Forest For The Trees (Book 3) (15 page)

Marik left it alone.  The intricacies of intelligence
games played by one kingdom against the next were of no concern to him.  He had
only made the comment in passing.

The number referred to whichever part of Tullainia
this mountain lay in.  Marik watched the man, who possessed magician talent
same as Tru, set the scrye in motion.  He could discern nothing of the alien
magic, only see the dirt disintegrate, or sint as magicians referred to their
components’ destruction, when the spell tore free the earth’s astral form.

Cottages around a village water-well from the
previously scryed image shimmered in the glass panes, as if rain sheeted down
the exterior, blurring the outer world.  Rather than the colors merely becoming
indistinct forms, new hues bled through to invade the scene.  Diseased
splotches grew in several places.  The colors succumbed to a disfiguring
plague.

It made Marik close his eyes to ward off the
disorientation.  He counted to ten before abandoning his inner darkness,
finding a new view through the window.  The sliding window’s central frame
added to the disturbing sensation of peering through a second floor window in
the palace at dusty, Tullainia lands.

Tru spoke short phrases to the man, getting him to
adjust the view from where the scrying had begun to wherever it needed to be. 
Marik drummed his fingers along his tunic sleeve, arms folded, waiting with
what he considered great patience.

When at last the view found what the magicians wished
it to, they had no need to inform the mercenary of the fact.  He felt his jaw
lowering, his exposed tongue drying against the air.  His arms slowly unfolded.

“That…”  A suffocating fish had replaced his tongue,
defiantly flopping in his mouth.  He forced himself to regain control. 
“That…can’t be right.  The scrye…it’s confusing the image.”

“No,” Tru said steadfastly, contradicting basic logic
with that one word.  “I scryed it first, then Celerity, then Elata, then Verge,
then Shanahan.”  The man sitting at Tru’s thigh tipped a finger in salute.  “I
still don’t know how they did it, but they must have kept doing it until they
finally did it.”

“This…  Why didn’t you mention this when I asked where
their mages were?  It’s pretty damned obvious to look at it!”

“No, it’s impossible.  We looked it up in every old
book we had. 
Ten-thousand
mages couldn’t do that.”  Tru scratched at
the corner of one eye.  “I don’t know how they did it, but it wasn’t with a
group of mages.  Even a big one.”

Marik glared at him before returning to the window. 
No mountain range could be seen in the foreground or dotting the distant
horizon.  The ground rolled gently, never quite enough to form a hill.  It
would be open pastureland in Galemar.  In Tullainia, it was mostly thick weeds,
dust and sporadic vegetation patches starting to catch green from the spring
days.  Of matters amiss, there were none to be found.

As long as one discounted the massive mountain
hovering a thousand feet above the deserted landscape.

It took Marik several moments to realize he had
stopped dead in the road’s center, staring at nothing while his ruminations
bent inward.  The brush from a passing horse’s flank brought him back to
awareness in time to catch the colorful invective hurled at him by the mount’s
rider.

He checked the sun to reassure himself of the time. 
Since rising from his meager bed for the second time, his sense of the world
around him had been gyrating as wildly as a festival showman juggling apples
whilst standing tiptoe on an oversized ball.

Three marks past the dawn.  Exactly as he knew it was,
except fully half of him remained in the day previous, staring in amazement
through the window at Tullainian fields.  It seriously disrupted his feel for
the proper order of the day.

To top it all, Tru had
farmed
an entire new
collection of scrying components from Marik.  In addition to the blood dripped
into a stopper-jar, enough to leave him worried at the amount, the hair
clippings, nail shavings and dirt from under his fingers, Tru had refused to
let him escape without filling the bottle this time.  When he emerged from a
cramped closet with the unpleasantly warm wine bottle in hand, he found the
magician already attempting a fresh scrye using his blood.

Marik waited out of interest for half a mark, mildly
hopeful that Tru would uncovered something with this attempt.  He’d grown
accustomed to failure and disappointment following every attempt to locate his
father.  If any image had formed in the mirror, it would have shocked his heart
into abruptly stopping.

Needless to say, his heart still continued its
ceaseless labor.

When, many years ago, he’d set out from Tattersfield,
finding Rail had been his driving motivation.  He had wanted resolutions to
unanswered questions, mysteries unraveled, puzzles solved.  Every action he’d
taken had been in hopes of discovering his father’s fate, or meant to
strengthen his self-sufficiency until he grew into a man Rail would accept
proudly.

But every path he took in search of answers ran
straight into a wall, or off a cliff.  In the end, what little knowledge he’d
garnered had come from sources he never would have expected.  His original plan
of questioning the mercenary band his father had last contracted with to
discover Rail’s back-trail had been naively optimistic from the start.

He viewed Celerity’s interest in the red-eyed man as a
mixed blessing.  Mages taking a keen interest in his personal affairs,
especially when that interest could be as hostile as not, disturbed him
greatly.  While it did mean the powers of the royal enclave’s best scryers were
dedicated to finding the man, the potential consequences…

Suppose this red-eyed stranger proved to be working
against Galemar after all.  Would they leave him be?  Would his father be swept
away in a mage battle he had no business with in the first place?

If the crown’s mages had been unable to locate them
after multiple attempts spanning months, then the chances that they ever would
were slim.  That comforted him to a degree.  Only to a degree, because it also
meant there was nothing Marik could do either.

Since joining the Crimson Kings, Marik had felt at
home in the place that suited him best in the entire world.  His friends, his
lifestyle…even his few enemies.  His sense of belonging threw a damper over his
raging need for answers.  The daily routines had gradually inured him to the
impatience.

Rail still lived.  Somewhere.  Marik believed that
sooner or later they would find each other.

All he need do is pursue leads when they presented
themselves and maintain the steady plodding without allowing discouragement to
gain a hold over him.

Tru could scrye all he wanted.  With a turn of luck,
he might actually discover a new lead.  With a bit more luck, he might even
tell Marik about it.

Until then, there were no other available options. 
Marik had learned that changes could occur when least expected.  He let things
be, waiting for the shift.  What could he do otherwise?

Nothing.

There was no point in brooding.  Instead he
concentrated on the business at hand.  Yesterday he’d gathered a picture of the
enemy forces in the southwestern corner.  Today he would conduct two separate
interviews, if he could manage it.

Tybalt’s clerks had coldly informed him that every
minute of the knight-marshal’s day was previously scheduled for other matters
than meeting with a scruffy hire-sword, no matter what his favor with the court
might be.  They were ‘too busy with their own tasks’ to help him learn what he
needed about the potential forces Galemar could field for the Tullainian border
defense.

He had pestered them about it until one snarled in
annoyance.  Marik held his ground.  Only in the face of his stubborn
persistence did a clerk finally inform him that any soldiers heading west
rather than east would be the newest recruits fresh from training.  Further
questions met with increasing hostility until Marik decided it would be enough
for going on with.

Which, in fact, tied in nicely with his second
objective for the day.  The black soldier prisoners were still being held at
Trask’s camp since the army was at a loss for where else to put them.  Marik
had interrogated prisoners before, though he hardly considered himself an
expert at it.  Depending on how he played it, they would either confirm what he
and Minna had pieced together yesterday, revel any flaws in their assumptions,
or unwittingly pass on new information regarding their forces.

At the same time he could talk to Trask and see what
raw recruits the western campaign would have to make do with.

Marik held little hope on that dice roll.

Of the many soldiers he had met, the few who stood
above the rest only came to the mid-C Class range if held against the Crimson
Kings’ standards.  The truly skilled tended to be affable sorts, seeing the men
under the clothing rather than separating out the Clean Uniforms from the
Ragged Ruffians.  As for the rest, army training consisted solely of set
routines, when training edicts were enforced at all.

And those substandard D Class soldiers were the
survivors.  What would he find in a camp of runny-nosed idealists who had yet
to have the mists blown from their eyes by hard combat?

He would have to check with Dietrik and ask his
ex-army friend what percentage of recruits survived their first battle.

Except any number Dietrik gave would be inaccurate,
wouldn’t it?  The type of fighting his old division had bloodied their noses on
was light skirmishing against Perrisan raiders, irate nobles whose neighborly
conflicts had spiraled beyond control, unusually well-organized bandit gangs,
the odd pirate making landfall off the Stygan Gulf, and foreign border lords
who thought they could surreptitiously annex extra land as they saw fit.

Could these fresh fish possibly maintain any level of
professionalism when they were hurled into a pitched battle against terrifying
monsters unleashed by their queer masters?  Or would they bolt, running
hells-bent for the horizon?

Too many questions.  Unfortunately, he suspected he
already knew the answers to this particular set.

Flying…in the air…

Marik shuddered when he realized he had stopped in the
roadway once again.  Whenever he successfully concentrated on what his next
step should be, his mind invariably returned to that view and its terrifying
implications.

He could conceive no basis by which to measure the
incredibly airborne mountain.  It was far too large for the mind to grasp.  By
the standard of the Stoneseams, the peak would be relatively small, lost among
the towering brethren surrounding it.  By the standard of a town, it would be a
question of whether the term ‘city’ was adequate, or if new terminology should
be created especially for it.

If told in a fanciful bardic tale, he would have
imaged a flat bottom, the pinnacle making it triangular overall.  The reality
bore a shape closer to a child’s rendition of a diamond; two triangles
back-to-back.

Had they carved the pointed base from the ground
through whatever unimaginable magic had raised it into the skies?  Or had they
searched until they found a small enough mountain which, in truth, was closer
to a half-buried boulder?  Marik’s guesses were wild, based on nothing, except
he felt the first option lay closer to the truth.  No power could keep the
flying fortress aloft indefinitely.  The gaping hole in the ground from whence
it had come originally would be the only place they could safely set it down,
the molded crater providing a perfect footing.

Was it possible to move such a hulk without it
crumbling to a hundred-thousand pieces?  Well, obviously they
could
, but
what about setting it back down without shattering it when the weight
redistributed?

Marik’s fingers scratched through his hair.  He
squinted one eye closed in a grimace as problems far beyond his learning became
apparent.

The most obvious problem of all was, ‘What is it for? 
What is its purpose?’  Given the limited resources the enclave had cobbled
together for cross-border scrying, it defied the odds that they had seen the damned
thing in the first place.

It clearly moved.  Once before the scryers had lost it
when it passed beyond the original area from which the anchoring earthen casket
had originated.  They crossed their fingers, guessed where it might turn up
given its observed progress, scryed for over an eightday, then finally found it
once it entered the new sector.  A sector closer to Galemar.

Was it heading for Thoenar, the black soldiers
intending to drop it on the capitol to behead the ruling government?  Would
they roll it over the massed armies to destroy all resistance at once?  Several
argued in favor of that, stating that such a tactic had not been optional
against Tullainia.  In the beginning, these invaders had attacked in surprise,
hamstringing the local forces before they had a chance to unite.

After a candlemark listening to conflicting theories,
Marik had left with a gut suspicion that none of them possessed the slightest
idea what any of it meant.  Their ideas were strictly that.  Ideas.  None had
foundations in any terrain but wild, unrestrained speculation on a phenomenon
their experience insisted must be impossible.

The floating mountain posed no immediate danger,
whatever its ultimate purpose.  Everyone agreed on that much.  Its speed, which
changed at different times, would keep it from reaching Galemar before six
months had passed.

Breakfast would be long over if these recruits were
being whipped without mercy to make them follow the army’s typical schedule. 
Marik expected to see the men running through training exercises when the first
hastily-built buildings hove into view.  Tents would always, he expected,
outnumber the few permanent constructions if this training arena survived after
the fighting forces fattened up.

He bent his concentration on finding Trask, preferably
after running down Dietrik.  Rather than the captain, when he reached the end
of the narrow path guarded by a lone soldier beside the main road, he found a
scene unbelievable in its layout.  Cork perched on an old stump, a guitar in his
hands.  He must have swiped it from a recruit since Marik knew the man had not
brought it with him from Kingshome.

Marik had never particularly liked the sounds created
by the instrument, favored, and probably created by, the Vyajjonese.  The
lute’s sweeter voice appealed to him far better.  That Cork could play it in
the first place, and play it well, came as a mild surprise.

Far more surprising was the minor court surrounding
Cork’s ankles.  No less than thirty recruits, younger than Cork, crouched on their
ankles, hearkening to the man who could never be satisfied unless he was on
top.  Or perceived himself to be.

Their eyes were wide in nervous hunger, resembling
nothing so much as children frightened by a tale of local haunts, yet eager to
hear further details.  Given the demonic leer twisting Cork’s face, that might
not be so far from the truth.  His fingers strummed out somber chords that
evoked a feeling of shadows and things creeping along the ground.  For all
that, the notes were hardly laborious, coming at a smooth, steady rhythm that
kept his fingers working.

“Their demon eyes will mark you,

“Searing through your soul.”

Cork swung his head from one side of his audience to
the other, his visage resembling a mad tax collector who enjoyed breaking the
despondent with his financial power.  He strummed several suggestive chords
between each line.

“Their arms swings easily,

“Then all your friends heads’ roll.”

He picked out the youngest in the crowd, staring deep
into the frightened eyes.

“Tumbles and rolls.”

His voice, amazingly sonorous with a deep timber,
caressed the last word.  Cork slowly allowed his gaze to travel from eye to
eye.

“Their heads always roooo-ooooll”

“Demons collecting the doomed who,