drifted again toward the south. I sensed in him a fierce desire to move in that direction; it was as if he could smell a mare deeper in the woods, and every muscle in his body trembled to find her. It was only by his instincts, I remembered, that we had escaped from the Black Bog. Perhaps his instincts might now help us escape the Stonefaces; certainly all my stratagems had failed in this. And so, without telling the others what was happening, I let Altaru go where he wished.
Thus we traveled quite a few miles due south. I sensed a gradual change in the air, and I thought that the trees here grew taller. Their great, green crowns towered over the forest floor perhaps as high as a hundred and twenty feet. From somewhere in their spreading branches I and fluttering leaves, I heard the voice of an unfamiliar bird: his cry was something like the raaark of a raven, but was deeper and harsher and seemed to warn us away. Other things warned us away as well. I had a disquieting sense that I was crossing an invisible larder into a forbidden realm.
Whenever I tried to peer through the woods to see what might be drawing Altaru, however, it seemed that a will greater than my own caused me to become distracted and look away. It was as if the earth itself here was guarded by some sentinel whom I could not see. But strangely, I was never quite conscious that some being or entity might be watching these woods. At precisely those moments when I tried to bring these sensations into full awareness, I found myself touching my wounded side or gazing at the blood on my hand – of thinking of how I had fallen in love with Atara. It was as if my mind had slipped off the surface of a gleaming mirror to behold only myself.
I knew that the others, too, sensed something strange about these woods. I felt Atara's reluctance to go any farther and Maram's doubt pounding in him like a heartbeat that seemed to say: Go back; go back; go back. Even Master Juwain's great curiosity about the woods seemed blunted by his fear of them.
And then, after perhaps a couple of miles, the soft breeze grew suddenly cooler and cleaner. The sweet scent of the numinous seemed to hang in the air. I found that I could breathe more easily, and I gasped to behold the heights of the trees, for here the giant oaks grew very high above us, at least two hundred feet. The forest floor was mostly free of debris, being covered by carpet of golden leaves. But there were flowers, too violets and goldthread and others that I had never seen before. One of these had many red, pointed petals that erupted from its center like flames. I called it a fireflower; but its fragrance filled me as if I had drunk from a sparkling stream. I felt my fever cooling and then leaving me altogether. My head pain vanished as well.
All my senses seemed to grow keener and deeper. I could almost see the folds in the silvery bark of an oak three hundred yards away and hear the sap streaming through its mighty trunk.
How far we rode into these great trees I couldn't tell. In the abiding peace of the oaks, both distance and direction seemed to take on a new depth of dimension.
Something about the earth itself here seemed o dissolve each moment into the next so that the whole forest opened onto a secret realm as timeless as the stars. I might have been walking these same woods a million years in the past – or a million years hence. 'What is this place?' Maram wondered as he stopped his horse to took up at the leaves fluttering high above us.
I climbed down from Altaru to give him a rest and stretch my legs I reached down to touch a starflower growing out of a little plant. Its five white petals shone as if from a light within.
'My headache is gone,' Maram said. 'My fever, as well.'
Atara and Master Juwain admitted that they, too, had been miracu -lously restored.
Along with Maram, they climbed off their horses and joined me on the forest floor.
Then Master Juwain said, 'There are places of great power on the earth. Healing places – this must be one of them.'
'Why haven't I heard of these places?' Maram asked.
'Yes, indeed, why haven't you, Brother Maram? Do you not remember the Book of Ages where it tells of the vilds?'
'No, I'm sorry, I don't. Do you remember the passage, sir?'
Master Juwain nodded his head and then recited:
There is a place tween earth and time,
In some forgotten misty clime
Of woods and brooks and vernal glades,
Whose healing magic never fades.
An island in the greenest sea,
Abode of deeper greenery
Where giant trees and emeralds grow,
Where leaves and grass and flowers glow.
And there no bitter bloom of spite
To blight the forest's living light,
No sword, no spear, no axe, no knife
To tear the sweetest sprigs of life.
The deeper life for which we yearn,
Immortal flame that doesn't burn,
The sacred sparks, ablaze, unseen -
The children of the Galadin.
Beneath the trees they gloze and gleam, And whirl and play and dance and dream Of wider woods beyond the sea Where they shall dwell eternally.
After he had finished, Maram rubbed his beard and said, 'I thought that was just a myth from the Lost Ages.'
'I hope not,' Master Juwain said.
'Well, wherever we are, it seems that we've finally lost the Stonefaces. Val, what do you think?'
I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to feel for the snake wrapping its coils around my spi^But my whole being seemed suddenly free from any wrongness. Even the burning of the kirax was cooled by the breeze blowing through the woods.
'We might have lost them,' I agreed. All around us grew fireflowers and starflowers and violets. In the trees, a flock of blue birds like none I had ever seen trilling out the sweetest of songs. I had only ever dreamed a place that felt so alive as this. 'Perhaps they lost our scent.'
'Well, then,' Maram said, 'why don't we celebrate? Why don't we break out some of your father's fine brandy that we've been toting all the way from Mesh?'
We all agreed that this was a good idea; even Master Juwain consented to breaking his vows this one time. Atara, who might have chided him for going against his principles, seemed happy at the moment to honor the greater principle of celebrating life. After Maram had cracked the cask and filled our cups with some brandy, she eagerly held her nose over the smoky liquid as if drawing in its perfume. Master Juwain- touched his tongue to it and grimaced; one might have thought he was touching fire. Then Maram raised his cup and called out, 'To our escape from the Stonefaces. Surely these woods won't abide any evil.'
Just as he was about to fasten his thick lips around the rim of his cup, a lilting voice called back to him from somewhere in the trees: 'Surely they won't, Hairface.'
A man suddenly stepped from behind a tree thirty yards away. He was short and slight, with curly brown hair, pale skin and leaf-green eyes. Except for a skirt woven of some silvery substance, he was naked. In his little hands he held a little bow and a flint-tipped arrow.
The unexpected sight of him so startled Maram that he spilled his brandy over his beard and chest. Then he managed to splutter, 'Who are you? We didn't know anyone lived here. We mean you no harm, little man.'
Quick as a wink, the man drew his arrow straight at Maram and piped out, 'Sad to say, we mean you harm big man. So sad, too bad.'
And with that, even as Maram, Atara and I reached for our weapons, the little man let loose a high-pitched whistle that sounded like tne trilling of the blue birds.
Immediately, others of his kind appeared from behind trees in a great circle around us two hundred yards across. There were hundreds of them, and they each held a little bow fitted with an arrow.
'Oh, my Lord!' Maram cried out. 'Val, what shall we do?'
So, I thought, this was why the Stonefaces hadn't followed us here: we had ridden from one danger into a far
