Forest For The Trees (Book 3) (78 page)

Or…not from nowhere.  Marik stared, barely able to see
the thin threads unspooling out from the soft skin.  The change continued until
the ten-inch claws retracted to ordinary fingernails.  Soon a wine-colored
glove covered his hand as before.

He stroked his face, which remained scaled.  “A
necessity…to wait…I fear,” he commented from where he knelt.  Heaving breaths
wracked him.  “The energy expenditure is considerable.”

Marik struggled for words.  At last, the only ones
that came sounded appallingly inadequate.  “Nice…camouflage.”

The Red Man fingered his cuff.  “Indeed, is it not? 
Nothing to be done regarding color.  It is outside my ability to determine.”

“Well…”

What could he say to that?

“We must depart soonest, Marik Railson.  An escape
from this forest is our pressing concern.”

“Why?  Xenos is gone.  The forest is safe enough.”

“Rovasii Forest is inundated.  It has been
hyper-saturated.”

“Meaning?”

“Use your mage eyes to study life force in its flows.”

Marik opened his magesight.  The forest
burned
with etheric power.  Before, the Euvea trees had been bright.  Now they seared
his mind.

And not them alone.  Forest grasses, shrubs, even the
worms chewing their way through the ground.  Birds in the air.  Squirrels in
the trees.  They all glowed with too much life force.

“As did the man become a creature, so too will the
forest.  Plant along with animal will change owing to a state of
hyper-saturation.”

“Screaming—  You mean the whole damned forest is going
to be twisted like…like he was?”

“Not twisted.  Twisting.  Study, for example, this
lichen patch with care most astute.”

Marik shifted until his eye was inches from the moss
growing on the tree root.  At first he saw nothing amiss.  No freakish
appearance or coloring.

The movement was so mild he felt uncertain he saw it
at first.  But it was there.  While he watched, the moss grew.  Grew fast
enough that he could see it spreading.

“Soon will this forest become uninhabitable.”

“We have to race the gods damned forest!  What else
can go wrong?”

“Best to avoid posing such questions to the gods.”

Marik scowled at the smile on the Red Man’s face. 
“Hey Jide!  It’s time to move!  Get your big stupid body over here and be
useful!”

*        *        *        *        *

The small group emerged from the trees six days
later.  Marik could see where the forest ended…or once had ended.  Tall trees
formed the line.  Stretching for miles ahead of them, fresh growth had sprung
up.  Bushes, tall grasses, young saplings.

Before long, the Rovasii Forest would begin retaking
lost ground.  The fringe towns were in for the hells’ own shock.

Dietrik stood on his own.  He still lacked a great
deal of strength.  Their way would be slow going.  The journey from the Euvea
had been considerably harder than going in.

Another unforeseen consequence of draining the
reservoir had been the shattering of every other seal within the trees.  Creatures
long contained in secluded environments were suddenly free to roam and
intermingle.

And fight.

“On your own, that is how,” Dietrik replied when Marik
mused aloud how they would ever report it all to King Raymond.  “Do not expect
me to walk into another rabid wolf pack at your side.”

“Not for a while, at any rate.”  He faced Jide and the
Red Man.  Jide had been despondent during the trip.  His friend’s death hit him
hard.  “You’re taking him off home, are you?”

“It will be best for him to return soonest,” the Red
Man replied.  “Much work lays along the future pathways.  Roots delve deeper
the longer they are free to grow unhindered.”

“Safe journey, then” Dietrik called.  “Don’t get
seasick and drown while you are leaning over the rail.”

“I shall see to it there is little chance of such an
occurrence.  Water is scarce along the route I plan.”

“Oh?”

The Red Man nodded his head and turned.

“One last thing,” Marik called.  He’d had time to
think during the escape, to review memories considerably jumbled until he
hardly recalled the order they occurred in.  His curiosity ate at him,
demanding he ask the question.  “You and Xenos were arguing during the fight. 
You said a name.  Oto-something.  I’m pretty certain I heard you say that name
in Thoenar when we first met.”

A blank look preceded a slight smile.  “Otos Trine.”

“That’s the one.  What was that about?  Who is he?”

“A man befriended by me in my youth.  At an age when
youths are wont to disregard the wishes and the wisdom of their elders.”

“So why,” Dietrik pressed, “was Xenos hacked off at
him?”

“Otos once destroyed a statue his sect held dear.  He
is not in favor with the green-robed priests of the Earth God.”

Without a further word, the Red Man departed with Jide
at his side.

“What are we to make of that, then?” Dietrik asked.

“Nothing.  No doubt it will seem like a dream
tomorrow.  Next year, we won’t believe half of what we’ve been through.”

They started walking northeast.  Dietrik leaned
heavily on Marik.  Their progress was excruciatingly slow since Marik also
dragged Rail’s sword along as well.  “Let’s find a ferry going up the
Varmeese.  I’d rather not chance running into the knight-marshal’s worshipers
before we return to the capitol.”

“No coin,” Marik reminded him.  “No packs, no spare
clothing, no blankets and a pocketful of berries.”  Their bandages were strips
torn from their tunics.  Marik’s only other possession was a leather eye-patch
Jide had produced and offered the mercenary.  It rested beneath Marik’s small
berry hoard for the time when his wound healed enough to wear it.

“A long, hard journey with naught but hard questions
to look forward to at the end.”  Dietrik sighed mightily.

“More than that,” Marik disagreed.  “Raymond owes us. 
He owes us a king’s ransom worth!”

“Coin is nice, but a warm bed is nicer.”

“A thousand things are nicer.  We can demand anything
at all from him.  Anything that belongs to the crown.  I’m not about to let a
chance like this slip away from me.”

“You have ideas in your head as usual, mate.  I would
have thought you had learned better by this late date.”

“They’ve brought me this far.”

“What do you have in mind?  You had best be careful
what you demand of a king.  You’re apt to end up with iron chains rather than
gold.  And a work gang’s shovel rather than a scepter.”

Marik laughed.  “Wait and see, my friend.  You just
wait and see.”

Several Tullainian youths loitered outside the door to
the Golden Roads.  They were pebble-spotting, the girls winning over the boys
three times to one.  The girls were not shy about letting them know it.  Each
of the boys’ pebbles knocked from the grid by a precisely flung stone from the
girls elicited groans and superior smugness alike.

The sun shone warmly along the Southern Road in
summer.  It was dry enough that hooves kicked up dust if the horses wandered
off the hard-pack road center.  Commerce had increased again despite the
stalemate with Nolier further to the east.  Galemar’s forces had chased the
invaders back across the Tenpencia River.  Both sides glared hotly at the other
from their side of the Hollister Bridge.

Only one serious skirmish had transpired in the Second
Nolier War.  If war it could be called.  Nolier still bled from the first
conflict a few years previous.  No Nolier detachment had made a stand against
the Galemarans who found them.  Retreats were immediate unless the invaders
cornered and the issue forced.

Galemar rarely forced a fight.  They too were still
recovering from the epic Battle at the Hollister.  Their wounds were no less
deep than their neighbor’s.

The only stand made had been at the gold mine.  No
doubt on orders from Nolier’s delusional king, they had fought to hold it. 
Both sides lost three-hundred men apiece, but Galemar’s force had been twice as
large.  A rout ensued.

Soldiers at the bridge stopped all traffic.  The
merchants complained loudly in every forum they could raise their voices in. 
Their indignation echoed hollowly, alone in the masses.

Still, with the Nolier presence forcibly expunged, it
was safer to move about the kingdom’s eastern reaches.  Smaller, local
merchants visited the Forest of Green Reaches to buy dyes of a unique
reddish-brown color from heellaberries, which no one had ever found growing
anywhere else.  The mines along the southern Cliffsdains were producing raw
materials in demand by Spirrattan crafters, and the sulfur springs could be
farmed once more.  Also, matching the rest of the traffic combined, the granite
quarries along the Tenpencia River were carting stone blocks, tiles and slabs
to shipping points along the Southern Road where the Spine and Varmeese Rivers
crossed.

Two riders approached the Golden Roads Inn through the
caressing sunlight.  They might have been taken for merchants themselves. 
Their mounts were impressive, their clothing cut to fit from sturdy weaves. 
New leather boots swung in the stirrups when they halted their horses.

A girl who had moments before scored three points off
her older brother’s stone trotted to meet them.  Her Galemaran was heavy with
the accent of her homeland, though she had lived in her adopted kingdom long
enough that she spoke the language well.

“Welcome to Golden Roads, travelers.  Will you be
staying the evening?”

The men smiled at the rehearsed line.  “I believe the
idea has merit, lass.  Have the stable hands bung our boys into a pair of
private stalls for the night, and we will have a look-see around.”

She nodded eagerly and whistled at the group she had
left.  Two of the largest boys came forward to take the reins.  “And will you
be wanting your bags taken to your rooms for you?”

“That would be kind of you.  Yes, why not?”

The girl came closer to accept a travel pack from the
man she spoke to…and hesitated when she neared.  From a closer view, these men
looked worrisome.  Dangerous.

Merchants did not usually have leather caps covering
the stump where a hand had gone missing.  The silver necklace he wore with
three curving fangs longer than her fingers was also intimidating.

Nor, as she studied the other fellow, did merchants
wear eye-patches that seemed designed to draw attention to the missing eye. 
And, oddly, a golden bracelet sparkled in the sunlight off the one-eyed man’s
wrist.  She could see a single metal charm hanging from it.  It was a sword,
although a strangely shaped one. She had seen enough carried by countless
travelers to recognize that.  That charm sword’s handle was long and round, the
blade extra long and far too wide.

“It could be a mite heavy for you,” the one-handed man
said warmly, “but I am certain you will do a fine job of it.”

She found a ten-copper coin pressed into her hand
during the transfer of the pack to her smaller arms.  The man smiled like a
favorite uncle, and she could not help but return the expression.  Her sister
took the one-eyed man’s pack.  Together they vanished into the building.

*        *        *        *        *

“Well,” Marik announced, “let’s have a look at
Kerwin’s dream-come-true.”

He and Dietrik entered the Golden Roads Inn.  They
found that the door gave onto a vestibule covered in reed mats that would
scrape any outside muck off the boots before a traveler could bring the
majority into the common room.  Through the door in the opposite wall, they
entered Kerwin’s main floor.

A massive countertop bar ran along the far end, shaped
like a horseshoe with fifteen-foot wings running to the walls ninety degrees
off from the feet.  Thirty round tables populated the space, with a massive
fireplace in the west wall, which also happened to be the building’s outer
wall.  Six tables were occupied by travelers.

“Not as mad as I expected,” Dietrik mused.

“Let’s say hello.”

Behind the bar at the top curve of the horseshoe,
Kerwin was shouting at two Tullainian workers who were moving an impressively
large sheet of flat glass.  Landon sat on a stool watching the proceedings with
interest until Marik slapped him on the back.

“Lazing about while everyone else labors?  You’ve gone
soft!”

“This is a surprise,” the archer observed.  “I
expected we would not see you until winter.  Assuming the best.”

“He received a lighter sentence in lieu of
cooperation,” Dietrik quipped while he sat at the bar.  “An official demotion
and an unofficial pat on the back.”

“I can hear the promise of an interesting story in the
making.”

“I said
careful
,” Kerwin shouted.  He looked
decidedly odd in a server’s apron, Marik thought.  “This already cost me a
fortune to make and have carted halfway across the damned kingdom!”

“Is this the man who could empty any purse for miles
around?” Marik teased.

Kerwin cast him a sour glare, but kept his verbal
abuse for the Tullainians.  Landon sipped his wine with amusement.

Marik’s eye wandered the setting.  Along the curving
wall above Kerwin, he could see signs that were mostly pictography rather than
writing.  The gambler must have paid nicely for the artwork.  A brimming ale
tankard had three copper coins connected to it by a black line.  Red and white
wine glasses were priced with a five-copper.  Five different food plates
enticed his appetite with their realistic quality, fairly priced for the
quantity.

The food signs were divided to either side of a
longer, twenty foot banner that contained the only words in the lot.  Across
the top, in colorful letters, Marik read, ‘Festival At The Bar’.  Beneath the
words were a dozen different pictures.  Marik recognized the first.  It showed
a tall, tapered glass filled with water.  Several coins rested at the bottom. 
A disembodied hand hovered over the top, a recently released coin about to
plunge into the glass.

It was a game they had encountered during the Arm of
Galemar tournament.  Two people dropped coins into the glass until the water
finally overflowed.  Whoever spilled the water lost, and the wet coins went to
the winner.

He scanned the banner.  Most of the icons were
unfamiliar.  He could not puzzle out their meaning.  A ring spinning on its
edge.  Two coins side by side, one face up, the other tails.  Wine bottles
balanced atop their corks.  A candle burning in a bottle, the wax dripping down
one side.  And…a rat?

One thing was obvious.  These were small-change
games.  Any coins won or lost would be mere coppers.  That sounded nothing at
all like Kerwin.  Marik searched the common room until…yes.  Above a wide door
in the east wall he found a second banner.  On it were arrows pointing at the
door, flanking a large pair of dice, fanned playing cards and a tube filled
with trident sticks.

That would be Kerwin’s main gaming room.  These
attractions at the bar were simply to provide amusement for the local farmers. 
Make the inn a more interesting place to gather after dark.  Bar games little
different from the brain teasers at Walsh’s Swan’s Down Inn located in Thoenar.

“You two have been through the grinder,” Kerwin
finally addressed when the glass was at last set to his satisfaction.  He
looked at Dietrik’s missing hand.  “What did you want to go and do that for?”

“I wanted a challenge,” Dietrik shot back.  “I found
that life was going far too easily with both my hands.”

“That’s a nice fashion statement.  Why not go for a
hook over a simple cap?”

“Do I look like a bloody pirate to you?”

Kerwin shrugged.  He tugged the ends of his tooled
vest out from behind his apron to display it while he mentioned, “There is a
good leatherworker in Cedars.  She can design you a set that look nice, instead
of like a sawed-off boot toe.”

“What is that all about?” Marik asked.  He gestured
with his chin at the glass sheet.

“Aha!  I am glad you asked!  Let me show you!”  And he
ran through a swinging set of half-doors into his kitchen.

“He has not changed,” Dietrik sighed in contentment.

“Not the slightest bit,” Landon agreed.

“But what is that?” Marik pressed.  The glass hung at
eye-level on the wall just under the signs.  It covered five long shelves that
continued without breaks along the entire length of the horseshoe.  There were
only six inches worth of space between each shelf, both from top to bottom and
from glass to the wood-paneled back.

“It is a run,” the archer revealed.  “You can see it
runs from the west end to the east.  Along the straight, around the corner,
along the horseshoe to where it finishes at the end of the second straight.”

“A run for what?”

“For these beauties,” Kerwin answered.  He returned
with a small cage containing a black rat.

“You’re going to hold ratting fights?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Kerwin scoffed.  “Blood sports
aren’t where it’s at!  This darling is Earlene!”

“Why would anybody wish to name a rat?”  Dietrik
sounded scathingly sarcastic.

“Because she’s a noble little lady who will be raking
in the gold for me!  Her and a dozen others!”

“This is new.”  Marik traced his fingers lightly across
his eye patch.  It had quickly become habit.  “Rats earning someone coin
instead of costing them it.”

“Watch here.”

Kerwin walked to the bar’s west end.  Marik and
Dietrik walked with him along the stools so they could see what happened around
the corner.  There he opened a narrow door at the end of one shelf.  He coaxed
the rat into the tiny space.  With the panel closed, Kerwin gripped a round
wooden knob between the shelves and the five doors in a row atop each other.

“And she’s off!” he cried.

He yanked the knob.  It was actually a long, thin
board that walled the space behind the doors off from the shelves.  Kerwin held
it and watched proudly as his rat skipped into the open shelf.  Marik could see
they were actually tunnels with one wall crafted from glass so people could see
the rodents within.

Earlene scampered along her tunnel until she reached a
point across from Landon.  There she stopped for no apparent reason.  Marik
laughed.

“So what will you do when your racers decide they
don’t want to race?  Wait half the night for them to reach the end?”

“Credit me with a brain, will you?”  Kerwin gripped
the glass sheet that had only moments ago finished being set in place.  It
swung out like a cabinet door on brass hinges.  He collected his precious vermin.

“I suppose watching five rats racing each other might
be a bit of a laugh,” Dietrik said.  “Unless the lot decide to go to sleep.”

“We’ll have food at the other end, usually.  They’ll
smell it and make a straight path for it.  We’ll have races every few minutes
all night!  This will earn as much coin as the main games once the locals start
picking their favorite ladies and rooting for them.”

“I would not care to bet against you.  I have long
since learned better than that.”

Dietrik and Landon fell into a conversation about the
current Nolier situation.  Kerwin leaned against his bar to speak to Marik. 
“You need to take better care of yourself.”

“So Dietrik keeps informing me.”

“Do you remember the conversation we had before?”

Marik nodded.  “I’m not finished playing the game
yet.”

“Looks like it has cost you a good chunk of your
purse.  A smart gambler knows when to quit playing.  He knows to quit before a
loss becomes a losing streak.”