Midnight Tides & The Bonehunters - By Steven Erikson Page 0,609

the trail brought them onto mossy ground, through which broken branches thrust up jagged grey fingers. To the right was a thick, twisted scrub oak, centuries old and scarred by lightning strikes; all the lesser trees that had begun growth around it were dead, as if the battered sentinel exuded some belligerent poison. To the left was the earthen wall of a toppled pine tree's root-mat, vertical and as tall as Karsa, rising from a pool of black water.

Havok came to an abrupt halt and Samar Dev heard a grunt from Karsa Orlong. She worked her way round the Jhag horse until she could clearly see that wall of twisted roots. In which was snared a withered corpse, the flesh wrinkled and blackened, limbs stretched out, neck exposed but of the head only the lower jaw line visible. The chest area seemed to have imploded, the hollow space reaching up into the heart of the huge tree itself. Boatfinder stood opposite, his left hand inscribing gestures in the air.

'This toppled but recently,' Karsa Orlong said. 'Yet this body, it has been there a long time, see how the black water that once gathered about the roots has stained its skin. Samar Dev,' he said, facing her, 'there is a hole in its chest – how did such a thing come to be?'

She shook her head. 'I cannot even determine what manner of creature this is.'

'Jaghut,' the Toblakai replied. 'I have seen the like before. Flesh becomes wood, yet the spirit remains alive within—'

'You're saying this thing is still alive?'

'I do not know – the tree has fallen over, after all, and so it is dying—'

'Death is not sure,' Boatfinder cut in, his eyes wide with superstitious terror. 'Often, the tree reaches once more skyward. But this dweller, so terribly imprisoned, it cannot be alive. It has no heart. It has no head.'

Samar Dev stepped closer to examine the body's sunken chest. After a time she backed away, made uneasy by something she could not define. 'The bones beneath the flesh continued growing,' she said, 'but not as bone. Wood. The sorcery belongs to D'riss, I suspect. Boatfinder, how old would you judge this tree?'

'Frozen time, perhaps thirty generations. Since it fell, seven days, no more. And, it is pushed over.'

'I smell something,' Karsa Orlong said, passing the reins to Boatfinder.

Samar Dev watched the giant warrior walk ahead, up the opposite slope of the depression, halting on the summit of the basolith. He slowly unslung his stone sword.

And now she too caught a faint sourness in the air, the smell of death. She made her way to Karsa's side.

Beyond the dome of rock the trail wound quickly downward to debouch on the edge of a small boggy lake. To one side, on a slight shelf above the shoreline, was a clearing in which sat the remnants of a rough camp – three round structures, sapling-framed and hide-walled. Two were halfburnt, the third knocked down in a mass of shattered wood and torn buckskin. She counted six bodies lying motionless here and there, in and around the camp, one face-down, torso, shoulders and head in the water, long hair flowing like bleached seaweed. Three canoes formed a row on the other side of the trail, their bark hulls stove in.

Boatfinder joined her and Karsa on the rise. A small keening sound rose from him.

Karsa took the lead down the trail. After a moment, Samar Dev followed.

'Stay back from the camp,' Karsa told her. 'I must read the tracks.'

She watched him move from one motionless form to the next, his eyes scanning the scuffed ground, the places where humus had been kicked aside. He went to the hearth and ran his fingers through the ash and coals, down to the stained earth beneath. Somewhere on the lake beyond, a loon called, its cry mournful and haunting. The light had grown steely, the sun now behind the forest line to the west. On the rise above the trail, Boatfinder's keening rose in pitch.

'Tell him to be quiet,' Karsa said in a growl.

'I don't think I can do that,' she replied. 'Leave him his grief.'

'His grief will soon be ours.'

'You fear this unseen enemy, Karsa Orlong?'

He straightened from where he had been examining the holed canoes. 'A four-legged beast has passed through here recently – a large one. It collected one of the corpses ... but I do not think it has gone far.'

'Then it has already heard us,' Samar Dev said. 'What is it,