19. Footsteps, Empire of Grass

19 Footsteps

After so much time lost in Aldheorte, Morgan was beginning to understand why the Sithi called their forest settlements “little boats” and the city they had abandoned, “The Boat on the Ocean of Trees.” The great forest really was a sort of ocean.

He stood in the upper branches of a great ash, its crown looming over the other treetops like a church steeple above a village, its great trunk creaking in the wind. Morgan felt as if he were on the edge of some great understanding. Most of the forest seemed to lie beneath him, but only its surface, an endless seascape in a hundred different greens, with here and there the early gold of late summer leaves starting to turn.

From the ground the upper reaches of the forest were as unknowable as what lay beneath the waters of any ocean. And from above, where he now stood, the earth and all its byways were just as hidden, just as secret.

Passing winds ruffled the treetops below him like a hand stroking a cat’s fur.

All my life I’ve looked at the outsides of things and thought I saw them whole. All my life I’ve seen forests and never wondered about the things that happen in them every moment—every creature with its own life, no matter how small, every tree and plant trying to find the sun.

So many new ideas filled his head but he had no one to tell them to. How would anyone who lived alone ever know if they were mad? Again Morgan thought he might be losing his wits—how else could he hear the words of a dying Sitha in his dreams? Other times he wondered whether this was how his grandfather and grandmother had felt during the Storm King’s War, as if important things were happening but people themselves were too small to understand those things.

He had hoped that climbing this tall, gray-barked ash would at least give him some idea of where the edge of the woods might be, but even from up here, nothing met his eye but the endless canopy of treetops, reaching out so far it seemed they must extend to the end of the world.

Morgan knew the ancient wood could not stretch on forever, but at the moment that was very hard to believe otherwise. For him, the forest had become everything.

Days went by, each the same but for the small particularities of life with ReeRee’s troop. The Chikri might not be people, might not cure the ache of loneliness that had become Morgan’s constant companion, but they were lively and individual in their way.

ReeRee’s front leg had entirely healed now. She scampered up and down trunks and from limb to limb beside the other young Chikri with an energy that exhausted Morgan just to watch. He was beginning to recognize some of her most frequent playmates, and he was certain now that the adult he had named Stripe must be ReeRee’s mother. Stripe was the busiest Chikri, as far as he could tell, stuffing her cheeks with tidbits of food until they bulged, then sharing with ReeRee and some of the other young ones. Stripe had at first regarded Morgan with extreme distrust, and would chik warnings at ReeRee every time she approached him, but the little Chikri would not be dissuaded, and at last Stripe grudgingly accepted him, going so far as to drop nuts or other treats in front of him from time to time, as though he were just another young one who could not be trusted to feed himself properly.

The males of the troop ranged far above and beyond the rest, taking picket duty, alerting the others with loud, rasping chirps and squeals when danger appeared on the horizon. Lynxes seemed to be the greatest threats to ReeRee’s kin, although the tuft-eared cats were slow climbers compared to the Chikri. But on the ground they were just as fast and much larger than their prey. Morgan and the rest of the troop had watched in dismay once as a lynx cornered and then killed one of the young members of the troop. The other Chikri had screeched and thrown down nut husks and sticks, but the cat had only ducked its head between its shoulders until it was close enough to spring. It landed with one paw on its prey’s back, crushed the little Chikri’s neck between its jaws in an instant, then carried the limp body off into the underbrush, as unconcerned as a tax collector he had seen one time, from the window of his grandfather’s carriage, carrying off a poor family’s goods.

It was only afterward that Morgan realized that he was not a Chikri, that he was many times larger than the cat and was carrying a sword as well. He had probably been too far away to help in any case, but the knowledge that he had watched and done nothing filled him with shame long afterward.

Morgan had moved his scabbard onto his back so it would not interfere with climbing. The belt, now a makeshift harness, chafed uncomfortably, but he was still unwilling to give up his father’s sword. It felt like one of the few things that tethered him to his old life, as if without it he might become a tree-creature in fact as well as by current circumstance.

Bored, frustrated, and hungry for something beside nuts and leaves, Morgan went out of his way from time to time to climb down out of the trees and catch a rabbit, then, like a human being, make a fire to cook and eat it while the Chikri watched him from the branches. The death and consumption of a creature not hugely different from themselves did not seem to alarm them as much as he would have guessed: the troop watched with wide, curious eyes and sniffed the rising smoke, as though this were only another strange thing the giant Chikri did, like standing up on a branch to piss or tying himself to a tree trunk before he slept. But it was important to Morgan. He was still a man. He might be lost, friendless except for a few forest creatures, hardly a prince at all—but he was not an animal yet.

He was sitting on one of the lower branches, a little more than twice his own height from the ground which, after many long days in the trees and more time on the branches than on the ground, felt like almost no height at all. Nearby, Stripe was grooming a recalcitrant young Chikri, giving it so much “elbow,” as his grandfather liked to say, that Morgan almost feared she’d scrub the poor little thing’s whiskers off. ReeRee crouched on the ground below him eating a mushroom she had found growing on a log, her small, nimble hands turning the white wheel of the cap from one side to the other as she bit pieces from it. Morgan was hungry, as usual, but he had learned the hard way that he could not eat everything the Chikri could. The last bits of mushroom he had tried, an offering from Stripe, had made him so sick he had spent the rest of the evening vomiting down into the bushes below, even though he had only nibbled at a very small piece.

One of the male Chikri stood on a branch high above, leaning out into the wind like a sailor atop a mast. The sun had all but disappeared behind the trees off in what Morgan would have called the west in the old world of certainties; the little creature’s reddish fur caught the light, glinting like a living flame. The troop had fed well that day while covering a great deal of ground on their mysterious, seemingly northward pilgrimage across the forest, and soon it would be time to sleep. Morgan felt a strange contentment, but a moment later he realized that he did not want that feeling, that even a moment’s simple happiness filled him with unease.

I’m turning into one of them.

He looked down at ReeRee, reminding himself that if he was ever going to be a person again he would have to leave her and her troop behind. As he did, a movement along the ground caught his eye. He stared, unable at first to make out what had caught his attention. He was about to look away when he saw it again, an odd linear flickering along the edge of the log where ReeRee sat.

It was a snake, a crossed adder, bigger than any he had ever encountered in the Kynswood or the fields around Erchester. Its gray, black-laddered body was as thick as his forearm and it was almost as long he was tall. The snake was headed toward ReeRee with surprising speed, gliding through the leaf mulch as smoothly as a loose thread being pulled out of a garment. Morgan shouted a warning but ReeRee only looked up at him for a startled instant, then returned to her meal. The serpent stopped and drew its head back, bending its body like a curving mountain road. Its tongue snicked in and out. ReeRee finally noticed it and froze, the remains of her mushroom still held in front of her mouth.

Morgan jumped down from the branch. He landed badly and rolled hard against the log, but was up almost immediately, reaching over his shoulder to find the hilt of his sword. He managed to pull it free while the snake drew itself back in a threatening arc, its raw, pink mouth open to bite. He had not grasped the sword hilt properly, but he swung it at the attacker as hard as he could, catching the adder mostly with the flat of his blade. ReeRee gave out a little squeep! of terror and bolted up into the nearest tree, but Morgan did not take his eyes from the snake. It had a bloody gash on its side where he had hit it, but was otherwise uninjured, and it darted its head at him again and again.

Now he had his hilt properly in his hand, he lashed out backhand to keep the snake from striking. Its head bobbed as it tried to find an angle to lunge, so he kept swiping. Finally, on his fourth or fifth swing he caught it with a full cut. It flew to one side from the strength of the blow, landing in two pieces, both of which continued to writhe on the ground.

Disgusted and frightened, he hacked at it until he had made it into several smaller pieces, and they had all finally stopped moving. For a fleeting instant he wondered if he could eat it but decided that it must be full of venom. He lifted the truncated pieces on the tip of his sword and, one by one, flung them away into the underbrush, then plucked a handful of poplar leaves and wiped the blood off his blade. His father had been far too modest and practical to name a sword he used only for one ceremony, but Morgan thought it deserved a name now.

“Snakesplitter it is then.” He was surprised at how strange his own voice sounded to him, how loud and unfamiliar. He sheathed the sword and scrambled back into the tree, although he discovered he was so shaky that even the short climb was difficult. ReeRee, Stripe, and the rest stared at him and chattered in quiet awe as he reached them, as though they were humble townfolk who had been menaced by a dragon and Morgan was the great Sir Camaris. And in that heady moment, he almost felt as though it were true.

More days passed by in stripes of shadow and sun. Morgan had long since lost track of what month it might be in the world outside. Anitul? Septander? Even those names had nearly lost their meaning. His time was measured instead in movement and sleep, in the soft murmurs of the Chikri as they settled in at night and the excited squeals of the youngest who woke him from his tethered sleep every morning by climbing onto his chest to share the apparently astonishing news of the sun’s return.

The troop kept moving steadily northward. One happy result of their pilgrimage was that they finally seemed to move out of the disturbing dreamworld of the Sithi. Morgan could trust the shadows now, and read directions from them, but he no longer had any idea where in the great wood—a forest as big as an entire country—he might be, so he continued following the Chikri, while they in turn followed whims Morgan could not understand. A few times he tried to change the troop’s direction, or simply set off on his own, but within a few hours ReeRee would find him and chatter at him in heartfelt distress until he followed her back to the rest of the troop and what she obviously considered the safety of their shared journey.

The forest lands they crossed were changing too, from the gentle hilly slopes at the edge of the Thrithings to steeper hills, heights crowned with pine trees and firs, most with branches too close together for Morgan to climb. He began to wonder where this long march would end. If he stayed with the little beasts long enough, would he finally reach the end of the forest, or—as he had long feared—were they only on some long, roundabout trek that would eventually return to the forest’s southern edge again when the seasons had turned? He no longer feared starvation, but it was neither a diet that satisfied him very much, nor a life he wanted to live forever.

I’m a man, he told himself again and again, as though he did not completely believe it. I’m not a squirrel or a bird. I can’t live in the trees forever. People are missing me.

Foremost in that imaginary group was his sister Lillia, of course, who had never known their father and who, like Morgan himself, had a mother who did not overflow with doting kindness toward her children. He owed it to his small sister to try to get back home. But how? Such thoughts came and went every day, but increasingly seemed to be matters of philosophy, like what the stars were made of, rather than real problems like feeding himself and keeping up with the Chikri.

He could not follow the troop across every stand of trees and often had to walk a good part of a morning or afternoon before being able to join them again in the heights. But his comfort in the trees was growing. His body was becoming strong in places he had not realized he was weak. His back, shoulders, thighs, and even hands grew knotted with muscle from the constant climbing. His hands, once barely callused, the rigors of youthful arms practice undone by hours spent in taverns or in soft beds, were now almost as tough as tree bark. He could hang by one arm far above the ground for long enough to find just the right place for his other hand before pulling himself up onto a limb, when only a few short weeks ago he had struggled for each upward span. Now, though he still could not match the Chikri, he would fling his loop of rope upward each time, so quickly that he barely paused on his way up the trunk in a vertical hopping motion not that different from a climbing squirrel. The Chikri, who had once watched his efforts with a worried interest that looked much like pity, had stopped paying attention, and this was perhaps the thing that made Morgan most proud.

Still, he asked himself, what use was it to be a prince who could climb trees better than any other? Especially when he was the only prince—in fact, as far as he could tell, the only person—trapped in the heart of the great forest.

They’ll find my bones in a tree one day, he sometimes told himself. I’ll be a puzzle for the philosophers, that’s all. That will be my legacy.

It was a disheartening thought, which was why, some days, it was best not to think too much at all.

Morgan did not hear Likimeya’s voice in his dreams any more, although he often wondered about her. He could not understand how the sleeping Sitha— if it was indeed her, and not just a phantom contrived by his own madness—could speak to him, and why she had chosen him of all people. Was it because he’d touched her? But surely others had done that too. Because he was a prince? But the Sithi had made it all too clear that they thought little of his grandparents, mortal rulers of all Osten Ard, so how much less did his own title mean?

One night he fell asleep early after a long, exhausting day and woke in darkness, still safely trussed to the linden’s trunk and supported by a basket of branches. The moon had risen while he slept, and sat full and fat atop the trees like an enormous yellow egg, though the branches around him, which had been loaded with Chikri grooming and eating when he fell asleep, were now empty. He was alone.

Morgan sat up and was unknotting his rope when he heard a deep, rumbling drone drift down from above, as if a bumblebee the size of a wild boar hovered not far away. The moonlight was strong enough for him to see that the branches near the top of the tree were bowed with the weight of almost every Chikri in the troop, a bountiful harvest’s worth of rounded, furry fruit. Those he could see were motionless and silent, though the low drone persisted, and he wondered if they had been driven farther into the heights after spotting some predator. Curiosity and concern overcame weariness, and he climbed up the trunk toward them, not even bothering with the rope because the branches made such useful steps.

When he had gone as high as he could without overtaxing the increasingly slender limbs, he saw that the troop members were all crouched along a pair of branches, and that above them, like a priest saying the mansa, sat a single Chikri, one that Morgan called Grey since most of his fur had gone that color. Grey moved with greater deliberation than most of the others, and the youngest ones liked to tease him sometimes until he drove them off with angry chiks. But they weren’t teasing him now. Like their older relatives, the young Chikri watched with what looked like reverent attention as Grey continued to make the deep sound Morgan had heard. It had something of the feeling of a loud cat’s purr, though it rose and dipped in a way no cat’s purr ever did. In fact, it had a cadence almost like song or prayer, which made him think again of a priest blessing his congregation.

Then Grey paused and, after a long moment of silence, the rest of the Chikri began to purr back to him, almost in chorus, nearly startling Morgan into losing his grip. It felt as if he had stumbled onto a well-hidden secret, as though the Chikri had only been pretending to be simple forest creatures but now were unmasked as something much more subtle.

Grey began to buzz and murmur again. The others responded. After watching and listening for no little time, Morgan decided that he would never know what it was or what it meant. A few Chikri looked at him again as he made his way back down to the tree, but only briefly. All their attention was on Grey and his song of moonlight and forest.

The troop’s murmur drifting gently from above, Morgan secured himself and fell asleep again. He dreamed of a place on the moon where only Chikri lived, feeding on moon moss and moon berries in a land of plenty, where they were never hunted, and where Morgan himself was happily one of them.

As if to remind him that even such a strange summer as this could not last forever, the mists began to creep across the forest. Each morning he woke to a world of murky gray beneath the treetops, and some days it did not disperse until well after the sun had reached its peak. Deer and other animals appeared as if summoned by magicians, then vanished again just as quickly and completely. Some days, descending to the misty ground when he could not follow the Chikri from tree to tree, was like diving into a colorless sea.

Is it getting colder because autumn is almost here? he wondered. Or because we are moving north?

The longer they traveled, the more hurried the Chikri seemed to be: the troop stopped less often these days and scarcely ever slept more than once in the same place before moving on. Some nights Morgan could hear the young ones complaining softly because there had been little time during the day’s progress to look for food. Nothing seemed to be pursuing them, and as they traveled increasingly in high hills the food became more and more scarce as evergreens replaced the other trees, but still something drove the Chikri onward.

Or leads them, he told himself. He, on the other hand, was beginning to wonder whether it might be time to go his own way. He had learned much from the little animals, but if they were bound for the white wastelands of Rimmersgard, Morgan knew he would not survive. Unlike the Chikri, he had no furry coat, only his now tattered and threadbare cloak and the clothes he had been wearing since everything had gone wrong. His boots were beginning to rub through where he tied on his climbing irons, and the idea of still being lost in the woods when the cold rains came, let alone in winter’s snows, filled him with dread.

The Chikri had begun a long climb through a part of the forest dominated by steep, rocky hills, and each day brought new hazards for Morgan. There were no roads, of course, and in most places not even animal tracks to follow, so when he had to leave the trees he was forced to make his way as best he could. Many times when he caught up to the troop he had the distinct feeling that Grey and the other Chikri were growing tired of waiting for him. Only ReeRee still seemed to think his presence was important, and when he staggered down from whatever rocky obstacles had slowed him and climbed wearily into the tree where they had stopped for the night, she would come to him and groom his hair and eyebrows, muttering softly the while, as if scolding a beloved but daft old relative.

They finally came to a place where Morgan knew he could not follow them, a narrow valley that stretched south to north, with high slate walls. Morgan did not much like the look of it: it was so full of mist it might have been a gateway to the netherworld, and the western side of the valley was mostly sheer stone cliffs. He hoped the troop would find a different route, but Grey and the others headed right for it. Worse, instead of simply traveling through the valley itself, or going past it to find an easier way north, the Chikri seemed determined to make their way up onto the towering eastern edge of the valley where, unlike the far side, trees grew along the steep, rocky walls. As Morgan watched in dismay, the little animals clambered through the evergreens that grew in tiers along the valley’s nearly vertical walls, leaping from one tree to the next. Morgan knew that climbing through the close-knit branches of the pines would be almost impossible for him, and that the journey would only grow more perilous as they made their way through the trees along the valley’s wall of crumbling slates. Even if he managed to go directly from tree to tree, Morgan could see that he would be high enough above the ground that a slip would drop him a killing distance down to the mist-cloaked valley floor, and he had no idea how long the valley was. They might be climbing along side it for days.

As the rest of the Chikri scrambled up the vegetation of the steep wall, Morgan turned away. He would have to make his way through the valley itself, which he felt sure could not be as deadly as the climb, even if the valley was inhabited entirely by hungry bears.

To his surprise, the Chikri troop took notice of him retreating to the forest floor and began to chatter and chik at him in alarm, but he ignored them, scrambling down the last yards of the slope. Just as he found his footing back on level ground, something ran up his back and became tangled for a moment in his cloak, making him trip and fight for balance before tumbling to the damp ground.

It was ReeRee, and when he unwound her she had a look on her strange little face he had never seen before, lips pulled back, eyes wide.

“Chik, chik chik!” She hopped around him as he picked himself up, her every movement a clear expression of fear and unhappiness.

“Leave me alone,” he told her sternly as he climbed back onto his feet. “I can’t climb that cliff. You go. I’ll meet you and the rest on the other side.” He pointed, but she only redoubled her scolding, and he realized he was arguing with a creature that could not understand him. He bent down to reassure her, but she leaped into his arms and clung, little claws scratching him through his thin clothing.

“Stop, ReeRee!” But she would not let go, only gripping him more tightly. He pulled her loose and dropped her to the ground, a bit more roughly than intended, but he was tired and worried about going into a place that the Chikri were so obviously avoiding, and he wasn’t going to take the little one with him.

“You go back,” he told her. The little animal crouched, eyes wide, looking at him in a way that filled him with shame, as though he had just knocked over a small child in the street. “I promise I’ll see you on the other side, ReeRee. Go with the others.” He turned his back on her and walked into the swirling mist. The last he heard was a single, distressed squeal—“Reeeeee!”—a final warning, he assumed, or perhaps a cry of misery.

It was only late afternoon, but within a few hundred paces into the valley he had left the sun behind along with the Chikri; darkness fell sudden as a blow and the air lost its late-summer warmth. The mist, thicker now with his every step, formed strange, ghostly shapes that billowed around him as he headed into the gorge. Nor was that the only thing that set his heart speeding and made him decide to draw his sword from the sheath on his back. The valley was also preternaturally silent—no bird’s cries, no hum of insects, not even the noise of wind rustling the branches. Even the broad river in the center of the valley floor flowed as smoothly as molten glass, without a burble or splash. Except for the occasional dull glint in the moving water and the dancing mists, the whole vale seemed still and empty as a plundered tomb.

Once he thought he heard a soft noise behind him and looked back, half-hoping and half-fearing ReeRee was following him, but though he stopped and stood motionless he saw nothing and heard nothing but his own heartbeat, a muffled drumbeat of blood throbbing in his veins.

The jagged valley walls looming over him were made of near-vertical bands of slate, like a stack of parchments set on end. The clifftops were jagged and broken slates piled everywhere: the valley was so narrow that it almost seemed as though giant hands had reached down and pulled the earth apart like curtains. Even the trees on the river’s banks seemed unnatural, trunks growing at bizarre, tortured angles, roots spreading in interlaced webs over the damp, dark ground, and the branches of neighboring trees tangled, as though they fought each other in some impossibly slow, impossibly ancient battle. Most of the vegetation was strange to Morgan’s eyes, black grasses topped with nodding gray catkin puffs, pale yellow moss that hung from the trees in clumps like the fleeces of sickly sheep. Some trees had blotchy, silvery bark and fruit as dark and shiny as lumps of tar. Morgan could not imagine ever being hungry enough to try one of those gleaming things, even though an unsatisfying meal of nuts early in the day no longer sustained him.

A glimpse of movement on the riverbank just ahead of him made him slow and stop. When he saw what had caused it, he was momentarily relieved by its small size, but sickened again a moment later by its shape. It was a salamander or something like it, but it had no eyes and as many legs as a centipede. It wound slowly across the open ground, each leg seeming to grope forward individually, toes flexing, before it disappeared into the black grass.

As he stood staring after it, the ground shook beneath his feet, a tremble so slight he might have believed he had imagined it but for the swaying of the black fruit on the branches. He began to walk again, watching the cliff walls above him for rockfalls.

The mists grew thicker still. Morgan’s way grew darker, and what little sky he could occasionally see over the valley had begun to turn from blue to twilight purple. He cursed himself for his foolishness at entering the valley with no idea of how far he would have to walk. He still had his flint and steel and could start a fire, but he doubted he could find any dry wood for a torch along a damp riverbank in this unending sea of mist. The idea of being here when full night descended made him hurry his steps. He suddenly wanted to be out of the gloomy, narrow valley more than he had wanted anything in a very long time.

Then the ground lurched beneath him again, stronger this time. He stumbled and almost lost his footing, and had to steady himself against a rock slimy with moss. Something in the moss stung his fingers, and he was so busy wiping his hand, trying to get the rest of the slimy stuff off his skin that he was caught flat-footed and unbalanced when the earth trembled for a third time, spilled him off his feet, and left him sitting in the mud. A snake as long as his leg—which in full sunlight might have been colorful, but was now banded only in shades of gray and purple-black—slithered out of the grass near him and writhed past so suddenly that he did not even have time to pick up his sword before it was gone.

He scrambled to his feet and looked up for the chunks of valley wall he felt sure must have broken loose, but saw only a scatter of small, flat stones cascading down the cliffs, making ripples in the mist where they fell.

Thoom! The fourth tremor was the strongest yet, and came with a sound like thunder. As he began to climb back onto his feet Morgan had a sudden realization: each rumbling shake had been the same as the one before, but louder. Like footsteps. Like footsteps coming toward him.

Slimy with mud and nearly blinded by the thick mists, he felt something leap past his ear with a noise like a hornet’s buzz. An instant later he saw an arrow juddering in the bark of a willow tree that overhung the river—it had only missed him by a hand’s breadth. As he stared in stunned surprise, two more shafts flew past him, hissing like a drover’s whip, and snapped into the tree just above the first one, the three in an almost perfect vertical line up the smooth gray trunk.

Morgan ran deeper into the mist, away from whoever was shooting at him, his sword still useless in his hand. His thoughts sped and fluttered madly—all he could think of was the next arrow, the one that would strike him in the back and end everything for him forever, here in this dismal, swampy valley.

A fifth great tremor struck then, and if it was a footfall the foot must have been as large as a house. The ground bucked under Morgan’s feet, and he tumbled forward into water that had sloshed out of the river and drowned the black grass along the bank. As he struggled forward on hands and knees, desperately trying to gain purchase in the muddy grass, dirty water streaming into his eyes, he looked up and saw an impossible thing.

Something unbelievably huge was coming slowly down the valley toward him. In the dense mist it almost seemed a vast section of the stony cliffs had broken loose and come to life. He could hear trunks breaking as the monstrous shape approached, great bursts of sound as trees the size of the Festival Oak back home shattered into flinders. He could make out little through the murk except that the shape had two legs, and above the legs a shadowy body as wide as the prow of a great ship.

Morgan turned and ran back the way he had come, no longer concerned about arrows. The terror of the monstrous shadow was on him and he could think of nothing else, only escape, only staying ahead of the world-devouring, giant thing.

On he ran until he saw the entrance to the valley before him, a delta of light against the pearly mist, but the monstrous footsteps seemed even closer behind him now and he could not keep his balance on the shuddering ground. A few more arm-flailing steps and he fell. He tried to get up, to stagger forward—the end of the valley was so close now!—but he could not make his mud-coated limbs work properly. He could barely even think at all and began crawling onward on his hands and knees like some crippled animal, certain it was useless, that it would be only moments until he was crushed by that impossible thing like an ant beneath a human boot heel.

Then something caught him from above. His belly was squeezed as though gripped by a terrible serpent, and it forced the air out of his lungs as he was jerked up into the swirling mists.