The Tree

Chapter Seventeen

With a cry of horror Hero threw himself down beside Aminza, slashing at the vine with his knife. When he had hacked the thing loose from her he sliced at her fastenings and hauled her to her feet, propping her against one of the raft's upright poles. Then he picked up the severed piece of vine, shuddering at its twisting and twining in his hand. Its underside was lined with tiny green suckers which opened and closed and pulsed in hideous hybrid death-throes.

Eldin snatched the thing from him and gave a cry of loathing as he tossed it away from the raft into the morass ... and a second cry as the scummy surface instantly erupted in a green writhing of hungry life. The whole swamp was a seething den of carnivorous creepers and tentacled plants.

"What in the name of-?" Eldin choked. "What lunatic of a mind nightmared this lot?"

Hero wasted no words. He snapped long branches from a dried-up tree standing close to the raft and handed one to his burly companion. "Get poling," he snarled. "Head for the open water there."

Aminza, still disoriented, hung on grimly to the now wobbly uprights as Hero and Eldin used their branches to propel the raft through the morass. No sooner was their craft moving, however, than a dozen more of the suckered vines came snaking hungrily over the edges of its platform.

Hero threw down his branch on the deck and whipped out his curved blade. Razor sharp, the Kledan sword severed wherever it touched and in another moment the raft broke through into open water.

"No use heading for the cliff," Hero panted, snatching up his pole. "We'd be smashed to bits by that great spout of water. Run parallel with the cliff until we find a bank."

Desperately the men poled through waters which were quite shallow, and as they began to make some headway so Aminza stated: "At least we're going in the right direction. According to old Thinistor's wand, that is."

Looking back Hero saw that she was right-that the knob of the suspended wand pointed straight ahead-but he also saw something which was far less gladdening. Following them from the seething mass of tangled vines and bullrushes, winding after them through the scummy water, came a tapering, snakelike member which was thick as his wrist.

"Pole faster!" he cried, but in another moment the great vine had reared up out of the water and lashed itself to Eldin's leg. Mercifully, it also trapped one of the raft's uprights, so that it was unable to pull the older dreamer overboard.

Hero's sword gleamed in the hot sunlight as he once again tossed his pole down and leaped to his friend's aid. His blade and Eldin's chopped into the vine together, severing it in two places, so that two great lengths of it flopped about the deck as the damaged parent limb thrashed the scummy waters to a foam in their wake.

Mouthing curses the weary dreamers kicked the writhing sucker-lined lengths of vine overboard and yet again took up their poles. Behind them the entire jungle of living green throbbed and tossed in a sort of fury, and despite their bruised and battered bodies the men needed no urging to toil frantically and put as much distance as possible between themselves and the enraged denizens of the swamp. But by now they were clear of the morass proper and the water ahead seemed calm and harmless enough ...

Half an hour later they beached the raft on a grassy bank where the cliffs were split by the bed of a dried-out stream. Here, as soon as they had recovered from their long-sustained ordeal of terror, they might easily scale the cliffs and be on their way again. Eldin made a fire well away from the water's edge and brewed tea while Aminza took dried meat and figs from a pack. For his part, Hero spent some time recovering various bits of rope from the raft and pushing its now sadly defunct members back into the water. Some of them might find a mooring somewhere and take root.

After eating, the three adventurers found themselves unbearably weary ... but not so tired that they were willing to sleep within sight of the swamp. So they shouldered their packs and made their way up the bed of the dead stream until they reached a place where shrubs grew in abundance on the sides of the gorge and they could easily climb to the top. For all that it was a safe, simple climb, they were just about all in by the time they stood on the summit.

Now they found themselves on a gently undulating plain of short grasses and flowers, bushes and shrubs that stretched away southward into low, distant hills. Finding themselves a wild apple tree for shade, they made down their beds in the warm, semi-tropical afternoon and were all three asleep in the twinkling of an eye.

They awakened together from dreams within dreams, to a sky already turning dark-blue with the stealthy encroachment of evening. They sipped tea and ate an apple each, then shouldered their packs and walked in moon- and starlight across plains which were soft beneath their feet, with a springiness that somehow eased their bumps and bruises. And always the wand pointed the way ahead.

"Just suppose this is Thalarion," said Hero after a while, "which I suppose it is. What do you know about it?"

"First off," Eldin answered, "I know that this isn't Thalarion."

"But you said-" Hero began.

"I said that the swamp lies in the hinterlands beyond Thalarion," said Eldin. "Thalarion isn't a country-it's a city!"

"I have heard of that city," said Aminza in a quiet voice, holding tightly to Eldin's great arm. "Its monarch is the eidolon Lathi."

"And what pray," asked Hero, "is an eidolon?"

"An image, an idea, a flight of fancy," answered Eldin. "I think."

"An idea!" Hero snorted, curling his lip in a certain way. "A flight of fancy? Ruling a city? It sounds nonsensical to me."

"Ah! But you're young in the ways of dreams, lad," said Eldin, shaking his head in the moonlight. "When will you learn that a nonsense is only something you don't understand or haven't experienced? It's your own ignorance. A faceless gaunt is nonsensical-until there's one looking right at you! So is a vine with suckers-until you get one wrapped around your leg!"

"I have heard other things of Thalarion," said Aminza, even more quietly.

"I'm not sure I want to know of them," said Hero. "If your tiny little whisper is anything to go by, I'm sure they'll be unpleasant."

"Say on, lass," said Eldin, "and take no notice of him. Forewarned is forearmed, they say ... I think."

"Thalarion is demon-cursed," she said.

Hero stopped walking, turned and took her by the shoulders. "Aye, I've heard that said before," his brow wrinkled. "Though I can't seem to remember where or when."

Aminza frowned back at him and the stars shone in her big eyes. "Also," she continued, "it's said the eidolon Lathi rules over a hive of horror!"

Now Eldin took hold of her. He shook her a little, but gently. "Now, now, now," he rumbled. "We don't even know if we're going to Thalarion yet-or even where the city lies. We're following Thinistor's wand, that's all."

"Let's forget Thalarion, eh?" suggested Hero. "Look, it's a beautiful night and we've a way to go. We'll see the sun up, breakfast on wood pigeon eggs, sleep till noon, then carry on to journey's end. What say you?"

"I say," answered Eldin, squinting ahead, "-I say we're heading straight for that tree there. The one with the moon standing above it."

Ahead, atop a low rise, the topmost branches of a tree showed as a black silhouette against a blue-black sky full of stars. Hero stared, then said: "There must be something wrong with my eyes. Plainly the tree stands atop the hill, or just beyond it, and yet somehow the perspective is all wrong."

"It's just an effect of the night," said Eldin.

"No," Aminza shook her head. "I can see what David means. Look, the outline of the hill is sharp, but the silhouette of the tree seems indistinct, distant. I wonder why?" Thalarion was forgotten now in the light of this new mystery.

In silence the three trudged up the hillside and soon stood upon the summit. "Well, there's one question answered," grunted Eldin, and he whistled his amazement.

A mile, perhaps two miles away, the tree stood on a plain that dipped gently down toward a distant sea. Its shape was that of a beautiful brandy glass ... but it towered at least a third of a mile into the night sky!

"I have heard of just such a tree," said Eldin wisely as they made their way down the slope of the hill to the plain.

"But of course you have," Hero yawned mightily. "Is there anything in all dreamland that you haven't heard of?"

"Don't knock experience, lad," the older dreamer growled. "Anyway, I was at a banquet in Ulthar some years before we met. This was toward the end of the Bad Days, if I remember correctly. The feast was in honor of a pair of mighty dreamers, men of the waking world- indeed of many worlds-named Titus Crow and Henri-Laurent de Marigny."

"Ah, now I have heard of them!" said Hero.

"Good! And now that you're satisfied with the authenticity of my tale, perhaps you'll let me finish it? ... well, the drink was flowing and everyone was in gay mood, and I might tell you that many of dreamland's greatest men were there. And when all the speech-making was done, then they got this Crow fellow to tell a few tales of his trip to Elysia and what he saw there."

"Elysia?" said Aminza. 'The home of the Elder Gods?"

"The same," answered Eldin. 'This Crow is a very special fellow, you see, and he has a special place in Elysia whenever he desires to go there."

"Hmm," mused Hero. "That would offend the vanity of the First Ones a bit, I fancy. A mere man allowed into Elysia!"

"Well, possibly-but as I said, this Crow chap is a rather special fellow. Anyway, he told of a tree, just like this one up ahead, growing in a vast garden in Elysia. Moreover, he said that the tree was sentient! It was intelligent and full of love and beauty. There, what do you think of that?"

But before Eldin's companions could answer, all three adventurers stumbled from green grass underfoot onto a powdery surface of crumbling soil, and in the moonlight they could see that this most peculiar path led straight as the flight of an arrow to the foot of the green giant rearing its massive trunk and branches less than half a mile away across the plain. Moreover, Thinistor's wand continued to point in precisely that direction.

"And you think this tree could be related to that other great tree in Elysia, do you?" asked Hero as they followed the sandy path toward the shadow of the giant.

Eldin shrugged. "Can't really see how that's possible," he answered.

"A pity," said Hero. "After all we've been through, I could do with a little love and joy and beauty!"

Soon the moon began to disappear behind the great tree's bulk, and then the dreamers trod more warily in starlight and occasional moonbeams; and as they passed into the shadow of the tree, so a hush fell over them and they stopped talking and even breathed more quietly. Now the tree towered overhead and they passed under its outermost branches, making never a sound as their paces grew shorter and slower.

Cool, hanging tendrils touched them as they passed beneath and soft-edged leaves as long as a man softly brushed them. The gloom seemed full of weird energy, an almost electrical excitement, as if they tip-toed across the chest of some sleeping behemoth beyond imagination.

Then Aminza tripped on a root and gave a little cry as she flew into Eldin's arms-and immediately the tree came to life!

"Who goes there?" demanded a throbbing, tremulous voice from nowhere-from everywhere-as leaves lashed and retreated and tendrils groped uncertainly in darkness. "What treachery is this? Does Lathi send out her Termen to steal my tender leaves under cover of night? Speak, I say!"

Wild-eyed the dreamers stared about in leafy gloom, and in another moment strong tendrils had found them and snatched them up like bobbins on threads, passing them higher and higher into the tree's heart.

Suddenly Hero discovered one of his arms to be free and he whipped out his curved sword. Eldin heard the hiss of his friend's blade unsheathing and saw its gleam in a stray beam of moonlight Even as they were rushed aloft he called out: "Stay your hand, lad, or you'll doom us all. It's a long way down if he drops us! Besides, he won't harm us. At least-"

"You don't think so!" Hero breathlessly finished it for him.

And a second later all three adventurers were dumped without ceremony into the crotch of a great branch a thousand feet above the ground ...