Lost Lands of Witch World (39 page)

Those who had hidden the bridge left other traces of their going. I had had good training as a scout in the mountains of Estcarp. These men—if they were men—had not hidden their trail. Hoofprints of Renthan—those were plain in a patch of earth. A tuft of fleece flagged me from a thorn bush, for this side of the gulf was not all rock. Things grew here, though the whipping wind and lack of good soil stunted that growth.

I followed the trail, easier to read in the soil, down a steep slope and into a wood of grotesquely twisted trees, which at first grew hardly higher than my own head. But, as I descended farther into their stand, they stood taller, though nonetheless crooked, until I was in a wood where sunlight did not pierce and I moved in a grayish gloom. Then I saw a thick moss depending from the limbs and crooked branches, so that, though these trees were scanty of leaf, yet they shut out light. Some of this moss dripped in long, swaying masses, as if tattered curtains hung between tree and tree. But the party whose traces I followed had broken away, pulling down some of this wiry vegetation so that it lay in heaps on the ground, giving forth a faintly spicy odor.

As the moss curtains hung from the trees, so did the ground give root to a similar growth. This was soft and springing under foot and from it, here and there, arose slender stems on which trembled, at my passing, pallid flowers. There were other lighter glimmers here and there along that mossy undergrowth. As the forest grew darker about me, so these did glow with a phosphorescent light. They were star-shaped with six points. When I bent more closely to them, they would fade, and all left to be seen was a kind of grayish web spun across the top of moss tendrils.

Night was coming, and I could not follow the trail in the dark. Nor had I any wish to camp in this place. So far I had not seen or heard life within the wood, but that did not rule out the possibility that some very unpleasant surprises might lurk here.

Yet I must find a place in which to rest, or else try to return back the way I had come. For the farther down-slope I went, the deeper became the moss-grown forest. I found myself pausing for long moments to listen intently. The faint breezes, which did manage to penetrate to this place, moved the tree-rooted vegetation so that there was always a low whispering. I thought it sounded eerily like half-heard words, broken speech, issuing from things which spied and followed as I went.

I stopped at last to look at one great tree which might, in spite of its gray-green curtains, provide a firm and safe wall for a man's back. Eat, drink and rest, I must. My bruised body was too tired to be forced along and I had no desire to blunder perhaps into a camp of the enemy.

The tree did provide a feeling of security as I sat with my back against it. Now, as the gloom deepened, the stars and the pale flowers were more noticeable. I was aware of an elusive fragrance, a pleasant scent carried by the sighing breeze.

I ate and drank with moderation. Luckily, the journey rations of the Green People had been long ago devised to give a maximum of nourishment to a minimum of bulk, so that a few mouthfuls sufficed a man for a day. Still one's stomach continued to want real food, chewed and swallowed for its filling. So I was vaguely dissatisfied, even though my mind told me I was well-fed on the crumbs I had licked from my fingers.

Just as, the night before, that climb up the stairs had wearied me past all previous acquaintance with fatigue, so now something of the same trembling weakness settled upon me as I sat there. It was rank folly to sleep . . . rank folly. . . . I remembered some inner warning trying to arouse me even as the waves of sleep rolled over me, and me, under them.

Water about me, rising higher and higher, choking me! I had lost Orsya, I was drowning in the river. . . .

Gasping, I awoke. Not water, no. But I was buried in drifts, waves of moss which rose to chin level, the end of the fronds weaving loosely about my head. Fear triggered my responses, my struggle to throw off that blanket. Yet, my legs and arms were now as tightly caught as if cords bound them. I could not even move away from the tree against which I had set my back, for now this tide of gray and green had lashed me to it! Would I indeed drown in it? I ducked, twisted and turned my head, and then I realized that the weaving fronds about my shoulders were not tightening about my head. While my movement was constricted, yet the fibers had not tightened to the point that either breathing or circulation was impaired. I was captive, but so far my life was not yet imperiled.

But that was small comfort. I rested my head against the tree trunk and gave up struggling. It was very dark now and the glow of the stars almost brilliant. Those caught my attention. I had not noted any particular pattern to their setting before, but now I saw two rows, leading from where I was imprisoned off to my left. Almost as if they had been deliberately set to mark a path! A path for who—or what?

The swish-swish of the tree-rooted moss whispered under some breeze. But I could hear no insect, no night hunter.

I turned my attention to the moss. The coarse strands about me were not of the ground growth, but that which was limb rooted. I could see by the aid of the phosphorescent stars that loops of it had loosened hold on branches to fall about the parent trunk and my body. Tales, told by the Sulcar rovers, of strange growths in far southern lands which had a taste for flesh and blood, which seized upon
prey as might animal hunters, came far too easily to mind at that moment. Then, I discovered I could move a little in that cording, enough to change position slightly when I strove to favor, half-unconsciously, one of my worst bruises. It was as if what held me captive had picked the need for such easement out of my mind and responded to it.

Out of my mind? But that was wild—utterly wild! How could a plant read my thoughts? Or was it a plant? Oh, yes; leaf and fiber about me were vegetation. But could it be a tool—this prisoning mass—a tool in other hands?

“Who are you?” Deliberately I aimed that thought into the gloom. “Who are you? What would you do with me?”

I do not believe that I expected any answer. But—while I did not get an answer—I did tap
something!
Just as Orsya had slid off that beam used for contact between us when she spoke to the aspt, so did I now but touch for a second, to lose it again, some think-level. It was not like those of the Green People, or of the Krogan, being far less “human.” Animal? Somehow, I did not believe so. I put all my concentration now, not into physical struggle against the moss, but into seeking.

“Who—are—you?”

Twice more that flicker of almost touch. Enough to keep me struggling. But it came and was lost again before I could even decide whether it was an upper band such as Orsya used, or a lower, in a level to which I had not delved before.

Light . . . it was much lighter . . . day coming? No—from those star-beacons to my left the light streamed in visible shafts of pearl glow. There was an expectancy about them, a waiting.

“Who—are—you?” This time I plunged, down the scale of mind bands, taking a chance that what I sought lay below and not above.

And I caught, held, though not long enough for a complete thought to pass between us. What burst at me in return was excitement, shock, and fear.

Fear I wanted least of all, for fear may drive the one afraid to violent action.

“Who are you?” Once more I hit that low level. But this time with no reaction; I touched no mind. It was as if that other, still afraid, had closed a door firmly against me.

The candles which had sprung from the stars continued to grow stronger. They were not akin to the weird gray lights which we had seen shine for evil, for they did not chill me. While sun did not shine, it was now coolly pale as if in the light of a cloudy day.

Up the path came a figure: small, yes, and hunched. But I did not feel about it as I had about those scuttling things of the dark, the Thas. This came very slowly, pausing now and then to eye me apprehensively. Fear—

When it came to stand between two of the nearer star candles I could see it better. It was as gray as the moss of the trees, and its long hair could hardly be
told from that growth. When it put up gnarled hands to part and brush aside that hair in order to view me the better, I saw a small wrinkled face with a flattened nose and large eyes fringed in lashes which grew bushy and thick. Once more it made that sweeping motion to send cascades of hair back over its shoulders and I saw it was female. The large breasts and protruding stomach were only part covered by a kind of net woven of moss. In that were caught some of the fragrant flowers in what seemed to me a pitiful attempt at adornment.

Then memory awoke in me and I remembered more childhood tales. This was a Mosswife, who, according to legend, crept despairingly about the haunts of man, trying ever to win some attention from the other race. A Mosswife, reported the stories of old, yearned to have her children nursed and fostered by humankind. And if one would strike such a bargain, the Mosswife thereafter served him richly, giving secrets of hidden treasure and the like.

Legend reported them good, a shy people, meaning no ill, distressed when their uncouth appearance frightened or disgusted those they wanted to befriend or favor. How true was legend? It seemed I was to test that now.

The Mosswife advanced another hesitant step or two. She gave the appearance of age, but if that were so I could not tell. The memories I had of the tales always described them so. Also—that no Moss man had ever been sighted.

She stood and stared. I tried again to use mind touch, with no result. If it were she whom I had contacted earlier, she held her barrier against me now. But there flowed from her a kind of good will, a timid good will, as if she meant me no harm, but feared that I did not feel the same toward her.

I gave up trying to reach her by mind touch. Instead I spoke aloud, and into the tones of my voice I never tried harder to put that which would lead her to believe that I meant her no harm, that on the contrary I now looked to her for aid. Elsewhere in Escore we had discovered that the language of this land, though using different pronunciations and some archaic turns of speech, was still that of the Old Race, and we could be understood.

“Friend—” I schooled my voice to softness. “I am friend—friend to the Moss Folk.”

She searched me with her eyes, holding mine in a steady gaze.

How did the old saying go: “Whole friend, half-friend, unfriend.”

Though I did not repeat that aloud, I was willing to accept from her name of half-friend—if she did not think me unfriend.

I saw her puckered lips work as if she chewed upon the word before she spoke it aloud in turn.

“Friend—” Her voice was a whisper, not much louder than the wind whisper through the moss curtains.

Her stare still held me. Then, as a door opening, thought flowed into my mind.

“Who are you who follow a trail through the mossland?”

“I am Kemoc Tregarth from overmountain.” But the designation which might mean something to others of Escore, meant nothing to her. “From the Valley of Green Silences,” I added, and this did carry weight.

She mouthed a word again, and this time a flood of reassurance warmed me. For the word she said, though it was distorted by the sibilance of her whisper, was the badge of rightness in what might be a land of nameless evil—the ancient word of power:

“Euthayan.”

I answered it quickly, by lip, not mind, so that she could be sure that I was one who could say such and not be blasted in the saying.

Her hands moved from the hold they had kept upon the mantle of her moss hair. They waved gently, as the breeze stirred banners on the trees. Following the bidding of those gestures, the moss strands binding me to the tree stirred, fell apart, loosing me, until I sat in a nest of fibers.

“Come!”

She beckoned and I got to my feet. Then she drew back a step as if the fact I towered over her was daunting. But, drawing her hair about her as one might draw a cloak, she turned and went down that path of the star candles.

Shouldering my pack, I followed. The candles continued to light our way, though outside the borders of their dim light the night pressed in and I thought we must still be a ways from dawn. Now those woods lamps were farther and farther apart, and paler. I hastened so as not to lose my guide. For all her stumpy frame and withered looking legs, she threaded this way very swiftly.

Heavier and heavier hung the moss curtains. Sometimes they appeared almost solid between the trees, too thick to be stirred by any wind. I realized these took the form of walls, that I might be passing among dwellings. My guide put out her hands and parted the substance of one such wall, again beckoned me to pass her in that entrance.

I came into a space under a very large tree. Its scaled bole was the center support of the house. The moss curtains formed the walls, and a moss carpet grew underfoot. There were stars of light set flat against the tree trunk, wreathed around it from the ground up to the branching of the first limbs. The light they gave was near to that of a fire.

On the moss sat my—hostesses? judges? captors? I knew not what they were, save they were Mosswives, so resembling she who had brought me that I could believe them all of one sisterhood. She who was closest to the star-studded tree gestured for me to sit. I put aside my pack and dropped, cross-legged.

Again there was a period of silent appraisal, just as there had been with my guide. Then she, whom I guessed was chief of that company, named first herself and then the others, in the formal manner followed by those country dwellers living far from the main life of Estcarp.

“Fuusu, Foruw, Frono, Fyngri, Fubbi—” Fubbi being she who had led me here.

“Kemoc Tregarth,” I answered, as was proper. Then I added, which was of the custom of Estcarp, but not might be so here:

“No threat from me to the House of Fuusu and her sister, clan, or rooftree, harvest, flocks—”

If they did not understand my good-wish, they did the will behind it. For Fuusu made another sign, and Foruw, who sat upon her right, produced a cup of wood and poured into it a darkish liquid from a stone bottle. She touched her lips briefly to one side of the cup and then held it out.