Return by Peter S. Beagle; Maurizio Manzieri Page B

death, taking it back through the Hunters. And the Masters plan to…feed me to the Tree?”
    No nod this time, but the clear, level stare of a much younger man. “ Have to. Because the Tree serves one task at a time—only one, only one killing at a time. And you survive and survive and survive like nobody else, never. So the Tree goes hungry, hungry. The Tree dies.” He grinned at me again, like a badly-healed wound slowly reopening. “Your doing. You live, the Tree fails. Live much longer, kill too many more of its Hunters, the Tree dies.”
    And more than that I could not get out of him, except for occasional bursts of anger at the very existence of this Tree. He kept blaming Master Krelim, gone decades before my time at that place , but greatly revered in my youth, almost as a saint. “The bow is not enough,” he told me. “They will come at you too fast, you must have a sword.” He offered me his own: a classic Corcorua two-hander, a true prize, which he seemed barely able to lift himself. I declined, checking to make certain that my trimoira dagger was still properly sharp and well-balanced, while hoping earnestly that I would never need to throw it.
    When Brother Laska finally said, “We will go now,” I hooked the bow across my left shoulder. It felt good there, like a friend’s arm around me.
    “From this time we say nothing,” Brother Laska said when we emerged into the darkness. “Follow me closely—must not lose each other. It is very hard to find, that Tree, you must stay close to me.” Indeed, I could barely see him. He put his hand on my arm and confided, in a whistling whisper, “I got lost, you know, that first time I went alone looking for that Tree. I never found my way back.” He winked, which was a strangely frightening sight: that one eye slowly closing by itself in that melting candle of a face, and then suddenly popping open again, like some kind of quick little animal or insect. He said again, “Do not lose me.”
    I expected that he would lead me in the general direction of the marshes; but in fact we went the opposite way, crossing the path toward the stable, but then veering sharply to the left and working uphill into country I had never really known when I lived in that place. The hills were rustly-dry in all seasons, pocked with dangerous holes and ruts in which one might easily break an ankle—especially on a moonless night—and there were always rumors among the apprentices that lourijakhs prowled there by night; though what they would have found to live on, I cannot imagine. There may have been some scratch of a path, but I never saw it, not in this darkness, and not under the drifts of sima leaves, so long dead as to be colorless and make no sound underfoot. I held onto Brother Laska’s shoulder, somewhat gingerly, because he had brought the great Corcorua sword with him, slinging it down his back, scabbardless. If he tipped over backward—which he very well might, on this ground—that monster would be bound to slice one or the other of us.
    I heard birds: tarshis, the only nightbird you will find this far southeast. They make a high, grunting sound, like a sleeper turning in bed, not loud, but persistent. Once they start they’ll keep it up all night, just at the edge of your ear. I still thought I was hearing them when Brother Laska suddenly stopped and hissed, “ Listen!” The Corcorua sword banged my nose.
    It took a moment, but I heard them.
    Voices. I could not say how many—several, certainly, but it was a murmur, not the rumble of a large crowd. And there was firelight; and one song rising out of the murmur and above it, high and clear and quite distinct, though the words were in no language I knew. But I recognized immediately the voice of Master Caldrea.
    He was as much chanting as singing: a curiously angular, slippery melody that kept sliding sideways, changing pitch each time; almost repetitious but never entirely so. After a time it began to hurt my