[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]rocky streams, it's harder. I tried to keep my sense of our direction clear in
my head, but without the sun to guide me, I quickly felt lost. I knew from
what Ha told me, and what the ondan confirmed, that the road to the
Watchowl Keep cut straight through the heart of the Watchowl Forest. If we
could keep ourselves heading mostly south, or even southwest or southeast,
we'd cross it. Proof that the trails we followed had been made by animals,
though, instead of humans, was that none of them followed straight lines or
headed in a specific direction. They looped, switched back, paralleled
themselves, and pointedly didn't go anywhere. So we were continually leaving
one trail and whacking our way through writhing, hissing underbrush until we
found another more often than not, as we worked our way deeper into the
forest, we found ourselves on foot, one leading each horse, one following
behind to keep anything deadly from moving too close.
"Clearing ahead," Ha said.
"Does it look like the road?" I called. I was third in line, leading the
ondan's magnificent black horse, while the ondan brought up the rear.
"No." Ha cleared his throat. "Maybe. It's hard to tell from here, but I think
we've found someone's house.
No one found this news cheering. My own experiences with houses since the
Changewinds blew through convinced me that I'd rather be in the woods but
there it was. As we got closer, I could see the thatching of the roof, and the
watde-and-daub packed in between the timber framing. It looked like an
ordinary house. The only ordinary house I'd seen since the disaster had
belonged to the dying bard in Blackwarren, and it had remained ordinary
because he'd managed to keep the Changewinds from touching it. Or him.
Maybe this is another such house, I thought. I found myself hoping.
We stepped out of the forest into the clearing, carefully because we had to
assume that someone was watching through the upper windows with bow drawn and
arrow nocked. But we did step out. Somewhere around the house, which did not
sit beside the road, there would certainly be a path that led to it.
And after we discussed the matter, we decided that we might have a chance to
acquire a couple of additional horses, if any had been present and had
survived, and if the people of the house hadn't.
We approached through a garden that showed early signs of neglect. A few weeds
grew among the neat rows. Several staked plants had toppled and been trampled,
with no effort to set them right. The plants hadn't been watered. I
could see nothing that told me something was terribly wrong with the place,
but nothing reassuring me that it was right, either.
"Barn will be around the other side," Ha said.
The ondan said, "Perhaps we ought to take the time to find out if anyone still
lives here."
We skirted around to the front of the house. From there, we could see a broad
path, the two-tracked sort that would have been made by a wide cart.
It already showed heavy overgrowth by the forest's predatory plants I
thought traveling along it looked more dangerous than the going right through
the woods had been, since the trees in the woods took up space where the
deadly vines and creepers and thorns couldn't grow. The path gave them plenty
of room.
Nothing encroached into the cleared circle, though.
"I'll just knock on the door," Ha said, and stood on the broad stone stoop and
knocked.
The door swung open. Ha looked back at us. "Wasn't completely closed,"
he said.
"Don't go in alone," Giraud said, handing the reins of their horse to me.
"Wait," the ondan said. "I'll accompany you."
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"Not without me you won't," I said. I had no intention of standing in the
clearing alone, holding the horses. I tied both of them to the hitching post
and followed the others.
They moved into the room and stopped. I heard them gasp. But I couldn't see
past them until I pushed Giraud (the only pushable one of the three) out of
the way.
I wished I hadn't.
That sickening sweet-rotten odor that bypasses all logic to go straight to the
gut hit me as I got fully into the house. Two bodies lay on the floor,
decomposed and swelling. Vines coiled out of their gaping mouths thick,
smooth, fleshy vines black as tar, with broad, pale leaves. The plants were as
malignantly ugly as anything I'd ever seen, but they were nothing compared to
the fruit they already bore.
Attached by their navels to ropy tendrils of vines were half a dozen
human-looking... what shall I call them? Gourds? Mannequins? Offspring,
perhaps. Those closest to the bases of their respective plants were nearest to
being ripe, and I had the feeling that when they ripened completely, they
would resemble in every way the humans from which their parent plants
sprouted.
The male plant it couldn't have been a male plant, of course, or it wouldn't
have borne fruit, but it was the one upon which the man-fruits grew had three
offspring that were recognizable. The first was full-sized, gray-haired,
brown-skinned, with a skinny body. The hands, feet, and face
were still blobby and unfinished fingers and toes were stubs, the eyelids
looked like they were fused together, and some sort of filmy membrane covered
both the nostrils and the half-opened mouth. The second had the unfinished
look I'd only seen before when I helped Maura dar Kastokan wrap the body of
her newborn baby for burial. It hadn't lived more than a few minutes, poor
thing, and had been small enough to fit in the palm of her hand.
The third was a brownish blob with stubby protrusions that would become arms
and legs and head. Two flowers just beyond that had already set fruit.
Two more were open, and flies buzzed around them.
The story was the same with the woman-plant, though I guessed the development
of the woman-fruit was at least a few hours behind that of the man-fruit. None
of the women looked so near completion.
"That's obscene," Ha said.
Giraud walked outside and threw up on the stoop.
The ondan alone of all of us moved closer. "How does it seed?" he asked.
For a moment, I couldn't understand his curiosity. More than anything else, I
wanted to be away from the clearing and on the road to the keep. Then,
however, I realized his curiosity had a purpose beyond mere gruesome
curiosity. Something had killed the man and the woman who had lived here.
Something had planted the seeds of those two vines in their mouths. That
something was presumably still around.
The fruits of plants carried the seed. The fruit of this plant looked human
and acted human. So now we faced not only people who were mad, and people who
wanted to kill us... but people who weren't even people.
"Get away from there," Ha said.
The ondan didn't seem to hear him.
I looked more closely. As I watched, the fingers on the ripest of the
man-fruits stretched and puckered, and little fingernails appeared on them.
The toes developed, too. And then the eyes opened. Blank eyes, pale blue and
as empty as the space between the Abyss and the knife-edged rock that lined
its floor.
"Get back!" I shouted, but still the ondan didn't respond.
The man-fruit's arm began to slide toward the old man, bonelessly, horribly,
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