Startled by the vividness of his fancy, he would open his
eyes, and, leaping out into the sunlight, resume his aimless wanderings
around the clearing. As he skirted in his weary march the edge of the
forest he glanced now and then into its dark shade, so enticing in its
deceptive appearance of coolness, so repellent with its unrelieved gloom,
where lay, entombed and rotting, countless generations of trees, and
where their successors stood as if mourning, in dark green foliage,
immense and helpless, awaiting their turn. Only the parasites seemed to
live there in a sinuous rush upwards into the air and sunshine, feeding
on the dead and the dying alike, and crowning their victims with pink and
blue flowers that gleamed amongst the boughs, incongruous and cruel, like
a strident and mocking note in the solemn harmony of the doomed trees.
A man could hide there, thought Dain, as he approached a place where the
creepers had been torn and hacked into an archway that might have been
the beginning of a path. As he bent down to look through he heard angry
grunting, and a sounder of wild pig crashed away in the undergrowth. An
acrid smell of damp earth and of decaying leaves took him by the throat,
and he drew back with a scared face, as if he had been touched by the
breath of Death itself.
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