Hero of Dreams - By Brian Lumley Page 0,48

seemed full of weird energy, an almost electrical excitement, as if they tip-toed across the chest of some sleeping behemoth beyond imagination.

Then Aminza tripped on a root and gave a little cry as she flew into Eldin's arms-and immediately the tree came to life!

"Who goes there?" demanded a throbbing, tremulous voice from nowhere-from everywhere-as leaves lashed and retreated and tendrils groped uncertainly in darkness. "What treachery is this? Does Lathi send out her Termen to steal my tender leaves under cover of night? Speak, I say!"

Wild-eyed the dreamers stared about in leafy gloom, and in another moment strong tendrils had found them and snatched them up like bobbins on threads, passing them higher and higher into the tree's heart.

Suddenly Hero discovered one of his arms to be free and he whipped out his curved sword. Eldin heard the hiss of his friend's blade unsheathing and saw its gleam in a stray beam of moonlight Even as they were rushed aloft he called out: "Stay your hand, lad, or you'll doom us all. It's a long way down if he drops us! Besides, he won't harm us. At least-"

"You don't think so!" Hero breathlessly finished it for him.

And a second later all three adventurers were dumped without ceremony into the crotch of a great branch a thousand feet above the ground ...
Chapter Eighteen
The Trees Tale

Chapter Eighteen

No sooner did Hero feel the bark of the branch beneath him than he leapt to his feet. "Hell's teeth!" he yelled, blindly waving his sword. "I've really had enough this time, Eldin. Sucked in by a whirlpool and sicked up in a swamp-victimized by vampire vines and chased by frenzied foliage-and now tackled by a Titan tree? Damn it to hell, where's it all to end?"

"Right here and now if you don't stop dancing about," Eldin replied with feeling. "Have you any idea how high we are?"

"Yes, do sit down, David," said Aminza crossly. "He doesn't like you stamping about like that!"

"I don't give a damn what the old duffer likes or doesn't like," Hero shouted. "I-"

"I didn't mean Eldin," she cut him off, and Eldin gave a pained snort in the dark.

"Eh?" Hero asked, suddenly deflated. "Then who did you mean?" He sat down beside his friends and peered at them in the leafy darkness. Now that his eyes were growing accustomed to the gloom he could see that slender green creepers enwrapped them and huge soft leaves trembled above them like great listening ears.

"If you'll only sit still a minute and put your sword away, he'll talk to you, too," said Eldin. "Damned if I'd converse with someone who threatened to cut my tendrils off."

"You haven't got any bloody tendrils!" cried Hero, but he nevertheless sheathed his sword. No sooner was the blade out of sight than several tendrils fell down from above and settled tentatively on his shoulders. A great leaf unfurled close by and brushed his face. At first the touch of these appendages made him start, at which the leaf and tendrils immediately drew back, but as soon as he settled down they approached once more and at last he was permitted to know the source of that throbbing yet ethereal voice he had heard down on the ground. , "Ah!" said the voice. "But you are an angry one-and therefore you are not of Lathi's brood, for they are without emotion. No, you are a man of the waking world, as is your companion. You are a pair of wandering dreamers, adventurers in Earth's dreamland; and the girl-she is a real girl!"

Hero took in all the voice said but was at first too astounded to answer. For he knew now that he heard the tree's voice in his mind-that its messages were sent to him telepathically through the tendrils-which would have been an amazing trick even for a wizard, let alone a tree. And the tree could hear his mind as well as it would hear the spoken word.

"Oh, I'm no wizard, David Hero. I'm the Tree, that's all. But I am a rather special tree."

And yet again Hero was stumped; for what does one say to a tree? Aminza, on the other hand, was positively voluble and full of questions. "But who are you?" she asked out loud. "And how did you get here? And what did you mean about the eidolon Lathi's-Ter-men?-coming to steal your leaves?"

"Slowly, my child, slowly," said the Tree, stroking her face with a great downy leaf. "It's a wonder I've not altogether forgotten