“Other things, too,” said Big Skip. He pointed away from the cliff: white, rope-like strands were dangling there, from somewhere far above. They were thick as broom handles and segmented like worms, and they ended in coils a few feet above the ground.
“There must be hundreds,” said Ensyl. “They go on and on into the forest.”
“The plants seem hardly of this world,” said Neda, gaping.
“Maybe they’re not plants at all,” said Pazel.
“Well, naturally they’re plants, Muketch,” said the younger Turach. “What else, by Rin?”
“Mushrooms,” said Thasha.
“Mushrooms?” Bolutu looked startled. “That could well be so. Fungus, molds, slimes-they all thrive in darkness. And moisture too, for that matter.”
“And heat,” said Cayer Vispek. “But great devils, a whole forest of fungi?”
“Not the trees,” said Thasha. “They’re plants, all right. That vine is a plant too, and there must be others. But most of these things-yes, I’m sure they’re mushrooms.”
“Come here often, do you?” asked Alyash. “Summer picnics and such?”
Thasha turned away, indifferent to his taunts. But Pazel touched her arm, trying in vain to get her attention. The familiar, faraway look was creeping back into her eyes.
Neeps pointed off to the left. There the growths, though tall as apple trees, were the same parasol-shapes as any mushrooms of the North. “I guess that settles it,” he said.
Hercol put his hand on Ildraquin. “Our quarry is motionless, but still far away. Let us form ranks and be off. Ibjen, bear the torch as you would bear no weapon. Stand in the center and hold it high. And to all of you: need I say that Alyash is right? You must touch nothing, if you can avoid it, and be ever on your guard.” He glanced back to where they had started. “The vine heads toward the center, and that is where we are bound. Let us follow it-safely to one side, of course-for as long as we may.”
They left the cliff wall and started out over the spongy ground. The vine grew thicker still, and its load of outlandish growths even heavier. Soon it was less a vine they followed than a twisting, scaly wall, each section flaring brilliantly in the torchlight as they neared. It was very quiet. Nothing moved save a few tiny insects, and the root-tentacles snatching weakly at their boots. Pazel was soon gasping with heat. His leg too began to hurt, but when Thasha came to his aid he shook his head and whispered, “Not yet.”
“Don’t ignore it,” she said, and gave his hand a squeeze. She marched ahead, fierce in her readiness for whatever was to come. As she had been just hours ago, in that so-much-gentler darkness, walking with him to the cedar tree. For an instant the wonder of their lovemaking came back to him, and he felt a wild need for her, a contempt for everything but the desire to be with her, far from these troubles, far even from their friends. The feeling appalled him with its selfishness.
An hour passed. With every step they saw new beauties, new horrors. The crown of one mushroom was a miniature flower garden, each blossom smaller than a grape seed. Another mushroom was as large as a haystack, and twisted as they passed, aiming a hideous, hairy mouth in their direction. The great dangling worm-tendrils moved also, reaching slowly for an outstretched hand. When Ibjen brought the torch near, the tendril coiled like a snake into the darkness above. In some places the tendrils had reached the ground and taken root, so that one looked through them as through prison bars.
Other vine-reefs descended from the unseen trees. Some they passed under; others lay upon the ground like the one they followed. Climbing them was an awkward business, for it was hard to find the solid vine beneath the fungal mass. And some of the mushrooms burned like nettles to the touch.
Atop one of these reefs they suddenly came face to face with a pair of enormous, four-legged creatures, grazing placidly on the far side. Elephant-tall and milky white, they resembled giant sloths, but their backs were hidden under jointed shells. They had great lower mandibles with which they scooped up mushrooms, and gigantic eyes, which they pinched shut against the torchlight. Flapping their soft ears in vexation, they shuffled away from the vine.
As the journey continued they met other creatures: graceful deer-like animals with serpentine necks; a waddling turtle that hissed at the dogs; and far more alarming, a swarm of bats the size of pumas that blasted like a storm through their midst, at eye level, and never brushed them with a wing tip. The bats settled on a gargantuan loop of vine and feasted on its melon-like fungi, before racing off into the perpetual night.
“Fungivores, all of them!” said Bolutu. “They must rarely go hungry. I wonder if anything in this forest lives off meat?”
“I do,” said Big Skip, “but I’ll settle for one of those fruits. How about it, Hercol? They smelled like blary ambrosia.”
“Hold out a little longer,” said the swordsman, “we may find something better, after all. I was a fool not to kill that turtle.”
A bit later they heard running water, but saw none. The sound grew louder, closer, and at last Neda bent to the ground and said, “It is under us. It is flowing beneath the roots.”
After that they realized that they were often mere feet over a rushing stream. Once or twice the gap in the roots was wide enough for them to reach a hand inside. There they found the running water deliciously cool, and bathed their faces. But Hercol warned them not to dip their arms too deep, or to taste even a drop of the water. As soon as they left these gaps the heat swallowed them anew.
They were on their second torch when they reached the base of one of the gigantic trees. It was a straight pillar, twelve or fourteen feet thick. Though painted with lichens its bark was paper-smooth, with no knobs or branchings as high as they could see.
“We will not easily climb such a trunk,” said Cayer Vispek.
“Myett and I could manage,” said Ensyl. “Those lichens will bear our weight.”
Then they saw it: the vine they had followed from the start took root here, right at the base of the tree. Beyond it there was no clear path to follow.
Hercol was unperturbed. “We will blaze a new trail,” he said. “Step up here, Neda, and count paces, and speak each time you reach twenty.”
Sweating and stumbling, they moved on. Each time Neda spoke Ildraquin cut a deep slash at breast height in the nearest fungus. “What if we miss one, Stanapeth?” Alyash called out. “What if something eats them? This is lunacy, I say.”
“The bosun’s right,” Pazel heard Myett say to Ensyl. “We should not have descended to the forest floor! We should be walking above, in the sunlight!”
“And then?” asked Ensyl. “The sorcerer is not up in the sunlight. What if we had marched all day across the surface, only to find no way down?”
“I do not want to die in this place, sister, on this giants’ quest. A reunion awaits me in Masalym.”
“I do not want to die at all,” said Ensyl. “But Myett, be truthful with yourself: Taliktrum surely returned to the Chathrand, ere the ship departed?”
“You do not know him as I do,” said Myett, “and you did not hear his words to Fiffengurt. Nothing will persuade him to return to the clan.”
“Love might,” said Ensyl, “and I think you will have your reunion, however unlikely that appears. We are not defeated yet.”
“Ensyl, you amaze me. Do you truly have such faith in them?”
“In the humans?” said Ensyl, surprised. “Not all of them, of course. But in Hercol, and the tarboys and Thasha-yes, in them I have faith a-plenty. They have earned it. And besides that, I would honor… whatever made us unite. Even as we honor the founders of Ixphir House, what they lived and died for.”
She knows I’m listening, thought Pazel, smiling. It was Diadrelu who brought us together, Ensyl. Your teacher, Hercol’s lover, my friend. Diadrelu who showed us the meaning of trust.
Someone screamed.
It was Alyash, Pazel realized a moment later. He was holding his head, reeling, smashing into the others. Then Pazel saw that there was something in the air, like a fine sawdust, trailing from his hands and head. Some of it drifted into the torch’s flame and crackled; some of it touched those nearest Alyash, and they too cried out.
Alyash crashed away into the darkness, blind with pain, sweeping through the white ropes like curtains. The others charged in pursuit. Cayer Vispek and Neda managed to grab him after thirty feet or so, but it took the whole party to calm him down. “He was cutting extra notches,” said the older Turach. “He was afraid you weren’t marking
