Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [186]
The Patriarch exhaled slowly. “I’m over seventy,” he said at last. “Such exercise as this is hardly recommended at that age.”
Then his sharp gaze fixed on Andrys, ice-blue, unwavering.
“You must help us,” he said quietly.
Andrys felt his heart skip a beat. “I ... I don’t know what you mean.”
“If the Forest is our enemy now, then it’s only a matter of time before something else takes an interest in us. Judging from this experience ...” He looked about the camp, his eyes narrow with foreboding. “We might survive another open assault, like this one, and persevere despite it ... but not all the dangers of the Forest will be so obvious.”
He remembered the sense he’d had of hungry things burrowing beneath the earth, and he nodded tightly.
“You have to find us a way through, Mer Tarrant. Either that—”
He drew in a sharp breath. “I can‘t—”
“—Either that, or we’re doomed.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but no sound came forth. Because the Patriarch was right, God damn it, and Andrys knew it. Shaking, the Prophet’s descendant struggled to find courage within himself. There was so precious little of it to draw on! But they would all die if he failed them now, he knew that. And he would die as well. Not merely losing his life, as the others would do, but surrendering it to the very power he had come to destroy.
“How?” he whispered at last.
“I don’t know,” the Patriarch said quietly. “You tell me, Andrys Tarrant.”
He was about to say something in response, but at that moment one of the supply officers came toward them, with a list of precious armaments lost in the struggle. As Andrys listened to the two of them discuss the amount of black powder lost with the horses, he felt a cold certainty crawl down his spine, to settle uncomfortably in his stomach. If the Forest were their enemy now, then there was only one thing to do. And only one man, he knew, who could attempt it.
He stared out into the Forest and shivered, sensing its power. Its hunger.
Only me.
He went to a far corner of the camp. It was as far as he dared go for privacy, while still being within the border of the light. Two soldiers flanked him silently, a man and a woman, and took up positions just out of his line of sight, but close enough to protect him if any new danger threatened. Respectful but determined: the man to whom they had sworn their fealty would not be allowed to die.
For a long time he just stood there, trying to work up enough courage to do what had to be done. His whole body was trembling. Was that the first manifestation of alcholic withdrawal, or a simple fear response? It frightened him that he could no longer tell the difference.
Calesta, help me.
It wasn’t the first time he had prayed to his patron within the Forest, but this was the first time the demon didn’t answer. That in itself was fresh cause for panic. While Calesta hadn’t always answered his prayers in Jaggonath, it had been pretty clear that once this campaign was underway he would support Andrys. The thought that the demon might leave him on his own here was something so frightening he couldn’t even consider it.
Calesta, he implored. I need you!
No answer.
Shaking inside, he drew in a deep breath and tried to steady himself. If the demon wasn’t going to help him, then he would have to do this himself. There was no other option, right? People would die if he failed. He would die if he failed. Right?
Shivering, he shut his eyes and tried to clear his mind. It took no effort for him to establish contact with the Forest. The instant he stopped fighting to resist it, sensations slid into his brain, trees and birds and insects and microbes and even the earth itself—
Only it had changed. All of it.
He felt the trees throughout the Forest twitching, tension eating into their bark like acid. Hungry things that burrowed beneath the ground writhed blindly in their tunnels, unable to find their way to the surface. Sharp-toothed predators growled at their mates, and a white-furred scavenger ate her children while her packmates fell on one another