The Skrayling Tree (35 page)

In certain parts of the mountains’ flanks, high overhead, some snow had begun to settle. I became alarmed. If we had heavy
snow, we were finished, I knew. Doing his best to reassure me, Lobkowitz failed to convince himself. He shrugged. “We must
hope,” he said. “ ‘Hope ahead and horror behind, tell of the creatures I have in mind.’ “ He seemed to be quoting from the
English again. Only when he made such quotations did I realize that our everyday speech was German.

From somewhere in the distance came the faint, cawing voice of a bird. Lobkowitz became instantly alert.

We rounded a great slab of granite and looked out over a descending cascade of mountain peaks towards a frozen lake. I must
have gasped. I remember my own breath in the air. I heard my own heart beating. Was this Oona’s prison?

Far out in the lake I could see an island. On the island had been raised some sort of gigantic stepped metal pyramid which
dazzled with reflected light.

Leading from shore to island, a pathway, straight and wide, shone like a long strip of silver laid across the ice. What sort
of thing was this? A monument? But it seemed too large.

The wind then slashed stinging sleet into my eyes. When they cleared, a rolling mist was covering the lake and the surrounding
mountains.

Lobkowitz’s face was shining. “Did you see it. Count Ulric? Did you see the great fortress? The City of the Tree!”

“I saw a ziggurat. Of solid gold. What is it? Mayan?”

“This far north?” He laughed. “No, only the Pukawatchi have ventured up here, as far as I know. What you saw was the great
communal longhouse of the Kakatanawa, the model for a dozen cultures. Count Ulric, give thanks to your God. Intratemporally
we have followed a dozen crooked paths all at the same time. The odds on accomplishing that were small. By chance and experience,
we have found resolution. We have found the roads to bring us to the right place. Now we must hope they have brought us to
the right time.”

Lobkowitz looked up with a broad smile as out of the air a large bird dropped and settled on his extended forearm. It was
an albino crow. I looked at it with considerable curiosity.

The crow was clearly its own master. It walked up Lobkowitz’s arm, sat on his shoulder and turned a beady eye on me.

Lobkowitz’s manner revealed that he had held little hope of our success. I laughed at him. I told him I was not pleased with
my fate. He admitted that overall he believed we had been dealt a pretty poor hand in this game. “But we made the best use
of the cards and that’s the secret, eh? That’s the difference, dear count!”

Fondling the proud bird affectionately and murmuring to it, he obviously greeted a pet he had thought lost. I suspect, too,
that he was half-mad with disbelief at his own successful quest. Even now I could tell he was torn between greeting the bird
and craning for another glimpse of the golden pyramid city. I understood his feelings. I, too, was torn between fascination
with this new addition to our party and peering through the swirling clouds for another view of the fortress, but the clouds
now made it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead.

It was dark before we decided to stop in a small, natural meadow. We drew the big cloak over a little shelter in the form
of tough bushes rooted into the mountainside and were thankfully able to light a small fire. It was the most comfortable we
had been for some time. Even Lobkowitz’s pet crow, roosting in the upper parts of a bush, seemed content. I, of course, immediately
wanted
Lobkowitz to tell me whatever new details it was possible for him to reveal. Anything which would not affect the course of
our time-paths.

There was very little, he apologized. He did not think we had much further to go. He frowned at his bird, as if he hoped it
would provide him with advice, but the creature was apparently asleep on its perch.

Lobkowitz was awkwardly cautious, perhaps fearing that we were now so close to our goal that he dare not risk losing it. A
pull or two on one of his numerous clay pipes, however, calmed his spirits, and he looked out with some pleasure at the dark
red and deeper blue of the twilight mountains, at the clearing sky and the hard stars glittering there. “I once wandered worlds
which were almost entirely the reflection of my own moods,” he said. “A kind of Heathcliffian ecstasy, you might say.”

He seemed emboldened and continued on more freely. “Our business is with the fundamentals of life itself,” he told me. “You
already know of the Grey Fees, the ‘grey wire’ which is the basic stuff of the multiverse and which responds, often in unexpected
forms, to the human will. This is the nourishment of the multiverse, which in turn is also nourished by our thoughts and dreams.
One kind of life sustains another. Mutuality is the first rule of existence, and mutability is the second.”

“I have not the brains, I fear, to grasp everything you tell me.” I was polite, interested. “My attention is elsewhere. Essentially
I need to know if we are close to rescuing Oona.”

“With considerable luck, more courage and any other
advantages we can find, I would say that by tomorrow we shall stand on the Shining Path which crosses to the island of Kakatanawa.
Three more have come together.
Three by three and three by three, we shall seek the Skrayling Tree,
ha, ha. This is strong sorcery, Cousin Ulric. All threes and nines. That means that every three must come together and every
nine must come together to link and form a force powerful enough to restore the Balance. There is much to overcome before
you will see the interior of the Golden City.”

Our fire sustained us through the night, and in the morning ours was the only patch of green in a landscape covered by a light
snow. We packed our gear with care and secured everything thoroughly, for we knew the dangers of slipping on that uneven trail.

The wind came back before noon and blustered at us from every angle, as if trying to uproot us from our uneasy balance on
the mountain face and hurl us into valleys now entirely obscured by thick, pale cloud. We kept our gloved fingers tight in
the cracks of the rock face and took no chances, advancing step by careful step.

At last we were climbing down, moving into a long valley which opened onto the lakeside. In contrast to the frozen water,
the valley was green, untouched by the snow on the upper flanks. It felt distinctly warmer as we reached the shelter of pleasant
autumn trees.

Lobkowitz’s face was now a stark mask as he kept his eye upon the gap in the hills through which we could sense the glittering
golden pyramid.

Soon enough the clouds parted again, and the sun shone full down on an unimaginably vast fortress. As
we neared it I began to realize what an extraordinary creation it was. I had seen the Mayan ziggurats and the pyramids of
Egypt, but this massive building was scores of stories tall. Faint streamers of blue smoke rose from it, obviously from the
fires of those living in it. An entire, great city encompassed in a single building and constructed in the middle of the pre-Columbian
American wilderness! How many brilliant civilizations had risen and fallen leaving virtually no records behind them? Was our
own doomed to the same end? Was this some natural process of the multiverse?

These thoughts went through my head as I lay staring at the multitude of stars in the void above me that night. Sleep was
almost impossible, but I finally nodded off before dawn.

When I awoke, Prince Lobkowitz was gone. He had taken his cutlass with him. Only his saddlebags were left behind. There was
a note pinned to one of the bags:

MY APOLOGIES. I HAVE TO GO BACK TO COMPLETE SOME UNFINISHED WORK. WAIT FOR ME A DAY. THEN CARRY ON TOWARDS THE SHINING PATH.
LET NOTHING DIVERT YOU.

—
LOBKOWITZ

I guessed that the albino crow had gone with him, until for an instant I spied it circling above me before disappearing down
into a canyon. Perhaps it followed Lobkowitz?

With little to do but nurse my fears, I waited all that day and another night for Lobkowitz. He did not return. Superstitiously
I guessed we had celebrated too early.

I mourned for him as I took up his belongings and my own. I wondered where the bird had gone. Had it followed him to his fate
or taken another path? Then I began the long climb down towards the frozen lake and the silvery trail which led across it.

I prayed that I would at last find Oona in the great, golden pyramid the Kakatanawa called their longhouse.

Then he told the deed he’d done,

Told of all that endless slaughter,

Red beneath the setting sun.

W. S. H
ARTE
,

“The War Trail”

T
he trail down to the lakeside was surprisingly easy at first. Then, as usual, the wind came up, and I had to fight it to stay
on my feet. It attacked me from every point of the compass. Now I, too, had the strangest feeling that not only was it intelligent,
but it actually hated me and wanted to harm me. This made me all the more determined to get down to the valley floor. Gales
forced their way through layers of my clothing, sliced me across the throat and drove icy needles into my eyes. My hand felt
lacerated from trying to protect my face.

Several times, on a difficult part of the mountain
trail, the gusts sprang from nowhere to grab me and more than once almost succeeded in flinging me down into the distant gorge.
Sometimes they struck like a fist into the small of my back and other times attacked my legs. I began to think of this wind
as a devil, a malignant personality, it seemed so determined to kill me. In one terrible moment I set off an avalanche I barely
escaped, but I pressed on with due care, keeping a handhold on every available crack and clump of grass as the full-force
gale tore and thrashed at me. Somehow I eventually reached the valley.

I stood at last on the flat, staring up a long, narrow gorge towards the lake. I could see a few dots on the shore, and I
hoped one of them might be Lobkowitz awaiting me. I could not believe he had betrayed or abandoned me. He had seemed so elated
the night before, anticipating our sighting of the causeway and the golden ziggurat of Kakatanawa.

The ziggurat became more impressive as I approached.

From this distance I could see signs of habitation. It was evidently a huge and complex city to rival any of the great cities
of Europe, yet arranged as a single vast building! From various parts of the ziggurat, which was verdant with gardens, hanging
vines, even small trees, I saw the blue smoke of small fires rising into a clearing sky. Everywhere was busy movement. The
place was thoroughly self-contained and virtually inviolable. It could have withstood a thousand sieges.

A huge wall ran around the whole base. It was extremely high and capable of withstanding most kinds of attack. The tiny specks
were people amid large, animaldragged
passenger vehicles and commercial carts. The general sense was of busy activity, casual order, and unvanquishable might. If
such a city had ever existed in my world’s history, then it survived only as a legend. How could something so magnificent
and so enormous be completely forgotten?

In contrast to the order of the city, the activity on the shore was confused. I saw a few figures coming and going. Some sort
of dispute seemed to be taking place. I tried to see who was arguing with whom.

Foolishly I had let my attention focus on the distance rather than on my immediate surroundings. The gorge had narrowed. The
trail dipped down into a shallow, green meadow blanketed with a light coating of snow. Enclosed by high rocks, the depression
might have once been a pond or old riverbed. I was so busy craning my neck to see the group on the shore that I was taken
entirely by surprise.

I slipped, losing both my bundle and Lobkowitz’s. My feet slid from under me, and I fell headlong.

When I came to rest I found myself surrounded by a large band of Indians. They were silent, menacing. They emerged from among
the rocks, glaring in full war paint. Though they had the appearance of Apache or Navajo, their clothing was that of woods
Indians, like the Iroquois. They were clearly intent on butchering me. But there was something wrong.

As they drew closer, spears and bows at the ready, I began to realize how small they were.

I tried to tell them I came in peace. I tried to remember the Indian signs I had learned in the Boy Scouts in
Germany. But these fellows were not concerned with peace. The tiny men screamed unintelligible insults and orders at me. There
was no doubting their belligerence but I hesitated before defending myself. Not one of them reached much above my knee. I
had been flung into some children’s fairyland, some elfin kingdom!

My first impulse was laughter. I began to make some remark about Gulliver, but the spear that narrowly missed my head was
unequivocal. I continued to try to avoid bloodshed.

“I am not your enemy!” I shouted. “I come in peace!”

More miniature arrows zipped past me like bees. They were not deliberately trying to miss me. I was amazed at their bad marksmanship,
as I was not, after all, a small target. They were clearly terrified. After one last attempt to persuade them to see reason,
I acted without thinking, without any hesitation, and with a growing frisson of relished destruction.

Reaching over my shoulder I sensuously slid the shivering, groaning runeblade from her hard scabbard and felt the black silk
mold to my hand, the black steel leap to life as she scented blood and souls. Scarlet runes veined her ebony blade, pulsing
and flickering within the steel as she sang her terrible, relentless song. And it seemed I heard names in the humming metal,
heard great oaths of revenge being taken. All this bonded me even closer to the weapon. My human self remained horrified,
distant. Whatever else inhabited me anticipated a delicious feast. As well as drawing on the experiences of Elric of Melniboné
I also became, in some hideous way,
the sword itself.