[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.There is sound reason for the name.It is a land terrible to men.Seldom are they welcomed there.In the heart of the Plain of Fear there is a barren circle.At the circle’s center stands a gnarly tree half as old as time.The tree is the sire of the sapling standing sentinel over the Barrowland.The few scabrous, primitive nomads who live upon the Plain of Fear call it Old Father Tree and worship it as a god.And god that tree is, or as close as makes no difference.But it is a god whose powers are strictly circumscribed.Old Father Tree was all a-rattle.Had he been human, he would have been in a screaming rage.After a long, long delay his son had communicated details of his lapse in the matter of the digging monster and the buried head and the wicker man’s insane murder spree.The tree’s anger was not entirely inspired by the tardiness of his son.As much was directed at his own impotence and at the dread the news inspired.An old devil had been put down forever and the world had relaxed, had turned to its smaller concerns.But evil had not missed a stride.It was back in the lists already.It was running free, unbridled, unchallenged, and looked like it could devour the world it hated.He was a god.On the wispiest evidences he could discern the shapes of potential tomorrows.And the tomorrows he saw were wastelands of blood and terror.The failure of his offspring could be precursor to the greater failure of his own trust.When his hot fury had spent itself he sent his creatures, the talking stones, into the farthest, the most hidden, the most shadowed reaches of the Plain, carrying his call for an assembly of the Peoples, the parliament of the forty-odd sentient species inhabiting that most bizarre part of the world.Old Father Tree could not move himself, nor could he project his own power beyond certain limits, but he did have the capacity to fling out legates and janissaries in his stead.XVIIThe old man could barely keep himself upright in the saddle when he reached Lords.His life had been sedentary.He had nothing but will and the black arts with which to sustain himself against the hazards of travel and his own physical limits.His will and skill were substantial but neither was inexhaustible nor indefatigable.He learned that he was just five days behind his quarry now.The White Rose and her party were in no hurry, and were having no trouble getting around the imperial authorities.For all his desperation he took two days off to rest.It was an investment of time he was sure would pay dividends down the road.When he left Lords he did so with a horse and pack mule selected for stamina and durability, not for speed and beauty.The long far leg of the next stage would take him through the Windy Country, a land with a bad reputation.He did not want to linger there.As he passed through ever smaller, meaner, and more widely separated hamlets, approaching the Windy Country, he learned that he was gaining ground rapidly-if closing the gap by four days in as many weeks could be called rapid.He entered the uninhabited land with little optimism for a quick success.There were no regular, fixed tracks through the Windy Country, which even the empire shunned as worthless.He would have to slow down and use his talent to find the trail.Or would he? He knew where they were headed.Why worry about where they were now? Why not forget that and just head for the place where they would leave the Windy Country? If he kept pushing he might get there before they did.He was three-quarters of the way across the desolation, into the worst badlands, a maze of barren and wildly eroded stone.He had made his camp and had fed himself and had lain back to watch the stars come out.Usually it took him only moments to fall asleep, but tonight something kept nagging at the edge of his consciousness.It took him a while to figure out what it was.For the first time since entering the Windy Country he was not alone within that circle of awareness open to the unconscious scrutiny of his mystic sensibilities.There was a party somewhere about a mile east of him.And something else was moving in the night, something huge and dangerous and alien that cruised the upper airs, hunting.He extended his probing mind eastward, cautiously.Them! The quarry! And alert, troubled, as he was.Certain something was about to happen.He withdrew immediately, began breaking camp.He muttered all the while, cursing the aches and infirmities that were with him always.He kept probing the night for that hunting presence.It came and went, slowly, still searching.Good.There might be time.Night travel was more trouble here than he expected.And there was the thing above, which seemed able to spot him at times, despite his best efforts to make himself one with the land of stone.It kept his animals in a continuous state of terror.The going was painfully slow.Dawn threatened when he topped a knife-edge ridge and spotted his quarry’s camp down the canyon on the other side.He began the descent, feeling that even his hair hurt.The animals grew more difficult by the minute.A great shadow rolled over him, and kept on rolling.He looked up.A thing a thousand feet long was dropping toward the camp of those he sought.The still stone echoed his shouted, “Wait!”He anticipated the lethal prickle of steel arrowheads with every step.He anticipated the crushing, stinging embrace of windwhale tentacles.But neither dread overtook him.A lean, dark man stepped into his path.He had eyes as hard and dark as chunks of obsidian.From somewhere nearby, behind him, another man said, “I’ll be damned! It’s that sorcerer Bomanz, that was supposed to have got et by the Barrowland dragon.”XVIIIA serpent of fire slithered southward, devouring castles and cities and towns, growing larger even as pieces of it fell away.Only fire black and bloody red lay behind it.Toadkiller Dog and the wicker man were the serpent’s deadly fangs.Even the wicker man had physical limits.And periods of lucidity.At Roses, after the city’s punishment, in a moment of rationality, he decided that neither he nor his soldiers could survive the present pace.Indeed, losses among his followers came more often from hardship than from enemy action.He camped below the ruined city several days, recuperating, till wholesale desertions by plunder-laden troopers informed him that his soldiers were sufficiently rested.Five thousand men followed him in his march toward Charm.The Tower was sealed.They recognized him in there.They did not want him inside.They named him rebel, traitor, madman, scum, and worse.They mocked him.She was absent, but her lackeys remained faithful and defiant and insufficiently afraid.They set worms of power snaking over stone already adamantine with spells set during the Tower’s construction: writhing maggots of pastel green, pink, blue, that scurried to any point of attack to absorb the sorcerous energy applied from without.The wizards within the Tower were not as great as their attacker, but they had the advantage of being able to work from behind defenses erected by one who had been greater than he.The wicker man spewed his fury till exhaustion overcame him.And the best of his efforts only left scars little more than stains on the face of the Tower.They taunted and mocked him, those fools in there, but after a few days they tired of the game.Irked by his persistence, they began throwing things back at him.Things that burned.He got back out of range.His troops no longer believed him when he claimed that the Lady had lost her power.If she had, why were her captains so stubborn?It must be true that she was not in the Tower.If she was not, then she might return anytime, summoned to its aid.In that instance it would not be smart to be found in the wicker man’s camp.His army began to evaporate.Whole companies vanished.Fewer than two thousand remained when the wicker man’s sorceries finally breeched the Tower gate
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]