Exandu puffed and heaved out a sigh. “My back! I ache all over! Get out the map and let us see exactly where we are.”
Ornol shook out the map and we crowded around.
This famous map, we learned, started it all. From the moment it came into Exandu’s possession — he was vague on the exact details, merely mumbling about red gold and slit throats — it set the fire of avarice alight. Exandu’s dealings with Strom Ornol brought that young dandy in. Fregeff was known to Exandu, as was the Clawsang, Skort. The Pachak, Kalu Na-Fre, had joined them in a tavern one night when the place burned down and he had been useful in extricating a terrified Exandu. So we had joined the party, and we were all devoted to finding the treasures, and the map pointed the way.
The bandits must have amassed great treasures. They had been put down by King Crox. Alive or dead, he could be dealt with. Queen Mab, too, was missing. No news was good news. I know that Ornol envisaged walking into the bandit lair and kicking rotting bodies aside to fling open their treasure chests and help himself.
Fregeff shook his flail at the lake, and repeated, “The water is evil. You may approach. I shall go the longer way.”
Exandu looked longingly at the short open way, and the dimness of the circuit. He shook his head mournfully.
“You put a poor sufferer in a great quandary. My aching feet will never carry me all the way around; yet if we venture across the center—”
“I am going,” snapped Ornol. “I shall wait for you at the far side of the clearing.”
The map indicated four of these clearings with a central lake. The accuracy of the map was open to question. The paper was rough, thick and coarse-grained, much tattered on the edges, burned here and there, and with rusty brown stains adding a decorative touch. The outlines of the river, lake and hills were sharp enough, and the cross near the center seemed to sit up and beg for attention. That was the lure.
The map folded up along worn creases. I wondered why Exandu allowed Ornol to carry the precious parchment.
The strom started off, long-legged, spry, striding out over the cleared area. He called back, harshly and imperiously: “Ilsa!”
Instantly, the girl ran out to follow.
With some hesitations, the guards and porters followed.
The Clawsang took a fresh hitch to his belt, drew one of his swords, gestured to his people, and followed.
The Pachak looked at Exandu.
“Go on, go on, good Kalu,” wheezed Exandu. “I shall struggle across after you. Somehow.” He put out his hand and at once Shanli was there, tall and dignified, and with his hand on her shoulder, bitterly complaining about his poor aching bones, Exandu waddled off.
Fregeff lowered his bronzen flail. “And you?”
“I think, master sorcerer, and with no disrespect to you, that our duty lies with the ladies and the main party.”
“Then may Destinakon have you in his keeping.”
Fregeff gestured to his people, and set off to edge around the clearing.
Seg looked me in the face, half-frowning, and I nodded my head, peaceably, and so we set off after the others.
The ground was covered with myriad gouges, like the imprints of a shovel, laid into the soft spongy soil. The dents overlapped and ran in no ordered pattern. Water glimmered in some of them. We followed along the drier parts.
At the border of the lake Ornol did not pause, but pressed on. The water held a dank oily scum on its surface, and rainbow hues broke blisteringly from the coils. Nothing moved in the lake; only our own onward progress changed the spectrum from each ridge of oily scum. The twin Suns burned down. The air hung flat and humid. We labored on.
When we reached the far edge of the clearing and the hard line of dark green, we stopped, and waited, and presently, panting with the effort, Fregeff joined us.
No one — not even the usually insensitive Ornol — said anything to the sorcerer.
He said, “Why does nothing grow in the clearing?”
Before anyone got up the effort needed to think of an answer, the Fristle went on: “I will tell you. The water is evil. It poisons the ground.”
That seemed all too probable.
On that somber thought we all plunged once more into the jungle.
Two more clearings were passed in like fashion, the party having skirted the lake at the center waiting for Fregeff at the far end. When we reached the fourth clearing with the heat of the Suns declining and the green dimness in the forest darker by contrast to the streaming mingled light out in the open area, Seg said, “Three out of four. Good odds. But — four out of four?”
“Fifty-fifty, I suppose, still.”
“Fregeff?”
The sorcerer did not shake his flail. His cat face looked exhausted, the whiskers drooping. He was no worse off than the others — all bar Strom Ornol.
“The evil I sensed in the waters of the other lakes is absent here.”
“So there is no problem, no hindrance,” shouted Ornol.
He started off at once, over the indentations in the mud. His figure looked hard and arrogant, lively, forceful. He led on, and his people with the lady Ilsa followed. He half-turned to shout back: “Come on, come on. We will camp at the far side.”
As the porters and guards moved forward, leaving the shelter of the trees and plodding on over the cleared ground, Seg started to follow. I said, “Wait, Seg.”
Fregeff turned to me.
“Why do you fear where there is no evil?”
“Why? Perhaps because you have not given your opinion?”
The Fristle sorcerer stepped out onto the mud. He was careful to step on the ridges between the indentations.
“I can tell that there is no evil in the lake. That is all.”
The members of the party had by this time advanced some distance across the clearing in the waning light. We followed. The indentations, like the blows of spades, flat into the earth, appeared sharper, less eroded than in the three previous clearings. Here and there a few small green shoots showed, fragile plants growing up along the ridges between impression and impression. There had been nothing growing in the first three clearings.
Here and there, too, lay casual scatterings of bleached bones.
Seg cocked an eye at me. We loosened the swords in our scabbards, unsure, uneasy, quivering against the onset of a dread that should not exist.
As we neared the water we could see the surface was crystal clear and sparkling where it was not covered by broad lily pads, blue-green and velvet with lushness in the low-lying light.
Strom Ornol strode on. At his side the lady Ilsa struggled bravely to keep up. The porters bent under their loads. The guards looked about, white of eye, and their heads turned this way and that as though under imminent attack from the air. The Pachak openly drew his swords. The Clawsang copied him. A sweet and intrusive scent gusted from the lake. The lily pads floated silently.
When I spoke to the sorcerer, my voice was hushed.
“No evil, Fregeff?”
“No evil of a supernatural kind that I can tell.”
“There is
something
wrong with this place.” Seg pulled his bow off his shoulder, the stave lay clenched in his left hand. He lifted his right to draw an arrow — and the surface of the lake boiled.
Lily pads swirled wildly away. From the sparkling water enormously long stems flailed. Dozens of them, bunched and thrashing, they heaved from the water, scattering glinting drops, slashing frenziedly at the members of the party.
At the tip of each flailing stem a bloated flowerlike object smashed down, hard, splitting into the earth, splashing mud in gouts, leaving spade-like indentations.
A Gon guard was smashed into jelly.
The people screamed. They were running, some fell and were squashed. Blood oozed into the mud. The hammer-hard flower heads flailed at us, lashed down, smashed into the earth with soggy deadly smacks, driving deep gouges into the mud.
I drew my sword and, raving, leaped forward.
Concerning a Distortion of Reality
Seg leaped alongside, bow thrust back over his shoulder, sword in fist. We burst past Fregeff, who was looping up his bronze chain around the little shoulder-perching reptile. His bronze flail clashed.
Shoulder to shoulder, Seg and I drove forward into the flailing forest of lashing stems. The plate-like mangling flower heads swung with tremendous force. The stink of disturbed mud filled our nostrils, till we gagged.
With ferocious slashes, we cut and hacked at the stems as they swooped near. They were sinewy, not easy to hack through, and from the gashes opened by our swords a thick and slimy brown ooze dribbled.
The screams of the terrified people racketed on never-endingly. Through the whirlwind of stems and the looping darting rock-hard flower-heads we glimpsed Strom Ornol, hacking and slashing. The other members of the party fought back. The porters reacted differently, each according to his race. Some dropped to their knees to pray and were so squashed into the mud. Others put their heads down and ran. Others hefted their bundle or bale and tried to beat off the terrible plants. Most of these, too, were squashed.
Seg pelted on before me, incensed, head up, his sword blurring. He lopped a plant stem clean through, catching it near the head where it was thinner and more tender. He scooped up Shanli in his left arm. He made loud squelching noises as he ran.
Following on as fast as I could I saw Ornol flailing away, and the lady Ilsa hanging to his left arm, hampering him and yet gaining protection from her nearness. She, I judged, would be safer with Ornol than if I attempted to snatch her. Ornol would as lief take a swipe at me, a suddenly appearing attacker in the corner of his eye, as at a plant.
Sword flailing above my head in ghastly parody of the plant stems flailing at us, I ranged up alongside Seg and Shanli. Exandu was just about done for. His face bloated scarlet. His eyes stood out. Yet he was bashing away with a heavy curved single-edged sword. He used it with a cunning skill, and all the time he bashed at the plant sterns, he was maintaining a high-pitched catalog of all the complaints besieging his poor abused body.
“Aid me, Dray the Bogandur! Help a poor old fellow who—”
“You appear to be doing well enough,” I shouted, sliding and almost going over. “I’ll stay with you. Run!”
Then a damned hard-edged flower whistled down at my head. It was useless to stand up to them and cut through the stem. If you did that the head would simply fly straight on and bash you. You had to duck and weave and slash cunningly, avoiding the blows.
“They can’t see us!” bellowed Seg. “Yet they strike with uncanny accuracy.”
“Magic,” said Shanli, under Seg’s arm. “It is sorcerers’ work.”
Puffing and bloated, Exandu slashed along with a will with companions to protect his side.
“No magic — Shanli, my treasure. They strike at noise.”
I had to say it, for I was annoyed with myself.
“There is no noise of bottles and glasses, or of people having a good time. It seems these things have no need of enticing us.”
“We were — fool enough — to come near them.”
The terror and confusion persisted. We had a long way to go. The impressions of the murderous flower heads reached everywhere in the clearing. There was no safety until we reached the hostile jungle.
We lost good men. Mere squashed red puddles, they had to be left as we fought to escape. Even the bundles they carried had to be left. Swishing our swords, taking more care to strike exactly, leaving a trail of decapitated flower heads, we labored on toward the far side of the clearing, for that was the nearest now. I thought to glance back.
The Fristle sorcerer stood stock still. The volschrin clung like a scaled polished statue. His hood was thrown back. His strong cat face was upturned. He did not move; he made no sound — and the devilish killer plants ignored him.
I gasped for a breath.
“Exandu! Stand still. Do not move, do not make a sound.”
When he understood, he stopped running. His body shook. Sweat ran thickly down his cheeks. Seg stopped, too, grasping Shanli. We all stood, swords poised, staring about, using our sight, the weapon we had that could trump the killer plants.
The stems wreathed and writhed above our heads, the blind flowers seeking prey. Those stems flailing and lashing at our party continued to do so. We breathed short, watching as more men were felled into red puddles. The stems left us alone. We breathed easier, getting our breath —
And Exandu sneezed.
Instantly two plant heads uncoiled and swished down at the source of the sound.
Seg chopped one, and I chopped the other.
He raised his eyebrows at me. I knew what he meant.
“By the Veiled Froyvil, my old dom!” he was saying silently. “How long are we to stand here like a couple of loons?”
I didn’t know. Once Exandu got his breath back — we’d run. Our squelching progress through the muck would alert the killer plants, and down they would swoop.
Fregeff lifted his flail. He lifted the bronze links silently. He looked proud, defiant, the recipient of powers that would blast a lesser man. The whiskers of his catlike face bristled.
He shook the flail.
Above the diminishing screams of the running people and the ghastly swishing sounds made by the killer plants, we in our pool of petrified silence heard the bronzen links of the flail clash together.
Rearing from the crystal waters of the lake, pushing the velvet lily pads aside, swooping out at any sound to smash their victims flat, the pallid stems swayed toward Fregeff. The wizard shook the flail again.
The blind flower heads above him, their edges hard and square, drew back. They wilted. They writhed, and now they writhed as though caught in an open flame. Swiftly, they withdrew, coiled, disappeared beneath the waters of the lake. It was as if, through the agency of his flail the wizard had told them to turn tail, yield, flee...
Again the sorcerer shook the flail of the Scourging of San Destinakon.
The chiming sounded sweetly in our ears, yet, in all truth, it was a sound of utmost horror.
The wizard emitted no brilliant gust of flame and fire, no bolt of lightning, such as the incandescent bolts with which the sorcerer’s Quern of Gramarye was formed. And we knew the power came not only from Fregeff and not only from the flail; the thaumaturgy boiled from the conjunction of the two. Invisibly, the power smote a circle of clarity among the swooping pallid killer plants.