The Forge in the Forest (21 page)

It was early evening before they at last came to more level ground. They were all weary, but still in good humor. It was something to have come through unknown mountains without worse hazard, and with the promise of rain in the air they were even glad to be back beneath the shelter of the trees. Within a stand of tall firs they found a spot that was dry and well floored with soft needles, and none could see any reason to go further that night. They had not hunted that day, but there was still plenty of dried venison to be stewed with herbs. The travelers sprawled around the little earth-oven as the shadows lengthened, resting their aching limbs and feeling secure and dry after their exertions. The faint scent of cooking, rich and savory, seemed the promise of a very banquet.

"Here comes the rain!" said Ils sleepily, as new gusts of wind ruffled the Forest around. She was always most aware of the weather, being least accustomed to it. "Hear it rattle down!"

"Down here we can snap our fingers at it!" sighed Elof, stretching contentedly. But even as he spoke he felt a sudden qualm, as of something forgotten that should have sprung to mind. He looked around uneasily. Roc raised himself on one elbow, peering into the gloom beyond the trees, and leaned over to Elof.

"You asked me…" he began, unusually hesitant, as if he feared to seem foolish. "You asked me to tell you if I felt… well, that that Someone was about to turn round. Well, that's the feeling I've got." He shivered. "How the storm blows!"

It seemed to be racing straight toward them; at every gust the rustle and creak of boughs grew louder, nearer. And with that thought Elof s qualms became a chill stab of awareness. "How it blows, indeed!" he cried. Kermorvan stared at him, their eyes met, then as one they sprang up while the others gaped.

"Up, all of you!" shouted Kermorvan, drawing his sword and snatching up his pack. "Up, and run! Run from the wind!" Even as he cried out a great gust raced upon the stand of trees and seemed somehow to circle it, so that the boughs above stooped and nodded, and raindrops spattered in. "Uphill! Out of the trees! Go!" Then came a hiss, a thud; he stumbled back against a trunk. In the ground before him a long spear quivered. The least step more and it would have impaled him. Tenvar dived for another gap in the trees, then fell flat with a yell as spears hissed by his head. Arvhes, about to dodge behind a tree trunk, stared aghast at the gray-fletched arrow that sang in the bark a hairsbreadth from his fingers. Gise's bow was drawn, Elof's hammer in hand, but Kermorvan's clear command froze them even as they sought their mark.

"No! Hold your hand! Do you not see?" Another gust shook the bending boughs, the foliage rustled softly apart; long low sunbeams poured in and set strange leaves glittering upon every tree. Slowly Elof let the hammer sink; thirty or forty there could be up there, arrows or spears, what matter? It was too many to fight, surrounded as they were. He cursed himself for failing to remember that trick of stealing up under cover of a rain squall; it was no comfort to guess that Kermorvan must feel much the same. "Stand your ground!" the warrior commanded them, letting fall his pack. "If they wished to slay us, they could already have done so."

"Be these your watchers, then?" demanded Bure, peering up into the trees. "Shy of showing themselves, aren't they?" Scarcely had the words left his lips when a loud rush of leaves made them all jump. The thud of feet on earth and suddenly a ring of shadowy figures barred the gaps in the tree circle. Tall and gangling they seemed, their stance oddly bowed, but keen eyes gleamed, the colors of the trees. Kermorvan lifted his head in silent recognition.

"These are they. We have met them before, Elof and Ils and I, and come to no harm. Be still, that they may see we mean none to them." Slowly he folded his arms and leaned back against the tree. The figures nearest him stepped warily forward, and as they moved into the light many of the company gasped.

"The Children of Tapiau, indeed!" said Ils softly. Two advanced, the reddening light glinting upon their hair, long, luxuriant, redbrown in hue; they were women, like as close kin to those they had encountered in Aithennec in the west. In their way they were fair, their faces lean, wiry, but smooth and unlined, strangely expressionless; only their eyes glittered with animal intensity. Their garb, or lack of it, was the same; no more than harness of studded leather about thigh and breast; Elof heard Roc chuckle appreciatively, and Ils warn him he might soon snigger on the other side of his face. Others followed them, men and women both, and to Elof's surprise they were less alike. Some were taller, padding along on limbs so long they seemed spidery, others shorter and more human in shape, though the least of them matched Kermorvan and Gise, and clad in plain short tunics of green and brown. One girl had hair as dark as Elof s, though her limbs were long and her eyes were that wild catlike green. She stepped up to Tenvar, peering at him, and put up a hand to touch his face; he flinched when he saw it, the least human thing about her, the fingers twice the length of his own, the thumb short and set low.

"Steady!" Elof told him. "It must be your dark skin, she may never have seen it before."

Gise nodded stolidly. "Aye, I can believe that! Their own damned hides are as milky as sothrans'."

"He's right!" said Ils. "I thought so before, and now I see more of them…"

"But not their hair," said Elof, considering. "No red or blond, little black…"

"Aye indeed," said Roc curiously, running his fingers through his own flame-red crown. "It's mostly that bronze shade, like 'twas a blend of all… I've seen but one head that shade, know it well, but on whom, now?" Then he caught sight of the others' faces, and together their eyes turned to Kermorvan, and the women who stood before him. A likeness deeper than the shade of their hair leaped to Elof's startled eyes, though he could not say whether it lay in some general thing such as the proud set of the lean faces, or some true semblance in the bones beneath.

Then a shout from Borhi distracted them. One tall Forest man had scooped up his pack, and was casually rummaging around in it with his long fingers. "Get your thievin' mitts out of there!" yelled Borhi, moving to snatch the long wrist away; he jerked his head back, choking, as two broad spears clashed at his throat.

"Easy, man," said Kermorvan reassuringly. "Let them look! Would you not search strangers loose in your lands? See, he steals nothing." And he reached out a foot, and tipped his pack toward one of the women. She flashed him a wary glance from under her thick eyebrows, then ducked down and twitched open the straps. Quickly but carefully she pulled out strips of dried meat, spare garments and some lesser oddments, sniffed at a box of salves and bandages. Then she hauled out a large and heavy parcel of oiled leather that Elof remembered well; Ils, too, by the anxious glance she shot him. He could only bite his lip and shrug; had Kermorvan meant her to paw at that? He saw his friend's fists clench hard as the woman idly peeled back the leather, and metal rang within. Unwrapping the dark helm and mail, she gave Kermorvan a sharp glance, but let them spill carelessly on the ground as she spied the gleam of gold within. Kermorvan's frown deepened. Then her gasp of astonishment was clear as the damascened breastplate spilled into her hand, its crest a flaming web of gold in the dying fires of day. Up to the watchful trees she brandished it, and the travelers heard a soft sighing cadence, a breeze like a low breath of awe, run through the foliage. "
Margh-erren 'ac athail
!" she said softly, and Elof gaped.

"Raven and Sun!" he breathed in astonishment. "Kermorvan, she knows your crest!"

Kermorvan nodded, looking slightly dazed. "So I see, though I cannot understand her words. How may you? Is it some arcane speech?"

"Arcane? Man, it is your own!"

"What?"

"Aye, listen! In ancient books I have seen it written thus. It is your tongue as they spoke it of old, the words the same, only their sound differs. Listen!" Elof turned to the woman, and spoke as slowly and clearly as he could. "
Krythen'a margran ac eyhel, e'yn! Yn'a Kermorvan Ar-lath, kanveydhe
?"

"You I understood!" barked Kermorvan. "The crest is mine, I am the lord Kermorvan… But did she?"

The woman looked at them both, cocked her head at Kermorvan, her mouth silently forming words. Then suddenly she darted forward, peering down into his face with an air of startled recognition. Abruptly she turned and shouted something. There was a flurry of movement, and Elof felt long hands seize him; he struggled to reach his sword, but fingers of steel wire clamped his hand crush-ingly to the hilt. He heard Ils cry out, had a brief glimpse of Roc and Borhi threshing and struggling in the grip of four tall woodsfolk, then he was plucked from the ground and hurled straight at the wall of foliage overhead.

Even though he knew now that he was being swept along by those elongated arms, swinging from bough to bough, it was a dizzying, sickening sensation; branch after branch hurtled crazily straight at his face, into his eyes, at such a speed it must dash out his brains, and he flinched in fright. Then at the last moment it would be whisked aside and the next one lash at him. The rush and sough of the wind around him rose to a shrieking gale, speeding cold droplets that stung his cheeks like hailstones. The mad rush of the air seemed to choke him, stifling breath and mind alike, though of falling he felt no fear, knowing too well the effortless strength of the hands and feet that held him. He could hardly cling to coherent thought enough to wonder or worry about his friends, or where they were being taken, or how long the journey was; only the failing light gave him any sense of passing time. He guessed they were moving downslope, but never for a moment could he be sure. Then, as abruptly as it began, it ended. He felt a sudden, jarring halt, swung for a moment in shadowy emptiness, then saw a greensward, as it seemed, rise up under his feet. Hard ground slapped them a crisp blow; unable to stand, he fell on all fours and clung to turf that heaved under him like a ship. Someone groaned beside him, and he saw Borhi sprawled there, staring at him with white-rimmed eyes, face bloodless, mouth working. On his other side was Roc, sprawled gasping upon his back, and beyond him Kermorvan clambering unsteadily to his feet. But suddenly the tall man rested on one knee, gazing upward, his thin lips parted, his stern features softened with the open wonder of a child. Behind him Arvhes staggered up, only to cry out, point and drop once more to his knees, his round face no less rapt. Swiftly Elof heaved himself up on one elbow and followed their gaze. Then he understood, and felt the same awe swell up in his own heart at this unlooked-for vision.

It was evening still, the sun hidden now by tree and cloud, yet shedding a last pale glimmer through the storm-cooled air. They lay on a broad space of level ground, for their mad journey had indeed borne them down into the eastern foothills of the Meneth Aithen. Those slopes arose above the travelers now, crested and carpeted with treetops tall and ancient, their foliage thick and shadowdark. Into the very rainclouds they mounted, that swept racing and boiling by, up to heights hidden behind the trailing veils of rain. A fine fast drizzle beat down upon them and from their whipping leaves a haze arose that scattered the pallid stormlight into a hoard of soft gleams and sudden sparkles, glowing droplets upon every shadowed leaf and bough. Solid they seemed, those tossing trees, as the stony soil they gripped, yet in their files there was a breach and their summits were overborne. For from the end of the greensward a way opened between them, a wide grassy way flanked by great cedars, curving up to the middle slopes of the hill. And there, wall upon wall, roof upon roof, all across the hill's wide flank a majestic hall arose out of the Forest.

Towers and turrets thrust up above the waving treetops, arched garrets and peaked gables; down upon them gazed windows uncounted in a multitude of walls, and between those windows ran many galleries and walks. Yet it was clear that all this was part of one great building which spread among the trees but did not sprawl, and seemed strangely suited to its situation. Noble and strong were those walls in the gathering twilight of storm and sunset, graceful those angled roofs as the treetops they crowned. And even as the last gold of day slipped from the walls, a thousand windows sprang alive with twinkling light and warmth behind the cool tossing of the trees. "A very town it might be, in one building," marveled Roc. "A mighty citadel…"

Kermorvan shook his head. "No," he answered ab-sently, "no citadel this, though as imposing. It was not made to withstand assault."

"Nor to confine?" asked Elof quietly.

"No more that!" answered Kermorvan decisively.

Ils nodded, her round eyes peering far into the gloom. "If it has defenses, that place, they are not in its walls. Yet my heart tells me that defenses it will have."

Elof glanced warily around. All the company were there, at least, and their baggage also; thankfully he snatched up his precious pack. He felt suddenly weak and famished, and found himself pining absurdly for the food left steaming in the little glade. But now their captors were helping them to their feet, gently enough, and urging them toward the grassy way. No gate barred it, but on either side were tall hummocks of green, like banks or thick hedges; only as he drew closer did Elof see patches of gray-white beneath. They were walls, stone walls, heavily overgrown with creepers and a kind of ivy; one even began in a stone pedestal, such as he had seen flanking gates in Kerbryhaine, bearing statues or other ornaments. But opposite it there was only a half-formed heap of rough stone blocks, hardly visible through the weeds.