Below the Root (15 page)

“There,” Neric said at last, already whispering although there was as yet no reason for it. “There, that looks climbable.” He was pointing to a place where a twisted mass of Wissenvine passed only a few feet from the edge of their branchpath.

Raamo nodded. For only a moment they stood looking downward to where, far below, they could see what seemed to be a solid carpet of shadowy green. And then Raamo jumped, grasping frantically for hand and footholds in the tangle of Vine. He slipped a few feet, came to a stop, and then began to climb downward. A moment later the Vine vibrated as, above Raamo’s head, Neric landed. Glancing up, Raamo saw Neric’s foot groping for a foothold directly above his head. Then he gave his full attention to the climb and to the rapidly diminishing distance to the forest floor. He did not stop again until he was directly above the highest fronds of the giant fern.

Dangling from his makeshift Vine ladder, Raamo turned from side to side, his eyes probing every opening in the heavy undergrowth, his ears straining to hear the slightest sound. The ferns seemed to grow in thick clumps. Their curved fronds sprang up, higher than a man’s head, and then curved over in graceful arches. Here and there the pale sleek domes of mushrooms loomed almost as tall as the ferns themselves.

A few more steps and Raamo was below the canopy of fronds, and the earth itself was visible. For the most part, it seemed to be carpeted in thick green mosses, but here and there were patches of deep, dark brown. Raamo stared in fascination. The brown surface, rough in texture, rich in hue, warm and damp and pungent, was earth. The earth that nourished everything—and yet threatened everything with its dark mysteries. Raamo was still staring when Neric’s foot touched his head.

“Sst,” Neric whispered. “Go on. I’m slipping.”

A moment later Raamo’s foot came in contact with a firm and yet spongy surface, and he was standing on the forest floor. As he turned quickly, alert for the slightest sound or motion, Neric landed beside him with a soft thud. Back to back, poised for instant retreat back up the Wissenvine, they stood for many minutes, immobilized by fear and fascination.

The very air was foreign to them, warmer, and heavy with rich musty odors. There was not the slightest breeze stirring, and the leaves and fronds hung motionless in the deep hush. When a faint rustling noise broke the silence, both Raamo and Neric jumped toward the Wissenvine, before they realized that the sound came from beneath a fallen grundleaf very near their feet. Bending, Raamo jerked the leaf away, and a small creature, no larger than a baby treebear, leaped out and raced away with a strange bounding gait. Grinning sheepishly at each other, they resumed their vigil.

At last Raamo crouched and, reaching out to where the bare earth was visible near the base of a fern clump, he dug with his fingers and then filled his hand with the warm damp soil. Standing again, he examined it closely. Neric, too, bending over Raamo’s hand, experimented with it, pressing a small amount into a ball and then crumbling it again with his fingers. Holding it near their faces, they sniffed it, and the strange rich smell moved Raamo with a deep obscure excitement, as if it awakened something within him that had long been forgotten. At last he opened the drawstring on his belt pouch and carefully deposited the earth inside.

“Come on,” Neric was whispering. “We won’t discover anything by standing here all day. We must find a way to mark our path back to this spot, and then we must start exploring.” He reached up and, breaking off a feather of fern, he placed it on the earth in front of them, its tip pointing down the nearest corridor of open space. “Shall we go this way?”

Raamo shrugged to indicate that one way was as good as another, since they had no idea where they were going or even what they were looking for. They started off, slowly and softly, stopping every few yards to deposit another fern frond to mark their path.

The light was dim in the fern-arched corridor. Underfoot the earth was soft and springy—a strange sensation to feet accustomed to the smooth hard surfaces of grund branches. Unfamiliar insects—fat black beetles and large ants—scurried away before their approach. Here and there delicate white flowers bloomed amid clumps of tiny rounded leaves, while larger bushes bore enormous clusters of red and orange blossoms. Several times they passed large protrusions—masses of some unfamiliar material, gray brown in color and of a strangely hard and cold consistency.

“It is called stone,” Neric said. “I have heard of it.”

Raamo ran his hands over the cool hardness of the stone. He poked at the black beetles and stooped to smell the flowers. Everywhere he looked were strange and wondrous sights, sights so intriguing that several times he found it necessary to remind himself of the seriousness of their mission—and of the great danger.

A moment later he was forcefully reminded when their path crossed an area where a network of ridges crisscrossed the surface of the earth, making it difficult to walk without tripping. “Is that the Root?” Raamo whispered.

Neric nodded. “I have heard it described by the Vine Priests. It is in areas like this, where the Root grows close to the surface of the soil, that there are most apt to be tunnels.” He bent and, picking up a twig, he scratched a thin layer of moss and soil from the top of one of the ridges, revealing a vinelike growth as thick as a man’s arm and very much like an old gnarled branch in appearance. But when Raamo touched the Root with his fingers, he snatched them back quickly in shocked surprise. The Root was cold, with a fierce consuming coldness that seemed to grip his fingers and suck at their warmth. Clutching his fingers, he stared at Neric. “Touch it,” he said.

“I have heard of its coldness,” Neric said. Touching it, he, too, pulled his hand away swiftly. “It is indeed an enchanted growth.”

Suddenly Neric clutched Raamo’s arm. “Look,” he breathed, pointing toward a thick clump of fern. Drifting up through the fronds, a thick gray haze spiraled into a towering column that stretched up and up, to finally disappear from view among the distant grundbranches.

“A cloud column.” Neric’s whisper was almost too soft to hear. “We must be near the mouth of a tunnel.”

They crept forward, an inch at a time, their bodies turned sideways in preparation for instant flight. Gradually they became aware of a musty acrid odor. As they rounded the base of the fern clump, the smell grew stronger, and Raamo found that his eyes were pained and watering. Panic assailed him as he recalled the stories of the poisonous qualities of the Pash-shan cloud columns, but before he could turn to flee, he saw something that shocked him into immobility. There before his eyes, only a few feet from where he was standing, was a large dark hole. The hole was perhaps a foot across at the widest place. It was bordered by sections of dark gray Root, making it resemble a gray lipped mouth, and from between these strange lips there issued the thick column of eye-paining graywhite haze.

Easing past Raamo, Neric began to circle the tunnel mouth, silently motioning for Raamo to follow. At a fever pitch of excitement, they continued to circle, their eyes glued to the dark opening. The cloud column twisted slowly upward, but nothing else stirred in the gaping tunnel mouth. When they had circled back to their starting place and retreated to a safe distance, Neric spoke.

“Come,” he said. “Let’s move on before we are poisoned. We have seen what is to be seen here.”

Dropping another fern frond, Neric altered their course in order to skirt the cloud column. They had gone only a short distance when the path curved, leading them close to the trunk of an enormous grund. The path seemed to circle the trunk, and they were halfway around it when Raamo suddenly stopped and stood still. A few feet ahead, Neric heard him gasp and turned back.

“What is it?” Neric asked.

Raamo was standing stiffly, staring down a path that turned off to the right. It was a narrower fainter path, and it led directly between two enormous mushrooms and on into a dense thicket of fern and Vine-stem. The air was suddenly heavy with a sultry sweetness, and Neric realized that the odor was coming from a bush that grew just to the right of the pathway. The bush was heavily covered with bloom of a deep rich shade of purple.

“This is the place,” Raamo whispered so softly that Neric was not sure that he had heard correctly.

“The place?” he asked. “What place?”

“In my dream. I dreamed about this place and—” Raamo stopped, listening intently, but there was not the slightest sound.

“And what?” Neric shook Raamo’s arm, his round eyes darting nervously.

“There was a call, a cry for help,” Raamo said.

“I hear nothing.”

“Nor I—no wait!” Shutting out the sensations of eyes and ears, Raamo turned his Spirit-force inward to concentrate on receiving in mind-touch, and almost immediately he became aware of it—a faint and indistinct sending that seemed to come from a great distance. Someone, somewhere was sending a weak and wordless plea for help. Then, just as in the dream, Raamo plunged forward down the dim pathway.

The path curved and turned, and in the dim light Raamo stumbled frequently, but he scarcely noticed. Nor did he react to the fact that Neric, hurrying after him, was continually grabbing at him and urging him to stop and explain. Everything—Neric, the rough pathway, even the fear that still gripped his chest—faded into the background as the cry for help grew louder and more insistent. They had been running for several minutes when the path broke out of the thicket into a small clearing surrounding an enormous grundtrunk. Cowering against the base of the tree, her face contorted with fear, her arms lifted as if to ward them off, was a small child.

As Raamo’s own panic subsided, an urgent curiosity took its place. He stared at the strange sight before him, exchanged bewildered glances with Neric, and stared again. The child still cowered, tears streaming down her face, and her whole body trembling visibly.

She was definitely a Kindar child, perhaps six or seven years of age, and perfectly normal in bodily appearance, except for her unusually dark skin. She was dressed, however, in a very strange fashion. Instead of a silken shuba, she was wearing a close-fitting garment made of material that resembled the fur of an animal. The fur was, in texture, so short and fine, and the garment fit the child’s small body so closely, that for a moment Raamo thought it was her own skin. At her throat and from her ears there dangled strands of a hard-surfaced material that Raamo now recognized as metal, and among these strands were sparkling particles that caught the light like sunlit raindrops.

Perhaps it was because her fear was so apparent, so intense and profound, that it seemed to fill the air around her with a tangible force, that Raamo was slow to realize he was actually pensing her. He knew, of course, that she was frightened; but it took him a little time to realize that his knowledge of her fright was greater and more specific than his eyes and ears could have told him. When he did awaken to the possibility and made a conscious effort to center his Spirit-force on her, he was able to pense clearly that she was begging, pleading, for mercy. He did not pense her pleas in exact words or phrases; but her sending was strong and vivid, and almost without hope.

“Do not fear us,” he sent in return. “We will not harm you.”

The child continued to cower, but her eyes turned searchingly to his. Stepping closer he took her wrist. She cringed at his touch, but he pressed his palm to hers and repeated the sending. Her eyes searched his, and al though she still shrank away from him, her sobs began to slacken.

“Can you pense her?” Neric asked.

Raamo nodded.

“She can speak then?”

“I don’t know. I pensed feeling only—no words.”

“You know what she is, don’t you?” Neric asked. “She must be a slave child. A kidnapped Kindar. She must have been captive since she was a very young infant, poor thing.”

“But how is it that she is free now?” Raamo said. “How is it that she is above the Root?”

“I don’t know. Unless it is true that the Root is withering, and there is somewhere an opening large enough for a child of her size to pass through. What was it that you pensed?”

“Only that she fears us and begs not to be harmed.”

Neric nodded. “We must be very strange and frightening to her. She does not know what we are.”

As they were speaking, the girl’s eyes darted between their faces. Now, suddenly, she lifted her hand and, pointing at the seal on Neric’s shuba she spoke. Although her voice shook with sobs, and she pronounced her vowels strangely in a slurring singsong, the words were unmistakable. “Are you not Ol-zhaan?” she asked.

Raamo and Neric stared at her in astonishment.

“Yes, we are Ol-zhaan,” Neric said. “And are you not a Kindar child who has been held captive by the Pash-shan?” He reached out and put his hand on the girl’s head. “You must not fear us,” he said. “We are of your kind, and we would not harm you.” He turned away to Raamo. “How do you suppose she learned to speak? Unless some of the fallen children have been old enough to have learned speech and have taught the others.”

“Or else the Pash-shan speak as we do.”

“I suppose that is possible,” Neric said. “I can’t remember being taught anything concerning their manner of speech. But I had always thought of them as being incapable of speaking as humans do.”

It was just then that a small furry creature similar to the one they had seen earlier appeared at their feet and, with one bound, leaped into the child’s outstretched arms.

“Look,” Raamo said. “It is tame.” He crouched, bringing his head to the same level as the child’s. Reaching out he touched the soft fur of the little animal. “Is it yours?” he asked, smiling. “What is it called?”

“It’s my lapan,” she said. “His name is Haba.”

“Haba,” Raamo repeated, stroking the animal’s head.

“And what is your name?”

“Teera. My name is Teera.”

Neric touched Raamo’s shoulder. “Come,” he said. “It is not safe here. We must—” he stopped, staring at the little girl in consternation. “What are we to do?” he said. “We can’t leave her.”