Stonebrow looked away while sockets popped and muscles split. When he looked back, the transformation was complete. Beside him stood a similar creature-a giant centaur whose flesh bore a greenish cast.
Granite gave a rueful smile, and his teeth were like wooden stakes.
Stonebrow looked away again, this time to the trees. His own twisted sinews were brother-flesh to the twisted boughs. He had become grotesque. Of course he would no longer fight the rampant growth of the forest. Now he embodied it.
There was no going back. He could not regain the creature he once had been. Nor could Granite. Nor could any of them.
Kamahl walked among them and touched their brows and gave them new names.
*****
What power he wields! the First thought as he clung, within the smoking hole. Though the forest is riddled with rot, this Kamahl is a channel of pure green power.
The First's hands still stung from the life-force that had lashed at him. He would not attack Kamahl directly again. Instead, the First lurked in the wet hole, waiting for Kamahl and his new warriors to move on. When finally darkness settled, the First climbed out.
Kamahl was already too powerful to be slain in his homeland. Luckily, his homeland was weak enough to succumb.
The First crept toward the Gorgon Mount. Under cover of night, he would slip in, and his death touch would turn the forest's power into his own.
*****
In their plethora, he made them-giant serpents, great centaurs, fire panthers, forest goblins, spine folk… Wherever Kamahl's hand came to rest, new life came to being. Those creatures who would defend the forest grew larger, imbued with its vitality. Those creatures who would march with Kamahl grew fiercer, tempered by fire. He had done what he had come to do. He had awakened an army.
At their head, Kamahl strode solemnly, and beside him marched General Stonebrow. From the desert's edge, they carved a highway toward the center of the wood. Huge squirrels leaped from bough to bough, surefooted on warping branches. Emerald-eyed elves climbed across gnarled shoulders of wood. Enormous slugs slithered along the ground, and toad men scampered among roots, gathering bugs. To all sides rolled spinefolk-tumbleweeds replete with thorns and will. It would be a terrifying army to face, but tonight Kamahl did not march them for war. Tonight they were an army of peace.
"There, do you see?" Kamahl asked, gesturing with his staff toward the Gorgon Mount. "It is the source of power." His eyes shone as he gazed at the rumpled mass. It was tenfold the peak it had been before and grew even still. Soon it would be like the mountains of his homeland, and here in the midst of the forest. "We go there."
Stonebrow marked out the site. His eyes were flinty. "Where is the ziggurat?"
"What ziggurat?"
"The sacred ziggurat. The druid temple, palace of the mantis lord," answered Stonebrow matter-of-factly. "Where is it?"
Kamahl's eyes roamed the tortured ground. Where was the ziggurat? Built of the entwined branches of four majestic trees, the ziggurat should have stood here, on the near slope of the great mound. It was nowhere. Only an endless twist of vast boughs covered the ground. "I don't know."
The giant centaur stomped a few steps farther. "There it is," he said, gesturing to one side.
The ziggurat lay there. Its trees had grown like all the rest and become too tall, too massive to stand. They had bent over. The walkways were twisted wreckage, the parapets shattered.
It was a grim sight, that ruined tower. Mangled bits of dead wood were clutched in coils of living. The old glory of the forest had been ruined by the new.
"All things change," said Kamahl. "It is the way of Nature."
Stonebrow gave a noncommittal grunt and strode onward.
"I embody the very power of the forest-this new, voracious life," Kamahl continued as though to justify himself. "Never before has it lived as it does now."
"Never before," echoed Stonebrow, though the centaur's rumbling voice left doubt as to whether he approved.
Kamahl's own brow turned stony. "It seems wrong only now, for the mantis folk have not yet felt the transforming power. I will touch them. I will change them so that they match the new sacred-ness."
To that, Stonebrow offered no comment.
Kamahl bristled at the silence. Had he not transformed this ingrate? Had he not given a new, more powerful aspect to this whole army? His eyes swept back over the creatures. They followed him dutifully. A moment before, it had seemed enough. Now he wondered why they didn't follow joyfully.
No looking back. Kamahl turned his attention to the mount, a thicket gone mad. Each thorn stood the height of a man, each twig the width of a tree. The forest moaned. It grew so quickly that wood ground against wood. Trees plowed deep furrows as they shoved along, and giant things loped in the midst. They grew visibly and preyed upon each other-rutted, birthed, hunted, and ate in fast cycles of want. It was an ugly place, caught in transformation.
Ah, but when the changes were complete, how glorious it would be!
Kamahl and Stonebrow approached the thicket. It was impassable. No creature, not even an ant, could penetrate its thick nap. Only one path gave entry-an archway hewn by stone blades and retained by poison. The space was guarded even now by the creatures that had cut it.
Nantuko warriors stood before the gate, their stone-bladed polearms held across their chests. They stared at Kamahl, and their podlike eyes showed no sign of fear.
Kamahl signaled his army to cease their march. He and General Stonebrow approached the guard. "Allow us through."
Unblinking eyes studied the man and the centaur. "It is forbidden."
Kamahl said, "Forbidden by whom? To whom?
"Forbidden by Thriss, Nantuko Master. Forbidden to all those beneath his sway."
"I am not beneath his sway," Kamahl said.
"We know. If you enter, you will be defying him."
Kamahl took a long breath. "I contain the power of the land. The mount is not too sacred for my feet."
The mantis shook his head slowly. "No. It is too profane."
"Profane?"
"Those who venture within become monsters. They stalk it even now. Any who pass this wall are killed by them or become monsters themselves."
Kamahl peered up through the passage. The shorn ends of dead stalks formed a weeping cave, unhealing. Kamahl could not keep his hand from straying to the wound in his belly. "I will go there. I will change these monsters into new forms. They will become defenders of the wood."
Even those merciless bug eyes showed surprise. "Defenders such as these?"
Kamahl did not look behind him. He didn't need to. Giant serpents, huge squirrels, toad men-of course his creatures would seem monstrous to this simple warrior, but these would be the saviors of the forest.
Kamahl said simply, "I must go."
"I cannot follow," rumbled Stonebrow.
His master shot him an angry look. "You agree with him?"
The centaur lifted one weighty eyebrow and gestured into the small passage. "No. Physically. I cannot follow."
"That's fine," Kamahl replied. "I go in alone and return with an army twofold." He ducked his head, gently brushed the mantis men aside, and stepped into the long passage. His century staff angled like a lance beside him.
It was a strange tunnel, a dead place in the midst of endless growth. The dry stalks were the color of sun-baked rocks, and they echoed Kamahl's footsteps. No breeze moved through the gap. Decay permeated the air.
At the far end of the passage, a gray and thorny light shone. Things moved there, massive, horrid things. A scaly leg flashed past, and then another-as if a giant lizard ran by. No sooner had its lashing tail disappeared than enormous bug legs pounded the ground. An abdomen with hissing spiracles eclipsed the light, and then the bug was gone. A reptilian wail told that it had caught its prey.
Kamahl neared the end of the tunnel, seeking the perfect forest within himself and its boundless power. He gripped the staff tightly in both hands, and motes o
f power scintillated along his arms. Three more steps, and Kamahl emerged.
A terrible beast crouched there-a monstrous mantis. It was the size of Stonebrow. Gone was the elegant slenderness of the insect folk. Bulky and brutal, the monster gorged on the lizard it had slain. While its mandibles ripped off scaly flesh, its haunches shuddered with violent transformation. A split began in its carapace, and fibers stretched and broke. All across its grotesque body, the outer skin failed. A worse beast, rumpled and wet, was emerging.
"Turn!" shouted Kamahl, his staff lifted high. "Turn, and be transformed."
The mantis lifted its triangular head from the gory corpse. Gore dripped from its mandibles. It seemed to consider its opponent. Rodlike legs shifted, and within splitting sheaths, muscles gathered. The creature leapt.
Kamahl stomped his foot, sending a jag of green energy down from his skull through his spine and legs and into the ground. It rooted him solidly. He swung his staff. It swept the legs of the charging mantis.
It stumbled but did not fall. The creature rammed him. Claws tore into his arms, and mouth plates bit into his head.
The wounds gushed not blood but power. It arced in a crown from Kamahl's head and jabbed into the monster's mouth. It rattled out of his pierced arms and into the creature's legs. Green transformation swept through the beast.
The splitting shell gave out entirely and sloughed to the ground. A slick and steaming creature emerged. Its head warped into a long, wolflike snout. The hairy thorax of the monster grew as deep as a barrel and blackened beneath thick carapace. The spiracles all down its abdomen widened into toothy mouths.
No, railed Kamahl, struggling to shape the magic he poured into the beast. No. Something pure… something good…
It was neither pure nor good. The creature's legs became barbed stalks with razor edges. Its antenna drooped and widened into a pair of lashing tongues. Its face began to boil.
No! You will be conformed to the new way of the forest. You will not be a monstrosity, but a noble beast.
Kamahl sent a new impulse surging into the creature. The glare of energy became blinding. In each violent flash, he saw a greater atrocity. The thing's eyes burst, its mouth drooled maggots to the ground, and its new shell split, oozing pink material.
No! You will be transformed.
The beast exploded. Its innards spewed until every plate shot free and spun in the air. The cracked exoskeleton slumped to the ground.
Kamahl fell back. Mouth parts still formed a coronet around his head. Little more remained of the creature. Gelatinous hunks shuddered across the thicket.
What had happened? Why had the transforming power failed?
"It did not fail," he muttered breathlessly. "It succeeded all too well."
In grief, Kamahl closed his eyes, and over the image of the monster he glimpsed the creature as it must have looked before becoming a monster.
The sentinel. This nantuko had been the druid sentinel beside the spirit well. She who had looked on his ascension with eyes of hope had been transformed horribly by the power he had awakened.
Kamahl lay there panting. He reached down to the perfect forest within him but found only a tangle that matched the Gorgon Mount. At last, the glory was gone from his eyes, and he saw this rampant growth truly. It was simply a cancer. What worse foe could a forest have?
Even as he knelt there, breathing raggedly, Kamahl knew he must withdraw and regain his strength. He could not advance i farther this evil night-perhaps not even in a fortnight. To recover, he would have to steal power from a dying forest, but in time he would return, whole and hale, to do what he must do.
Kamahl would descend to the Mirari sword, destroy it, and kill the cancer.
*****
He will come soon. The First sent his thoughts down through the Mirari sword and into the heart of the wood. He has defeated your watcher, and once he has had time to heal, he will descend. He wishes to draw the sword. Do not allow it. Tell him what I have commanded of you. Convince him of what he must do…
Night lay deep on the Gorgon Mount as the First rose from the spirit well. Swathed in his death aura, the man was invisible. He floated upward and glimpsed Kamahl, sitting to one side and panting as if almost slain.
For a moment, the First considered killing him. No. That would only end all his best-laid schemes.
Setting his feet to ground beyond the mount, the First picked his way easily among the boughs. He had become a coconspira-tor with the cancerous wood. It opened a trail for him out of Krosan and toward distant Aphetto.
Soon Kamahl would be acting out the First's plans. A smile of glee lit the patriarch's face. Now he need only enlist one other barbarian. The First would fly upon the wings of darkness, across the desert and to the swamps. There he would acquire a barge crew, and pay a visit to Kamahl's other half.
Phage.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: TO THE DEATH
From malarial mists, a grand arena rose. Its curving wall lifted uneven battlements above the fog. Sunlight splashed across the dwarf masons who set stones atop it, and murky fog shrouded the crews that toiled below.
Shorn rhinos strained against leather traces, pulling massive blocks across rolling logs. Gigantipithicus apes hoisted cement sacks up long stairs. Goblin grunts worked the pumps or stirred the mortar or scrambled up ladders or sat in stocks. Taskmasters watched them all, their whips of black magic driving the whole machine forward.
Pain was the coin of the realm-pain and no little fear. Like it or not, Zagorka had become the usurer of that coin.
She and Chester made their plodding way among the work teams. Sight of that old woman and her doughty ass put fear into the hearts of even the most brutal taskmasters. The woman's disapproval meant Phage's disapproval, and Phage's disapproval meant pain or death. Zagorka preferred fear. If she could make the crews fear the consequences of failure, they would not have to suffer those consequences.
Chester snorted irritably as another mule, smaller and younger than he, bustled by beneath a crushing load of gravel. Despite his size, Chester's main use now was as a ride for Zagorka.
"Not much farther," she murmured to the beast.
He brayed in response, and nearby goblins shied as if from a blow. Chester's other role was enforcer, for he could kick over a rhino.
Zagorka and her comrade approached a particularly ominous taskmaster. Yokels would have called it a demon: a goat-headed, bat-winged, lizard-bodied thing that once had hid in a cave. It was a leftover from the War-but then again, so were they all. This beast had been hunted and snared by the Cabal, brainwashed and forced to fight in the pits, and eventually commissioned as a taskmaster. So far, it was not a very good one.
Zagorka dismounted and tugged the leathery wing of the thing. " 'Scuse me. You're Gorgoth?"
"What's it to-" he began, spinning around with teeth notching each other. As soon as he saw Zagorka, though, the red fire in his eyes turned greenish. His talon fell, dispersing the scourge-spell it had conjured, and his knees folded to the ground. "Zagorka! My humblest apologies." He bowed his curved horns and touched a furry forehead to the dust. "I am indeed Gorgoth."
Zagorka smiled absently, a look she knew inspired terror. "How does your work progress?"
"Well. Very well," Gorgoth replied. "We have met every quota for two weeks and are right on schedule according to the timetable."
Zagorka scowled. "That's too bad."
The demon's rectangular pupils closed to slits. 'Too bad?"
"All the other crews are running three days ahead-"
"But we are meeting our quotas- -and whenever their work overlaps yours, they have to wait."
"But the schedule-"
"You're dragging down the whole project."
"But-"
"Why not be first rather than last? Alive rather than…?"
Gorgoth offered no more objections. He had sunk lower with each reply and now lay prostrate before the old woman.
Zagorka stroked Chester's mane. "You've
survived since the War. It's clear you want to keep on, but the old way of surviving-hiding and skulking-won't work anymore. You cannot hide from Phage."
The demon released a whimper.
"You have to drive these workers."
"I'll beat them to a pulp-"
"No, you won't. Maimed workers don't work. Dead workers don't work. You cannot beat them to a pulp, but you must make them think you will."
The beast lifted his homed head, and a cocky glint showed in his eyes. "Is that what you are doing? Threatening with no thought of following through?"
"No," Zagorka replied. "I don't threaten. I advise. I don't follow through. Phage does. She plans for all of you to die, whether in building this coliseum or fighting in it. I advise you how to avoid death." She took up Chester's reins and pivoted him slowly away. "Listen to me and live. Ignore me and die. It is as simple as that."
"Yes," Gorgoth replied, forehead once again pressed to the ground. He remained that way as the woman mounted her mule and rode off.
*****
Though outwardly the demon was utterly still, inwardly his mind churned. Zagorka's words were more than a warning.
They were an object lesson. She gained the ear of the taskmasters by acting as their advocate. Phage would punish, yes, eternally-unless one listened to the advocate. Gorgoth would work the way Zagorka did.
He rose from the ground and roared into the mists, the signal for his workers to assemble. They answered immediately-dwarves and goblins from the cutting fields.
"There is a new decree," Gorgoth said. "The slowest team will be flogged each night. We are the slowest."
"But we're meeting our quotas-"
"We are the slowest."
"But already we work twelve hours-'
"We are the slowest."
"But-"
"Silence!" he growled. "You will work faster and harder. Every night, I will flog the slowest among you, whoever is dragging the rest of us down. Now, work!"
*****
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