“Bullshit! Where the hell is Tracker? Get that big stupid son-of-a-bitch out here and let him say that to my face!”
The light was weakening. The fat tomato of a sun had slipped behind the hills. Soon it would be dark. I felt a creepy tingle against my back. Was the damned tree going to act up?
Once I thought of him, I sensed an intense interest upon Old Father Tree’s part. Also a sort of dreamy rage coalescing...
Suddenly, menhirs flickered around all over the place, even across the creek where the brush was dense. A dog yelped. Silent signed something to Elmo. I did not catch it because his back was turned. Elmo trotted toward the turmoil.
The menhirs worked our way, forming a wall, herding something... Well! Tracker and Toadkiller Dog. Tracker looked vacuously puzzled. The mutt kept trying to scoot between the menhirs. They would not let him. Our people had to stay light on their feet to keep from getting their toes squashed.
The menhirs pushed Toadkiller Dog and Tracker into the barren circle. The mongrel let out one long, despairing howl, tucked his tail between his legs, and slunk into Tracker’s shadow. They stood about ten feet from Darling.
“Oh, Gods,” the Lady murmured, and squeezed my hand so hard I almost yelled.
The kernel of a change storm exploded in Old Father Tree’s tinkly hair.
It was huge; it was horrible; it was violent. It devoured us all, with such ferocity we could do nothing but endure it. Shapes shifted, ran, changed; yet those nearest Darling stayed exactly the same.
Tracker screamed. Toadkiller Dog unleashed a howl that spread terror like a cancer. And they changed the most, into the identical vile and violent monsters I saw while westward bound.
The Lady shouted something lost in the rage of the storm. But I caught its triumphal note. She did know those shapes.
I stared at her.
She had not changed.
That seemed impossible. This creature about whom I had been silly for fifteen years could not be the real woman.
Toadkiller Dog flung himself into the jaws of the storm, hideous fangs bared, trying to reach the Lady. He knew her, too. He meant to finish her while she was helpless inside the null. Tracker shambled after, just as puzzled as the Tracker that looked human had been.
One of Father Tree’s great branches whipped down. It batted Toadkiller Dog the way a man might bat an attack bunny. Three times Toadkiller Dog gave it the valiant try. Three times he failed. The fourth time, what might have been the grandfather of all lightning bolts met him squarely and hurled him all the way to the creek, where he smouldered and twitched for a minute before rising and howling away into the enemy desert.
At the same time Tracker-beast went for Darling. He gathered her up and headed west. When Toadkiller Dog-beast went out of the game. Tracker got all the attention.
Old Father Tree may not be a god, but when he talks he has the voice. Coral reefs crumbled when he spoke. Everyone outside the barren grabbed their ears and screamed. For us who were closer it was less tormenting.
I do not know what he said. The language was none I knew, and it sounded like none I had ever heard. But it got through to Tracker. He put Darling down and came back, into the teeth of the storm, to stand before the god while that great voice hammered him and violent violet echoed round his misshapen bones. He bowed and did homage to the tree, and then he did change.
The storm died as swiftly as it had began. Everyone collapsed. Even the Lady. But unconsciousness did not come with collapse. By the wan light remaining I saw the circling Taken decide their hour had come. They fell back, gathered velocity, cut a ballistic chord through the null, each loosing four of those thirty-foot spears meant for shattering windwhales. And I sat on the hard ground drooling, hand in hand with their target.
Through sheer will, I guess, the Lady managed to murmur, “They can read the future as well as I.” Which made no sense at the time. “I overlooked that.”
Eight shafts arced down.
Father Tree responded.
Two carpets disintegrated beneath their riders.
The shafts exploded so high that none of their fiery charge reached the ground.
The Taken did, though. They plunged in neat arcs into a dense coral reef east of us. Then the sleepiness came. The last thing I recall was that the glaze had left the three eyes of Goblin and One-Eye.
Forty-Four
The quickening
There were dreams. Endless, horrible dreams. Someday, if I live so long, if I survive what is yet to come, I may record them, for they were the story of a god that is a tree, and of the thing his roots bind...
No. I think not. One life of struggle and horror is enough to report. And this one goes on.
The Lady stirred first. She reached over, pinched me. The pain wakened my nerves. She gasped, in a voice so soft I barely heard it, “Get up. Help me. We have to move your White Rose.”
Made no sense.
“The null.”
I was shivering. I thought it was reaction to whatever struck me down.
“The thing below is of this world. The tree is not.”
Wasn’t me shivering. It was the ground. Ever so gently and rapidly. And now I became aware of a sound. Something far away, deep down.
I began to get the idea.
Fear is one hell of a motivator. I got my feet under me. Above, the Tinkle of Old Father Tree beat maddeningly. There was panic in his wind-chimes song.
The Lady rose too. We staggered toward Darling, supporting one another. Each groggy step spiced more life into my sluggish blood. I looked into Darling’s eyes. She was aware, yet paralyzed. Her face was frozen halfway between fear and disbelief. We hoisted her up, each slipping an arm around her. The Lady began counting steps. I remember no other labor so damnably great. I do not recall another time when I ran so much on will alone.
The shaking of the earth waxed rapidly into the shudder of passing horsemen, then to a landslide’s uproar, then to an earthquake. The ground around Father Tree began to writhe and buckle. A gout of flame and dust blasted upward. The tree tinkled a shriek. Blue lightning rioted in his hair. We pressed even harder in our flight down and across the creek.
Something behind us began to scream.
Images in mind. That which was rising was in agony. Father Tree subjected it to the torments of Hell. But it came on, determined to be free.
I no longer looked back. My terror was too great. I did not want to see what an ancient Dominator looked like.
We made it. Gods. Somehow the Lady and I got Darling sufficiently far away for Father Tree to regain his full otherworldly power.
The shriek rose rapidly in pitch and fury; I fell down grasping my ears. And then it went away.
After a time the Lady said, “Croaker, go see if you can help the others. It’s safe. The tree won.”
That quickly? Out of that much fury?
Getting my feet under me seemed an all-night job.
A blue nimbus still shimmered among Father Tree’s branches. You could feel his aggravation from two hundred yards. Its weight grew as I moved nearer.
The ground around the tree’s feet hardly seemed disturbed, considering the violence of moments ago. It looked freshly plowed and harrowed, was all. Some of my friends were partially buried, but no one appeared injured. Everyone was moving at least a little. Faces looked wholly stunned. Except Trucker’s. That ugly character had not resumed his fake human form.
He was up early, placidly helping the others, dusting their clothing with hearty, friendly slaps. You would not have known that a short time before he had been a deadly enemy. Weird.
Nobody needed any help. Except the walking trees and menhirs. The trees had been overturned. The menhirs... Many of them were down, too. And unable to right themselves.
That gave me a chill.
I got me another shudder when I neared the old tree.