The Forest King

CHAPTER 13

Balif’s party rode south, away from the nomad war band. For reputedly empty territory, they ran into plenty of people on the move-centaurs and kender, mostly. The few small groups of humans they spotted were mixed men, women, and children. The elves were unable to approach them, as the family bands fled at the sight of riders.

Balif dictated notes to the Speaker from the saddle. He was calm, insightful, and accurate in his judgment of the situation. There was no law in the eastern province. Human war bands crossed the territory with impunity, and they were trying to drive out anyone not part of their own tribe. The wanderfolk were numerous but not a serious threat to Silvanesti hegemony. They were simply migrants, living off the land, bothering no one but belligerent nomads and hysterical officials such as Governor Dolanath.

Mathi noticed that the general did not use the official Silvanesti name for the east, Silvanoth, and that he played down the potential problems the kender presented. She asked Balif about that point.

“The wanderfolk are not warriors or nation-builders. They are no threat to the Speaker’s rule or the elven nation. In fact, they may prove to be a useful buffer against the humans and centaurs,” he said.

“Those little oddlings useful?” Lofotan commented sarcastically.

“Would you buy a house infested with cockroaches?” asked Balif. Lofotan avowed he wouldn’t unless the pests were exterminated. “Not an easy thing to do. Smoke, poison, and traps will get many, but the house may never be free of them. Do you understand?”

Lofotan easily saw a connection between cockroaches and kender, but Mathi felt she understood better. If the east were thickly populated with kender, it would put off the nomads from settling there in large numbers if at all. They were perfectly willing to fight the elves for the land, but the kender wouldn’t fight; they would just dwell there, doing all their infuriating kender things.

“Wanderfolk are bigger than insects,” Lofotan mused. “Maybe the humans can eradicate them.”

Balif said, “We must not let that happen.”

Before his majordomo could question the wisdom of that, Balif trotted ahead, signaling an end to the conversation. Treskan hurried after him, eagerly scratching down every word the general had said.

As they drew near the forested region just inland from Golden-Eye Bay, they found signs of conflict: patches of burned grass, broken spears, and shattered arrows. The heads had been carefully salvaged, but there was no mistaking the ruined shafts of either. When the first tall trees came into sight, a delegation of kender emerged from the woods and approached them.

“Greetings, illustrious General,” said the lead kender, holding a green sapling with a scrap of white cloth tied to the tip.

“General? What general?” Lofotan said warily.

“This is the storied commander of the elder folk, is he not?” The kender with the sapling pointed at Balif.

“You have us confused with others.”

“The Longwalker told us of your coming.”

Balif said, “The Longwalker deserves his name. Is he here?”

The kender wagged his head back and forth. “I don’t see him.”

Behind the flag bearer were five more kender, all bearing wounds of various sorts. The leader said, “Where is your army?”

“What army?” said Lofotan.

“The army that will defend the greenwood against the horsemen.”

A large number of kender, traveling more or less independently, had taken to the woods to escape the bands of marauding humans. Some kender had been captured, brutally treated, then turned loose as a warning to the others to leave the territory.

“Who gives orders for you to leave?” asked Balif.

“The chief of the horse riders, Bulnac by name.”

“Is this Bulnac a veritable giant, seven feet tall?” Mathi put in.

One of the silent kender stepped forward, waving a tightly bandaged arm. “Yes, yes, that’s him! Closer to eight feet, I’d say!”

According to the kender, Bulnac had recently led an uprising against the chief of his people, the Monsha. Balif knew the Monsha, or Mon-shu as they were called by the elves. They were a populous, powerful tribe whose range was in the far northern Great Plains. Losing his fight to gain control of the tribe, Bulnac had ridden away with his supporters to carve out a new realm for himself in the east.

Lofotan and Mathi glanced at their leader. He sat immobile, gazing over the heads of the battered kender delegation.

“Bad tidings,” he finally said. “A failed coup makes the loser desperate. This Bulnac will be difficult to deal with.”

“Your excellent self can do it,” said the flag-bearer cheerfully.

Balif looked at each of the little folk in turn. “I will do it,” he said solemnly. “But you must help.”

Lofotan started to protest, but his lord’s manner dissuaded him. Inwardly Mathi rejoiced. For reasons she did not understand, she wanted Balif to help the wanderfolk. The sympathy she felt for the race-a word she did not completely comprehend-was something new. But she was pleased to know Balif would be fighting the savage humans and defending the kender.

He had no army. He had a single old retainer, a disguised human scribe, an unknown quantity of kender to command, and Mathi. She had no idea if the wanderfolk could be welded into an effective fighting force, but with those few words-“I will do it”-Balif had pledged himself to try.

Balif and his companions dismounted. They led their horses into the cool shade of the woods. Born to the green, Balif glowed with happiness to be under trees again. Close on his heels, Lofotan brooded. Treskan gripped his stylus. The nomads had taken his best instrument. He’d had a spare in his gear back at camp, and he held on to it for dear life. He had been writing all morning, even when conversation stopped. Mathi supposed he was compiling impressions of the territory and situation.

The forest was old and long-standing. Oaks and beeches predominated, interspersed with cedars so dark, their green fronds appeared black. The trees had reached great heights, growing unmolested since the dawn of time. Centuries of leaf fall had smothered all undergrowth, leaving the space between the soaring trunks relatively open. Passing through the forest was like traversing some enormous, columned hall. The air was still. Birds flitted in the high branches. Motes sank slowly through high lances of sunshine.

Tugging the packhorse reins behind her, Mathi’s mind turned back to her mission. Since discovering the general’s affliction, she had begun to wonder if she should continue with the plan to kidnap him. Would their creator prefer they left Balif to the mercies of his curse? Then there was her growing feeling that Balif should be left alone to deal with the human nomads and protect the kender.

Her mental juggling was halted by a small face popping up right in front of hers.

“Rufe!” she said. “You’re here now, are you?”

“Tall people say the strangest things,” he replied. “If I weren’t here, who would you be speaking to?”

Mathi pushed him aside with a theatrical sweep of her hand. Rufe fell in step behind her, gently patting Mathi’s pony.

A quick survey revealed hundreds of kender lurking and lolling in the forest. They perched on low branches, feet swinging; they dodged in and out of the columned trunks, playing tag. Some were doing tricks for the amusement of their comrades. Mathi saw one kender show how he could slip his arm out of his sleeve then leave behind a leather glove as a false hand. With his freed hand, he probed pockets, tossed rocks, and tied and untied shoelaces.

“What are we going to do with such folk?” Lofotan said. “The nomads will chop them down like wheat.”

Balif remained curiously optimistic. “If you must fight against a sword, and you have no sword, take two knives.” It was an old saying, but Lofotan only frowned when he heard it.

There was no camp to speak of, no central spot around which the kender gathered. The elf party walked on, leading their horses until the Longwalker appeared. The kender chief was, for him, grandly dressed in a white robe and buff suede boots too large for him. A gilded circlet crowned his head. From ten feet away Mathi could tell that the headgear was fake. The gold leaf was peeling at the edges, and the “gems” mounted on it were murky chunks of glass. Nevertheless, the Longwalker looked something like a leader of substance instead of just another short-statured vagabond.

“Greetings, wonderful General,” he said, beaming.

Balif shook his hand like an equal. “Hail to you, Longwalker. How have you come to this state? The humans have driven you to cover like a covey of quail.”

“Pah, it’s nothing. A few dark nights and we’ll slip away.” No one believed him, not even Rufe and the other kender listening. The nomads were too thick on the plain to evade.

“If I can help, please say so,” said Balif. “I am at your disposal.”

The Longwalker clasped his hands together and breathed, “How splendid! You can drive the riders away, can’t you, illustrious General?”

“With what? Juggling tricks?” muttered Lofotan.

“If necessary, even that, Captain.” Balif raised his voice for all to hear. “War is more than fighting and killing. The most potent weapon of war is here.” He tapped his temple. “More often than not, guile and artifice can overcome strength and ferocity.”

Cheerfully clapping the elf general on the back, the Longwalker and his companions escorted Balif to their fireside. Lofotan unhappily watched his commander.

To no one, he said, “Foolish at best and suicidal at worst.” Treskan, tramping by, asked him to repeat what he just said. Lofotan gave the scribe a frosty glance and moved on.

Mathi and Rufe brought up the rear. As the elves passed out of sight among the big trees, the kender said, “What about my payment? Where’s my horse?”

“Your job isn’t over yet.”

“Uh-huh, it is. Pay up, or I tell the general what you really are.”

“You’re too late,” Mathi lied. “He already knows.”

For the first time since meeting the kender, Mathi had the pleasure of seeing Rufe be genuinely surprised.

“He knows? And he still lets you ride with him? I thought he would tear the points from your ears for deceiving him.”

“General Balif is an unusual fellow,” Mathi said. “After all, he’s working for your people now.”

That the kender could not deny. He nodded sagely as though he believed her. He was about to leave when Treskan joined them. Keeping an eye on Lofotan and the general, he asked Rufe if he had penetrated the human camp yet.

“A few times.”

There’s a certain item he had, the scribe said carefully. It was taken from him while he was held in the humans’ camp. He wanted it back.

“What?” the kender wanted to know. Treskan described the talisman in some detail.

“Oh yeah, I remember that dingus. What’s so important about it?”

“I want it. It’s mine. Get it back as soon as possible, and I will give you-” Treskan stopped, stumped. What could he offer someone who was proud to own nothing but could get virtually anything his heart desired?

Mathi came to the rescue. She said, “What do you want, Rufe?”

“Pancakes.”

Used as she was to Rufe’s obscure reasoning, Mathi had to ask again. The answer was the same.

“Pancakes, with green berry syrup, butter, and cheese.”

“All right,” said Mathi slowly. “Treskan will make you pancakes.”

“I will?”

“I want to be paid in advance,” Rufe insisted. “Going in that camp is risky.”

The elves had flour in their supplies and maybe syrup, but Silvanesti did not eat dairy products as humans and kender did. Finding cheese and butter might be hard. Once again Mathi wished Artyrith were still there. He undoubtedly could produce pancakes from a glutton’s dream.

She explained their culinary dilemma. Rufe relented. “Have ’em by tonight,” he said.

Rufe wandered off in his aimless way, shrugging his shoulders now and then as if arguing with himself then agreeing to what he had said. Mathi and Treskan tethered the horses. Lofotan had ordered him to stand guard over them, but he had other things to do, such as finding ingredients for pancakes. Mathi suggested that he inquire with the Longwalker or the other kender. If anyone had butter and cheese in the wilderness, they would.

It was dark by the time he found all the ingredients. When the time came to cook Rufe’s bribe, there was no one around. He found Mathi seated under a lofty beech tree, dozing. He woke her quietly. She reacted by seizing his hand so swiftly, Treskan barely saw her move. She opened one eye.

“What is going on?” she said in a hushed tone.

“Nothing. I found what I need for Rufe’s pancakes, but everyone seems to be gone.”

All day the woods had seen a constant though erratic procession of kender passing back and forth. Mathi, exhausted by her long ride and their escape from the nomads’ camp, learned to ignore the restless wanderfolk as she would the pounding surf or raucous street noises. Once she was awake, the absence of kender and the silence was startling-and a bit ominous.

Releasing Treskan, she rolled to her feet. Mathi sniffed the wind. She smelled smoke. Wandering forward, she used her nose to track the aroma. The forest, so comforting by daylight, took on a strange atmosphere by night. The massive tree trunks and heavy canopy of leaves overhead made the forest floor prematurely dark. No stars or moons shone through the roof of green. When night fell, it fell hard.

She followed an erratic course in and out among the trees, turning this way and that, grasping the invisible lifeline of smoke. Treskan trailed her, puzzled but unquestioning. Mathi decided the odor was coming from a number of small twig fires, not a great pyre like what the nomads used. Treskan pointed out a glimmer of light among the trees ahead. The odor of burning grew stronger as they tracked to the light. Soon they heard the drone of voices and the snap of burning twigs.

A hollow between two rows of oaks was filled with seated kender. In the center of the smooth, shallow trench, a fire blazed. Seated around it were the Longwalker, Balif, and Lofotan.

Treskan opened his mouth to hail them, but Mathi stopped him. Something was happening, something unusual. The kender were all sitting still, facing the Longwalker and his guests. And they were listening. Mathi had never seen kender sit and listen to anyone before.

“And so Silvanos, called the Golden-Eyed, became Speaker of the Stars and Father of all his Country,” Balif was saying. “Our elder race has grown wise and strong during his reign and will grow wiser and stronger still.”

“Do all the elder folk bend a knee to the Golden-Eyed?” asked the Longwalker.

From where she stood, Mathi could swear Balif’s eyes twinkled. “All with wisdom do. No chief is loved by all.”

“True enough,” said the kender. He glanced over both shoulders at the crowd behind him. “This lot don’t love me. They don’t even like me very much.”

“Sure we do!” piped a voice from the darkness. “As long as you give us drink!”

There was much laughter. Mathi saw Balif had passed around the supply of the nectar that Artyrith had acquired in Free Winds. Kender drank from everything from cups made of rolled tree bark to battered gold goblets liberated, no doubt, from people they met on their travels.

“But what about you, Serius Bagfull? How did you become Longwalker of your people?” Balif asked. He held out a simple, clay cup for Lofotan to fill from a nearly empty skin of nectar.

“I was named such by the Eye.”

“Eye?”

The kender nodded. Fire highlighted his long nose and prominent cheekbones. “As I entered this world, the Eye spoke to me and said I would be the Longwalker of my people.”

“I don’t understand,” said Balif.

“Tell the story!” someone called. Others echoed the cry, but some of the kender objected just as loudly. Serius Bagfull, Longwalker of the wanderfolk, looked embarrassed.

“It is not a tale we tell to those not like us,” he admitted. “But the honorable general has agreed to aid us, so can we not repay him by sharing the story?”

Another mixed chorus of yeas and nays filled the clearing. The Longwalker held up his hands for quiet and received it.

“Sometimes I must act like a chief,” he said apologetically. “If you all do not mind!”

Only crickets sang in the woods. Treskan went down on one knee, opening the case of his writing board with one hand. Hand poised, he prepared to record everything the kender said.

“Time was and time is, as old ones say. Time was there were no wanderfolk in this land but in a place far gone, as far away as the opposite side of a circle. There were lots of us there, lots and lots-too many in fact, and no one had room enough to wander without bumping into another coming from another place. It was a bad time, and the people made trouble for each other out of spite and boredom. They stole-”

“Found!”

“Borrowed!”

The Longwalker cleared his throat. “They hurt each other, even killed one another. The People cried out to our makers for help, but the gods were not listening to our pleas. To get their attention, an especially clever girl named Fina decided to make a lodestone so large, it would pull the gods down from the sky. Then they would have to listen to our pleas.”

Treskan squinted in the poor light, scribbling it all down. He muttered to Mathi that kender as a race were obsessed with natural magnets. Some of them went on quests for decades, collecting every bit of lodestone they could find, filch, or finagle. Outsiders assumed kender had some daffy purpose for collecting magnets. For the first time, the origin of their obsession was revealed.

“Fina convinced her kinfolk to scour the countryside for lodestone. She collected enough to fill forty barrels. She and her cousin Rufus hauled them to the top of Mount Aereera, which was the highest peak in the land. They built a great pile of lodestone, and sure enough, after a day or so, clouds began to gather over the mountain. Lightning came down and struck the mountain all around them, turning the rocks to lodestone as well. The pull became so strong, nothing could resist it.”

“And the gods came down?” said Lofotan. He sounded a bit drunk and quite insolent. The Longwalker did not seem to mind.

“Not the gods. The Eye.”

All through the crowd of kender the word Eye was repeated with great reverence. Hearing the chant made the hair on Mathi’s neck prickle.

“What is the Eye?” Balif asked.

“The handiwork of the Makers,” the Longwalker replied. “A great oval stone in the sky, faceted like cave crystal, and the color of smoke.”

Treskan dropped his stylus. Mathi stooped to retrieve it for him.

“The Eye came down to the lodestone mountain. Though it was not bright, it burned the sky as it came. It drove Fina and Rufus off Aereera. They ran and behind them the slopes of the mountain ran like water. Great crowds of the People stood waiting for the two to return. When they saw the Eye descend, they fled for safety, but no place was safe. Houses burned, forests went up like kindling, and stone mountains melted like lead in a crucible. Fina herself was burned to ashes, but Rufus escaped.”

“How?”

“While running through the valley of Nepsas, below Mount Aereera, he saw a wide cleft in the rocks. He crawled in. There was a deep passage through the ground there, and many hundreds of the People followed him to escape the wrath of the Eye.

“The Eye pressed against the doors of the cleft, but the stone was so hard, it could not melt it. It tried so hard and so long that it wore out its anger at having been pulled down from the sky. The unseen fire faded away, leaving a cool and calmer Eye hovering over the mouth of the cave.

“‘Since you seek the world’s protection, go forth and find it,’ said the Eye. The crack in the ground deepened. Rufus and the People in the cleft went down and down, then up and up. It took so long for them to find the up from the down that babies were born along the way, and the babies of babies. I, myself, was born in the cleft. I have the mark of it, see?”

The Longwalker parted the seams of his dusty robe, revealing a large, angular scar on his chest. It could have been made by anything, and the kender chief did not elaborate on how he got it.

“One day while we were climbing up, the Eye spoke through the hollow core of the world and said, ‘You have taken a long walk, my children. Let the first one out into the new day lead you into the light.’

“I was the first of the People to see the sky of today. I am the Longwalker. I led the people out of the down and into the up.” He paused as if finished.

Balif was listening raptly, a fist pressed against his lips. “This happened in your lifetime? How long ago?” he murmured.

Serius tugged a tuft of weathered hair. “When this was long and glossy.” Kender didn’t observe calendars. Assuming the Longwalker was a spry age for a kender-seventy-five or eighty-it sounded as if the wanderfolk had arrived in the past forty years or so.

“We were not the same folk when we came out of the up as when we went into the down,” the Longwalker continued. “The people of the land around the circle were bigger and less handsome-not as big as you elder folk, I guess.”

“Who else would your ancestors be?” Lofotan said. “Not humans!”

Treskan said a single word. Mathi did not understand it, and she repeated it more loudly than the scribe intended. “Gnomes? What are gnomes?” she said. “The parent race of the wanderfolk?” Balif said thoughtfully

“Maybe. Don’t know.” The Longwalker sat down. “The stories say we were bigger, and passing through the down made us better sized.”

Treskan wrote wildly. His stylus flew across the sheet, leaving a slanting trail of ink scratches that Mathi could not fathom. He seemed awfully excited about hearing a silly traveler’s tale.

“So we have come to this land in search of breath and space. It’s a good land. We’ll stay.” Smiling, the kender chief qualified his last statement by saying, “With the help of our friend the famous general.”

“Is that story true?” demanded Lofotan.

Serius Bagfull grinned. “How could it be?”

With that, Treskan snapped his stylus in two. He stared helplessly at the broken instrument. How would he write his chronicle?

“Hey, boss.”

Rufe appeared like a mirage beside him. Treskan lost his composure. After frantically recording the entire fantastic story related by the Longwalker, only to hear it pronounced untrue, he had broken his last writing instrument. He cursed loudly, but less elegantly than the departed Artyrith.

“Easy, boss.”

“What are you playing at?”

“Found your whatsit,” Rufe said.

“Wonderful! Where is it?”

“Not here. In the nomad camp where I saw it.”

Anger rose and fell on the scribe’s face like a fever. He resisted an urge to take Rufe by the throat and shake him. “How do I get it back?” he asked slowly.

“Come with me. I’ll get it for you. You come too,” he said to Mathi.

“Me?” said Mathi. “You don’t need me. It’s not my trinket.”

“He’s clumsy and blind in the dark. You see like a cat. You come, or I don’t go,” Rufe said flatly.

Mathi looked to Balif, seated comfortably between the Longwalker and Lofotan. To be polite, it was Balif’s turn to tell a story, so he had launched into the tale of Karada, the woman who led the nomads out of fear and obscurity to their current state of power. The general was a fine storyteller. No one would willingly leave that spot for some time.

Treskan sadly pocketed the pieces of his writing instrument. He begged Mathi to accompany them.

It was a fool’s errand and a good way to get killed. Still, she had made a pact with Treskan, and he had kept his part faithfully. Perhaps she could leave word for her brethren along the way. They had to know about Balif’s unfolding curse.

“Lead on,” she told Rufe.

Treskan embraced her, and he was dissuaded from kissing her only by threat of violence.