As he spoke, Spatha seemed to rouse, murmuring through twisted lips. The company gathered around as she slowly opened one eye.
“Not…” the Nonae said, her voice straining. “Not dead…yet.”
Kakere stepped forward, and bent low over Spatha.
“Why?” the Ichthyandaro asked. “Why suffer these wounds for my sake?”
“Because…” Spatha began, before she was cut off by another coughing fit. Pink spittle foamed at the corners of her mouth, but when Kakere began to pull away, she reached out and grabbed the hem of his robe, dragging him back down to her level. “I was…ashamed…not to have acted as thou had done. I know”—she coughed again, her whole body trembling, and her nose began to bleed—“what it is like…to be imprisoned by circumstance, kept apart from…one's own kind.”
Spatha's eyes closed, and her head lolled to one side.
“Is she…?” Kakere said in a reverential voice, looking up at Benu. “Is she…dead?”
“Do you doubt my diagnostic skills so readily?” Benu shook his head. “No, of course she's not dead. I just said she had days left to live. She's just lost consciousness again. No doubt her system is in shock, due to trauma and loss of blood. However, there's little to nothing we can do about her injuries in the wilderness, and we must find some civilization if we're to prevent her inevitable death.”
“We press on to Keir-Leystall,” Hieronymus said, straightening. “As the oracular forest is said to hold all knowledge, perhaps it will know the secret of healing Spatha's wounds.”
Hieronymus looked from one to another of his companions, as if seeking consent or disagreement, but if anyone had a better idea, they kept it to themselves.
The company continued on, leaving behind the mangrove swamps, tidal channels, and alluvial plains of the coastal regions and moving into a lightly forested zone. By midday, though, they'd traveled no more than a few hundred meters, progress made difficult due to the preponderance of boiling pools of mud scattered through the landscape.
“What is that stench?” Balam said as he lowered Spatha's stretcher to the ground, once they'd found a dry spot to exchange positions. He and Benu stepped away from the stretcher as Hieronymus and Kakere stepped forward to take their shifts.
Leena sniffed the air, and wrinkled her nose in disgust. The air stank of rotten eggs, or flatulence.
“Sulfur, if I'm not mistaken,” Benu answered, “and I'm not. These hot pools of mud must be evidence of volcanic activity, not far below the surface, the bubbling we see the product of escaping volcanic gases.
“Well, I think it's disgusting,” Balam said, pinching his nose shut with a thumb and forefinger.
“It could well be worse than disgusting,” Benu said, following Leena as she led the company deeper into the forest. “If the gas levels grow sufficient to drive out the breathable oxygen, the smell of the gases which asphyxiate you will be the least of your concerns.”
They had gone another few kilometers through the burbling pools of mud, and had just passed a small lake of brackish water, when from behind them came a loud popping noise. Balam suddenly stopped short, sniffed the air, and shouted.
“Run!”
Without another word, the jaguar man took to his heels, sprinting up the forest track ahead of them as fast as his legs would carry him.
The company didn't waste any time in discussion, but followed as quickly as they could, Hieronymus and Kakere struggling with the awkward load of the stretcher, Leena sprinting full out, and Benu following at the speed of a brisk walk, taking his time.
Leena chanced a glance back over her shoulder and saw the multiform denizens of the forest racing after them: birds, small lizardlike dinosaurs, and large mice the size of capybaras. Leena raced a few more dozen meters, then glanced back again and saw Benu calmly studying the fallen forms of the small creatures, scattered around him and lying unmoving on the ground.
Dizzy and lightheaded, the company gathered at the shores of a narrow, paved stream. They'd run flat out for several kilometers, and all of them were out of breath. Only Benu had lagged behind, and as they fought to catch their breath, chests burning and leg muscles aching, he casually strolled out of the forest, whistling tunelessly.
“It is nice to see proof that the olfactory capacities of the Sinaa are not overestimated,” Benu said, smiling at Balam, who wheezed on the ground, tongue lolling.
“What…” Hieronymus began, panting. “What was that?”
“A cloud of poisonous gas,” Benu answered simply, kneeling in the dust before them, “issuing from beneath that small lake we passed. If Balam hadn't given us early warning, I'm afraid all of you would have asphyxiated as quickly as the smaller organisms who fell in the cloud's wake. As it was, you were able to keep just ahead of the cloud as it spread and, now that it's been dissipated, you should be in no further danger.”
“You didn't appear to be in any hurry,” Leena said, rubbing her inflamed calf muscles.
“Why should I have been?” Benu answered. “After all, I don't have to breathe, now do I?”
The company, once rested, forded the paved stream, and as they continued on, the volcanic pools and small copses of trees gave way to wide plains of stone. It was as if an entire prairie had been paved over in cement, untold millennia before. No blade of grass nor flower nor scrub brush grew here, only the ancient stone rising in slight waves and valleys, broken into archipelagos of shattered rock by the passage of time.
They moved through the desert of stone for two nights and two days, eating and drinking only what they carried in their packs, seeing nothing but gray sky and gray stone ground, until at last, they reached the periphery of the forest of Keir-Leystall.
“What are they?” Leena said in a low voice. Less than half a kilometer from them, across the final stretch of broken pavement, stood what appeared to be a hedge of large metal bushes.
“Little sister,” Hieronymus said, wonderstruck, “your guess is as good as mine.”
“Benu,” Balam said from his position at the foot of Spatha's stretcher. “You have been here before. What, exactly, are we looking at?”
As they drew nearer, the strange metal objects came slowly into focus.
“They are the trees of Keir-Leystall, of course,” the artificial man answered simply. “Once, in ancient days, the long-forgotten culture of Keir-Leystall was a satellite of Atla in the far south, as was Hele in the Lethe Mountains to our south, and Scere beyond the Rim Mountains to the west. In days of unimaginable antiquity, the people of Keir-Leystall mastered the art of duplicating a man's mind, and recreating it in a machine. Similar skills were used in my own forging, I hasten to point out. And the ancients of Keir-Leystall further mastered the art of fashioning mechanical devices so fine that they could manipulate the very particles that make up matter itself. At some point, as their culture aged to senescence, these two arts were combined in the creation of the oracular forest. History has forgotten whether the men and women whose minds were uploaded into the fractal robots were prisoners, patients, or priests, and whether they were being imprisoned, cured, or saved.”
Balam sneered, regarding the metal structures as the company drew nearer their goal. “Why doesn't someone just ask the trees which it was? Don't they hold all knowledge?”
“Well, you could try,” Benu replied thoughtfully, “but the answers could not be trusted. The trees, you see—at least those who have not retreated from all interaction with the outside world, about whom nothing can be known—are all quite mad.”
“And we come here to find the way to Earth?” Leena asked. “To ask these insane beings for answers?”
“I never said you were certain to find the knowledge you seek, Akilina,” Benu said. “I merely said that the answers you seek, if they are to be found anywhere in Paragaea, are to be found here.”
They had, by this point, neared the forest close enough that they could begin to make out details of the “trees” before them. They did indeed look like large m
etal bushes that grew upwards from the ground, branching into three branches at intervals, standing about four meters tall. At the tips of the branches, the air seemed hazy and indistinct, as though the branches continued to exfoliate smaller than the eye could see.
Without warning, when they were within a few meters of the nearest tree, the air around them buzzed with a sound like the voice of a swarm of bees. The nearest tree vibrated in time with each syllable. “What do you want?”
Hieronymus stepped forward, and opened his mouth to speak, but before he could answer, the strange voice buzzed again.
“One of you is damaged.” There came a pause, and the metal tree shimmered slightly. “Would the damaged one be repaired? It is within our power to effect this change.”
“Yes,” several of the company quickly said in unison. Balam and Kakere stepped forward, set the stretcher down on the ground at the base of the tree, and then retreated to the rear of the group.
“Very well.”
The branches of the metal tree twitched, and then began to ripple slowly as if plied by a slight wind. Leena felt a whisper on her cheek, like someone had just run past her.
The company looked down at the supine form of Spatha, but she still lay broken and bloodied on the stretcher, unchanged.
“Um, guys?” came the voice of Kakere from behind them.
Leena turned, and saw Kakere standing naked, his robe reduced to powder that dusted the pavement at his feet. He held his hands out at arm's length to either side, his expression bewildered. His skin had a bluer cast to it than normal, though he seemed otherwise unchanged.
“This one had an unnecessary dependence on hydration, a faulty design. We have improved the model, and this one will be much more efficient hereafter.”
“No,” Kakere said, stepping forward, pleading. “Not me! Repair her!” The fish man stabbed a finger at the dying Nonae on the ground at the tree's base.
The voice buzzed, wordlessly, with a distracted air.
“This one's phenotype appears to be operant.”
“Your pardon,” Benu said, stepping in, “but I hasten to point out the systemic imbalances, caused by trauma, which are preventing this one from operating at peak efficiency.”
The tree shimmered again.
“We have had intercourse with you before, though you are now housed in a new shell.”
“Yes, both statements are true,” Benu said, his voice laced with impatience.
“Has much time has passed since our last encounter? The days pass so strangely, here.”
“By my reckoning, nearly two thousand, five hundred and seventy-three solar years.”
“That short a span? I thought it would have been longer.”
The tree rustled, its hazy branches moving as if in a slight breeze, and it seemed to Leena that the mind within was contemplative.
“You will have to visit again. This has been most engaging. Good-bye.”
“No,” Benu said forcefully, as if scolding a recalcitrant child. “You must repair this one”—he pointed at Spatha Sekundus—“and then you will answer our questions.”
“Oh. Really?” There followed a long pause, and Leena could feel her pulse sounding in her ears. “Very well.”
The tree shimmered once more, and again the wind kissed Leena's cheek, and in the next instant Spatha was lying naked on the ground, her wounds healed. But not only her most recent injuries had vanished, but ancient injuries, too, were gone. Even the ix, the Nonae ensign on her cheek, was gone.
Kakere rushed forward, and helped Spatha climb to her feet. They stood side by side, looking up uneasily at the metal tree above them, too stunned to speak.
Hieronymus whistled low. “They are as naked and unblemished as the day they were born. They might be some Adam and Eve from the pages of myth, facing a newborn world.”
“The world is newborn every day, and when one's perceptions cycle through a dormant phase, it dies again.”
Benu glanced over at Leena. “If you're going to ask your question, you might want to do it quickly. I'm not sure how long the trees will remain this lucid.”
“This is lucid?” Balam asked, eyes rolling.
“Trees of Keir-Leystall,” Leena said, not wasting a moment. She stepped nearer the tree, coming almost within arm's reach of the smooth, cool surface of its metal trunk. “Do you know of Earth, and the way between the worlds?”
“Yes,” buzzed the tree's answer.
Leena's heart skipped a beat, and she held her breath.
“And no.”
Leena's breath expelled in a defeated sigh.
“We indeed know of Earth. Passage between that plane and our own is through transient gates. Predicting the appearance, duration, and characteristics of these gates is beyond our knowledge.”
“So no one knows the way?” Leena cursed, her shoulders slumped.
“No. The answer to your question can be found in Atla, and nowhere else.”
“But no one may approach Atla,” Benu objected, stepping forward to stand at Leena's side. “Not since the citadel city burned the steppes of Eschar with cold fire and sealed the south away from the rest of the world.”
“Not true, little machine. You forget, if you ever knew, about the Carneol of Hele.”
Hieronymus and Balam exchanged glances with Leena, and they all looked to Benu, who only shrugged.
“The Carneol is a gem used as the sign of office by the coregents of the Hele, but what even the rulers of the hidden city themselves do not know is that it is actually an ancient Atlan device. Hele was first settled as an outpost of the Black Sun Empire, long millennia ago, established to investigate certain”—the voice paused, its branches rustling for a moment—“peculiar characteristics of the region. The Carneol could grant its bearer free passage into Atla, a key to unlock the barrier long enough for entry, just as it did in ancient days, when the barrier was used only for defense, and not concealment.”
Leena drew a ragged sigh. “So, if we steal the crown jewel of this place—Hele—then we can use that to sneak into the one place in all the world where the knowledge I seek can be found?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, delightful,” Hieronymus said, crossing his arms over his chest.
Kakere and Spatha edged away from the tree, moving to stand beside Balam, while Benu strode up and rapped the tree's trunk with his knuckles.
“What do you know of Atla, since the barrier raised?” Benu asked, an urgent tone in his voice. “Do the wizard-kings still rule their citadel city, or have they all fallen to dust, long ago?”
The tree was silent for a long moment, rustling slightly.
“We have had intercourse with you before, haven't we? How long ago was it?”
“We spoke only seconds ago,” Benu answered, exasperated.
“That short a time? It seemed so much longer.”
“Answer my question,” Benu demanded.
“Good-bye.”
The tree fell silent, and nothing they could do or say would make it buzz again.
None of the company had any desire to traipse into the thick of the metal trees, especially considering that the branches could remake their constituent elements with the barest touch, and that the collective intelligence with whom they'd spoken had been, according to Benu, the most rational and sympathetic of all the intelligences uploaded into the forest. The minds they might encounter in the metal forest's dark interior, were they to enter, might well remold their bodies in horrific, irreversible ways, and death would be the least of their worries. Without dissent, then, the company skirted the forest to the south, and then made for the southeast.
It was hoped that they could reach the trade routes, the main trunk of which ran from northeast to southwest in this region before turning back to the northwest once it passed the Lathe Mountains. Traffic along the main trunk was fairly frequent, and with some luck, they'd manage to catch up with a caravan of one kind or another that might be willing to give them transport.
> The first night out from Keir-Leystall, Spatha Sekundus and Kakere sat apart from the others, some distance from the campfire, and spoke together in low tones. With his robes demolished by the manipulators in the branches' tips, the uncharacteristically quiet Kakere now clothed himself only in a makeshift kilt, his torso, head, arms, and legs exposed to the air; but after a full day of walking through the dry heat, he seemed none the worse for wear, displaying none of the symptoms of an Ichthyandaro in the throes of dehydration. Spatha, for her part, had seen her leather armor reduced to molecular dust, and now wore only a linen shift, belted at the waist with a length of cord. Her gladius and baldric, which had been on Balam's back when she'd been “repaired,” was all that remained of her former armory, and she now laid the sheathed sword across her legs, thoughtfully, as she and Kakere whispered together.
Leena rubbed the bridge of her nose, and then ran her fingers through her hair. It was matted and greasy, and longer than she'd worn it in years. She realized, glaring disconsolately at the campfire before her, that some part of her had just assumed she'd be home by now. During their long trek through the mangrove swamp, their flight from the Tannim township, the slog through the bubbling mud pits and volcanic gases…every step since she'd come ashore, more than a week before, she'd been convinced was carrying her closer to home. The miraculous trees of which Benu had spoken would surely have the knowledge of how to traverse the gulf between the worlds, and she could bathe, and shampoo and cut her hair, and all the thousands of things she'd done in her former life, when she returned home to the Soviet Union.
Now, her only prospect for ever leaving Paragaea behind was to travel another span of weeks or months, infiltrate a hidden city deep within a mountain range, steal the monarchs' crown jewel, exfiltrate, journey another span of weeks or months, circumvent a barrier that had kept out all intruders for long millennia, and find someone willing to show her the way to Earth. Assuming, as Benu evidently did not, that anyone within the walls of the citadel city of Atla still lived.
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