Gordon R. Dickson - Dragon Knight 02 by Gordon R. Dickson

Author:Gordon R. Dickson
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter Twenty-Three

When Jim and the others had approached the Loathly Tower for their final battle with its creatures, almost a year before, land, sky, and water alike-and everything enclosed by those three-had shown signs of the sort of place they were approaching. There had been a grayness, a dullness, an overall sadness-almost a deathliness-to everything.

Now, however, as they finally drew close to Malvinne’s castle, there were no such signs to be seen in the day around them. It was late afternoon, but the sun still shone brightly. What clouds there were, were gathered to the eastward, so that they did not dim the sunlight in any fashion. The dryer green grass of summer was thick on the ground, the trees full with their leaves. Summer flowers bloomed in patches here and there.

Following the instructions of Sir Raoul, they had left the main road some ways back, at a point he had warned them to look for. The road to Malvinne’s castle, Raoul had said, was visible only, when Malvinne wanted it to be. Otherwise most traffic passed far out of sight of his estate and his territory, and never suspected he or it was there.

Their first sight of Château Malvinne was from a relatively high point of land that looked down upon the blue stream of the Loire River in the distance, just beyond the structures that made up Malvinne’s castle.

In some respects, in some of its architecture, it did resemble a castle, although it was spread out much farther than any castle Jim had ever seen or imagined.

All of this sparkled in the sunlight.

Only in the black wood, the black, thick wood-which must be a mile to a mile-and-a-half deep around the castle, so that it fenced the castle in completely against the waters of the Loire-was the first hint of a darkness resembling that which they had seen near the Loathly Tower.

The blackness was not merely the blackness of dark wood, but of wood that was literally black; of

undergrowth literally black-bushes, small trees and perhaps even the grass itself- though there was no way to be sure of this at this distance; and it could simply be black earth underneath the trees.

The trees themselves grew thickly together, so thickly that the whole forest looked like a single bramble patch. None of the trees were tall. Jim estimated that there were hardly any of them over fifteen or twenty feet in height. But it was not necessary that they be tall. Their thick growth and intertwining limbs were sufficient to give the forest its reason and its reputation.

Yet, Jim told himself, there must be paths through it, or else those that Malvinne sent out to patrol it against intrusion would not be able to get through it. But these paths could well be like the paths of a maze-safe enough for those who knew them, but a trap for anyone who did not know them and intruded under the dark branches.

All of them stopped instinctively at the top of the green rise, including Aargh; and stood or sat silent, gazing down at their destination.

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