Rhapsody

  By sunset they had come to the forest proper, the exterior copses of trees and thickets becoming dense in the transition to the greenwood. The three travelers waited until the night was in full flower before venturing in, watching intently for eyes glittering in the dark.

  Many times in the course of coming this far Rhapsody had whispered the namesong of the forest, singing the roundelay over and over again: Yliessan. Yliessan. Yliessan. It had seemed to her that the branches had moved aside in answer, that the brambles and scrub of the forest floor had not sought to hamper them in any way, allowing them to pass quickly, silently, in the dark.

  All around her, in the sound of the wind through the leaves and the birds in the tree branches above them, she felt the greenwood answer back, as if calling her to itself. Yliessan. A sense of welcome, innate and primal.

  There was a richness to the air in the forest that Rhapsody had never felt before; she drank it in eagerly, filling her lungs and finding them cleaner upon exhaling. She wished they had been able to arrive in light, because she would have loved to see what the forest really looked like. Though it was a sacred place to the Lirin, and only the Lirin knew its name, the legends of the enchanted woods and the Tree were common even hundreds of miles away in Easton among people who would never see a forest in their lives.

  Unlike the exhaustion that had consumed her after she had hidden herself and the two men within the highgrass, the sensation she felt during their disguise as part of the forest was invigorating. From the first moment she had matched their vibrations to the signature of the forest, Rhapsody had been filled with a bright, calm sense of home, a cool serenity that cleared her mind and spoke in gentle tones to her half-Lirin heart. Yliessan. Welcome, Child of the Sky. Yliessan.

  “Any ideas?” The words, spoken softly by the still-unfamiliar voice, caused Rhapsody to jump a little. Achmed was speaking into her ear, though a moment before he was nowhere near her.

  “What do you mean?” she whispered back.

  “The Tree; do you feel where it might be?” The tone held a strong tinge of disgust.

  She closed her eyes and let the night wind brush over her face, and listened again to the music it made as it passed through the branches and leaves all around them. The rustling was not unlike the sound of the sea down the coast of the city, far enough away from the port to be free of its noise.

  After a moment of careful attention Rhapsody could hear a low, deep tone resonating through the ground and hanging in the air above it. It was clear and singular, with a faint harmonic around it, and the more she concentrated the more she could hear its voice. She had no doubt that it came from the Tree.

  She pointed southwest. “There,” she said.

  Achmed nodded; he had felt the tone as well. Silently they passed through the underbrush, making their way carefully in the dark. Eventually she found she was leading, but it was not a problem for her, as the tone was growing deeper and louder; she could now feel it through her feet.

  The forest was vast. Rhapsody had assumed that they would not come to their destination before dawn, or perhaps even in that cycle of the moon. She was surprised to find the song of the Tree so nearby.

  Finally, she began to see a pattern in the trees to the east, a thicker, darker line of evergreens forming an almost impenetrable barrier. The song was strong and clear, emanating from behind the treewall. Without a word both she and Achmed turned instinctually toward the sound and increased their pace. A few muttered curses were heard behind them, as Grunthor had to suddenly correct his course without warning. Apparently he could not hear or feel the song as they could.

  The three crept to the tree line, feeling a presence of people in the distance around them, but seeing no one. Finally they reached it and stepped between the dark pines, trees thick with old needles and tall trunks, stretching up into the darkness so that it was impossible to see their summits. They passed between them with some difficulty; Grunthor in particular was hard-pressed to fit between the guardian trees. When they got around to the other side they stopped.

  The leafy mulch of the forest floor gave way to pristine grass that even in darkness could be seen as neat and uniform; the light of the crescent moon reflected off it, touching the pale green carpet with silver. The lawn that began at the tree line stretched for a great distance, ending in another tree line, thicker than the first and composed of ancient, twisting oak trees.

  As Rhapsody started forward across the smooth, open lawn she felt a light tug on the back of her vest.

  “Wait.”

  Achmed and Grunthor had fallen back against the tree line, and were conferring softly in their common tongue.

  Rhapsody felt her feet begin to itch, her body protesting the halt. The song of the Tree was calling her now, filling her with an intense need to hurry, to come, an almost magnetic pull that was painful to resist.

  “I thought you wanted to make haste and get to the Tree,” she whispered fiercely.

  Achmed held up a hand to silence her and took one more look around. He was uncomfortable at the thought of crossing the wide lawn, open and unprotected by any tree cover or brush, but he and Grunthor could determine no way around it.

  The grassy plain was a dry moat to the Tree, positioned between the two treewalls. He could see the immense branches hovering above them, forming a pale, unbroken canopy over this forest meadow.

  Carefully he drew the cwellan out from behind his back and nodded. He could discern no heartbeats in the vicinity other than their own. The three travelers checked east to west as though about to cross the Kingsway, then broke into a brisk trot across the open lawn.

  Past the next tree line they could see a deep vale, a glen filled with air even richer and sweeter than that in the rest of the Lirin woods. The noise of night in the forest died away as they crept through the oak trees into the glen; the stillness was palpable. Rhapsody looked before her but saw nothing for a moment.

  An enormous shaft of moonlight had filled the glen past the oak-tree line, making even the air before them seem white and solid. Then her eyes adjusted and she realized that what she was seeing was the Tree itself, the sacred white oak: Sagia, the Oak of Deep Roots.

  Veins deep as rivers scored the surface of silvery-white bark, smooth as a pebble at the bottom of a riverbed. Rhapsody could see no branches, because the trunk of the Great Tree was so tall that the first limbs were high in the air out of sight in the darkness. Fallen leaves littered the ground, however, green and lush, with veins of gold running through them.

  Her eyes could not behold all of the Tree at once, it was too mammoth. Its girth was such that she was not sure that should the three of them stand around it in different positions and shout they would even hear each other; eye contact would be out of the question. It would easily have filled the town square in Easton, a place where hundreds gathered for public events. Its sheer size held Rhapsody in awe, so much so that when she became aware again she no longer knew where her two traveling companions were.

  She looked around for the giant and his cloaked partner, but they were nowhere in sight. The early symptoms of panic began to swell in her ears and fingers; her hands grew cold in the knowledge that she was no longer sure of their intentions. But the deep calm of the glen stilled the cramping in her stomach as a soothing, resonant hum filled her mind. It was the song of the Tree again, deep and abiding, and Rhapsody could feel the wisdom of ages past in its simple melody. She closed her eyes and listened, memorizing the sound. It was the most enchanting song she had ever heard.

  As she stood, breathing in the song of the Tree, the knotting in her forehead and neck muscles that had been present for a fortnight since Gammon had come to the Hat and Feathers melted away. A sense of peace and rightness filled her, calling to parts of her soul that she had long forgotten.

  She could hear her mother’s voice again as she had in her dream, speaking to her in the Lirin language of her birth, telling her old tales and singing the ritual songs that celebrated the
wonders of nature, wonders like this immense Tree.

  She did not know how long she stood, eyes closed, listening with her heart to the hypnotic melody, but she came harshly to awareness when she felt a hand grasp her shoulder roughly and a voice speak softly into her ear.

  “Where have you been? Come, we’re waiting.”

  Rhapsody turned in surprise. “Waiting for what? I thought we were here to pay our respects to the Tree. That’s what I’m doing.”

  “Come around this side. I’ve found the main trunk root.”

  Rhapsody shook off his arm. “So?”

  “I am reluctant to shed blood here.” There was warning in his voice.

  The panic returned, and Rhapsody went cold again, then grew hotly furious. “What does that mean? Is that a threat?”

  Achmed held something up; she had to look away as the light it flashed seared her eyes. When she was able to look again she saw it was a key, made of something like bone but gleaming like burnished gold, and filmy, as though it was made of captured sunlight reflecting in the dark.

  “Want to see how it works? Or are you just going to stand there like an idiot?”

  “No, I suppose I’m going to have to follow you like an idiot.”

  Angrily she trailed after Achmed around the side of the enormous tree. She looked up into its limbs again but could not even begin to gauge the top for the dark and the immense height of it.

  When she came around it farther she could see a little of the first canopy of leafy branches in the vast reflecting pool that mirrored the Tree on the south side. Sagia’s song reverberated in the water, sending silvery chills through Rhapsody’s soul.

  She tarried for a moment to drink in more of the beauty of the sight, and when she looked up Achmed was gone again. Hurriedly she ran around the southwestern side to where he had been headed, and saw him bent over in the shadows. She caught up with him and looked over his shoulder. He was reaching around near the ground, the key seemingly buried up to the handle in the base of the Tree.

  “Watch,” he said.

  With a violent twist, Achmed turned the key, sending a shower of iridescent sparks in a slender stream skyward from the ground. A thin outline of red light, the size and shape of a small passageway, gleamed for a moment, then disappeared.

  Rhapsody backed away, her eyes wide. She continued to stare as Grunthor wrenched a huge rectangular section of the root up and away from the ground. Within the hole that remained was a darkness so complete that she felt it was about to spill out at their feet.

  “What are you doing?” she cried before Achmed could cover her mouth.

  “Shhhh; listen, and I will tell you. This Tree is the sign that this is one of the places where Time itself began. Its roots lead to everywhere the power of this Island touches.” He released her and turned her to face him. “We have to leave. We need to escape to a place of deeper power than even the demon who is chasing us—”

  “Demon?”

  “—all right; perhaps demon is an understatement—the monster who gave me this key, has access to. This Tree holds immense magic; it is tied to the fabric of the world. It’s a metaphysical corridor. We need to go where the Tree’s roots will take us.”

  Rhapsody glared at him. “So go.”

  Achmed held out his hand. “You too; come on.”

  “I can’t go; I don’t want to go,” she said, her voice beginning to shake. “Why on Earth would you think I’d go with you?”

  “How would you like to see the beginning of Time? You could see the heart of the Tree, or of the world. What would any Lirin give to feel the beating heart of this tree?”

  “No.”

  Grunthor, who had peeled away a section of the Tree so that it looked like a doorway, looked up at her and grinned. “Tell ya what, miss. Come now, and you’ll be able to stop us from damagin’ the root. Leave us to our own devices and—”

  Rhapsody gasped in horror. “You wouldn’t dare! This is a sacred oak, the seat of wisdom of the entire Lirin population, not just the ones that live in the forest. To injure it in any way—”

  “—would not be too difficult, miss.” Rhapsody’s eyes opened even wider as Grunthor disappeared into the dark hole. Achmed moved to the Tree and watched as the giant descended, blocking her view.

  “Don’t you want to see what it looks like inside?”

  Rhapsody did, despite her revulsion at what seemed a desecration, but the thought that these two marauders were entering Sagia made her stomach turn. Having seen their prowess in a fight she knew she had little chance to prevent it, but knew just as surely that she would gladly die trying.

  “Stop,” she demanded, and drew her dagger. “Get out of there.”

  “Last chance,” said the strange, dry voice as the cloaked man disappeared. “Good luck explaining the damage to the Lirindarc guards who will doubtless arrive any minute. I wouldn’t wait around here if I were you. Grunthor, you did bring your ax, didn’t you?” The question, obviously meant to prod her into compliance, echoed up from the darkness.

  Rhapsody looked around. In the distance she thought she did in fact hear the sound of people approaching. Worse, Sagia’s song had changed, as if the sacred oak was in pain.

  She ran to the place where the two men had entered to observe the damage herself, anxiously running a hand over the silvery bark and feeling the vibration in her fingers that she had felt before in her heart. As she was examining the Tree a hand shot out from the dark hole and seized her, dragging her inside.

  Rhapsody screamed for help as Achmed passed her down to Grunthor and grabbed the key. He gave it a firm pull from the ground and spun to face her. As he did, the wall of bark closed behind him silently; then, with a final pulse of light, the key disappeared from his hand, plunging them all into total darkness.

  7

  When the darkness swallowed them, Rhapsody went absolutely silent. She gave the gloom a moment to settle, then tried to rip free from Grunthor’s hands. It was a futile effort; she could hear the giant chuckle as he tightened his grip slightly on her. Instantly she knew that she was mired to the waist in tepid liquid, something more viscous than water, with tensile strands running through it, supporting her weight.

  Seconds later she saw a tiny flame appear, and Achmed’s nightmarish face came into the light; it was a sight that caused her to gasp again. Grunthor let go of her with one hand and reached behind him over his head, pulled out a small torch, and gave it to his partner. The smaller man lit it, and held it out to look around.

  Above them, disappearing into the darkness, was a tapered shaft, the passage through which they had descended. The shadows from the torch leapt off its black sides.

  Around them was a wide, irregular cylinder of softly translucent walls, striated in hues of sunless green, pale yellow, and mottled white. As the light from the weak flame passed over the walls she could see they were thick and fibrous, damming in the murky liquid of similar color which surrounded their legs and hips. Ropy strands twisted through the glutinous muck.

  It seemed clear that once long ago the opening in which they now stood had been a tunnel of a sort, an irregular corridor descending through the vast root. Time and nature had filled in the base of the shaft with thick new growth, a crazily woven system of branchlike strands that crisscrossed the air around them and formed the netlike floor on which they now were balanced. The thick liquid had been displaced with the opening of the doorway, but ebbed and surged slightly, rising back through the network of vines below them.

  Droplets of water from the dank, vapor-rich air came to rest on her skin, leaving it clammy and cold. Rhapsody looked back up from where they had come. In the torchlight she could see no opening. The walls of the tree trunk were as smooth as if they had never been opened.

  She squirmed away from Grunthor—he released her when he saw Achmed nod—reached up, and ran her hands over the smooth wooden surface, looking for the break. There was none.

  A knotted fiber close to her hip offered a hig
her ledge. With great effort she extricated a leg from the gelatinous liquid and brought her foot to rest on the strand. It seemed firm enough to bear her weight, so she felt around for a handhold, then lifted herself out of the fleshy slime.

  Her head and shoulders ascended into the shaft, but still she could see no break in the wood of the Tree’s core. Rhapsody’s hands trembled as she ran them frantically over the shaft around and above her. There was no break, no hole, no tunnel in the Tree. The surface was solid as death.

  “Where’s the door?” she demanded, trying to keep the panic she felt out of her voice. “What have you done?”

  “Closed it,” Achmed answered without sarcasm.

  Grunthor’s hand came to rest on her back as she teetered on her fibrous perch. She was almost on eye level with him, and within those amber eyes, remarkable in their humanity above the rest of the monstrous face, there was a distinct look of sympathy.

  “The door is gone, miss; Oi’m sorry. We ’ave to press on, we can’t go back.”

  Rhapsody whirled around and glared down at Achmed, her eyes blazing green in the light of the torch. “What do you mean, we can’t go back? We have to go back—you have to let me out.”

  “We can’t. You’re stuck. You may as well accept it and come along. We’re not going to wait for you.”

  The air in her lungs grew heavier with each breath. “Come along? You’re insane. There’s nowhere to go but back through there.” She jabbed a finger into the tapering shaft above her.

  “You really are given to some amazingly incorrect assumptions.” The man she had renamed Achmed the Snake shoved aside some hanging branchlike strands, pushed past her legs, and waded to the farthest side of the cylindrical wall, where the flesh seemed thinnest.

  He removed his leather gloves and slowly ran his hands along the surface, probing the semi-flaccid barrier carefully, until he found the weakest spot. He glanced back at Grunthor, who nodded and drew from his back scabbard the strangely sharp, three-bladed weapon he had taken from Karvolt.