The wandering forest
The wandering forest is a novel by Wolfgang Hohlbein from 1983 and represents the first part of the Enwor fantasy series created by Hohlbein and his friend Dieter Winkler .
action
The two warriors Skar and Del, members of the Satai, a caste of elite warriors, are coming from Besh-Ikne on their way to Elay, where they want to join a mercenary army set up by the Tribaronate of Kohon. From this they hope not only for fame and honor, but also a possible officer's license as a reward. During a rest in a tavern, however, the local Malabese landlord warns you not to take the shortest route north. Lately a lot of quorrl, dangerous reptilian creatures, have been making the area unsafe there. However, the two Satai are not dissuaded from their plan and move on as planned. However, when they are attacked by a superior force Quorrl, they have no choice but to flee to the infamous Nonakesh desert.
Hoping to traverse the desert quickly, they soon discover that this is a barely feasible undertaking. Plagued by hunger and thirst, they fight their way through the seemingly endless desert landscape and soon lose their bearings. When you are already at the end of your tether, you suddenly see a large forest area in front of you. What they initially think is a mirage turns out to be actually there. Happy to have reached the end of the desert, they dig deeper into the forest to look for water and food. Soon they come across indications that the forest could be an artificially created one.
After a short time they meet a group of armed horsemen, who take them prisoner, handcuff them and take them with them. When the group of warriors is suddenly attacked by a swarm of hoger, flying monsters, they are released and play a crucial role in eliminating the threat, which gives them prestige. You will be taken to Went, one of two towns in Cearn, as the forest area is called. While Skar is recovering well from the exertion, Del is seriously injured and now ill - he can only be rescued by a healer with great difficulty, but needs some time to rest so that his body can recover.
Skar spends a lot of time with the warrior Coar and learns from her that he and his friend never left the desert, but rather Cearn represents a large oasis in the middle of the Nonakesh. Its inhabitants settled on the coast a long time ago, but one day they became expelled from their homeland by foreign attackers. These fled into the desert, where certain death awaited them. Only a small handful of Cearner, the rest of what used to be a great people, were able to save themselves when they surprisingly come across a small oasis in the desert where they settle. They decided that in the future they wanted to become a race of warriors, only to recapture their homeland one day. Over the generations, they expanded the oasis into a very large forest area. Since the Cearners see it as hopeless to ever be able to cross the desert safely in large numbers, they come up with the plan to let the forest grow in the direction of their old home called Urcôun. So after a few generations it would finally be possible to get there again with the help of such a "wandering forest".
Skar learns that there is an ancient legend in Cearn, according to which one day a savior will come who will lead the people back to their old homeland. This is what he is now taken for by the inhabitants of the forest. The Cearners hope that he will help them become better warriors. At the Ipcearn residence, Skar meets with Seshar, King of Cearn, who tells him in a private conversation that he thinks it is best if Skar and Del move on again soon, because changes would be the beginning of the end of Cearn be. Skar understands that the man is right about that and that it is best for everyone. In order to disappoint the expectations of the residents, he provokes an argument with a warrior and lets him win, whereupon he appears to the Cearners like a show-off that is grossly overestimating himself.
Back in Went, however, Skar has to change his plan again: Del is now conscious again. The healer who contributed to his recovery died, which made him very thoughtful. Del is now of the opinion that they owe something to the residents of Cearn, without whose help they would no longer be alive. He has promised a group of warriors who do not want to wait any longer and want to set off immediately to liberate their old homeland, to help them with a secretly planned enterprise: They want to ride to the Hoger Caves in the desert and the threat to Cearn there at the source. Skar isn't thrilled about it, but eventually agrees to the plan. When the company was closed, he and Del agreed that they would immediately set out to leave Cearn.
Skar, Del and the warriors find the entrance to the Hoger's cave and descend. Down there, contrary to expectations, they don't come across any of these creatures, but something else: an underground river from which the Cearn forest draws its water. The Cearner present are shocked because it is a river that they only know from their legends and that once flowed westwards towards their old home. You realize that all the work of previous generations was pointless as there is still a way back to the old area. They are also aware that someone must have known that the river existed, after all, Cearn was painstakingly laid out, which is actually difficult to achieve in a desert. The warriors decide to abandon the Hoger mission and instead ride back to Cearn, where they want to tell the residents the truth about Cearn. Their anger is strengthened by the fact that they meet warriors from Ipcearn on their way back from the cave, who apparently had the order of Seshar to kill them and thus keep the secret that has now been revealed.
After their return, the mood in Went is high. Skar and Del are able to convince Bernec, the leader of the impending revolution, and Coar to secretly travel to the residence in Ipcearn and put Seshar there. They succeed; however, he was already waiting for her. When asked why the people of Cearn have been lied to all this time, he suggests that they leave immediately for Urcôun, whose situation, to everyone's surprise, is known to him. You should first look at the place and then decide what to do next. The group agrees and rides into the desert with Seshar. Via an old tower located there, they get to a bank of the underground river, where a boat is tied up with which they travel on. Arriving at their destination, the group comes across the remains of a once large city with a completely alien architecture.
Seshar reveals to them there that the current story of the Cearner is not true. Urcôun was never their home, the city was instead built by a strange people who had once come from the stars. However, Urcôun's wealth soon attracted many envious people who wanted to share in the wealth there. It was not the Cearner who lost their homeland, rather their ancestors were the cruel robbers who tried to wrest their land from the strangers by force. Urcôun was the last fortress of the foreigners and when the Cearner wanted to conquer it, there was a devastating counter-attack, in which the defeated attackers only had a futile escape into the deadly desert. When they found a new home in the forest of Cearn, their leaders created the legend according to which they were once driven from their homeland in order to give the almost completely destroyed people a goal that was worth surviving for. Seshar's father revealed the same thing to him in this place many years ago and, he says, he was also very angry at first at the truth, but then realized that it would be best for the people of Cearn if the legend continued remains. Bernec and Coar, he believes, would soon become the new rulers of Cearn Seshar's legacy. Skar and Del, on the other hand, are not supposed to return to Cearn, but rather set off immediately and see that they can get out of the desert quickly, Seshar leaves them some provisions for this. When night falls and the two warriors make their way through the desert again, Del wonders what they have done.
illustration
The title motifs of the novel differ depending on the publisher and edition. The issue of the collector's edition of Weltbild, for example, shows several warriors on horseback using curved swords to defend themselves against creatures flying from the air.
The novel is accompanied by a printed map showing the Nonakesh Desert and the Cearn Forest. In the east the desert borders the sea of fog. Directional arrows indicate that Ikne is in the south and Elay is in the north. The map seems contradictory to the map of the whole of Enwor, printed later in the fifth volume, where it becomes clear that Enwor is the North American continent and not a pure fantasy landscape: Elay is not located somewhere north of the Nonakesh, but far away on the west coast, where Los Angeles used to be. The information in the book also contradicts the printed map: It is described that the Cearner originally came from a country far to the west and that the coast is there, but the city of Urcôun and the coast are marked on the map in the east, as is the Hoger -Caves.