The Lady's Man (38 page)

Chapter Twenty Five.

Three days later the rangers finally made it down from the plateau into the lowlands, and all of them were grateful for the sight of the forest in front of them. In the end they were elves and the forests were their home. They felt safe in them. And on the plateau where so much of it was open to the sky and there weren't a lot of trees, they didn't feel safe. Not when there was a dead wizard somewhere out there who could kill them all in a heartbeat.

To add to their woes they had only five horses for the nine of them. Genivere had sent out a call through her magic, but some of the horses had been too far away to respond. So most of them were sharing horses, something that would have been less of a problem if they'd had saddles and bridles. But with no saddles and therefore no stirrups, loosely tied halters made of woven reeds, and two of them on each horse, if they had to flee the chances were that many of them would fall off and the horses would be slowed. Luckily they hadn't had to flee so far.

The dead wizard it seemed had gone, and there weren't many predators on the plateau.

But as they'd followed the gently sloping land of long grass and wild flowers down towards the forest, Genivere had started to worry about what lay ahead. She'd begun to realise that the forest wasn't quite as it should be. But it took a while for her to realise just how wrong it was.

“Blessed Mother!”

Genivere was shocked when they finally made it down the pass from the plateau and she could see clearly all that was wrong with the forest. From the distance things had looked strange; the greenery less green than it should have been, the air for some reason hazy, and she'd worried that the forest they would find would be damaged in some way. But up close she could see that it was worse than she'd guessed. Far worse.

The trees were wilting, dying in front of her. She could feel the sickness, the approach of death all around her. Worse she could see a blight spreading through them. It was some sort of rust, a brownish red stain slowly crawling its way up tree trunks and out onto the foliage, sucking the life out of the forest, tree by tree. It looked terrible, slimy and putrid, and she could even smell its disease. And it was everywhere. From the moment they entered the forest, she could see the trees all around, slowly changing colour, the rust creeping all over them, the healthy green disappearing beneath a clinging river of foetid disease that was eating away at them.

As one of dryad blood she had of course seen disease in trees before, and she had been taught the various cures. But this was different. First, because it was so vast – and she could feel the sickness spreading out ahead of her in every direction – but second and possibly worse, because it was affecting all the trees. Not just one variety, not just oaks or pines, ashes or redwoods, but all of them. The whole forest. Every tree. Even the small patches of scrubby bush surrounding them. That was something she'd never seen before, nor even heard of.

The haze though was more troubling because she knew what it was. It was the lingering smoke from fires that had raged out of control, and she could see the remains of burnt trees all around.

Fire was always a horror for a dryad, and something they watched very carefully. The thought of the forests, of their homes burning to the ground was a nightmare. Even more so for them than the elves. They didn't build houses in the manner of the humans and elves. They grew them, shaping the trees themselves to form the structures they needed. So if the forest burned so too did their homes.

But this time she knew it was the dryads themselves who had set the flames. They had tried to burn the disease out, which meant that every other curative they had at their disposal had failed. It was a sign of desperation. They had seen the disease spreading and been unable to stop it by any other means. But even worse than that, because there were more trees all around, and more rust covering them, she knew that it too had failed. Fire after fire had been set, and one by one they had burnt out the disease wherever they could to stop it spreading. And yet nowhere was there a sign that the rust had been stopped. Even the burnt out blackened stumps were covered with rust.

Clearly the disease was unnatural. She didn't know what it was, but she could feel the wrongness in it. Even diseases had their place in the world. But this had no place. In fact it reminded her of the undead in some way. A disease of living death slowly consuming everything in its path. That was something she had never before heard of. But she could see it happening in front of her.

It was like a festering wound on the land, and like all physicians Genivere knew that she had to understand the disease affecting her patient in order to cure it. That was going to require
knowledge she didn't have. Knowledge that she wasn't sure anyone had. Knowledge that she could only find in one place. In the forest itself.

The captain cleared her throat to ask the obvious questions, but stopped when she saw the look on Genivere's face. Genivere ignored her and the others as she prepared herself.

Then when she was ready, fearing what she would find but knowing that she had to understand this plague, Genivere let her thoughts reach out to the forest all around her. Immediately she discovered that as bad as things looked, they were actually worse. The rust – the disease – had extended beyond just the trees and bushes she could see with her eyes. It was actually beneath her feet, extending its way through the roots of the trees, reaching into and killing the very soil that supported life. If it wasn't stopped the land would never grow anything ever again, and if it spread too far, the people would starve. She already knew it was spreading. She could feel it reaching out slowly, clawing at the fresh growth all around, and slowly consuming it. A carpet of living death slowly smothering everything.

That was too much for her. Despite her best efforts she couldn't concentrate when she could feel that cold, clammy grip of death creeping towards her. She shuddered uncontrollably, her flesh reacting to the slimy disease as if it was crawling on her and not the trees. The feeling brought her quickly back to herself and after that she knew there was no way she could let her awareness flow back into the forest again. Not for a while anyway. Not until she was prepared to feel the touch of disease.

“What is this?”

The others had seen her return to the world and they were curious.

“Death.”

There was no other answer she could give. It was death; the death of the entire forest and maybe much more. But it wouldn't be enough for them and she tried to marshal her thoughts into some form of order.

“It's a disease of some sort. A plague that consumes the very essence of life. Almost like the stench of the undead. And it's spreading.”

“The dark wizard? Mayfall?”

For an answer Genivere just shrugged. It made sense in some way that it was him. After all that they'd seen, it would seem unlikely that two such impossible events so close together weren't linked in some way. But as to how he'd done it or why, she had no idea. Surely whatever he was, he needed to eat too, and this if it spread too far, would stop that happening.

“What do we do?”

At last someone asked a question she could at least answer, and Genivere was grateful for that.

“We find my grandmother's people. There's a copse a few leagues east of here called Sunnybrook. They can probably help us, give us food and shelter for a bit. They may know more about this blight. And they can probably also contact the elders at Hammeral, and tell them what's happened.”

That last was important now that so many of the eldest and wisest were making their home there. If anyone could come up with a plan, it would be them. It would have to be them.

But even as she suggested it Genivere was worried. Worried for them. This sort of disease so close to their copse must have brought them out here. They must have seen the destruction and acted. They were surely responsible for setting the fires. And if they'd run into Mayfall assuming that this was his handiwork, it would not have gone well for them.

“We should hurry.”

Chapter Twenty Six.

Sunnybrook was gone when they finally made it there. Not abandoned, not destroyed or burnt out but completely gone. Torn from the world as if by a giant hand, and what remained behind was nothing more than wreckage and dirt. Where once there had been giant stands of beautiful redwoods standing tall and proud, now all that remained were only holes in the ground, hundreds if not thousands of craters. Each one she knew was what was left after one of those magnificent trees had been ripped out of the good earth, roots and all, but as to what could do such a thing she had no idea. Nor did she have any idea as to where the people were. But she feared that knowledge.

There were no bodies at least. For that she was grateful. So hopefully they'd got away before whatever had happened had happened. But it was also possible that since they lived in those glorious trees, that many of them had simply been ripped loose from the ground with them, and she could see no sign of them either. All that remained were mounds of dirt and craters for as far as the eye could see, while here and there a few lonely patches of grass stood out. The only green in a landscape of death.

“What happened here?”

Genivere wished people would stop asking her questions like that. She had no answer to give them, and once more had to settle for shrugging. But then they asked an even worse question.

“So how much further is the copse?”

She turned to look at the soldier, realising he didn't understand, and maybe some of her pain showed on her face. Perhaps that was why he looked away hurriedly. Still she had to give voice to the awful truth. It had to be said.

“This is ...” She stopped in mid sentence and then corrected herself. “This was Sunnybrook.”

A town of several thousand dryads; gone without a trace. Men, women, children and their homes. Ripped from the world like a weed being pulled up by a gardener. She didn't want to say it. She didn't want to even think it.

For the longest time the others stared at her, and then again at what had once been a copse, and nothing was said. But they were all thinking the same thing. That the town had been destroyed and the people with it. It was a monstrous evil but then they had already met a dead wizard with impossible power and a black heart. They had watched him smash their comrade into a stone wall, no doubt killing him, and then they themselves had been hurled about like pebbles by the merest trace of his power. They had travelled through a forest being eaten by disease, and now they had found a destroyed town. It was just one more evil in a world full of darkness.

“Mayfall.”

The captain whispered his name on the wind, naming their enemy at least. But even if she was right, and as terrible as he was he might only be a part of the nightmare that assailed them, there was nothing they could do about him. He was simply too powerful.

No one answered her and the silence continued.

“We should ask the foretellers and farseers. If anyone can tell us of this wizard they can.”

Genivere thought for a while, and then some more before dismissing the idea. But in the end she still shook her head. “I don't know.”

The suggestion wasn't out of hand. Thus far the foretellers had been only somewhat reliable, but they were still the best hope they had of understanding what was happening in the world. Of how a dead wizard could be walking around, murdering their friends and destroying a town and perhaps starting a plague. They were the only hope in truth. But even if their words could have been trusted there was still a problem with asking them. They were fighting the plague of the undead, trying desperately to work out how the Dark One was doing what he was doing, and what his next move would be. Did they have time to wonder about a dead wizard no matter how powerful?

Unless of course Myral had been right and it might not be the great demon at all. She only wished he'd told them what had been discussed with the ghost dragon, before the wizard had arrived among them. But still there was hope that he lived. And that he would tell the others in time. And that they'd see him again.

She didn't hold out much hope though. Especially not when she was standing in the ruins of a copse and witnessing for herself the terrible damage that had been done to it. If this was the work of Mayfall as she feared it was, then his power was beyond that of any wizard she'd ever heard of. Far beyond. And that he should be here in the world killing and destroying at exactly the same time as the great demon was raising his armies of the undead to destroy the world was just unfair. Bitterly unfair. But try as she might she couldn't imagine that the two weren't related in some way. Maybe Mayfall was the Dark One's most powerful undead necromancer? He hadn't seemed undead and he hadn't felt it, but Yorik believed he'd killed him, so maybe he was.

Then again she had to ask herself; what was the alternative to the foretellers? The undead walked but they didn't talk. The dead wizard was far too powerful for them to capture and interrogate. The blight was as nothing she had ever seen before and could tell her nothing. And the only one who could explain what was happening was the same one who was slowly ripping the world apart. So many evils were walking the world at once, all of them linked somehow, and none of it made any sense.

“Yes. Maybe. Who knows, maybe the foretellers and farseers in Hammeral will have some luck this time.” She sighed as she doubted her own words. “Unless anyone has another thought?” She asked having found no answers in herself and hoping that someone else might have them.

There was a long silence and then –

“The stone?”

Whoever suggested it earned Genivere's immediate enmity as she knew exactly what stone he meant. The others also grimaced in distaste at the thought. But a heartbeat later she realised that as terrible as the suggestion was, it made sense. The dwarven Heart of the World or the stone as it was known to most, was a font of knowledge. More than that, it contained the wisdom of the ages, so it was claimed, stretching all the way back to the very beginning of the world.

To the dwarves it represented the world. Actually they claimed that it wasn't a stone at all. It was the world. Or rather it was an outcropping of the great stone that formed the very bedrock of everything. The world had been built on top of it. A thin skin of life laid on top of a firmament of stone.

That was the reason it was an unquestionable source of knowledge. It had been there at the beginning. It would be there at the end. And for all that time it watched.

But the dwarves guarded the outcroppings of the stone closely. More than closely, it was the very centre of their world, the rock of their faith. And the idea that an elf – even a part elf part dryad might consult it – would not be well received. In fact it would be considered a sacrilege. Just the presence of elves on dwarven lands would be considered an affront. It could get them killed. Especially in these dangerous times when the dead were walking and towns were being wiped away. When according to the traders the dwarves were fighting a never ending battle with their own dead.

If there was an unquestionable source of knowledge the stone was it. But a dwarf would have to ask the stone, and then they'd have to believe whatever he told them in turn, assuming that they weren't already dead. And dwarves lied. Genivere didn't want to do it.

“We could try”, Captain Ysabel told them thoughtfully. “Iron Deep is only ten days ride south of here. It's a safe journey though Gerwindar, and the gnomes would never deny us passage through their land.”

“But we still have no provisions, not enough horses, and we could not ask the stone ourselves. And we would still have to get word of what has happened to us and where we are going back to the elders in Hammeral.” Yet even as she objected Genivere knew her words were going to fall on deaf ears. She could see it in the eyes of her companions. They had lost a companion maybe three. Their mission had failed. They had been defeated by a wizard with contemptuous ease. They had refused to even go back to the ancient temple for fear that he might still be around. And now she was expecting them to return to Hammeral in disgrace.

They would not do it. No matter how crazed and desperate the idea was, it was a chance to do something. To succeed in something. And they were going to take it no matter what.

And though she knew she should protest in truth she was with them. Yorik was dead, despite the Captain's words of hope. And she could not avenge him as he deserved. But maybe in this she could do something. She had to do something.