Kamahl marched on, snarling, "You will let me out. If I succeed, you will be different than you are, and you will let me out."

The chamber before him would have been utterly dark except for its inhabitants: numinous orbs and luminous ectoplasm-the ghosts of the wood. Millions of ghosts. On its own, nature was ravenous. The law of the forest was kill or be killed. When that law was sped up exponentially, the result was genocide. Not just individuals but entire species had ended up in these caves. Spirit hares leaped and dived through the air. Ghostly wolves lurked among archways. Spectral elves sat around a remembered brook and poured their laments to the sky. Every spirit made a keening wail.

The sound tore at Kamahl. Shreds of creatures twisted around his staff. He strode on like a man through sleet.

You will not pass these caves, Kamahl. Though your body advances, your soul is winnowed away.

"These are your aborted children, Krosan. Don't you hear their cries?"

Don't you hear their cries? Their maddening cries?

"I hear them, and I will end them. I will stop this mad growth and the killing it brings."

Growth is growth. Growth is the be-all and end-all. There is no such thing as mad growth or bad growth.

"When growth brings death, when it destroys, it is mad."

The forest grows more in a month than in a century. It has brought more creatures into being than in a millennium.

"And it has ushered out a hundred millennia of species. If this growth continues, the whole forest will be destroyed before winter."

You have given me six months to live. I give you six seconds.

With sudden fury, the spirits in the cave rushed upon him. Ectoplasmic hands grasped the staff and struggled to rip it free. Kamahl held all the tighter, whirling the pole in an arc before him. From its powerful pith flowed the true energy of the wood. It gathered the tormented spirits: In its simple strength, they sensed the old forest, the home they longed for. Like cobwebs wrapping around a stick, the ghosts mantled the staff. They roared and spun in hopes of returning to the way things were. In a scintillating white mass, they covered the head of the staff.

Kamahl advanced into utter blackness, his way lit by the pulsing souls. Their howls were maddening. Still he bore them. As potent as they were to the ears of an outlander, they would be doubly so to the heart of the forest.

Ahead the passage opened into a huge cavern whose ceiling and walls were lost in blackness. The floor was slick and utterly flat, and it gave off wisps of mist. A rotten stench filled the air.

Kamahl had reached the bottom of the labyrinth. He knew what lay at the bottom-or more rightly, who.

There, half sunk in the glassy floor, lay the corpse of Laquatus. Like all else in the rampant forest, this dead thing had grown horrifically. The body was huge. Its feet were as tall as Kamahl. Its legs were as wide around as ancient trees. All across its flesh, scales had turned to leaves, veins to vines, flesh to humus. The corpse had become a forest giant composed of compost. Worse yet, the giant moved. It possessed life but not true life. Its belly quivered with maggots. Its fingers trembled with the shouldering hunger of rats. The gasses of decay filled its chest and came hissing from its lips. In eye sockets, things swam.

Kamahl had the strong impression that if not for the Mirari sword through the thing's heart, it would rise.

It would, Kamahl. Draw that sword, and you will have a giant to fight.

Kamahl did not respond. He had come to stop the rampant growth. He would do so, whatever the cost. He stepped out upon the smooth floor and found it to be unutterably cold. It was ice. The natural fluids of this deep place had been frozen by the unnatural chill of that corpse. Kamahl's boots cut shallow marks into the ice as he went. He walked cautiously, fearing to break through into the black waters below.

The spirits atop the staff moaned all the louder.

"You threaten me with a corpse. I threaten you with spirits," Kamahl said, edging his way along the giant's legs. "The corpse is the creature I killed." He lifted his staff. "The spirits are the creatures you have killed."

Not even the Mirari sword, not even your spirit staff, will stand against this giant. You will never escape this cave with the sword in hand.

Kamahl gritted his teeth. "You have invested me with the power of transformation," he said as he approached the giant's fuming chest, "and now I use my gift upon you."

Holding the spirit staff high in one hand, he reached the other to the Mirari sword. It dragged at his hand, as of old, and begged him to take hold. The sword's seduction had only grown, bedded here in the heart of the wood.

Kamahl had also grown, but inwardly. He would not be so easily enticed again. Grinning with determination, he eased his fingers around that so-familiar hilt. His hand tightened. Flesh touched metal, and mind touched mind.

The forest mind was enormous. Every branch was an axon and every leaf a dendrite, each species an axiom and each creature a thought. Even Kamahl was but a favorite fancy of that great mind. He was a wandering hope that touched other thoughts and changed them, a rubric that freshened the corners of that fetid brain.

Do you see now how small you are? You are only a notion, a thing to entertain or dismiss. What umbrage for an itinerant idea to think it could change the organ that had made it! Do you see how inconsequential your soul is, how meaningless these souls are? They are only old thoughts, forgotten. This growth is not genocide; it is learning. I have not slain all these creatures but only outgrown them. I am thinking thoughts a thousand years beyond you.

Kamahl did not answer aloud. He needn't. His mind was part of the greater mind. He needed only think to remind the forest of those memories it had forgotten. His body became a conduit between the Mirari sword and the spirit staff. Souls raced from wood through flesh and into steel. They took with them their wailing dread, their hopes and desires.

Remember, thought Kamahl, remember these dismembered parts of you. Thoughts are alive. They are creatures who wish and hope, grow and change. Even I am a multitude. You, then, are a multitude of multitudes. To so callously kill these children of yours is to callously kill yourself. Remember. You are more dead than alive, more scar tissue than new flesh. Regain what you have lost. Become again what you once were.

All the while that he spoke, the ghosts of the forest coursed through its forgetful mind. Their piteous wailing brought forth other emotions-recognition, fondness, sadness.

The forest remembered. Once again it saw the bright macaws and heard their sweet cries in its upper branches-pale ghosts returned to life. It glimpsed tigers amid bamboo stalks where tigers no longer survived. It remembered the ticklish touch of bush babies, the patient nibbles of ground squirrels, the savage cries of howler monkeys. All were gone, now and forever.

Worst of all were the millions of vanished insects. Their drone had been the pulse of life. While the insects thrived, all that ate them thrived. They were the foundation of the food pyramid. Now, they were gone. The foundation had cracked and crumbled, and the apex even now was falling in on the rest. The extinction of the smallest thoughts in that great mind foretold the death of the mind itself.

The mourning of the lost spirits had infested the forest. It too began to mourn. While it did so, Kamahl rooted out his true foe, the mind of the Mirari.

Abruptly, it was all around-curious, insatiable, ceaseless. It was a mirror, yes, but liquid. It not only reflected but also conformed to what it encountered. That was why it was so destructive. It became the apotheosis of what it beheld. Among the barbarians, it had become Bloodlust. Among the Northern Order, it had become Tyranny, and among the merfolk, Deception. The Cabal had made it Corruption. The forest made it Cancer.