Thomas Covenant - 02b - Gilden Fire (4 page)

At this, Lord Shetra turned her birdofprey eyes toward Hyrim. “You mock me.”

“Ah, no!” he protested at once. Do not think it. You must learn to hear me in my own spirit. I seek only to warm the air between us.

“Better that you do not speak,” she snapped.” I do not hear your desires. The wind of your words blows cold.”

Instead of replying, Lord Hyrim gazed at her with the look of intent repose which came over the Lords when they melded their thoughts. She shook her head, refused him, climbed to her feet. But the next moment, she answered him barrenly, as if she were too full of dust to resist his question. “I have left behind a husband who believes I cannot love him. He believes he is inferior to me.”

She cut off any response Hyrim might have made by stepping quickly to the fire. “We must not keep the wood alight more than necessary. Without a Hirebrand to tend them, the rods will decay slowly
 
and we will have greater need of them.” As if she were in a hurry for darkness, she pulled the wood out of the fire and hummed a lillianrill command to extinguish it. Then she wrapped herself in a blanket and lay down on the grass a short distance from Lord Hyrim.

After a while, Korik asked Cerrin:

 
Will her concern for Lord Verement weaken her?

 
No, Cerrin replied flatly. She will fight for both.

Korik understood this assertion and accepted it. But he did not like it. It carried echoes of other losses and griefs
 
deprivations and hollow places which the Haruchai had not taken into account during their sole night of extravagance. Dourly, he posted his comrades in a wide circle around the camp. Then he stood with his arms folded on his chest, gazed warily out over the grasslands and the starpath of the moon, recited his Vow through the long watch. He could not forget any details of the last night he had spent with his wife, whose bones were already ancient in the frozen fastness of her grave. The Vow sustained him, but it was not warm.

Still it gave a rhythm to the sleepless night, and the time passed as a myriad other darknesses had passed
 
in ceaseless vigilance.
 
When the moon completed its worn traversal of the sky and fell into the west like a weary exhalation, Korik decided that soon he would awaken the Lords. However, a short time later Lord Hyrim struggled out of his blankets of his own accord. Even in the bare starlight, Korik saw that Hyrim was stiff and aching from the past day’s ride. But the Lord suppressed the groans which twisted his face, and began to prepare breakfast.

The aroma he created revealed his talent for the work. Korik smelled strength and refreshment and delicacy in the steam of the broth Hyrim made
 
a savour Korik had not scented since the curious healing meal which High Lord Prothall had cooked after the battle of Soaring Woodhelven, when all the warriors and urLord Covenant were sickened by the reek of blood and burned flesh. The food’s subtle potency awakened Lord Shetra. She came close to the fire looking dull and pale, as if she had not slept well for many nights; but as she ate, Hyrim’s work spread its beneficence through her, and she brightened. When she was done, she nodded to him, approving the food as if were apologising. He answered with a broad grin and an apothegm which he claimed he learned from the Giants:

“Food is concentrated beauty
 
the sustaining power of the Land made savourable and ready for strength. A life without food is like life without tales
 
deprived of splendour.”

When he mounted to ride again; he managed to limit himself to one tight gasp of pain.

The Ranyhyn ran as if they were hurrying to rejoin the sun; and at daybreak the riders found that they were crossing short irregular hills covered with stiff grey grass. There was no sign of human life. The ground was arable, if not inviting; but no people had ever lived here, It was too close to Grimmerdhore. Though dark, Grimmerdhore was among the least potent, the most slumberous, of the Forests, the surviving remnants of the One Forest which had formerly covered the whole Upper Land
 
and though since before the time of Lord Kevin there had been no Forestal in Grimmerdhore to sing the ancient trees to wakefulness and movement and vengeance.
 
still people kept away from the severe woods. Many things lived in Grimmerdhore, and few of them were friendly. It was said
 
though Korik did not know the truth of it
 
that the kresh, the yellow wolves, had been born in Grimmerdhore.

Yet the Bloodguard did not waver in his determination to pass directly through the Forest. It would lengthen the journey by days to go around, either north or south. Still, he exercised added caution. As the company cantered into the new day, Korik sent one of his comrades wide of the company on each side, to increase the range of their wariness.

 
By midmorning, his caution was rewarded. Korik received a call from one of the ranging Bloodguard, who was out of sight behind a hill. He stopped the company and waited. When the caller came over the hill, he was accompanied by a woman mounted on a Revelstone mustang.

She was a brisk young Warhaft, and her Eoman was riding patrol along the western borders of Grimmerdhore. She asked for news of Revelstone, and when she heard of Lord Mhoram’s vision, she requested permission to accompany the mission. But Lord Shetra ordered the Warhaft to remain at her scouting duty, then inquired about the condition of Grimmerdhore.

“Wolves,” the Warhaft reported. “Not the yellow kresh. Grey and black wolves
 
nothing else. And little of them. Small packs raid outward, find nothing and return. We have avoided them so that they would not be wary of our scouting.”

“No sign of the Grey Slayer?” Shetra pursued. “No scent of evil?”

“The Forest conceals much. But we have seen nothing
 
heard nothing.”

The Warhaft and Shetra exchanged a few more details, and the Lord refused an offer of help for the crossing of Grimmerdhore, Then the mission started eastward again. As they left the Warhaft behind, Hyrim waved back at her and said as if he were lonely, “It may be that we will see no other people until we gain Seareach.

“I would have been glad for the company of her Eoman.”

“They would slow us,” Shetra returned without looking at him.

Korik sent two Bloodguard wide again. In this formation, he was confident of the company’s readiness except on one point: Lord Hyrim’s horsemanship. Since the previous day, Hyrim’s scant control over his riding had deteriorated
 
the combined effect of rougher terrain and extreme soreness. Now at every jolt he clutched like a drowning man at the mane of the Ranyhyn; and between grasps he used his staff like a pole to steady himself.

If he falls, I will catch him, Sill promised.

But Korik was not reassured.

At full gallop in Grimmerdhore, he will be at hazard.

Sill stiffened, but could not deny Korik’s point. He proposed constructing a harness for the Lord, then discarded the idea. The Bloodguard had no wish to affront the Ranyhyn that had chosen Hyrim: they preferred to carry the additional risk themselves. Korik drew calmness from his Vow and observed to his comrades that the question of Hyrim’s riding would soon be answered.

Just before noon, the company swept over a ridge and came within sight of the Forest. The hills had hidden it until it was almost upon them. It loomed around them on the east and south as if they had surprised it in the act of trying to encircle them. But now that they had seen it, Grimmerdhore Forest stood up out of the grasslands like a fortress:
 
its black trunks grew thickly together as if to form a wall;
 
its gnarled limbs bristled like weapons; its shrouding dark green seemed to shelter lurking defenders. And over all the ground before and between the trees were brambles with barbed thorns as strong as iron. They interwove with each other tightly, to resist any penetration, and at their lowest they were taller than Korik.

The Ranyhyn stopped, unbidden: they were sensitive to the denying will of the Forest, though the trees had never held any enmity for them. The riders dismounted. Lord Hyrim stared at Grimmerdhore as if its mood confounded him; and Lord Shetra dropped to the grass, felt it with her hands, staring all the while at the trees
 
trying to read the Forest through the sensations in the ground. When Hyrim said, “Never have I seen Grimmerdhore so angry, she nodded slowly and replied, “Something has been done to it
 
something it does not like.”

Korik was forced to agree. In the past, the ancient ire of the Forest, the hatred for people who cut and burned, had always been drowsier than this, more deeply submerged in the failing consciousness of the trees. Still, what he could see of Grimmerdhore did not look sentient enough to be active.

 
Then the peril lies in what has been done to the Forest, said Tull, completing Korik’s thought.

 
Unless a Forestal has found his way here, Runnik suggested.

 
No, Korik judged. Even a Forestal would require much time to awaken Grimmerdhore. There is another danger within.

Gradually, the Lords began to resist the mood of the Forest. Hyrim started to prepare meal
 
a large one, since he would not have the use of a cooking fire again until the company was past Grimmerdhore and Shetra walked to the brambles to touch them with her fingertips and listen to the murmurings of the wind. When she returned, she had reached Korik’s conclusion: there was not enough wakefulness in the timbre of the wood to account for Grimmerdhore’s mood. Something else caused it.

“Not the wolves,” said Hyrim, sampling his fare. “They have always been at home in the Forest. And they care for nothing but themselves unless another power is there to master them. Another mystery I hope I will not be asked to unravel. Riding is challenge enough for me. Shetra nodded absently, ate the food Hyrim gave her without paying it much attention.

In spite of their concern, the Lords did not delay. They ate promptly, then left the Bloodguard to pack their supplies and went together on foot to the edge of the brambles. There they raised their arms, held their staffs high, and gave the ritual appeal for sufferance to the woods:

Hail, Grimmerdhore! Forest of the One Forest! Freehome and root, and preserver of the lifesap of wood! Enemy of our enemies! Grimmerdhore, hail! We are the Lords
 
foes to your enemies, and learners of the lillianrill lore. We must pass through!

“Harken, Grimmerdhore! We hate the axe and flame which hurt you! Your enemies are our enemies. Never have we brought edge of axe of flame of fire to touch you
 
nor ever shall. Grimmerdhore, harken! Let us pass!”

They shouted the appeal loudly; but their cry was cut off, absorbed into silence, by the wall of the trees. Still they waited with their arms raised for a long moment, as if they expected an answer. But the dark anger of the Forest did not waver. When they returned to the company, Lord Shetra said squarely to “Korik,
 
“Grimmerdhore
 
Forest has
 
never harmed the Lords of its own will. What is your choice, Bloodguard?
 
Shall
 
we attempt passage?”

Korik suppressed the tonal lilt of his native tongue to speak the language of the Lords flatly, that what he said was both a decision and a promise. “We will pass through.”

With a silent nod, his comrades turned and called to the grazing Ranyhyn. Soon the company was mounted in formation, facing the Forest. Korik spoke quietly to Brabha, and the Ranyhyn started forward, walking directly at the fortifying brambles. When Brabha was close enough to nose the thorns, a narrow slit of path became visible before him.

In single file, the company walked into the shadowed demesne of Grimmerdhore.

The thorns plucked at them as they passed, but the Ranyhyn negotiated the path with such easy skill that even the long blue robes of the Lords suffered only small rents and snags. Yet the way was long and twisted, and Korik’s senses quivered at the vulnerability of the company. If the brambles within the Forest were active, the riders were in grave danger. Korik sent a warning to the Bloodguard who rode nearest the Lords, and they braced themselves to jump to Hyrim’s and Shetra’s defence.

But none of the bushes moved: the low breeze carried no sound of awareness through the thorns. And then the brambles began to shrink and thin until they fell away like a sigh, leaving the riders in the hands of the Forest itself.