The New Age Read online

  Leif, daughter of Leif and Leif before her, had seen the whole drama unfold. On the day before the burning, she had been gathering brown-capped frooms, when a great flock of crows had descended on the trees. Crows were not forest birds, and the trees were soon irked by their grating cries and querulous shuffling. Leif put a hand on the nearest tree to calm it. She called high to the birds, asking why so many were present. The birds replied gruffly that they had been summoned.

  Who summons you? Leif had wanted to know.

  Being the belligerent sorts they were, the crows told her to mind her business.

  They caarked in unison and warned her away.

  And so Leif quickly cached her harvest, worried now that danger was approaching. The trees, having woken, were already sending restless ripples throughout their network of aged roots. The forest floor was bristling, the tree bark quivering. Creatures were diving for their holes.

  Leif put her ear to the bracken and listened. Among the pattering drops of rain, she heard the tree roots crackling in fear. Something dark had invaded the forest, at the end where the hill flattened out toward the river.

  What is this something? Leif asked the forest. Other members of the tribe would be kneeling with their ears to the ground by now. News would fly faster than a needle could fall, but Leif wanted it first from the trees themselves.

  The forest breathed its reply. The darkness has the shape of a child of the Kaal.

  Leif jumped straight up. The Kaal were not welcome in the forest. They took little from it and rarely left scars, but their home was the mountains—at least it had been until the scaled ones had driven them out to the flatlands, beyond a line the creatures had burned in the erth. The Treemen avoided the Kaal wherever possible. Their hunting men were swift to anger, and far too quick with arrows and scorn. They mocked the Treemen’s fingers of wood, and laughed at the array of moss and flowers that grew across their erthy backs. But the Kaal had never caused trouble before, not the kind the forest was warning of now.

  Leif pricked her ears and listened to the calls bouncing through the trees. A lone voice chipped by many growth rings told of smoke rising near the river, started by one of the flying giants. Leif felt her heartwood moan. Every creature of the forest lived in terror of the beasts she had heard the Kaal call skalers. Nothing bore destruction in its wake like them.

  She started to run for the river’s end. But barely had she crossed a single twig, when she heard the crows screaming, Attack! Attack! Aark!

  Into the sky went the flock. Puzzled, Leif changed her mind about running and scrabbled up the nearest pine instead. Faster than a nutterling could open a cone, she was at the top. Despite the rain slanting in from the mountains, the air was wild with waves of heat. To Leif’s amazement, a bright green skaler was battling an army of crows. She saw a bird ignite from wing tip to wing tip as it gyred too close to a spurt of flame. Many more expired in the same lick of fire. They were falling all around like fizzing hail, spreading sparks among the branches as they hissed through the treetops. Leif had to leap to another branch as a half-blazed bird came hurtling toward her. She beat out its fire and looked up again. The death toll of crows was steadily mounting, but Leif could see that the birds were winning. One by one, they were landing on the skaler, pecking every part of its wiry body, until there were so many on its back that the green of its scales was fully obscured. The creature wailed and clawed at the sky. Leif thought then it would crash into the forest, but she could never have predicted the way it would happen.

  A second skaler bore down on the first. It was blue, this one. Wide of wing. It flashed through the rain clouds quicker than anything Leif had ever seen. She heard the click as its jaws sprang open. A ferocious burst of fire lit the sky, driving a wall of steam at its head. For the crow-covered skaler, there was no escape. Leif squealed in fright as the fire erupted on its broadest side and spread to the farthest points of the body, engulfing the helpless creature in flame.

  Down came the crow-covered beast, streaming incinerated feathers in its wake. The smell was horrendous, tarred and thick, cloying enough to choke the life out of any delicate, air-breathing flora. Leif dived for the safety of the lower branches, knowing that the impact would feel like thunder cracking in her breast. Ba-whump! The forest reeled beneath the huge entanglement of weight. Leif was flung sideways, almost punctured by a severed branch. She caught her breath and held on tightly, fearful of the small fires springing up around her. She could hear the lament of the injured trees but guessed the shock wasn’t done with yet. The smitten trunks, though sturdy and strong, were struggling to hold the body aloft. The beast was going to fall.

  Sure enough, as the forest steadied and the skies above cleared, the creature began to slide. Some of its less-scaled underparts had been speared in the impact and would never see the ground again. But the heavy tail had already found a downward course and was slowly dragging the rest along with it. Branches snapped like brittle leaves as the body gathered momentum and dropped in a hump to the forest floor, dead.

  For one day, that was how it remained: a stinking mound of alien fauna, a swelling that was going to take years to seed and overgrow.

  That was the first time any Tree People spoke of vengeance.

  Leif and her tribe had gathered around the corpse, where there was talk of what they might do to fight back. Some voices were saying they should form an alliance with the Kaal and join them in their struggle against the beasts. One voice said they had met a Kaal boy who ran with a skriking skaler at his breast and could send out shoots of fire from his hand. Aye, his hand, they insisted. They pointed to Odum’s beard, which had been burned in the conflict, they said. But the old ones ridiculed this, and in the end, it was left to the wise ones to decide there was nothing to be done. The beasts were too powerful to fight. Let the next rings of wood record that the People of the Trees would mark this spot with healing flowers. All present would bend their heads and whisper to the Erth sprites. Pray that this beast would feed the ground, not poison it.

  Spears were raised in agreement.

  Aye. Let the forest be at peace.

  And it was—for less time than the passing of a shadow.

  As Leif started to make her way back into the forest, she saw the Kaal child who had caused the trees to quake. A pale-skinned girl with straggly hair. She looked plain enough to Leif, but there was blood all down her tattered robe. Black points marked the centers of her eyes.

  Her teeth were very strange.

  The trees begged Leif to stay clear of the waif, and Leif was glad she did, though she continued to watch the girl well. Not long after, a boy turned up. The girl drew him into a wide clearing. She called him “Whitehair”; he called her “goyle.” They argued, but Leif did not see it all. For one of them summoned up a dreadful phantom, a vapor in the shape of a snarling skaler. Leif was greatly afraid of vapors. She fled in terror and waited for the trees to tell her the rest. To her relief, no trees were harmed this time, despite the fact that some skalers had landed in the clearing and one had used fire against the boy.

  And the girl? she asked. What of her?

  Taken, said the trees.

  By the skalers?

  By the boy. He left unharmed on the spirit of a whinney.

  Unharmed? Leif sank into the bracken, drawing her knees tight up to her chin. Is he a sprite? she asked.

  The forest did not know.

  The next morning, the burning began.

  Leif woke to see shadows crossing the tops. Skalers! They had returned in force. Leif thought at first they might be looking for the boy, but they had come instead to burn to ash the skaler the crows had attacked. In doing so, they set a fire so feral it ran like a pool of hot blood through the forest. Leif called on the rain sprites, begging their aid. Other Tree People did the same. The sprites answered as fast as they could, dragging dark clouds across the sky. In time, those clouds did quench the fire and later flaked the forest with snow. But many trees had been razed by
then, whittled to black by a cruel and needless act of destruction.

  The Treemen gathered again, though some never made it as far as the ruin. Their heartwood sobbed so much that their sap ran free and they fell to the forest floor in grief. Those who survived looked at the hole and swore they would not rest until the skalers were punished.

  There must be a way! they cried.

  But what use were a few crooked spears against creatures with claws that could tear down bark?

  Poison, said some. We have roots and wild frooms that would kill a strong man. Why not a beast?

  Aye, they said. Poison.

  But how to deliver it? How to put venom in the mouths of the monsters?

  Bait, said a voice. Slaughter ten snorters and pack them with frooms.

  The tribe agreed. Aye! Throw the bodies of the snorters over the scorch line and let the beasts feed on them, all they will!

  Now Leif was right at the front of this talk, and she spoke up loud and well. “Snorters have no grievance with skalers. I would liken their deaths to the wasting of the trees. Would the Erth sprites not be angered by this?”

  That made for a solemn moment.

  The treeman Odum said, “The Kaal do not see sprites. They could set the bait.”

  There were murmurs of agreement, but Leif shook her head. “If we ask the Kaal to do our work for us, I say we will yet have to answer to the sprites.”

  But the ugly seed was sown. Louder voices began to water it.

  Who shall go? they cried. Who will carry this plan to the Kaal?

  A cold wind stirred the ashes of the trees. The silence tickled Leif’s throat. “Me,” she said quietly. “I will go.”

  They did not mock her, for this was brave talk. Crossing into Kaal territory was dangerous. Even to step outside the forest for too long was a risk. Leif’s people revered the sun, for it warmed the soil and made the trees grow. But too much exposure to the Orb of Plenty could weaken a treeman and cause his skin to crack and dry out.

  “I will pray to the sprites,” Leif said, unafraid. “I will ask them to show me fair passage—and beg them to forgive me if I do any wrong against the Erth.”

  But Leif, you are nought but a child, said a voice.

  “Aye, and fast across the ground,” said she. “Light enough to be lifted by the wind.” She raised her voice again. “I am no threat to the Kaal. I will carry no spear, only frooms and words—if that is what the old ones wish.”

  The old ones rubbed their beards.

  They nodded.

  You must take them something—to prove our bond, said one.

  “What?” said Leif. “What shall I take?” What gift would a murderous Kaal desire?

  An old one gestured at the bones of the beast. Odum put down his spear and moved cautiously across the ash. He wrestled something off the corpse.

  “Take this,” he said.

  He held up part of the broken skull of the beast.

  The skull of the Veng commander, Gallen.

  The skull was lighter than Leif had imagined, but long in her hands and awkward to carry. Odum offered to carry it out of the forest, to spare Leif’s strength for the long walk down the river, a path that would lead her to the Kaal settlement. Leif accepted Odum’s help but had an idea of her own. If she made a strong raft, she could float to the settlement on the river’s current. There would be no need to walk.

  They praised her quickness of mind and set to it. The raft was made at the water’s edge, from thick lily pads and whittled wood. Odum launched it on a spill of reeded water out of the pull of the main current. Leif jumped on with her strange cargo. The raft felt good. It sat evenly in the water and sprang no leaks. Odum threw her a carrying pack made from a mulch of leaves and twigs. She secured it to her back with loops of twine. In the pack was a mass of deadly frooms.

  Lastly, he handed her a branch to steer by. “May the sprites protect you,” he grunted.

  He bade her a nervous farewell.

  Leif said in return, “I will be back before the moon sees me gone.”

  “Find the boy!” Odum called as she pushed against the mud flats and the raft spun slowly toward the river. He tugged at what was left of his beard.

  “He was in my dreams this last night,” she replied. “I will try, Odum.”

  She waved to him once, and was off.

  The current was kind, the steering easy. No river rocks came to poke at the raft. Thick clouds shaded the midday sun. A weary but refreshing mizzle fell. Birds flew over in the shape of an arrow, honking as they made their way toward the sea. The wind was light, the going ponderous. But the sky was clear of skaler patrols, the one thing Leif had truly feared.

  So in time, she came upon a run of trees that bent their branches into the flattest part of the river. This was the mark she’d been given by Odum. “Look for the willowing trees,” he’d said. “Behind them lies the Kaal settlement.” It was all the information he’d been able to glean from the twittering birds who lived off Kaal scraps and occasionally came to the forest for shelter.

  Leif steered the raft to the shore. Through the gaps in the trees, over a shallow rise in the ground, she could see the mudstone walls of Kaal dwelling places.

  She stepped onto the bank and wedged the raft among the willow branches. Then she tightened the twine on her pack of frooms and dragged the skull ashore.

  For the first time, her heartwood began to creak. There was no way of telling how the Kaal would react to a forest girl carrying the bones of a skaler. Many Kaal had died in skaler fires. They were sure to be wary of any new arrival. And arrows flew faster than Leif could run.

  She crept forward, moving from tree to tree with as much stealth as the skull would allow. At the last tree, she made an important decision. She laid the skull down and covered it with leaves. When the time came, if the Kaal proved agreeable, she could bring them to the tree and the gift would be given, the bond made. If they rose up against her instead, she would have a better chance to flee at pace.

  She gave her sap a moment to settle, then stepped into the open. As she did, the wind changed and she detected smoke. She knew from her teachings that the Kaal made fires to heat meats upon; she thought it was nothing more than that.

  She was wrong.

  As she pressed against the rear of the first dwelling place and carefully peered into the central clearing, she noticed burn holes in the thatched roofs opposite. They had been recently lit.

  Skalers. That was Leif’s first thought. But if skalers had burned these dwellings, there would be nothing left for the rain to save. That meant the fires had been set by hand. But why? Why would the Kaal want to burn their own homes?

  She lifted the flap on a window space and peeped inside. What she saw nearly made her crumble to dust. The bodies of at least eight men were lying in a row, already pestered by anything that buzzed. The chest of the nearest man had been opened. A mutt was lapping at the blood.

  Leif gasped and dropped the flap.

  Too late. The mutt had seen her.

  Why it had to bark, she would never really know.

  She turned immediately, intending to run.

  Blocking her way was a figure that in some ways was more grotesque than the body in the hut. She guessed right away what it was. Until the skalers had invaded their world, there was only one monster the Treemen feared: a warrior tribe from the Wild Lands beyond the Barley Down Hills.

  They called themselves the Gibbus.

  In form, they were somewhere between the Kaal and the Treemen. They stood erect on two clawed feet, which were as good to them as hands when they swung through trees. Their muscular bodies hunched forward at the shoulders where the Kaal’s ran straight. Most of their bodies were covered in hair. They wore no cloth of any kind. Their faces were ugly, their eyes set back. Small eyes. Brown. Deceptively quick. More fearsome than their claws were their prominent teeth, as big as flat stones when they rolled their lips back. The teeth on this one were hidden from Leif.

&nbs
p; It was holding the skaler skull to its face.

  She turned in terror and ran into the clearing, where she was quickly surrounded by a whole clutch of Gibbus.

  “I mean no harm on your kind!” she cried. “My enemies are skalers! I seek help to fight them! I—”

  A powerful hand clamped her mouth. One Gibbus tore the pack off her back, ripped it open, and spilled the contents. Two Gibbus went for the frooms, squealing over who should have them. But as fast as the first show of teeth, an awed hush fell upon the camp. The Gibbus with the skull had walked into the clearing. It barked what sounded like a fatal warning. The two Gibbus backed away, leaving the frooms scattered on the ground, but not before one of them had filled its face with the frooms he’d managed to grasp. Leif shuddered as she watched the creature swallow. In less than two days, its gut would shrivel. Without sweet clover, the beast would die.

  On the orders of the skulled one, she was dragged away and thrown into one of the shelters. There were Kaal in there, kneeling, their feet and hands bound. All were women and children.

  The Gibbus bound Leif too and growled at her. Silence!

  “I have done no wrong on you!” she wailed.

  For that, it struck her with its heavy-boned hand.

  “Child, be still,” a voice beside her whispered. “They will hurt you sorely if you cry out again.”

  Leif looked up, hot sap trickling down her cheeks.

  The speaker was a woman. She had kind green eyes and waves of red hair. “What is your name?” the woman asked quietly.

  “Leif,” Leif replied, twig dust dropping from the soft-woven bracken that formed her dark hair.

  “What brings you among us, Leif? What foul wind blew so slight a creature this far from her forest home?”

  “Skalers,” Leif said. Her sap dripped on to the erth.

  The woman gritted her teeth and nodded. “Skalers have brought this world to its knees. And now they draw these Gibbus upon us.”