Longeye

by Sharon Lee

  Meri laughed weakly. She could hardly be a worse one.

  Did you learn tree lore all in one day? the elitch asked.

  Nay, and I own that my knowledge remains inadequate. I made no claims to being an apt pupil.

  The Gardener expresses her judgment, as a healer, that you are ill, Ranger. Is that so?

  He sighed. Certainly, I am light. If there were another present to take this charge, I would ask the boon. What news, indeed, of those Rangers I had asked of?

  There was a pause, long enough for him to nod off, his back warm against the sleepy pine.

  They have passed from the memory of trees, Ranger. The elitch's voice was somber.

  Meri sat up, chilled to the core. Passed from memory of trees? But the trees recalled everything! All and each of them, and their actions, good or ill. When their kest was spent and they had returned to the elements which had formed them—they lived on, in the memory of the trees.

  Elder, how can such a thing be?

  The trees remember much, Meripen Vanglelauf, but they cannot remember all, the elitch said sternly. The trees do not number those who wander the mists, and the wood that you attempt to ward away from us is beyond our thought entirely.

  Meri looked down, trying to order his thoughts. Certainly, it was true—the trees could not recall those who had been taken by the keleigh, for if kest were never lost, yet it could be transformed. As for the shadow-wood—such a thing was beyond his experience, though it was . . . disquieting to hear that the trees found it so, as well.

  Until you walked beneath those strange branches, we had no knowledge of it, save as a void; an absence of trees, the elitch told him.

  An absence of trees? Worse and worse, Meri thought, and lay back against the pine again. The pine's sleep was deep, and he was so very tired. There were many more wards to be set. A nap, to recruit his strength and regain his focus . . . A nap would not at all . . . be . . . amiss . . .

  "So there you have it," Becca murmured into Rosamunde's ear. "Apparently I need only marshal my will and direct my kest to heal my arm. What a fool I have been, Lady Rosamunde, to believe myself forever a cripple!"

  Rosamunde snorted and stamped a foot.

  "Yes, you are doubtless correct. The study of such matters beyond the Boundary is far different." She sighed and leaned against Rosamunde's warm shoulder.

  "I wonder . . ." she murmured. "If kest informs all things, including the small plants . . . might it not be possible to—to draw the healing humor directly from the plant?" She chewed her lip. "I think I would very much like to meet a Fey healer," she said. "And certainly I would like to hear why our methods are so much more . . . efficacious here in the Vaitura."

  Rosamunde flicked an ear.

  "Yes," Becca said, holding her left hand out under the soft nose, revealing the patch of shiny pink skin across her palm. "It's entirely healed. The scar may fade, or it may not—but, truly, it is as good as it needs to be. There is no pain, and I have not lost any . . . more . . . strength or motion."

  Rosamunde blew an interrogatory.

  "Well, yes, I suppose I might consider it a practicum," Becca said. "And, as you say, if I succeed, many things will be made easier . . ."

  The list unrolled before her mind's eye: to be able to cut her own meat, brush her own hair, do up her own buttons, take off her own shoes, tie a bow, bathe . . .

  "I wonder . . ." she murmured, stepped away from Rosamunde's side. "I wonder how it might be done . . ."

  If it were one of her patients, she thought, she would begin by examining the area, by touch and by sight. She unbuttoned the sleeve as she walked over to the edge of the corral and leaned against the fence. Pushing the sleeve up as far as it would go, she considered the withered member, not as a shameful thing, but as a problem in healing.

  Carefully, she ran her fingers up the ruined arm, identifying wasted muscles, and clicked her tongue. It was difficult to believe that anything—even kest!—could rescue this, and, yet—Meripen Vanglelauf had been certain that the thing could be done and she must, she supposed, bow to his superior understanding.

  So, then.

  She braceleted her left wrist with her strong right fingers and closed her eyes, seeking—and finding the pool of molten gold at the base of her spine. No sooner had she identified it, than her blood began to warm. Determinedly, Becca gripped her own wrist, trying to imagine the golden warmth flowing to her fingers and into the ruined muscles.

  Heat built; the very air tasted hot, and yet there was no sensation in her ruined arm at all.

  Rosamunde screamed.

  Becca's eyes flew open, and she echoed the scream, staring at the flames at her feet, greedy tongues licking along the grass.

  "Rosamunde!" she cried out. "Run!"

  The mare reared, front hooves cutting the hot air, and screamed once more.

  Her skirt was smoldering; golden light dripped from her fingertips.

  "Stop!" she cried, but the flames she had created no more heeded her command than more mundane fires.

  Meripen Vanglelauf had said a word, and raised his hand. Mist had formed, thickened to clouds and rain had fallen, extinguishing the flames she had kindled.

  "What was the word?" she cried, but the trees did not answer.

  Becca bit her lip, tasting blood, hearing Rosamunde's hooves drumming against the ground.

  Defiantly, she raised her hand, thinking of—reaching for—the moisture in the tree leaves, and in the grass, and in the trough at the far side of the corral.

  Mist swirled 'round her fingers, thickening, darkening into swollen purple. Lighting flashed, gold and crimson, and thunder rolled.

  Rain exploded from the roiling clouds, turning the ground in her immediate vicinity into a quagmire, drowning the greedy yellow tongues.

  "Enough!" Becca gasped, and folded her fingers closed, breathing in and willfully imagining the molten gold retreating along her veins, pooling at the base of her spine, cooling, cooling.

  Cool.

  Becca looked around at what she had wrought; the water draining slowly away into the scorched soil, her soaked skirt splattered with mud, and Rosamunde, mincing toward her between the puddles, shaking her head so that her mane slapped the sides of her neck noisily.

  Becca sighed and raised her hand to stroke the soft nose. Rosamunde blew emphatically into her ear.

  "Yes, I don't doubt at all that I look a fright," Becca sighed—and then laughed. "But, Lady Rosamunde, did you see? I put it out! Even without the word! Perhaps I will learn to use kest! I will be able to protect us all and we need fear nothing—not from Altimere—not even from the Queen!"

  "What's that you've got, Vika, a dead one?" The voice was low, gritty, and sounding not particularly interested in a dead one.

  Something pointed and damp shoved against Meri's face.

  "G'way," he muttered, while what felt like a particularly rough piece of bark scraped his cheek.

  "Still alive?" The voice was, perhaps, slightly more interested in a live one. Meri wished that whoever it was would leave him to sleep, and take the rasping bark with him.

  "Here, let me have a look." The scraping stopped, and Meri felt warm fingers against his forehead.

  "Let be!" he snapped, and heard a faint growl from somewhere nearby.

  "Bit of spark in 'im yet," the voice said approvingly. "Here, then, lad, have a drink. Nay, nay, I'll hold the bottle."

  Water, tepid and tasting of the skin, splashed into Meri's mouth. He reached, suddenly desperate for more, choked, swallowed, gasped, and cried out when the stream was withdrawn.

  "You want to rest a bit before you take more," the voice told him. "Which you'd know, if you had your wits about you."

  Meri licked the last drops of water off his lips, opened his eye, and glared into a face as brown and seamed as elitch bark beneath a shock of hair the color of old wheat.

  "I have my wits about me," he said, his voice little more than a raddled whisper.

  The othe
r Wood Wise nodded approvingly, eyes the merest leaf-green slits in his worn face. "Certain you do! Which is why Vika and me found you sleeping snug against an Old One, and looking to be sharing the Long Dream."

  Meri blinked, and sat up, turning to stare at the pine he had reclined against so comfortably. An Old One, indeed, and on the edge of its final sleep, but strong enough, still, to overwhelm a thin-kested Ranger and pull him down into the dreaming.

  "Oh." He closed his eye. "You'd think I was just sprouted." He sighed, and looked to his rescuer. "My thanks, Brother." He got a knee crooked, pushed himself awkwardly up—and would have toppled right over again if the other hadn't grabbed his shoulder and steadied him.

  "No need to rush matters," he said. "If it were me, I'd take a bit to savor my luck."

  "Luck?" Meri shook his head, carefully.

  "I'd call it luck that you've enough kest left to warm yourself." The other jerked his head toward the lowering shadow-trees. "That wood's no friend to our kind, nor to any other, I'll warrant."

  "I allow you to be right," Meri told him. "Have you been inside that wood?"

  The other laughed and settled back on his heels, withdrawing his hand slowly. "No, nor will I! There's too much that's precious riding my shoulders, and it's a burden I'll risk for nothing you can name."

  "I wonder you walk so close, then."

  That earned him a crooked smile and a sideways glance from those vivid, half-closed eyes. "We just skirt the edges, Vika and me. Shortest route from someplace to someplace else. Why go inside, yourself?"

  Meri took a breath and carefully drew his legs up, one at a time, until he sat cross legged and erect.

  "Have you some waybread to spare?" he asked.

  "Here you are." A broken bit appeared between two gnarled fingers.

  "My thanks." Carefully, he gnawed off a corner. Now that his limbs were strengthening, he felt kest beginning to warm at the base of his spine. "I was sent by the Engenium at Sea Hold to help the Newmen at New Hope Village learn what was amiss about the wood that sheltered them," he told the other Wood Wise. Something moved at the edge of his vision. He turned his head and stared into the slitted red eyes of a sizable woods cat, its brindled fur making it all but invisible against the grass.

  "Vika?" he murmured.

  "That she is," the other said, and gave Meri a nod. "I'm Palin Nicklauf—and you'll be?"

  "Meripen Vanglelauf." Meri cleared his throat. "I've met your sprout, Jamie."

  Palin laughed, and offered the water skin again. "Had all sorts of ill luck, haven't you?"

  Meri drank, prudently, and put the skin aside. "I found him likely, and well schooled."

  "There's praise, coming from the Longeye," Palin said. His face shadowed. "I heard the boy's plea to the trees. Has young Lucy given up her kest?"

  "She has," Meri confirmed, and paused to chew more waybread. "Her apprentice blames her own lack of skill."

  "Aye, well, that's Violet in the shell." He shook his head. "It's hard for the young to accept the failures of youth."

  "Of Jamie—" Meri began. Palin raised a hand.

  "The trees tell me the sprout was under a geas last night, and won free by your kindness."

  "It's . . . somewhat more complicated than that."

  "What isn't?" the other said rhetorically. "I'd hear the tale if you've a mind to tell it."

  Meri recruited himself with another sip from the skin. "You'll have heard of the Gardener."

  "Will I? The elitch and ralif scarce speak of anything—or anyone—else."

  That was, Meri thought, chewing a bit of waybread, a detail that had escaped him. Trees often babbled of their favorites—but it was mostly the culdoon and the larch and the other more foolish trees. Elitch and ralif were not only more sensible, but saw further.

  "They do see something," he acknowledged, giving Palin a nod. "What it is, I don't know, even after having some dealings with her."

  "Asked?"

  "Not in so many words."

  Palin grinned. "Nor have I. More fun to guess it out, though I might change my mind on meeting her. Why put a geas on the boy?"

  Meri looked him in the eye. "It was an accident."

  There was a pause, while Palin traded him glance for glance, then nodded, just once.

  "An accident," he said, his voice utterly bland. "Might've befallen anyone."

  "She displays an aura like . . . Newmen," Meri said slowly. "Unlike the Newmen of—of my acquaintance, who seem . . . unaware of the inner fires, and blind to the auras of others, she—Rebecca Beauvelley—is aware of her own power and of the auras of others. She has, however, not been trained in the slightest. Jamie frightened her, so I make it out to be, and she shouted at him to go away from her and never return, never realizing . . ."

  "Never realizing that she was no more like Violet or Eliza or even Lucy—hot, brilliant, and powerless—if ever she had been."

  "Why is that?" Meri asked suddenly.

  "Eh? No talent for it, and no one to teach them, I expect. As for yon pretty Gardener—"

  Palin's voice chopped off, and he became so still he seemed to vanish into the forest air.

  Meri froze where he sat, scarcely breathing. The constant undertwitter of birds and other creatures had died away; not so much as a flutterbee moved.

  From inside the shadow-wood came . . . sounds, as of something . . . hunting.

  Vika flowed through the scant grass like a whisperbreeze, ears back, tail low. She paused some distance from the place where living forest became undead wood, and Meri saw her hackles rise.

  With infinite care, and not half so much grace, Meri crept forward until he was at the woods cat's side. He was not particularly surprised to see Palin on the cat's other side.

  The sounds within the shadow-wood continued, but nothing showed itself.

  "I don't like that," Palin breathed.

  "Nor do I," Meri answered, thinking of the creature that had beset Rebecca Beauvelley, and trying very hard not to think of the amount and kind of damage such a monster might do at New Hope Village.

  His wards were pitiable things, Meri thought. They would protect nothing. And the Elders drowsing here could hardly be expected to rouse—

  Warmth at his side, growing rapidly warmer. He moved his arm slowly, his eye on the shadow-wood, and pulled the elitch wand out of his belt.

  Will you watch, he asked it, and warn?

  Aye, it whispered, and Meri smiled. He brought it 'round before him, unsurprised to find a fresh hole in the mold, into which he slipped the slender branch. He pressed the hole closed with his fingers and then went back, pushing with elbows and knees, until he was under the branches of the sleepy pine, Palin and Vika with him.

  "That'll do," the other Ranger said, and rose to his lanky height. At his knee, the woods cat stretched, her yawn exposing a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth.

  Palin held a hand down, and Meri was not too proud to take it.

  "Try your legs, Brother, and see how you stand."

  Meri came to his feet, feeling the crackle of kest against their joined palms.

  "Nay . . ." he protested, slipping his hand away.

  Palin tipped his head. "What's amiss? It's nothing more than you were willing to do for the sprout, so the elders tell me. I'm hale, and you could use the aid. Brother."

  "The last one to give me her kest died of it," Meri said slowly, feeling the black edge of that moment, when he knew that her gift would be her doom—and knew that he would accept it . . .

  "I'm hale," Palin repeated, and nodded toward the village. "Best we go on, if you're able. Eliza'll take a piece out of my bark, if I don't show myself soon."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  "And that," Becca said, meeting Violet's eyes firmly, "is what happened. I will perfectly understand if you do not wish me to live in your grandmother's house, or to subscribe to my teaching in anything."

  The girl glanced down at her lap, which was filled with gathered marisk, and Becca bit her lip
, recruiting herself to patience. This was Violet's decision to make and truly she would understand if the girl did not wish to have the almost-murderer of her brother under roof.

  "It must be difficult," Violet said slowly, "to have had these virtues thrust upon you without receiving training in their use." She expertly stripped the blossoms from a marisk stem, frowning as they tumbled down into the basket.

  "Father believes that a race of halflings might serve the land best." She gave Becca a slight, sidewise smile. "Which is where you'll see Jamie and me."