A Forest of Stars - Kevin J. Anderson [210]
Beneto grasped the nearest treeling and sent all his thoughts and impressions into the worldforest, like a fervent prayer. He was the only person who could report what was happening here. The worldforest, the green priests, his family—yes, even the Hanseatic League—had to know. There was nothing else for him to do.
The warglobes joined together again, a quartet of merciless spheres clustered in the sky. Then, leaving the smoldering ruin of ColonyTown and the devastated fields behind, they approached the defiant stand of worldtrees.
Dedicated to the last, Beneto wrapped his arms around the treeling. He pushed his cheek to the bark and hammered his thoughts through telink into the network. He wanted to fall into the spreading forest mind, to seek mental sanctuary.
All the lives here on Corvus Landing must be remembered, all the trees he and Talbun had planted in this grove, all the efforts the innocent settlers had made to tame this reluctant world. He gripped the tree and opened his thoughts completely to the telink. He embraced the distant forest with his mind, and poured himself inside. It was his only refuge.
Misty icewaves spewed from the warglobes as they cruised over the doomed grove. As the first treelings began to shrivel, Beneto felt agony like frigid fire through his veins. Inside his head, he heard the worldforest’s strange inhuman screams that drew upon millennia of fear and dread.
He forced himself to keep his eyes open and sent his last messages through telink, even as the hydrogues completed their destruction.
109
FATHER REYNALD
Wearing an expression of terrified astonishment, a young green priest sprinted down the corridors inside the petrified fungus reef, calling out in alarm. The trees were already cringing and shuddering. Outside, through the open overhanging balconies, Reynald heard a chillingly tangible despair and horror sweeping through the green priests; he felt it all the way to his marrow.
“Father Reynald!” said the green priest. “Hydrogues are attacking Corvus Landing.”
Standing in the reception chamber, where she and Uthair had been advising him on his upcoming marriage to Cesca Peroni, old Lia stood up, her voice cracking. “ Beneto is on Corvus Landing!”
Reynald lurched to his feet, hurrying to meet the message bearer.
“Beneto is the one sending us messages through telink,” the young priest said, fighting his own panic. “Where is a treeling? I must—” He raced toward the slender plant in an ornate pot near the empty chair that was reserved for Cesca’s eventual arrival. The priest touched the tree, closed his eyes, then snapped his attention back to Reynald.
“Your brother says the hydrogues are obliterating the agricultural fields. They are using one weapon of cold mist and another of blue electric fire.” Barely pausing for breath, the priest described the destructive threat the hydrogue emissary had issued against the worldtrees—the verdani—and the human race.
“How can we help Beneto?” Reynald said. “And everyone there? They’re in terrible danger.”
“All the worldforest is in danger!” The priest closed his eyes again. “Beneto’s trees fought back; they destroyed the hydrogue emissary. But it was not enough…not enough.”
Outside, in the congested Theron forest, countless dismayed green priests shouted the news to other people as they clutched the wide trunks for new telink updates from Beneto. Workers dropped down from their harvesting vines. Teenagers buzzed around in their jury-rigged flying vehicles, calling out what little they knew of the emergency. All of the Theron people rallied, but were unable to do anything for the distant satellite of the worldforest…or for Beneto.
Reynald could hear the shock and alarm that swept through the forest. In every other village across the planet, from the Looking Glass Lakes to the coastline, green priests would be reacting in the same way.
“Hydrogues