Kingdoms of Light

by Alan Dean Foster

  "Axe."

  Samm was more than ready: the giant was eager for the opportunity to finally put his exceptional strength and stamina to a real test. Taking the lead, he lumbered resolutely into the woods. Almost immediately, he was struck by a barrage of thorns. Ignoring the pain, monumental axe held high, he waded purposefully into the bosk of crannochs. With his first swing he cut down not one but three of the gnarled, spiny-armed boles. The cry of anger and distress that rose from the bosk was as unmistakable as it was surprised.

  When the last of the thorn-throwing crannochs had been lopped, Samm sat down on a stump and allowed himself to be dethorned by the solicitous Cocoa and Mamakitty. With more flesh to penetrate, he had been at less risk of serious injury than his smaller companions. Not to mention the fact that his skin was, unsurprisingly, much tougher.

  Meanwhile Oskar, Cezer, Taj, and the quartet of giddily ambulatory hardwoods caucused in the clearing and plotted strategy.

  "It won't always be this easy." Having been exiled as a rebellious stripling of a sapling by being passed from branch to inimical branch, the zealous maple knew whereof it spoke. "Word of the carnage your hulking friend has wrought will spread quickly through the woods. Schemes will be devised to stop you."

  "And to return us to our border isolation," the willow whimpered.

  "No one and no thing is going to keep us from reaching the Kingdom of Blue." Mamakitty's resolute words served to reassure, if not entirely convince, their tetrad of new guides. "Just show us the path of least resistance."

  Oak and sycamore entwined branches. "We store no such itinerary in our xylem, but we will find a way, sensing a path from tree to tree."

  "Inflexible trees," declared the maple sturdily. "Rooted trees. Trees incapable of movement unless they are dead and falling." Half a dozen thick, strong roots rose from the ground and wiggled their tips. Cezer had to fight back the urge to jump on them. "Such a wondrous feeling." Bark lashes fluttered at Oskar. "You had better hope it does not catch on. From what I can perceive, bipeds such as yourselves would not live so well if all the trees in your land suddenly took to walking about on their own."

  Cocoa nodded. "It would certainly complicate certain activities. House building, for example. Not to mention the havoc such mobility would wreak in orchards."

  "Verbal cooperation might replace silent coercion," Taj suggested. "I, for one, wouldn't know how to survive in a world where trees rejected my presence. Where would I sleep? Where would I raise a family? I'm speaking as if I were occupying my normal physique, of course," he hastened to add.

  "We would all have difficulties," Cezer agreed. "Or at least, our human companions would."

  "You mean owners, don't you?" Oskar corrected him.

  Cezer favored him with that look of unalloyed haughtiness only felines can muster. "Speak for yourself. Dogs have owners. Cats have staff." Turning, he started off into the woods, the light continuing to give him, as well as everything around him, a collective greenish cast. "Let's begin. The sooner we reach the Kingdom of Blue, the sooner we'll be rid of this infernal foliage." He nodded in the direction of their guides. "Present timber excepted, of course."

  That much could not be denied, Oskar knew. And what awaited them in that next unknown, mysterious kingdom? If the pattern of rainbows held true, beyond it lay the Kingdom of Purple, where, the lecherous soldier-scholar Captain Covalt of the Red Dragoons had told them, they would have the best chance of finding the white light that contained all colors. Assuming they made it that far. As for himself, he was not nearly in so great a hurry to depart from the Kingdom of Green as were his companions.

  He quite liked trees, and prior to arriving in this place, had been entirely convinced that, they liked him.

  FOURTEEN

  Its unrelieved hostility to trespassers aside, the amazingly dynamic forest that seemed to comprise the whole of the Kingdom of Green was an impressive place—far more so than its benign otherworld counterparts like the Fasna Wyzel. Instead of trees of a type, all flourished in the verdantly egalitarian domain. Evergreens grew side by side with tropical diderocarps, while the hardy dwarf brush of the near tundra snuggled close to mangroves, cypress, and other tropical water-loving trees. Palms shaded wild roses, while ginkgoes wrapped long, spreading branches around the trunks of exfoliating eucalypti. There was room for all, without rhyme or reason or regard for climate or soil. Aside from the natural competition for sunlight and sustenance, it was truly a magical place, Oskar marveled.

  If only it wasn't trying so hard to kill them.

  "I don't understand." Ducking a flung, unrecognizable nut somewhere in size and shape between coco and filbert, he and his companions waited while Samm strode forward to chop down the offending growth. "Doesn't this forest understand we mean it no harm?"

  Their white maple guide strove to explain while simultaneously shielding Oskar with its trunk from attack by the surrounding vegetation. "Most of the trees in this forest kingdom consider all nongrowing things a threat. Unlike my friends and I, the majority of them are only broad-leafed, not broad-minded. Mobiles dig up our roots, devour our seeds, rip off our bark to eat, or bore through it to lay their parasitic eggs in our heartwood. Those capable of thought like yourselves cut us up and use our bodies for shelter, or burn us to provide the additional heat their own bodies are not capable of producing." Branches leaned in the direction of the perambulating sycamore.

  "When but a sapling, Oppin there had a particularly close grove mate. They shared soil and the same access to sunlight. One night the other had a dream, of marching bipeds like yourselves armed with things called saws. Its screams upon awakening unnerved a whole section of forest. Poor thing was never the same after that. All his leaves fell out, he developed a severe scale infestation, and eventually he just withered."

  "I'm sorry about that," Oskar responded, "but it's no reason to fear my friends and I."

  "Well, not you, perhaps. But your companions are different."

  "We're all different. And we're not actually bipeds."

  "Ah, an enchantment! Ever since you roused us from our plots, I have been wondering about that. It does not matter. You are bipeds now, and will continue to be perceived as such by the forest."

  "It doesn't matter." Cezer started forward as soon as Samm indicated that it was once more safe to proceed. "With our serpentine friend to clear the way, we'll be through in no time."

  "His activities are certainly making an impression." Ambling along on its strong, magically emancipated roots, the oak inspected the carcass of the fallen bousoun tree. No longer would it grow, or throw, potentially lethal bousoun nuts at wandering travelers. "Each passing day sees a steady diminution in the frequency of these attacks."

  Mamakitty shuffled thick leaf litter with her feet, wishing she had the time and the anatomical structure to scamper through the crunchy, crackling ground cover on all fours. "Hopefully, the trees that lie ahead of us will find out from others what is happening and let us pass without incident." She nodded in the direction of their oversize companion. "I worry that our large friend may be getting tired."

  The giant overheard her. "Not at all," he rumbled in response. Resting on his shoulder, the stone blade of the great axe was now stained with sap. "I like cutting down trees."

  Off to the left, Oskar thought he saw a stand of sugar pines shudder. That was not surprising. Word of Samm's ongoing depredations on behalf of the advancing travelers had surely spread throughout this part of the kingdom by now. What was unsettling was that Oskar thought he could feel the trees shudder. No matter how dense their network of roots, they ought not to have been capable of disturbing the earth that forcefully.

  There it was again: a distinct and unequivocal trembling underfoot. And then a third tremor, stronger still.

  "What do you make of this quaking?" In the olivine-tinted light, Cocoa's striking green eyes appeared almost black.

  "You feel it, too?" He shifted his attention to their sycamore. It had edged clo
ser to the willow and the maple. The oak continued to stand off by itself, studying not the route ahead or the surrounding trees but the soil underfoot.

  "I don't need a tree to tell me what's happening." Wary and alert, Cezer had come to a halt. Though his sword remained in its scabbard, he scanned the surrounding woods uneasily. "Something's coming."

  "Something big." Samm unlimbered his implacable axe.

  "There!" A startled Taj whistled as loudly as he could.

  It came crashing through the dense woodland, its massive crown overawing the surrounding growths. The green-hued light could not entirely obscure the fact that its trunk was an odd grayish hue, with a highly distinctive scale-like bark. Branches grew up rather than out, and many were themselves thicker around than all but the largest trees. It was very simply the biggest ambulatory thing Oskar and his companions had ever seen.

  And it was coming straight toward them on short but immensely powerful roots.

  "It is the greatest of all trees—a kauri!" The willow fairly threw itself forward, scrabbling across the ground at a speed Oskar would not have believed it capable of mustering. Its three panicked companions followed frantically in its wake.

  Having seen how Oskar had liberated four of the iconoclasts among them, the trees of the forest had somehow conspired to set into motion the most monumental of their own kind, an ancient and monstrous member of the pine family. Samm's axe was useless against such a perambulating colossus. It would take the giant weeks, not moments, to make a dent in the gigantic girth. As to the tree's actual intentions, Oskar did not intend to linger to find them out.

  "Run!" he heard himself shouting. The warning was unnecessary, as everyone had already taken flight, sprinting to escape the lumbering wooden massif. It was enormous, he noted, but slow, the leafy crown swaying back and forth with each uncertain step. Though he missed the ability to move rapidly on all fours, he soon saw that he and his friends should easily be able to outdistance the oncoming colossus.

  He looked back over his shoulder only when Cocoa screamed. What he saw sent his heart leaping into his throat and choked off his next breath.

  The kauri was falling. It was sacrificing itself, descending in a dreamy but rapidly accelerating arc of inescapability. It was so broad none could evade its bulk, so tall that Cezer and Mamakitty, running in the lead, did not have room enough to escape its reach. The majestic bole toppled completely in a matter of seconds, smashing into the ground with a thunderous roar that could be heard throughout much of the Kingdom of Green, taking mature trees, dozens of smaller saplings, and a whole thicket of bushes down with it. Impacted dust and dirt rose fifty feet into the air, while splinters flew at lethal velocity in every direction.

  Then all was quiet once more. A few woodland dwellers crept from their hiding places to have a look at the fallen giant. Slowly settling dust motes danced in the sunlight that was now able to reach the forest floor in the wake of the colossus's suicide. Of bipedal travelers and their accompanying quaternion of talkative trees, there was no sign save for some splintered branches and a mighty axe that, in the absence of its owner, lay useless and forlorn amid the settling debris.

  After some time had passed, it occurred to Oskar that he was not dead. He ought to be, he knew. The last thing he remembered was the falling bulk of the kauri blotting out the light and then, silence.

  Opening his eyes, he saw nothing. At that moment even heavily green-tinted darkness would have been welcome, but this was deeper than that. It was as black and solid as a wall. It pressed tightly against his mind as well as his vision. Experimentally, he tried wiggling his right hand. Nothing moved, not even a finger. He could barely flutter his eyelids. But his tongue flicked freely within his mouth, and a strong second effort allowed him to move his jaws slightly up and down. His limbs, however, were trapped in place. He could not even scratch at the confines of his prison.

  The rest of his senses proffered only sketchy information. He heard nothing, but his nose brought to him several pungent, distinguishing odors. Primarily of cellulose, but also of sap and dust, of decaying mold and diligent insects. There was around him an overwhelmingness of wood. Extending his teeth as far as he could, he gnawed at the material that held him prisoner. Definitely wood.

  Then he heard a voice, sharp and clear in his ears. Mamakitty sounded more positive than she had any right to. "I think we're inside the tree that fell on us."

  "That's something of a contradiction, isn't it?" Smothered by the all-encompassing darkness, Cezer was subdued, but still defiant. "If that mother of all splinters landed on us, which certainly fits my last recollection, then it should have squashed us flatter than that old rubber ball we used to play with in front of the Master's house."

  "But it didn't." That was Cocoa speaking, Oskar noted. "I can't move a hand to touch myself, and I can't see a thing, but I don't feel flattened. I certainly don't feel dead."

  "You don't sound dead, either," Mamakitty observed. "Samm, can you reach your axe?"

  The slow, even voice of the giant was reassuring as always, if not on this particular occasion especially encouraging. "I don't even know where it is. When the tree came down, I tried to jump clear of the trunk. Obviously, I failed. When I jumped, I threw my axe aside. Not that it would matter if it had been entombed with me. I can't move my arms or legs."

  "So we're trapped inside the fallen tree," Cocoa observed. "We're alive, but unable to move. Breathing, but incapable of freeing ourselves. I'm not sure I wouldn't rather have been flattened. At least that would have been quick."

  "This is more of Master Evyndd's magic," Mamakitty murmured knowingly. "It is protection of a sort I would deem peculiar, unless we can somehow free ourselves from these wooden bonds. Samm?"

  "I'm sorry, Mamakitty. Even if I could somehow reconstruct my former body, I see not a single hole large enough to slip a worm through, much less my previous self. As for breaking free, I cannot move even a finger. This is no flimsy wooden cage that holds us, but a tree as thick and solid as it is huge. We will not break free by chewing at its interior with our teeth."

  Cocoa's voice fell. "Then we are well and truly trapped here, to survive an unknown while longer until we expire from thirst and hunger."

  "Maybe our four wooden friends had the easier way out." Straining, Oskar felt that his eyes might be adapting to the absence of light. Another contradiction, he scolded himself firmly. "You'll notice none of them have said anything since the treefall."

  "Maybe they managed to escape." Taj was more hopeful than sanguine.

  "I don't see how," Samm hissed softly. "The fleetest among them was not as quick as you or I." His ponderous sigh rippled through the dark wood. "I fear they'll be of no further help to us. Kindling makes a poor guide."

  "What does that matter?" groused Cezer. "What we need now is a giant drill, operated from the outside, to liberate us. If I could reach my sword, I might be able to at least start to cut us free. But as Samm has pointed out, while our hands are not tied, they are completely immobilized. All we can do is talk. That will open only old wounds, not a way out."

  Especially if I have to listen to your interminable bitchingand moaning until I expire. Oskar kept the thought to himself. Snapping at one another would only make an already unpleasant situation intolerable.

  Silence descended within the imprisoning expanse of the fallen tree as a sense of utter hopelessness came to dominate the thoughts of the entombed. We've failed you, Master Evyndd, Oskar thought glumly. Not Cezer's elongating blade, nor the cats' ability to meld with shadows, not Samm's great strength, nor his own unique talent for inspiring movement in other trees, were of any use to them now. They would be mummified within the kauri, interred out of sight and mind of the rest of the world. No one would find them, no one would know what had happened to them, and no one would care. And why should they? After all, the adventurers were no more than common household pets who had momentarily been raised above their station.

  For a little while, t
hat raising had given them dignity and abilities beyond understanding. It appeared now that it was all for naught.

  He was not certain when Taj began to whistle. It was a pleasant change from the episodes of deathly silence, and certainly more uplifting than Cezer's sporadic whining. Oskar appreciated the songster's attempt to lighten their mental burden. If nothing else, a little buoyant minstrelsy would help to raise their spirits. He would have thanked Taj, but he was enjoying the tuneful warbling too much to interrupt. Apparently, everyone else felt the same way.

  Time passed, until a subtle vibrating in his ears caused Oskar to wonder if the inevitable loss of cognition, with its concurrent mental disturbances, had begun to take hold of his mind. As the noise intensified, however, he came to the conclusion that it was a real sound and not a deranged figment of his lonely imagination.

  "Mamakitty?"

  "I hear it also." Though careful and qualified, her positive response was heartening. "What it is I do not know."

  "Kind of a wild, clucking noise," Cocoa ventured.

  Cezer was not one to be easily encouraged. "But of course! We are in the process of being rescued by a giant chicken with an unquenchable taste for pine knots."

  "Be quiet," Mamakitty chided him, "and listen. Or have you failed to note that Taj continues with his singing?"

  It was true, Oskar realized. Ignoring his companions' increasingly vigorous debate, the songster maintained his steady trilling. Trying to find something in it besides the purely euphonic, Oskar failed completely. But then, except for an occasional howl at the moon more notable for its enthusiasm than any resemblance to actual harmony, he was no connoisseur of music.

  The clacking vibration continued to increase in volume, leaving those imprisoned within the body of the fallen tree as apprehensive as they were bemused. What impending event could it portend? Of what significance was Taj's uninterrupted song? Between incessant warble and unceasing vibration, Oskar felt he might go mad. He would have given anything simply to have been able to clap his hands over the sides of his head, but his limbs remained imprisoned at his sides.