Then the town was behind us and we moved south along the river, then west toward the heights. They loomed before us. Flitchhawk began to circle, catching some warmer air from time to time, though he labored with his wings to climb and I knew it was more difficult at night than when the sun warmed the earth and made great updrafts to carry him. We crossed the wide expanse of Middle River, silver glinting on its waves. Lake Yost gleamed to the north. Then came the soft, velvet depths of Long Valley and at last the cliffs, falling away like a sweep of carved wood, gleaming under the knife of the stars. There the forest was before us, trees taller than any I had ever seen or imagined. Leafy tops shifting. Smaller wings circling. A scented breath rising, like the flitchhawk’s breath: field mint and pine; bergamot and rose; webwillow and shatter-grass. Sweet, spicy, catching the breath in one’s throat with memories of lost childhood among the grasses at the brookside. “Chimmerdong,” I cried, unable to help myself. “Chimmerdong.”
“Jinian,” I imagined the forest calling in return. “Jinian.”
The flitchhawk folded his great wings and took hold of a treetop, rocking there. “Here,” he creaked. “Here. The ladder is beneath you in the tree.”
I had climbed out onto the branch and was taking inventory of myself, somewhat windblown but otherwise intact. “See here,” I said, “you’ve got to tell me something. I’ve been dragged from housedoor to cellar, from kingpost to rooftree without a word of explanation. Now, what’s going on here, and what am I supposed to do about it?”
“Daggerhawk Demesne is killing the forest. You’ll know what to do, Jinian Footseer. Use your eyes, your ears, your feet.” His wings came down, knocking me flat on the branch as usual, and he was up and gone. Far off at the edge of the world I saw the rim of the sun and knew he had not wanted light to disclose him upon the forest roof. Nor did I want to be seen there. I plunged into the leafy wilderness, scrambling about until I found the ladder. It carried me down as it had carried me up. No immediate course of action presented itself. The first thing to do would be to find out what was going on. Perhaps the next thing would be to talk to the forest again. If I could. If it could. If the shadow would allow. Hows and perhapses kept me thoughtful the entire journey down, and I was utterly unsurprised to find both a bunwit and a tree rat at the bottom of the ladder waiting for me. My same ones or other ones? My same ones, I thought. They sat there propped on their hind legs the way they do, bunwit with his pointy ears and tree rat with his round ones, bunwit gray and white, tree rat black and copper, both with round, curious eyes fixed on me as though I had answers. “I’ve got no answers, beasts,” I told them. “But if you know where something is going on, I suggest you show me.”
Tree rat started for me. I picked up a branch. “Just for the record, rat, if you bite me even a little, even one time, there will be one dead rat.” He backed off, surprised. I still had teeth marks on my rear from last time.
They looked at each other, conferring, I thought. Perhaps they did. At any rate, we went off through the trees at an easy pace, one or the other scouting ahead, then coming back to be sure I still followed. It was not long before we heard a sound. Both of them came back, close to me, pressing against my legs.
“That it?” I asked. They pressed closer, ears cocked toward the noise. It was a whuffling, snorting, growling noise, with crashes and smashes in it.
We were on a rounded hill with an abrupt rocky ledge above a clearing. We peered between the rocks, seeing nothing but shrubs and grasses. The noise was near, perhaps behind a screen of trees. Nothing. Then a glitter, as of sun on polished bone. Then again. Crash of branches. Gouts of soil and turf flying, a small tree toppled, snorting, and then ...
I said, half to myself, “What in the name of the Hundred Devils is that?” The beasties only pushed closer to me, not answering.
The thing had come into the light. Great snout over curved tusks. Little pig eyes. Sharp pig hooves. It came and kept coming. Three pairs of legs, four, five. I counted silently, in awe, not even aware I was counting. When I got to fifty, I stopped counting. The thing had at least a hundred legs, like a centipede. “Centipig,” I breathed to my cowering beasties, watching the turf fly in solid, muddy slabs. Champing and whuffling, the centipig ravaged its way out of the clearing and down the hill. “By Dealpas, the Doleful,” I hissed to myself.
Familiar voices followed the pig-path into the clearing. Porvius Bloster. In a moment he was beneath me, he and another man, both carrying tanks with hoses and tubes. We use similar tanks in the Stone-flight Demesne to spray the sammit seedlings with water. Both carried outlandish, pig-snouted masks in their hands.
“Give it a year,” Porvius shouted, waving his hands at the destruction around him. “Give it a year and it will have flattened half of Chimmerdong.”
“It would be faster and surer if you had more than one,” the man with him said. At first I had not recognized him, but then I realized it was the pursuivant who had corne to Vorbold’s House seeking Dedrina-Lucir. Cholore? If he were Reading, he would find me. Not likely, though. Who would expect Jinian to have left the luxury of Vorbold’s House
