Forest For The Trees (Book 3) (70 page)

Dietrik stood by the branch’s edge, fists balled
against his hips, staring down through the Euvea limbs to the distant earthen
floor.  Or what could be seen of it beneath the twisting roots.  The branch
they stood upon was narrower than the Tangle’s pathway.

When Colbey emerged moments later, Marik shouted an
angry demand before the shimmer could completely fade.  “What is this, a
twisted joke?  Where’s the gods cursed ground?”

“Where it always has been, mage.  Beneath you.”

“Then how about an exit down where the
sane
people prefer one, instead of high enough up a tree that we can see people
entering the heavens?”  Sweat beaded Marik’s brow in fresh layers.

“Actually,” Dietrik contradicted, “by the look of the
land’s lay, it is little different no matter where you stand.  We would be
forced to beat a path while keeping our balance atop the worst roots yet.”

“Exactly,” Colbey affirmed.  “The branches are the
faster route.  Push on, mage, if you intend to continue any further.”

Dietrik pierced Marik with a silent gaze.  Marik knew
what was on his friend’s mind.  He hunched his shoulders and resolutely
followed Colbey, against Dietrik’s better judgment.

His body swayed alarmingly on the narrower branch. 
Wind that had been absent within the Tangle pulled at him with every step. 
Stomach acid burned the back of his throat at the mere thought of the drop to
either side.  It only made matters worse to see Colbey leap onto a lower branch
that crisscrossed theirs.  The necessity was plain.  Not much further on their
branch would be blocked by the towering Euvea trunk.  Outside the seal, the
pathway branches could not continue indefinitely.

His senses swam during the short fall to the next
branch.  He felt his heart hammering a frantic tattoo within his chest.  There
was no possible way he could continue.  The fact that he could actually see the
ground made the perilous march a dozen times worse.

Acting before he fully realized his intention, Marik
switched over to magesight.  Heights had never bothered him as he soared
through the etheric skies in disembodied form.  Much of the tension fled when
thick purple mists filled the surrounding environment.  The lower roots twisted
through the ground’s black void, coming to resemble the Tangle’s impossible
weavings.

Since he remained confined within his body, the
sensations he sought to overcome were far from completely vanquished.  But
enough had dissipated that he could continue the journey.  Marik mastered the
gnawing emotions, taking his mind off the present by taking inordinate interest
in the forest.

It took him several moments to notice just how vivid
the green auras emitted by the Euvea were.  Plant auras were generally a lesser
background against which animal or human auras blazed with bright ferocity. 
Defying the norm, the Euvea trees glowed enough that he felt he needed to
squint his eyes.  If the magesight had actually made use of his eyes.

Marik concentrated while he followed Colbey.  He
pushed his magesight to its highest level.  The auras around him faded,
replaced by the pure white networks of life energy flowing through the trees
and his companions.

He nearly stopped.  Large as the Euvea were, the core
of life force they contained seemed far larger.  Never had he witnessed such
incredible energy networks.  Pulsing through the trunks were channels thick
enough that they were etheric lines in their own right.  Many were thicker than
the few lines he had worked with in Kingshome and Thoenar.  At this level, the
Euvea appeared composed, not of bark over wood, but pure energy shaped to
resemble the mighty trees.

Around him, mountainous trees of white fire rose
against the black void.

He had never heard tell of so much energy in one
place.  How could simple trees…well, the Euvea were hardly simple, were they? 
Even so, trees should never be able to produce this much life force.  It no
longer surprised him that they had grown to such an enormous size.  Anything
containing this amount of energy must either use it or burn out.

Could this unthinkable amount be produced by the trees
alone?  He lowered his magesight so he could study the mass diffusion with
increased care.  These mists were thicker than he had ever encountered.  Small
wonder.  The bleed-off from the Euvea must be phenomenal.

Something was wrong, though.  As he watched, he grew
increasingly certain that the mists were different from the usual free-floating
energy they ought to be.  There was a definite direction happening.  An etheric
wind wafting the mists slowly toward the outer forest.  What madness was this? 
In the etheric plane, natural forces such as weather and the sun did not exist.

Yet it was undeniable that the mists were moving.  And
that the trio was walking into an etheric wind they could not feel.

Colbey pushed them hard, moving faster the closer they
came to their goal.  Marik noticed that the Guardians must have made a few
alterations to the lofty branches this far into the groves.  Climbing to branches
above their own became easier due to molded handholds and foot grips.  Only
after the fourth such climb did he realize how cleverly they had been crafted. 
They must have been manmade in spite of their natural appearance.  The
Guardians had disguised their work with superior craftsmanship.

Marik’s thoughts were in a knot no less impressive
than the Tangle when Colbey finally stopped.  The mercenaries could see they
had reached their destination at last.  Ahead, around the trunk this branch led
to, a broad platform encircled the Euvea tree.  Railings ran along the edge,
curving out of sight behind the tree.

“Outsiders are present,” the scout whispered.  “Make
no noise.”

“Where?” Dietrik returned.  “In the trees?  They must
be the rest of your chaps, then.”

“We would not hear them, were that the case.”

“How could they have gotten ahead of us?” Marik hissed
far too loudly.  “You said we could get to this place first!”

“I could have, mage.  Clearly I should have left you
on your own after all.”

“Left us to die, you mean.”

“To the same result, apparently.  You slowed me to
much!  All hope for ambush is lost.”

Dietrik pulled his main-gauche dagger and held it
menacingly between the two.  “Enough with casting blame!  Let’s see what is
what before we throttle each other.”

Colbey’s ire persisted.  It made them vividly recall
the scout of old.  He rounded the deck silent as a falling leaf.  Marik
followed.  So did Dietrik, who chose to keep his dagger withdrawn.

The tree-borne village shocked Marik.  True enough that
Colbey had described it so he should have pictured it with sharp clarity, but
witnessing entire buildings perched nest-like high above the ground stole his
breath away.  They evoked equal parts wonder at their existence…and poignant
sorrow at their disarray.

Their cracked and splintered doorframes, their broken
window shutters and caved-in roofs simply looked wrong.  He could see both
their ruined corpses and their heyday when they had been glorious…shacks. 
Well, not shacks exactly, nor rude sheds.  None could be called an unparalleled
feat of architecture but their simplicity made them perfect for their setting. 
They blended harmoniously with the Euvea trees that sheltered them.

Looking at the torn walkways hanging limply against
the trunks reminded him forcibly of the post-war veterans who had lost body
parts to Nolier blades.  Those maimed soldiers were set adrift by the army they
had served, left with nothing save what sympathy would gain them.  They were
out of place huddled half-drunk by tavern hearths, or leaning heavily on rough
crutches by the fences that marked a town’s furthest limit.  Never had they
been meant to become broken shadows without purpose, robbed of body and spirit.

The same cruel play of life was no less forcibly acted
out here.  Marik could sense the ending of an age in these ruins.  A village
that had been as alive as any patriotic soldier who ever wore the green and
brown.  Maimed here forevermore.

He followed Colbey mutely.  All thought of the
perilous path they trod was forgotten even when the scout forced them to climb
or descend twenty feet at a time via a line he carried.  Each rent wall and
frayed rope drew his eye.  Battlefields were gore-strewn charnel houses,
several of which he had walked under the knowledge that it mattered little in
the larger scheme whether it had been he who lay dismembered across the grass
or the enemies he’d slain in his place.  Yet this one touched his heart with
soft calls from the dead.  And it was no mystery why.  There was only one
corpse to be found in the Rovasii.  One so large he was forced to walk through
it rather than around.

Images of the great stained-glass windows in Thoenar’s
cathedral rose cyclically in his imagination.  Each shattered with the mindless
brutality of a soul incapable of acknowledging beauty.  Glass scattered over
the filthy ground.  Yellow shards, and blue, and green, and red.  Blood drops
winking in winter’s cold light.

His vision slowly slipped to the upper reaches of
magesight while his mind wept from a loss it scarcely understood.  From his
mood, the bald energy flowing through the Euvea looked closer to ice than
anything else.  A towering forest of icicle giants, cradling a grave that
called to the one man who had escaped.  Colbey strode the frozen arms in search
of…what?  Revenge?  Justice?  Most certainly.  At least on the surface.

But deep inside, Marik thought he truly comprehended
for the first time.  Respite.  An escape from the cold reality of what had been
irrevocably destroyed.

Colbey slowed, trailing his hand along a wall
belonging to the largest building they had seen so far.  The massive doors
faced an opening in the trees.  It was a space around which dozens of buildings
were set in much the fashion of a town square.  Marik inched closer to Colbey’s
back to see what the scout did.  Dietrik leaned against the wall and flung his
dagger hilt horizontally from hand to hand.  He performed the maneuver fast
enough it flew through the air twice a heartbeat.

The scout’s head blocked most of the view until Marik craned
above him like a long-necked fishing bird.  A piece at a time, the tableau
unveiled itself.  Marik could see that his assessment must have been close to
the mark.  Enough broken suspension walkways hung in mossy strands that this
must have been the central point in the village.  Numerous buildings, as well
as broad platforms that must have served as social gathering points, rested at
various heights above the forest floor.

In fact he saw, leaning still further over Colbey,
there was no true forest floor at all.  A vast standing pool drowned the trees,
the roots arcing from the water majestically.  The waters shone green from the
algae growing healthily along the bottom.  It could not be especially deep to
judge from the clarity.  He could make out the stones resting along the
bottom.  Along as much of the bottom as he could see.  From back where the
three had so recently come, all the way to…

Marik’s legs went watery while he stared, transfixed,
at the center of the pool in the village’s heart.  He could
feel
what
was there.  Knew that
here
lay the ancient legacy protected from the
outer world by Colbey’s ancestors.  Reluctantly he reopened his magesight. 
What he beheld beneath the placid waters dumbfounded him.

The pool’s center was deeper than he had first
assumed.  An artesian well was the water’s source, endlessly pumping water
upward to maintain a constant surface level.  Any farmer would sacrifice
anything short of his soul to have one on his property.

He could see the ground tapering into a funnel leading
to the well’s source, but lower than that, deep in the not-ground of the
etheric plane, within the subterranean waterways, he could see a sphere glowing
with greater intensity than the Euvea trees.

In Thoenar he had been astounded to find three etheric
lines flowing under the city.  The most he had ever before seen that close
together were two beneath the Forest of Green Reaches.

He counted
seven
lines under his feet.  Each
massive by ordinary standards.  Far thicker than his wrist.  Nearly the size of
his thigh.  Nor, he marveled, could they be entirely natural.  At some point
they must have been
shifted in their course
.  Was such a thing
possible?  How?  The ability to effect the etheric plane in such a manner was
beyond the realms of imagination!

Yet there was no other explanation.  Seven lines did
not, by chance, flow to exactly the same point any more than seven rivers
would.  Marik could feel the power flowing through the lines.  The total life
energy of the entire Rovasii forest, without question.  Wild, hot, dangerous to
touch.  Using energy from these lines was beyond his ability.  It would burn
him out until there was nothing left but a drooling vegetable wearing his
clothing.

The power he sensed was astounding, but also only the
beginning.  Gods, the
beginning
!

Each line flowed into the sphere.  The closer he
examined it, the better he felt he understood.  What he saw as a perfect sphere
must be another seal.  Must be a seal set by those ancestors who long ago
defeated the Rovasii mage. 
This
was the remnant that lay beyond their
power to eliminate.  A massive knot formed from seven lines.  A knot so
incredibly powerful that any mage with the ability to tap it would be as a
living god on the world.  Nothing could stand up to a mage with such…with such…