The Forest of Peldain

The men moved into the little orchard. The fruit had a thick but soft and edible skin. The pulp within was juicy and tasted delicious.

They quickly ate their fill and most would have been glad to relax for a while in this pleasant spot, but Octrago was eager to be moving. At his urging their scant equipment was taken from the boats, which he then unceremoniously pushed into the water and allowed to drift downstream.

“Gather fruit,” he then said. “We shall need provisions.”

“And how do we carry it?” Mendayo Korbar asked dubiously. They had no satchels; no way to carry except with their hands.

Octrago had an answer to this. He beckoned to Korbar, and led him deeper into the grove, looking about him in search of something.

They came to a tree of a different type: slender, with sharply raked down-pointing branches. From them grew unusually large pale green leaves, broad and fat. Octrago plucked one and showed it to Korbar, then peeled open the edge nearest the stem and inserted his arm.

The leaf was hollow. Opened up, it made a serviceable bag or satchel, large enough and strong enough to hold a dozen or so of the yellow fruit. Octrago then split the stem into a loop by which he hung it over his shoulder.

“Nature provides,” he said curtly. “The bag can hold water, too, and if the lips are pressed together they seal themselves again. The men can pick whatever they need.”

Korbar returned to give Vorduthe the news. Shortly the party was trudging toward the mountains.

The afternoon saw them climbing the foothills, after which the ground rose steeply and they toiled up the lower slopes. Vegetation grew sparse. They entered a wilderness of boulders, cracked cliff-like blocks of rock and patches of scree.

After they had gained considerable height Octrago paused and bid Vorduthe and Korbar look back. The plain lay below them. But now the large hill from which they had emerged by boat lay revealed in its outline—and it held a surprise.

It was a massive sculpture: a long hill carved into the recumbent figure of a naked woman. Trails of wheat-colored grass represented her spread tresses as she lay on her back. Pointed hillocks, thrusting up from the main mound, were her breasts. Her arms were smaller side prominences, lying limp.

Her legs were apart. From the cleft in her crotch the stream issued, to pass between her thighs and go wandering over the landscape.

Everyone present marveled at the sight. Fascinated, Vorduthe tried to imagine how much labor must have been involved in such a task, how much time it must have taken. And what was its purpose?

“It was done a long time ago,” Octrago answered when this question was put to him. There seemed to be a note of sadness in his voice. “I do not know why.”

“Then this region was once inhabited?”

“Yes, it was once inhabited. Here we are between the Clear Peaks and the forest, whose fringe you can see.”

Vorduthe looked again. Octrago was right. Beyond the reclining female the horizon was banded with a darker color—a malevolent dark green.

“It would not have been visible once,” Octrago said lightly.

“You mean it is spreading…?” An image came to Vorduthe’s mind of the helpless woman being engulfed, eaten, as the forest encroached on her body, burying her in horrors.

“It was less extensive in times past. But have no fear. Its growth will be curbed.”

Lord Korbar spoke up. “The route we have taken is essentially the one you followed on the outward journey?” he queried.

“Correct,” Octrago told him.

“Then you followed the river from this plain, underground and into the forest. You must have found it most difficult to make such a journey against the current.”

Korbar had made no attempt to hide the suspicion in his voice. Octrago barely paused before answering. “At intervals the river reverses its direction. Sometimes it flows outward from the groin of the hill-statue, sometimes inward. We followed the inward flow. This is caused,” he added casually, “by the chasm in the cavern. At times water wells up from deep underground, and forces a reversal of current.”

Blinking, Korbar stared at the river as it meandered over the plain below. “That’s a strange business,” he grumbled. “Wouldn’t it mean the stream had to flow uphill?”

But this time Octrago did not reply. He turned and led the way up a bank of loose shale, pausing at the top and then finding a way through a crevice in the tortured rock.

He seemed a more confident guide than ever he had been in the forest. At length they came to a cliff face impossible to ascend on foot, and here it was necessary to climb. At Octrago’s direction the men were roped together in groups of five or six. Octrago led the way; where hand and footholds could not be found he made them by means of the tools that had been made for the purpose, chisel-headed picks that opened cracks in the rock where metal struts could be hammered firmly in place.