Tanequil (28 page)

At the top of the stairs, the little company came to a halt behind Cinnaminson, who had stopped finally and was pointing ahead. The Rover girl's face was intense and she was breathing hard. Kermadec was trying to talk to her, but she wasn't responding. Pen, seeing what was happening, abandoned Tagwen and hurried forward.

“Cinnaminson,” he said, taking her by the shoulders and turning her to face him.

Her young face was flushed with excitement. “We have to go there. We have to follow them,” she said.

He looked in the direction she was pointing. An ancient stone arch, pitted by weather and time, bridged from the grassy area on which they stood to a forest of massive trees that sat atop a pinnacle of rock, a forested island surrounded by a deep ravine that ringed it like a moat, stretching away for as far as his eyes could see in the rapidly dimming daylight. The trees on the pinnacle were tall and straight and unbroken, rising hundreds of feet against the skyline, their bark mottled by greenish gray patches of moss. Their branches were deeply intertwined, forming a canopy so thick that it shut away the sky, but their trunks were widely spaced and the ground beneath opened through, clear and uncluttered by undergrowth. The forest backed away from the edge of the ravine in front of them until it joined with the curtain of the encroaching night.

Cinnaminson lowered her head against his shoulder, as if all the strength had gone out of her. “Did you hear them, too, Pen? Did you hear their voices?”

He wrapped her in his arms and stroked her long hair. “The spirits of the air?” he guessed. “The ones from before?”

She nodded. “From the edge of the gardens. Did you hear them?”

“I sensed them, but they spoke only to you.”
Something else spoke to me.

“No. It wasn't speaking. They didn't use words. But I knew what they wanted. For us to follow them. For us to cross to the island.”

Pen looked again at the narrow stone arch and the forested pinnacle of rock beyond. The top of the pinnacle was mostly flat, though rock formations jutted from between the old growth and ravines split the forest floor. The interior of the woods was dark and shadowed in the failing light. It was difficult to tell how deep in it went.

“Is the tanequil in there?” he asked quietly. “Is this the place?”

She hesitated, then lifted her head to stare blindly at him. “Something is in there. Something is waiting.”

Kermadec touched Pen on the shoulder and, when he turned, directed his attention to a flat-faced boulder into which symbols had been carved, the markings so worn they were almost unreadable.

“This is the warning of which I spoke,” the Maturen advised. “Written in the Gnome language. Very old. It tells strangers that the place is forbidden. It warns that to cross the bridge is death.” He looked at the boy. “We can't risk you going until we know. One of us will have to go first.”

“No!” Cinnaminson said sharply. Her eyes were suddenly frantic. “No one is to cross but Pen and me. We alone are permitted entry. The spirits of the air insist!”

Atalan gave an audible snort and looked off into the trees. Tagwen began rubbing at his beard the way he did when he was anxious.

“They told you this?” Kermadec pressed her. “These spirits? You are not mistaken?”

“It doesn't matter,” Khyber interrupted. “I'm going with them, whatever these spirits say. Ahren gave the responsibility of making this journey to me. He gave me the only real weapon we have. The Elfstones will protect us. And I have the use of Druid magic. Whatever threatens, I will be able to keep it at bay.”

“No,” Cinnaminson said again. She walked over to Khyber and embraced her. “Please, Khyber, no. The warning is clear. You cannot come with us. I wish you could. But whatever lies on the other side is for Pen alone.”

“And for you, it seems,” Khyber said quietly.

“And for me.” Cinnaminson released her and stepped back. There were tears in her eyes. “I'm sorry. I don't understand why the spirits have chosen me. But my sense of what they want is very clear. Pen is to go and I am to go with him. But you cannot come. You must not.”

“This could easily be a trap,” Atalan pointed out, his flat face dark with suspicion as he swung back around again. “You are awfully trusting of invisible voices, Rover girl. If they have bad intentions, you will likely be dead before you know of them.”

“He is right,” Khyber agreed. “You are too trusting.”

Cinnaminson shook her head. “They are not dangerous to us. They mean us no harm. I have felt them guiding us ever since we entered Stridegate. They are a presence meant to shelter us, not to cause us harm.”

She turned to Kermadec. “Please. They have been waiting for us. They want something from us, but they won't tell us what it is until we cross the bridge.” She hesitated. “What choice do we have but to do as they expect? Pen has come in search of the tanequil, and the Elfstones have shown it to be on this island. Doesn't he have to cross over and find out if it is really there?”

There was a long silence as the other members of the company looked at one another uneasily. Even the Rock Trolls, who spoke little of her language, seemed to sense what was happening. Already on edge from their encounter with the Urdas, they were suspicious of everything in this strange place. Stridegate belonged to the past, to a time dead and gone. They had intruded on that past by going there, and they were anxious to do what was needed and be gone again. Most looked to Kermadec, waiting on his decision.

Cinnaminson turned to Pen, her blind eyes empty, but her face bright with expectation. “You understand, don't you, Pen? You know what we have to do. Will you cross with me?”

The boy nodded. “I will.” He looked at Kermadec. “There is nothing to be gained by sending someone on ahead. It would be a pointless sacrifice that would tell us nothing. Cinnaminson and I are the ones who must test the warning.”

He could tell that the big Troll was unhappy with the idea, the impassive face giving away just enough to reveal his displeasure. The Maturen glanced at Tagwen and then Khyber, shaking his head. “I don't like it, but his point is well taken. We won't know anything if we don't let them try. We will have come all this way for nothing.”

Atalan walked to the edge of the ravine and peered down. “It's deep enough that I cannot make out the bottom. Maybe there isn't one.” He looked back at them. “If you fall off that bridge, boy, we will have come all this way for nothing, anyway.”

“Tie a rope around his waist,” Khyber suggested suddenly. “Tie one to each of them. It couldn't hurt.”

They did so, the trolls knotting the ropes in place and taking up positions on both sides of the bridge, ready to haul back should it be required. Pen felt foolish, trussed as he was. He thought the effort pointless. If the spirits of the air or whatever else dwelled in that place wanted them dead, they were not going to be able to save themselves anyway.

He looked at Cinnaminson and wished she weren't involved. It was bad enough risking his life. He didn't care to risk hers, as well. It wasn't her fight. It had nothing to do with her. She was here because of him, and that was unforgivable.

“Pen.” Khyber came up to him. “I will stand at the edge of the ravine when you cross. If anything threatens—anything at all—I will use the Druid magic and the Elfstones to help you.” Her lips tightened. “I won't fail you.”

He nodded and smiled. “You haven't yet, Khyber.”

Cinnaminson took hold of his hand. Pen looked around at those assembled, those who had come with him on the quest. The trolls stared back, blank-faced and imperturbable. Tagwen was tugging on his beard, but he managed an encouraging nod. Khyber was already at the edge of the ravine, the Elfstones gripped in her hand, her dark face alert and watchful.

Pen took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. With Cinnaminson's hand in his own, he began to walk toward the bridge.

 
T
WENTY-THREE
 

As he approached, Pen was able to take a closer look at the bridge, and what he saw gave him pause. It was narrow, less than eight feet wide, and provided no handholds to protect against a fall.
You don't want to walk too close to the edge,
he thought.
You don't want to look down.

But it was the nature of its construction that troubled him most. The bridge was formed of massive stone blocks cut and placed so precisely that the seams were barely noticeable. Each block was wedge shaped, with the narrow part pointed downward, the blocks carefully fitted and aligned so that the weight of each was buttressed by the others, the whole arranged to form the arch that spanned the ravine. There were no pins or supports or any kind. Stone abutments at each end wrapped the corners, serving as cradles to keep the stones tightly pressed together and immobile.

But the massive blocks each must have weighed thousands of pounds. How had they been shaped, carried, and placed across the ravine without underlying supports? They could not have just hung in midair, each in turn, while the rest were fitted. Pen could not fathom it. Even using pulleys and a block and tackle it would have been impossible to suspend the first stones while waiting to set the others. They were too big, too heavy, and too cumbersome.

There was something else to consider, he saw. These stones were not as old as those of the ruins themselves. They were smooth and not yet worn and pitted by weather and time as were the walls behind which Pen and his companions had hidden earlier. Stridegate was thousands of years old. The bridge was much newer. It had been constructed long after the city was destroyed and its inhabitants dead.

The implications of his reasoning caused him to shiver; they made him want to turn around right then and there and go back.

It would have taken at least one giant to construct this bridge. It would have taken technology that no longer existed in his world.

Or it would have taken a very powerful magic.

He didn't care for any of those possibilities. All were beyond anything the group had ever encountered. It dwarfed them, reducing their tiny defenses to a handful of pebbles. Even Khyber, with the magic of the Elfstones to aid her, would not be able to stand against something that could accomplish what he saw before him.

He stopped abruptly, not five feet from the bridge, and stood staring at it. Sensing his discomfort, Cinnaminson whispered, “Pen? What's wrong?”

He didn't know what to say in reply, how to explain. He wasn't sure he should try. He couldn't turn back, couldn't give up. The Ard Rhys needed him to go forward if she was to have any chance at all of escaping the Forbidding. Those he had come with needed him to cross if they were to realize any success from their efforts to bring him there. All other considerations, no matter how daunting, had to be put aside.

He was just a boy, but he knew instinctively what he must do.

“Nothing's wrong,” he said, squeezing her hand reassuringly. “Don't worry.”

He started forward again, leading her onto the bridge, reaching out with his senses into the twilight shadows that now draped everything from the forested pinnacle to the ravine that surrounded it to the bridge that reached to it. He used his tiny magic, his strange gift, to seek anything that might be waiting. Whispers came back to him, small rustlings and little hissings. They came from unidentifiable sources, from the impenetrable dark, from the void. He heard them, but could not make sense of them. He sorted through them swiftly, seeking just one that he might recognize.

Nothing.

He glanced over the side of the bridge into the ravine, into the pooled darkness. His gaze tightened. Was something moving down there?

He slowed, caution once again taking hold.

–Cross–

A chorus of voices spoke, all sounding the same, all whispering in perfect unison. They echoed in his mind, clear as the ringing of a bell. He started in shock, then glanced quickly at Cinnaminson.

“The spirits of the air,” she said softly. “Can you can hear them, too?”

He nodded, surprised that he could, wondering why they were speaking to him, as well.

–Cross–

Fairy voices, soft and feminine. Telling him to come ahead, to do what they had brought him to do.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

–Aeriads. Spirits of the air–

“What is the matter?” Khyber called out to them, a disembodied voice from somewhere behind. “Are you all right?”

He waved back at her without looking.

–Cross–

The whispers urged him to obey, and he did so, not knowing why exactly, not understanding the nature of his readiness to do as they commanded, only knowing that he should. He moved slowly, one careful step at a time, climbing toward the apex of the stone arch, watching the island pinnacle draw steadily closer.

“Where do you come from?” he whispered, not really expecting an answer, but curious anyway.

–From our father and mother. From seedlings strewn far and wide. From wind and rain and time–

Surprised, Pen considered the words. He had no idea what they meant, but the word
seedlings
caught his attention.

“Are you children of the tanequil? Is the tree your father?”

–Our father and our mother. One lives in light; one dwells in dark. One has limbs; one has roots. They wait for you–

Pen shook his head. At the center of the bridge, at the apex of the stone arch, suspended above the dark void of the ravine, he was suddenly aware of something stirring down in the depths, down where he couldn't see. His senses warned him, but he could not trace that warning to anything specific. He just knew. He froze in response, feeling Cinnaminson do the same. She was aware of it, as well. It wasn't the rustle of grasses or the whisper of leaves. This was something much larger—like the heavy rub of a massive animal passing through brush or the drag of logs, cut and chained, through dry earth. But it wasn't localized like that, either. It was spread all through the ravine, twisting and turning along ruts and down sinkholes, oozing and burrowing through dirt and under loose stone.

Mirrored in the sharp glare of the setting sun, a vision flashed before his eyes. Out of that glare, a monstrous apparition took shape, vague and unformed, a thing of tentacles and feelers, of crushing strength and brutal response. He saw in its grip the bodies of humans and animals alike. He saw them break and bleed. He watched their struggles and heard their cries. He cringed from the vision, turning quickly away, closing his eyes to shut out the sights and sounds.

–Cross–

The ropes that had been bound about their waists fell away as if severed by knives. Shouts and cries ensued from those left behind, but quickly faded.

–Cross–

The voices of the aeriads called to him once more, firm and insistent. Keeping tight hold of Cinnaminson, he moved swiftly ahead, no longer even glancing toward the ravine. The shadows had thickened with the twilight, and it seemed as if, sinewy and rapacious, they were trying to climb from the ravine, out of the darkness and into the light. Pen walked more quickly still, trying to ignore their presence, to block away his perception of the thing below, to ignore the possibility that it was attempting to find him.

Then he was across, safely off the bridge, standing on the solid rock of the pinnacle amid a fringe of trees and brush, just another of the twilight shadows. He no longer sensed the thing in the ravine. He no longer felt it coming for him. He breathed slowly and deeply, steadying himself, pushing back his fear. He was all right. He was safe.

He looked over at Cinnaminson, whose shadow-streaked face was pale and drawn, etched with lines of fear. He squeezed her hand. “We're across. It isn't coming anymore.”

She nodded that she understood, but her tension would not be so easily dispelled.

–Come–

The aeriads had no time or interest in fear, it seemed. Pen and Cinnaminson started ahead once more, moving into the trees. Night descended, the moon and stars appeared, and the texture of the light changed. Slowly, their vision adjusted, and they were able to see well enough to know how to place their feet. The trees closed about them, towering old-growth giants, age-worn sentinels of that strange place. Pen could almost feel them watching, waiting to see what he and Cinnaminson would do. The forest was deep and still, and it was living. Pen stepped lightly, gingerly, thinking it made a difference where and how he walked. The earth was soft, carpeted with needles, damp and smelling of mulch and rot. He did not hear the sounds of night birds or small animals. He did not see anything move.

–Come–

The aeriads led them with whispered encouragement, leading them through the forest, between the massive old trees, down the ravines and across the ridges, over the rocky outcroppings and around the steep drops. The path was circuitous and unknowable, a thread that no one who hadn't traveled it many times before could hope to find. Pen could not explain it, but he had the curious feeling that it might not even be possible to travel the same path twice, that it might somehow be different each time. Even though comprised of earth and rock, streams and trees—solid, knowable things—that place felt as if it were ephemeral and ever shifting. There was a changeling quality to it, a mutability that turned it from solid to liquid, from a terrain of the physical to a dreamscape of the mind. Pen had the feeling that it wasn't a place you could go to if you weren't a guest of its maker.

It was a place, he thought suddenly, in which the King of the Silver River would feel at home.

He began to hear humming then, soft and insistent. He thought it was the wind at first, weaving through the branches of the trees, vibrating the leaves, but there didn't seem to be any wind. Then the humming changed to singing, the nature of the words indistinct but the sound clear and compelling.

“Cinnaminson?” he whispered.

She was smiling. “The aeriads are singing, Pen.”

He listened to them, to the strange, echoing voices that seemed to come from both inside and outside his head, rising and falling in regular cadence, the sounds repeating, over and over.

“Can you understand them?” he asked, leaning close and speaking softly, afraid that his voice might do something to disturb the song, might break its spell.

She shook her head. “Isn't it beautiful? It makes me want to sing with them.”

They continued on through the trees, deep into the forest, far away from the ravine and the thing that dwelled within it. Night had descended, and the world was a mix of tiny pieces of starlit sky glimpsed through breaks in the canopy. Pen could not be certain how far they had come, but it seemed much farther than should have been possible. The pinnacle, though large, was of a finite distance, certainly no more than a quarter of a mile across. Even allowing for all the climbing up and down and detours over rocky terrain, they shouldn't have been able to travel so far without reaching the opposite side.

But they walked on anyway, the time passing, the night settling in, silent and soft, the air warming, the light from moon and stars growing steadily brighter. After a time, Pen dropped Cinnaminson's hand, no longer afraid for her or himself, willing to believe that they had found a haven from the dangers that had tracked them for so many days. It was a conclusion based on a feeling, not rational cause. But it felt as real to him as the earth he walked and the trees he navigated, and that was enough.

Finally, long after the moon had risen and they had walked well beyond any distance it should have taken to cross the pinnacle, the aeriads, who had been singing all the while, went suddenly still.

–Wait–

Pen and Cinnaminson did so, taking hands again without looking at each other, an act of reassurance that had become as familiar and comforting to them as a childhood hug. All about them, the ancient forest had gone still, the silence deep and penetrating, a presence as real as the sky and earth.

Ahead, a sudden, unexpected brightness shone through the trees, as if the moon had broken through the thick forest canopy to light a place previously hidden from view.

–Come–

They went forward once more, drawn by the invisible presence of the aeriads, trusting to fate and their invisible guides. Pen felt a strange sense of calmness, a peace of mind he hadn't known since Patch Run. Everything would be all right, he knew. Whatever awaited, everything would be all right.

Then they stepped from the trees into a clearing awash with moonlight. The canopy of the trees had pulled back, opening to the heavens as if in deference to the ancient tree that sat at the very center. It was massive by any standard, its trunk thick and gnarled and its limbs twisted and broad, lending it an otherworldly, surreal look among even the largest and strangest of the old growth that surrounded it. The moonlight revealed it clearly, particularly the odd colors that infused its bark and leaves—the former a peculiar mix of mottled black and gray, the latter deepest green bordered in bright orange. Pen could see the colors clearly, even in the darkness. He could see the way they mingled with each other, forming a strange pattern that glimmered against the deep black backdrop of the starry sky.

He had found the tanequil.

He had seen it only once, in the flare of the vision revealed by the Elfstones weeks before, when Ahren Elessedil had used the magic in the Elven village of Emberen to make certain that finding the tree was an attainable goal. He had seen it then, but the vision was nothing compared to what he was seeing in front of him. No vision could adequately capture the size and majesty of that giant. No vision could reveal how it made him feel to stand before it, dwarfed by its size and the sum of its years.

Dwarfed, he thought suddenly, by its intelligence.

He blinked in shocked surprise. He could feel the tanequil watching him. He felt it considering him, deciding what it would do with him now that he was there. It was a wild, irrational conclusion, one couched in premonition. Nevertheless, he was convinced of it. The tanequil was watching.