"I'm just saying your approach isn't very, you know, inventive." inventive."

"You take the one standing," she answered. "I'll take the one sitting at the table."

"Take" was one of those little euphemistic expressions that she and her brother favored. It usually meant, as it did now, "kill." Feeling that things were moving far too quickly for my liking, I swung my crossbow round and fiddled frantically with the c.o.c.king mechanism.

When she stepped out into the room, she did so with quiet ease and confidence, her bow already raised and the string drawn back. I scuttered after her and dropped to one knee. The standing goblin was in my sights before it knew we were there. It turned at the swish of Renthrette's bow, but her arrow plunged into its comrade's chest as it struggled to its feet. It barely had time to cry out before I fired and the bolt silenced it forever. Renthrette was already grabbing the keys and running to the cell doors calling Mithos's name.

"Renthrette?" called a voice in answer. "Renthrette, listen, this is important!"

I was running over to join her, barely able to contain my delighted laughter, when there was a metallic sound behind me and I turned to find doors on either side of the arch we had come through, doors we hadn't even seen, opening virtually simultaneously. A great goblin clad in dark, waxed leather and brandishing a huge scimitar was coming in through one door. There were others behind him. A pair of smaller goblins, their skin ochre and their limbs thin, had already come through the other, and there were darker, bigger forms following.

Renthrette drew and fired again, and one of the smaller creatures fell, holding its stomach. I took the keys and fumbled desperately at the lock, but the first key I could fit in would not turn at all. I turned to find the large goblin already bearing down on Renthrette, who had dropped her bow and drawn her sword. I thrust my crossbow head to the ground, braced it against my stomach, and leaned all my weight on it until the slide clicked into position. By the time I had fitted a bolt and swung the weapon around, Renthrette was almost surrounded, and several blows had been struck. I picked the nearest goblin, fired hurriedly, and, as it fell, drew my axe. One of them was closing on me and there was no way I was going to be able to get Mithos and Orgos, who were shouting our names wildly, out to help. The doors behind the archway continued to breed goblin forms. Renthrette parried a goblin slash and looked wildly round. For a moment our eyes met, and for once the feeling was mutual: This was not going well. In fact, it didn't look like it would be going much further.

One of the goblins strayed close to me, leering through its narrow eyes. I cut at its legs with a savage sweep of my axe. The blow went wide and threw me off balance, and when I looked up, the goblin had edged cautiously closer, a slim spear aimed at my vitals. Renthrette was backing off, leaving her riven shield on the ground. One of the large black goblins had collapsed at her feet, bleeding, but another was advancing steadily, wielding a two-handed weapon that looked like an axe/sword hybrid, but bright and keen edged. She held her ground as the monster brought down its hacking strike. Her sword flashed up and parried, but as it did so, its blade shattered and fell in glittering shards.

"Run!" I shouted. "This way."

There was nothing else for it. There was one way out of the chamber, since the enemy had blocked the way we had come, and that was out toward the other side, to the pa.s.s where we had been attacked the previous day. Barely waiting for her, I fled down a corridor of doors and tunnels, not knowing where I was going but running as if every devil in h.e.l.l was on my tail. For all I knew, that was exactly what was happening.

A black-flighted arrow whistled over my head and clattered against the wall, and I heard Renthrette's bow gasp back its defiance. There was a cry of pain, harsh and loud as the bellow of a bull, but it was a token retaliation on our part. We knew we could not stand and fight. One of the doors ahead of me opened, and a goblin stepped out, curious about the commotion. I ran right into it and hacked at its neck once, barely breaking stride as it slipped to the ground, foaming blood.

Renthrette was immediately behind me now, but the pursuit had slowed. They were organizing themselves. If we were going to get out of here, we had to do something before they were on our heels again. I tried a door. It revealed a chamber full of shelves laden with pots, so I slammed it shut and moved on, trying the next: another storeroom. Then a third, and the sound of the door reverberated hollowly. It was dark inside, but I could hear the slosh and trickle of water: a great deal of water.

Renthrette grabbed a torch from the corridor, pushed me inside and pulled the door shut behind us. We stood on a rock platform in a huge square and high-ceilinged chamber cut out of the rock. The platform was only a few yards long. The rest of the room was filled with water.

"A cistern," said Renthrette, looking quickly about her. "There must be a spring or something that brings in the water. Maybe we could use it to get out."

"It's probably under the surface," I said. "Or it just seeps in through channels in the rock. Most of it is probably melted ice from the mountaintops."

"Then why doesn't it flood the whole fort?" Renthrette demanded.

"Good question. There must be some kind of overflow drain to stop the level from getting too high. Look around the edge."

She paced the platform with her torch outstretched, peering into the water to see how deep it was. I did the same but could see nothing under the surface.

"Quick!" I said. "They're coming!"

"There!" she said. "Over on the far wall."

There, barely visible in the torchlight, was a small rectangle of darkness: a channel cut into the stone right at the water's brim. My heart sank.

Renthrette jumped in without another thought. For a moment I thought she was standing on the bottom, but then she started to bob up and down as she treaded water, somehow managing to keep the head of the torch above the surface.

"Come on!" she hissed.

"I can't swim!" I whined, awash with self-contempt and horror.

"Yes you can!"

"No ..." I began.

"You have to! Now get in! I'll help you get across. It's not far. Come on! They're coming!"

I sat on the shelf and lowered my feet and legs into the still, freezing water. "I can't!"

She reached over and tugged at my boots, pulling me in. I sank into the cold and silence, bobbing up a moment later, terrified and gasping for air. I began to go under again and she caught me, dragging me along as she began to swim.

"Hold the torch and kick!"

I tried, but my legs were too stricken with cold or the paralysis of fear to respond. All I could think about was the depth of water beneath me. Then the door into the cistern clicked and opened.

I pulled the torch underwater and it hissed briefly. Then all was dark and quiet, save at the door, where a pair of goblins stood framed in the flickering light of the corridor.

Renthrette's hand slipped over my mouth and her legs began to kick silently. I let the torch go and began to move my arms and legs to her rhythm, my heart thumping. The goblins came in and looked around, but the chamber was pitch black and even their night eyes would have difficulty seeing us if we kept still.

If. I flapped my arms like a wounded duck and prayed not to break the surface with my hands or otherwise make some telltale ripple that would leave us floating here shot full of black arrows.

It was only a few seconds, of course, but it seemed like an hour before the goblins stepped out into the corridor and closed the door. Renthrette uncovered my mouth and began to swim for where the hole had been. I got a mouthful of water, spat it out as if it was acid, and began flailing my way after her like some hyperactive puppy.

Fortunately her sense of direction was better than mine. She swam to the wall, pulling me after her, then began testing the stone with one hand till she found the s.p.a.ce which marked the mouth of the drainage channel. It was a rectangular hole cut into the stone about five feet high, its floor no more than an inch below the waterline of the cistern. She swung herself up and in, then offered me her hand. Once in, I lay on its wet stone floor and breathed.

"There's no time to lose," said Renthrette. "They'll notice the missing torch and be back soon enough."

And so we set off, stooping, hands in front of our faces and still trying to run, though we were utterly sightless. I hit my head, painfully skinning my right temple, and the roof got steadily lower. After only a few yards we could go no farther upright.

"We'll have to crawl," Renthrette breathed.

We did so, and the pa.s.sage descended gradually, just enough to keep the chill water around our hands and knees flowing. But soon the walls narrowed and the roof dropped still lower and I began having to squeeze myself through the tunnel. The water level had risen proportionally, and over half my body was now beneath its surface. I was freezing, but I desperately wanted to slip out of my jerkin and cloak, which were now taking up valuable inches of s.p.a.ce. I tried to shrug myself out of my cloak, but there wasn't enough room. A horrible, fearful sense of paralysis came over me. I flexed my back against the dripping rock overhead as if I could somehow push through it, expanding the way. When I couldn't, and the pa.s.sage seemed almost to contract against me, I felt the urge to scream building in my throat. My eyes closed tight and my fists clenched and, for a second, I thought I would go mad. Then the sound of Renthrette splashing and scrambling in front of me came to an abrupt halt and I got hold of myself, bracing for some new development.

"What?" I stuttered, desperately. "What's the matter?" My words boomed in the tight, dank pa.s.sage.

"It gets narrower," she said. "I don't know if we can get through."

"If it's worse than this, I don't see how we can. But I can't turn round here. I don't think I can get back this way. I can't move."

Neither of us said anything for a long time. We stayed where we were, still in the darkness, and the icy water flowed around us.

"We'll have to go on," she said eventually.

And then she was gone. I crawled a little ahead and found that the ceiling of the tunnel stepped down abruptly. I knelt at this new gateway with growing fear. There was only an inch or two of s.p.a.ce between the stone and the top of the water. And farther inside even that might be filled.

Renthrette had gone. She might have been drowning only a few feet away from me, but there was nothing I could do about it. I could try to inch my way back, but I was unsure that I could get all the way to the cistern without getting stuck. And even if I did, then what? What mercy could I expect at the hands of the goblins after our little a.s.sault? They would have found the way we got in and it would be guarded even if I could get that far unseen.

Loneliness, if that is not too tame a word for the crippling sense of isolation that struck me, won out. I could not stand to be left there by myself or to attempt to escape without Renthrette. I lay down in the water. Then, with infinite care, I rolled over onto my back. For a terrifying second I was completely immersed in the black water, then I thrust my neck and shoulders up on my elbows and lifted my face out into the ribbon of air between the water and the rock. I breathed, then inched backward, walking crab-like on my elbows, into the smaller tunnel. My face was pressed up against the stone and the water lapped around my cheeks and ran into my ears. I put my lips right against the granite, inhaled, then held my breath and continued my backward crawl.

I had been making my painstaking and nightmarish pa.s.sage like this for several minutes when the water closed over my face altogether. I spluttered and pulled back, jerking involuntarily toward a sitting position and cracking my forehead hard against the rock. I retraced a few feet of my slithering steps, surfaced, and breathed, calming myself. Then I filled my lungs to capacity, rolled onto my face and clawed my way along the bottom of the channel. In so little water buoyancy was hardly a problem, and I was able to wriggle against the walls of the now tube-like tunnel, but the rock was closing in. The water above and around me was running faster, and, as I pulled myself along, nearing the end of my air, I hit my shoulder hard against a stony outcrop.

I gasped, swallowing water and losing what little air remained. My stomach contracted and my knees snapped hard against the rock beneath me, then the outcrop ground into my waist and I stuck fast. The gorge in my throat rose and I fought against it, stretching out as much as I could, flattening myself to the floor of what had turned into a pipe less than two feet in diameter and full of rushing water.

I remained lodged there and panic overcame me. I began to thrash as much as I could, but the sides of the pipe were quite smooth and I could get no purchase to drag myself through. I lunged forward with the little strength I had left and a strong, slender hand took mine, tightened and pulled. Sinews in my shoulder cracked and a flash of pain went through my arm, but then I was sliding forward and out. The water and darkness fell away and I found myself retching into the weedy pools of a waterfall on the western side of the mountain.

Renthrette watched me with her usual detached curiosity, as if she was looking at something in a museum case, while I continued to vomit water onto the gra.s.s: not a technique renowned for impressing women, but that was, for once, far from my mind. She didn't speak, but she looked stern. Our survival, harrowing though it had been, had not taken away from her awareness that our mission had not been a raging success. I sat up, coughing. The swollen stream into which the waterfall flowed wound through the wetlands we had crossed that morning, and squinting in the noon light I thought I could just make out the smoke from the Last Refuge Inn. I suppose I was grateful to be alive, but I had been so close to not not being that all I felt was my customary petulant anger. being that all I felt was my customary petulant anger.

"There are only a couple of them, she says," I wheezed bitterly. "Sorrail knows this place like the back of his hand, she says. Has he ever looked at the back of his hand? It's probably crawling with goblins."

"Shut up, Will," said Renthrette. "Well, at least we know Mithos and Orgos are alive."

"If our little visit doesn't change that," I replied grimly.

All peril and near-death experiences aside, I was puzzled. I still didn't understand how we had got in, why the side door wasn't better protected. Maybe the goblins had only been there a little while, but ...

"Mithos was trying to tell us something," Renthrette added, pensively. "I wonder what it was."

"We may never know," I answered. "I hope it wasn't important."

SCENE VIII

Eventor

Renthrette prowled the inn, brooding, muttering curses and shooting me black looks. We had to go back, she said. We hadn't tried hard enough. We could still get them out. I let her rant and pace for a while and then told her she was talking nonsense, that we were lucky to be alive, and that going back was like taking a swan dive off the Cliffs of Doom or whatever they called that d.a.m.ned mountain that was full of teeth, scimitars, and other nasty, spiky things I wasn't about to get stuck through my throat. Amazingly enough, she actually listened, and eventually nodded in silence.

That evening, over a melancholy dinner of meat and potatoes utterly devoid of flavor, we came to the obvious conclusion. We couldn't get Mithos and Orgos out alone, presuming they hadn't already been killed in reprisal for our botched "rescue," and the locals were too concerned with protecting their own property to consider helping. We needed to go somewhere where we could mount a less suicidal rescue attempt with real soldiers instead of relying on incompetents like yours truly. The idea that the locals were "concerned" with protecting their farms and houses was an understatement. There was a frenetic mood approaching paranoia in the tavern's sitting room that night, the men sitting armed and talking about how best to defend their houses and barns against the "hand of evil" which was expected to extend from the mountains. They feared, they said, for their wives and children, it having been confidently reported that the goblins had a taste for human flesh, raw or broiled. Moreover, the goblins, foul and twisted though they were themselves, prized human females as their concubines, and their brutal l.u.s.t was legendary.

"My Alsary would die before she submitted to their loathsome hands," said one, a large man, pale and blond as the rest but with a weathered look about him. This met with general agreement. "And if she could not, she would find a way later. She would not foster their brood or bring forth any creatures of tainted blood."

"Tainted blood?" I repeated. Even given the subject matter, I thought the phrase a bit rich.

"I mean that she would stifle at birth any monstrous b.a.s.t.a.r.d fathered by such as they," said the man, his blue eyes hard on mine. "A child with goblin blood, however little, is a goblin through and through and must be destroyed as such."

I frowned and he responded instantly, leaning forward with an odd, disarming light in his eyes. "Do you not yet know what they are? Can't you see it when you look upon their horrid blasphemy of the human form? They are born with a malice and cruelty so intense that it shows through in their very features, their twisted faces and foul hides. That is their nature as a species! They breathe the stench of death and corruption. They yearn to cause misery, to practice acts of obscenity and torture, to ruin the living and defile the dead. Nothing pleases them like the tearing down of all that is fair and beautiful, the ravaging of virtue, the perverting or violating of all which is true and bright. They bring terror, and in their path they leave destruction of a savagery you cannot conceive."

There wasn't much you could say to that. A grim silence had descended on the room during this dreadful litany and all I could do was nod respectfully as their pale faces clouded over and they each turned to their own thoughts. It was some time before anyone spoke again, and in the end it was me who tried to break the awkward silence. I wanted to ask about interesting local cuisine, their att.i.tudes to plays and music, but I couldn't think of a segue.

"So the goblins have always been on your borders like this?" I began.

"Far from it," said an elderly man with a growth of silver-gold beard. "They used to cross the river rarely, and they have been in the mountain fastnesses only a few months."

"But they have always been in this land with you?" I asked.

"G.o.d, no!" said another. "They first appeared only four or five generations ago. A wandering, vagabond race of cutthroats, they are. They steal and murder for their living, moving from place to place, sacking what they find and settling only when all is laid waste. Then they move on. Five or six score years they have been here, loitering away yonder on the far side of the river, inching into the mountains when we could not defend them adequately, mainly in the winter. But lately their numbers have grown, and they have ma.s.sed an army bent on conquering our lands and cities."

"The forests fell to them first," said the older man, to whom the others seemed to defer. "A hundred years ago it is said they were fair and golden, full of deer and birdsong. Back then the forest west of the river was called Lucendale, the bright place, and the portion on the east bank, twenty miles south of here, was Eventor. Since then, the goblins have taken the forest west of the river and it has changed. They call it Sarak-Nul; it is a darksome place of blasted trees and stinking swamp into which few, save the enemy, will travel. On this side, Eventor remains ours, but goblins have been seen in its glades and clearings and the mark of their corruption is feared to be spreading, souring the air and rotting the earth. Their grasp on the mountain pa.s.ses grows steadily stronger, and our Warders can no longer keep them at bay. The Falcon's Nest, the ancient bastion and lookout, whose strength and beauty you can affirm, fell but recently as our warriors gathered in the White City. We have been sleeping and it has cost us dear. You have looked upon the wonders of the Falcon's Nest, but many of us have not. Our ancestors carved its magnificence out of the very mountain, sweating and bleeding over their hammers and chisels. We will no longer lie silently while goblin filth soils the labor, the memory, nay, the very lives of our forefathers with their presence. Dark times are ahead and the struggle which you have seen begin will be long and b.l.o.o.d.y. It has been long in the making and will not end until they have destroyed us completely, or till we have vanquished them."

Well, so much for music and theater. There didn't seem to be much to say about their local cuisine either, since these people seemed to have no concept of the word "gourmet." Never before had I tasted beef so cunningly disguised as tree bark. I know: tough to imagine, but the chef at the Refuge clearly had special gifts. Renthrette swore it was wholesome and nutritious, but since she rarely ate anything other than raw vegetables and rice, her opinion did little to sway me. I poked at the gray meat and wondered what day they had begun boiling it. The fact that no one remarked on this study in the culinarily bland and stodgy did not bode well.

The beer wasn't much better, either. It looked like a kind of lager, but paler, with almost no alcohol content and absolutely no flavor. When I first sipped the fizzy, yellowish stuff, I presumed there was something wrong with the barrel and took it back to the bar. The landlord helpfully gave me another gla.s.s of the same gutless liquid and followed it up with a blank look when I asked to sample something else. The Refuge served only one kind of "beer" and this watered-down donkey urine was it.

Taking into account what we'd probably be eating and drinking if we stayed at the Refuge made it easier to consent to Renthrette's desire to leave. We couldn't save Mithos and Orgos alone, and there was nothing to do here, so she wanted to go on to the White City in pursuit of her beloved Sorrail. I hadn't actually ascertained that he was was her beloved Sorrail, but it aided my put-upon mood to think so, and I wasn't about to bring the subject up with the ice queen herself. What did not initially occur to me was that the journey to said city took us through, or at least close to, the forests which had been so ominously depicted for us earlier in the evening. Renthrette pointed out that we wouldn't be crossing the river and would thus be close to "the good bit." This snippet of arrestingly vivid description referred to Eventor, the woodland which was, by all accounts, a little less rancid than its counterpart on the western bank. This was supposed, in so far as she gave a d.a.m.n one way or the other, to make me feel better. her beloved Sorrail, but it aided my put-upon mood to think so, and I wasn't about to bring the subject up with the ice queen herself. What did not initially occur to me was that the journey to said city took us through, or at least close to, the forests which had been so ominously depicted for us earlier in the evening. Renthrette pointed out that we wouldn't be crossing the river and would thus be close to "the good bit." This snippet of arrestingly vivid description referred to Eventor, the woodland which was, by all accounts, a little less rancid than its counterpart on the western bank. This was supposed, in so far as she gave a d.a.m.n one way or the other, to make me feel better.

The first day of the journey pa.s.sed without event. Our meager supply of silver had managed to wring us a pair of horses for the trip and some oh-so-inspiring bowls of something resembling gruel. (I hoped we were received favorably in the White City, because we didn't have another penny to our names.) The horses, old and listless beasts with heavy feet and long, thick manes the color of new wool, had probably been used for pulling plows, and they seemed as likely to canter as they were to fly. The villagers wanted them back and the fee we had paid was a deposit we could ill afford to lose.

A series of rills and streams-including, I expect, the overflow from the Falcon's Nest cistern-came down from the mountain and congregated randomly over the two miles north of the Refuge Inn. Thereafter our route followed the eastern bank of a slow river. This was the s...o...b..rne, a southbound frigid curl of clear, shallow water only twenty or thirty feet across for much of its length but swelling, we were told, to several times that as it pa.s.sed the White City. It was reedy and its surface was broken by rocks and stones, but there was never any chance of us losing it altogether, and it was as good a guide as we could have wished for.

That was presuming, of course, that we wanted to go at all. I was pretty ambivalent about the whole thing, but I sure as h.e.l.l wasn't going to sit around in the village of the d.a.m.ned while Renthrette rode off looking for her knight in shining armor and his heroic pals. I wanted to get some distance between me and that nightmare fort, at least until I could do something constructive to get my friends out of it. I did still feel responsible for them, to be honest, but I couldn't wish myself into being something I wasn't. If I could I would have been Will the Heroic and Invincible long ago. Well, probably.

Incidentally, I had not given up on finding some other road, one that got us away from these lands of legend and myth and back to more predictable problems and petty miseries, but when I had asked the residents in the Refuge about Stavis and Cresdon, the mountains of Thrusia and the Diamond Empire, I just got blank stares. One of the barmaids pointed out that someone had once had a cow called Cresdel. That was very helpful.

So what was I supposed to do? Take off by myself and go wandering through this land of goblins and talking bears? Good scheme. So I sat astride my ponderous mount and kept my eyes on the riverbank just in case something grotesque came striding over to tear my head off. It was, after all, only a matter of time.

Renthrette, by contrast, was quite jaunty. For her. She seemed to have gotten over our catastrophe in the mountains and the imminence of the denizens of h.e.l.l now that we were "taking the right course." She rode on, talking idly about reforging her sword blade and how much she missed riding Tarsha. To these observations I made wary agreement, which seemed all that was required of me. We didn't speak of the others-any of them, the ones we lost in Stavis or those we had left under goblin guard-as if even breathing their names would be bad luck.

Then we saw the forest. It appeared along the western bank of the s...o...b..rne and it was all the villagers had said it was and more, a dank and sinister-looking wall of trees. Sarak-Nul, they had called it. An ugly name for an ugly place, though "ugly" doesn't begin to describe it. The trees along the riverbank-those that were still standing, that is-were pale and gray, stripped of their leaves by more than winter. Their branches clawed the sky, and, at their feet, piles of dead lumber blackened and sprouted flesh-like fungus in great tubes and swellings clearly visible even from this side of the black water. The wood was swampy, silent, and vast, its dead, waterlogged foulness stretching farther than the eye could see. The horses snorted and tossed their heads uncomfortably, and a chill ran down my back, making me look sharply away. Renthrette stared at it fixedly, as if getting to know the enemy or staging her defiance. I just thanked G.o.d that we were forty feet of water away from it and did my best to ignore it.

I was less than completely successful at this because the woodland had a way of making you feel like you were being watched. I realize that sounds cliched, but that's how it felt. There is, after all, usually a degree of truth at the bottom of every cliche, only the familiarity of the words making the thought sound insincere. So, trust me, I'm being sincere. The trees had, I was convinced, eyes. If they didn't, there were things among them that did, and the eyes were trained on us like a thousand crossbows. Could a place be evil? I had never thought so, but this soul-sapping forest was doing a pretty good impression.

An hour after the forest first appeared, we came upon a collection of buildings too small to call a village. None of them advertised itself as an inn or tavern, so we didn't even dismount. We slowed, however, to discuss whether it was worth checking our route with one of the locals. As we did so, we became aware of doors and window shutters stirring fractionally. More eyes. Then the doors were closed carefully and bolts were thrown into place. Shadows pa.s.sed across upper windows and vanished. The hamlet became quite still and we, it was apparent, were not welcome.

"Such warm people," I remarked to Renthrette loudly. "Hard to believe the place isn't awash with tourists! I mean, considering their openness and their exotic cuisine, amiable wildlife, and picturesque scenery"-this last bellowed with a broad gesture toward the fetid forest over the river-"it just takes my breath away that we aren't fighting for road s.p.a.ce. Well," I concluded, in a bitter roar at the shuttered windows, "I'll spread the word, have no fear! I'll say, 'If ever you're pa.s.sing a cramped and run-down shanty on the edge of a dead forest, a lousy collection of ruinous hovels populated by a bunch of inbred, misanthropic gits,' I'll say, 'do yourself a favor and keep pa.s.sing.' "

"Quiet, Will," sighed Renthrette predictably. "Let's go."

"Oh, I'm not sure I can tear myself away from this. ..."

"Shut up, Will."

That was the last haven of civilization (if you could call it that) that we saw for ten days. Thereafter it was just us, the river, and the forest, and a right hoot that was.

We slept alternately during the deepest hours of the night, taking a couple of hours each to watch by the fire. It was cold, but there was no wind, and we had brought extra blankets from the inn. Strange birds called from the river at night, great booming rolls that didn't sound like birds at all; Renthrette said they were bitterns and that I should go back to sleep and stop being so pathetically infantile. There were other noises that she said were birds, too, lunatic cries that came out of the darkness when you least expected it, chuckling and whooping insanely to themselves, then stopping abruptly. The sooner we got to this White City place, the better I'd feel.

Then the forest crossed the river. I don't mean that the trees of Sarak-Nul uprooted themselves and splashed their way across, though I was beginning to think anything was possible in this land of goblins and their conversational pets. I mean that the forest spread onto our side as we had been told it would. This was Eventor, the wood which was supposedly still largely untainted by the black hand from the western bank. Still, it was a forest and, given recent a.s.sociations, I was more than happy to give it a wide berth, and said so.

"No," said Renthrette in that apprentice-party-leader way she sometimes had. "We have to stick to the riverbank, and the forest is big. To go round it would take us twenty, thirty miles out of our way."

"To go through it could cost us a good deal more than time," I pointed out.