Longeye

by Sharon Lee

  On they went. Though the shadows lengthened, yet they did not walk entirely in the dark, thanks to the tree-shine, and her own luminescence. Occasionally, they disturbed some branch-dweller, who complained with sleepy chirps or chitters and, judging horse and rider to be no threat, settled down again.

  Ahead, Nancy darted into the heart of a shrubbery and disappeared.

  "Not again!" Becca whispered sharply. "Rosamunde, stay—"

  But Rosamunde did not stay. Ignoring word and rein alike, she pushed forward into the shrubbery. Leaves rustled, horrifyingly loud, a branch broke like a thunderclap, and there was an overwhelming scent of cedar.

  "Stop!" Becca whispered frantically, but the noise was done. Rosamunde stood quite docile in the clear center of the plant, Nancy perched between her ears and the Brethren dancing in a tight circle on the ground, shaking its horns and growling.

  "Be quiet!" it snarled, though it seemed quite shockingly silent to Becca. She tried to take deep, silent breaths, hoping that it wasn't the pounding of her heart that the creature objected to.

  "Quiet!" it said again, glaring up at her with glowing yellow beast-eyes. "Stupid Gardener! Too loud! They'll see!"

  They? Becca thought. Were Sian and Brume in pursuit, after all?

  "I'm being as quiet as I can," she whispered, her voice so light she could barely hear it.

  "This is not quiet!" The Brethren swept its horny hand up and out, fingers closing in the golden spill of her aura. "Be quiet," it repeated for the third time.

  Becca gasped. The rich light piercing the Brethren's fist faded, like the sun going behind a storm cloud, leaving only a pale wash of gilt behind. She raised her hand. If she stared, she could see the pale fires outlining her fingers. Rosamunde's flank was only a slightly warmer chestnut, as if she were bathed in dawn-light.

  "What did you do?" she demanded, but the Brethren had turned away, its heavy head cocked to a side, as if it heard some sound too soft for her ears to discern.

  "What—" she began again. Her words were cut off by the firm press of cold fingers across her lips. She pulled back, slightly, seeing Nancy as a blur of silver and jewels, emphatically shaking her tiny head from side to side.

  All right, then, Becca thought. Nancy was plainly as convinced of the necessity of quiet as the Brethren. Though she still did not understand how she should have known that her glow was too loud—much less what to do about it—she could keep quiet in . . . more traditional ways.

  She pressed her lips tightly together. Seemingly satisfied, Nancy withdrew her hand, and drifted upward on lazy wings. She patted Becca's cheek lightly, then rose higher and was lost in the shine of the shrubbery enclosing them.

  Ignored by her companions, she concentrated on what she could hear, which was precisely what she would expect to hear in a wood settling down for the night: branch-creak and leaf-rustle; the skitter of some small creature through the dried leaves that covered the ground inside her shelter; the call of a night bird.

  Rosamunde tensed, noble head rising, ears at full alert. Becca's heart slammed into overaction, and she tasted the metallic tang of fear at the back of her mouth. Yet, she saw nothing.

  Still, Rosamunde did not relax. Becca swallowed and sighted determinedly between those fine, upright ears.

  Tree-glow was what she saw, and a glossy wall of blue-green cedar needles. Rosamunde had likely just picked up her rider's unease and, horselike, was on the lookout for goblins.

  Becca took a deep breath, willing herself to relax. The Brethren, she told herself, was only being cautious, and hiding them until it could be sure there was no pursuit. Really, it was a wonder that it had led them so long before taking—

  The wall of cedar framed by Rosamunde's ears broke inward, away from a massive head and snarling maw.

  Becca screamed. Rosamunde reared, lashing out briskly with a front leg. The hoof caught the creature a glancing blow across its massive nose. It fell back with another roar, over which the Brethren's voice could be clearly heard.

  "Run!"

  It was Sian's voice the wind brought him as he came upon the Newman village, and Sian's aura he saw staining the new night with power.

  "Well," Meri said conversationally, in case a tree or six might be listening; "I don't have to walk all the way to Sea Hold, after all." There came the sound of running feet, and the blare of Newmen auras. "Surely, this display is not on my behalf."

  Sian has lost the Gardener, the voice of the elder elitch told him. She is not pleased.

  "Certainly, Sian never took it well when she misplaced something," Meri allowed, slowing slightly while he sorted words out of the wind.

  ". . . must have gone off the path at the long curve," Sian was saying, her voice sharp. "It is imperative that she be found—quickly—and brought here to safety! Where is the Ranger I sent to you?"

  Meri sighed, and quickened his stride.

  "Master Vanglelauf went into the wood this morning." Elizabeth Moore's voice was calm and unhurried, a notable feat in the face of a High Fey's angry panic. "We don't know when he might come out, Lady. He, himself, was unsure of what he might find."

  "As much as it pains me to disturb Master Vanglelauf at his work, yet I must ask if you will have young Jamie request the trees to bid him come, and at once."

  The two stood beneath the elitch's generous branches; he could see their auras clearly as he moved on, Sian's showing far too much turbulence, and Elizabeth Moore's a steady, if dangerously bright, copper. Sian must be distressed, indeed, Meri thought, to allow so much to be read; she was court-trained, as surely as he was, and certainly knew how to keep her aura calm, even—especially!—under stress.

  "Don't trouble Jamie on my account," he called, and forcibly did not grin as Sian spun about to face him. "Good evening, Cousin."

  "Cousin Meripen," she said, as if she suspected the existence of the grin, despite his efforts. "We are well met."

  "So we are," he answered cordially, and bowed to Elizabeth Moore. "Good evening, Tree-Kin."

  "Master Vanglelauf," she said composedly; "we had not looked for you so soon."

  "I had not expected to return so soon," he said truthfully. "As it happens, I have news for the Engenium."

  "Which will wait," Sian interrupted. "Meri, attend me. Diathen has put a Newoman, one Rebecca Beauvelley, into my care until such time as she is wanted at court. The trees call her 'Gardener' and appear to find her appealing. She was following me, but left the path between the long curve and the village green. A Gardener she may be, and holding the goodwill of trees, yet she must not spend the night, alone and unprotected, in the wood. Please find her and bring her back. I have asked Sam to rouse the others—"

  Meri shook his head, remembering at the last moment to swallow the sigh. If he must go and find this Newoman, he did not need the trees disturbed by the efforts of those who were—kindly—not Wood Wise.

  "There's no need to send—to rouse honest folk from their beds," he said to Sian. "If Sam will come with me—?"

  He looked to Elizabeth Moore, who gave him one of her roguish smiles and a cordial nod. "I'd wager you couldn't keep him in the village. I will do my best to keep Jamie here at least—unless you want him, Master Vanglelauf?"

  In truth, the sprout would slow them, Meri thought, though he would need to practice his tracking, and it was an elder's duty to teach. He considered Sian, noting the anger tinting her aura. Sian had been court-trained. If she gave herself away by so much, the case was desperate, indeed.

  "I look forward to hunting with Jamie on another occasion," he told the sprout's mother.

  She laughed, her aura sparkling bewitchingly, and shook her head. "Always the courtier!"

  "Indeed," Sian said; "it is always a pleasure to observe Meri in the midst of behaving himself."

  He gave her a glance, eyebrow up, which she met with a frown.

  "Now," she said pointedly, "would not be too soon to go. Cousin."

  "Of course," he answered, keeping his voi
ce smooth. Sian was in a chancy temper, indeed, and a wise man would not bait her. "Let me find Sam. We shouldn't be long."

  Chapter Nine

  Despair made the mists thicker; the air warmer. He would, therefore, not despair. There was no reason for him to despair.

  Indeed, there was reason for cautious optimism. He had called; Rebecca had come. That the fickle mists then rose to hide them from each other—the mists were jealous; that was well known even of the keleigh, which could not abide anything to thrive, excepting itself.

  The point to focus upon was that experimentation had proved that he could call Rebecca to him, and that she could recognize him amidst this tenuous geography. That was well.

  What was required, before he called her a second time, was that he craft some way for them to connect immediately, and before the mists intervened. He must contrive to meet her at some point where the mists were thin, and follow her back out. Whether she led him to the Vaitura or to her own land, he cared not, save that he was brought out from this mist-filled and treacherous place.

  It was said that Drakin Fairstar sought her heartmate inside the keleigh, when her duty was done and her hands were grown back. When she found him, so the tale went, she carried him far away into the mountains, and hid the two of them, until they forgot they were heroes, and, by degrees, the rest of who they had been, and so they had faded away entirely, rejoining the elements that had birthed them.

  It was also said that the keleigh never relinquished that which it had claimed, but if anyone could have managed the thing, Altimere thought, closing his eyes against the monotonicity of the mist, it would have been Drakin.

  The keleigh grew stronger on fear, on confusion, on pain. It melted away from power, confidence, and endurance. He had crossed the keleigh many times precisely by keeping his goal before his mind's eye, and riding on, refusing to accept any doubt of his safe arrival.

  So, then, this substance, which was so like, and yet subtly unlike the keleigh. He had allowed himself to be vulnerable and it had attacked that vulnerability. Before he attempted another contact with Rebecca, he must gain and hold mastery over his environment.

  He centered himself, feeling his kest warm at the base of his spine, and the tingle of banked power at his fingertips.

  "I am Altimere, of the Elder Fey," he said, and the mist eddied away from his voice. He rose with studied calm, and with a hand-wave dispersed his chair back into the surrounding murk.

  He took one step forward, another—a third.

  And the mist parted to let him through.

  Rosamunde was the wind itself, sweeping between trees and over low-growth.

  From behind them came roars and other noises, that sounded like shouts, or laughter, or both. Ahead was darkness, lightly etched with tree-shine, and the blazing silver bar that was Nancy, scarcely beyond Rosamunde's nose, her wings a smear of color painted on the dark air.

  Of the Brethren, there was no sign.

  Becca lay almost flat, the reins long since lost, her strong arm around Rosamunde's neck, the fingers of her weak hand tangled in mad strands of mane.

  Branches lashed her, as if they would unhorse her, but she clung to Rosamunde's back, and would not, would not fall. The sounds of pursuit fell behind, grew fainter, and fainter yet, until all Becca heard was the wind wailing in her ears.

  "We lost them," she said—or tried to say. She loosened her hold 'round Rosamunde's neck and eased slightly upward, groping for the reins, whereupon two things happened at once.

  The beast that had flushed them from their protecting bush roared out of the shadows toward which they were rushing, two creatures that looked as if they were made out of twigs shouting from its back . . .

  . . . and Rosamunde stumbled.

  "Stay close," Meri said to Sam Moore. "We will go quickly."

  The Newman smiled, blue eyes glinting, ripples of humor flowing through the hectic disorder of his aura. "I heard our good Lady give that command," he said. "But why do I come at all? I'll slow you."

  "You can run when it pleases you," Meri returned, settling his bow across his shoulders. "Besides, it will fall to you to take this Newoman in hand. It may be that she simply blundered from the path. But it also may be that she deliberately quit Sian's escort, in a reasoned attempt to escape. In either case, she may be more willing to come away with one of her own."

  Sam frowned. "A prisoner? I—"

  "Queen Diathen's prisoner," Meri interrupted, his attention more than half on the images beginning to form inside his head. "We neither of us wishes to disappoint her."

  There was a pause, then a light snort, as if of laughter. "You're right there," Sam said. "Lead on, then, and I'll follow as best I can."

  Meri nodded, took his direction, turned to the right, and leapt into a run.

  It was a challenge to travel under the direction of trees. It required the ability to heed both the vision unrolling between one's ears, and the very real landscape through which one ran—and match the two.

  Meri had often done such hunting before his long sleep, and it was only the matter of a few heartbeats before he had picked up the way of it again. It was rather like seeing from both eyes at once—dizzying, disorienting, and oddly energizing.

  He did not worry about Sam Moore, whose woodcraft he knew to be equal to trailing, in the unlikely event that he fell behind. On the contrary, all his worry was centered on what the trees showed him, of a creature like some mad melding of horse and boar, accompanied by a handful of brown and stick-thin Low Fey. All were in pursuit of a chestnut mare, her rider clinging like a limpet to her neck, her tail streaming like water behind her.

  Frighten the beast from the scent, he suggested to the trees as he ran. Compel the Low Fey to abandon the hunt.

  We have tried, Ranger, a cedar murmured to him; they do not hear us.

  Meri felt an icy stab in his belly. Low Fey that did not hear the voices of the trees? That was against all natural order.

  Like the trees in the deep wood, he thought, leaping over a downed branch, which do not hear the voice of a Ranger.

  Swallowing a curse, Meri ran on.

  . . . Rosamunde stumbled.

  The monster lunged, slashing with cruel tusks, one of the twig-man leaping from its back, screaming in a high, excited voice.

  The horse-boar rushed by, and the twig-men crashed into Becca, its stick-fingers closing hard around her wrists, gibbering shrilly in her ear as it wrenched her from Rosamunde's back. The stick-man was beneath her as they hit the ground, the breath leaving her lungs in a scream, and ribbons of color distorting her vision.

  She twisted, yanked her good arm free, and rolled away, sobbing in pain and fury. A angry snort warned her, she looked up to see the horse-boar charging her, and threw herself flat. The creature passed over her, and she rolled again, trying to get beneath the dubious protection of the small-growth.

  Laughter sounded, her hair was yanked with a force that all but removed her scalp, and the twig-man was astride her, heavier than it looked, and utterly naked, her hair gripped cruelly in one long hand while the other tore her blouse from shoulder to waist, thorn-tipped fingers scoring her flesh.

  Becca screamed, twisting, got her good arm free and struck out, only to have it caught in those same strong fingers, which were exerting pressure, while blood dripped from the scratches it had inflicted.

  Somewhere nearby, a horse shrieked. She managed to turn her head enough to glimpse Rosamunde rising on her hind legs, exposing her belly dangerously to the horse-boar's tusks.

  "No!"

  Her captor struck her with the back of a hard hand. Becca's sight fragmented, the monster snorted, Rosamunde shrieked. Sight still confused, Becca twisted, not caring if she left her hair in the stick-man's grip. She struck out again, her weak arm connecting with twiglike ribs—and its weight was gone.

  Free, she rolled, away from the sounds of angry hooves and furious hooting; branches scraped over her and leaves crackled against her ears. She d
ragged her hair away from her eyes and peered out upon the battle scene.

  Directly before her, the twig-man was swatting at a tiny bedevilment, darting in and out, swift and bright as a needle. Nancy! Heart in mouth, Becca watched as her maid turned the twig-man, dodging his blows, while apparently landing no few herself. Beyond, the monster and Rosamunde faced off. Gore from half a dozen scrapes and scores marred the bright chestnut hide. The monster was not unscathed, and it displayed a certain respect as it faced its noble opponent, but it showed no intention of quitting.