tree, and then she pushed him out altogether and lowered herself to her feet and clasped him tight in her hand, frantic, hips straining against the side of his leg, she was closer than his own skin, closer than he was to himself.
The moment they fell still another sound reached their ears. The dog had followed them, and was scratching urgently with a hind foot just a few feet away. He felt her heart drum against his chest, the laughter shaking her from forehead to thighs. It was nonsense, what they said about dying of happiness. Happiness made you want to live.
They walked a bit farther along the edge of the gorge. He tried talking to her but she only murmured; she was suddenly far away and thoughtful. He was teased by the notion that they had done something dangerous, perhaps mortally so. Was it the magic inside her, Erithusme’s strange, destructive gifts? Or his, maybe: the language-spell working to decode her silence, her yearning; trying to translate her wordless needs into his own? He could not make himself care. They clasped hands, scarred palm to scarred palm. He felt that whatever befell her must happen to him as well, and already he longed to touch her again.
Thasha said she wanted to bathe in the Ansyndra. He tried to dissuade her and got nowhere; she told him it might be their last chance for days. They found a descent, but not an easy one. Thasha looked at his leg and shook her head. “That’s all we need,” she laughed. “You at the bottom, shouting in pain, and our clothes up here by that tree.”
So he sat beside the dog and watched her creep down the broad rocks, spider-like, moving in and out of shadow. The river was a braid of murmuring darkness, and it was hard to tell when she reached it, until he realized that she had slowed, and was splashing palmfuls of icy water against her legs. The simple gesture enough to drive him mad. She moved a step deeper, staring fixedly at the opposite shore. Another step, and she was gone.
Pazel surged to his feet, terrified. Why in Pitfire had he let her go? Into that water out of Ilvaspar, a river that mixed with the River of Shadows?
His fright grew by the second. How could he have been such a fool? Thasha was gone, gone into the black turbulence he had sensed at the bottom of the temple pool. And suddenly he knew that she had been drawn to the river by more than a desire to bathe.
Then she rose and clambered for shore. Her eyes sought him, found him, and she hugged herself, and Pazel was so relieved that he never did ask, then or later, if the gesture meant that the water was freezing or that he was loved.
When dawn came the party rose and set off at once, for there was no breakfast to linger over, no tea to warm. They rounded the bluff and came back to the side of the Ansyndra, and soon the vast green crater was sprawling before them. Pazel had hoped the mystery of its nature would be resolved as they approached; but on the contrary, the place only became more alien and strange. The scrub and feathery grasses of the plain grew right up to its edge. Then the side of the hole fell straight down some thirty feet, to where the green surface began. The latter pressed tight against the rock, leaving barely a finger’s width of empty space, and often not even that.
What was it made of? How strong was it, how thick? Alyash tossed a rock onto the surface: it bounced and skittered and lay there in the sun. Not a liquid, then, and not flimsy either.
“It looks like elephant hide,” said Big Skip. “I’ll bet you could walk on it.”
Hercol stepped close to the riverbank. They could hear the sound of a waterfall as the Ansyndra plummeted into the dark depths, but even at its very edge they could not see much, for the green tissue stretched to within a few feet of the spray. But they could at least see the edge of the substance: it was some three inches thick.
“There’s a second layer below,” said Ibjen. And so there was: a second layer, slightly less green, about twenty feet beneath the first. And below that, a third? Pazel could not see it, but the dlomu (whose eyes could pierce the darkness better than human eyes) said that yes, there was a third; and the ixchel (whose eyes were better still) detected even a fourth, cracked and withered, about sixty feet below.
“And something else,” said Ensyl. “Struts, or rafters, on the underside of each layer, propping it up, maybe. But they are very irregular and thin.”
Myett peered down into the rushing void. “Those are not rafters,” she said. “They’re branches.”
There were grumbles of disbelief. “Branches,” Myett repeated. “And I would wager that those”-she swept her hand over the miles and miles of olive surface-“are leaves.”
“Oh, come now,” said the older Turach. “Leaves? All flattened, crushed together like a griddle cake?”
“Can you think of a simpler explanation?” asked the dlomic woman, Lunja.
“Pitfire, it’s true,” said Neeps, crouching. “The surface is dusty, like, but you can see veins if you look close. Those are treetops, by Rin.”
“Then we’re in the right place,” said Pazel.
“And so is Arunis,” said Bolutu. “The Infernal Forest. And he has taken the Nilstone deep within.”
“Then let us go and take it back,” said Cayer Vispek. “But there is no entrance here. We might aim for those rocks, but to my eye that is a two-day march, and who knows if the… leaves are as solid everywhere as here.”
“Something is different far off along the rim,” said Hercol, pointing east. “Perhaps the leaf is torn or folded; I cannot tell. But that too is miles off.”
“We could try to shimmy down the cliff beside the river here,” said Alyash, “but that’s a tricky wall. Very sheer, and wet with spray.”
“And dark, too, it must be, farther down,” said Dastu.
“Let’s make for that torn spot, if that’s what it is,” said Thasha. “Maybe we’ll find something along the way.”
Having no better option, they set out. The day was bright, and the dark green surface warmed quickly in the sun, and soon the heat was rolling off it with each puff of wind. For several miles there was almost no change in the surface. Here and there they could see a frayed edge, where two leaves were not quite perfectly joined. But they always overlapped, so that one could never catch a glimpse down into the crater. Pazel reflected morbidly that they still had no idea of its depth.
Slowly the thing Hercol had spotted came into view. There did appear to be a hole, but also something white protruding from it. When they arrived at last, they found themselves standing above a semicircular gap some twelve feet in diameter, opening right against the cliff wall. The edges were not torn but smooth and rounded, as though the opening was intentional.
The white shapes turned out to be flowers: enormous, fleshy blooms with dark stamens the size of bottle- brushes. They had a rich perfume, a mixture of honey and spirits. The flowers were not part of the leaf structure, but grew instead upon a woody vine reaching up out of the darkness. The vine was massive, and tightly grafted to leaf and stone. Its angle of descent was gradual, no more than a steep staircase, and indeed with its corkscrew pattern and elbow-turns it somewhat resembled a staircase, leading down to the next level.
“We could manage well enough on that, I dare say,” said Alyash.
“Look there!” said a dlomic soldier, pointing downward. “There’s another opening on the level below. And what’s that? Fruit? Am I seeing fruit on that blessed vine?”
It did look very much that way: five or six purple fruits, about fist-sized, dangling in a bunch near a second opening in the leaves.
“Beware your hopes, and your appetite,” said Hercol. “If ever I saw the makings of a trap, it is here.”
“Agreed,” said Jalantri, “but what if the entire forest is a trap? It must have done something to earn its name.”
Hercol looked gravely into the depths. “Let us descend one level,” he said. “We will collect those fruits but not taste them, for now. If we are starving-well, then we shall eat, and hope to live. But this is all too convenient.”
He went first, scrambling down the mighty vine, passing through the highest layer and stepping out gingerly onto the leaf-platform below. Pazel and Neeps went next, and couldn’t help but smile at each other: this was far easier than climbing the shrouds on the Chathrand, and a thousand times preferable to the iron ladders. Still, Pazel’s leg was throbbing again, and the wound felt itchy and inflamed.
When they reached Hercol, Neeps shouted to those above: “You can all come at once. That vine won’t break, it’s thick as a hawser!”
“Like your head, Undrabust, more’s the pity!” hissed Hercol. “Do you want to announce us to the sorcerer, and whatever else may dwell here? The next time you shout, I expect to find you menaced by something at least as deadly as a flame-troll.”
