by Ari Marmell
Actually, as Katim and Jhurpess both pointed out nigh simultaneously, there was no sign of any rabbits or squirrels, rabid, irate, or otherwise. No birds perched in the trees, twittering the day away with their inane songs; no deer bounded from clearing to clearing; no wolves lurked to thin out said bounding population. With a single exception, Ymmech Thewl appeared devoid of animal life. And that single exception—a huge, stone-hued snake with a head on both ends, that had curled around a towering tree and watched them with four unblinking eyes—didn't really make them feel any better about the whole thing.
Belrotha finally dealt with her unease by grabbing the snake just below each head and tying it around the tree in a simple but efficient knot.
It was a short-lived comfort, though—one that vanished the instant they found the body.
He'd once been human—that was clear enough. He lay facedown, just off the meandering strip of slightly thinner grass that Katim had laughingly called a game trail. His clothes were tattered, and a few scraps of leather suggested that he had once worn a small pouch but that it had been equally savaged. He appeared to have died desperately reaching for a walking staff lying just a few inches from his outstretched hand.
None of which would have troubled any of the goblins, really, were it not for the tree beside which the body lay. One of its thickest roots extended through the man's back, passing through him to join with its brethren under the soil. The corpse, Katim noted with a sniff, was quite ripe, far too fresh for anything to grow completely through the body, let alone an entire tree root. And Gork, kneeling down to see if the body held anything worth looting, went abruptly pale as he got a good look at the amount of dried blood on the skin and tattered clothing and realized the man must have been alive when the root punctured his flesh.
The tree stabbed him?! Gork felt a sudden need to lie down.
“Oh, it did not!” Cræosh snapped when presented with the kobold's theory. “You have any fucking idea how stupid that sounds?”
“Yes, I know very damn well how stupid it sounds!” Gork said, a hysterical tremor in his voice. “Of course it sounds stupid! It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard, let alone said! And as soon as you come up with a more plausible theory, I'll be absolutely thrilled to go along with it! So?” The kobold actually crossed his arms and began tapping his foot. “I’m waiting.”
“It's simple,” Cræosh said, gesturing toward the corpse. “Obviously he…Well, that is, the body…The tree…” He stopped, staring at the root protruding from the cadaver's back. “Or then again,” he finished lamely, “perhaps not.”
“Me know,” Belrotha announced. The entire squad stared at her.
“Oh, yeah,” Gork snickered. “This, I've got to hear.”
“Simple,” the ogre said. “Someone drop tree on human.”
“Um…” Cræosh actually tilted his head. “You wanna run that by us again, Belrotha?”
“Me said, someone drop tree on human.”
“That's what I thought you said,” Fezeill groused, the words emerging as a growl from his simian mouth. (He'd decided, given their surroundings, that a bugbear's form was once again appropriate.) “Listen, you elephantine mass of ignorance, would you care to explain exactly what could have dropped a tree that size? I doubt you could even lift it!”
“You probably right,” she admitted after studying the bole. “Me not think me could do it.”
“And there's not much around that's stronger than you are, is there?”
“A few things. Dragon, maybe.”
“I think,” Gimmol said from his perch on her shoulder, “that most dragons have, uh, more efficient weapons than trees.”
The ogre shrugged, practically dislodging the gremlin from his roost. “Me not know what did it,” she said impatiently. “Me just making suggestion. You not like suggestion, you figure out for yourself. Me going this way.” And with that, she turned and continued on her way.
“She's right,” Katim said. “We're not…going to figure out what happened by…standing around guessing. Let's get…through this forest before we…find out firsthand.”
“Scared, troll?” Cræosh smirked.
“No. Just not…stupid enough to stand around…waiting for more trouble. Are…you?”
“Whatever.” But he stayed with the rest as the squad followed the impatient ogre.
Gork hung back just long enough for a final glance at the tree and the corpse. Was Belrotha's idea feasible? Could something huge have ripped up this tree and…No. The roots climbed smoothly from the surrounding dirt; Gork was no expert, but he was sure the tree had to have been growing here for a few decades, if not longer.
Which brought him back to his original theory, however laughable. With a sudden burst of speed, he ran to catch up to the others.
The sun had just begun its inevitable slide toward the horizon and the squad was finally approaching the heart of Ymmech Thewl when Katim and Jhurpess caught the scent of man on the breeze. A few quick hisses and hand-signals resulted in the rasp of drawn weapons.
He stood statue-still, some twenty yards into the massive clearing—a veritable island of grass in the center of the sea of trees. Although he was little more than a darker shape against the gathering gloom, his posture suggested that he was very carefully watching their approach. The goblins spread out, so far as the trees at the clearing's edge would allow, ready for any attack…but not ready for the man to raise a hand and beckon them onward.
“You must hurry!” he called, his voice young but reverberating with the ring of authority. “Night is falling!”
Cræosh—whose Manspeak was better than most of the others’—shouted back. “So what? You afraid of the dark?” They moved, albeit cautiously, out of the cover of the trees.
The human shook his head. They were near enough now to see his shoulder-length mane of brown hair, his plain robe (very similar to the one they'd seen on the body in the woods), and, perhaps most urgently, the dread scrawled across his face. “Not the dark! The trees! Come quick, before…” Even in the dying light, they saw his gaze rise and fix on a spot somewhere above and behind them. “Run!”
Naturally, they glanced behind rather than obey, and most nearly stumbled and fell at the sight. Towering shapes bent and swayed, horribly backlit by the falling sun. Limbs—uncountable, twisted, spindly—writhed like dying eels, the first wakeful stirrings of something that should never stir at all. And those looming things surged forward, carried ponderously but swiftly on creaking appendages. Cræosh's attention was drawn to the corpse of a human that flopped horribly along with them, impaled on one of those twitching limbs.
The goblins ran. They tore past the few sporadic trees between them and the human, and whether they merely scratched themselves on protruding branches as they passed or whether these, too, had come alive and grabbed for them, they could not say. It was a small miracle that not a one of them stumbled or injured an ankle as they followed the strange human.
He, too, was running from the unnatural forest. The surety of his footsteps and the even pace of his stride belied the near blindness he must be suffering as the day breathed its last. At the limits of his vision, Cræosh saw the man vanish with a sudden splash, and then the squad were near enough to see their destination.
In the center of this massive clearing, the river called the Precrene Flow split in two, traveling in tandem for perhaps a hundred yards before merging once more into a single ribbon of blue. The islet in the center, a hillock only slightly higher than the rest of the clearing, was home to a great henge of stones, almost a mirror image to the one in Jureb Nahl.
Almost. This one was in far better shape, missing none of the towering blocks. And this one, too, cradled a small stone structure in its center. It was toward this building that the human, having already emerged dripping from the Precrene, was fleeing.
Katim appeared to balk as they approached the banks of that narrow but swift stream, but the others hit the water without slowing, Belrotha scoopi
ng up Gork by his belt. The waters barely reached Cræosh's armpits, and that seemed to alleviate the troll's concerns, for she caught up with them an instant later. The waters were frigid, the current treacherous, but the goblins (save those being carried) kept their feet.
When they tromped up the banks on the other side, the brown-haired human was standing by a door that blended seamlessly with the stone wall, holding it ajar with one hand. “Hurry!” he called, waving frantically. “They don't often cross the stream, but it happens! Quickly!”
Under normal circumstances, most of them would have hesitated, suspecting some sort of trap. These were not normal circumstances.
However…
“Me not fit!” Belrotha screeched at them.
She spoke in Gremlin, since that was how the squad normally talked. The human may or may not have understood her words, but there was no misunderstanding her concern.
“Don't worry!” he shouted. “The building's just there to protect the stairs! There'll be enough room for her once we get below!”
Below? Cræosh shook his head, even as he shoved past Fezeill and into the minuscule edifice. This ain't like any druid circle I've ever heard of.
Sure enough, the interior of the building was devoid of features, save for a huge set of double trapdoors occupying most of the floor. Cræosh pointed, the human nodded confirmation, and the orc squatted to yank both open at once. They crashed aside, revealing descending stairs of carven stone, worn and pitted, coated with layers of dust that showed the footprints of recent use.
And they were indeed wide enough—and, after a short ways, deep enough—for Belrotha. She'd have to squeeze at first, just as she'd done to enter the building, but not for long. Satisfied there were no obvious traps, Cræosh plunged down the steps two and three at a time. An incredible cacophony of crashes and clatters and grunts above were signal enough that the rest of the squad followed. Those were punctuated by a single reverberating boom, presumably the sound of the human slamming the outer door. That, hopefully, would keep the trees at bay.
The trees. Cræosh felt an incipient headache and actually had to mouth the words a time or two, forcing them to sink in. We were attacked by fucking trees! The orcs back home are not gonna believe a word of this…. Cræosh wasn't afraid to die, at least not much, but being murdered by an abnormally ambulatory log was not how he wanted to go.
He also really, really didn't want to face Gork's inevitable “I told you so!” It might just result in bloodshed.
The human slipped by him on the wide stairs, startling him from his reverie. “Forgive me,” the man said, nodding his head in the shallowest of bows. “I don't mean to be rude, but there's no telling what my companions might do if the first person into the room is an orc.”
“Or what the orc might do,” Cræosh said, “in reaction.”
“Exactly.” The human quickened his pace, disappearing around the staircase's gradual curve.
Cræosh immediately halted, stumbling as Jhurpess ran into him from behind. He waited another moment or so, just to be sure that their “savior” was out of earshot. “All right, quick assessment. How do we want to play this?”
“Isn't it a bit late for that?” Fezeill asked acidly. “If there's a trap waiting for us, it may be too late to escape it.”
“Maybe,” Gimmol said, “but the other option was staying outside. I didn't exactly hear you suggesting that.”
The doppelganger scowled, but shut up.
“I don't yet see what purpose…a trap might serve,” Katim said. “Though of course I…don't know who these people…are. I suggest we…continue, but very, very…carefully.”
“We could just go down there and kill them all,” Gork said. “I find that, on the whole, it's safer to trust dead people than live ones.”
“Who said anything about trust?” Cræosh asked. “I don't trust you bastards; you can bet your last intestinal parasite I’m not gonna trust them.” He pondered a moment. “Same time, though, I don't think we ought to kill them just yet. Might be they can tell us something about those trees. Or, for that matter, about the druids that used to practice here. No sense in tearing around the place half-assed if we can get them to just take us where we need to go. Had enough of that in Jureb Nahl, thanks.”
There was a general agreement to that one, so Cræosh resumed his trek down the winding stairs.
It led, after another handful of turns, to a wide archway. Stepping through, Cræosh found himself standing in a massive underground sanctuary. The walls were lined in wooden panels, except for four-foot-wide vertical strips of bare stone, positioned at intervals of roughly five paces around the perimeter. Said panels were intricately embossed with a series of patterns, suggesting layer upon layer of branches and leaves extending into the distance. The floor, too, was covered in wooden paneling, though bare of adornment. Flickering torches, scented with some sort of herbal mixture, were mounted to the stone, and a fire pit blazed merrily in the room's center. The smoke coiled upward to vanish somewhere in the dark.
“We were starting to wonder if you'd gotten lost,” the human told Cræosh in a tone probably intended to be one of good humor. The orc decided, for the time being, to take it as such.
“Yeah, well, you know how confusing stairs can be. Up, down…So many choices.”
The man's smile broadened, and Cræosh marginally relaxed. The human who had led them down here stood by the fire pit flanked by two others clad in identical robes. One was female, the other male, but otherwise Cræosh saw little to distinguish them. They were all pink and squishy.
Their guide waved elegantly at the pair behind him, starting with the male. The fellow thus indicated gave them a wide grin; combined with his unruly hair, the expression made him look like something of a yokel, or perhaps an amiable mop. “This is Josiah Gruder, my oldest friend and one of the staunchest of my brethren.”
Brethren? Behind Cræosh's back, Katim and Gork traded wary glances, each feeling a sudden sinking in the pit of his or her stomach (or stomachs, in the troll's case).
“This,” the human continued, now directing their attention toward the red-haired woman, “is Mina MacCray, a far more recent, but by no means less welcome, addition to our order.” She offered them a shy half-smile.
First “brethren,” and now “order.” Katim growled, and Gork shook his head.
“And my name,” he finished grandly, “is Alam Tyr.” He bowed once more, with only the hint of a flourish. “I am the head acolyte of the temple of Ymmech Thewl.”
Gork groaned aloud.
“What?” Cræosh asked, craning his head around.
“You,” the kobold told him, “have the brains of a wildebeest.”
The orc scowled, but Katim interjected before he could speak. “Think, Cræosh, if you…still remember how. What…are we here for?”
His scowl just deepened. “The relic of…Oh, shit!” He'd finally gotten it.
The head acolyte Alam stepped forward. “I’m sorry,” he said, not having fully understood the conversation, which had, of course, been in Gremlin. “Is something wrong?”
Cræosh and Katim exchanged glances, and both nodded just slightly. They'd get more useful information if the acolytes knew why they were here.
They could always kill the humans later, if they decided they'd said too much.
“We were sent,” the orc said, speaking Manspeak once more, “to find a relic of a forgotten god. But if you lot are here, the god ain't really forgotten, is he?”
“She,” Alam corrected absently. “My particular sect personifies the World-Mother as female.”
“Whatever. Point is, you worship her. Which means we're pretty well buggered.”
“Kirol Syrreth had eighty billion druid sects,” Gork muttered sourly, “and we just had to pick the one that's come back.”
“Actually, quite a few of us have sprung back up in recent years,” Mina announced proudly. “We're hardly the only one.”
“But we are the one,”
Alam said, as though struck by a sudden revelation, “with so obvious and so famous a temple.” He waved his hand upward, presumably indicating the small stone building in the circle above. “You came here specifically because you thought that this would be the best place to find such a relic.” He frowned. “Alas, we no longer even have the relic that we need.…”
“Got it in one,” Cræosh said. “But now, we need to get back and find some other place to look.”
“That may not be quite as easy as it sounds,” Alam said, his voice dropping. “I doubt very much that Gnarlroot and his minions will let you leave.”
“Gnarlroot?” Fezeill asked from the rear. “That sounds like some floral blight.”
Alam sighed. “In a way, I suppose it is.” He wandered over to the nearest wall and placed his hand on the wood. “Let me start at the beginning then. Perhaps, when I’m done, we can help each other.”
I truly doubt it, Cræosh thought. What he said was, “We're listening.”
“All right. Hundreds of years ago, when the druids were a true power in this land, we—that is, they, my predecessors—wielded great magics. All the wonders of nature were theirs to protect, but also to control. They could summon weather at a whim, talk to animals with no more effort than you and I converse now. And every so often, they put the trees to work.
“It was one of the greatest of their spells, you see. Trees are quite strong, and they are capable of labors that hundreds of humans could not accomplish. How do you think they assembled the henges that make up so many of our sacred groves?”
“Right, trees. Got it.” Cræosh sniffed. “So what the fuck happened upstairs? You not paying these guys enough?”
