The Forest of Peldain

Chapter Eleven

Several times during the night Vorduthe and Octrago were called on to intervene in disturbances where the serpent harriers, conscious of past and coming dangers, recklessly sought to enjoy themselves with the village’s women. It was a sullen set of local folk who early next morning gave the strangers a filling breakfast of crunchy nut-flavored cobs, quite unlike any fruit they had ever seen, and with relief bade them farewell.

The day proved idyllic. The Hundred Islanders marched leisurely through an enchanted landscape carpeted with the soft mosses and waving grasses of Peldain. There were clear streams, hillocks, villages and hamlets—always set amid groves of the magical trees that gave the country its magical economy.

They met no resistance, and Vorduthe began to wonder if the Peldainians were akin to savages, unable to organize themselves effectively or defend their territory.

“As we shall soon enter Lakeside, our strategy must be decided,” he said to Octrago during the midday halt. “What is your intention?”

“First let me hear your proposals,” Octrago countered.

“Well, do you think it is conceivable that a force like ours could actually take possession of the kingdom? If the center is seized, is all done? And can the center in fact be seized?”

“It is the same here as in the Hundred Islands,” Octrago told him. “Strength is what counts. The difference is that here one needs little strength, since the opposition has little. Very well, then. Come, I will draw a map of Lakeside. We shall infiltrate by night and converge on the king’s palace. There we shall give Kestrew and his band of ruffians their desserts. Tomorrow morning Mistirea will proclaim me king—and you will deal with dissenters, first of all in Lakeside and later throughout the land.”

“This is easier than you made it sound in Arcaiss.”

“There was the forest to deal with,” Octrago said blandly.

Vorduthe became accusing. “So you admit deception.”

“Deception? No, more a case of altered emphasis. One must marshal one’s arguments carefully when speaking with kings. Arelians have a horror of Peldain’s coastal forest. Overcoming that horror was my first difficulty.”

“Clearly you have some kingcraft yourself,” Vorduthe said bitterly. It was hard not to feel hatred when he thought of his destroyed army.

“My motives were honorable.”

While speaking, Octrago was sketching on a boulder with a piece of sharp stone. “Here is the lake and here is the palace—though ‘palace’ is your word. We call it the king’s tree. The approaches are through these avenues, thus and thus—it is straightforward enough. I will draw this map again when I find a convenient piece of tree bark, and your men can all study it. What do you think?”

“How many armed men may we expect to find within?”

“That I cannot say. Neither do I know whether Kestrew will have any stationed on guard round about, but no doubt we can find out. At any rate I am certain your men will give a good account of themselves.”

“How shall we find out about the guards? By sending scouts?”

Octrago sucked his lower lip thoughtfully. “I will go into Lakeside ahead of you. I must take Mistirea into a place of safety among friends. There I will make inquiries, and return to you.”

With a sour smile Vorduthe shook his head. “You and the High Priest remain with us. You are our guarantee that all is as you say.”

“How sad to find you so distrusting,” Octrago sighed. “I hope this mood will disappear when we rule Peldain together.”

“I am sure it will since, as you agreed with King Krassos, I shall have military command. You must then trust me.”

“Well, I know you for an honorable man,” Octrago murmured.

Contemplating the coming action, Vorduthe realized that the whole enterprise would now hang on one stroke.

Still, that was the kind of situation he liked.

Late in the day the terrain began to rise and to break up into a region of knolls and ridges. It was a bare and dusty landscape interspersed with clumps of verdure. Octrago led the party up a ridge and into a curious wood, the like of which they had never seen.

The trees were small, like Arelia’s fruit trees, but were twisted, seeming to writhe, and were bleached in color, seemingly without bark. The tortured, convoluted branches all joined up overhead and seemed a single network, and greenery grew only on the topmost part.

It was like walking under a low, vaulted ceiling carved by an insane mason. To Vorduthe, the sight resembled nothing so much as an enormous exposed brain.

Remembering the forest, the men were nervous until they assured themselves that the trees of this wood, however weird in appearance, were as still and passive as any in Arelia. Vorduthe, however, could not avoid an oppressive feeling, and he noticed that the men became subdued and quiet.

Glancing at him, Octrago paused and leaned with one hand against a tree trunk that was like a column of frozen wriggles. He let his gaze wander over the elaborate canopy.

“This is called Cog Wood,” he informed in a distant tone. “You feel it, don’t you? I can see it on your face.”

“Feel what?” Vorduthe asked him.

“Its presence. I told you before that the trees can hear our thoughts. Now, if you are quiet in your mind, you may hear this wood’s thoughts. Yes, it thinks—after a fashion. These wooden sinews—” he gestured to the overhead twisted branches—“are the cranial channels of a kind of brain. Tree touches tree and branch joins branch so that they become as it were one tree. Do you not hear it thinking?”

“No,” Vorduthe said, but he was half-lying. There was a feeling of presence, as though the wood were alive and watching, and it was an oppressive feeling.

Octrago, however, seemed in no hurry to leave the place. He sauntered between the narrow trunks, looking about him as though attempting to attune himself to the vegetable mentality he claimed existed—a claim Vorduthe could not take seriously, especially considering the beliefs of the cult Mistirea represented.

They came atop the ridge, descended a series of terrace-like depressions, then broke from the tree cover.

Below them lay Lakeside, spread out on land that sloped very gently to the east. Half wood, half town, the buildings merged with the trees almost without distinction. From Octrago’s rough map Vorduthe recognized the king’s tree, or palace—a large construction, probably of several stories, bedecked with verandahs and, in a gorgeous display, broad-leaved branches.

To the east of the town was the lake, irregularly shaped, its east shore sustained by raised banks. The oddest thing about it was its color: not blue, or grayish like some muddied waters, but distinctly green, so that it seemed at first like a discoloration on the spread moss.

For what remained of daylight they remained on the slopes overlooking the town, keeping out of sight. Night came, and the massed stars appeared, making the lake gleam unnaturally.

“The eye of Peldain watches the stars,” Octrago said at Vorduthe’s elbow, after the manner of one quoting a familiar saying.

“And what does the soul of Peldain do?” Vorduthe replied ironically.

“Broods, perhaps.”

The men had been briefed and each was aware of what he had to do. The party swarmed down the slope, spreading out so as to move through the town in twos and threes. No street lamps burned on stone pedestals as would have been the case in Arcaiss—the Peldainians retired early. In fact there were no proper streets, only foot-worn paths between the houses, from whose resined windows came soft light and the sound of voices.

They met no one on their way to the big building that was the palace. Inspecting it at closer quarters, Vorduthe paused to wonder if such an elaborate structure really could have been jigsawed together from individually grown units, as the larger Peldainian dwellings usually were. It seemed barely possible. Perhaps, he thought, it had been grown in situ as the conjoined product of a grove of trees—or perhaps it even resulted from a single gargantuan tree.

Octrago whispered nervously. “Mistirea should wait out here. We cannot risk the life of the High Priest.”

“We are all at risk,” Vorduthe retorted. “He comes with us.”

Theirs was the largest group, numbering eight, the reason being that they had also surreptitiously to guard Mistirea and Octrago. Around the palace, metal glinted in the starlight. The others were moving into position.

So far there had been no challenge and no guards stood at the foliage’s entrance, though the many windows glowed with light. Vorduthe advanced into the open and raised his arm as a signal. Seaborne warriors flitted to the large ground windows.

A double-paneled door on thick leather-like hinges, patterned like a gnarled tree, blocked the entrance. It creaked open easily when Vorduthe pushed it, and he slipped inside, motioning to the others to follow.

The broad hallway in, which they stood could almost have been the interior of a spacious building in Arcaiss, were it not for the alienness of the designs on the walls. Vorduthe was used to carved wood and bright, simple colors. The soft, full light came from numerous cressets. Opposite the door a staircase, organically grown like everything else, led to a balcony or gallery.

The place was empty of Peldainians. Cracking sounds came from nearby. The seaborne warriors were breaking the windows, as quietly as they could, and filtering into the palace. Finding no resistance, they gathered together, looking to Vorduthe for guidance.

Suddenly a serpent harrier uttered a warning exclamation, pointing with his sword. Vorduthe whirled in time to see Octrago and Mistirea disappearing through a small door to the right of the stairway. Three of the men who were to have watched them charged in pursuit, but the door slammed and held as they tried to force it.

“Sorry, my lord,” another said. “They caught us unawares.”

“Too late now—don’t waste time on them.” Vorduthe raised his voice. “Spread through the palace, put down any and all resistance as you find it.” He picked out a group of men. “You come with me. The rest—that way, and that.”

He was about to mount the stairway, when men appeared on the gallery.

They were Peldainians, their bony white faces peering down curiously but without fear at the invaders. They were garbed for combat, carrying swords and timber shields, and wearing breastplates and helmets of honey-colored metal. All this Vorduthe perceived in a moment, for in that instant what he had taken to be a ceiling decoration detached itself from the ceiling and fell on the whole gathering of Arelians.

It was a net. Like the others, Vorduthe tried to cut his way through it with his sword, but this was no ordinary net. It was not made of rope. Its flexions reminded him of triproot or stranglevine, except that it acted not to strangle or to amputate but only to immobilize. And this it did by progressive squeezing. Swords fell from nerveless hands; arms quivered with the effort to break free as the net wrapped itself tighter, embracing each man individually.

The net was a living thing that reacted to movement, even the movement of breathing. Vorduthe realized this belatedly. He held his breath in an attempt to fool the net, but it remembered its victim, and whenever he breathed out a little it contracted around his thorax, preventing him from drawing breath again.

Suffocation overwhelmed him, vision faded. With a faint croak of frustration, Vorduthe lost consciousness.

With hands hauling him to his feet, he knew he had not been out for long. The net had been drawn back and was rolled up against the wall. The bony-faced men in honey armor were everywhere, dragging and herding the disarmed Arelians to one side with cuffs, blows and pricks with swordpoints.

The voice of Troop Leader Kana-Kem cried out hoarsely. “Remember our pledge, Commander! Remember!”

Vorduthe felt shame. He had led his men into a trap.

Before he could reply, another voice called out.

“That man must be kept apart from the others!”

It came from Mistirea. Vorduthe raised his eyes and saw four figures descending the staircase. The High Priest was pointing to Vorduthe, and Octrago was by his side.

With them was a man very advanced in years who stepped carefully with the aid of a stick, watched over by an accompanying servant. He wore a robe of a glowing lilac color laced with silver, more sumptuous than anything Vorduthe had yet seen in Arelia. The skin of his face was like bone bleached and weathered on the beach. Yet except for its age, even taking national likeness into account, it was remarkably like Octrago’s.

The four stopped a few steps from the floor. There was a sudden silence, and the guards paused in their work to bow to the old man, who inspected everything with a kind of bewildered interest.

Vorduthe would have expected a roar of rage from the seaborne warriors at the entrance of Octrago. Instead they were as still as statues, and as silent, only their eyes betraying their feelings.

“This trap has been well laid,” Vorduthe announced loudly. “Your talent for treachery now becomes evident, Askon Octrago—tell me, is this your cousin Kestrew, the false king we were to turn off the throne? If so, why are we prisoners and you are not?”

The old man gave a puzzled look to Octrago, who twisted his mouth in a cynical smile.

“There is no cousin Kestrew,” he told Vorduthe. He sounded almost sad. “That was a tale I spun to serve my purpose. But as for treachery, I want you to understand that everything I have done I did for the sake of my country. And since you ask, you see before you King Kerenei, undisputed monarch of Peldain—whose eldest son I am.”

Vorduthe’s head swam with this news. “Korbar was right all along,” he muttered. “Everything has been lies….”

“Nearly everything.”

For the first time the old king spoke, quaveringly. “Askon, what should be done with these strangers?”

Octrago did not reply instantly. He looked pensively at Vorduthe, who held the gaze, and it seemed that his supercilious expression softened slightly.

“They must all be put to death, father; and immediately. Perhaps I could wish it otherwise, but they are hopeful fools whom I have led a long way from home and used to good purpose. They will be dangerous to us while they live.”

Were it not for the guards who held him Vorduthe would have hurled himself at Octrago’s throat, but instead it was Mistirea who intervened. He swept past Octrago, pointing to Vorduthe.

“If you kill this man, Peldain dies with him!”

“The High Priest suddenly develops a conscience,” Octrago said caustically. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “Give the order now, father, before my nerve breaks too.”

Mistirea addressed himself imploringly to Kerenei. “Will no one listen to me? I am High Priest of the Lake no longer!”

“This is preposterous,” Octrago drawled. “Father, I did not go through unimaginable trials just to have our High Priest prove obstinate now. These are desperate times and if he will not cooperate—force him!”

“You may torture me unto death,” Mistirea said calmly. “It will make no difference. Peldain is doomed unless my successor can be found. Why, when I retired to the mountains, could you find no one to take my place? It is because there is no Peldainian able and worthy to fill the role, and if providence had not sent us new blood the Cult of the Lake would have died with me. This I have known for a long time.”

He turned, pointing his-finger at Vorduthe again. “This man is your new High Priest. There can be no other.” He cast darting glances around him. “Who will gainsay me? You, Prince Askon? Do you have mental insight, to look into a man and tell whether he has the power of communion? Yes, you have impossible bravery and extraordinary resourcefulness too—but you are not an initiate of the cult.”

King Kerenei’s look of incredulity had become more and more pained. He stamped his stick on the stair. “Enough! I can take no more! After all this time my son, whom I had thought lost on a gallant but hopeless enterprise, has returned to me. He has succeeded beyond all our dreams, and still matters are not right! I cannot bear it!” He turned to mount the stairs. “Askon, look into this matter. Mistirea’s knowledge must be our guide.”

“As you say, Father.”

While the King took his leave Octrago, author of Vorduthe’s misfortunes, sauntered to him. Despite himself he was evidently intrigued by what Mistirea had said.

Vorduthe spoke stiffly. “Whatever you want from me will not be forthcoming if a single one of my men is harmed.”

“You are quick to seize a scrap of advantage….” Octrago fingered the hilt of the upward-pointing Arelian sword he still wore. A hint of friendliness returned to his manner. “Well, we shall see what transpires.”

“I marvel that you are able to face me, after your behavior,” Vorduthe said. “One thing baffles me. No travelers passed us on the way here. We watched you all the time. Yet you still managed to give warning of our approach.”

“Cog Wood,” Octrago supplied curtly. “I told you it could sense, even think after a fashion. Did you not notice how I tarried there? I wanted the wood to convey our perturbing presence to one of Mistirea’s sensitives here in Lakeside. From then on our movements were followed.” He smiled. “Our land has held a number of surprises for you. And now, my lord, it seems I must explain what really has been happening since the day I landed in Arelia.”