Reaching out his hand, Caramon touched solid trunks to his right and his left. He could feel them massed behind him. An idea occurred to him. He stretched his arm out into the darkness and felt around ahead of him. All was clear.
“Keep close to me, Tas,” he ordered and, for once in his life, the kender didn’t argue. Together, they walked forward into the opening provided by the trees.
At first they moved cautiously, fearful of stumbling over a root or a fallen branch or becoming entangled in brush or tumbling into a hole. But gradually they came to realize that the forest floor was smooth and dry, cleared of all obstacles, free from undergrowth. They had no idea where they were going. They walked in absolute darkness, kept to some irreversible path only by the trees that parted before them and closed in after them. Any deviation from the set path brought them into a wall of trunks and tangled branches and dead, whispering leaves.
The heat was oppressive. No wind blew, no rain fell. Their thirst, lost in their fear, returned to plague them. Wiping the sweat from his face, Caramon wondered at the strange, intense heat, for it was much greater here than outside the Forest. It seemed as if the heat were being generated by the Forest itself. The Forest was more alive that he had noticed the last two times he had been here. It was certainly more alive than the world outside. Amid the rustling of the trees, he could hear—or thought he heard—movements of animals or the rush of birds’ wings, and sometimes he caught a glimpse of eyes shining in the darkness. But being among living beings once more brought no sense of comfort to Caramon. He felt their hatred and their anger and, even as he felt it, he realized that it wasn’t directed against him. It was directed against itself.
And then he heard the birds’ songs again, as he had heard them the last time he’d entered this eerie place. High and sweet and pure, rising above death and darkness and defeat, rose the song of a lark. Caramon stopped to listen, tears stinging his eyes at the beauty of the song, feeling his heart’s pain ease.
But even as the lark’s song pierced his heart with its sweetness, a harsh cackle made him cringe.
Black wings fluttered around him, and his soul was filled with shadows.
“What does it mean, Caramon?” Tas asked in awe as they continued to grope their way through the Forest, guided, always, by the angry trees.
The answer to his question came, not from Caramon, but from other voices, mellow, deep, sad with the ancient wisdom of the owl.
“It means the magic is out of control,” Caramon said softly. “Whatever will holds this Forest in check is just barely hanging on.” He shivered. “I wonder what we’ll find when we get to the Tower.”
“If we get to the Tower,” Tas muttered. “How do we know that these awful, old trees aren’t leading us to the edge of a tall cliff?”
Caramon stopped, panting for breath in the terrible heat. The crude crutch dug painfully into his armpit. With his weight off of it, his knee had begun to stiffen. His leg was inflamed and swollen, and he knew he could not go on much longer. He, too, had been sick, purging his system of the poison, and now he felt somewhat better. But thirst was a torment. And, as Tas reminded him, he had no idea where these trees were leading them.
Raising his voice, his throat parched, Caramon cried out harshly, “Par-Salian! Answer me or I’ll go no farther! Answer me!”
The trees broke out in a clamor, branches shaking and stirring as if in a high wind, though no breeze cooled Caramon’s feverish skin. The birds’ voices rose in a fearful cacophony, intermingling, overlapping, twisting their songs into horrible, unlovely melodies that filled the mind with terror and foreboding.
Even Tas was a bit startled by this, creeping closer to Caramon (in case the big man needed comfort), but Caramon stood resolutely, staring into the endless night, ignoring the turmoil around him.
“Par-Salian!” he called once more.
Then he heard his answer—a thin, high-pitched scream. At the dreadful sound, Caramon’s skin crawled. The scream pierced through the darkness and the heat. It rose above the strange singing of the birds and drowned out the clashing of the trees. It seemed to Caramon as if all the horror and sorrow of the dying world had been sucked up and released at last in that fearful cry.
“Name of the gods!” Tas breathed in awe, catching hold of Caramon’s hand (in case the big man should feel frightened). “What’s happening?”
Caramon didn’t answer. He could feel the anger in the Forest grow more intense, mingled now with an overwhelming fear and sadness. The trees seemed to be prodding them ahead, crowding them, urging them on. The screaming continued for as long as it might take a man to use up his breath, then it quit for the space of a man drawing air into his lungs, then it began again.
Caramon felt the sweat chill on his body.
He kept walking, Tas close by his side. They made slow progress, made worse by the fact that they had no idea if they were making progress at all, since they could not see their destination nor even know if they were headed in the right direction. The only guide they had to the Tower was that shrill, inhuman scream.
On and on they stumbled and, though Tas helped as best he could, each step for Caramon was agony. The pain of his injuries took possession of him and soon he lost all conception of time. He forgot why they had come or even where they were going. To stagger ahead, one step at a time through the darkness that had become a darkness of the mind and soul, was Caramon’s only thought.
He kept walking and walking and walking one step, one step, one step...
And all the time, shrilling in his ears, that horrible, undying scream...
“Caramon!”
The voice penetrated his weary, pain-numbed brain. He had a feeling he had been hearing it for some time now, above the scream, but—if so—it hadn’t pierced the fog of blackness that enshrouded him.
“What?” he mumbled, and now he became aware that hands were grasping him, shaking him. He raised his head and looked around. “What?” he asked again, struggling to regain his grasp of reality. “Tas?”
“Look, Caramon!” The kender’s voice came to him through a haze, and he shook his head, desperately, to clear away the fog in his brain.
And he realized he could see. It was light—moonlight! Blinking his eyes, he stared around. “The Forest?”
“Behind us,” Tas whispered, as though talking about it might suddenly bring it back. “It’s brought us somewhere, at least. I’m just not certain where. Look around. Do you remember this?”