by Sharon Lee
Meri grinned and bit into the fruit, savoring the sharp taste. "These . . . creatures that surprised you when you were guiding the Gardener . . ."
"Stupid Gardener is too bright!" the Brethren snarled.
"She is certainly very bright," Meri agreed, and had another bite of culdoon to cover his shudder. Bright and willful. He was not at all certain that he could have endured the healing she had just imposed upon herself—the shadow-pain he had received through their kest-bond had all but set him to weeping. He shook the thought away and looked back to the Brethren.
"I wonder where they come from, these creatures, and if you think we might encounter any on our way to the hole in the hedge."
The Brethren was silent for so long Meri thought that he would get no answer at all. Then came a soft growl, and a sharp rustle, as of a tail snapping irritably among leaves.
"There is much of the Gardener in you, Longeye."
Meri froze, the culdoon suddenly tasting of ash. Deliberately, he swallowed, and rested his head against the tree's trunk.
"The Gardener gave a great gift," he said evenly. "I am in her debt."
"There is more," the Brethren observed, "of the Alltree."
Meri laughed slightly. "The Alltree is a story for sprouts, and for the Little People, snug in their holes."
"Silly Brethren," the creature crooned, and growled again, as if in debate with itself.
"The Brethren see many things," it said slowly.
Meri waited.
"We see roaming mists, dead trees, and creatures even stranger than we. There is a hole in the hedge, Meri Longeye, and the wyrd is blowing through."
Altogether, Meri thought, that was a very un-Brethren-like speech. He cleared his throat, but there was a rustle of leaves above him, and when he looked into the culdoon branches, the Brethren was gone.
The dream was of dappled leaves, scented breezes, and bright flowers; a child's happy woodland. Becca, curled sweetly on silky grasses, knew it for what it was—a sleep imposed upon her—and felt a small golden ember of anger begin to smolder.
Deliberately, she brought her attention to one single honeycup blossom. Concentrating, she altered it, pulling it tall and giving it a copper beard, until it was a penijanset blossom blowing there. Emboldened, she pushed at the fabric of the dream, feeling it give way under the assault of her will, the bright day darkening, the dappled leaves becoming shadows, and the flowers fading.
Becca opened her eyes, and sat up.
She was alone with the packs, tucked cozily against the ralif. It was, she thought angrily, not enough that she had again been thrust into sleep by a Fey, she must be left vulnerable and unguarded, too!
Not unguarded, Gardener, a mellow voice said inside her head. I had you under leaf.
"Thank you," she said, putting her hand against the tree's trunk—and gasped, staring at the strong supple hand delicately outlined in gold, pressed against the rough bark.
"I am healed," she whispered. She had half feared, but no! On impulse she threw both hands into the air and waved them wildly over her head. She jumped to her feet, spun—staggered as the wet skirt snarled around her ankles. She saved her balance by windmilling her arms, and laughed aloud.
"I am healed," she said again, loud enough that her voice came back to her from the surrounding night. She pressed her fingertips to her lips, took a step back—and stumbled as the skirt caught her up again.
"That is quite enough of that!" It was the work of a moment only to unbutton the spiteful garment, and step away, leaving it lying on the forest floor.
"Which is all very well," she told herself, "but you cannot walk naked through the wood."
Her eye lit upon the packs. Perhaps Palin had packed extra clothing. The thing had certainly weighed enough to have held a whole wardrobe.
The laces came apart easily under nimble fingers and she quickly set out on the ground a rope, an axe, a tin of tea, several leaf-wrapped packets of waybread, and a wooden cup. Whereupon, the pack was empty.
"How can so little weigh so much?" Becca asked the wood rhetorically. "Surely, there must be something—"
She reached inside again, thinking that she might have missed something balled up and shoved into a corner, wishing against hope that the something might be a pair of sharkskin leggings and a wide-sleeved shirt.
Her fingers touched something soft.
Her fingers touched something rough.
She pulled them out, first the one, then the other, and stared at them as they spilled over her lap—a shirt in flowing forest green; sharkskin leggings, tight and tough.
Becca bit her lip and took a careful breath. "I would like a belt," she said aloud, though that, she knew, was foolish. "And a good knife."
She reached into the pack and withdrew those items.
"Sturdy boots," a light voice suggested from behind her. "And a vest."
Becca gasped, embarrassment warring with anger.
Anger won.
"How dare you put the sleep on me!"
He moved out of the darkness to lean a casual shoulder against the ralif trunk, green and gold silking about him.
"You needed to recruit your strength," he said mildly.
She glared at him. "I will not be put to sleep whenever you or any other Fey wish it! Sian thought nothing of putting me to sleep, without so much as a by-your-leave, and Altimere—!" She bent her head, pressing her fingers to her lips.
"Go away," she whispered. "I want to get dressed."
He said nothing. After she had composed herself somewhat, she raised her head.
She was alone under the ralif, her clothes and goods strewn all around her.
Meripen Vanglelauf was gone.
The ralif whispered when he returned, while she was finishing her braid, using the comb she had last seen in Violet Moore's grandmother's bedroom, and, before that, on her own dressing table at—across the keleigh.
"Where do they go," she asked, by way of a peace offering. "When they are returned to the pack?"
"They fade," he answered, his voice also neutral, "unless they are required to remain. After all, they're only shadows."
Becca turned to frown up at him. "Shadows? But . . ." She held up the comb, showing him its solidness.
"Think it into something else—a necklace, perhaps, or—"
"No!" Becca recoiled—and stared as the comb melted out of her fingers and was gone.
"How—"
"We draw upon the heart of the Vaitura for such things," Meripen Vanglelauf said, as if he were delivering another lesson, which, Becca supposed, he was.
"We are children of the Vaitura," he continued. "We each have our service, and we are cared for according to our need." He knelt, and pulled his pack to him. "There is no need to make a comb for you, and one for me—" Smiling slightly, he withdrew his hand and showed her the same silver comb—"when the thought of a comb will groom us all."
"But do you make nothing?"
He tipped his head. "Did I not just make a comb?"
Becca sighed. "I—don't know," she confessed. "I—surely New Hope Village makes what it needs—and not out of thin air, sir!"
"I don't doubt that they do," Meripen Vanglelauf said carelessly. "They are Newmen, and have their ways." He rose effortlessly, shrugged into his pack, and settled the bow.
"The Brethren awaits us at the culdoon tree," he said. "It's time we were walking again."
"The trees here, they aren't real. They won't talk, they don't grow, and they'll steal all your kest in a eyeblink if you don't watch close."
"The heroes are like them, all silverlight and gone. Sometimes they'll give you words, and sometimes you can hardly see them, or hear them."
"The trees are like shortcuts—I saw a sprout come in through one. And then it closed, and the sprout screamed . . . and her kest just . . . blew away."
"They're working though, the heroes, shades though they be. We can't figure, quite, what it is they're doing. They're chary of us, because we
're here, but our trees are still thriving in the Vaitura."
All of the Rangers had their say, four of them sitting in a semicircle around the pile of marked stones, drinking ale that Altimere had produced out of the hanging mists. He listened, and questioned pointedly, arriving at an improbable description of long-dead heroes thrusting keleigh-kissed trees out into the Vaitura.
"Why?" he asked.
"What would you?" That was Cai, the restless Ranger who had not yet spoken. "This is a curious place you have built for your amusement, Elder."
Her voice put her behind his left shoulder. He turned, courteously, to face her, and pretended he did not see the serviceable leather truncheon in her hand.
"Forgive me, but I do not believe I understand you."
Cai swept her free hand out, encompassing the keleigh entire. "The creatures of this place are misshapen and desperate, the heroes long gone mad, the forests dreadful and dangerous. All of us here—the poor, mad heroes; the ghastly trees; the monstrous creatures; ourselves—why, even the weeds!—all long to be elsewhere. You made this place—you and the philosophers. Can you not solve it for us now, as you snatch good ale out of the very mists that bind us? Can you not unmake this place?"
"The keleigh may be unmade," he said, which was truth, if a simple one; "but not from within it."
He rose then, carefully, taking a pace back, which allowed him to include all the Rangers in a glance, and left him out of range of a quick blow, were Cai mad, rather than weary and ill with grief.
"Think of the keleigh, which one might liken to a wall, or, more properly, to a storm coming from the sea, all in motion in a great swirl, with winds and lightning."
Here he demonstrated the inner and outer spiral, by animating a passing thread of mist.
"What we did in defense of the Vaitura was to create such a form of chaotic materials, that stretches and shrinks time, steals energy; material that confuses and leaches life. When the material was gathered and the forms imposed, we set what we had made into motion around the Vaitura, sealing us away from the devastation that had been visited upon our enemy.
"Such a storm is not an easy thing to build; it required much kest, much energy, and a very great deal of will, as well as crafting beyond rapid description."
"And who bade you build this great and terrible work?" Dusau asked.
Altimere inclined his head. "We acted as required, at the behest of the Queen and the Constant."
He paused again, then went on, speaking as much to himself as his listeners.
"We accomplished what was asked of us, losing many of ours, and many more trees, and then, perforce, we rested and moved on, those few of us who were left, for the Vaitura was safe.
"Yet the action of the keleigh is not just in the plane of growing things. This we saw as we worked, assuming that the motions and equations were of theoretical interest at best, since they required energies far above those we intended to work; and thus what we overlooked was that we were not dealing with something as simple as the light of the sun on a warm day. We had assumed the trees of the forests we used for power, and the lives of those heroes who stayed with their trees as we worked, we assumed that these were destroyed, consumed by chaos. Gone."
He paused, then waved at a misty hilltop crowned with silvered trees.
"Alas, as we now see, kest cannot be so simply eliminated. The trees we thought destroyed have not properly subsumed and returned to the Vaitura, but linger on in this unnatural form. Since the keleigh continues to spin, and continues, therefore, to suck kest from the world, the keleigh continues to grow."
"And we can do nothing, any of us?" Cai challenged.
"There is that which can be done, but it cannot, as I said, be done from here. I am the last of the artificers who built the keleigh. I know what needs done to stop it."
"You, and no other?" Skaal's question was low and potent.
Altimere nodded, sober and firm.
"This seems likely. No one else in the Vaitura has the keys to the building. No one in the Vaitura can call on the kest I have available there."
He looked at them, one by one by one, seeing their service etched on their faces, and their desire to do something in their eyes.
"You say the heroes have devised a way to evict their trees from the keleigh?"
"That looks to be what they're about," Dusau agreed.
"Then I think it is decided," Altimere said briskly. "We must go to the heroes at once, and have them put me across. Once I am in the Vaitura, I will—on my kest and my honor—bring the keleigh down."
Chapter Twenty-Five
"The Fey must make things," Becca said when they stopped next to a spring for waybread and tea, and to refill the water bottles.
She raised her cup, and pointed at the tea tin. "There is a trade market at Selkethe, and another at Lunitch!"
She felt a jolt of distress, and blinked at Meripen Vanglelauf's stern face.
"Assuredly, the Fey make things, and there has always been trade. Do you think that the clothes you wear are woven only from kest?"
"But—"
He took the cup from her hand, filled it with spring water, and handed it back to her.
"This is not tea," she said.
"It will be when you add the leaves and heat the water," he answered, filling his own cup. He glanced at the Brethren, apparently asleep on its back across the spring. "Would you like tea, Little Brother?"
"Tea," the Brethren said, mimicking the Ranger's voice. "Would you like tea, Little Brother?"
"I'll take that as a no," he said, and reached for the tin. He sprinkled a few dry leaves into the water. Becca felt a brief warmth, saw a flash of green above his cup, and smelled spicy tea.
"We are children of the Vaitura," Meripen Vanglelauf said as Becca dropped a pinch of dried leaves into her cup. "If I wish to make a cup, I will find a piece of fall wood and shape it."
Becca frowned, drawing her kest carefully to the cup. The water boiled, and she withdrew the heat immediately, proud of her control.
"Would you," she asked, "use a knife, or kest to form it?" She looked up at him. "Your cup out of wood."
He tipped his head, as if it were a fair question to which he must give proper thought. "I would by preference use a knife, for my father taught me the pleasures of carving when I was a sprout. He carved his arrows by hand, as well, with only a veneer of kest to finish them, and to ensure that they flew true."
"The Fey I saw at the market at Selkethe was dealing in fabric," she said slowly, recalling the day as one might recall a pleasant dream. "A . . . friend . . . told a story of her grandmother, who had a pitcher from a Fey at market. Whatever went into it stayed fresh and never soured."
"Do you ask me how such things are made?" He gave her a faint smile. "Why not work out how it was done, yourself? Who knows when you might need a pitcher?"
Becca gave a small, and perhaps not quite ladylike snort. "For the pitcher . . . let me see. I would dig the clay and shape it, and fire it with my kest."
"I," Meripen Vanglelauf said, "would dig the clay, afterward shaping and firing it with kest, for my hands have not learned to make pitchers. Then a veneer of kest, to preserve whatever is placed within."
Becca sipped her tea, finding it pleasant. She lifted the cup. "Why drink or eat at all, then? Why not simply ask the plant to give you its essence?"
"Because drinking tea is pleasant," Meripen Vanglelauf said repressively, "and there is no harm in pleasure, so long as it harms none." He sighed. "Do you always have so many questions?"
Becca laughed. "I was a trial to Elyd, too," she said, and swallowed suddenly, lifting her cup to hide the sudden rise of tears.
"Who is Elyd?"
She cleared her throat. "He was . . . he cared for the horses, at Artifex," she said slowly. "I—he was my friend. Elyd Chonlauf. I think that—I think he may have been . . . subjugated. There were things he could not seem to remember, and when he looked at the trees beyond the wall . . ."
<
br /> "If he was out of Chonist Wood, then it is probable. That land falls within Altimere's honor—or had done, before I slept."
"But—the Queen's Rule . . ."
Meripen Vanglelauf shrugged. "Altimere would not necessarily bide by the Queen's Rule. It is, however, just as possible that your friend had fallen to his will before the Queen's Rule was lain down."
"He—" Becca shivered, remembering. "Elyd. I had asked him if he had been in the war, and he—but he didn't know how long he had been in Altimere's service."
