Margaret Weis - Test of the Twins

“Caramon?” came a quavering voice. “Hush, Tas!” Caramon hissed.

The silence was as thick as the darkness. And then, slowly, he felt the branches release him. He heard the creaking and rustling sounds again, only this time they were moving slowly away from him. Gasping in relief, weak from fear and the pain and the growing sickness inside him, Caramon lay his head on his arm, trying to catch his breath.

“Tas, are you all right?” he managed to call out.

“Yes, Caramon,” came the kender’s voice beside him. Reaching out his hand, Caramon caught hold of the kender and pulled him close.

Though he heard the sounds of movement in the darkness and knew the trees were withdrawing, he also had the feeling the trees were watching his every move, listening to every word. Slowly and cautiously, he sheathed his sword.

“I am truly thankful you thought of telling Par-Salian who you are, Caramon,” Tas said, panting for breath. “I was just imagining trying to explain to Flint how I’d been murdered by a tree. I’m not certain whether or not you’re allowed to laugh in the Afterlife, but I’ll bet he would have roared—”

“Shhhh,” Caramon said weakly.

Tas paused, then whispered, “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, just let me catch my breath. I’ve lost my crutch.”

“It’s over here. I fell over it.” Tas crawled off and returned moments later, dragging the padded tree branch. “Here.” He helped Caramon stagger to his feet.

“Caramon,” he asked after a moment, “how long do you think it will take us to get to the Tower? I—I’m awfully thirsty and, while my insides are a little better since I was sick a while back, I still get queer squirmy feelings in my stomach sometimes.”

“I don’t know, Tas,” Caramon sighed. “I can’t see a damn thing in this darkness. I don’t know where we’re going or what’s the right way or how we’re going to manage to walk without running smack into something—”

The rustling sounds suddenly started again, as though a storm wind were tossing the branches of the trees. Caramon tensed and even Tas stiffened in alarm as they heard the trees start to close in around them once more. Tas and Caramon stood helpless in the darkness as the trees came nearer and nearer. Branches touched their skin and dead leaves brushed their hair, whispering strange words in their ears. Caramon s shaking hand closed over his sword hilt, though he knew it would do little good. But then, when the trees were pressed close around them, the movement and the whispering ceased. The trees were silent once more.

Reaching out his hand, Caramon touched solid trunks to his right and his left. He could feel them massed behind him. An idea occurred to him. He stretched his arm out into the darkness and felt around ahead of him. All was clear.

“Keep close to me, Tas,” he ordered and, for once in his life, the kender didn’t argue. Together, they walked forward into the opening provided by the trees.

At first they moved cautiously, fearful of stumbling over a root or a fallen branch or becoming entangled in brush or tumbling into a hole. But gradually they came to realize that the forest floor was smooth and dry, cleared of all obstacles, free from undergrowth. They had no idea where they were going. They walked in absolute darkness, kept to some irreversible path only by the trees that parted before them and closed in after them. Any deviation from the set path brought them into a wall of trunks and tangled branches and dead, whispering leaves.

The heat was oppressive. No wind blew, no rain fell. Their thirst, lost in their fear, returned to plague them. Wiping the sweat from his face, Caramon wondered at the strange, intense heat, for it was much greater here than outside the Forest. It seemed as if the heat were being generated by the Forest itself. The Forest was more alive that he had noticed the last two times he had been here. It was certainly more alive than the world outside. Amid the rustling of the trees, he could hear—or thought he heard—movements of animals or the rush of birds’ wings, and sometimes he caught a glimpse of eyes shining in the darkness. But being among living beings once more brought no sense of comfort to Caramon. He felt their hatred and their anger and, even as he felt it, he realized that it wasn’t directed against him. It was directed against itself.

And then he heard the birds’ songs again, as he had heard them the last time he’d entered this eerie place. High and sweet and pure, rising above death and darkness and defeat, rose the song of a lark. Caramon stopped to listen, tears stinging his eyes at the beauty of the song, feeling his heart’s pain ease.

But even as the lark’s song pierced his heart with its sweetness, a harsh cackle made him cringe.

Black wings fluttered around him, and his soul was filled with shadows.

“What does it mean, Caramon?” Tas asked in awe as they continued to grope their way through the Forest, guided, always, by the angry trees.

The answer to his question came, not from Caramon, but from other voices, mellow, deep, sad with the ancient wisdom of the owl.

“It means the magic is out of control,” Caramon said softly. “Whatever will holds this Forest in check is just barely hanging on.” He shivered. “I wonder what we’ll find when we get to the Tower.”

“If we get to the Tower,” Tas muttered. “How do we know that these awful, old trees aren’t leading us to the edge of a tall cliff?”

Caramon stopped, panting for breath in the terrible heat. The crude crutch dug painfully into his armpit. With his weight off of it, his knee had begun to stiffen. His leg was inflamed and swollen, and he knew he could not go on much longer. He, too, had been sick, purging his system of the poison, and now he felt somewhat better. But thirst was a torment. And, as Tas reminded him, he had no idea where these trees were leading them.

Raising his voice, his throat parched, Caramon cried out harshly, “Par-Salian! Answer me or I’ll go no farther! Answer me!”

The trees broke out in a clamor, branches shaking and stirring as if in a high wind, though no breeze cooled Caramon’s feverish skin. The birds’ voices rose in a fearful cacophony, intermingling, overlapping, twisting their songs into horrible, unlovely melodies that filled the mind with terror and foreboding.

Even Tas was a bit startled by this, creeping closer to Caramon (in case the big man needed comfort), but Caramon stood resolutely, staring into the endless night, ignoring the turmoil around him.

“Par-Salian!” he called once more.

Then he heard his answer—a thin, high-pitched scream. At the dreadful sound, Caramon’s skin crawled. The scream pierced through the darkness and the heat. It rose above the strange singing of the birds and drowned out the clashing of the trees. It seemed to Caramon as if all the horror and sorrow of the dying world had been sucked up and released at last in that fearful cry.