Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Annals of the Chosen 01 (14 page)

And he knew that just
as he had felt the wrongness of the place,
it
had felt something of
him.
He
could
not have explained how he knew, but he did.

The
oak knew he was there, he was sure of it—it must have sensed his magic.

He
looked up, trying to see how much farther he had to go, and saw that he had
somehow veered from the guide's path, toward the great oak—the oak he could now
see was twisted and bent, despite its size. Its house-thick trunk was distorted
by bulging growths, its limbs crooked and spiraling; these abnormalities that
had been largely hidden by the canopy of healthy green leaves, but he was under
the leaves now
...

That
wasn't right. Why was he under the leaves, so close to the tree? The guide had
not ventured so near, and Breaker had certainly not
intended
to.

But
something was urging him even closer, drawing him in. The oak's
ler
was
pulling at him, closing its hold around his own
spirit.

He
slowed, and tried to turn his feet back toward the guide's track, clearly
marked by the line of crushed and scattered leaves his boots had left.

His
feet would not turn. The oak had hold of him. He struggled, trying to turn.

He
could not. Against his will, he was still placing one foot directly in front of
the other, walking toward the hideous tree.

He
could not turn, but he could slow his pace. He could not
stop,
though—he tried,
and his own legs refused to obey him. Dead leaves and distorted limbs filled
his sight and his mind, and even as he struggled to stop his movement forward
he could feel his own thoughts becoming twisted and somehow treelike.

At last, though he
could not stop, he stumbled,
and the dry snap of old bones breaking echoed in the unnatural stillness
beneath the great tree. One hand dropped toward the ground to steady him if he
fell, and the other hand closed instinctively on the hilt of his sword, as his
sack shifted awkwardly and almost fell from his shoulder.

Touching the grip of
the sword seemed to wake him, though he had had no awareness of being asleep;
the cold ferocity of the weapon's
ler
was like a rush of wind in his face, and he was
suddenly free again, able to turn h
is
steps and break into a flat-out run directly away from that hideous tree. His
booted feet sent clouds of crumbled leaf into the air, and scattered bits of
bone across the clearing; he ducked his head to avoid touching the lowest
branches.

And then the g
uide was beckoning him forward, out of the clearing
and into the shade of a towering ash, and the malign influence of the oak faded
from his mind like a warm breath vanishing in midwinter air, replaced by the
calm presence of the ash tree's sane, if disdainful, spirit. Breaker turned to
look back, and started to say, "I never
..."

The
guide pressed a finger to his lips and shook his other hand side to side,
indicating that he should not speak. Breaker snapped his mouth shut and nodded,
and the two men proceeded in silence, under the ash and on into the forest
beyond.

Breaker could sense
the
ler
of every tree
they passed, and they were all
different;
in Mad Oak the trees were cooperative parts of a
greater whole, but out here they were all individuals, pres
sing close to one another but caring for nothing
but themselves. Breaker would have liked to slow down and take time to feel
their spirits, to see how this strange wilderness worked, but the guide was
hurrying him on.

At last, when they
were safely clear
of the oppressive atmosphere
of the Mad Oak, the guide said, "I thought you were one of the
Chosen."

"I
am," Breaker said, glancing up at the sunlight in the leaves overhead.

"Shouldn't
you have greater resistance to magic than that, then? That's the closest I've
come to losing a customer in the past ten years. I didn't bother giving you any
feathers or casting a spell because I assumed your magic would protect you. It
should
have protected
you; it protected the Old Swordsman well enough when he came north
. Going south with me he used feathers, of course,
and a talisman, but he said he'd never needed them when he was one of the Chosen."

"I'm
sorry," Breaker said, lowering his gaze. "I'm new at it. I didn't
know how to use my magic to protect myself. The tr
ee's spell broke when I touched my sword, though,
so I think I
...
It did help. Being
Chosen."

"It
shouldn't have gotten a hold on you in the first place. Maybe you should wear a
feather after all
..."
He reached
for his pack.

"I'll
be fine," Breaker said, holding up a hand. If the Chosen were supposed to
be immune to the hostile
ler
on the road, then he would play that part, he would
focus himself on his sword and talisman and not use the magic-blocking
feathers the Uplanders sold. Maybe assuming it was tru
e would make it so—and if not, he had the guide to
save him.

"If
you ever have to fight the Wizard Lord, I hope you do better," the guide
said.

"So
do I," Breaker said, looking back at the Mad Oak with a shudder. Then he
squared his shoulders, straightened his sack, and marched onward at the guide's
heel.

A
few moments later he asked, "If the Mad Oak is so dangerous, why do you
take this route? Isn't there any other path to Greenwater?"

"The
others are worse."

Breaker
opened his mouth, then closed it again. "Oh," he said at last.

The Mad Oak was the
worst of the hazards they encountered, but by no means the only one, and their
route detoured around several areas the guide said made the oak seem like a
mere game. Even as they made their way through the fore
st along the supposedly safe paths, vines twisted
around Breaker's feet, hostile eyes watched him from the shadows, branches
whipped at his face—he began to see, he thought, why the guide wore that
leather coat.

But when he looked at
the guide, somehow not
hing seemed to be
bothering him—even as branches slashed at Breaker's arms, they seemed to move
aside for the guide. Breaker remarked on this.

"They know
me," the guide said. "I've made my peace with them. And they know
this coat will protect me, too. They
might well do far worse to you if I weren't with you, or if you had no magical
protection—as it is, you might have a slap or a scratch here and there, but
nothing that will leave a permanent mark. If you weren't one of the Chosen and
tried to make this trip alone, you might not make it to Greenwater alive."

"But
they don't touch you at
 
all!

"They
know me," the guide repeated.

"So
you're a priest of this road, then? You speak to the
ler,
and
treat with them?"

"I'm
no priest. I don't know any secret tongues. I speak with some of the
ler
along my route, the
ones that deign to understand human words, and I know which to avoid entirely,
but there are no compacts or covenants, no cooperation between them. I don't
know their true names, I can't tell them what to
do, who to let pass—if you seriously anger them, I can't save you. These are
wild ler,
boy,
every one for itself, not a peaceful little community like your town of Mad
Oak."

A
dry twig snapped beneath Breaker's foot, and the sharp broken end leapt
up
to slash at his shin; he winced, though
the scratch did not break the skin or draw blood. "I see that," he
said.

'This
is what most of the world is like, you know—wild and uninhabited." "I
know."

"You
mean you've been told that; you won't
know
it until you've
seen
more of the wild."

Breaker
knew better to argue with such a statement.

"So
without you, Mad Oak and Greenwater would be cut off from each other?"

"Oh,
there would still be other routes, but it would be a long way around—maybe a
very
long
way."

"Do
you have an apprentice, then?"

"No.
Your townsfolk might want to think about that."

That
was another statement that Breaker did not care to reply to. Instead he asked,
"What's Greenwater like? I mean, I've heard stories about it all my life,
but I've never been there."

The guide shrugged.
"It's a town. A hundred families or so. They mostly eat fish and berries,
and do some fine woodwork, and they make wine rather than beer. They have
priests who deal with the
ler
so the crops will grow and the fish will stay in
the nets, same as any other town. And they have one priestess, who runs the
place."

"I've heard that
their priests live underwater." He had actually heard that they could
turn into fish, but he decided to start with the more believable part of the
tale
.

The guide snorted.
"No, they live
in
the water much of the time, but not
under
it—they can't breathe water any more than we can,
and they'd freeze in the winter, and no, they aren't part fish, they're men
like any other. But it's true that Greenwater's m
ost powerful
ler
are in the lake, the soul of the village is the
lake, and the priests spend hours standing in water up to their chests, coaxing
favors from the water
ler."

"I've
never seen a lake."

"Then
look over there." The guide pointed ahead and to the right.

Breaker
looked.

When
not dodging supernatural hazards their path had led them more or less along a
ridgetop for a distance of several miles, but the surrounding trees had blocked
most of the view; now, though, as Breaker looked where the guide pointed, the
ground fell away steeply ahead of them, and through gaps in the trees he could
glimpse the far side of the valley.

Except the valley was
far wider than it should be, and its far side more distant than Breaker had
thought possible—it seemed as distant as the Eastern Cliffs. He had been to the
ridgetop in Mad Oak many times, and had looked out across the wilderness of
Greenvale to the next ridge, and it had been much, much closer than this,
closer than the northeastern side of Longvale. Here it was
so distant it seemed hazy. The trees on that
distant ridge were merely an uneven green blur.

"Down
there," the guide said.

Breaker's
gaze dropped to the valley floor ahead of them, and he saw the lake, a vast
blue-green splotch gleaming in the afternoon sun—Greenwater's water was indeed
greenish, though not the vivid verdigris color he had always imagined it. It
was closer to the dull green of a spruce tree.

"Oh," he
said. The sheer size of the lake was overwhelming. It was many times as broad
as the Lo
ngvale River was anywhere
in sight of Mad Oak. The bargemen said the river grew much wider to the north,
toward its mouth in the icy seas, but Breaker had never been sure whether they
were telling the truth or just spinning yarns to amuse the townsfolk—and even if
the stories were true, Breaker had never seen that. He had never imagined that
as much water as he saw down in the valley below could be in anything but the
ocean.

"We
should be there in an hour or so," the guide said. "Oh," Breaker
said again.

Then
he began pointing, and asking confused fragments of questions, and the guide
took pity on him and explained as they began picking their way cautiously down
the surprisingly steep southern side of the ridge.

"Not all the
valleys in this part of Barokan
are
nice and straight like Longvale or Shadowvale," he said. "Greenvale
is almost triangular—it's wide here and narrows sharply to the northwest. If
we'd gone the other way along the ridgetop, toward Ashgrove, you'd have seen it
narrow down to nothing, and this ridge we're on merges with the next. North of
that it wouldn't be Greenvale over there at all, it would be Deepvale."