The Forge in the Forest

by Michael Scott Rohan

  He had but a moment to see it. Then the whole raft heaved, as if on some invisible wave it could not crest. It listed, tilted, sloping ever more steeply. "They'll slide us off!" yelled Bure.

  "And overturn the raft on us!" cried Ils. "Spring clear while you still may!" None lingered to argue. Elof sheathed his sword, braced his feet against the slanting logs, and kicked out with all his strength. Sky and shore whirled about him, and then icy blackness lashed his face. Just behind him a great bulk like a breaching whale slapped at the water, and a wave engulfed him; struggling, he sank, fighting for breath and imagining every instant the clutch of webbed claws about his limbs. The weight of his pack pulled him down, but never for a moment did he think of casting it free. He bumped something solid, slimy, cold, and threshed in panic a moment before he realized it must be the lake bottom. He pulled his feet under him and kicked upward. Almost at once his head bobbed free, he could tread water and cough up all he had been swallowing, suck in a painful, blessed breath. Then he had time to be surprised; he must be in the shallows already. There indeed were the dark walls of the shore, not far off, and other heads bobbing across the silvery water, too far to aid or be aided. He kicked out to follow them, but had swum hardly a stroke when the water boiled before him, and a rounded shape broke surface.

  It was an eye, an eye the width of his whole face, and it fixed him as it rose. It was set high like a frog's, in a socket above a huge rounded head, and the look of it was glassy, impersonal, utterly unhuman yet acutely aware. That same dappled fur clad the head, sleek and seallike; water spilled from the smooth dome as it arose, running in streams over strands of weed that hung like mocking garlands about the head and straggled down past the corners of the wide lipless mouth, fixed in a false sated smile. There was no chin, no neck; the lower jaw curved downward to massive shoulders and a great tun of a body.

  Desperately Elof groped for his sword, fearing it had fallen from its scabbard, but the cold hilt came to hand. He drew, but hesitated; if this thing had a mind… He held the blade up for it to see, a shadow upon the water, and motioned it aside. The creature answered clearly enough; its mouth gaped, a ghastly grin that bared rows of long teeth, and it glided slowly, tauntingly, forward. Elof thought of Dervhas, and shivered; the intensity of purpose in those eyes was more frightening than any rage or hatred. Then anger colder than the lake welled up in him, and he struck out between the glinting eyes. The blade bit and bounced free, the water convulsed and boiled up darkness. Elof gulped air and jackknifed down; he felt a huge body surge overhead where he had been. He slashed at it, but the water slowed his stroke. The shadowy bulk stooped upon him; he twisted about and thrust upward with all his strength. The blade bit deep, and a violent threshing hurled him this way and that in the water, till his chest labored and his head grew tight and dizzy with pain. At last he managed to twist the blade free and find the air once again. But even as he drew breath his knees scraped painfully into gravel, the sword chinked against a rock. He stood, found himself scarcely chest-deep, and floundered on, fumbling with vague anxiety at his pack. Still there, still closed, he could feel no more. The water fell away from him, leaving his body a dead weight, his wet clothes leaden. When the last wavelet lapped his ankle a sudden agony lanced through him, deadly fear for Ils, Kermorvan, the others. But he could bear the weight no longer. He dropped where he stood. He strove to raise himself, found himself staring into dense undergrowth above the bank. In among it eyes stared back at him, eyes unlike the lake creatures, or any other he had seen: eyes just as Roc had described them so many leagues past, narrow, slanting gleams of yellow, unwinking, impassive. He struggled to lift the sword he still grasped, but the instant it scraped upon the gravel the eyes blinked out, vanished utterly. He stared a moment, then slumped down upon the pebbles. Darkness took him.

  Hard fingers clutched him, and in panic he snapped awake, flailing wildly around. "Hold hard, there!" said a protesting voice in his ear, and to his equally wild relief it was Ils. He grabbed and hugged her hard, and felt her sturdy shoulders quiver in his embrace. But she snorted impatiently, and pushed him off. "Napping quietly on the shore! Just like you, when we were combing the place!"

  "And close to giving you up!" grumbled Roc's voice. "Fond of making life awkward, aren't you? Why'd you head so far out?"

  Elof sighed and sat up, blinking through gummy eyes. The night was past, the gray dawn lighting up the trees, and he was looking out across the bay water, so still and black and heavy it might have been an oil pool. Only a faint swell upheaved its smooth surface, like the flank of some slow-breathing beast, giving no hint of what had lately happened there and what yet lurked beneath. He saw that he was on the outermost tip of the headland; he must almost have been dragged out into deep water. "Then you were not… beset, any of you?"

  Ils caught his arm. "No! Were you? You took no hurt?"

  "None, I think, save bruises and near-drowning. Was I the only one? Are Kermorvan and all the rest safe?"

  Roc nodded somberly. "Aye, he's ashore and gathering the others; we saw a fair number, and maybe the rest are just late sleepers like yourself. Come, if you can walk we'll go and see."

  Elof nodded silently, willing his stiffened limbs to move. His first attempt to stand brought on a tearing attack of cramp, but when that subsided he was able to limp along the stony shore to the wider middle of the beach. It was a bedraggled, dejected group of figures that sprawled there, but they sprang up swiftly and gladly enough when they saw him. "Are we all escaped, then?" he asked anxiously, when the excitement had subsided. "Save Dervhas, that is, and the other who fell…"

  "That was Eysdan," said Kermorvan harshly. Elof was shocked: he had never seen the warrior so haggard, his lips drawn and bloodless. "I had his hand even as the logs took him; one instant more and…"

  Gise shook his head grimly. "No blame to you. You did what you could. Well that you did not follow."

  "Aye," said Roc. "Rest of us clinging onto that hank of firewood by our fingertips, and he somehow gets it ashore on a sandbank so close to shore we can all but walk. Seems shallows don't suit those brutes. Did what he could, and still blames himself. Never mind saving all our skins…"

  "Did he so?" demanded Kasse sardonically as ever, though his face was gray, as if he labored under some great terror. "Did he indeed? All?"

  "Stehan?" demanded Borhi. "Where's he got to? We forgot Stehan!" As one they turned to look out across the little bay, scanning water and shoreline for the least trace of another human form. Borhi cupped his hands to shout, but Kermorvan cocked his head at the looming palisade of trees above them.

  "Wait! I have not told you this before, but it is meet you know now. We have had watchers, whom I guess we have evaded in crossing the lake. Best we do not draw them to us again." And swiftly he told them the little he knew of the Children of Tapiau. "We must search indeed," he concluded, "but swiftly. And above all, silently."

  Like morning shadows they slipped along the shore line, questing even beyond the bay for some trace of their companion. Once Elof espied something far off across the waters, but it was only the second raft, overturned but whole, lodged on some remote sandbank. Its wet logs glistened as empty as all the waters between. Softly they lapped at the pebbles by the searchers' feet, but no trace of the lost corsair did they yield. At last Kermorvan had to call a halt to the futile search.

  "Aye, why not?" muttered Kasse to Arvhes. "It's just another poor Sothran! Five gone, just you, me and Borhi left! It's clear who's borne the brunt of this little jaunt—"

  Then he sprawled flat on the stones, clutching his mouth, Gise standing over him with his great fists clenched and his dark face purple with rage. "And Eysdan?" demanded the forester in stolid outrage. "And the lad Hol-var? But I'll add one Sothran more to the tally any time you say, Kasse."

  Kasse, face contorted, scrambled up clutching a jagged rock, only to have Borhi snatch it from him, so that he fell down again.

  "Enough!" barked Kermorvan, pushing
Gise back. "You, Kasse, you brought that upon yourself."

  "Aye," said Borhi, ignoring Kasse's glare, and making no move to help him up, "save your bile for them things as did the killing, eh? Murdering brutes, to attack for no cause!"

  Elof shook his head unhappily. "Not so, Borhi. That was their dam we shattered, their fishtrap I guess by the net. It must have cost them much labor, for since they cannot come on land, they must have worked only with driftwood. They may have thought we were attacking them. And as to slaying, Ils maimed one, and I wounded or slew another. We could not talk with them, that was the pity."

  Silence fell, and many looked out at the lake once again. From oil to steel it turned as warmer light spread up the sky behind the wooded hills, and from steel to gold as the sun itself rose. Soft wisps of mist drifted over the waters, as if to flirt with its mirrored clouds. Small birds began to chirrup and twitter in the bushes around them, and the horrors of the night hung less heavy about them. But Kasse sat apart on a stone and spat blood through puffy lips. "Well," demanded Ils, who had no great love of sunrise, "what now?"

  Kermorvan held up an urgent hand for quiet, and gestured to the Forest. Elof heard it then, a distant echo along the lake, the trample of many hooves, harsh snorting breaths, the crackle of large bodies moving through the brush. "A herd of some kind," he said, with the ring reborn in his voice. "Nothing alarms them, so we have evaded the watchers for now. But if we wish to stay free, we cannot linger here, and we must hunt to stay alive. So…"He shrugged. "You ask what now, my lady? We press on. What else can we do?"

  So it is told that as the rising sun shot the mists with pale gold the company passed at last beneath the eaves of the Great Forest, Tapiau'la-an-Aithen itself. And since the river had borne them nigh on a hundred and fifty leagues from its western margins, they stepped at once into the very heartlands of that domain. To Elof, weary and grieving, it was a stranger experience than he had expected; he felt as if he entered some immense hall of worship, some mighty tomb or mausoleum such as he had seen in Kerbryhaine the City, but infinitely vaster, infinitely more imbued with ancient presence. The towering trees upheld it as pillars, sustaining an immense vault-work of interwoven boughs, a roof whose greens and yellows shone far richer than coppered domes or tiles of gold. Even the sun must defer before them, bowing down in narrow beams to pick small patches of the Forest floor out of its reverential gloom, or scattering into glimmering green shades upon the many-textured trunks. Rainbow iridescence it awoke, like the shadows of stained glass, from the water droplets that glistened on every leaf and moss patch, in every crevice of the trunks, that hung heavy in the unstirring air. For this was a place of water, a forest of rains, ever remembering the last shower or looking forward to the next.

  Now Elof was on land he could see how much the lesser trees had changed, as well as the greater; among the more familiar dogwoods, junipers, tall hollies and black cherries he found slender quaking aspens, sumacs, spreading mulberries already heavy with their unripe fruit, and a hundred others he hardly knew. Willows and alders arched over the little streams they passed, but between them lifted madder and red osier, shrubs in his homeland grown here to trees. Indeed, tree and shrub, evergreen and seasonal alike, even the creepers that draped them like rigging on high masts, all were grown more tall, more rich than any he had ever seen, so that it felt to him as if it was he and his fellows who had dwindled, and were become like little beasts that dodged and scuttled through their brief lives among the roots. And it was not only the imposing trees that diminished humanity, but something greater that dwelt in this place, that ancient presence he had felt from the first.

  "I keep thinking there's somebody else around," muttered Roc, who was walking by Elof's side. "Not spying on us, more like… It's hard to say. Like there was someone in the next room, or round the corner, and you always knowing it. Someone… important."

  Elof nodded. "I feel the same. But more acutely. As if I walk steathily past that someone's door, or behind his back. A little excited, a little afraid, as when I was a child, and sought to avoid my master or mistress…" He shook his head, puzzled and daunted. In Vayde's Tower, on that first dark night, he had sensed something of the kind, but more remote, a vast emptiness of anguish remembered. This was different; the thrill of it, the nervous tickling tingle, was so strong it recalled the touch of the Ice, to him agony, to Kermorvan only chill and unease. Here Roc and the others felt no more, and unease was natural enough. "Well," Elof sighed. "We have worse problems for now. But if you ever begin to feel we are about to turn that corner…"

  "Or that someone's about to turn round," agreed Roc. "Aye, I'll tip you the word. And you me. If the river was that bad, I reckon we've got to be ready for 'most anything here."

  But that first day, as the travelers cast about for the track of the herd, they saw nothing save the small life of any ordinary forest, though even those creatures were larger and sleeker than they had seen before. The very jays that swooped chittering and scolding were larger, blazing arrows of color among the heavy foliage.

  "How can they fly so fast in this air?" panted Tenvar, pushing back his streaming hair. His clothes, like everyone else's, had obstinately refused to dry out entirely. "It's like soup!"

  Kermorvan smiled, though his own hair hung lank and grayed with dew. "Would it were as sustaining! But it is rich in other ways; scents linger even for feeble human noses. I am sure we draw near the track of some large beasts, large enough to yield us food for many a long league more. So do not grudge the effort, Tenvar! And may a full belly be the least of your rewards."

  But though the other hunters felt as Kermorvan did, they still had not picked up the trail by the time the light began to fail. There was nothing to be done save camp and await the dawn. Kasse, most skillful with snares, caught them two rabbits, and this, with roots and herbs gathered by Elof, who knew most about them from his sojourn in the Marshlands, was all they had to sustain them that day. They found a dell, little more than a patch of earth among great tree roots, that was drier than the rest, and there Kermorvan made an earth-oven, covering it with leaves to damp down the smoke. But though it worked well, and the rabbits were unusually large, they made a small meal for ten weary travelers.

  "Made sure it was three I saw you take up, huntsman!" Borhi remarked cheerfully as he gnawed the last fragments off a bone. "Not hiding one all for yourself, are you?"

  Kasse curled his lip. "Two's what I caught, two's what we've had! If you want any more, get out and take 'em yourself. I give you leave!"

  "Quiet, the pair of you!" grunted Arvhes, normally the most patient of men. "Do you save your energy for the hunt; then you'll be able to feed your faces all the better! Me, my back pains me, my legs are leaden, my heart sore, and I'd swear I'm catching an ague from the wet clothes. I care only for sleep."

  "So say we all!" said Kermorvan wryly. "This is as dry a place as we shall find, and I think as safe. Rest you, while you may! The first watch is mine."

  Elof rolled himself in his cloak, clammy as it was, and pillowed wet hair on damp arm; he was so weary that despite the chill he slept almost at once. But it was an unquiet sleep, full of strange dreams, of the solitary redwood in its lawn of flowers, of the great gusty voice that called from afar. And eyes moved through his dreams, eyes with a snakelike glitter, eyes pallid and staring, narrow, slanted, yellow… He awoke, shivering violently in the dark, looked around for reassurance as a dreamer may who opens his eyes from inner turmoil. At least they had a sentinel… but where was he? Nobody sat up. Kermorvan was curled up not far away, his lean features just recognizable in the faint glimmer of starlight that penetrated the canopy. Angrily Elof reached out and shook him. "Fine watcher you are!" he hissed, and jumped as Kermorvan uncoiled like a snake. In the blink of an eye he was squatting by Elof's shoulder, peering about.

  "But I am not the watcher!" he murmured. "It is past the middle hour, and I bade Kasse take my place. Where might he be, I wonder?"

  A branch r
ustled, feet scuffed in the mold; they both sprang up. A stocky shadow moved out from behind a tree. Kermorvan sighed, and slid his half-drawn blade back into the scabbard. "Where have you been?" he demanded in an angry whisper.

  "Where d'you think?" grunted Kasse ungraciously, and settled down to his watch once more. The others looked at one another, and shrugged.

  Elof was just settling down under his cloak when he saw Kermorvan stop, whirl about and jerk Kasse to his feet by the front of his heavy jacket. "You! Where were you, indeed, watcher?" hissed Kermorvan. The fury in his voice startled Elof. "And what has become of Borhi while you were gone?"

  Elof looked across the circle of sleepers and with a sudden thrill of alarm he too noticed the empty place. "How'd I know?" gurgled Kasse, feet almost leaving the ground in the force of Kermorvan's grasp. He threw back his arms in protest. "Not my fault if he wanders—" Elof saw the faint glimmer, flung himself forward on all fours and wrenched at the hand as it swept inward toward Kermorvan's side. Even a hunter's wiry strength could not match the grasp of a smith. Elof caught what fell, and held the knife up for Kermorvan to see.

  The warrior nodded; his face took on a look Elof knew, remote and hard as a stone carving. "You will take me to Borhi," he said, very softly, and Kasse began to struggle wildly in their grip.