front of the man and holding out a silver coin.
He paused and looked up at Mark. "You're the folks interested in going inland, aren't you?"
Mark nodded.
The man laughed. "The only ones who go in there and come back are the ones the old man of the forest invites. Do yourselves a favor and go home."
"How do we get invited?"
"Listen, sonny," the man said evenly, "we make our living by trading with the old man. We're the only ones allowed in and back. No one's going to give away our secrets, and you can be damn certain no one's interested in getting the old man angry at them. And when it comes to Deidre, your best bet is to skip it. So just buy what you want here, and go home."
Without even asking, the burly man took the coin out of Mark's hand.
"Payment for some excellent advice," he said almost cheerfully and made as if to continue on.
"Damn it, I've had it with this shit," Walker snapped, coming up to block the man's path.
"Walker, don't," Mark commanded.
"Ah, so the mighty sorcerers are going to gang up and threaten me, is that it?" the burly man said, raising his voice. "An excellent display of Jartan's so-called sense of fair play."
"All we want to do is find Deidre," Walker snapped.
"Find her yourself." The man shouldered his way past, not bothering to look back.
"If you're looking for Deidre, I'm over here," a high, clear, and very amused voice called.
Mark looked up and saw a thin, almost childlike woman leaning over a balcony that arched between two trees. Her waist-length brown hair floated in the cool forest breeze, and her freckled face and green eyes were alight with laughter at the scene beneath her.
"I've been waiting for you," she said, and beckoned to the group.
"Is there something wrong?" Imada asked nervously, reaching out to touch Vena.
She flinched, drawing away as if his hands were poisonous. His heart breaking, he pulled away from her. She had been like this since they had left on what he had thought would be an exciting trip, one which for a girl who had grown up on a border outpost would be filled with wonder.
"Why won't you talk to me?" Imada sighed.
"There's nothing to say," Vena whispered, and she smiled, though somehow it looked brittle and cold, as if she was hiding something.
"I think I'll go for a walk," she went on. "Sitting in this room is bothering me too much."
She paused, looking into the mirror. He watched her closely. Funny, he never remembered her doing that when they had been in Landra and first come to Asmara. All her attention had always been focused on him. But now, he noticed, she could not pass a mirror without pausing, staring at her reflected image, sometimes drawing close to it as if she was gazing at an interesting stranger. She noticed him looking at her and turned, the smile in place.
"Why are you watching me like that?" she whispered almost accusingly.
"Because I love you."
She smiled and drew closer, but in his heart he sensed that it was an action that was being forced. She kissed him lightly on the forehead.
"I'd like to go out for a walk," she said.
"You remember Leti's orders, we're to stay here, and I know she means that even more for you."
"I can take care of myself," Vena snapped.
"Maybe back along the border," Imada said, drawing closer and tentatively putting his hands on her hips, "but this town seems dangerous."
She pulled away from him and started to the door.
"Vena, you know the rest of the men will stop you from going out."
"And what's wrong with you?" she snapped. "Aren't you man enough to tell them different?"
Stunned, he looked at her, unable to speak.
She seemed to hesitate and then turned back to him.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, and he felt as if somehow his old lover was now back. "Oh, I'm so sorry, Imada, it's just that I don't like this place. I wanted to be alone just with you for a while, and then they made you come with them. I guess I'm just angry."
"It's all right," he sighed
, coming up and hugging her. "You haven't played your harp since we left," he continued, brushing her cheek with the back of his hand. "Why don't you sing me a song?"
"The harp? I don't feel like it." He felt as if her response was just a little too sharp.
He looked over at the battered case, resting by her side of the bed.
Suddenly her lips brushed against his ear.
"Let's do something else," she whispered, and though at the mere suggestion he felt his passion taking hold, still he could sense a strange distance within her, as if her body and mind were two separate beings.
"So that's the arrangement," Deidre said, motioning for a servant to pour another round of drinks.
Mark took the goblet appreciatively. The wine seemed to have been made from a fermented honey, yet it was light, even slightly dry instead of cloyingly sweet, with a curious flowery aftertaste.
"I'd still prefer to fly it," Walker said.
"Go ahead and try," Deidre replied. "Above that forest canopy you could crisscross the old man's realm until you were damn near as old as he is and not see anything. Fly under the canopy and you'll be lost inside the first hour."
"Riding is the easiest way. Each of us who has permission has our own private trail and markers. So you go my way or not at all." She smiled sweetly at Walker, who shook his head and said nothing.
"One thing," Leti said evenly.
"Go on."
"No one else wanted to take us in, they said the old man would be angry with them. So why are you doing it?"
"I'm his granddaughter," Deidre replied. "If he doesn't like me bringing you in, I'll just get yelled at. Whether he kills you or gives you a feast will be your problem, not mine."
"But I'm the daughter of a goddess," Leti replied, "with some of the best sorcerers in all of Haven with me."
"If you're telling me that as a threat," Deidre replied, "rest assured, Grandfather can take care of himself even against you. Your father rules an ocean away, not here. These are free city-states, under no god or goddess, so your name and lineage count for little."
"I still don't understand why you're bothering with us," Mark interjected. "No one else would give us the right time of day."
Deidre laughed. "Because I'm good-natured."
Walker looked at her suspiciously.
"And besides, I'm a merchant. Your price is a good one, believe me. Finally--let's just say I'm a bit bored."
"Bored?" Walker asked.
"I'm curious as to what the old man will do when and if he finally agrees to see you."
"I don't like this one bit," Walker snapped.
"If we want to see him," Leti replied, shaking her head, "this is the only way."
She paused and looked at Ikawa. "That is, if you really want to do this." Mark could sense the hopefulness in her voice. He knew if Storm were here the two of them would not do anything to get in the way of this venture, yet at the same time both would hope that in the end nothing would come of it and that there was no way to ever return to Earth. He found he was half hoping for the same result. The thought of having to make a choice was becoming a nightmare.
"I'm sorry," Ikawa replied. "We have to find out."
Leti forced a smile and looked at Deidre. "When do we leave?"
"This afternoon. There's no time like the present to get started."
At the sight of the coastline, Patrice felt as if energy had coursed into her. The land was as beautiful as she had remembered it, the vast trees cloaking the mountainside, the sparkling snow-capped mountains, the deep crystalline blue of the ocean. It was so different from the rolling hills and pastoral splendor of her own land.
She looked over her shoulder, scanning the world. It was as if the sky were hers alone, and she the only person soaring above the world.
Her guards and battle team were far behind her now, resting on one of the floating islands, concealed under the garb of guild sorcerers going east to work for a prince half a world away. They would continue on slowly, awaiting her word for the right time to strike.
They must be in Portus, she realized. The trick would be to sneak in without being detected. If the party was still there, getting Vena and the stolen crystals out might be difficult, since no matter what her guise Leti would recognize her on sight. She would need an ally in this; and she smiled at the memory of an encounter she'd had when had been younger.
"There are times I think we're just riding in circles," Ikawa said, looking to Leti as if for confirmation.
She smiled, shaking her head.
"I'm every bit as confused as you are. I've never been in a realm like this before."
If he had not felt there was an ever-increasing danger to what they were doing, he would have been enjoying this trip like no other he had ever been on before.
In the four days since leaving Portus, he had sat astride his Tal, dumbfounded by the wonders of the forest. Deidre had explained to them that the great woods they were traveling through were not made up of individual trees as all had at first assumed but a single vast living entity--each "tree," as it were, a single stem of an organism which she believed had an intelligence as well. The forest, which covered tens of thousands of square miles, had six separate trees growing in district groves. The border regions between them were areas of tangled conflict as roots and stems struggled for dominance and to push their neighbor back.
The second day out from Portus, they had crossed such a region, dividing the forest of the ocean, the Portus Woods, from that of the Druid Woods. Ikawa had been filled with a dark foreboding at the sight of it.
It seemed as if the trees were locked in a slow-motion combat. Roots reared up out of the ground, drilling straight into the hearts of rival trunks; branches snaked upward, struggling to block the light of their rivals, winding in to strangle and choke. The forest was a vast litter of dead limbs and broken trunks piled up like jackstraws. As they took a break from their march, Ikawa had nicked a trunk around which a root from a rival was trying to curl, and in their one hour stay he was amazed to see the root had grown several inches.
There was even a strategy to this slow motion struggle: Roots came up around an attacked trunk, reaching out to coil around the offending limbs and strangling them in turn. It was a region he was glad to flee.
Though all the trees were of the same species, there were many trunks that were different, as if they were manifestations of different organs. Some had silvery bark, the bottom sides of their leaves nearly mirrorlike, projecting bursts of light downward into sections of the forest where new saplings were arising to replace trunks that had died.
Sections of the forest were covered with spindly vines which Deidre carefully guided the party around, warning them to stand far clear of any of the vines' golden orchidlike blooms, which contained a pollen that could induce a paralytic state. The vines were parasitic, moving through the forest like some strange disease, their needle-sharp tendrils driving into the trunks of their host, draining out the life-giving nutrients, and then quickly moving on through the branches when the tree reacted and attempted to strangle the invader.
Ikawa looked back up again, trying to somehow judge the direction of their travel, but with little success.
Mark, urging his mount forward, came up to ride beside his two friends.
"If I knew the old coot was going to be friendly, I think I'd actually enjoy this place," Mark said, looking over his shoulder at a vast pulsating array of mothlike insects which had started to gather behind the party nearly an hour back.
"Say Deidre, what are those things?" Mark asked, pointing back to the moths.
"Just what they look like," she said with a smile, and then turned her attention forward.
"A fountain of information," Leti whispered.
"You notice there's been a hell of a lot more of them following us?" Mark said. "They've been coming in from every direction."
"Other things, too." Saito came up to join the conversation, pointing to a large flock of grey birds t
hat kept circling and filtering through the trees, winging in low over the party, moving as silently as bats in the night.
"Something's building up," Leti said, keeping her voice pitched low.
Ikawa nodded in reply. He kept looking about, yet was so confused by this strange world that he could make no sense of what he was looking for. All he could tell was that somehow the forest had become watchful.
Deidre put up her hand to motion for the party to stop.
On the ground before him Ikawa saw a shard of white sticking out, covered by a latticework of roots that had a curiously disquieting appearance to them.
"I'd suggest we stay straight on the trail here," Deidre said softly, "and pass the word back to the rest of the party to keep quiet--and for heaven's sake, don't drop anything."
Ikawa sensed a ripple of conversation going through the Tals, and several of them whined softly like puppies that were suddenly afraid.
"Say, Captain," Walker hissed, pointing to the ground, "tell me I'm wrong, but those roots look like they're shaped like skeletons."
"You know, he's right," Ikawa whispered, looking at Leti.
The floor of the forest for several hundred yards ahead was torn and convoluted by roots that seemed to come together to form skulls, limbs, and entire bodies, both human and Tal. Scattered here and there and covered with a sprinkling of leaves, white fragments of bone were evident.
"What happened here?" Leti asked, her voice low but insistent.
Deidre, without looking back, pointed up. "See those white sacks in the branches?"
Ikawa followed where she pointed and saw dozens of great white globes, like inverted parachutes, hanging several hundred feet above him.
"Doiga--large stinging insects," Deidre whispered. "If something upsets them they come out by the millions and swarm over their victims. The roots of Uldrasill take what is left. Somebody from the last party through here most likely upset them.'"
"Upset them?" Walker whispered.
"Laughed too loud, or jumped on the ground and they felt the vibrations. Sometimes they'll attack because they simply feel like it."
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