Onslaught

CHAPTER SEVEN: ARMIES FOR KAMAHL

Battered and bleary, Kamahl left the desert behind. He climbed from sand to the root network of the forest. His boots were in tatters, held together only by the remains of his willow whip. With sandy fingers he gripped the green wood and with trembling arms hauled himself upward. Handprints of fine dust tracked his progress up the forest's head wall. Kamahl clambered to a natural nook in the tangled boles, and there he collapsed.

The onetime barbarian lay on his back and panted. His staff jabbed beneath him, but he didn't care. He would lie here awhile, die here if he needed to, in the womb of the green Mother. At least he would not die in the desolate desert. It was a killing place, endless and empty.

Empty except for the One Who Followed.

Kamahl had glimpsed it only once but constantly sensed the dark presence that tracked him. By day, the follower skulked just beneath the dune crests. By night, the thing had greater power, spreading its darkling soul through cold black heavens to harry Kamahl. No armor could guard against that presence. It nipped at him like a murder of crows. Kamahl could only clutch his century staff, draw upon its power and his own, and walk until dawn. Some rotten thing had followed him up from the Cabal pits and sought to kill him or drive him mad.

No more. The dark creature would be impotent before the power of the forest. That power now surrounded and suffused Kamahl. Every fatigued muscle relaxed. Surely the follower could not stalk him here, where growth was omnipotent. Flora and fauna advanced upon the very desert. Aerial roots sank into sand and then widened into new boles. Leaves and blossoms proliferated while boughs extended the shadow of the wood. Since Kamahl had last seen the forest, it had gobbled up half a mile of sand. Eventually it would eat it all.

Kamahl was glad. Such places as that desert should not be.

Shaky fingers drew aside the ragged bandage that wrapped his stomach. Beneath lay an unhealing wound, jagged counterpart to the cut on his sister. The wound, the desert, and the follower had conspired to kill him. They had failed.

The Krosan Forest had its own conspirators. Even now, creatures approached. They quietly converged in a wide ring.

How ironic to survive desolation only to be devoured by a crowd.

Kamahl clutched a gnarl of wood, and through galvanic impulse, conveyed his fears. The prayer, if that was what it was, was heard.

The creatures that approached slowed. Their leader stalked silently around to the mouth of the niche. A wicked-headed lance jabbed in, two bulbous eyes hovering above. The spear withdrew, and the mantis-man bowed his head. He spoke the common tongue, but with an uncommon clack.

"Kamahl. You have returned. We had been watching but did not recognize you. You seemed… someone else."

A rueful smile spread across Kamahl's face. "It is no wonder." He nodded down toward the wound across his stomach. "You must have sensed this."

The nantuko captain peered down. Above his weird green eyes, antennae moved slowly, tasting the air. He laid down his spear. As lithe as a spider, he ambled into the niche. On rodlike legs, he hovered, studying the cut. "A fresh wound, then?"

"No," Kamahl replied, "not fresh. Ever bleeding, unhealing."

The creature nodded his triangular head. His mouth parts shifted, and he emitted a low whistle. It was a patrol signal-quiet enough to be mistaken for birdsong.

From the tangle of brush, another nantuko emerged. This one bore the pods and blooms of a healer. Medicinal leaves hung in bunches across her thorax. She arrived with the same rapid grace as her captain, eyes studying the wound. All the while, her arms worked at a poultice-cutting, mashing, mixing.

'Take no offense, healer," Kamahl said, "but this wound will not heal. Druidic medicine could not heal my sister, and it will not heal me. Jeska gave me this in repayment of what I did to her. This wound will not be healed until I have brought her back."

The mantis healer nodded. She heard his words, but the chunky poultice she loaded into the wound told that she didn't believe him. "You are a champion of the forest. You cannot succumb."

"I will not succumb." Kamahl's eyes gleamed brightly in his dusty face. " I have crossed the desert with this ever-fresh wound and fought off a fell presence that lurks there even now. I will champion the forest, even with this wound in me."

"Lie still," the healer cautioned. Her claws poked at the leaf pack. "Even if it cannot heal the wound, it will strengthen you. The vital essences of the leaves are seeping into your flesh."

Kamahl stiffened at the bite of the leaves. "Yes. I will lie here awhile; then you will bind this wound again, so that I may march once more."

The healer tilted her angular head. "You only just returned. Where will you head now?"

'To the heart of the forest," Kamahl replied. "Something evil follows, and it will brings greater evils. AH of this is of a piece. If I am to slay this thing, I must heal my wound. To heal my wound, I must save my sister. To save her, I must have an army. I go to the heart of the forest to heal, slay, and save… to gain my army."

The First stood on a sand ridge and peered toward the Krosan Forest. He waited for dark, when his powers would be greatest. For three nights in succession, he had nearly slain Kamahl. Veiled in death-scent, the First had crept up beside the man, behind him, before him, and jabbed. That touch would have killed any other, but not Kamahl.

Even wounded, he had proven powerful. Perhaps it was the staff he clung to, brimming with the life-force of the wood. Perhaps his blood had saved him, as it had saved his sister. Twice now, the kin of Auror had survived the First's death touch, and even he could not guess why.

That power had made Phage the ultimate ally. It had made her brother the ultimate foe.

"Kamahl will die," the First told himself.

Swollen, the sun sank toward the sea of sand. The First's shadow lengthened, crossing the desolation. It grew until it stood like a titan on the Krosan head wall. Soon the whole world would be swallowed in shadow, and the First would stalk the Krosan. Soon Kamahl would die.

The First stood and waited, dark magic tingling on his fingers.

It could no longer be called simply a mound-the swollen ground where Kamahl had stabbed Laquatus. Rampant growth had changed it. It was now a veritable mount. Some called it the Gorgon Mount for the snaky growths across its emerging head. The tumulus rose a hundred feet from the forest floor. Dreadlocks of wood and vine draped its sides. The cycles of fecundity, sprout to blossom to fruit to seed to sprout, ran in daily loops. The forest wove flesh out of air, soil, water, and sun and blanketed the ground in a foot of new humus each day. Among the burgeoning boughs trundled beasts like swollen ticks. They ate and rutted, dropping their vasty broods amid the roots.

Kamahl stood in the literal shadow of the Gorgon Mount. He squinted against the sun, which brought its fiery bulk down upon the rioting branches. A similar sunburst covered the bandage across his waist. The poultice had been unable to heal him, and the milkweed packing was unable to stop the bleeding.

The druid healer and the honor guard of mantis warriors stood around him. Suspicious, they watched Kamahl. "No one ventures onto the Gorgon Mount except the druid elders," said the captain. "It is a place of wild spirits, sacred and vicious."

"That's what I need. Wild spirits," Kamahl said, "a whole army of them."

"You see what that place does to the creatures on it," the captain said. 'They are grotesque. The same will happen to you, my friend."

Kamahl smiled, his face red with the setting sun. "No. I'm already grotesque. You can't parody a parody." With that, he left them and strode up the mount.

Kamahl forged forward like a man against the tide. His staff split the currents of growth that poured past him. Fecundity made the air curdle and boil. It hurt to breathe. Vitality burned Kamahl's lungs and tingled through his bloodstream.

"Move aside," he calmly told a roiling thicket.

Its thorns ground against each other as if a pair of giant, invisible hands dug into the patch and parted it. Kamahl stepped within. He marched up the passage. Thorns on all sides proliferated. If the wood so chose, he could be trapped and picked apart. The forest spared him. He emerged from the hedge of briars, but the forest ahead had braided itself into an impenetrable jungle.

Kamahl did not bother asking the branches to part. Instead, he hung his staff from his belt and climbed. Hand over hand and foot over foot, he ascended the wall of boughs. Near their summit, the way flattened, and the branches thickened. He walked atop their twisted backs. As the tentacles of a sea monster lead inevitably toward the thing's mouth, the tree boughs led toward the spot where Laquatus lay pinned. While the mount had risen, its heart had sunk. This was no simple hole but the vertical mouth of a twisting cave.

"The spirit well," supplied a stump sitting by the edge of it.

Kamahl glanced in surprise at the stump, noticing only then that it was a nantuko woman. She hunched beneath a gray cloak and stared down into the black pit. Her eyes reflected the darkness-wide, empty, and unblinking.

"It holds a wicked spirit. Its blood transforms the wood."

Kamahl's hand strayed to his own bleeding wound. He then reached for a fat vine at the edge of the pit and set his foot on a ledge within. "I'm going."

"You're gone," said the sentinel. She breathed once and grew as still as a stump.

Kamahl descended. At first, he found footholds down the slick side. Soon, though, the cliff sucked in its belly, and Kamahl had to climb down with hands only. The vine ended before the drop did. He let go and fell through the swirling cold. His feet struck ground in a shallow creek, and Kamahl rolled and rose.

Before him, the creek wended downhill into darkness, seeking the lowest level. It would find Laquatus and the Mirari sword. Kamahl followed it.

Darkness deepened, and cold reached to his bones. Occasional fists of stone struck his head. Kamahl would reel, wait, and let the waters lead him on.

At last, in the deep heart of the ground, a cavern opened. Its lowest reaches were filled with a lake, which centered around an island. There the corpse of Laquatus lay. Even it had grown. Pallid and swollen, the merman seemed a skewered manatee. The Mirari sword cast a steely glow across the scene.

Kamahl waded through shoulder-deep water to reach the island. He arose, streaming water. Waves of energy bled from the bluish corpse, and Kamahl trudged through them. He stared at the wound that pierced Laquatus-the same one that pierced him, his sister, and the forest. All the wounds were one.

"To save them all, I must save myself," Kamahl said even as he placed his hand on the Mirari sword.

Power surged into him. He recoiled, but the energy held him fast. A voice came with it. This wound will kill us, but until it does, it empowers us. Do not draw it.

Kamahl shuddered. He still clutched the sword, an envious hand against a jealous world. An evil one is coming.

Yes. He enters Krosan on the flood of night.

Kamahl could sense the follower's fell presence. How can 1 fight without this sword?

I will form new beasts through you. They will be your foot soldiers and your command corps. Build an army from the abundance within me and shape them from the abundance within you. Make your army and march them to war. Heal yourself and heal the land…

The contact broke. Kamahl staggered away. The darkness around him was profound. Though the revelatory moment was fleeting, it had changed all. Kamahl brimmed so full of power that it poured from his eyes and nose and mouth.

"I will gather my army," he said, flames standing on his tongue. "I will make new warriors. I will heal the land."

Swathed in night, the First sat beyond the Gorgon Mound. Around him spread a riot of dead boughs. Kamahl had descended into the pit and communed with a very god. He was its champion, just as his sister was the champion of the First.

A bleak smile cracked the man's face. He would soon descend to commune with that same god, but not yet. The forest was still too vital, but a great evil ate into its heart. The evil gave the Krosan power for the moment, but it stole power for eternity. Once the forest was weak enough, the First would touch its heart.

He withdrew into deeper shadows. He would test the forest's champion, and when the man was found wanting, he would strike to kill.

Kamahl emerged into a benighted forest. He was its only light. His face beamed with power, and he stood-lantern-bearer and lantern both-atop the spirit well.

Beside him hunched the druid sentry. In her gray robes, the nantuko woman seemed a stump, but her eyes glistened with hope. Prior to this moment, she had seen only darkness in that cave-tomb, but now she saw light incarnate.

Kamahl descended the hill. He was not truly light incarnate but only a vessel that held the inestimable power of the forest. The perfect place within him had grown until it verged on his very skin and would flow out at a single touch. His tattered boots left glowing footprints, and in them rose the tender shoots of new life.

He walked, refulgent, focus of this once-chaotic power. The fecund force that had lashed mindlessly, warping plant and beast into grotesqueries, now would emerge mindfully.

Before him, the great thicket spread. It had trebled in size since he had passed it. Thorns interlaced in an impenetrable wall.

Kamahl reached it and stopped, power oozing from his pores. In places, the green energy gathered and leaped outward. Tracers bounded down his legs and onto the ground, and flowers bloomed there.

Clenching his jaw, Kamahl stared at the thistles. His eyes traced out the slender stalk, the tripartite thorns, the way in which-branch added upon branch-the whole bush formed a round mass. He raised his index finger and touched a single thorn. Verdant energy leaped from the nail onto the stem. At first, the green power danced like lightning along the hard-edged thorn. It found a ring of pores beneath the cluster and pierced to the core of the stalk. Down sap channels it ran, enlivening the branch, adjacent stalks, and finally the whole bush. It glowed with green flame. Energy spread into the roots, lighting up the dirt. The bush rocked and pulled itself loose from the ground. It tumbled, its thorns walking like a million legs.

"Away," Kamahl quietly commanded, gesturing up over the mound.

The spiny creature rolled, climbing the thicket. Where its thorns touched, power bled into other bushes. Each transformed. One plant at a time, the briars came to life and spun away. The thicket broke into countless green-glowing tumbleweeds, which made room for Kamahl to pass.

He wanted more than room. "Go, defenders of the forest. Patrol her borders. Protect her from any who would do her harm."

All the thicket bounded outward now, the deployment of an army.

Kamahl watched them go. They would be vigilant defenders of the forest. Still if he would march an army, some would have to be aggressors.

Kamahl remembered the Pardic Mountains; he remembered heaps of his own folk, slain in his anger. It was a potent memory, and he mixed it with the life-force that raged through him.

His fingers flung red radiance onto another thistle. Anger burned the plant away, but a ball of scarlet power remained. It whirled, spreading its fire to other such bushes. These would be his shock troops, living fiery rumbleweeds rolling before his army.

"Go to the desert's edge and patrol and wait. I will come for you." Kamahl watched with satisfaction as the burning spheres bounded out through the woods. He was pleased with these first creations but not satisfied. More potential lay latent in his skin.

He had transformed plants. Now, he strode out to change beasts.

The denizens of the forest watched: Mantis-folk peered from dark hollows; centaurs lingered like statues; druids turned gleaming eyes to the glowing man.

Kamahl could not begin with them, not sentient folk. Let him start with something simple-a primeval creature that kept its breast on the breast of the world.

Two snakes entwined nearby. Whether they writhed in battle or mating, Kamahl did not know. They were his primordial beasts, though. He hung his staff at his belt, reached down, and gingerly plucked the snakes apart. He lifted them, one in either hand. They coiled around his wrists and strained toward each other.

Kamahl raised his left hand. Power ran in green rivulets from his fingertips and twined about the snake. Every scale glowed, and the flesh beneath swelled. Sinews grew broader, longer. Ribs widened to make room for enlarging organs, and the riling spine lengthened.

In moments, the snake had doubled in size. It grew as large around as Kamahl's leg. He set the serpent on the ground. The beast's scales lengthened to feathery tips. Its mouth broadened to the size of a crocodile's, to the size of a giant shark's. It grew as wide around as a horse, an elephant-as long as a centennial tree.

"Remain," Kamahl said simply. His hand touched the beast, fingers barely spanning one scale. A spark leaped from human flesh to serpentine, reminding the giant beast who its creator was. "You are Verda, and you will remain here in Krosan to guard it from any invaders."

The serpent coiled slowly. Its body rose, loop on loop, as it listened. Verda's eyes met Kamahl's, and the man read the hunger there.

"You may not eat me. Nor may you eat mantis folk or druids or centaurs or any other thinking thing." The question remained, what might Verda eat? A hiss in Kamahl's right hand reminded him of a more pressing task. He glanced from the small snake to die hungry giant. "Wait, and do not eat."

Kamahl lifted high the other snake. "For you, I have even greater plans."

Power erupted from his palm, and flame mantled the snake. Scales burned and twisted, and flesh flared. Ribs exploded, sending gray smoke up through the air. While the first snake had swelled, this beast burst. Kamahl tried to drop the incendiary creature, but its flames expanded and took form, extending into a massive head. Rolling billows of orange grew into a huge body and tail. Heat and light solidified as scales of black and red. The crimson beast moved with volatile, darting motions.

"You are Roth. You will be my war steed," Kamahl said. He swung his hand out, and flame splashed over the fiery beast Roth hissed and recoiled, eyes burning in its skull.

"You must come with me-" Kamahl began, but before he could finish, Roth leaped upon Verda.

Jaws spread and clamped down on the great green snake. Teeth grated against feathery scales. Verda responded in kind, wrapping its powerful body in a constricting grip. The reptiles wrestled as before, though now each creature weighed a hundred tons. The massive boles of the Gorgon Mount shuddered. A tail crashed to ground beside Kamahl and left a trough as wide as he was.

Kamahl stepped back. He should have foreseen this. Verda was hungry, and Roth was angry or perhaps amorous. They would tear each other apart unless they found another focus.

Roth's fiery head darted in for another bite, but Verda reared back. Massive red jaws clamped on a rotten bough and shattered it. Roth hurled itself after its mate. From its gaping mouth tumbled wood and softer things-furry things.

A colony of squirrels had lived in the hollow bow, and they pattered one by one to the ground. They had been feasting on huge hunks of nut and scrambled to recover their spilled hoard.

Kamahl smiled and walked slowly toward the scolding squirrels. He grasped a large nut and lifted it, raising also the squirrel who had claimed it. The creature chattered furiously, attracting the attention of its comrades. Squirrels leaped for the stolen nut and clambered up Kamahl's arm. Vital power jagged into them.

In moments, they had grown to the size of badgers. Kamahl shook them off. Still they grew, clawing despondently at nuts that seemed to shrink in their midst. Squirrels as large as ponies, then as horses…

Even Kamahl backed away.

The serpents had gone ominously silent. Roth and Verda, necks entwined, stared at the brood of giant squirrels. Forked tongues darted out to taste the air. As one, the green and red creatures slithered toward their prey.

"You are to eat, and cavort, and flee," Kamahl said to the squirrels. They had noticed the serpents' attention and had gone still.

"You are to reproduce and to feed my guardians, but only when they deserve it."

One squirrel let out a tearing shriek. It hopped away, shaking the ground. Others did likewise. For a moment, there was no sky, but only furry bellies.

Snake heads darted in behind. Razor teeth snapped down on nothing. Had the giant serpents not been intertwined, each would have gotten a meal. As it was, they tumbled petulantly across each other while giant squirrels hurdled away. Roth and Verda slithered afterward.

"Eat," commanded Kamahl, "then return to your duty. Verda, you will begin to patrol. Roth, you will find me wherever I roam."

The hisses that replied were sullen but affirmative.

Kamahl's face shone with power as his creations pursued each other across the Gorgon Mount. He turned and walked through the wood. New creatures waited eagerly within his fingers.

What power he holds over beasts!

The First watched Verda and Roth slither into the distance. He would have to avoid them. Snakes could taste the very air, and they would sense him unless he masked his scent among rotting things. Luckily, there were plenty of rotting things in this rampant forest.

The First slid from his hideout and followed Kamahl at a distance. The man might have been raising an army, but the First would turn that army to his own purposes. As he stalked, his smile was like a dagger across his face.