by B. V. Larson
“Come on, Kaavi,” he said. “Just tell me what happened.”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
Brand sighed and sat down hard on a rock. He winced, and watched as she began to cook. He felt despondent. If he had bedded Kaavi…well, he didn’t want to think about it. Telyn would be furious if she ever found out. He was a married man—a happily married man. He grew frustrated the more he thought about it.
“You tricked me,” he said. “You got me to drink, and you got what you wanted afterward, is that it? All this business and mystery about Trev meant nothing.”
Kaavi laughed. “My, how much you must think of yourself! Am I such a poor unsightly creature that I must pine away for years, dreaming nightly of the great Brand? Then, I hatch a fine scheme that only took me a decade to come up with: to get Old Hob to visit you, giving you dire warnings. In a complex plot, I weave a spell and have my way with the innocent, middle-aged River Boy at last.”
“Humph,” he said. “It wasn’t like that. You saw an opportunity and took it. No scheming required beyond whatever you did last night.”
Kaavi shrugged and began cooking bacon on a skillet. The smell was wonderful, and Brand’s mouth was soon watering.
“Telyn doesn’t like me to eat bacon,” he said.
“Oh really?”
Brand watched her. Was this another ploy, or was he becoming hopelessly paranoid?
“All right,” he said. “I give up. I won’t be angry. I won’t shout. Just tell me what happened. I want to know, and I think you owe me that much, if you would call me friend.”
Kaavi fed him strips of bacon, which he devoured hungrily. She was right, he was ravenous. Did that mean…? He couldn’t be sure.
“I can’t tell you Brand.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because I promised not to.”
Brand stared at her. “Who did you promise? Can you at least tell me that?”
She laughed again. “Such suspicion! I promised you silly. You made me swear that I would never tell a soul.”
Brand almost choked. “But that doesn’t mean me! Surely, you can tell the man who made you promise!”
She shook her head sadly. “I can’t. You would not have me break my word for such a trivial thing, would you?”
“I hereby release you from your promise,” he said.
Kaavi shook her head again. “You know it doesn’t work that way. I’m bound.”
Brand huffed and chewed, thinking hard. Had he bedded this elf girl at last? It was perfectly possible. It seemed unfair that he couldn’t even remember the act, if he had indeed performed it. He knew such details wouldn’t matter to Telyn if she found out. Kaavi’s life wouldn’t be worth a sack of beans—nor would his, for that matter.
Looking around the camp, he was struck with a new thought.
“Where’s Trev?” he asked.
“He’s gone.”
“Where? When?”
“Last night. He said he knew what to do now, and he told me to give you his thanks. Then he left before midnight.”
Brand’s mouth sagged open. “Left? To where?”
Kaavi shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Brand stood up, his heart was pounding. “He had what he wanted? You say he thanked me for helping him? What does that mean?”
Kaavi shrugged and seemed disinterested. “Would you like more bacon? I have a few strips left.”
Brand made a long sigh of exasperation. “Any human woman would at least be curious where their nephew was off to at midnight!”
“Well, I’m not a human woman. Trev is full grown now, his business is his own.”
Brand walked away toward the road. He felt an urgent need to find the boy—or at least to learn where he was going. Had he made a grievous error? Had he somehow told the boy what he wanted to hear, and done what Old Hob had warned him not to? As was so often the case when dealing closely with the Faerie, he felt lost and uneasy.
“You’re just going to march off, then?” Kaavi asked behind him.
He turned. “I’m sorry. I’m distracted. Do I owe you a farewell embrace?”
She shook her head. “You don’t owe me anything, Brand. Not unless you want to give it.”
He walked back to her and gave her an awkward hug. After he released her, she coughed.
“Sorry,” he said. “I can’t even do that right.”
“I’m fine.”
He looked her up and down. “Are you a virgin?” he asked suddenly.
For once—perhaps the first time in her entire life—Kaavi looked embarrassed. “That’s a rather surprising question, Brand.”
“You can answer it, can’t you?”
Kaavi thought about it. “I suppose I can… No, I’m not.”
“Then was last night…?”
She smiled and shook her head at him, touching his nose with her outstretched finger. “You made me promise not to tell!”
He sighed, kissed the top of her head, and walked out of the forest. It wasn’t until he reached the lane outside that he was struck by a sudden thought: If she had been a virgin until last night, and he had lain with her—she must be with child already. Under these circumstances, there was always a child, and it might come out like Trev, or it might not.
Brand walked back to his keep, lost in thought. He did not reach his study until midday. Over and over again, he replayed the events of the night in his head. He did seem to recall touching and caressing Kaavi, but that could have been a fantasy or a dream as easily as a memory.
But he did know one thing, if he had impregnated her, she would have a half-breed. That could be good, or it could be awful. He thought about ogres like Ivor and worse things.
It was early afternoon by the time he thought to inquire about Trev’s whereabouts. That boy had come and gone so quickly, so quietly. All he could find out was that his guardsmen had let him out through the western gates late at night, after being talked into it by the friendly youth.
Brand stood on the battlements, gazing west. What was out that way? Swamp, and then the Black Mountains. Little else.
Snowdon arose in the west, the mountain’s top gleaming white with snow as the sun touched it and the mists cleared completely.
He stared, and he had a sudden, disturbing thought. He knew with sudden certainty where Trev had gone. The boy planned to see Gudrin.
He could not recall much of their talk, but he did remember Trev’s question about the Dark Jewels. Brand had told him he didn’t know much, and had thus been relieved.
But he’d also told Trev who knew more: Gudrin and Myrrdin.
The boy was heading to the Earthlight, Brand felt sure of it. He had aided Trev on his quest accidentally. It was the only answer he could think of. Why else had he departed hastily to the west and left Kaavi with his thanks?
Brand rushed down the stone steps of his keep, taking them two at a time. He donned his cloak in such a hurry that it hung askew and when he stepped into the courtyard he roared for his horse. By the time night fell over the land, he was galloping along the lonely marsh roads toward Snowdon.
Trev had a day’s head start, and he was fast on his feet, but Brand was determined to get to Gudrin before he did.
* * *
After crushing the elf village and leaving it behind, Myrrdin began to worry. His wits were returning slowly, and he began to realize he was far from invincible in his living tree. A good fire or a steady chopping of axemen—there were many ways to bring down a tree whether it walked or not.
He knew he didn’t have much time. The elves weren’t going to allow him to rampage throughout the Great Erm as long as he wished, after destroying one of their settlements. They would gather their warriors and huntsmen and track him down. As a single tree, even a tremendous one, they would eventually take him down. Perhaps Oberon himself would do it, wielding the Red Jewel and creating blood abominations from his fallen.
And then they would cut out the Jewel Vaul from the depths of t
he tree he rode within. He could feel Vaul now, beating like a huge green heart at the center of the mass of wood-flesh that surrounded them both. He knew that if the light of it could be seen a witness would observe it flashing brilliantly with each step the ponderous oak took.
When they finally brought him down, the elves would scramble over him like ants and tear holes in his black bark, revealing the splintering white flesh beneath. Wet with fresh sap, they’d steep themselves in it until they had dug the Jewel out and taken it from him.
That was the single thought he could not bear to contemplate. Even though he was half-mad and filled with anger, he could not conceive of losing Vaul again after having so recently regained it. The mere concept was painful to him. He could risk his life, but could not bear the loss of his beloved green stone.
And so he retreated after his initial onslaught into the trackless depths of the forest. In any normal overgrown region this would not have saved him. His body was so huge now, so impossibly bulky, it tore a hole through the brush, leaving a path a child could identify and follow to its end.
But the Great Erm was no normal forest. It was full of life, almost as if Vaul drove the place wild all the time. Not only did everything grow to tremendous size here, but it grew quickly as well. So quickly that a trail blazed through it would vanish behind them within a dozen hours.
He rode his oak the way a lord rides his horse after he’s had too much to drink and wields his whip with abandon. If the tree could breathe, it would have frothed and foam would have blown through it nostrils. It would have been huffing and puffing, crying out as things clawed and chipped sticky holes in its bark—but it could do none of those things. For it was a living, moving plant. A huge, dumb thing. Silent, ignorant and almost unstoppable. Its mindlessness made it lower than the most stupid beast in the Erm.
Ivor strode in Myrrdin’s wake, often glancing from side to side in concern, wondering where they were going and alert for danger. Myrrdin ignored his nephew because the creature seemed content to follow the great tree into the depths of the green-black hell they marched through.
Ivor carried a shield, helm and a heavy maul, all sized and fitted to his body. Myrrdin had been vaguely surprised to see this, and even more surprised that the ogre seemed trained at arms. But he did not discuss it with the beast-like child. His mind was too full of schemes of his own. He hadn’t learned that Brand himself had provided the creature with these tools of war, and he didn’t much care in any regard. The ogre wasn’t key to his plans—not yet anyway.
The forest was startling in its immensity. The trees here were often a thousand feet high, and the insects could be the size of a full-grown man. Often, in the lore of the River Folk, it was said the Fae were tiny. And it was true that elves were the size of human teens and the Wee Folk were generally only two or three feet in height, sometimes weighing no more than a tomcat. But here, in the dark Erm, every living thing was huge making the elves seem tiny in comparison.
Myrrdin had often thought humanity’s legends had become confused and twisted over time in the retelling. After all, a human visitor might have been misunderstood by his fellow villagers upon returning home. Describing mushrooms used as homes and beetles the elves could ride upon may have confused the listener. They may have thought the elves were tiny—rather than everything else in the forest being gigantic.
At last, when Myrrdin felt he’d found the deepest, dankest region of the Great Erm, a spot so far from light and fresh wind that it might as well have been in the Everdark itself, he stopped.
“Where are we?” asked a voice.
Myrrdin ponderously turned his bulk, crashing down brush with his thick rooted feet. He saw Ivor there, and stared for a moment.
“Ah yes,” he said. “You’re still following me—I’d forgotten.”
“Was that not your wish, uncle? Because I’m sure I can’t go home again. I’m well and truly lost.”
Myrrdin gazed down at the dumb beast that was his half-breed nephew. The other gazed back with a comically long face. He was sad and lost out here in the dark pit of the Erm.
Myrrdin felt an urge to lift a root and stomp the beast down, smooshing him flat. But the moment passed. He’d almost forgotten about the idiot in his haste to get away, but he told himself the creature could still be useful.
“Yes,” Myrrdin said at last. “This is the spot I was hoping to find. You see here? That is a headwater.”
“A what? That’s a spring. The water will be sweet here.”
The ogre rushed to the spring and dipped his head into it to drink.
A feral rumble came from Myrrdin. He slashed out with an eight-fingered hand of wood. Like a claw, the oak branch struck Ivor and sent him tumbling.
“Don’t foul the water, you fool!” Myrrdin said. “The elves will be tracking us. They will catch that scent in an instant. Worse, you’ll make the water taste like a swamp for a dozen leagues downstream!”
Ivor rolled until he came up against a thick vine that encircled a boulder like a constricting snake. His head cracked into the rock—but he was not seriously injured. He climbed back to his feet and shook his head, tapping at it experimentally.
“You’re stronger than me, uncle.”
“Of course I am. My body isn’t made of flesh, bone and muscle. Wood is stronger than any of those! That’s why fools make clubs from oak, so they can better beat one another into paste.”
“Who?” Ivor asked in confusion. He had one hand at the back of his head, rubbing at a sore spot.
“Never mind! I’m going to attempt a ritual now, and I don’t want to be disturbed. But, if some kind of danger comes, you are to warn me. Do you understand?”
Ivor massaged the back of his lumpy head. “Uh…maybe.”
Myrrdin doubted the wisdom of bringing this beast with him.
“Let me explain,” he snapped. “I will be distracted as I work. You must serve as my watchdog. If something approaches that might harm either of us, interrupt me. Otherwise, leave me alone until I’m finished.”
“Okay. How long will that be? I’m hungry.”
Myrrdin raised a heavy claw-shaped branch, thinking to clout Ivor again. Ivor scuttled away.
“I’ll go find something to eat,” the ogre said. “If I see danger, I’ll return.”
Myrrdin grumbled, but let him go. He would probably be useless in any case. He’d probably been the fool thinking he could get useful service out of an ogre.
Now that his wits had returned to him, at least in part, Myrrdin realized that full vengeance upon his countless enemies could not be achieved in a single stroke. He’d realized after destroying the village that he could not handle this job alone. The ogre had provided him with an idea, the germ of a plan, if nothing else.
He’d already gathered an ogre to his banner. Ivor was a follower, and he liked that. Not only for the good it did his ego, which had been bruised badly by years spent alone in a dark pod beneath the earth, but also because it gave him hope for another possible stage, a step, on the path to vengeance. He wanted to avenge himself against everyone who had ever wronged him—at least within his own twisting mind. The list was long and impressive.
And so he’d come here, to the deepest part of the wildest forest in all the known worlds. This was not a sunlit place full of lovely glades and dancing dryads and babbling brooks. There were no clearings full of unicorns prancing about. No, this was a dark, dense, overgrown region full of tree trunks, vines and crawling things.
He paused to consider the spot where he’d halted. It was a headwater, of that much he was certain, and there was a cliff of sorts nearby. He marched to the cliff and felt along its ridged walls, for he stood at the bottom of the wall, not the top. He frowned as he touched and tested the cliff. The strange thing was—
“This isn’t a cliff! Not at all!” he cried.
“Huh?” Ivor called back to him.
“Never mind. Stay alert.”
Myrrdin edged along the wall, feeling
it. He could barely see it so low was the light down here in the depths of trees. It was not a cliff—it was the base of a tree trunk. One so great in size he could scarcely credit his senses!
He made his way, clambering over roots and probing for clues. What kind of tree could be so huge? How was it that he’d never heard of this place, or never seen it when winging above the Erm?
The base of the trunk did curve, as it must, and he eventually found himself having made his way completely around its circumference. It had to be a quarter mile around.
“Unbelievable…” he muttered. Entombed within the body of a tree, he felt huge. But in comparison to this monstrosity, he was like a sapling beside a redwood.
He took another turn around the trunk, probing high and low this time. He felt at the base of the roots and as high up as his finger-branches would reach. There at last he found a shock—a sharp, flat surface above.
He was aghast and even horrified. The tree wasn’t a tree at all. It was a stump. A massive, ancient stump.
The tree that had once stood here must have been the greatest living thing in all the worlds. So huge, so tremendous, that the tallest pine in the Erm today was like a candle compared to the sun, like a breath of air to a howling wind. Like an ant at the foot of an ox.
Myrrdin stared at the ancient, thick bark, caressing it and thinking. It crumbled in his wooden hands and flaked to dust.
His mind twisted as the dust trickled away from his fingers, and he began to get…ideas.
* * *
Trev had left Brand and Kaavi behind the night before. He was already far from Castle Rabing. The marsh road was muddy and ill-kept, but not even the patches of oozing bog that would have sucked the shoes from a galloping horse troubled him. He ran lightly over the muck and bounded over the worst of the thickets. Only rarely did a thorn catch his sleeve and tear it as he passed swiftly by.
He thought about Brand and Kaavi. He would miss them as they were both part of his childhood. But he had sensed they didn’t want him around last night—and that he didn’t want to be there to witness what may transpire.