It was more than enough to slow their advance. Ermos pinched his nose tightly and blew out the red nuts from his ears. The song was quiet now.
The Stone Tree was right in front of them. They were so close that they could make out its finer features: the lattice of black iron that strengthened the doors; the faces of the gargoyles, no two expressions alike; and the old log pillars that ran by the stone, all the way up to the spired roof.
But no matter how hard he looked, he could see no way for them to cross the wide moat. There was a bridge, of course. Only – by some devilish cruelty – it had been turned so that it faced the completely wrong direction. Instead of connecting them to the Stone Tree, it connected two sections of empty air. Ermos had to clench his fist in frustration as he looked at it. A thousand-year-old joke that had not lost any of its sting.
"That's evil," Ermos muttered to himself. It would have been better if there was no bridge at all.
The bridge was the perfect length. Four stone archways pillared underneath it. If only they had a giant that could run at it with a shoulder and force it to spin around by a quarter of a clock. That was all it needed.
"Oh, the birds have stopped singing," Pash realized, taking his hands away from his ears.
"We've bigger problems than birds now, apprentice of mine," Ermos said.
"Is that a lute?" Pash asked.
Ermos looked at him with a frown. It was an unusually irritating question to ask. "What?"
"A lute. I think I hear a lute playing," Pash said, moving his ears back like a curious cat.
"That's the birds still," Ermos said mildly, deciding that he would try and walk around the perimeter of the moat and look for a more sensible way inside. He cut the branches out of the way. The trees grew right to the edge, roots dangling in midair, forcing their way past hard rock.
"No, the birds have definitely stopped. It must be a lute. But who would be playing a lute all the way out here? Someone else searching for treasures, or perhaps…" he shuddered, "it really might be Teachers."
"An easy mistake to make. Both a lute and these birds make an awful sound," Ermos said dismissively.
Pash was not convinced by that, Ermos could tell. He was still looking suspiciously through the trees, his hand on his sword. Ermos sighed and left him to his worrying, bringing his blade down on the next branch, slicing straight through its stringy green wood.
It was not long until he was drenched in sweat. He was not as conditioned as he once was.
"Ah, master!" Pash gasped. "I think I saw something."
Ermos sighed again. He turned around with all the enthusiasm of a dead man. "…Where?"
"Right there…" Pash pointed to a collection of thickly woven branches, all of them heavily burdened with petals. Ermos squinted and gave it a good look for the sake of his pupil, but all he saw was the same trees that he had seen for the past hour.
He went a little closer, bothering to part the branches so that he might look deeper into the dark forest. Dried leaves, pink petals… and then he too saw a flash of white.
With a slash of his sword, he brought all the branches in front of him tumbling to the ground. Slender sticks went flying, casting a mist of pink petals with them.
"I told you master," Pash said, his voice was too nervous to be gloating.
"That you did boy… Both hands on your sword now," Ermos instructed, growing serious. He had long since learned to fear most that which appeared defenceless.
In front of them, hiding in the shadows of the trees, there stood five of the most beautiful girls Ermos had ever seen, plucking a melody on short-necked lutes. It was for their beauty that Ermos knew to mistrust them.
They paused their song and smiled sweetly, hardly fazed by the swords that were drawn against them.
Locks of shining black hair fell from all their heads. Youthful skin stretched across their faces, as white as the robes that they wore. Their pale red lips were made jealous by the bright red of their wide trousers.
Standing at the same height, with the same almond eyes, they all seemed to be near identical. The only difference lay in their faces. Not the same nose nor mouth nor ears, yet all equally and uniquely beautiful. Beauty of such a level that a sensible man would have to fear it.
They all bowed together, deep and respectful.
"Please do not be alarmed, noble chevalar," one girl said.
"It is on behalf of our Queen that we sought you," another said.
"Your Queen?" Ermos asked suspiciously, nudging Pash to bring him further away from the edge of the moat.
"The Queen of Flowers," the girls said together. Their words hung ominously in the air.
The trees stirred, hearing them.
Branches began to tremble lightly, as though disturbed by a gentle wind.
With each second, they seemed to grow angrier. Their movements grew more extreme, more intense, until they were whipping their way up and down like an army of fingers, desperate to claw Ermos and Pash to pieces. What a sound they made, like the splashing of monsoon rain.
Their whipping grew so strong that they cast streams of pink petals into the air, thousands of trees together, all the way around the moat, filling the sky with a cloud of pink
The blossoms were not obedient enough to allow gravity to bring them to the ground. They moved as though they had a will of their own, a place they had to be. They ran together in hundreds of pink airborne veins, all of them flowing together towards a single point, a point that happened to be right in front of Ermos and his apprentice.