Tanequil

Twenty–three

As he approached, Pen was able to take a closer look at the bridge, and what he saw gave him pause. It was narrow, less than eight feet wide, and provided no handholds to protect against a fall. You don't want to walk too close to the edge, he thought. You don't want to look down.

But it was the nature of its construction that troubled him most. The bridge was formed of massive stone blocks cut and placed so precisely that the seams were barely noticeable. Each block was wedge shaped, with the narrow part pointed downward, the blocks carefully fitted and aligned so that the weight of each was buttressed by the others, the whole arranged to form the arch that spanned the ravine. There were no pins or supports or any kind. Stone abutments at each end wrapped the corners, serving as cradles to keep the stones tightly pressed together and immobile.

But the massive blocks each must have weighed thousands of pounds. How had they been shaped, carried, and placed across the ravine without underlying supports? They could not have just hung in midair, each in turn, while the rest were fitted. Pen could not fathom it. Even using pulleys and a block and tackle it would have been impossible to suspend the first stones while waiting to set the others. They were too big, too heavy, and too cumbersome.

There was something else to consider, he saw. These stones were not as old as those of the ruins themselves. They were smooth and not yet worn and pitted by weather and time as were the walls behind which Pen and his companions had hidden earlier. Stridegate was thousands of years old. The bridge was much newer. It had been constructed long after the city was destroyed and its inhabitants dead.

The implications of his reasoning caused him to shiver, — they made him want to turn around right then and there and go back.

It would have taken at least one giant to construct this bridge. It would have taken technology that no longer existed in his world.

Or it would have taken a very powerful magic.

He didn't care for any of those possibilities. All were beyond anything the group had ever encountered. It dwarfed them, reducing their tiny defenses to a handful of pebbles. Even Khyber, with the magic of the Elfstones to aid her, would not be able to stand against something that could accomplish what he saw before him.

He stopped abruptly, not five feet from the bridge, and stood staring at it. Sensing his discomfort, Cinnaminson whispered, «Pen? What's wrong?»

He didn't know what to say in reply, how to explain. He wasn't sure he should try. He couldn't turn back, couldn't give up. The Ard Rhys needed him to go forward if she was to have any chance at all of escaping the Forbidding. Those he had come with needed him to cross if they were to realize any success from their efforts to bring him there. All other considerations, no matter how daunting, had to be put aside.

He was just a boy, but he knew instinctively what he must do.

«Nothing's wrong," he said, squeezing her hand reassuringly. «Don't worry.»

He started forward again, leading her onto the bridge, reaching out with his senses into the twilight shadows that now draped everything from the forested pinnacle to the ravine that surrounded it to the bridge that reached to it. He used his tiny magic, his strange gift, to seek anything that might be waiting. Whispers came back to him, small rustlings and little hissings. They came from unidentifiable sources, from the impenetrable dark, from the void. He heard them, but could not make sense of them. He sorted through them swiftly, seeking just one that he might recognize.

Nothing.

He glanced over the side of the bridge into the ravine, into the pooled darkness. His gaze tightened. Was something moving down there?

He slowed, caution once again taking hold.

-Cross—

A chorus of voices spoke, all sounding the same, all whispering in perfect unison. They echoed in his mind, clear as the ringing of a bell. He started in shock, then glanced quickly at Cinnaminson.

«The spirits of the air," she said softly. «Can you can hear them, too?»

He nodded, surprised that he could, wondering why they were speaking to him, as well.

-Cross–Fairy voices, soft and feminine. Telling him to come ahead, to do what they had brought him to do.

«Who are you?» he whispered.

— Aeriads. Spirits of the air—

«What is the matter?» Khyber called out to them, a disembodied voice from somewhere behind. «Are you all right?»

He waved back at her without looking.

-Cross

The whispers urged him to obey, and he did so, not knowing why exactly, not understanding the nature of his readiness to do as they commanded, only knowing that he should. He moved slowly, one careful step at a time, climbing toward the apex of the stone arch, watching the island pinnacle draw steadily closer.

«Where do you come from?» he whispered, not really expecting an answer, but curious anyway.

-From our father and mother. From seedlings strewn far and wide. From wind and rain and time–Surprised, Pen considered the words. He had no idea what they meant, but the wordseedlings caught his attention.

«Are you children of the tanequil? Is the tree your father?»

-Our father and our mother. One lives in light; one dwells in dark. One has limbs, — one has roots. They wait for you—

Pen shook his head. At the center of the bridge, at the apex of the stone arch, suspended above the dark void of the ravine, he was suddenly aware of something stirring down in the depths, down where he couldn't see. His senses warned him, but he could not trace that warning to anything specific. He just knew. He froze in response, feeling Cinnaminson do the same. She was aware of it, as well. It wasn't the rustle of grasses or the whisper of leaves. This was something much larger—like the heavy rub of a massive animal passing through brush or the drag of logs, cut and chained, through dry earth. But it wasn't localized like that, either. It was spread all through the ravine, twisting and turning along ruts and down sinkholes, oozing and burrowing through dirt and under loose stone.

Mirrored in the sharp glare of the setting sun, a vision flashed before his eyes. Out of that glare, a monstrous apparition took shape, vague and unformed, a thing of tentacles and feelers, of crushing strength and brutal response. He saw in its grip the bodies of humans and animals alike. He saw them break and bleed. He watched their struggles and heard their cries. He cringed from the vision, turning quickly away, closing his eyes to shut out the sights and sounds.

-Cross

The ropes that had been bound about their waists fell away as if severed by knives. Shouts and cries ensued from those left behind, but quickly faded.

-Cross

The voices of the aeriads called to him once more, firm and insistent. Keeping tight hold of Cinnaminson, he moved swiftly ahead, no longer even glancing toward the ravine. The shadows had thickened with the twilight, and it seemed as if, sinewy and rapacious, they were trying to climb from the ravine, out of the darkness and into the light. Pen walked more quickly still, trying to ignore their presence, to block away his perception of the thing below, to ignore the possibility that it was attempting to find him.

Then he was across, safely off the bridge, standing on the solid rock of the pinnacle amid a fringe of trees and brush, just another of the twilight shadows. He no longer sensed the thing in the ravine. He no longer felt it coming for him. He breathed slowly and deeply, steadying himself, pushing back his fear. He was all right. He was safe.

He looked over at Cinnaminson, whose shadow–streaked face was pale and drawn, etched with lines of fear. He squeezed her hand. «We're across. It isn't coming anymore.»

She nodded that she understood, but her tension would not be so easily dispelled.

-Come

The aeriads had no time or interest in fear, it seemed. Pen and Cinnaminson started ahead once more, moving into the trees. Night descended, the moon and stars appeared, and the texture of the light changed. Slowly, their vision adjusted, and they were able to see well enough to know how to place their feet. The trees closed about them, towering old–growth giants, age–worn sentinels of that strange place. Pen could almost feel them watching, waiting to see what he and Cinnaminson would do. The forest was deep and still, and it was living. Pen stepped lightly, gingerly, thinking it made a difference where and how he walked. The earth was soft, carpeted with needles, damp and smelling of mulch and rot. He did not hear the sounds of night birds or small animals. He did not see anything move.

— Come

The aeriads led them with whispered encouragement, leading them through the forest, between the massive old trees, down the ravines and across the ridges, over the rocky outcroppings and around the steep drops. The path was circuitous and unknowable, a thread that no one who hadn't traveled it many times before could hope to find. Pen could not explain it, but he had the curious feeling that it might not even be possible to travel the same path twice, that it might somehow be different each time. Even though comprised of earth and rock, streams and trees—solid, knowable things—that place felt as if it were ephemeral and ever shifting. There was a changeling quality to it, a mutability that turned it from solid to liquid, from a terrain of the physical toa dreamscape of the mind. Pen had the feeling that it wasn't a place you could go to if you weren't a guest of its maker.

It was a place, he thought suddenly, in which the King of the Silver River would feel at home.

He began to hear humming then, soft and insistent. He thought it was the wind at first, weaving through the branches of the trees, vibrating the leaves, but there didn't seem to be any wind. Then the humming changed to singing, the nature of the words indistinct but the sound clear and compelling.

«Cinnaminson?» he whispered.

She was smiling. «The aeriads are singing, Pen.»

He listened to them, to the strange, echoing voices that seemed to come from both inside and outside his head, rising and falling in regular cadence, the sounds repeating, over and over.

«Can you understand them?» he asked, leaning close and speaking softly, afraid that his voice might do something to disturb the song, might break its spell.

She shook her head. «Isn't it beautiful? It makes me want to sing with them.»

They continued on through the trees, deep into the forest, far away from the ravine and the thing that dwelled within it. Night had descended, and the world was a mix of tiny pieces of starlit sky glimpsed through breaks in the canopy. Pen could not be certain how far they had come, but it seemed much farther than should have been possible. The pinnacle, though large, was of a finite distance, certainly no more than a quarter of a mile across. Even allowing for all the climbing up and down and detours over rocky terrain, they shouldn't have been able to travel so far without reaching the opposite side.

But they walked on anyway, the time passing, the night settling in, silent and soft, the air warming, the light from moon and stars growing steadily brighter. After a time, Pen dropped Cinnaminson's hand, no longer afraid for her or himself, willing to believe that they had found a haven from the dangers that had tracked them for so many days. It was a conclusion based on a feeling, not rational cause.

But it felt as real to him as the earth he walked and the trees he navigated, and that was enough.

Finally, long after the moon had risen and they had walked well beyond any distance it should have taken to cross the pinnacle, the aeriads, who had been singing all the while, went suddenly still.

-Wait–Pen and Cinnaminson did so, taking hands again without looking at each other, an act of reassurance that had become as familiar and comforting to them as a childhood hug. All about them, the ancient forest had gone still, the silence deep and penetrating, a presence as real as the sky and earth.

Ahead, a sudden, unexpected brightness shone through the trees, as if the moon had broken through the thick forest canopy to light a place previously hidden from view.

-Come

They went forward once more, drawn by the invisible presence of the aeriads, trusting to fate and their invisible guides. Pen felt a strange sense of calmness, a peace of mind he hadn't known since Patch Run. Everything would be all right, he knew. Whatever awaited, everything would be all right.

Then they stepped from the trees into a clearing awash with moonlight. The canopy of the trees had pulled back, opening to the heavens as if in deference to the ancient tree that sat at the very center. It was massive by any standard, its trunk thick and gnarled and its limbs twisted and broad, lending it an otherworldly, surreal look among even the largest and strangest of the old growth that surrounded it. The moonlight revealed it clearly, particularly the odd colors that infused its bark and leaves—the former a peculiar mix of mottled black and gray, the latter deepest green bordered in bright orange. Pen could see the colors clearly, even in the darkness. He could see the way they mingled with each other, forming a strange pattern that glimmered against the deep black backdrop of the starry sky.

He had found the tanequil.

He had seen it only once, in the flare of the vision revealed by the Elfstones weeks before, when Ahren Elessedil had used the magic in the Elven village of Emberen to make certain that rinding the tree was an attainable goal. He had seen it then, but the vision was nothing compared to what he was seeing in front of him. No vision could adequately capture the size and majesty of that giant. No vision could reveal how it made him feel to stand before it, dwarfed by its size and the sum of its years.

Dwarfed, he thought suddenly, by its intelligence.

He blinked in shocked surprise. He could feel the tanequil watching him. He felt it considering him, deciding what it would do with him now that he was there. It was a wild, irrational conclusion, one couched in premonition. Nevertheless, he was convinced of it. The tanequil was watching.

«Pen, I have to go now," Cinnaminson said suddenly, releasing his hand and stepping away. Her milky eyes shifted blindly. «The aeriads say I must go.»

«Go where?» He was suddenly afraid. He wasn't sure if he was afraid for her or for himself, — he only knew that he didn't want to be separated from her. «Why do you have to go?»

«So that you can be alone. So that you can do what you came here to do.» Her smile was quick and dazzling, lighting up her face in a way that rendered her instantly beautiful. «The aeriads are going to show me what they look like. They brought me here so that I could see them. I won't be long.»

He stared at her helplessly. «I don't want you to leave.»

Her eyes shifted again, searching the space between them, making it seem as if she were trying to find a way to reach him. «You came to find the tanequil, Pen. You have done so. Make something good come out of that. Find what you need to help your aunt.»

She hesitated a moment longer, then turned away. «I am coming," she said to the air, to something only she could hear. Her head lifted slightly. «Good luck, Pen.»

He watched her disappear into the trees, sylphlike, a shadow quickly lost in the changing mix of light and dark, swallowed whole.

«Good luck," he echoed back, and was alone.

He stood motionless in front of the tanequil for a long time, unsure of where or how to begin, of what to do. The tree would give him one of its branches, if he could find a way to persuade it to do so. The branch could be shaped into something called a darkwand, if he could figure out how. The darkwand would give him access to the Forbidding and allow him to find and retrieve his imprisoned aunt and bring her home again, if he could reach Paranor and pass through the portal created by the potion called liquid night.

If. That word was everywhere. It loomed all about him like an impenetrable wall.

What should he do?

He waited some more, half hoping that the tree would try to communicate with him, that it would take the initiative and show him a way to speak with it. But after standing in front of it for what seemed an interminable amount of time, he gave up hoping. The effort to communicate would have to come from him. He was the supplicant, — he was the one who was going to have to find a way to break through.

He had communicated with the aeriads just by speaking aloud. Would that work with the tanequil, as well?

«My name is Penderrin Ohmsford," he said. «Can you understand what I am saying?»

He felt foolish speaking that way, and he knew as soon as the words were out that there wasn't going to be any response. The tanequil was different from the aeriads. He was going to have to find a different way of speaking to it.

He walked up to the tree and placed his hands on its bark, running them slowly over the hard, rough surface. He was surprised at the warmth he found there, a pulsating heat that radiated outward to spread through his own body. He kept his hands in place as the heat entered him, thinking that might be the beginning of a way to connect.

But nothing more happened.

He took his hands away, staring upward into the thick nest of intertwined limbs. The orange–tipped leaves shimmered in the moonlight overhead, a rippling that reminded him of a sunset's glow on the surface of the Rainbow Lake. Rustling sounds emanated from that shimmer, soft and gentle, and he reached for them with his senses, drawing them in, trying to sort them out and make them into words.

But nothing revealed itself.

He moved back again, gaining some distance, hoping that by doing so he might also gain some perspective. But as he walked slowly around the tanequil, studying its shape, he began to doubt that such a thing was possible. From every angle, the tree appeared the same—ancient and huge, a knotted enigma a boy could never hope to untangle. It was a tree, and as such he understood some little bit about it. But it was a tree of such immensity—of size and shape and age and immutability, of innate intelligence and deep understanding—that it defied him. He recognized its power, but he could not begin to come to terms with it. The longer he tried to decide how it might be done, the more certain he became that it couldn't. The tanequil was too remote, too foreign, and too impenetrable for anyone possessed of less magic than a Druid.

Khyber, he thought, would be better suited for this. He wished suddenly that he had agreed to let her come.

But that was ridiculous. It wasn't Khyber who had been sent by the King of the Silver River. He was the one who had been told that he could find a way to communicate with the tree.

He sat down, crossing his legs before him, resting his chin in his hands, staring at its mottled trunk, and trying to think the problem through. There had to be a means for doing so. He might not know what it was yet, but he should be able to find it if he just thought about it long enough. Communication with living things came about in all sorts of unexpected ways. He had discovered that over the years, — he knew it to be true. So there was a way to communicate with the tanequil too. There was a way to understand it and to make it understand him.

How do trees communicate?

He had no idea. Until then, he had never heard of one that did. Save for the legendary Ellcrys, when it spoke with the Chosen of the Elven people. But the Ellcrys was formed from a human who had willingly agreed to be transformed into a tree. So there was human nature buried somewhere deep within the Ellcrys. He wasn't sure the same could be said of the tanequil. He knew nothing of its history, nothing of how it had come into being. He could not presume that there was anything human about it.

He must find another way, then. It was a tree, and, as such, a plant. What did he know of plants and their relationship with the world? They were alive and took their nourishment from the soil. Some, like the tanequil, were very old, and because they could not move, they had to be very patient. They had endless amounts of time to think, and so they could reason in ways unknown to humans, who were never in one place long enough to give themselves over to reasoning as trees could.

He sighed, staring up into the branches. He was imbuing the tree with human characteristics. Should he be doing that? Did the tanequil think? Did it reason? Could it understand such concepts as patience? Did it do more than root and nourish as the eons passed and the world changed about it?

He thought for a time about the ways in which he understood other living things. Birds and animals he understood from their calls and cries, from the way they moved or didn't move. Insects communicated in much the same way, but without thought. Grasses and flowers possessed limited communicative skills, all in the form of instinctual responses to heat and cold, to wet and dry. Days earlier, in the Klu Mountains, he had read the responses of lichen to the sun's movement by touch …

He stopped himself. Would touch work here? He had tried placing his hands on the tanequil, but its bark was like an armor that protected it from the elements, designed specifically to shield it. It didn't take in nourishment or produce responses to the elements through its bark.

It did those things through its roots.

He stared at the tree. Was that the way to communicate with it— through its roots? How in the world was he supposed to do that, especially when those roots were buried dozens—perhaps hundreds—of feet underground? The prospect of digging down to find them seemed ridiculous. Surely that wasn't what he was intended to do if he wished to communicate with the tree.

If Cinnaminson were there, she might be able to offer a different perspective. In her blindness, sometimes she saw things more clearly than he did. He still didn't know why she had been ordered to leave him alone even though the aeriads had been so specific about her coming with him. Frustration and irritation warred with each other as he thought about it.

Suddenly, he was just tired. He didn't want to think anymore. He didn't want to do anything but rest. He couldn't remember how long it had been since he had slept.

He stretched out on the ground under the limbs of the ancient tree and closed his eyes. He needed only a few minutes, just long enough to clear his thinking, and then he would go back to work.

Overhead, the tanequil's branches formed a silvery green canopy in the moonlight, its strange webbing of orange lines shimmering softly. He had the distinct impression that time was slowing down, that his own breathing had become the measure of its passing. His tension and frustration drained out of him until nothing remained but the leaden ache of his body.

He closed his eyes and slept.

As he slept, he dreamed. His dream was of home and his parents. He was back in Patch Run, and his mother was telling him that magic wasn't important, that in some ways it was a burden. His father stood close by, using the wishsong to bring the buds of flowers into bloom. All around them, the sky was green and damp, and the air smelled of rain–soaked earth and leaves. Somewhere distant, an airship flew in silhouette against the sky, and he wished he were on it, safely aloft, safely away.

The scene changed, and he was hiding in a fortress, deep within its walls, down where only torchlight could penetrate the shadows and darkness. He crouched behind a wall, listening to sounds that came from the other side. He knew what was happening behind those walls, but he couldn't bring himself to look. His aunt, the Ard Rhys, was a prisoner of creatures so terrible that even to look at them was death. They were doing things to her best left to the imagination. Those things were meant to change her, to alter her mind, to make her something she didn't want to be. She was calling his name, begging him to help her, to save her from what was happening. Her cries were desperate, unbearable, filled with pain. She was all alone in that dark place, and he was the only one who could bring her back into the light.

But he couldn't move.

He could only sit there, listening …

He came awake again, eyes opening to a sunrise brightening through the heavy canopy of the tanequil in a flush of pink light. He stared at the limbs and the sky and the light, fighting back tears and a sense of desperation that threatened to overwhelm him. He lay without moving, waiting for both to pass, waiting to regain control of his emotions, to breathe easily again.

Something stroked the skin of his arms, soft and feathery. Little fingers were touching him, fairy hands or insect legs. They moved along the backs of his hands and wrists. But their movement was circular, a stroking that suggested an attempt to soothe or ease. He grew calm. His tears dried and his heartbeat slowed. He took deep, steadying breaths.

Without moving his hands or wrists, he raised himself carefully on his elbows.

Tiny roots sprouted from the ground all around him, little nests of them, some so slender they matched the hairs on his arm. They formed a bed, poking from the earth, weaving and touching, twisting and stroking. They were everywhere, though he felt them only where his skin was exposed. In front of him, the tanequil's limbs were swaying gently and its leaves shivering in time to the movement of the bed of roots that cradled him. He watched their undulation, watched the swaying of the tree, fascinated, mesmerized.

He lay back again and closed his eyes. The touching continued, and he lost himself in its hypnotic repetition. He reached out to it with his senses, embraced it, and made it a part of himself.

Then, deep within his consciousness, down where his heart beat and his life pulsed, he heard a deep, slow whisper, and even though it came from within himself, the voice wasn't his.

— Penderrin—