Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong

by Greg Hamerton

  At last the grim dawn became strong enough to see in, and they pressed on, if only to stretch their cramped muscles. They had all seen the forest on the northern horizon the previous day. There should be some better shelter there. It hadn’t seemed too far off: three, maybe four leagues?

  They followed the course of the wide gorge. The water had pooled in the base of the channel, but it wasn’t flowing anywhere. Tabitha had assumed they were in a river course, but the stagnant water proved otherwise. But if it was not a river course, what had carved such a massive channel out of the desert? The question returned to her many times as she followed Garyll along the alternately scoured and encrusted surface. After a while the channel sloped up and ended, and they had to shuffle upon the hard-packed mud. Then the channel began again, dipping then rising, dipping again, as if it was a trench made by an erratic hand or the random trail of a hungry worm. They walked along the line of its devastation.

  When the rain abated, they climbed to the trench’s rim to see where they were heading. The forest was barely a league away; the trees could be identified individually. Towering and yet strangely buckled trunks held up a deep and mottled canopy. The trench carried on into the forest, and on either side of it the ground was scoured and bare, the trees were stripped of leaves, and those closest to the trench had fallen flat to the ground, as if a great wind had tried to collect them as it passed.

  Another hour and they’d be there.

  And then what? Tabitha thought. She was deathly tired. Her boots had begun to wear through on the sharp rocks and she could feel the cold mud seeping in at her left heel. She sat on a boulder and held her head in her hands. She had hoped to find people in Oldenworld, people who could help her to find Ethea. Instead, she had led them into the deadly wastes, she had lost them the horses, she had lost Ashley, she had nearly killed them all, and now that she could see the forest they had been striving to reach, she realised it was not the end of their troubles. It was just a forest, another wilderness in this strange and ravaged land. How far would they have to tramp across Oldenworld before they found any hint of where the Low Lands were? And how would they ever find Bevn? Those tracks that had led off across the desert from the top of the Penitent’s pass were long lost. Now, after the rains, there would be no way to find them.

  “Here, have something to eat,” Garyll said at her elbow. He offered her an orange.

  She ignored the food. She wasn’t hungry. How long would their meagre food last? Three days? Four? Then they’d die, and it would all be her fault. She was terribly ill-prepared. She had assumed that because she was the Wizard of Eyri that she could do anything. It had begun to feel like that after all the miracles she had performed in Levin. Fame had changed her, she realised. It had made her foolish. She thought too much of her own abilities, and now that she faced real hardship she realised how hasty she had been in setting off on this quest. She should have studied the Revelations more; she should have waited until Twardy Zarost returned.

  “Eat,” Garyll insisted. “We’re all feeling a little low because we’ve used up our fuel.”

  A little low? That didn’t begin to describe how she felt. She allowed him to slip a segment of the peeled orange past her lips. It burst in her mouth, sweet and juicy. It was better than she’d expected. She took another piece.

  Her mind lingered on Twardy Zarost. She wished he had told her more about what to expect in Oldenworld. She wished he had told her more about magic. She wished he had come back.

  “Whok hu fink abouk?” asked Mulrano.

  “Magic,” she replied. “I wish I could heal our pains. I wish I could make us dry and warm.”

  Garyll gave her a consoling squeeze. His sodden loden cloak had begun to smell green.

  “Can’t you do anything?” he said. “Not even a little sustenance for yourself?”

  “Something in this world out here doesn’t like wizards,” she answered, staring across the wet surface of the desert to the misty trees. “I don’t think we’ll survive the next spell, Garyll.”

  Garyll’s strong arm felt good around her. His cheek was rough beside her face.

  “Your casting—provoked—that strange lightning, didn’t it?”

  “I think so,” she replied.

  “Does the Sorcerer know we are here? Can he sense our presence?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think he’s aware of us. He can’t be. If he was, we’d probably be dead already. He’d just dump a sky-full of Chaos upon us. The way the energy seemed to gather above me, it’s like it’s part of a web the Sorcerer’s built to react against magic, to burn out a wizard, or to touch magic-users with his power. Maybe he doesn’t like competition.”

  Garyll watched the clouds with her for a while. They both knew what hid in the heights beyond the mists—that strange network of cracks in the sky which had spawned the wildfire strike.

  “It is an effective deterrent to using magic, isn’t it?” he said at length.

  “Either I’ll have to learn how to combat the wildfire or I must stop using my power altogether.” Maybe she could just use a trickle of the Lifesong. Just a murmur of her magic, a soft whisper of song. Maybe, unlike the Light-spell, the song wouldn’t be noticed, but she couldn’t risk being wrong.

  What could drive a man to cast such a horrible web of magic, in place just to bring ruin upon others, to blight so much land, to leave places so ravaged that even time was twisted upon itself? Why would someone with so much power want to break everything? What drove the Sorcerer to such extremes?

  A-m-e-t-h-e-u-s.

  The mud swelled against the writing she had made with her finger, as if the living earth rejected what had been placed upon its face. The single word faded quickly until it was gone.

  After a slow trudge that seemed to last forever, they reached the edge of the first of the great trees.

  They searched for a pathway, working their way northward into the mighty forest. It had seemed a hopeless task, for the ground was littered with bark and leaves and showed little in the way of traffic. Garyll picked a careful path between the detritus of the fallen limbs that plagued the border of the forest. The farther they went, the tighter together the trees grew. The canopy drew closed overhead so that the morning sun cast only a dim light ahead of them.

  The forest was humid and rich with the scents of wood and earth. They passed clumps of mushrooms, white, orange and pale pink. Lichen grew in scalloped shapes in the crooks and curves of the trees. The trees were similar to oaks, but everything was oversized—the first boughs were twenty feet above the ground, the second, thirty. It made her feel very small. It also made the Great Forest of Eyri seem like a pale joke. Those trees were dwarfs in comparison.

  “Over here!” Garyll called out. “There’s a trail here.”

  A kind of hardy moss had been cultivated in parallel strips to form a green-and-white carpet leading through the trees. At its edge lay a border of giant leaves, planted into the earth so they stood upright. Some of the leaves had their centres hollowed out from decay, but their bright red or yellow rims remained. Tabitha went up to feel the strange shovel-sized blades. They had fleshy centres, but their edges were as hard as metal.

  They walked on the carpeted trail for some time, which was easy to move upon, adding a slight spring to her steps. It was almost straight, except for where it wove around the roots of the larger obstructions. Most of the trees seemed to have been coaxed to lean and grow away from the road. Tabitha saw a few saplings bound back on twisted vines. Someone had worked on the forest, tending the trees. There were people here.

  The forest was silent. She stayed close to Garyll, having developed a queer sense of being watched, but she couldn’t place the cause. The air was still, trapped within the endless trees, filled with an expectant hush. Even her footfalls and those of the men alongside seemed to be absorbed by the soft earth.

  Something whistled out of the air and struck the ground with a thump. She spun around.

  A bird cal
led from high above. “Lwhoo-lululululu!”

  Another whistling impact. Something rolled away from close by her feet, a big nut of some kind. Tabitha craned her neck, but the bird was hidden among the great canopy.

  “Lwhoo-lululul!” Gay and cheeky.

  Tabitha wondered if the nut might not have been dropped by accident.

  “Lwhoo. Lwhoo!”

  A third nut whizzing down, like a stone shot from a sling.

  “Watch out!” she cried, but too late. The nut smote Mulrano on the back of his head as he ducked. It bounced high into the air. A cackling call from above identified the culprit.

  “Wek-argh whorefung!” he cursed. He shot a glance at Tabitha and reddened as he rubbed his head.

  With a flash of colour, a feathered form dropped toward them. The bird swooped then beat its brilliant crimson wings to hover at head-height. A pair of humanlike eyes peered at Tabitha out of a parrot’s face, blue eyes, shocking in their demanding intelligence.

  Tabitha yelped in surprise. The bird opened its hooked yellow beak wide, and shrieked in shrill laughter as it beat the air and flew away.

  “Hoh hoh hoh hoh hê!” it called out. “Hoh hê!”

  It was an upsetting creature. Its sudden closeness and escape left her feeling strangely violated. It had a human presence, yet it was clearly a bird. It had laughed as it escaped.

  “Did you see that?” Tabitha asked Garyll.

  “This is a very strange place,” Garyll replied, eyeing the trees. The bright bird was perched high above them. It bobbed from side to side. It was still watching them. Tabitha was about to dismiss it and continue when it leant down and screeched out loud, “Don’t know who ye are, don’t know who ye are, hoh hê!”

  It seemed to be aware of their rapt attention, for it spread its wings out wide in a shivering display, and gave two low bows. “Whooop! Whooop!” it called. “Born inner fire!” It hopped along its branch toward the outer leaves. Small round objects were clustered among the foliage.

  “Nuts!” she warned the others. “Get moving!”

  The trees began to close in on them, and although the bird followed them, issuing shrieks and jeers, it didn’t make another clear shot. Such a dense canopy of vines linked each towering tree that in the end the sunlight was cut off altogether. The lowest boughs reached out like frail and naked arms, skeletal memories of an older time when the sun had shone upon the dark loamy floor. The earth was wet, and it oozed where they trod upon the mossy road. The air was thick with the scent of mushrooms and mould. Great spider webs dangled slackly beside the trail, and there were more, still whole, strung deeper in the forest, great nets hoping for a catch. The spiders Tabitha saw were as big as her head, and as black as pitch. Thankfully they seemed content to sit in their webs, waiting for prey to be foolish or panicked enough to venture in where they shouldn’t.

  A cool wetness brushed her head. She looked up and the next beard of lichen caught her directly in her face. Garyll pulled her back, too late. It stung; it felt as if the slime was eating into her skin. She smeared it from her face with her sleeve. The lichen was difficult to discern in the gloom, but once she looked for more, her eyes picked out the prolific hanging garden ahead, a greyish green mass growing upon a latticework of ropes stretched between the trees. Somebody was cultivating the slime. For what?

  At the far end of the hanging garden they encountered a tree which had been carved upon. It was a marker of some kind, white-barked, free of lichen. Large symbols had been cut in a haphazard hexagonal pattern. It was no language she had ever seen before. She had been taught some runes in the Dovecote, but these weren’t spell-runes, they were more like little clusters of pattern. Each raised symbol was linked to the others by a system of lines, worked into the wood. A map, perhaps, or a register. Below the carvings, the pale exposed bole was stained with spirals and twisting organic designs, marked out in a dark fluid.

  “Wooo! Izzit Hunter? Izzit? Brrrradach! Izzit traderkind?”

  The bright bird had returned to plague them. As before, it swooped down and hovered just ahead of Tabitha in the clearing. It looked directly at her with those terrible eyes, tilting its head from side to side as if trying to make up its mind what she was.

  “Ki-oo, ki-yoo,” it screeched, then more clearly, “Kill you. Rrrrround! Look kill you.” It beat the air and rose higher, flying around the carved trunk before finding a perch in the boughs.

  A shiver passed down her spine. It was eerie to hear a bird speak, even if it was in a screeching avian way.

  “Do you think it’s dangerous?” she whispered to Garyll.

  “The bird? Not up there it isn’t, but it will alert anything else in the forest of our presence.”

  “Hoh hê! Look coming, look coming! Kroooookrookrook!”

  The bird danced around in an agitated manner. It swooped down from its perch again, this time harassing Garyll with its piercing litany. Garyll swung his baton, but the bird tumbled in the air and easily avoided his swipe, banking up and around to come at them again. It strafed low over Tabitha, and pulled her hair as she ducked.

  “Zrreek! Dumbich! Dumbich! Whatarewhee? Firewyld?”

  “Will you shut up?” Tabitha shouted after it.

  “Angry now!” it called out. “Fly away. Hoh hê!”

  Its screeches might not be random nonsense, Tabitha realised. It might be trying to tell them something.

  “What is coming?” she asked the highest branch, where the bird had hidden. It was not likely that the bird would understand her, but something about the strange human awareness in those eyes made her persist. “What are you trying to warn us about?”

  “Look. Rrrround. Look kill you,” came the hidden taunt.

  “Look where?”

  “What if it’s saying Lûk?” Garyll cut in. “As in the people, the barbarians. The Lûk.”

  It clicked into place. Tabitha had read it, in the Legend of the Forming, how the Eyrians had battled the fierce northern men with shaven heads, the northern Lûk, whose pointed staffs and great woven shields made them difficult targets, and whose devious throw-nets were said to grip like iron cables.

  “This is the land of the Lûk?” she asked of the bird.

  “Lûklûklûklûklûk! Killer hunterkind.”

  “Hunter kind?”

  “Brrrradach! Find Brrrrradach!”

  “How do we find Bradach?” Tabitha shouted to the trees above.

  “Brrrrradach! Hoh hê!”

  “How do we find him?”

  A bright beak jutted over the branch, and those wet eyes watched her.

  “Setsun, setsun, lwhoooo!”

  “We follow the sunset?” she asked, but the bird just squawked and took to the wing.

  It was going to be impossible to follow the sunset in the forest, what with the overhanging trees and the mists above. Maybe the bird had a better idea, as it could rise above the canopy. The bird had darted off back the way they had come.

  “I think we should go back,” said Tabitha.

  “You believe the bird?”

  “It couldn’t gain anything from lying.”

  “It also threw nuts at us,” he reminded her. “It’s just as likely to send us over a cliff!”

  The Lûk were ancient enemies, but war was a fire that needed constant feeding. After four hundred years the fires of the Lûk hatred toward Eyrians must have long since burnt out. Surely they didn’t have anything to fear from the Lûk?

  A haunting sound came from deep in the forest ahead, a horn, perhaps. The gentlest of breezes pulled through the lichens, a damp spicy breath. Tabitha strained to reach out with her hearing. There were many small sounds, creatures in the undergrowth, birds flitting through the trees. Underneath those sounds she heard a trampling, like a herd of cattle on the move. Or people. The horn sounded again, a hollow woodwind tone. It was answered by another, closer, higher pitched; a few loose notes drifted past her. Then a flat drumming sound followed, slightly mistimed.

  “Do you
see them, Garyll?”

  The gloom hid much of the forest on either side of the trail, but far away down the corridor of trees she could just make out the pale shape of another marker tree with its stained base, and around the tree poured figures, men with shields, bristling with spears. They came like ants from some secret chamber, a steady stream that diverged around the pale divider. They wore scarlet-and-orange headscarves, and their clothing fluttered as they ran. Tabitha couldn’t be sure from that distance, but it appeared to her from what she could see of their faces and arms that their skin was grey.

  “Do you see them?”

  Garyll looked hard, but his expression remained puzzled.

  “Where?”

  “At the next marker tree!”

  She had forgotten to allow for the advantage she had with the wizard’s ring. It was warm on her finger; she drew on it without even thinking, it was a part of her now.

  “Men?”

  “Sort of. They move like men, they have spears and shields, and coloured headscarves.”

  “Ah, I see something now, just a bit of colour.”

  “How mengy?” asked Mulrano.

  There were too many to count. The stream of warriors flowed past the pale tree and poured toward them on the mossy road.

  “An army of them,” she replied. “Two hundred, maybe more.”

  “Have they seen us yet? Are they running, or walking?” asked Garyll.

  “Loping, I think.”

  “Then there’s a hope their eyesight is as poor as mine,” said Garyll, “we can still hide. Come, let us get off this trail.”

  “No, wait, Garyll.” She tried to put her feeling into words. If this was the grey-skinned people’s territory, hiding would do no good. She needed the help of the people of Oldenworld, to find where Bevn had gone, to find Ethea. They couldn’t run from every danger; they’d just as likely stumble into some other threat in the gloomy forest. Besides, she was simply too tired to run. “I think we must meet them. We must stand.”