The Forest of Peldain

Momentarily his attention was distracted. The medium through which he sank became thicker with depth and impeded his motion. Soon he could thrust no deeper and came to a stop, suspended.

Once again he turned his mind inward. Unlike the upper levels, the surrounding fluid was at body temperature. He was losing the sense of his bodily outlines. An impression of beating heart and racing blood filled his consciousness, as though he had become a creature inhabiting his own internal organs. Then that, too, faded.

Mistirea had given him no inkling of what contact would be like, except that it was apt to be unexpected. The spirit of the forest had no solid body and manifested itself according to the mind of the inquirer.

Unexpected it was. Vorduthe almost forgot where he was, almost forgot the need to hold his breath. He was plunged into green light and a mass of green fronds and foliage that stretched away in all directions.

The verdant jungle was not still. It roiled and swelled. Monstrous mutational sports burst from it, quickly to subside and be replaced by others. Fear gripped Vorduthe at first; he thought he was back in the coastal forest. Then he realized that none of this actually touched him. He quieted himself.

In that quiet, he sensed the presence.

Like the jungle itself, it gave the impression of green: the dark, brooding green of the forest’s depths or of ancient ferns; the light green of southerly trees; the dazzling luminous green of the glassy gems found on volcanic slopes.

And yet nothing was really visible. The presence was at his shoulder, just outside his range of vision. Now it was here, now it was there. Or he was in a new world and that entire world was alive, in the same way that a person was alive, so that the presence was everywhere and it was nowhere.

But it was real. So real that Vorduthe found himself framing a question.

Where am I?

The answer came in sighs of wind, in the shush of waving fronds, in the rustle of foliage and the groan of slender tree limbs.

Where else but here?

Here is only illusion, Vorduthe replied.

Is it? If it is, then everything is illusion.

The voice was becoming strangely firmer. With each succeeding word it seemed to detach itself from leaf and stem, from fern and frond, to become a definite tone: a smooth, confident, green tone. Vorduthe could almost put a face to it, could feel a kind of personality behind it.

Without volition on his part, he plunged deeper into the jungle, which seemed to be of endless depth. Suddenly he was in a little glade, and here a pageant was presented to him. It reminded him of the mythic pageant played out yearly in Arelia, which told how Irkwele, the sky god, made the world. But here the pictures were mind pictures; some of them one could have drawn on sketching bark, some not.

He had already heard something of the story from Mistirea. The lake had poured itself from the sky, where it had once dwelt among the stars. It was a godlike intelligence that had created both the forest and the artifact trees. It had also placed people on the island, to live in harmony with the trees.

For many generations of Peldainians the spirit in the lake had been cooperative, receptive to the trained minds of successive high priests. But now it was growing stronger and intractable.

It was stretching, extending itself. It no longer wanted to be restrained. Peldain’s strange botany was its body, and that body wanted to grow. Peldain as a garden for intelligent animals to live in was an indulgence that no longer mattered. It was to become rank with life, and the mind-jungle surrounding Vorduthe boiled with eagerness.

Vorduthe was glad to see it. This was the revenge he had spoken of to Kana-Kem. He would encourage the spirit in the lake to choke the island.

But what was this… he had not counted on the forest being so voracious, so hungry for conquest. It had a greater lust for it than had King Krassos or any of his forebears. Vorduthe saw the forest rage unchecked and invade the sea, mutating all the time.

It would seize the whole world. In time, it would reach the Hundred Islands.

“So now there is a fresh mind to contend with,” the green voice said calmly. “Listen, you speak of illusions. You are troubled by dreams. Well, here is a dream.”

The viridescent jungle faded. Vorduthe felt his eyes close involuntarily. He was falling asleep.

When he awoke, he felt refreshed. He was lying on a low fleece-covered bed. A pleasant breeze, carrying the tang of the sea, drifted through a nearby open window.

His gaze fell on a ceiling of gaily painted timber, typically Arelian in design. Idly he let his eyes scan the rest of the room, and everything he saw he knew.

He was in his sleeping quarters in his villa, on the headland overlooking Arcaiss.