Wrath-Bearing Tree Read online

  At first, as he closed with the moving lights, he was disappointed. It was just a woman, her eyes enchanted to help her see as she travelled the dark woods. She had red hair and a hawklike nose, and the general air of one of those-who-know, the confraternity of sorcerous knowledge. This made her dangerous: one of those few who were likely to understand what Vesper was and how to stop him. There was something else odd about her, though, so Vesper (for lack of anything better to do) followed her for a while, keeping what he hoped was a safe distance.

  She began to stumble and waver as she loped along. Perhaps she was drunk, Vesper thought. (He’d never been drunk himself, but he had often eaten the unprotected lives of drunken men and women.) Or she might be sick. Once he had eaten the delirium-laden life of a fevered child; it had been an interesting experience.

  Eventually she sat right down in the yttern-track she had been following. She unhitched the wallet swinging from her belt and scrabbled for something in it. As Vesper watched warily, she brought forth a wax tablet and a stylus. She tapped the stylus on the wooden frame of the tablet, and its tip began to glow. She hastily scribbled some words onto the waxy surface; they glowed slightly in the darkness.

  Eventually the stylus and the tablet fell from her slack fingers. The light in her eyes died, and she fell over as if she’d been struck with a hammer.

  What was happening now? At first it looked as if the woman were melting, like snow in sunlight. Then he saw that a new form was being imposed on the woman. Now she was much taller, her body thicker in some places, thinner in others, her hair paler. And there was another change, something he could just catch with his fugitive shadow senses: a different flavor, a different scent.

  The truth hit him then. This woman was a pair of twins, sharing a single body. He knew, better than anyone, that what most call substance is merely the unstable form given by the shadow that is true life. When one sister dominated, her shadow gave form to the body’s substance.

  He had heard a rumor of a creature like this, in the mind of someone he had eaten. The tale said that the Two Powers who ruled in Tychar would give a great bounty for something so trivial as a vial of this one’s blood.

  Vesper was charmed. How lucky he had been to find her (or them)! What an addition they would make to the pandemonium of monstrous shadows he was collecting! What a complex and interesting shadow-life there would be, with two spiritual essences competing for the control of one body! He could hardly wait to taste it. And if he could please entities as powerful as the Two Powers with the remains, so much the better.

  He would not wait: now, when she was still disoriented from the change, was the best time to strike.

  He approached her tentatively through the shadows. These were deep and dark enough to be dangerous to him, so he picked his way carefully among them. His shadow-tendrils were fully extended to grip and feed.

  Hope Nimuelle awoke from infinite darkness to a darkness that was slightly less intense. Blinking, she took in the night-deep shadows, edged with moonlight, the dark shapes of the trees.

  Ambrosia! she groaned within. Where have you dragged me to now?

  There was, of course, no answer. Ambrosia was as thoroughly eclipsed now as Hope had been until a few moments ago.

  Hope glanced around. Ambrosia wasn’t the best of all possible sisters, but she did try to leave Hope a clue or two as to where she found herself on awakening. (Hope naturally did the same for her, when she could.)

  Almost immediately she found the note on the wax tablet, its letters still glowing in the shadows. The note said:

  Hope,

  I’m sorry to say that you find yourself about an hour’s run into the western edge of the Skarsl Woods. I’ve been travelling to the Vale of Vraid in the center of the woods, if you know where that is. You should be able to reach it by morning, if you hurry. If you are in any doubt, head back to the western edge of the forest. In any case, get out of the forest by dawn.

  I have filled a focus with sunlight and stashed it in the wallet. Make use of it as you see fit. The focus is sealed with the rune of the Open Fist.

  Your sister,

  Ambrosia Viviana

  P.S. Situations like this might be avoided if you would show up at regular intervals!

  A.V.

  Hope was genuinely dismayed. The Skarsl Woods were a bad place to be, by night or day, and she was nothing like the warrior and witch that her sister was. She was tempted to run back westward, as her sister had hinted that she should do, as fast as possible. Still, Ambrosia must have had some reason for wanting to get to the Vale of Vraid, and Hope had been there before. Perhaps she should risk going forward. If worst came to worst, she could probably find a cave to hide in during the day: there were a good many of them in the rolling hills over which the forest had grown up.

  She was also genuinely annoyed. She had often appealed to her sister (via notes) to set up some regular schedule, by which they could both share their single life on an equitable basis. Ambrosia had always refused. She repressed Hope until her strength to do so failed, and that was why Hope displaced her at irregular intervals. Hope was inclined to write her a stinging note to this effect on the wax tablet, then decided it could wait.

  The decision saved her life. She angrily shoved the tablet and the stylus into the wallet. This pushed aside the vekka-cloth covering the focus, which winked at her with a dark gleam. She lifted it out and held it in her hand speculatively. Perhaps she should test the focus, to make sure she could release light from the thing.

  Standing, she held the spherelike focus of power in front of her and spoke the rune of the Open Fist. The rune glowed briefly in the center of the sphere; she found herself in rapport with the power of the focus and, yes, it was hot with unshed light. She experimented with it, releasing a faint reddish sunset glow from the focus.

  She was shocked to see a gray shadowy form like a mandrake standing before her. Like a mandrake . . . but from its chest extended half a dozen shadowy tendrils ending in toothless maws. Their function seemed tolerably obvious. And they were pointed at her.

  She had only a moment to choose. She meditated drawing the short stabbing sword that Ambrosia favored . . . but she doubted a material weapon would do any good. This creature seemed no more substantial than a shadow as it stood there, agonized in the light.

  No. Not in the light. From the light.

  Hope raised the focus over her head with both hands and cried aloud, renewing the rune of the Open Fist. She felt it burn in both her eyes as a day’s worth of sunlight was released in a single moment from the focus. She directed the searing wave of light at the creature’s chest, blasting its tendrils and throwing it back screaming soundlessly in agony.

  A dead tree behind it burst into flame, and it fled into the red shadows, its mandrake form ragged with damage.

  Hope scooped up the wallet from the ground and hitched it to her belt. She ran along the yttern-track, often stumbling in the dark, heedless of other dangers, thinking only of escape from the shadow beast.

  Had she killed it? Certainly not outright; it had been moving under its own power as it disappeared into the fiery shadows. Perhaps it was mortally wounded; she had no idea what that would mean for this sort of creature . . . or even if it was mortal. Ambrosia would know, but she didn’t. Ambrosia might know how to fight the thing if it returned, but she didn’t.

  Hope stopped short. She had only one weapon to wield against the shadow-thing: her sister Ambrosia. She hated to relinquish awareness: even this deadly danger was preferable to oblivion, and she knew that if Ambrosia ever found a way, she would suppress her forever. But Hope couldn’t let that stop her from doing what was right for both of them.

  She sat with her back to a tree and pulled out the glowing stylus and wax tablet. Wiping off Ambrosia’s message, she wrote:

  Dear Ambrosia—

  It is the same night as it was. As I tested the light in the focus, I found I was being stalked by some sort of shadow-demon in the f
orm of a mandrake. I released all the light and damaged it greatly, but I fear it is not dead. This task is clearly yours to do, but I am sorry to thrust it on you.

  Love,

  Hope Nimuelle

  P.S. I think I made a mistake in throwing all the light at it. It seemed to be immobilized by the first faint light I sent out. Only after the great wave of light passed did it seem able to move again. If you can summon up more light, perhaps you can trap it again.

  H.N.

  Hope gripped the message in her hand and threw herself into oblivion, summoning up her sister.

  Sun-colored chaos! Destruction! Death! They swept over Vesper, immobilized by the red sunset light of the woman’s focus. Much of what he had been was blown into nothingness by that deadly light, and he feared it was the end. For the first time in his long hungry existence, he feared.

  Then the terrible light had passed and he could move of his own will again. He staggered back and dissolved into the fluttering red shadows about the burning tree. Safe! Safe!

  He greedily ate the shadows of all the animal life around him: the rats, startled from sleep by the wave of light, owls and bats, stunned by the noon-bright blast, crooked dryad-beasts, dwelling within their tree-shells, serpents cowering in their lairs.

  As his strength returned, his fear faded. In its place came another new emotion, the converse of fear: anger. That woman had hurt him, scattering his monstrous dreams and blowing him in pieces. But he was still alive, and he would make her pay. Yes: she would pay!

  Now he turned again to attack: with the shambling gate of a dryad beast, the needle-toothed maws of a thousand rats and snakes, the dark wings of owls and bats, the myriad staring eyes of nocturnal beasts. He was a legion of the night. He would find the woman. He would eat her shadows. He would kill her. He would kill both of her. This woman who could not understand that she was Vesper’s prey would know it at last.

  He found her running through the thickest part of the woods, the yttern-track long abandoned. She had changed, again, to the red-haired sister with glowing eyes. That was good: it made her easier to track through the dark woods.

  But some of those woods were very dark! Vesper paused, concerned. He could move easily through shadow, but direct light or full darkness were both dangerous to him.

  Still, both of the major moons were high overhead; there was some tracery of shadow on nearly every part of the forest floor tonight. And the woman seemed to be headed south, toward the foothills where the forest petered out. He would risk following her. He would risk anything rather than let this prey go unpunished. And she had already passed out of sight.

  Vesper oozed his chimera form along a silver track of shadows. He could not take the straight reckless path into the dark the woman had taken, but he could move more quickly than she could, and he expected her to come back into sight soon.

  She didn’t, though. He saw no sign of her anywhere.

  Vesper went toward the darkest part of the wood, guessing she was hiding from him there. It was a good guess, but he could still find no trace of her. He exerted all the sharp shadowy senses of his verminous selves, circling slowly among the deeper shadows.

  Suddenly, he caught a flash of dim blue light: the woman’s eyes. There!

  The gleam of blue shone out clearly from the depths of a cave whose entrance was shadowed by a stand of trees.

  Several of his shadowy ratlike heads nodded in rueful appreciation. In the whole forest, perhaps, there was no place to him as dangerous as this, at least while night lasted. Inside the cave was darkness as complete as could be found outside a buried coffin.

  Except for her eyes. Their light was too dim to do him harm, but they did give enough light to create a faint path of shadow he could safely travel. He could leap down it and plant his tendrils in her before she was aware of it.

  Of course, if he killed her there, her eyes would close and he would die in the cave’s darkness. But he thought he could drain her of volition without killing her, and then compel her body to walk out of the cave. Then he could finish feeding on her in safety.

  It was risky. But he was willing to take any risk in order to capture and kill this elusive, infuriating prey.

  His amorphous twisted body followed his thought and leapt into the cave mouth, charging down the dim path of bluish shadow.

  He was well into the cave, several lengths of his body, when he slammed into a barrier. The eyes still seemed to be many feet away. Yet they weren’t . . . they peered glassily at him from the barrier. As he leaned toward them, his own shadowy form impinged painfully on their light.

  Slowly, too slowly, Vesper understood. The barrier was the wet earthy wall of the cave itself. And the eyes . . . were just reflections of eyes in a mirror, set in the cave-wall.

  Vesper turned and saw the woman standing, watching him, several yards before the cave-mouth. She was just a darkness in the darkness, except for her luminous eyes. He leapt toward her, but as soon as he began to move she shut her eyes. The darkness of the lightless cave fell down on him like a ton of black stones.

  The last thing he heard was the woman’s laughter, darker than the darkness that was killing him.

  Ambrosia Viviana kept her eyes clenched shut, waiting for the monster to die. If her guess was right, total darkness would be as deadly to its shadowy frame as direct light. Eventually she heard a slight sigh as the subtle body of the shadow beast dissolved into the surrounding darkness. She kept her eyes shut for a long time afterward: in case it was a trick; in case it was a trap. There were so many traps in the world, and she had to face them all alone. She was almost used to it, now.

  Presently she turned away and resumed walking eastward, with the one person she could trust trapped by the oblivion within her.

  A dark narrow ship—Sammark, out of the Wardlands—was sailing up the Kaenish coast when fiery stones fell out of the night to batter it. Sailors threw water on the flames, which splashed back at them, burning, and they ran away, screaming, and plunged over the rails and sank into the dark cold sea, still burning.

  Morlock Ambrosius (turned out of his cabin by the noise) ran forward groggily, against the tide of burning sailors. He was hoping to quench the flames in some other way: he knew something about the magic of fire. But by then the hungry flames had gnawed deep into the vitals of the ship: it broke in half and sank. The shock of the craft’s death threw Morlock clear, and by the time he managed to get his spluttering head above water the broken Sammark could be seen, burning in several parts, deep beneath the surface of the sea.

  Chance had saved Morlock, rather than any skill in swimming. He managed to keep afloat and keep moving and was therefore lucky enough to find himself, at dawn, crawling on his hands and knees along the rocky coast of Kaen, vomiting up an astonishing amount of seawater.

  Of course, this was the upside (dead men do not vomit). But on the downside, there he was in Kaen: friendless, armorless, weaponless, shoeless (he had kicked off his early in the nocturnal swim). Kaen, where men and women of Morlock’s nation were routinely killed for sport in the arena. Kaen, land of dark magics where evil subterranean gods protected the people and demanded a fearful price in return. Kaen, where cruelty was a religion and intrafamilial murder was considered the highest form of art.

  “Eh. I wonder what their shoes are like?” Morlock muttered. The downside would not have seemed so very depressing if he’d had some shoes: the ragged coast of Kaen was carpeted with bitterly sharp rocks. In the end, he took off his shirt, soaked it in seawater and tore it into strips to bind his feet with them like bandages. It wasn’t enough: blood was soaking through the makeshift pads as he walked. The blood caused the wet cloth to seethe with steam, a minor discomfort he was used to. His blood was dense with latent fire: that was part of the heritage of Ambrosius.

  It was safer for him on the coast. Except for certain religious purposes, any use of the sea was illegal in Kaen. But, “I’ll never make it home this way,” Morlock observed to his bloody fee
t (who were telling him the same thing without words). He took one last hungry look at the western horizon. There lay the blue spiky line of the Grartan Mountains, the eastern edge of the Wardlands: home, for Morlock. But he couldn’t get there from here; he’d have to take the long way overland, northward through the Gap of Lone. And his feet could not stand any more of these stones. He turned his back on the west, the sea, the bitter black rocks and home, and walked into the hateful land of Kaen.

  He found a track of smoothed stones that soon turned into a full-fledged road. There he came across something he had been expecting: a bloodstained shrine for one of the Kaenish gods. What he had not expected was that it would be desecrated: the ratlike face was split more or less in half so that one of its eyes stared up into the sky while another peered down at the earth, and the broken bloodstained mouth wore a crooked loser’s grin.

  “Hah!” said Morlock, who had no love for any of the brutal blood-drinking gods of Kaen. It looked as if something had overturned their cruel worship in these parts. Morlock walked along more cheerfully, in spite of his wounded feet.

  After a while Morlock came upon a woman walking along the road in the opposite direction. Sort of walking: she stumbled along blithely to the side of the road, tripped over that, laughed politely (as at a joke she didn’t understand), and stumbled away to the other side of the road where she did the same. The general trend of her walking was toward Morlock, though. When she was quite close, she saw him.

  “You!” she cried in Kaenish. “You! You! You! You are happy, happy and bright?”

  Kaenish was one of the seven languages which Morlock’s foster-father had made him learn, and he knew it pretty well. But he could hardly understand this woman’s slurring speech; she seemed to have something wrong with her mouth. And perhaps something wrong with her mind as well: her feverish eyes focused on him intently, as if it were a matter of life and death that he was happy, happy and bright.