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he intended. "I concur, but don't expect me to try and cut any wood for it.
Not when the wood in question is liable to object strenuously to the action."
"We've passed many dead trees." Samm hefted his axe. "If we lash them together
with vines, I'm sure we can put together a craft capable of carrying all of
us."
"Fssst, yes--but carrying us to where?" Cezer wondered aloud. "I don't know
about the rest of you, but I'm no sailor. In fact, I've never been fond of
pond water, much less the ocean." He nodded toward the tranquil sea. "Now that
I've actually set eyes on it, I'm even less enthusiastic."
"As am I." Mamakitty's reaction was not unexpected, Oskar knew. Cocoa
mentioned her own distaste a moment later.
"Like it or not, we're going to have to cross it." Shading his eyes with one
hand, Oskar tried to see across the water and found that he could not. Unlike
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the cat-folk, he was not troubled by the prospect of an ocean voyage. Like
every dog he'd ever met, he loved the water. In this he shared an affinity
with Samm. As for Taj, the songster was indifferent. It would be a new
experience for him to have to travel on water instead of high above it.
Oskar was pondering whether a suitable dugout could be fashioned from a fallen
spruce when the first pale coils exploded from the sand to wrap around him.
Yells of alarm and shouts of surprise confirmed that his companions were under
similar assault from beneath the surface.
Reaching for his sword, he looked on in horrified fascination as a pair of
pallid wooden tentacles promptly punched their way out of a parent trunk to
lock themselves around his wrist before he could draw the weapon. Though they
might well have belonged to some fantastical sea creature, they did not
represent an assault from the Kingdom of Blue. They were not soft, like flesh,
but hard, like--wood.
Roots, he thought. Then he noted their smoothness, the absence of tiny cilia
or branchlets capable of extracting water and nutrients from the soil. If not
roots, then what? he wondered as the rapidly expanding tentacles tightened
around him. He could not get loose; neither could he make use of his
sharp-edged blade to cut his way free. From nearby, the book-loving Mamakitty
(well, she loved curling up and going to sleep on them, anyway) shouted a
warning that came too late. It confirmed his fear that the forest of the
Kingdom of Green had not done with them yet.
"Strangler fig!" she managed to gasp out.
So that was what had surprised and overwhelmed him and his friends while their
attention had been distracted by the newly revealed beach and the sea beyond.
They were under attack from trees that even in their normal, natural,
nonsentient state, were endowed with the ability to commit murder. Normally,
the lethality of the strangler fig was confined to other trees, which it
encircled and smothered from the ground up, eventually choking the host growth
to death. Now several members of that quietly murderous tribe had been given
the task of doing to the intruders what they would normally do to their woody
brethren. The abnormal growth spurt the figs at the edge of the forest were
demonstrating must have been in preparation for days, as the travelers came
closer and closer. The deadly rate of growth was nothing short of phenomenal.
Oskar could feel the multiple wooden shoots swelling around him. As they
expanded, they formed a tighter and tighter cage around his pinioned body. The
pressure on his ribs was becoming intense. To one side, he could see Cocoa
frantically sawing away with her knife. Though she still had both hands free
to wield the blade, she was making little headway toward freedom. The fig that
now enclosed her put on new wood faster than she could cut it away.
"Help, somebody, please!" That was Taj. The songster was in obvious pain. What
denizens of the sky could he whistle up to aid him? Oskar wondered. It would
take a thousand eagles clawing away in unison just to keep up with the
stranglers' impossibly rapid growth.
One bulging bole was putting exceptional pressure on the dog-man's right side.
When he tried to force it back, he found it was like pushing against a wall.
Beyond his line of sight, even the always poised Mamakitty was starting to
moan.
Could he influence these trees as he had influenced others? Desperately, he
tried to repeat his actions of days before. Unfortunately, he was so terrified
that his insides refused to cooperate. As he struggled with his recalcitrant
bladder, he found himself wondering if Master Evyndd had ever suffered from a
similar problem. He suspected not.
Where, he wondered frantically, was incontinence when you needed it? [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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