Melforger (The Melforger Chronicles) (21 page)

“Any idea how you attach yourself to this thing? Does it just clip on or what?”

“It’s a bit daft of him, actually,” said Cisco, “leaving us here clueless. And what are we supposed to do with the rope when we’re all across? It doesn’t untie itself, you know.“

The Foreman scratched his head irritably as the three of them stood examining the harness.

“Back!” came the voice of Fergus from behind them.

“What the… how…” stuttered Cisco, jerking in fright.

“No good you all coming across and leaving the rope here. We’ll need it a few more times still,” said Fergus brightly.

“Of course. Er… that’s what we were just saying,” said Cisco. The Foreman barked out a laugh and patted Cisco’s shoulder.

Fergus took the rope from Raf, twisting it into a loop shape and then slotting it through the buckle so that it held securely. Then he reached up to slip it onto the rope above them in one easy motion.

“There we go, Raf. Now just hold on to the sides of the harness and make sure you use your feet to land against the tree. The first time I did it, I missed it and almost fell off!” He stood back watching Raf expectantly.

“Right. I can do this,” said Raf, taking a deep breath. Before he had time to even think about it, he stepped up to the edge. He grabbed the harness tightly with his hands and, squeezing his eyes shut, he pulled his feet up off the ground.

Nothing happened. He hung there, swaying slightly in the wind.

Fergus sidled up to him and whispered, “You need to run at it a bit, Raf. It’s quite flat.”

Behind him, there was a snorting noise. Raf swung around to see Cisco covering his mouth, his shoulders bobbing up and down. The Foreman hid a smile with the back of his hand.

He cursed under his breath and lowered his feet to the ground again before stepping back from the edge a few feet. “You’re sure this is safe?” he asked, nervously poking the buckle.

Fergus nodded. “Go fast though, Raf. You don’t want to get stuck in the middle.”

Raf peered down the long rope and then nodded firmly. He rocked backwards and then scrambled awkwardly to the edge before launching himself into the air.

There was a moment of weightlessness where he felt his stomach fly into his throat, but then the wheel caught on the vine-rope. Raf’s weight was held and he found himself speeding smoothly down the slide. He was flying! He couldn’t make out any details below him, only blurs of color as he sped over patches of jasmine and cherry blossom and honeysuckle. There was even a flash of a flying lourie at one stage, its gorgeous red and green plumage flaring up in the sun briefly as it passed below Raf.

He was so mesmerized by the flight that he only remembered about the warning from Fergus a few seconds from landing. Frantically raising his legs, he crashed through a thick bush of leaves and then saw the massive tree trunk racing towards him. Even with his legs taking the majority of the collision, he smacked against his side heavily, knocking the wind out of himself. He reached up in pain to unhook the rope from the buckle and then flopped onto his back on the thick branch.

“Raf!” came a shout across the gully. “Are you all right?”

He lifted his arm and gave a feeble thumbs-up.

The Foreman came hurtling down the rope a while later, although he had more luck with his landing and managed to run in comfortably, stopping well before the trunk.

Cisco took a massive leap and came flying down the rope, but to his dismay, he somehow managed to spin himself around so that he was speeding down backwards. Screaming in a high pitched voice, he slid towards them, legs kicking violently. Raf and the Foreman watched as he approached the branch they were on, and just before he crashed into the tree, the Foreman jumped in front of him and caught the struggling boy, taking the brunt of the force with his chest. Cisco’s scream was cut off by the jarring impact while the Foreman merely grunted and let the boy down so he could stand on his own.

“I almost died!” he stammered.

Raf held his stomach and laughed until he couldn’t breathe anymore. “You clown!” he wept, pointing at Cisco’s bright red face.

“Shut up you!” snapped Cisco. “You’re hardly one to talk with blood all over your face.”

Raf reached up and felt a bruise where he had collided with the tree; he had a bloody nose. “Great,” he muttered. “But at least I didn’t do a peacock impression sliding down the wrong way…” He laughed again, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

The Foreman dryly shook his head. “All right, you two, we’ve got a long way to go. Come on.”

“What about Fergus?” asked Cisco.

“If you’d been paying attention instead of bleating like two goats at each other, you’d notice that he’s untied the other end and is almost back now.”

They both turned to watch as the boy scrambled through the branches and vines up to the branch they were on. The Foreman nodded approvingly to him and then hauled in the rope, coiling it neatly on the floor until the end came slithering up through the branches below.

“Err… how many more of those do we have to do Fergus?” asked Raf, getting to his feet.

“Not many. Maybe four?”

Raf groaned and cast a pained look at Cisco, who said, “At least it’s brightened up a bit now.”

.  .  .  .  .  .  .

There was a knock at the door and Leiana looked up mid-conversation with Nathyn and Tarvil.

“Come in.” The oak door swung open and a familiar chiseled face poked around the corner. “Orikon!” said Resma in surprise.

“You found him?” asked Nathyn.

Orikon shook his head. “No sign of him. I tracked him all the way back up to the crossroads.” Nathyn cursed and slammed his fist down on the table.

“Nothing else?” asked Dr Allid.

“Nothing,” replied Orikon. “All I found were the bodies, a map and Jan’s bag.”

“Wait, a map?” butted in Leiana. “Jan had a map? Of what?”

“It’s… you should maybe see for yourself, Councilwoman,” said Orikon.

He laid open a rolled parchment on the table and moved back to let them all see. After only a few seconds, an eruption of exclamations and curses filled the room. Tarvil took a measured glance at the map and then retreated to one side to stare out the window thoughtfully.

“This is unacceptable!” ranted Leiana, waving her finger in the air.

“These were given out in Miern?” said Nathyn. “Brinchley lied right to my face!”

Leiana’s voice rose another notch. “And the
Capital
of the Aeril Forest? The pompous swine!”

“There must be more to this,” said Dalton.

Tarvil nodded. “We can’t jump to conclusions here; we have no idea who else is involved and it m-”

“Oh, this is Allium’s doing all right,” said Leiana. “It reeks of him and that Brinchley!”

“What’s interesting, though,” said Tarvil, “is that these were made a long time ago, which might explain the scarceness of traders this season. A mere handful compared to last year. I imagine that most traders and travelers – especially new ones - remained at Three Ways. Why wouldn’t they when we don’t even appear to exist on this map? Which obviously doesn’t bode well in the future for any of us other than Three Ways.”

He shook his head, sighing, and looked at the hunter. “There’s been an incident. Something’s happened since you left that may prove to be a greater challenge than this.” Orikon took in their serious expressions. “You may be wondering why Vince isn’t with us.”

“L
ast one,” said Fergus. He took the rope and disappeared. The others stood wearily and gazed at the lush purple crowns splayed out in front of them, keeping an eye on the fleeting figure of the boy as he crawled his way along a thick branch a few hundred feet away.

“I love jacarandas,” said Raf quietly. He wiped the sweat away from his forehead and stepped down to the tiny platform the other two were lounging on. The Foreman and Cisco grunted in agreement.

Off to their left there was a huge spruce crown which was brimful with chattering capuchins, unnerved by the presence of the foresters. From somewhere below them came the squawking of parrots, and in the slender elm that was next to them, Cisco spotted a small vine-snake that slowly unwound itself from one of the branches to slide away from them.

“Disgusting things,” he muttered. “One of these days I’ll be happy climbing, reach to grab a branch and you just know I’ll end up holding a blimmin’ snake’s tail.”

A faint whistle drifted across the gully and the Foreman looked to where Fergus was waving from a branch in the jacaranda
Ancient
. “Here we go.”

Experienced as they were now, the three of them were across the gorge quickly, and a short while later, they all gathered on a branch underneath the purple crowns.

“Now what?”

The Foreman turned to them. “I will show you where this tree is, but,” he scratched his head, “I have no idea how this
Ash-knell
works. I hope it’s simple.”

The boys followed him along the branch into the midst of the purple grove, climbing down onto the lower, thicker branches. They eventually came to a strange section where the jacaranda trunks formed a closed circle of sorts, with foliage filling the gaps between them.

“Funny how dark it is as you get lower,” commented Cisco. “You never realize how much darker it is under the canopy until you’ve been up here for a bit. Makes me wish I listened to Yurgin a bit better in class and m-”

“Cisco,” said the Foreman. “Could you keep your thoughts to yourself for a bit?”

“Sorry, sir.” Cisco grimaced at Raf who shrugged, and the group moved on silently.

The Foreman made his way up to the circle of trunks and then the four of them edged through the foliage on one of the branches that penetrated the dark enclosure. They pushed aside the dainty clusters of leaves and, as their eyes adjusted to the darkness inside, they realized they had reached their goal.

A huge, dark tower of a tree came into focus. It had no branches or leaves. It was simply a thick, cylindrical trunk that stretched down into the murky gloom below, and grew up straight as an arrow to disappear into the thick crowns above.

“That doesn’t look right,” said Cisco. “How is it so perfectly smooth? Not even the Council’s sequoia
Ancient
is that perfect…”

The Foreman stared thoughtfully at it.

“Are we supposed to beat it with a stick or something?” asked Cisco.

“That seems logical; it’s called a ‘knell’ after all. Maybe there’s a beater somewhere?” replied the Foreman.

Cisco walked along the branch to the trunk and reached out to give it a hard rap with the back of
his hand. There was a dead, muffled sound and he scowled, rubbing his bruised knuckles. “Nope.
Way
too hard. Feels like it’s completely solid.”

The four of them climbed their way around the trunk, hopping from branch to branch of the surrounding jacarandas. They tried beating it with sticks, kicking it and slapping it, but nothing worked. Eventually, they gave up and sat down.

“You know,” said the Foreman, pointing at a section of the trunk near them, “if you look at it from this angle, it’s almost like there’s a small round bit of lighter wood just there.”

“Oh yeah…” said Cisco. “That’s definitely not natural. It’s almost a perfect circle.” He walked up to it and peered closely at the trunk. The circle of lighter wood was about two feet in diameter, and exactly in the centre was a small hole about the size of an acorn.

“What do you think that is?” asked Fergus.

“No idea. Maybe a woodpecker or something made it. It’s weird though. Even the hole is very neat.” He peered closer. “Too neat.”

The Foreman walked up to join them and looked at it, shaking his head in annoyance. “It should be easier than this! Why would some simple old musicians make something so complicated to work out how to use in an emergency?”

“What should we do?” asked Fergus.

The Foreman crouched down and smiled at him tiredly. “If we can’t work it out, we must concede and make our way back quickly to do what we can with the pigeons.” Fergus twisted his mouth in disappointment.

Raf sat back and stared at the tree. It stared back at him. How could it work? It must be a drum, surely? He started humming softly to himself as he looked blankly at the jacarandas and then leant back against the trunk, closing his eyes for a moment.

It came to him immediately, a glimmer of understanding that flashed up in his consciousness. It was just suddenly there where there had been nothing before. His eyes sprang open and he got to his feet. The others turned around and looked at him curiously.

“Musicians…” he whispered.

“What about them, Raf?” asked the Foreman.

“Our ancestors, the people who grew these, were musicians, not drummers…”

“Well, some would argue that drums are also instruments, but never mind that - what are you saying? That this isn’t a drum? How else does it work?”