A Forest of Stars - Kevin J. Anderson [244]
Reynald watched the continuing evacuation. Most of the spectators had scrambled to the forest floor beneath the shelter of thick interlocked fronds. He hoped they would be protected there, but he knew in his heart that Theroc had no effective defenses against such an enemy. No one did. And, as Father of the Theron people, Reynald would witness the attack with his own eyes.
The hydrogues dropped down and began their destruction. Electrical blue lightning and frozen white icewaves swept the worldforest, each like a reaper’s deadly scythe.
The green priests beside Reynald cried out in reactive pain.
“Tell me what you see from all the continents on Theroc,” Reynald demanded as he watched the warglobes slash and devastate the worldforest. The two green priests grasped the fronds, drawing images from the other priests around the planet, innocent bystanders in the terrible battle. “Describe what is happening on my world.”
In the tree village around the deep LookingGlassLakes, green priests, treedancers, and settlers swarmed out of the dangling worm hives. Vengeful hydrogues soared overhead in an inexhaustible thirst for destruction. Waves of freezing mist touched the verdant canopy, and with each caress, the deadly cold seared life from the foliage, blistering and cracking it into dead lumps.
Blue lightning incinerated the thickest trunks; even the worldtrees could not draw enough power from the soil itself.
Almari, the young female priest who had offered to marry Reynald when he’d visited her village, watched in horror as the hydrogues came in over the round, placid lakes. She grasped the bark of the nearest tree, trying in vain to summon some kind of defensive tactic, some power to protect the forest and her people. But the trees could offer her nothing.
As the hydrogues came, the papery worm-hive dwellings became death traps coated with ice, cementing victims inside. Many villagers fell from high branches as they tried to flee headlong. People ran deeper into the densest forest, crashing through the underbrush.
But Almari stood awestruck at the opposite lakeshore.
The cold icewave weapon struck first; then blue bullwhips of energy knocked down the forest, blasting the frozen trunks into fragmented shards. The worm hives fell to the ground, where they shattered into snowy dust.
Almari watched transfixed as the cold fingers froze the circular lake into jagged chunks of white ice. The hydrogues kept coming toward her. The green priest turned into a frozen pillar herself, an ice sculpture still wearing an expression of despair and disbelief.
Across the continent at the fungus-reef city, the trees tried to pull the canopy closed in a defensive posture to block the attack from the skies. The thick boughs folded together like praying hands, overlapping to form a barricade as the hydrogues pounded them from above. The massive trunks trembled, but stood firm, withstanding the first impact of icewaves and electrical blasts.
Shielding his eyes, Reynald watched another diamond sphere cruise low over the treetops, spraying cold waves and shriveling whatever parts of the canopy it touched. He grabbed both green priests. “The trees must help us! If they don’t, we will all die!”
The priest closed his eyes, summoning the will to place his mind into the expansive forest again. “The trees are not ready for this battle—”
“None of us is, but we must still fight. Life has the power to encourage other life.” It seemed as if the worldforest had given up in despair, but Reynald wouldn’t accept that. “After our centuries of talking to them, reading to them, the trees must have learned something about us.”
The two green priests closed their eyes, concentrating, sending their thoughts into the injured network. Together they summoned the strength stored deep within the root network, drawing it up into the trunks and the whispering leaves. Reynald could see the strain