A procession of pilgrims, all following the darting, bobbing light of a single lantern suspended from a hooked staff, approached from the direction of the seaside city. Kural swept aside his drawing of the estates above with an open hand, erasing it from view. My eyes lingered in the place it had been, recreating its lines and circles from memory. A few of the shapes escaped me.
I would take the hidden path, I decided, and avoid the court of the kingdom above. What could I say to the gathered noblemen of the treetops that would convince them of my need for their relic? Here was a land where the living worshiped the dead, and where hidden, shadowy gods dueled for control of honored corpses kept within vaults of stone or living wood. Whatever I said had an equal chance of offending with grievous blasphemy as it did of earning their sympathy.
No, for better or worse, I would take the Sage’s Mirror from their vault, and I hoped to board a ship back to Gallia before anyone noticed it was missing. I could make the treacherous climb, I was sure of it.
The pilgrims walked with heavy, quiet steps past our small encampment beneath the towering fungus. Night had fallen, extinguishing even the faintest light of the sun over the distant city. Kural and I had walked far enough that daylight was a memory, and by the time I found the place I would make my climb, the sun would have passed out of sight completely. Still, the pilgrims continued on, though it was too dark to see where their feet fell. I counted thirty of them, their necks and wrists laden with gold and the coils of their hair falling around their downturned faces. They walked in perfect silence, and did not even look up at our smoldering campfire. I dared not speak.
Their light led them deeper into the forest and disappeared. The last pilgrims in the column turned to shadows and vanished as well.
“Who are they?” I asked in a whisper when they had gone.
“Shrine keepers,” Kural answered. “They will walk all night, never speaking a word, and climb into the treetops come morning. For their efforts, they’ll be interred with a small measure of gold and silver outside of the deeper chambers. It will grant them some authority after the world’s end—enough to give orders to commoners, perhaps.”
Kural’s cynicism had begun to grate on me. I had only just arrived, and he wanted me to agree that the priests of the upper and lower kingdoms were equal in both their foolishness and their tyranny. Other than Kural, I had spoken to one woman in the marketplace and no one else. I could no more speak to the validity of either faith than I could the nature of the creatures that inhabited the black depths of the ocean and never came near the surface. Was there a difference between a silent procession of pilgrims in the forest at night and a silent gathering of worshipers around a cauldron in a dark room? I could see none, only that the pilgrims were dressed in finer clothes and did not ask me to drink strange tea from a cauldron.
“I’ll take first watch,” I said.
Kural wrapped himself in his bedroll. Despite the strangeness of our surroundings, he soon began to snore, a soft, whispering sound like the wind through the gills of the mushroom overhead.
I could not track the movement of the stars beyond the vast canopy of trees, so I woke him when the fire had turned to lightless ash. In turn, he woke me when a faint, pale glow appeared in the north—the only sign that morning had come.
We kept to the paved road with its drifts of fallen leaves for an hour or more. Tiny, flickering lights emerged from the gloom between the vast trees. As we grew near, the bright pinpricks expanded into lanterns encased in glass, flanking a magnificent staircase that spiraled around a trunk as wide as a mead-hall of the North was long. It rose into the canopy until the broad branches and fluttering leaves hid it from view.
“There,” Kural said with a sweeping gesture. “Your pathway into the upper kingdom.”
“I’d rather take the hidden way,” I said. “I wish to be back in Gallia as soon as possible.”
Kural smiled. I did not like the gleam in his eye. “Of course. You took me on as a guide, and thus I shall guide you. This way.”
We left the road, then, leaving the grand stairs behind and entering the shadowed depths of the forest. I fell a few paces behind as Bran and I picked our way over roots and between clusters of enormous, flesh-like mushrooms. If my horse were to turn an ankle here, I did not know if I could get him back to the city to help him. I did not wish to lose my only friend in this eldritch place.
Kural walked with sure feet, following a path I could not see. He turned left at an embankment of brilliant white-and-scarlet fungus, and right at the trunk of a younger tree, only the span of both my arms across and as tall as the heavens. The columns of living wood pressed in closer around us, dressed in lacy furls of fiery orange and scales of soft yellow.
“Put out your torch,” Kural said at last.
We stood in front of an enormous tree, wide as a city wall. One low-hanging branch stretched out over our heads, and a curtain of moss shrouded our position from any onlookers that might be lurking in the gloom. A solitary horned beetle, as large as two fists, climbed up the trunk, weaving its way between shelves of bright fungus that jutted out from the furrowed bark.
I did as I was told. Kural extinguished his light, and we stood in the dark.
One light appeared in the branches overhead, and then another, and more as my eyes grew accustomed to the lack of illumination. A constellation of hanging lanterns, far above me, lit up the edge of a walkway and a smooth, white wall that wrapped around the tree.
“Here we are,” said Kural. “This is the closest I can bring you. You will scale this tree by any means you see fit. When you arrive, wait for the change of the guard and cross over to the tree directly east. The vault is there. If you can enter it unseen, you should be able to wait until the guard changes again.”
“That sounds easier than I expected,” I said. The climb itself was no trivial matter, but the branches would hold my weight and give me plenty of space to rest, should I have had the need. Even the fungus, though I did not trust its slippery surface, was large enough in places to accommodate me lying down with room to spare.
Kural shrugged. His white robe had taken on several new, greenish stains, and he brushed at them with one hand. “This way has been kept a secret, and one cannot make the climb in armor. The upper kingdom believes itself untouchable. All you must do is avoid the patrols—or die.”
“I’m not going to die,” I said with a confidence that was only partially false. “You’ll look after my horse. If anything happens to him, you’ll answer to me as soon as I return.”
“I’ll protect him with my life,” Kural assured me. “I wish you the luck of the hidden gods. Perhaps when you return, you will accept their blessings.”
I doubted that I would, but I might have humored Kural with another hour of my time out of gratitude if I recovered the Mirror without incident.
I took a little dried meat and my recently purchased ropes from my saddlebags. With the rope and my harpoon over my shoulder, and the food in my pockets, I could climb with both hands. I tested the lowest shelf of fungus with one foot and pushed myself onto the first branch.
With no visible sun, and no change in the heavy, damp air as the day wore on, I could not tell how long I climbed. I scaled the first branch as it curved away from the trunk, and then onto a second branch where it tangled with the first. From there, I crossed to the trunk again, and I tied a rope to the end of my harpoon and threw it above, where it caught between two more branches. I tied the other end around my waist and lifted myself onto the next branch.
The ground fell away beneath me. Kural’s white robe became a tiny spot, and then disappeared, while the lights of the upper city grew brighter and brighter as I climbed. The walkway ringing the tree was lacquered against the ever-present humidity, and it shone where the light touched it. Soon, I could see the shadows of men crossing back and forth, their steps punctuated with the tap of short spears. I stayed as close to the trunk as I could, keeping myself directly beneath the watchful guards and out of sight.
I made the mistake, when the supports beneath the walkway were just out of reach, of turning my eyes to the ground. The tree seemed to tilt away, and I clung to it, digging my fingers into the bark. I had not fallen yet.
My head swam. Surely, I had climbed higher in my time, but that had been in the mountains, with the earth beneath my feet.
This is no different, I told myself. A single misstep was as dangerous there as it is here.
I kept my eyes on the tree in front of me as I climbed, branch by branch and foothold by foothold. At last, I wedged myself under the walkway, in the corner of one of its struts, and waited for the guard to change.
They took their patrols in measured footsteps, not unlike the procession of pilgrims. They wore tall boots with hard soles, and carried spears balanced for throwing, not much longer than my harpoon, and through the gaps between planks I thought I could see short bows slung unstrung on their backs. Longer weapons would have tangled in the overhanging branches. The watchmen spoke to one another in a language I did not know, though I recognized a few words—evening and tomorrow, mother and friend. These were ordinary men with ordinary lives. I would not raise a hand against them unless I had no choice.
The patrol moved on. I placed both hands on the lip of the walkway, under a twisting handrail decorated with both living vines and their facsimile worked in metal. I let my weight fall from the strut. With my legs dangling in the air, I lifted myself up and over the railing.
My boots had leather soles, and my footsteps were silent as I followed the patrol around the round room that stood around the trunk of the tree. I pressed myself against the lacquered wall as another group walked around the next tree—around the vault, if Kural was to be trusted. They were dressed in red cloaks as bright as fresh blood, and their helmets shone gold when they passed by the hanging lanterns.
I darted across the next walkway, ducking my head so the low branches and climbing vines could cover me. The door to the vault stood between two white columns carved with a spiraling pattern, and it was clear of moss and overgrowth.
I flattened my body against the door. Surely, it would be locked, and I would need another place to hide in the space of another two breaths. The watchmen approached from both sides.
It was unlocked. The door swung into the vault.
I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. Kural had said I could hide within and wait for an opportune moment to flee.
“You are not whom I expected,” someone said, and I could understand his words with surprising clarity.
I lifted my eyes. The room was dark, but a single lantern hung from the highest point of the ceiling, making the golden treasures within shimmer like a bonfire. Several mirrors reflected my surprised face back at me, framed in gold and silver. Colorful gems winked from the bands of crowns and the crests of ceremonial helmets.
In the center stood a man: tall, as all the people of the upper and lower kingdoms were tall, his hair and beard gray as a storm cloud. He wore a violet robe trimmed in red, and a cloak that sparkled with silken threads in a pattern of embroidered emerald vines.
I froze. My hand went halfway to the harpoon on my back and stopped.
“Welcome, outlander,” the man said. “I suppose you’re here for me.”
Back to Chapter XLVII: Under the Trees
Forward to Chapter XLIX: The Treasure-Hall of the Mage-King
I am trucking along with this draft. Thanks for reading! If you have any questions, comments, or rants about plot holes for me, comments are open.
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