When he finally arrived home, the scarred worldforest was worse than Yarrod had imagined. Even though he’d experienced the events directly through telink, he still felt like weeping as soon as he set foot on the scorched ground.
The surviving green priests had selected a ring of damaged trees—five massive stumps, each one twisted like an amputated limb—as their memorial for fallen trees and people. Though severely wounded, the five burned and blasted trunks remained alive, standing like a wooden version of Earth’s Stonehenge. With uneven steps, Yarrod hurried from the shuttle to the templelike tree ring.
Forced to view all the damage through the eyes of the forest, the surviving priests were stunned or crippled by the constant agony that screamed through telink. The clamor of the worldforest made it difficult for them to see and understand small details inside the tree mind. But each time a priest helped to rescue and shore up a living tree, saving it, they all rejoiced. In many surprising instances, worldtrees had sacrificed themselves to shield small treelings. Each green shoot was a gesture of defiance against all that Theroc had suffered.
Alexa and Idriss came to greet Yarrod. His sister and her husband had always been mellow leaders, with calm personalities, never overreacting, ruling in times of quiet prosperity. They had never been prepared for anything like this. Now both of them looked gaunt and drained, as if they’d been broken into pieces and poorly reassembled.
“Oh, Alexa . . . oh, my forest.” Yarrod could think of nothing else to say. He embraced her, experiencing the still-echoing screams of the burned and frozen trees. He endured it like a flagellant punishing himself. “What can I do? I need to know what I can do.”
“The same as all of us.” Idriss wiped sooty dust from his cheek. “You work until you drop, do every task you see that needs doing, and when you must rest, you gather your energy to start it all again the next day.”
Yarrod tore off his provisional EDF uniform so that he stood in only his green priest’s loincloth. With his emerald skin exposed to the air of Theroc, he walked to the nearest of the five scorched trees and pressed his chest against the bark. He wrapped his arms around the tree and just held it, feeling the contact with the worldforest on every centimeter of his skin.
The flood of sensations was more than he could bear, but Yarrod clutched desperately, drinking it all in. His mind expanded to see through the eyes of millions of surviving worldtrees.
Over the ten millennia since the last conflict, after the hydrogues assumed they’d exterminated the verdani, the scraps of the forest mind had settled here and gradually spread to cover all the landmass of Theroc. For almost two centuries now, green priests had carried treelings to other planets, once again spreading the ancient forest entity. And now the hydrogues had returned, intent on finishing the task of extinguishing their rival. Coming from space, they had attacked everywhere, intending to annihilate every last shred of the worldforest.
On uninhabited continents, some blazes continued to eat away at the forest. Yarrod felt the urgency, the crisis, the pull of the overwhelming and desperate work that still needed to be completed. But Theroc’s population, never large, was even more diminished since the attack. They did not have the manpower or equipment to defend or revive a whole planet. They had to concentrate their efforts near the scattered population centers.
Though bemoaning the loss of each green priest volunteer who wanted to go home, the EDF had not seen fit to send enough troops, ships, and workers to help Theroc in its time of greatest need. The military vessels had come for the first, brief wave of relief efforts, assisting in broad-strokes firefighting and tending to the injured, keeping an eye out for another hydrogue invasion. But the soldiers had left long before the task was finished, drawn away by other emergencies.
Now the people of Theroc would have to do the rest themselves.
Yarrod backed away from the tree and turned to his sister and Idriss. He was covered with soot, his tattooed face streaked with tears. “You are the Mother and Father of Theroc again. I am so sorry for the loss of your son.”
“Our sons,” Idriss said. “The hydrogues killed both Reynald and Beneto.”
Yarrod hung his head. “Yes, Beneto was linked with the worldforest when his grove on Corvus Landing was destroyed. I felt everything he said. He poured his mind and soul into the trees . . . but nothing could save his body.” Yarrod drew a deep breath and looked around. “Let me help here. I need to speak with my comrades.”
Alexa said, “We’ve done our best to clear areas, distribute new tree-lings, gather and plant seeds. The forest tells us that a high percentage have already germinated.”
Yarrod refused to let himself be overwhelmed by the seemingly impossible task. “Every one of those seedlings is precious, and the soil of Theroc is well fertilized with blood and ashes.”
Through telink and the reports of other green priests, he knew how the forest had tried to defend itself during the initial icewave attack by unleashing a furiously accelerated growth and rejuvenation. The worldtrees had attempted to restore the foliage as fast as it was destroyed, and they had succeeded for a brief while, but such a thing required huge amounts of energy, and the forest’s reserves had rapidly been drained. That defense was triggered only during a time of extreme stress, and the damaged worldforest was now depleted, barely able to keep itself alive.
The green priests and the people of Theroc would have to restore the forest in the slow, natural way.
Yarrod sensed that many of the dazed and despairing green priests were on the edge of surrender. A few collapsed and wept, but after taking a moment to recover, they dragged themselves back to their feet and returned to their all-consuming job. He joined them, throwing himself into the work. He could afford to give nothing less than his utmost. None of them could, if the worldforest was ever to thrive again.