The Forest of Peldain

Then the stranger spoke, using the Arelian tongue but with a sharp, almost strangled accent. “Just the same, I come from Peldain. I will tell you what I have told His Majesty. You are mistaken about the forest. It is indeed as hostile as you believe, but it does not extend over the whole of Peldain, as you have always assumed. It forms a hedge around my country, between thirty and forty leevers deep. Within is a fertile, fair land inhabited by people like myself.”

Vorduthe looked toward his monarch. Krassos was smiling. “The stranger has been interrogated at length,” he said. “If he is a liar, he is a convincing one.”

“Forty leevers of Peldain forest still sounds impassable to me,” Vorduthe replied, looking back at Octrago. “How did you cross it?”

“By means of a special route known to me which avoids the greatest of the forest’s severities. Even so we suffered much difficulty. Of fifty who set forth, only five survived to reach the sea, where we put out in a raft whose frame we had carried with us. Had our preparations been less hasty, we would have fared better.”

“Then you are not alone? There are others of you?”

“I fear not. For over ninety days we drifted at sea. We of Peldain have no experience as sailors. When an Arelian ship picked us up, I alone was left, my companions having died of thirst and myself nearly so.’

Krassos nodded. “He was in poor shape, that much we do not need his word for. And he comes from none of our islands, if I am any judge. But speak on, Octrago. Tell Lord Vorduthe the reason for so desperate a venture.”

The stranger drew himself up. He held his head high. “I, Askon Octrago, am the rightful monarch of Peldain, but I have not been permitted to take my throne. I suffer, my lord, from treason. On the death of my father, the revered King Kerenei, my cousin Kestrew gathered together a gang of ruffians and claimed the throne for himself. Peldain is a peaceful country, my lord. The king commands no armed forces. I was forced to flee for my life. Yet there is nowhere in Peldain where I could be safe. Therefore I and my loyal companions resolved to seek help from the islands we knew existed across the ocean.”

King Krassos took up the tale. “And now Octrago offers to become my vassal, in return for help in regaining his kingdom.” He clapped his hands. Vorduthe saw that his eyes were sparkling. “That’s it in a nutshell. What do you think, Vorduthe?”

Vorduthe pondered these remarkable words. It was not surprising that Krassos was aroused by the tale. The possibilities it opened were, indeed, enticing….

“What, exactly, are you proposing?” he asked Octrago, tilting his face in the typical Arelian quizzical manner.

“A comparatively small force is needed to take the kingdom itself,” Octrago told him smoothly. “Peldain has never known external enemies—the forest itself has been sufficient defense. And it is the forest that will be the greater foe. With my guidance, and proper preparation, enough men could get through the same route I came by. The rest should be easy. Later, I believe this route could be strengthened, the forest driven back. Peldain would have regular intercourse with the Hundred Islands—and would be added, I pledge, to King Krassos’ realm. That I rule as his loyal vassal is all I ask.”

“This matter needs thought …” Vorduthe cut off his own words. He could see that, in fact, King Krassos had already made up his mind. Here at last was a chance to do what his father had done, and moreover, to nearly double the size of the kingdom. The temptation was too strong to resist.

But now, from the shadows at the side of the audience chamber, another figure stepped forth. It was Mendayo Korbar, a member of the Defense Council and a squadron leader under Vorduthe’s command. He wore a kilt made of pieces of beaten silver, sword-shaped and riveted to a belt. On his feet, sandals of bark leather. His torso, gleaming with oil, was bare save for the straps that held his weapons.

With hostility, he gazed on Askon Octrago. “Sire, how can you trust this man?” he said bitterly to King Krassos. “He says he is a king. Yet all we know of him is that he was picked up out of the sea. He speaks the same language that we speak, when even among the islands different tongues may be heard, yet he claims to come from a land with which we have never had contact! I say he is an impostor, and that there is no country of Peldain. The forest covers all of the island.”

Octrago, stepping toward Korbar, moved in and out of the bars of sunlight that shone from the high mullions of the room and made a grill pattern on the tiled floor. When the light struck his head, his straw-colored hair seemed to flame.

His voice, with its weird accent, became cold. “The son of a royal household does not permit one of inferior rank to call him a liar,” he said. “Though I am a castaway in a foreign land, I am ready to meet and deal with that slight.”