But perhaps it would be easier for Tahl if she wasn’t anywhere near him, and he could think about something else.
“All right,” she said.
“We’ll build a shelter while we’re waiting for you,” said Alnor. This turned out to be unnecessary. Shortly before they reached the trees they found several tumbledown buildings beside the road, temporary storehouses, they guessed, for the army that had come. Most were already ruinous, while those whose roofs were still sound were dark and rank with the stench of lairing beasts. Small creatures scuttled into hiding as they stood in the doorways.
“I’d sooner get wet,” said Meena, turning away. “What’s that over there?”
The strange little circular hut stood all on its own, well away from the road. It was walled on three sides but open toward the forest. Birds had roosted in the rafters and the floor was spattered with their droppings, but the roof was sound. At the center of the hut was a flat stone on which someone must have lit a small but intense fire, hot enough to redden and crumble the surface, though no ashes remained. They eyed it suspiciously.
“Anyone feel anything?” said Alnor.
“Nothing special,” said Tahl.
“Looks like something’s been going on here, but not that recent, judging by the mess,” said Meena. “There was magicians came with the army, Lananeth told us. It’ll be something to do with one of them. Why don’t we just clean it out—we don’t want to be doing that in the dark—but not move in here unless it comes on to rain? Then Tilja and me can have a go at the forest while you do your kick-fighting. And you may as well get stuff for a fire together, too.”
There was, for once, a decent patch of grazing just below the hut, so Tilja hobbled Calico and left her with the boys while she and Meena returned to the old road and followed it to the edge of the forest, only to find that the place where it had entered the trees was an entrance no more. Three years ago the Emperor’s engineers had started to hack a broad gouge into the forest, and had thus let in the light. Dormant seeds had sprung into growth all across the opening, even between the cobbles of the road itself. A mass of brambles tangled through the dense array of saplings.
“We’ll not do any good here,” said Meena. “And besides, if they’ve gone and cut everything down, where’ll I find a cedar old enough to talk to me? They need to be a hundred years old and more before they start that, and a couple of hundred before they say anything worth hearing. There’s got to be a way in somewhere along here. . . . Now look at that! What’s been happening here? That’s never woodmen who did that!”
They were now a little beyond the road, staring at a tangled jumble of smashed timber. Many great trunks had been snapped like twigs twenty feet above the ground. Trees that still stood had lost half their branches. Then, as they walked on along the edge of the forest, the damage ended as suddenly as it had begun and they could pick their way through the fringe of undergrowth to ancient standing woodland, like that above Woodbourne, shadowed leaf litter between the soaring trunks, with only here and there a shrub or smaller tree that could thrive in such darkness.
“What do you make of that?” said Meena, gazing back to the ruin they had passed. “That’s never a storm did that, just all in one place. That’s got to be magic, like I was saying back at the hut. Now, just stand still a moment, will you . . . ? Don’t tell me there’s none over this side . . . not a whisper . . . you’d’ve thought . . .”
“Can you tell where the lake is?”
“Should do . . . let’s try a bit further on—maybe it’s something to do with you. You just stay here . . .”
She ran off between the trees, halted a moment and waved to Tilja to join her.
“Got it,” she said, pointing. “Still a long way off, though. I was right, too—I can’t feel it now with you being so close.”
“I didn’t seem to do that to you that time we went to fetch Ma out of the forest.”
Meena paused, frowning, while she went to fetch the memory from the other room.
“Wasn’t the same, then. You’ve changed. Found yourself, if you know what I mean. There’s a lot more to you now. And that’ll be why I couldn’t hear the cedars. So if you’ll just keep a bit behind me . . .”
Again she ran off, but this time didn’t stop until she turned aside and disappeared. Tilja found her standing at the foot of one of a group of enormous cedars, their boles as broad as haystacks, their spires way out of sight above the canopy. She watched while Meena laid her hands against the ridged red bark, bowed her head and stood motionless. After some while she straightened, turned and came slowly back. Tilja had never seen her, either young or old, look so stricken.
“Just mumbles and mutters,” she said sadly. “Like when you wake someone up only they don’t want to be woken. The magic’s dying, Til. It’s dying!”
“Perhaps they’ll wake up when . . . What about the unicorns? Are they still there?”
“If they are, they’re hiding. Ah, well, there’s one way to find out. Let’s go and fetch the boys in before it gets dark.”
The answer came clearly. Barely twenty paces in under the trees Alnor stumbled and would have fallen if Meena hadn’t caught him. Close behind them, Tahl halted, swaying, and closed his eyes, waiting for Tilja to turn him and lead him back into the open. Her touch seemed to have no effect on the sickness. Calico watched the proceedings with a bored sneer.
“That’s the unicorns being so scared, and they’ve good reason,” said Meena when they’d helped the boys out and settled them down to rest beside a small grove of sweet chestnuts that stood separate from the forest.
“You mean they were there? Somewhere close by?” said Tilja.
“Don’t have to be,” said Meena. “It fills the whole forest, what they’re feeling. Maybe it’s worse when something’s happened to scare them, but they’ve no need of that just now. Like I say, they’ve reason enough without it. The cedars aren’t talking, and what that means is the magic’s dying out of the forest. Not just the sickness—that’s worse than ever, like you’ve just seen, but it’s not going to stay like that. Once the magic is gone, the unicorns can’t live here anymore, and they know it. That’s why they’re so scared right now. And when they’ve gone the sickness will go too, and anyone will be able to come through the forest—soldiers, tax collectors, anyone. That’s why we’ve got to get back, see it doesn’t happen.”
“There’s got to be a way through,” mumbled Alnor, lying with his head in Meena’s lap. “We’ve both got to get back, he said, and he’d have known if I couldn’t.”
“Oh, there’ll be a way all right,” said Meena, running her fingertips along his bare forearm. “We just need to find someone who knows where it is.”
She paused, and glanced sideways at Tilja.
“And tell us what to do when we get home,” she added.
There was a silence. Tilja shrank into herself. Tahl was looking directly at her now, and didn’t glance away when she caught his eye. Now that the moment had come, he had allowed himself to think it all through. He knew. She swallowed.
“All right,” she said. “He told me not to tell you, in case . . .”
“Then don’t,” said Alnor.
“Only if there’s anything we can do,” said Tahl.
“You’ll have to stay right away,” said Tilja. “And . . . and if it goes wrong . . . he said it might . . . no, there won’t be anything.”
There was another silence.
“He told you to try this?” said Alnor.
“Yes . . . if . . . I can’t tell you that either.”
“Then it’ll be all right,” said Meena firmly. “If it’s something you’ve got to do, you’d better get it over. And just smell that wind—it’ll be raining in a couple of hours. You’d best take Calico. We’ll stay here and look for chestnuts. Don’t you worry about us. They’re good honest trees, these. They’ll look after us.”