Grand Conspiracy. Janny Wurts

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Asandir untied the tether rope knotted to his mount’s neck and secured the animal to a deadfall. The horse had long since grown accustomed. Too shrewd to expend restless energy, it tipped one shaggy hoof, slanted a hip, and shut its eyes, relaxed to the point where its lower lip dangled. The Sorcerer was not fooled. He was careful to stay well clear of its heels as he settled himself in damp moss. There, he reclined, with his head cradled amid the branching divide where the trunk of the beech engaged its splayed grip on the earth. He, too, shut his eyes, but not to subside into sleep.

      Instead, he embraced the dream of the tree, stately, slow, a step in four attenuated beats that marched to the change in the seasons. He drifted there, an immersion into a peace so beguiling, danger lurked for the unwary. The thick crawl of sap lay far removed from the pulse of a red-blooded heartbeat; recast to the dance of a rooted perception, the endurance of a winter’s freezing winds became as poisonously gentle as a soundless, caressing fall of snow. All threads of human personality could unravel, lulled into forgetful slumber, and then drawn into deep coma that would spiral beyond the threshold that marked life from death. A mind trained to power embraced at its peril the engulfing, staid majesty of the greenwood.

      The Fellowship Sorcerer took precautions and wove a small spell as an anchoring link to the sun. Should he lose his purpose and drift into languor, too much at one with the sugared tides of sap that subsided below ground for winter, the advent of nightfall would recall him. Earth’s shadow would snap that frail linkage. A jarring cry of dissonance would run through his nerves as that binding gave way into chaos.

      Should he fail to harken, his bones might be found, clutched at length in the ingrown embrace of the beech. His mind would be absorbed, welded into the current of dreaming that made up the leafed weaving of Caithwood.

      Asandir let go of awareness without hesitation, without fear, with no marring note of unease. He immersed his whole being into the slipstream of life that was the joined multitude, root, trunk, and bough, that comprised the forest of south Tysan. In fullest command of all that he was, unencumbered by barriers that would cloud true perception, he became at one with the gnarled old beech.

      The dream claimed him wholly. He was knotted root, tasting the mineral-rich darkness of earth. He was leaves, speaking the summer’s endless, whispered promise of tranquillity. In the grasp of winter’s gales, he was bare branch and twig, drumming the untamed tempo of the elements. He was pollen, sifted under spring sunlight, and the spanging snap of bitter frosts. The old beech’s memory extended like fog past the dawn of Athera’s Third Age.

      Beneath the layering of the tree’s individuality ran the currents that interlinked its being with its neighbors; and theirs, to their neighbors, until the forest’s webbed consciousness extended its reach to encompass the far borders of the wood. Asandir rode that tranquil sea of soft whispers, loomed from the speech of blown leaves in the wind, and braided amid the gossamer filaments of root hairs. He sensed flowing water, and the tidal pull of the moon; the warm, flooding canopy of sunlight. He knew the blind, reaching growth of the acorn, and the ground-shaking fall of the elder trunk, claimed by rampaging tempest. The lives of the trees entangled in dream like the trackless silence of owl flight.

      Deeper, the flow of arboreal awareness lost its seamless, broad fabric of communion. A directional tide stirred the fathomless depths, spiraling outward in tacit connection with the mystery that encompassed Ath’s creation. Within that singing band of unity, Asandir found the signature he sought, encoded in language of sound and light, and steeped in the gentle nurture that was the wise province of trees.

      He knew the wood’s heart, the given Name for the patriarch tree whose great presence could be called to awaken the dream of the forest, and make its form manifest in the minds of animate beings. Granted the key he required to arrange for the defense of Caithwood, the Sorcerer withdrew his consciousness. A whispered act of will freed him back into separation. Such was his care, he left no disturbed ripple to mar the transmission of spirit language. Within the core wisdom of everlasting silence, that ageless current passed yet on the unquiet air, leaf to leaf, tree to tree; and sky to earth at the behest of sun’s fire and cloud’s rain.