But by now, rider and mount are atop Keera’s enormous rock, and he is able to see the scene in and around the broad pool that spreads out before them. The sound of the fall at the water’s far end is muted, in reality by distance and the last of the morning mist — but for a moment it seems that the terrible scenes that line the pool’s northern and eastern banks have themselves caused the falling water to quiet its roar, out of solemn respect: respect for the dead, and respect for the irretrievably dying …
{vii:}
Caliphestros has witnessed most of the varieties of brutality which either Man or Nature can display — but he is now forced to admit woefully that he has scarcely ever beheld such unnatural carnage as that which stretches away before him. All stages of death and decay, afflicting nearly every kind of woodland and lowland creature, are represented; and, while there are flutters of movement among several groups of untamed grazing animals, these scarcely living representatives of their kinds are greatly outnumbered by the scores of dead. It is a supremely lamentable and pitiable sight, made worse when one or another of the throng’s still-living members — who lie, almost uniformly, on their sides, their ribs revealed so clearly and painfully that it seems they must soon burst through their hides — twitch and occasionally start, trying but inevitably failing to get back to their feet. The dead, meanwhile, are only less horrific for their being, mercifully, finished with life: some lie with abdomens burst open, some with but a little rotted meat clinging to their skeletons, and some with those same skeletons bleached to an almost pure white, but all in the same position, with their necks and heads extended toward the bank of the pool, as if they had expected to find salvation or at least comfort in the cold waters, but were cruelly disappointed. Yet there are other, even more surprising varieties of dead beasts at this place, too: hunters of the wood and the plains, including wolves, and even a young panther, have also come to the cooling waters, seeking relief from whatever it is that sickened and then slew them. There is cause for pity in this, too, for the wolves have brought their young with them, in an attempt to save at least those future members of their indomitable breed; yet those smaller hunters also lie dead and dying, their whimpering providing the most lamentable and strange sound in the small world that Death has built here, over what must have been many days and weeks.
“Look, my lord,” Keera says at length, scarce able to contain her sorrow, but suddenly intrigued by one collection of carcasses and half-dead beasts that surround a small, shaded inlet, a cove of sorts, at the very northernmost point of the pool’s long bank. “Can it be …?”
“Aye, Keera,” Caliphestros whispers, urging Stasi forward on the great mass of stone that provides their vantage point. “Shag cattle — strays, and almost certainly Lord Baster-kin’s own.”
“It is as if …” Keera speaks softly, and tears have by now moistened her face; and so she sets her jaw and says no more.
But Caliphestros knows her well enough, by now, to finish her thought: “It is as if every sort of creature has been assembled to die in this one place; and finally, in that death, they have become neither hunters nor hunted, but only fellows in their suffering, fellows who are soon, together, to travel to and reside forever in the next existence …”
Keera nods silently. “Yes, my lord — and have you noticed one thing more?” But Caliphestros makes no reply, and so she continues: “All creatures of this Earth are here …” Keera lifts a hand to indicate an ash stand in the northeasternmost corner of the pool. “Even our own …”
Caliphestros requires a moment to make sense of the dappled, early morning scene toward which Keera has directed his gaze; but soon he sees that a human body hangs amid the ash trunks, strapped by its arms between a pair of the trees, and missing the lower portions of its legs: a victim, plainly, of the Halap-stahla.
“Armor,” Keera says, as if unable to quite believe it. “He wears the armor of Broken. And very fine armor it is …”
“And, therefore, warrants further inspection by us,” Caliphestros answers with a nod, his manner suddenly fretful. “But be careful, Keera — you must touch neither the body, nor any of the other carnage, here, no matter how great your pity and sympathy. It is enough that we even walk through this scene — for the very air may be full of pestilence, for all we know or can tell …” Glancing at the water that flows through the stone channel beneath them, which is some eight feet across and again as deep, Caliphestros judges, “Stasi can leap to the other side, with my scant weight on her back. I can then send her for you—”
“There is no need, my lord.” Keera has been searching the surrounding trees, and has found what she desires — a length of thick climbing vine, which hangs from one especially stout limb of a high, spreading oak on the opposite bank. Taking up a long, notched branch that lies among a scattering of dead wood on the rocky surface, she grabs hold of the vine with it, and has swung across the spillway even before Stasi’s broad paws have leapt from the south to touch the northern side. The hardest part of their passage to the ash stand on the far side is, however, yet to come: Keera must exert all her will to keep from looking into the eyes of the now-close collection of dying animals — for there is, in the wide, dark eyes of each surviving thing, not only a terrible, bewildered fear, but a pitiable plea begging relief of any living thing that might pass by. It is not long before Keera must look away altogether, and hurry to keep pace with Stasi and Caliphestros. The panther’s mind is fixed most determinedly on the man suspended from the trees, a man who reeks with the scent of those deadly and despicable men of Broken …
When Keera does reach her comrades, she finds them both deep in contemplation of the scene of ritual mutilation: Stasi’s nose moves from spot to spot upon the ground, able, apparently, to pick up a scent trail. Caliphestros, in the meantime, twists and turns his head as Stasi roots through the undergrowth of the forest floor, keeping his eyes — which have gone from an expression of worry to one of recognition and shock — fixed on the hanging dead man. Deeply creased skin interrupts the victim’s grey and white beard and surrounds the eye sockets (the latter emptied by scavenging birds, some of them, perhaps, the very ravens that are now among the dying that ring the pool), all of which betray a man of advanced years.
“Korsar …” Caliphestros pronounces, lifting a trembling hand to indicate the lifeless half-figure. “But I knew this man …” He stares deep into the famed soldier’s eye sockets as if searching for the light of mutual recognition, and finding only the gleam of putrid gore.
“Yantek Korsar?” Keera asks, herself shocked, now.
“Aye, Keera,” Caliphestros answers. “Once, the famed and honored commander of all of Broken’s legions. Yet now …”
Keera glances at Caliphestros, to take the measure of his sentiment; but she finds an expression impossible to interpret, and so looks again at the sadly mutilated body. “Was he one of those who denounced you?” she asks at length.
“Denounced me?” Caliphestros answers, his face and voice ambiguity itself. “No. Neither did he speak for me, but — Herwald Korsar was a good man. A tragic man, in many ways. But no …” And at that moment, as his characteristically certain voice trails away again, an aspect enters his features that surprises Keera, perhaps more than the sight of the mutilated body. For the first time during his alliance with the Bane foragers, this master of sorcery, or of science, or of whatever art it is that usually enables him to speak with such authority about so many strange and wondrous subjects, appears uncertain. “I had expected some such horror as this, when news came of Broken’s plan to invade the Wood and attack your tribe,” he says. “But to see it …” He glances at the tracker. “I should hate any such torment to be the fate of you or your children, Keera—”