The Great Tree of Avalon

  “Great.” Elli looked at Tamwyn with renewed scorn. “So that’s the best you can do? A path that doesn’t exist?”

  He paused in the middle of a slice. “Oh, it exists, all right. I’ve seen it myself.”

  Nuic’s color brightened slightly, with ribbons of yellow moving through the gray. “You’re sure?”

  Tamwyn drew a long, slow breath. “Well, no, not exactly.”

  Elli snorted skeptically.

  He continued to the sprite, “But I’m almost sure. It’s a sort of cave, you see. Way up in the high peaks, even higher than Dun Tara. I heard it called Fergus’s Path by an old hedge faery I met up there—you know, the kind that’s all covered with prickly fur.”

  “The kind that’s famous for telling tall tales and stealing food from other faeries’ gardens, you mean.” Nuic’s colors had darkened again. “And you believed what he said?”

  Though he was starting to feel a bit foolish, Tamwyn nodded. “He said he was going to leave Stoneroot and start a new life.”

  Elli scowled. “So you speak to faeries as well as dragons?”

  Tamwyn ignored her, which made her even angrier. “Then I watched him fly into the cave—and not come back.”

  “Hmmmpff. Probably just running away from whoever was chasing him for thievery.”

  “Maybe.” Tamwyn carved an especially curly slice. “Look, I admit that I don’t know much about these things. But I do have a theory about the Rugged Path. And it fits with what I learned from that faery.”

  “And your theory is?”

  “Well, we know that Avalon is a tree, right? And that each realm is one of its roots. And we also know that Krystallus, after years of portalseeking, concluded that Woodroot is on the side of the Tree nearest to Waterroot and Stoneroot. So . . . what if those three realms are connected up at the top? The way tree roots connect to their trunk! Don’t you see? That means the highest mountains at the very top of Stoneroot might actually be a kind of barrier—a border—between the realms. So if there really is a path up there, you could go from one realm to another.”

  “But that still doesn’t explain why the path supposedly runs just one way,” objected Elli. “Or which way that could be.”

  “Say,” he replied in a mocking tone, “you’re a genius. You have a better theory?”

  “I think you’re a fraud!” she shouted, waving her arms. “I think you’re all those things you said to Llynia, and ten thousand more!”

  A bony little wing poked out of Tamwyn’s robe, followed by a pair of glowing green eyes. “Hushy shush!” squeaked Batty Lad. “Me me needsa day nap, you know. Yessa ya ya ya. Gotsa rest to go hunting all nighty.”

  Tamwyn tugged one of his round ears. “You’re in luck, then. It’s nighttime now. See? Look up.”

  The batlike creature gazed up at the darkened sky, his eyes aglow. “Goody good! Me hungry fora some tasty flies.” He clambered fully out of the pocket, stretched his crumpled wings, and flapped off into the night.

  Tamwyn was about to turn back to Elli, a new batch of insults on his tongue, when he caught sight of the Wizard’s Staff. The constellation seemed to sit on the rim of the knoll, just above the dark outline of the cooking pot. It still had five stars, but one of them, at the upper end, flickered weakly. Soon it, too, would go out.

  Elli had seen it, as well. She was gazing up at the constellation, her expression now one of worry. “Nuic,” she asked, “what does it mean?”

  “Nothing good.” The pinnacle sprite looked down at the small pool of water. “I should have stayed in the mountains.”

  So should I, thought Tamwyn.

  Elli nodded grimly. “A week has gone by already and we haven’t accomplished anything.”

  “Not true, Elliryanna. You’ve given our new guide here a ripe pair of black eyes.”

  “Yes, well, he deserved them.”

  Right now she wished she could sit under the beech tree and play her harp, forgetting about everything else, feeling at peace. But now the memory of her harp just made her angry again.

  She faced Tamwyn. “Looks like we have no choice now but to follow you into that fool’s cave! There isn’t time to find another way. In case you’re too stupid to figure it out, we have to get to the Lady—and, most likely, beyond—before the last of those stars goes out.”

  “Shouldn’t be too hard for a great genius like you,” he said with a smirk.

  Elli slapped at the pool, drenching him with water.

  Tamwyn grabbed a couple of wood shavings. Quickly, he tied them together, then turned them in his hand. When the little knot caught a glint of starlight, he focused on that speck of light, imagining it was really a spark. Then a burning coal. Then a candle wick on fire. The wood shavings seemed to spurt into flames.

  With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the knot of burning shavings at Elli. It landed on her thigh, crackling like a ball of fire.

  “What? Aaaaah!” She leaped into the air, swatting at the flames.

  But there were no flames. The knot of shavings rolled on the ground, completely harmless. Elli glared at Tamwyn, her own eyes about to burst into fire. Shaking with rage, she kicked the knot at him and strode off to the beech tree.

  “Well there,” said Nuic gruffly, “aren’t you full of surprises?”

  Tamwyn, grinning with satisfaction, watched Elli sit down hard in the roots of the beech. “Just a trick, really. But it does come in handy sometimes.”

  “Hmmmpff. Something else you picked up, I suppose. At least call it by its real name.”

  “What’s that?”

  “How many times do you need to be told? It’s not a trick, but an illusion! You projected the image of fire onto that wood, just like you projected the sound of that dragon into the air.”

  “Trick, illusion, whatever.” Tamwyn’s toe nudged the hoofprint in the mud again. “It’s not real, that’s the point. Only people with real magic in their blood can change things for real.”

  Nuic studied him closely. “Like the ancient deer people, perhaps?”

  Tamwyn’s mouth went dry, for once not because of the drought. He turned to look at the hoofprints for a moment, then asked, “Nuic . . . was Hallia really the last survivor of the deer people?”

  “The last in Avalon, yes.”

  Somewhere down inside, Tamwyn felt a sudden emptiness. But he tried to keep his face from showing anything.

  “Don’t you know your lore, young man?” Nuic went on grumpily. “Any child could tell you the story: How Merlin asked Hallia to come with him when Lost Fincayra became part of the Otherworld. How she couldn’t bear to leave behind her people and her heritage, and so parted from him. And how, in the end, she realized that she loved the young wizard—yes, yes, he really was young once!—too much to live without him.”

  A lavender hue crept over the sprite’s round body. “And so, with help from Dagda himself, who became a stag and led her out of the spirit world, she and Merlin were reunited at last. They were married, in the Year of Avalon 27, atop the highest mountain in the Seven Realms. Now, that was an event, I’ll tell you, attended by all sorts of mortal and immortal beings. Even that bumbling giant, Shim, was there— holding a huge hat full of children—and a ballymag whose name, I think, was Mooshlovely.”

  Tamwyn nudged the old sprite. “You make it sound like you were actually there.”

  “Hmmmpff. Of course I was there, you bung-brained dolt! The wedding took place near one of my favorite bathing brooks. I had the best seat of anyone.” His colors shifted to a tranquil shade of blue. “Anyway, Hallia’s love for Merlin was so great that she stayed with him the rest of her days. She even joined him on a few trips to mortal Earth, the greatest sacrifice I could imagine, just so they wouldn’t be apart.”

  The sprite made a rough sound in his throat, almost a chortle. “But of course, she had a son, Krystallus. A regular scamp of a boy, full of mischief! I should know, since I encouraged that right from the start.”

  “You actually knew him??
??

  Nuic merely grinned.

  “But Krystallus couldn’t change into a deer, could he?”

  Nuic shook himself. “No, and he always regretted that. Made up for it by running all over Avalon, mind you! Even founded the College of Mapmakers—mainly, I suspect, to keep track of his travels. But he could never run like his mother, with the speed and grace of a deer.”

  Tamwyn cleared his throat. “I’ve heard bards saying that if Krystallus fathered a child, that child could have some of Hallia’s magic. It could skip generations, the way it does with wizards—or did, at least, in the old days when we had wizards. But then, I’ve never heard anything about a child of Krystallus.”

  Nuic’s liquid purple eyes turned to the star-studded Avalon sky. “When you live as long as I have, you get to see many things. Some of them happen only once, like the birth of our world from a single seed. And some of them happen . . . more than once.”

  He faced Tamwyn. “Krystallus did have a child.” Seeing Tamwyn listening with rapt attention, he said casually, “It happened far away from here. In Fireroot.”

  Tamwyn’s heart leaped.

  “When Krystallus traveled there, he was the first person with human blood to face the flamelons since the war of the Age of Storms. Which is to say he was either very brave, or very stupid. And probably, since he was part human, it was the latter. He was captured, and sentenced to be burned to death. But on the eve of his execution, he was rescued.”

  “By who?”

  “By a woman. A woman he loved—and who later bore their child. Their union didn’t last long, mind you. For mysterious reasons, she fled with the child—no one knows where. Not even Krystallus could find them . . . though it is said that he searched everywhere, even among the stars. And that led to his final, fatal voyage.”

  Nuic paused, thinking. “Not many people know about all this, which is why even those who know aren’t certain just who that woman was. Some believe she was herself a flamelon, perhaps part of the royal family. And others are sure she was an eaglewoman, who could carry Krystallus to safety before he was killed.”

  “And which,” Tamwyn asked in a quaky voice, “do you believe?”

  “I’m not sure. But I am sure of this: Their child was a son. And he was born seventeen years ago, in the Year of Darkness.”

  Tamwyn sucked in his breath. “So their son could be—”

  “That’s right,” said Nuic, cutting him off. “Their son could have great powers, only now emerging. Including the power to change into a deer. After all, he would be the grandson of Hallia . . . and the wizard Merlin.”

  His colors darkened. “But he could also be the child of the Dark Prophecy.”

  22 • Death Trap

  None of the humans in the group slept well that night. Or the next, or the next.

  For Llynia, it was because of the difficulty of finding any flat space bigger than a ledge to lie down on, the sound of clattering rock slides that echoed all night long among the ridges, and the thinner air of the high peaks that sometimes made her wake up gasping. Not that she didn’t wish for sleep, to give her some rest from all her aching muscles and scraped elbows and knees. For the Rugged Path was aptly named! And this trek up the mountain passes and glacial valleys, as Tamwyn reminded her each day, was not the fabled path itself—just the quickest way to reach it.

  For Elli, the harsh terrain wasn’t a problem. She began to find the challenge of climbing steep slopes hand over hand invigorating . . . although more than once she was tempted to drop a heavy stone on Tamwyn’s head. She still fumed, burning like an ember herself, whenever she thought about his prank with the trick fire. And it made her even angrier when she noticed how Nuic, who rode on her shoulder, seemed to tolerate him. Even listen to him sometimes. As she lay on the rocky terrain each night, she tossed and turned, dreaming that she was dodging great fireballs from the sky. Most often they’d miss her, but would destroy, over and over again, her precious handmade harp.

  And for Tamwyn, the nights were difficult because he couldn’t distract himself from his own thoughts, as he could when he was busy guiding the group. He could only look up at the stars—and the places where stars used to be—and wonder. About Avalon . . . and about himself. Who he really was. What his fate might be. And whether he was truly destined to bring ruin to Avalon.

  Each day proved more challenging than the last. They traversed a wide field of unstable boulders that shook and slid as they clambered across, using their hands no less than their feet. They hiked over a glacier, throbbing with cold rivers beneath its surface, crowned with spires of misty blue ice. And they leaped across several deep crevasses—all except Llynia, who refused to move unless Fairlyn lay down and made herself into a bridge.

  Higher and higher they climbed, above the string of lakes known as Footsteps of the Giants. But like all the others they’d seen, these lakes were nearly dry. Instead of their usual turquoise blue color, they were muddy brown, their bottoms covered with webs of cracks. One afternoon, a great winged creature soared overhead, and Tamwyn peered at it hopefully—until he saw that it was just a canyon eagle, not the brother he’d sought for so many years.

  As they gained altitude, the high peaks of Olanabram lifted before them. Though still crested with snow, their rocky summits were more exposed than Tamwyn had ever seen. Even Hallia’s Peak, the jagged mountain where Merlin and Hallia had been wed long ago, was almost bare of snow.

  Beyond the high peaks, they could just barely glimpse a series of dark brown ridges that ran northward in parallel rows, rising swiftly higher as they faded into the distant, ever-swirling mist. Those ridges, as Tamwyn knew, were actually the bottommost reaches of Avalon’s trunk. For this was the only place in all the root-realms where the Great Tree’s trunk could actually be seen—aside from the Swaying Sea, a strange appendage that some considered Avalon’s highest root, and others its lowest branch.

  As he looked at those misty ridges, Tamwyn wondered just how high the Great Tree’s trunk ultimately rose. Did it support branches as vast and varied as the roots themselves? And did the trunk reach past those branches, past the swirls of mist . . . all the way to the stars?

  At last, on their eleventh day of trekking, they reached the entrance to the Rugged Path. It sat near the top of a windswept ridge, shielded by a mass of jagged outcroppings that blocked it from view. In fact, the cave was impossible to see without standing almost on top of it. Stalactites, sharper than dragon teeth, hung down from the cave’s roof, which made it look like a black mouth of stone ready to swallow anyone who came too near.

  “That’s where we’re going?” Llynia’s face, which was red with starburn (all but her chin), reddened some more. “Into there?”

  Wearily, Tamwyn nodded. He set down his load, now just a few flasks of water and some dried herbs, and blew a frosty breath in the chill mountain air. Then he waved below them, at the white expanse of snowfields, glaciers, and moraines that seemed to stretch on endlessly, unbroken but for the few summits of faded gray rock that lifted out of the snow. “You can try searching down there for a portal if you’d like. Maybe you’ll find a friendly snow leopard who can help.”

  Llynia knitted her brow. “But you don’t even know if this is the right path!”

  “Or if it goes the right direction,” chimed in Elli. She picked up a pebble and threw it into the gaping mouth. It slid and clattered for many seconds, then all sound abruptly ceased. It had been swallowed.

  “This could be nothing more than . . .” Llynia wiped her forehead on the sleeve of her badly frayed robe. “Than a death trap.”

  “Ooh, really?” Henni dropped his load on the rocks. Silver eyes shining, he sauntered over to the cave entrance and looked inside. “I’ve never met a death trap I didn’t like.”

  “A hoolah’s motto, if I ever heard one,” said Tamwyn. “All right, then. You can go first.”

  Henni’s long arms reached up high, so that his big hands could grab a pair of stalactites. He then
lifted up his legs and swung there, oblivious to the danger of falling into this cave that plunged down into the heart of the mountainside. “Eehee, eehee, hoohooheeheeha-ha-ha!” he laughed, his silver eyes gleaming. “Here I go, clumsy man.”

  “Wait!” shouted Tamwyn. He strode over to the cave entrance. “I’m tempted to get rid of you, believe me. But just in case this really is a death trap, I’d rather you live for a little while longer.” Seeing Henni’s puzzled look, he added, “So I can kill you myself later on.”

  The hoolah giggled, swinging from the stalactites.

  “So,” Tamwyn continued, “I’m going to ask Batty Lad to fly in and check it out first.” He shook his pocket, but the sleeping beast didn’t stir. “He was out late hunting last night, I guess. Not many insects up here for his—yaaaaaaaaaah!”

  Before Tamwyn could do anything to stop him, Henni kicked out his legs and wrapped them tight around the young man’s waist. Then the hoolah lurched backward and went tumbling down into the cave—taking Tamwyn with him. There was a sound of screams, shattering stalactites, and then silence.

  23 • The Rugged Path

  Down, down, down plunged Tamwyn and Henni, roaring wildly. The young man was roaring with rage, the hoolah with glee. But both of them shared the same fate: Now nothing could stop their fall except the bottom . . . if indeed there was a bottom.

  Right after tumbling into the cave, they smashed through a row of jagged crystals, snapping them like icicles. Then, for a moment that seemed endless, they fell freely, whizzing deeper into this world of darkness. Suddenly they slammed into a wall where the passage turned. The impact drove Tamwyn’s shoulder deep into Henni’s chest. The hoolah screeched in pain and lost his grip around Tamwyn’s waist.

  Hurtling deeper into the mountain, Tamwyn thudded against a limestone column, breaking the stone into bits—along with every bone in his back, he felt sure. Down he tumbled, sliding at terrifying speed down a long chute, around a bend, and straight over a gap that could have been a side tunnel or crevasse.