"For I know not of woodcraft or travel, but I know the Code and Measure. And the Order of the Rose takes its Measure from deeds of wisdom and justice. And a Knight of the Rose shall see, through word and deed and sword, if it comes to sword, that no life is wasted or sacrificed in vain."
The giant said nothing but dismounted slowly, heavily. The stallion, free from its monumental rider, snorted and thrashed into the woods as again the warrior settled into a stillness, his enormous club raised on high. At the very head of the club, three long black thorns glinted menacingly in the veiled sunlight.
Sturm dismounted as well, his movements swift and businesslike. He reached over Luin's back and grappled the heavy bundle of shield and breastplate to the forest ground. Under the masked gaze of the giant, he donned the armor of his forefathers and, bowed a little by the unaccustomed weight, through the water he waded, his sword drawn. The reforged blade shone in the forest light, and surging out of the pond, Sturm extended the blade in the time-honored Solamnic salute to the looming figure before him.
It was all Sturm could do to raise his shield.
The impact of the club sent the lad to his knees, and for a moment, his senses wobbled as well. He fancied himself in the Inn of the Last Home, and the eyes of Caramon and Raistlin and his mother sparkled in the green recesses of the leaves around him. Dazed, Sturm shook his head. The eyes winked out, and the lad lifted his shield again as the second blow plummeted home.
Sliding in mud, his armor creaking and rattling, Sturm backed unsteadily toward the water, his enemy anchored firmly before him, speaking in a strange and gibbering language that was not words so much as the sighing of wind through the branches, the crackle and whisper of dried leaves.
"Failed," the giant seemed to be saying. "These miles and these years and these ventures into the hollow and poisonous dark, and you have failed, yes, beyond your worst fears and because of those fears."
The visor of its helmet fell back in its sudden movement, and beneath that visor was no face but instead a deep, featureless plane of wood and oak bark. Then, out of the gorget, the elbows and greaves snaked a dozen, then two dozen branches, twining and tangling and lashing Sturm with their switching movements in the sudden rush of growth. The crown of the tree burst forth from the crest of the helmet, which shattered with the shrill, rending sound of torn metal. Sturm leapt backward, gasping, catching his balance in ankle-deep water. The tree began to move.
"You will never defeat me," its voice said, clearly now as the warrior rose and stretched, his feet rooted fast in the soil but his forty limbs stretching and moving. "You will never defeat me because I am what the sword comes to in the last battle."
Cruelly, almost gleefully, the thing poked its club into the center of Sturm's shield, forcing him back on his heels. Its limbs creaked as it pushed and pushed again, and staggering backward, Sturm felt the water lap at his knees. The thing continued to speak, to gibber at him, but the words and finally the sounds were lost in the rush of water and his own thunderous fear.
Nervously Sturm lunged with his sword, his movements tentative and short. The first thrust struck the armor of the monster and turned aside, and with a casual flick of its club, the thing parried the next blow, and the next.
"Is it always the sword and the lance that settles things for you?" the oak creature taunted, waving the club above its head. Sturm watched, groggy with fear, as the enormous weapon blurred in the forest light, whipping through the air with the whirring of a thousand cicadas, of a hundred thousand bees.
Desperately Sturm scrambled from the water and lunged again, his movements more reckless, more unschooled. Under the flickering movement of the club his blade passed, beneath the breastplate and into the heart of the wood. Quickly, as though it had been stung, the creature cried out, its shriek like the tearing of branches, and the club flashed blindingly into the armhole of the breastplate, sharp upon flesh and muscle and bone, sending Sturm's sword end over end into the undergrowth.
White pain danced through Sturm's left hand as the black thorn lodged in his shoulder, directly in the spot where Vertumnus had wounded him at Yuletide. Stifling a cry, he dropped his shield, spun and scrambled after the blade, the oak creature's club crashing on the ground behind him, sending loud tremors through the earth. Jarred into fearful waking, the forest around them erupted with the deafening quarrels of squirrels, the loud insistent shrieks of hawk and jay.
With his right hand, Sturm clutched the handle of the weapon and turned to face his adversary. In the shadowy clearing the creature looked distant, veiled, as though it had summoned the forest to surround it. Weaving on his feet, his left hand throbbing and useless, his shoulder impaled by a broken black thorn, Sturm leveled his sword and awaited the onslaught of his enemy.
But the oak creature stood still, its weapon motionless and lifted. In the shadows, it looked like an enormous, many-armed spider, its bristling limbs unmoving now in the windless clearing. Puzzled, Sturm stepped once toward the thing as the noise of the forest around him settled and subsided. Slowly he raised the sword, his eyes on the crown and leaves of the tree. Another step he took, and then another…
And up through the ground surged the roots, whipping about his ankles, binding him to the spot. Then slowly the limbs approached and descended, the dry leaves shaking like a death rattle.
Sturm slashed at the roots with his sword, but right-handed, he was awkward and scarcely as strong. As one root snapped, another shot up to take its place, and Sturm's blows became more hurried, more frantic and dangerous. Panic-stricken, he raised his sword yet again and tangled it in the web of branches that had covered him. He pulled his hand away, leaving the sword in the thick, coiling branches and, pushed beyond himself by fear, tore at the enveloping roots with his bare hands.
Just as the branches and roots were about to cover him, as one green branch wrapped itself around his neck and tightened, Sturm reached desperately for the blade above him. As he felt the air and the life leaving him, his hand clutched the pommel of the sword, and with the strength that propels a drowning man, Sturm wrenched the weapon from the branches and, gasping, shouting, plunged it to the hilt in the dark heart of the treant.
The creature let forth a dry, rasping shriek, and the limbs that held and tangled Sturm shuddered for an instant. But the heart of the monster was rotten and hollow, and the branches began to tighten again, encircling Sturm's neck and chest with renewed and redoubled energy. The wound in his shoulder throbbed, his will dissolved, and his thoughts passed from fear through a great and drowning weariness and into a black and dreamless sleep.
Before he lost all consciousness, he smiled at the foolishness of it all. It is like some old wooden myth, he thought. I have come this far to be undone by a thorn in the flesh.
Then suddenly the world exploded and crackled around him, incandescent and charged with silver and green light, and he saw and felt no more. They would find him lying at the foot of the blasted tree like an ancient and unexplainable sacrifice.
Mara rushed blindly through the thickening forest, heedless of obstacle or danger. Three times she saw a flash of brilliant black amid the trees ahead of her, heard the clear and familiar whistle and chatter, its accents dire and urgent. Each time she turned toward the source of the sound and rushed toward it, only to find that the spider, made frantic by pain, had scurried elsewhere, leaving her alone with her deepest fears.
On she raced, her thoughts darkening as the foliage closed around her. Ahead, the cry arose again, this time shrill and different. She saw him finally, thrashing in the leaves of a sunlit clearing, a deep, tattered wound on his back. Two legs held at a grotesque, broken angle, he was screeching in pain and trying to burrow at the base of a blasted oak. Mara raced to the spider and touched him. Frantically Cyren spun about, arching his shattered back in desperate, witless self-defense.