Read Into the Thinking Kingdoms Online
Authors: Alan Dean Foster
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #FIC009000
Into the Thinking Kingdoms (24 page)
As the pounding outside increased, he was encouraged by the continued stability of the doorway. Working the index, which was an entire book unto itself, he finally found the item he was looking for. By the steady, reassuring illumination of the twin candles he flipped through the heavy weight of pages until his fingers stopped them at the appropriate chapter.
There it was: a simple recitation for banishing spirits that might arise up out of statues. Leaning over the open book and squinting in the flickering light, he saw that the spell was deemed effective on sculpture rendered in any medium: stone, metal, wood, bone, shell—and glass.
Turning to the thudding portal, he raised a clenched fist and bellowed defiance. “Pound away, brood of foreign devils! In another moment you’ll all be dead and gone, extinguished, like steam off a hot stove! Nothing and no one besieges Cuween Bisgrath in his own house!”
Turning back to the book, he bent low over the relevant paragraphs. Though writ small, they appeared elemental and shorn of unpronounceable terms. To make sure he committed no potentially hazardous errors in the reciting of the formula, he reached automatically for the pair of reading glasses that were always kept safe in the single pull-out drawer beneath the reading table.
And made the mistake of putting them on.
XVI
H
oy, bruther, what did you give to that poor little thing, anyway?”
oy, bruther, what did you give to that poor little thing, anyway?”
“Nothing much.” Ehomba strode along easily as they climbed into the first foothills. “It was a little doll, a carving that had been given to me by one of the women of the village.” He glanced over to where the emancipated Knucker was stopping to inspect every flower they passed, as if seeing and sniffing each one for the first time. “When you are going away on a long journey, people give you peculiar odds and ends, in the hope that this or that frippery might at some time prove useful. I saw no particular use for the carving, and thought that since the girl appeared to be losing everything she owned, she might enjoy the comfort of a doll, however small and hard.”
The swordsman took a playful swipe at the tuft on the end of Ahlitah’s switching tail. Looking back, the big cat’s eyes narrowed. With great dignity, it loped on ahead, effortlessly outdistancing its human companions.
“Maybe you have got kids of your own, bruther, but your woman must have done the raising. No girl that age is going to cuddle up to a piece of black rock.”
“It was not rock.” Ehomba stepped carefully over a patch of small, bright blue flowers.
“Whatever.” The swordsman shook his head sadly. “You’re always the one in such a hurry, Etjole. If you waste time to pause and jabber with children unfortunate in their choice of parents you’ll never get to where you’re going.”
“Yes, I suppose you are right, Simna. There was nothing we could do for her family without making ourselves the targets of those soldiers, and she will probably throw the figurine away at the first opportunity.”
“Don’t take it to heart, bruther.” The swordsman gave his tall friend a condoling slap on the back. “People are always thinking they can make a difference in some stranger’s life, and invariably they end up making things worse.” Raising his voice, he called out to their new companion.
“Hoy, Knuckerman! There’s footpaths all over this place. You’re supposed to be guiding us. Stop snorting those stinking weeds and show us the right one.”
Bright-eyed and alert, the little man straightened and nodded. “Your animal is still moving forward on the correct line. Keep following him. If he makes a wrong turn I’ll let you know. Don’t worry.”
“Why should I worry?” Simna murmured aloud. “We’re following the lead of the man who knows everything. Or used to. I wonder: If we got a drink or two into him—not enough to destabilize him, mind—would he stay sober enough to understand the question and still be able to know the answer?”
As they walked, Ehomba dutifully considered the proposition. “I do not think so. I believe that with Knucker and his knowing it is all one way or all the other. There is no middle ground.”
Simna showed his disappointment. “Too bad.”
“But he is happier this way. And healthier, with a new outlook on the future. Look at him.”
“Hoy, hoy. Clean and sober but useless. A fine trade-off, that.” The swordsman strained to see over the next hill. They were entering dense forest, fragrant with towering pine and spruce. “Didn’t he say something about an interesting town not far ahead?”
Ehomba nodded. “Netherbrae.” The herdsman surveyed the steeply ascending hills. “Two days’ journey from here and well outside the borders of Bondressey.”
“Good.” Simna increased his pace. “I could do with some surroundings that were interesting instead of civilized.”
“Cannot a place be both?”
“Hoy, but given a choice, I much prefer the former over the latter. Ow!”
Reaching up, the swordsman felt the back of his head. The source of the slight but sharp pain was immediately apparent: A sizeable pinecone that had fallen from a considerable height was still rolling to a stop near his feet. Ehomba’s gentle grin at his friend’s discomfort vanished when a similar missile struck him on the shoulder. Together, the two men peered warily up into the trees. As they did, another cone landed several feet away.
Simna took consolation from his tall friend’s ignorance. The herdsman had never seen seeds like these before. There were no towering evergreens in the land of the Naumkib.
“Such trees drop their cones all the time,” the swordsman explained. “We just happened to be walking in the wrong place at the wrong time.” As he finished, another cone struck Ahlitah on his hindquarters. The big cat whirled sharply and smacked the offending seed pod twenty feet before it could roll off his backside and hit the ground. His dignity was more injured than his hip.
“Your location had nothing to do with it.” Knucker had rejoined his new friends, but instead of on them his gaze was focused on the interlocking branches overhead. “We’re being targeted.”
Ehomba’s excellent eyesight could discern no movement in the treetops except for the occasional bird or dragonet. One pair of mated azure dragonets was busy enlarging a prospective nesting hole high up in the otherwise solid bole of a giant spruce. Each would inspect the cavity, lean forward and blast it with a tiny, precisely aligned tongue of flame from its open mouth, then sit back and wait for the fire to burn itself out. The pair was already through the bark and into solid wood. Several days of such careful work would leave them with a fire-hardened black cavity in which to raise their young.
The herdsman kept an eye on them as he and his friends continued to make their way through the cool, enclosing woods. Both dragonets were fully occupied with the task of excavating their nesting hole, and neither paid the least attention to the party of three men and one cat tromping through the forest litter. Certainly they did not pause to kick pinecones at the figures far below.
“I do not see anything throwing these cones at us,” Ehomba declared. Even as he concluded the observation, two more cones landed close by his feet, just missing him. His eyes instantly darted upward, but there was no sign of movement in any of the branches immediately overhead.
A smiling Knucker tapped the side of his nose with a long finger. This time, nothing came out. “We must be under attack by groats.” He scanned the treetops. “Troops of them are common in these woods. They don’t like visitors.”
As a particularly heavy cone plummeted to strike him a glancing blow on the left foot, Simna loudly offered to trade his blade for a good bow and a quiver full of arrows.
“It wouldn’t do you any good,” Knucker assured him.
“Why not?” More insulted than injured by the cone, the swordsman spoke without taking his eyes from the branches overhead. “I’m a pretty good hand with a bow. What are these groats, anyway?”
“Small furry creatures that live in the treetops in forests like these.” Holding his hands out in front of him, Knucker aligned the open palms about three feet apart. “They have long tails and feet that can grip branches as strongly as hands, in the manner of monkeys, but their faces are like those of insects, hard and with strangely patterned eyes.”
Ehomba hopped clear of a falling cone nearly the size of his head that he was fortunate to spot on the way down. It hit the ground with a weighty thump that held the potential for serious injury. As the bombardment continued and the first small cones gave way to far larger woody projectiles, the situation began to deteriorate from merely bothersome to potentially serious.
“I have good eyes and I have been looking for a long time,” the herdsman replied, “and still I see nothing like what you describe.”
Knucker’s expression turned serious. “That’s because the fur of the groat is invisible. You have to look for their eyes, which is the only part of them that reflects light.”
Searching for three-foot-long furry creatures ambling through the treetops was one thing. Hunting only for isolated eyes was far more difficult. A cone that could have knocked a man unconscious struck Ahlitah squarely on his head, provoking a roar that shook the needles of the surrounding trees. It did not intimidate the unseen groats, who continued to rain cones down on the hapless intruders at an ever-increasing rate.
More cones suggested the presence of more groats. While this made the travelers’ situation more perilous, it also improved the opportunities for detecting the elusive creatures. Moments after he executed an elegant if forced little dance that enabled him to dodge half a dozen falling cones, Simna stabbed an arm skyward.
“There! By that big branch thrusting to the east from this tree next to us. There’s one!” Reflexively, he fingered the hilt of his sword. The large compound eyes of the otherwise invisible arboreal tormentor glistened in the afternoon light. No accusatory chattering came from the creature or from any of its companions. The barrage of cones was being carried out in complete silence.
Simna was not silent, however. Ill equipped to deal with an attack from above, he was reduced to screaming imprecations at their unseen adversaries. Unsurprisingly, this had no effect on the volume of cones being dropped upon him and his friends.
By this time they had broken into a run. Their progress was made difficult because they had to keep more or less to the trail as located by Knucker while avoiding not only the falling cones but also the dense mass of trees. Straining to pick out eye reflections in the branches overhead, Ehomba struck one smaller tree a glancing blow with his shoulder. While trying to determine the extent of the resultant bruise, he was hit by two smaller cones launched from above. Gritting his teeth, he pulled himself away from the tree trunk and ran on.
“These groats!” he yelled at Knucker, who was having a hard time keeping up with the pace. “What would they do if they killed us? Eat us?”
“Oh no,” the wheezing little man assured him. “They’d just make sure we were dead and then go away. They only want their forest back. As I said, they don’t like visitors.”
“Can’t they tell that we’re trying to leave as fast as we can?” Raising a hand over his head, the swordsman warded off a cluster of small cones. Despite their moderate size, they still stung when hurled from a considerable height.
“They probably can’t.” Knucker was gasping for air now. It was clear to Ehomba that their new companion would not be able to keep up for much longer. Something had to be done. But what? How did one fight an opponent beyond reach and impossible to see except for its eyes?
Simna thought he had the solution. “Do something, Etjole! Blast them out of the treetops, turn them into newts, call up a spell that will bring them crashing down from the branches like stones!”
“How many times do I have to tell you, Simna—I am not a sorcerer! I can make some use only of what wiser ones have given to me.” Looking up, he dodged to the right just in time to avoid a pinecone as big as a beer tankard, and almost as heavy.
“Hoy, then use the sky-metal sword! Call up the wind from between the stars and blow them clear out of the woods!”
“I do not think that would be wise. The wind that rushes between the stars is not a thing to be trifled with. You do not bring it down to earth every time you have a problem.” While running, he waved at the imposing, surrounding trees. “I could try to bring down the wind, but once summoned it cannot be easily controlled. It could bring down every tree in this forest along with the groats. Better to endure a pounding by seed pods than by falling trees.”
“In your pack.” Simna was tired of running. He wanted to stand and fight, but doubted their assailants would oblige him. Even if they did, it would be hard to do battle with three-foot-long invisibilities. “There’s always something in that pack of yours! A magic amulet, or a powder to make smoke to hide us, or another figurine like the one that summoned Fhastal the younger.”
“Fhastal’s sword would be of no more use to us here than our own.” The herdsman looked for a place to halt that offered some concealment from the arboreal barrage. “And I have no magic pills or conjurer’s tricks. But I do have an idea.”
“Glewen knows I’d rather have an amulet,” Simna yelled back, “but at this point I’ll settle for an idea. If it’s a righteous one.”
There were no caves in which to hide, no buildings in which to take refuge, but they did find a lightning-scarred tree whose base had been blasted into a V-shaped hollow. In this they all took refuge from the steady rain of spiky projectiles. Glittering eyes gathered in the branches overhead as the peripatetic yet silent groats continued to pelt this temporary sanctuary with cones.
Slipping his pack off his back, Ehomba dug through its depths until he found what he was looking for. Simna crowded uncomfortably close. The tree hollow was barely large enough to accommodate the three men. With the addition of the litah’s substantial bulk it was difficult to breathe, much less move about.
Removing his searching hand, the herdsman displayed a slim, irregularly shaped, palm-sized slab that was dull gray metal on one side and highly polished glass on the other. The reflective surface was badly scratched and the metal pitted and dented. It looked like a broken piece of mirror.
“What is it?” The swordsman was openly dubious. “It looks like a mirror.”
Ehomba nodded. “A piece of an old mirror. An heirloom from Likulu’s family.”
“That’s all?” Simna stared uncomprehendingly at his tall companion. “Just a mirror? What would you be carrying a mirror around for? I haven’t noticed that you’ve been paying special attention to your appearance.” Expectation crept into his voice. “It’s more than a mirror, isn’t it? It has some kind of unique properties to help you vanquish your enemies?”
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