He decided to scale the tree, if he could, to get a lay of the land from on high.
He placed one hand against the tree's grayish, deeply grooved bark. It was sun warm and pleasant beneath his fingers. Raidon mused, "You've survived this Plague-wrought Land well, it seems."
Intense gladness washed across Raidon. It came without warning and smashed through his focus as if it were nothing more than rice paper.
The monk snatched his hand from the tree, and the sensation was gone.
Raidon studied the tree several long moments, considering.
He ventured, "Are you conscious?"
No voice answered, nor unwarranted feeling. He laid his palm again across the tree.
Acknowledgment suffused the monk from his crown to his toes.
"I greet you, Grandmother Ash. I am Raidon Kane. I am sorry to disturb your solitude, but if you please, I have a question, if you will hear it?"
Curiosity prickled up Raidon's arm.
"Thank you. I seek an old friend, an elf woman, who may have ventured past you some years back. She would have carried with her a powerful sword and had a dwarf as a traveling companion. Does that sound familiar?"
A "green" feeling of assent settled upon him, and then… fear.
"What makes you afraid, great one?"
The tree shuddered. A blue flame ignited beneath Raidon's hand. The monk snatched his hand away, leaving a trail of fading flame. He anxiously regarded his palm for several heartbeats, and then let out his breath in relief.
The point of flame on the bark remained, grew into a line that quickly traced the outline of a humanoid figure. The shape bulged, and then stepped from two dimensions to three. It was a woman, perhaps, but she was bark and leaves, stem and bough, with hands of knotted root. Thick strands of moss made up her hair and her eyes were twin forest pools limned in blue flame. Her bare skin was the ridged, grayish bark of an ash tree.
"Who says I am afraid?" the woman asked him, her voice vibrant with the music of a major chord. She wasn't much taller than Raidon, though he had the feeling she wasn't fully unfurled.
He resisted the urge to retreat a step. He replied simply, as if women emerging from trees was nothing less than what he expected, "Perhaps I misspoke, madam."
The woman examined her digits, wriggling them as if checking to see that they all functioned. Satisfied, she glanced back at Raidon. She asked, "Why do you seek those three in particular? Many more pilgrims have traveled the Plague-wrought Land since them."
"The elf s sword, Angul, has duties to perform in defense of Faerыn."
"You do not seem a swordsman," the woman said, somewhat critically.
"I am trained in their use: fist, foot, sword, sling, and more I have studied. Regardless,"-Raidon waved away the topic, surprised to find himself extolling his own virtues-"Angul is required. Have you seen him, or his wielder, Kiril the elf, or her companion, Thormud the dwarf?"
"I saw those you describe. I manifested a form much like this one so that we could converse. I attempted to dissuade them from their goal. They sought the Chalk Destrier, a fiend of white stone who was empowered the same time I was awakened."
"In the Year of Blue Fire? You are a spellscarred… tree?"
"The few creatures that survived full contact with the most virulent wave of spellplague are more than merely scarred, but utterly transformed. Plaguechanged. They are monstrous entities of rage and destruction. The world is lucky most of these creatures are bound to one location. Of course, I am an exception. I am prone more to philosophy."
Raidon suppressed the urge to explain that he too had been touched and changed by the initial wave of spellplague. Did that mean the Cerulean Symbol bound to his soul was more than "merely" a spellscar, as well? He looked down at the massive root field surrounding the ash tree, then back into the woman's burning eyes.
"I am bound, yes. But unlike the Chalk Destrier and others, my mind remains uncorrupted. Perhaps it is because I had no mind before I was awakened by the touch of unleashed, wild magic."
"Yet you have a shape like mine." Raidon pointed at the woman. He flirted with the idea of asking if she were a dryad. Some instinct made him refrain.
"I am an avatar only, a seedling," she replied. "In this form, I can move within the bounds of this changeland, but not beyond. Not yet."
Raidon frowned but chose to ignore the last.
"Can you direct me to this Chalk Destrier?"
"It will prove your death, as it did your friends."
"They have perished, then? You know that?"
"In time, I can taste all that occurs on the surface of the Plague-wrought Land. That which rots is absorbed into the earth, even soil as unstable as that found in this region. My roots spread even farther below ground than is visible above. I tasted their essence diffused into the loam some years ago. True, my subterranean tendrils cannot reach all the way into that creature's lair. Perhaps they were only wounded. But my knowledge of the Chalk Destrier leads me to believe otherwise."
Raidon nodded. "We suspect the same, but we think the sword remains."
"We?" inquired Grandmother Ash's avatar.
"My advisor, Cynosure. He is not with me now." Raidon looked around wondering if a voice out of thin air would prove him wrong. But a few more moments proved that hope false.
"Ah," said the avatar, her head cocked in a human fashion, indicating her uncertainty.
"I must retrieve the sword Angul. Events outside the borders of your land require him. Angul is a relic of vanished Sildeyuir. He has the power to oppose the Abolethic Sovereignty."
The woman brushed her hair back with a delicate, bark-skinned hand. She said, "I am unfamiliar with this Sovereignty."
"It is a group of creatures who are like the plaguechanged you described-fiends from the deep earth that must be opposed."
"And it is given to you to oppose them." "The task has fallen to me, yes."
The woman clapped her hands, making a sound like two planks slamming together. "A hero! The pilgrims' tales sometimes described such. You're my first."
The avatar smiled.
Silence stretched.
"Will you help me?" Raidon was suddenly weary. "Usually pilgrims must give me a story in return for my aid. But for you, a hero brave and true, I require only that you allow me to accompany you. When you meet the Chalk Destrier, my old foe, perhaps I can distract him long enough for you to look for your lost sword, if it's there."
Raidon bowed his head slightly. "Thank you, Grandmother Ash."
"This way, hero." The avatar touched his elbow and turned him to face a new direction. South. Southeast, perhaps. The strength in her root fingers was incredible, and the gnarled wood abraded his skin.
Releasing him, she pointed. "We must pass into a maelstrom of greater activity to reach the heart."
So saying, all the individual tendrils composing her form were sucked into the ground, like a plant growing in reverse, until she was gone.
Confused, he looked back to the great tree. Hadn't the woman just indicated she'd accompany him? The vast shape provided no answers.
Raidon glanced in the direction the avatar pointed. A stormy cloudscape hovered on the horizon, somehow half familiar. Blue lightning played within it.
A hundred paces from where he stood, a stem burst from the earth, followed instantly by dozens more. They twined and condensed. An eye-blink later, Raidon recognized the avatar.
She called, "Come along, hero. This way!"
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Taunissik, Sea of Fallen Stars
Anusha screamed the worst profanity she could ever recall hearing, something her half brother once said to a servant. The darkened cabin aboard the Green Siren absorbed her outburst, and quiet returned.