Page 20 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy
Osric was heavy about the legs after the climb. It had taken its toll on Fairhrim, too; she was dragging her feet.
They finally approached the Færwundor. The squat tower had windows and doors, but no glass or wood crossed them; the Druids apparently liked to keep things au naturel within. On either side of the Færwundor’s entrance stood two more hooded Druid sentinels.
Osric bypassed the sentinels in the shadow-walk with Fairhrim in his arms, straight into the tower’s vestibule. He put Fairhrim down when they were safely inside. She was pale-lipped, but didn’t have that particular greenish tinge that heralded vomiting.
“Almost there,” whispered Osric.
“Thank Fria,” said Fairhrim. “My legs are done for; I can hardly lift them.”
“Mine, too. Keep your voice low and your eyes open. I don’t know if those sentinels are going to patrol.”
Fairhrim sniffed the air. “Something smells awful.”
“Cadaverine,” said Osric.
He and Fairhrim looked at each other. Osric felt a bit sluggish not only in the legs but in the brain. Cadaverine? What had died? He slipped back into the shadow-walk and stuck his head out of the Færwundor’s entrance.
Neither Druid sentinel moved, in spite of the Fyren popping into existence between them.
Osric prodded one of them in the shoulder.
The Druid slithered to the ground in five or six decomposing parts. Only his torso remained at attention. It had been driven into the stone behind him with a stake.
Fairhrim, who had followed Osric out, said helpfully, “He’s dead.”
Osric pulled the hood off the other Druid to reveal not a face but a pulpy mass of maggots.
“Fria,” gasped Fairhrim.
“Poor bugger.” Osric replaced the hood.
“Who did this?” asked Fairhrim.
Was there a slight slurring at the edge of her words, or was Osric hearing things?
“I don’t know,” he said. “Let’s get in. The healing is the priority. But be careful—something’s afoot.”
They reentered the vestibule—more accurately, stumbled into it—and peered into the Færwundor proper. No further Druids, alive or decomposing, were within.
They found a vast atrium bathed in moonlight. The Færwundor had no roof.
The tower’s interior walls, trickling with wet, were draped with more of those galactically beautiful flowers, which opened as Osric and Fairhrim passed them. Fairhrim got a real dose of one right up the nose; it forced her into a muffled sneezing fit.
On a plinth at the very centre of the atrium stood a great oak tree, stretching its stately arms towards the moon-filled sky. Osric discovered the provenance of the strange music: in the oak’s branches, chimes of copper and bronze rang softly. The tree’s roots circled the room and made a sculptural, art nouveau masterpiece of the floor and walls. Its leaves caught a soft yellow light, as though the sun of another place mingled with the moonlight.
Fairhrim studied the tree’s crown. Osric followed her line of sight. He thought, at first, that the tree was diseased. About a quarter of its boughs were bare and dry. Above that, tender green shoots peeped. The next quarter featured full, dark green foliage, and the final one, leaves burning with the red death of autumn, and heavy with acorns.
“How is it in all four seasons s-simultaneously?” whispered Fairhrim.
Shewasslurring. Osric regarded her with concern; perhaps it was her fatigue, or an effect of the shadow-walk.
The tree’s roots, blood dark, curled from the plinth into a pond atits base. Well, it looked like a pond, because it was locked in by wide, flat stones round its circumference—only the surface of the pond moved swiftly, emerging from a source to the right and disappearing in a frothy tumble under a rock ledge to the left.
“Look at the current. That must be the River Istorr. It passes under the Færwundor. I suppose it surfaces briefly here,” said Fairhrim.
“I thought we were looking for an intersection between watercourses,” said Osric.
Fairhrim pointed at the oak tree’s plinth. A man’s face was hewn into it; carved leaves made up his hair and beard, and a purling stream frothed from his mouth. The water sparkled green, unlike the black-silver river.
