The Forest of Peldain

Had the spirit of the lake depended on words only, Vorduthe might have grasped little of what was said. He understood as much as he did with the help of visualizations of hallucinatory vividness, which showed him in glimpsed pictures how this strange long-dead man had descended on Peldain in his flying ship, with a retinue of slaves to help him. He had arranged for future generations of these slaves to be cared for in Peldain’s inner garden, in case he still needed human servants. Ironically the cult of the lake had arisen, and unknowingly had retarded culmination of the project. But early on some of the slaves had escaped, had made their way across the sea and settled in the Hundred Islands.

“How could the mind of a man dwell in this lake for thousands of years?” Vorduthe objected. “It would be unendurable.”

The spirit laughed gently. “Vegetable existence is not only everlasting, it is also slow. What to you is a thousand years I can experience as one short day, and in that day there has been much to attend to.”

“Life as a forest sounds hardly to be desired.”

“You lack imagination. Once the time scale is taken into account, there is as much potential in vegetable development as there is in animal. I shall be mobile, I shall sense and think—I shall develop vegetable brains, I shall grow human bodies in pods if I wish. Every tree, every branch and blossom, every new organ and sensation will be at my disposal. Already I experience the sexual excitement of wind-spread fertilization, and had I been able to focus my consciousness in any one place, I would have battled with you in the forest, and destroyed you.

“You would destroy me now, if you could.”

“You have guessed that I cannot. I have no power over your will. But there is no need for us to be enemies. I have no interest in the Hundred Islands. I only need Peldain, and not even all of that. Do not oppose me. Leave me in peace, to grow… in return, you may come here, and gain your reward …”

The glow faded and impending suffocation told Vorduthe that his time was up; the spirit could hold him no longer. He came out of trance state, into blackness, and kicked out for the surface.

The bargain had been struck.

Chapter Fifteen

The tinctures exuded by the medicine trees, the chief aid of Peldainian physicians, no longer were able to sustain the ailing King Kerenei. An air of ceremonial sadness fell over Lakeside at the news of his impending death, mingled with the expectation of his young, vigorous son’s accession.

But although Askon Octrago’s extraordinary exploit in bringing the foreigners to Peldain had advanced his reputation, the easy-going life of Lakeside was not too much disturbed by these events. Early one morning Vorduthe was visited by Troop Leaders Donatwe Mankas and Wirro Kana-Kem. They walked together through the tree-town. Multicolored blossoms, their perfume ever-present, fell from the arbors and drifted constantly in the air. All around were the parked tree-dwellings, the greater structures that were used as communal meeting places, somewhat of a cross between gardens and taverns. Also there were small workshops where such work as there was to be performed in Peldain was done, and storehouses for food provided by the trees.

No payment was ever demanded for services rendered. The inhabitants were allotted to work as needed, by the authority deriving from the king.

Vorduthe and his companions walked through a crowd of playing children. “We are reaching the point of no return, my lord,” Donatwe Mankas complained. “Some of the men are taking wives. Children are on the way. Soon they will feel settled here and will have no stomach to fight. And now Octrago is to be king! Have you given up, my lord? Are we not to strike at all?”

With all the squadron commanders gone, the two remaining troop leaders instinctively spoke up as boldly as if they had held the rank. Indeed, either of these two would make a match for Mendayo Korbar. Kana-Kem glanced at Vorduthe but said nothing. He had never repeated what Vorduthe had told him about his plan to destroy all Peldain, had never even asked what he had eventually decided, but it was plain the warrior thought much.

When he saw these innocent children at play, when he thought of all the blameless families on this island, Vorduthe wondered if he would in fact have the heart to let the entity in the lake proceed, squeezing the habitable area of the island smaller and smaller.

Yet the Eye of Peldain held him to his bargain. Every day he dived into its turbid, tepid depths, and it was as if he dived straight into a secret land below the lake; he no longer encountered the entity at all.