Read Seeds of Earth for Free Online Page B

top a bushy slope led into a tree-shaded gully that tapered to a fissure full of the sound of rushing waters. But logs and shaped pieces of stone had been put in place as a rudimentary but solid walkway. It was dark in the fissure, its rough walls bearded with moss, beaded and glistening in a mist of water droplets descending from above. Then a notch appeared on the right and up they climbed, roughly hewn steps curving round to emerge on a grassy knoll with a large boulder at their backs. To one side, the ground dropped away to the rocky gully, the waterfall and the wooded hills, while on the other it dipped gently into a small, flowery dell beyond which lay Ibsenskog.
    Segrana's daughter-forest stretched almost the entire length of a high mountain valley. Fifty years after the reseeding, Ibsenskog and the others had become the lushest, most flourishing places on Umara yet were still only comparable to the sparser regions of Segrana, tracts where the medleys of living things were less numerous. Chel paused for a moment or two, letting the lifesong of the daughter-forest sink into him, feeding ears, taste and smell with its sweet richness, even as he knew it to be only an echo of Segrana's enfolding, never-ending song of celebration. Eyes closed for a moment, he smiled.
    'Listener Faldri awaits us, Scholar,' came Giseru's voice.
    In surprise he opened his eyes and saw the tall, cowled form of a Listener standing at the edge of the forest, near the path that led into its green embrace.
    I knew that the Benevolent Uvovo were the wardens of Ibsenskog, he thought. But I did not know that Faldri would be here.
    Giseru was already steering her lohig down into the dell, so Chel urged his mount into motion, his eagerness to enter the forest now tempered by reluctance.
    The Listener was leaning on a long stave of red markwood and seemed not to acknowledge their arrival, even as they dismounted and tied the lohigs to a notched pole. Only when Giseru led Chel over to bow to his right side did the Listener respond - by turning away and striding unhurriedly towards the forest shade.
    'Underscholars will attend to the creatures,' he said. 'Come.'
    Giseru looked faintly embarrassed but Chel just smiled patiently and followed.
    Faldri is testing me, he thought. Whether he intends to or not.
    Curtains of fine-tendrilled gumaus hung from branches to either side, supporting a variety of other dependent plants and blooms from which fragrance drifted. As they walked, packs of small red-furred igissa scampered and leaped from tree to tree, making masses of foliage sway and rustle. Squeaks and drones, whistles and clatters, the exuberant sounds of Ibsenskog's wildlings over which the lifesong of the forest itself flowed, spilling through his thoughts. He was about to ask Giseru about the local water pattern but Faldri dismissed her, then wordlessly beckoned Chel to continue to follow. He thought that Faldri intended to avoid con versing with him entirely until, a short while later as they climbed a curve of bark steps, he spoke.
    'You have made significant progress since attaining your scholarhood,' he said. 'Despite choosing to serve in the Warrior Uvovo.'
    The Listener had pulled back a little and now the two walked side by side. Faldri had been Chel's teacher and their relationship had not been an amiable one.
    'I chose to serve Segrana and the Great Purpose, Listener,' Chel said. 'I merely judged the Warrior clade to be more amenable to my temperament than the Benevolents.'
    He was trying to sound conciliatory by downplaying his preference for the Warrior Uvovo. But instead comments seemed to provoke anger.
    'Judged}' the Listener said, slowing to look directly at him for the first time. Chel was taken aback by the changes wrought in his old teacher by the Listener husking: the lengthened features, the sunken eyes, the paring away of excess. 'Judgement is for Listeners, not Scholars!'
    Then he was moving ahead, striding up to the top of the rise.