know it is possible and not merely a tale told to bilk the incredulous.'
Raidon clasped her shoulder, then turned to regard his path. He excised concern for her safe trip back from his consciousness.
A drifting cube obscured 'the distant tree for a moment. Above, a jagged trail of blue lightning split the sky, sending a flash across the plain. Blinking away the after-image, Raidon left the bridge and entered the plain of red grass. He did not look back.
The long-bladed, crimson grass crunched beneath his feet. The boulders drifted like tiny versions of the earthmote he'd seen west of Nathlekh. Unlike that massive air island, these moved and left wakes of bluish radiance. He wondered if the masses were solidified spellplague. He avoided the darting masses with the diligence they deserved.
He left the unmoored rocks behind and reached the edges of the exposed, tangled root mass. The field of burrowing roots, stretched perhaps a mile, maybe more, surrounding the tree in the distance. He'd misjudged the tree's size. It was larger than he'd thought. At least no grass grew between the great, fingerlike roots that clutched at the earth so fiercely. He studied the roots for a time. It seemed they slowly twined and churned the earth, moving, but only as quickly as earthworms through soil.
He moved out across the root field. They offered solid footing and did not react to his weight. He quickly reached that which the roots all supported.
The bole of the tree was more like a cliff face than an ash trunk. No limbs offered access for several hundred feet, but those above were as thick as roads. The sound of the wind in the roof-like leaves high above was like the roar of a distant cataract. Each leaf gleamed like a tongue of sapphire flame.
Raidon scratched his chin, and then drew out his map. The Pilgrim's Path led to the Grandmother Ash's base. A dotted arrow led away from the tree into the heart of the discontinuity, as if the cartographer had lost confidence in the route in this final leg.
He decided to scale the tree, if he could, to get a lay of the land from on high.
He placed one hand against the tree's grayish, deeply grooved bark. It was sun warm and pleasant beneath his fingers. Raidon mused, 'You've survived this Plague-wrought Land well, it seems.'
Intense gladness washed across Raidon. It came without warning and smashed through his focus as if it were nothing more than rice paper.
The monk snatched his hand from the tree, and the sensation was gone.
Raidon studied the tree several long moments, considering.
He ventured, 'Are you conscious?'
No voice answered, nor unwarranted feeling. He laid his palm again across the tree.
Acknowledgment suffused the monk from his crown to his toes.
'I greet you, Grandmother Ash. I am Raidon Kane. I am sorry to disturb your solitude, but if you please, I have a question, if you will hear it?'
Curiosity prickled up Raidon's arm.
'Thank you. I seek an old friend, an elf woman, who may have ventured past you some years back. She would have carried with her a powerful sword and had a dwarf as a traveling companion. Does that sound familiar?'
A 'green' feeling of assent settled upon him, and then… fear.
'What makes you afraid, great one?'
The tree shuddered. A blue flame ignited beneath Raidon's hand. The monk snatched his hand away, leaving a trail of fading flame. He anxiously regarded his palm for several heartbeats, and then let out his breath in relief.
The point of flame on the bark remained, grew into a line that quickly traced the outline of a humanoid figure. The shape bulged, and then stepped from two dimensions to three. It was a woman, perhaps, but she was bark and leaves, stem and bough, with hands of knotted root. Thick strands of moss made up her hair and her eyes were twin forest pools limned in blue flame. Her bare skin was the ridged, grayish bark of an ash tree.
'Who says I am afraid?' the woman asked him, her voice vibrant with the music of a major chord. She wasn't much taller than Raidon, though he had the feeling she wasn't fully unfurled.
He resisted the urge to retreat a step. He replied simply, as if women emerging from trees was nothing less than what he expected, 'Perhaps I misspoke, madam.'
The woman examined her digits, wriggling them as if checking to see that they all functioned. Satisfied, she glanced back at Raidon. She asked, 'Why do you seek those three in particular? Many more pilgrims have traveled the Plague-wrought Land since them.'
'The elf s sword, Angul, has duties to perform in defense of Faerыn.'
'You do not seem a swordsman,' the woman said, somewhat critically.
'I am trained in their use: fist, foot, sword, sling, and more I have studied. Regardless,'-Raidon waved away the topic, surprised to find himself extolling his own virtues-'Angul is required. Have you seen him, or his wielder, Kiril the elf, or her companion, Thormud the dwarf?'
'I saw those you describe. I manifested a form much like this one so that we could converse. I attempted to dissuade them from their goal. They sought the Chalk Destrier, a fiend of white stone who was empowered the same time I was awakened.'
'In the Year of Blue Fire? You are a spellscarred… tree?'
'The few creatures that survived full contact with the most virulent wave of spellplague are more than merely scarred, but utterly transformed. Plaguechanged. They are monstrous entities of rage and destruction. The world is lucky most of these creatures are bound to one location. Of course, I am an exception. I am prone more to philosophy.'
Raidon suppressed the urge to explain that he too had been touched and changed by the initial wave of spellplague. Did that mean the Cerulean Symbol bound to his soul was more than 'merely' a spellscar, as well? He looked down at the massive root field surrounding the ash tree, then back into the woman's burning eyes.
'I am bound, yes. But unlike the Chalk Destrier and others, my mind remains uncorrupted. Perhaps it is because I had no mind before I was awakened by the touch of unleashed, wild magic.'
'Yet you have a shape like mine.' Raidon pointed at the woman. He flirted with the idea of asking if she were a dryad. Some instinct made him refrain.
'I am an avatar only, a seedling,' she replied. 'In this form, I can move within the bounds of this changeland, but not beyond. Not yet.'
Raidon frowned but chose to ignore the last.
'Can you direct me to this Chalk Destrier?'
'It will prove your death, as it did your friends.'
'They have perished, then? You know that?'
'In time, I can taste all that occurs on the surface of the Plague-wrought Land. That which rots is absorbed into the earth, even soil as unstable as that found in this region. My roots spread even farther below ground than is visible above. I tasted their essence diffused into the loam some years ago. True, my subterranean tendrils cannot reach all the way into that creature's lair. Perhaps they were only wounded. But my knowledge of the Chalk Destrier leads me to believe otherwise.'
Raidon nodded. 'We suspect the same, but we think the sword remains.'
'We?' inquired Grandmother Ash's avatar.
'My advisor, Cynosure. He is not with me now.' Raidon looked around wondering if a voice out of thin air would prove him wrong. But a few more moments proved that hope false.
'Ah,' said the avatar, her head cocked in a human fashion, indicating her uncertainty.
'I must retrieve the sword Angul. Events outside the borders of your land require him. Angul is a relic of vanished Sildeyuir. He has the power to oppose the Abolethic Sovereignty.'
The woman brushed her hair back with a delicate, bark-skinned hand. She said, 'I am unfamiliar with this Sovereignty.'
'It is a group of creatures who are like the plaguechanged you described-fiends from the deep earth that must be opposed.'
'And it is given to you to oppose them.' 'The task has fallen to me, yes.'
The woman clapped her hands, making a sound like two planks slamming together. 'A hero! The pilgrims'
