The White Tree

by Edward W. Robertson

  Fanna might be engaged to another boy by now, even dead. Dante knew that thought should make him sad, but he doubted if she ever thought of him anymore; leaving people behind and forgetting them piece by piece was just the way life worked. His past fixation on her struck him now as almost pathetic. He was glad to be gone from her, glad to be older, but he wished he could have met her all over again now that he'd begun to grow into his age—or that she could see him here for just a moment, compare what he'd become to the odd, nervous boy she'd known. He thought she'd like what she saw.

  Dante bumped into the back of the man whose footsteps he'd followed and saw they were nearly at the top of the hill. Without warning, someone vomited noisily to his right. Before he had time to laugh his eyes fell on the trunk of the tree that stood a mere thirty yards away and his mind went empty as it struggled to categorize the thing he saw.

  The trunk was wider than his arm was long. White and gnarled, it looked at first glance like a rope of spines twisted around each other. He thought it might be one of those tricks of nature where a fly paints its wings to look like a wasp, or a harmless plant grows its leaves in the pattern of the poisonous one, but there were no leaves on this tree, none of its branches swayed in the winds. Instead it was starkly empty, horribly motionless in a way every other tree he'd ever seen wasn't.

  The main branches appeared composed of ribs and humeri and femurs—not as if they were each a single big bone, but rather a fused line of thousands, like a hundred corpses had been forged into the curve of a single limb; the branches forked into smaller versions of themselves like a normal tree, terminating in willowy fibulas and ulnas and radii and individual ribs, and sticking out from those delineated bones were the prongs of tarsals and metacarpals and knuckles and toes and teeth, looking like twigs and pale blooms. Barden stood a hundred feet high or more and every inch as wide across its branches, casting still, sharp-edged shadows on the snow. Dante fell back a step, struck by a guts-deep revulsion. His boot caught against a rock-hard root, a jumble of jawbones and backbones.

  At first glance Barden looked like it might have been built by someone's hands rather than coaxed from the soil, but for all its stillness he had the sense it was alive, not artifice. It wasn't inert in the same way that bones in a grave were inert, or like the stones in a fieldstone wall were no more than stones. But if it had been built, who could it have been built by? Some insane person who'd hauled a caravan of countless dead to this desolate spot and spent a year nailing together the bones? When he looked closer, he could see no sign of craft in its branches. Where one bone met another they blended till the seam was nearly invisible. They had grown that way. Some time ago, a very long time ago, the seed of the White Tree of Barden had been planted in the dirt, had risen as a sapling and raised its bleached arms to the heavens, and grown and grown and grown until it filled the sky.

  Blays' hand clamped on his shoulder. Around him men muttered oaths or said nothing at all. Three of the six priests dropped to their knees, arms held out from their sides. Samarand took a slow step forward, neck tilted, and for the first time Dante saw her eyes humbled. Even Larrimore looked put out of sorts—chewing and chewing a splinter of wood he'd picked from the handcart, running his fingers down his face and scratching the stubble on his neck till his skin turned red. A gust of wind screeched through the branches like something living being torn and the man who'd vomited let loose a fresh stream.

  "Barden," Samarand breathed. "I've never been this close," she said, as if she had to explain her awe. But for an occasional retch, every man went silent. "This is where Eric Draconat spilled the blood of Taim in the first days of earth," she said in quiet tones as she turned to face the small group of men. "This is where the birth of man began, where Arawn and Carvahal plotted to hand the fire of the heavens to the low reach of our race. It's only fitting it will be the place where we restore Arawn to his seat in the stars."

  "Live this earth," one of the priests replied, and was echoed by the others.

  "Bring the treated bones," Samarand said. She walked toward the bleached bole of the tree. A few of the armsmen reached into the wagon and hoisted rattling bags and Dante darted to grab one as well. The priests leaned into the wind and snow and continued up what was left of the hill between themselves and Samarand and Dante followed, the hard ends of the bones in the sack battering against his back. Overcast shadows of the White Tree fell on his face, striping his skin more coldly than the northerly gusts of wind. His toes stubbed against roots concealed in the snow, but he kept his eyes fixed on the branches, making sure they weren't about to snatch him up and patch his frame into the greater body of the tree. The branches stayed as immobile as the flanks of the mountains many miles away.

  He stopped ten feet from the sinuous trunk. Samarand stretched out an unsteady hand and laid it on the smooth bone, ran her fingers over the bumps of its vertebrae. One of the armsmen set his bag by her feet and Dante did the same, daring himself to touch the trunk. Samarand took a long breath, then drew away her hand and picked up one of the bags, scooping out a handful of bones scripted with Arawn's name. Dante recognized his handwriting on a few of the pieces. She scattered ribs and jaws and thighs around Barden's gnarled roots like a fowl farmer tosses seed to his flocks. The bones sank into the snow, gray on white. Samarand circled the putrid trunk, throwing bones, and when her bag ran out one of the priests hurried to hand her another. Scores of bones, clattering heaps, each one holding a speck of the same shadowy force Dante felt rolling off the White Tree in waves. She made seven circuits in all, then paused where the road ran up to meet the trunk, considering the rings she'd made around it.

  "It's time to begin," she said. She met the eyes of each man in turn. Dante squirmed. "I don't know what will come of this," she went on. "Perhaps nothing. Perhaps three hours from now we'll stop our work, exhausted and defeated, and everything will be the same as it is now. There are no guarantees we know the steps as well as we need. There are no guarantees we possess the power to do what no one before us has been able to accomplish." She paused in the manner she'd done while giving her sermon. "Yet I have no doubts we'll succeed. Why? Is it simple faith? I feel it's something deeper than when we tell our parishioners or each other to place our trust in the hands of the gods. Perhaps it has something to do with standing in the shadow of a thing from another age and knowing at least some of the old stories must be true."

  She drew back her lips in something close to a smile and gazed up at the many arms of Barden.

  "Perhaps it has to do with you, the men who've come here with me, and our purpose, which defines justice. If, some time from now, we cry the final word and the heavens crack apart and we look upon the face of Arawn, know we still live in and of this earth—that this will be but a beginning to restoring his place in the hearts of men. Rejoice, but be resolute. Remember also that a god may take a form we can't understand.

  "I need everyone not of the council to leave me now. Our concentration can't be disturbed."

  "Even me?" Larrimore said, eyebrows scooting up his forehead.

  "Even you, my Hand."

  He frowned but nodded. "May your will be done where I can't follow."

  Larrimore started back down the hill and Dante and Blays and the armsmen who'd carried the sacks fell in behind him. They reached the wagon with the other men and looked on the seven priests some twenty yards away. Samarand stood at their center, three of them to both her sides, all heads bowed. They were silent.

  "What now?" Blays whispered at Larrimore.

  "Now you keep your damned mouth shut and hope against hope we have nothing more to do than stand around."

  "For how long?"

  "For however long it takes," Larrimore said, leaning toward the boy so intently Dante felt sure he'd punch Blays in the face.

  After a few minutes of silent prayer Samarand's clear voice pitched into a droning chant of ancient Narashtovik and the men of the council joined her. The wind tried to drag away her words, and
for all Dante's lessons with Nak much of its meaning remained foreign, but he made out something about star-touched blessings, verses about the cycle of the twelve months of Earth and the twelve houses of the heavens, how the lives of men had been warped by Arawn's missing seat in the house of the gods and how that balance must be rebuilt. It was an eerie tune, harmonious but as fundamentally wrong to Dante's ears as the leafless limbs of the White Tree were to his eyes. At times the pitch of their notes seemed to match that of the wind in the ragged branches. The council ceased singing, their last word hanging in the air.

  They bowed their heads again. Other than a few oblique references in the Cycle, Dante didn't know a thing about what they were doing. He couldn't even tell if they were actively shaping the nether at the moment or just praying. He reached out for the shadows, meaning no more than a touch to try and see what they were up to, but the energy lurched up in him so fast he gasped. The White Tree was a nexus so potent that any tap into its pool shot up like a geyser. He sent the nether away and held perfectly still. Nobody had seemed to notice his intrusion. He supposed they had their own concerns.

  For a long time the priests didn't move. Men leaned against the cart or quietly took a seat on it, brushing snow from their trousers and watching the scouts coming and going on the crest of the hill across the valley. Samarand lifted her head and bent down in front of Barden. She picked up one of the bones she'd thrown down and turned it in her hands. For no obvious reason, she dropped it and picked up another instead. Dante made a face. None of it made any sense to him.

  "Come with me," he said softly to Blays after another while had gone by with no evidence of progress. Blays blinked at him, then got up, snow falling from his hood and shoulders. Dante wandered left toward the cliffs.

  "What's up?" Blays said once they were a short distance away.

  "I get the idea they're going to be a while."

  "Yeah." Blays glanced back toward the tree. "How will you know when it's time?"

  "Samarand will give up her last ounce of strength before it's over," Dante said, just above a whisper. "I'll be able to tell when they're drained."

  Blays ticked his nail against the hilt of his sword. "What do you think we should do after? Fight off all her men, or leap off the cliff and take our chances in the ocean?"

  "I think we're doomed, whatever we do." Dante laughed through his nose. His breath steamed.

  "Oh, that's funny to you?"

  "There's this story in the Cycle of Arawn," he said. "It's about a man named Kiel."

  "Sounds fascinating," Blays whispered.

  "It is," Dante said. He took a moment to remember the important parts of what he was about to tell. "Kiel was an average man. A follower of Arawn, but not of the clergy. He was a farmer. For many years he and his neighbor Harron had feuded. It had gone on so long they no longer remembered how it had begun or who was in the right—one night Harron would open Kiel's goat pen and make him spend all day recapturing them, so Kiel would dump old grain in Harron's troughs and make his swine sick before market. That sort of thing. Angry as they were with each other, neither considered actually taking up arms. This was, excuse the pun, a domestic matter."

  "That's not a pun."

  "Shut up. And so on it went. Harron impregnated Kiel's prized mare with his spavined nag, Kiel sowed one of Harron's barley fields with batweed, and so passed the years. One night Harron tried to burn the sign of Simm's hare into the Arawn-fearing Kiel's yard—I don't think I need to explain the blasphemy—but a wind picked up his fire and spread it to burn down Kiel's barn instead."

  "Tough break," Blays said. The aggressive disinterest had faded from his face as Dante went on.

  "Indeed, tougher yet when the townspeople saw the fire and came to see what had happened. Harron, guilt-stricken over the consequences of his prank, told them what he'd meant to do and that he'd accidentally started the fire. As it is now, burning someone's land was a serious crime, but rather than our humane hanging, the people of that time punished arson with death in a fashion similar to the crime, and the townspeople grabbed Harron up and carried him into the city to be burnt on a pyre.

  "For a brief moment, Kiel was grateful as he thought on what a nuisance Harron had been. And the loss of his barn was no mean price. However, as he saw them stacking up the cordwood for the fire, he realized that, if justice were to be done, it couldn't come from the hands of these intrusive men who'd had nothing to do with he and Harron's squabbles—for justice isn't earthly, it's handed down from the stars of the heavens, and must be seen by their silvery light. Neither, he realized, did he want Harron to die, for Harron was a part of his life. So he put himself in front of the stake where they'd tied Harron up and spoke to the men who were preparing to burn him.

  "'I know it is our law to burn those who'd burn our houses and lands,' he said. 'But I know Harron, and I know he didn't mean to do the thing he did.' 'What you think doesn't matter,' the townspeople said. 'The law is the law. Justice must be done.' But Kiel didn't move. 'He harmed me and me alone,' he said. 'Let him free, and I will decide how he may repay me for his unintended crime.' 'We cannot do that, Kiel,' they said back. 'Now stand aside.' Again Kiel refused: 'Let him go, for I will not budge.' The townspeople gathered around him. 'Stand aside, or we will tie you with him to the flames.'"

  "Kiel sounds like a hardass," Blays said.

  "He does. And Kiel saw they meant what they said. He also knew they deserved no role in the punishment, that their lust for blood and vengeance was driving them rather than a natural hunger for justice. Harron was, Kiel knew, his friend, and he wouldn't let his friend be burnt as Harron had burnt his barn.

  "'I see I cannot stop so many of you from killing him,' Kiel said, leaning on the barley-scythe he'd carried into town. 'But I am this man's friend, and if it is his time to be rejoined with Arawn in the black skies, I will send him there in the manner I deem just.' Before the townspeople could stop him, Kiel swung his scythe and cut out Harron's throat.

  "'You fool!' the townspeople cried. 'You've murdered, and so stolen our justice! You will take his place on the pyre.' Kiel only shook his head. He could not fight them all, and so he let them take him and lash him beside the corpse of Harron. They lit the pyre. Kiel closed his eyes and even as his skin crackled and his fat popped he made no sound but to thank Arawn for giving him the strength to send his friend to that great place with the peace Harron deserved. The men were humbled then, and slit his throat with his own scythe before the fires could roast him. They carried his scythe to the altar of Arawn, where it has stood ever since."

  Blays shuffled snow with his feet. "I'd have swung that scythe at the mob till my arms dropped off." He stole a look at the priests, who were again bowing their heads beneath the tree. "Did that really happen?"

  "I don't know," Dante said. "It's a story from the book. One of the Mallish parts. It's too old to know which parts were true."

  "Do you think anyone will know?" Blays said, squinting into the snow. "The whole town saw the good thing Kiel did. Then they told his story till we heard it now. Will anyone know what we've done here?"

  "Cally might," Dante said. "He'll be able to figure it out, at least."

  "And probably claim credit for himself."

  "The people will know someone did something right when there's no war in the spring."

  Blays shuffled the snow with his toes some more. "But they won't know our names."

  The priests started another chant, saving Dante from trying to answer that. He made the faintest touch to the nether and saw Barden's skeletal canopy go dark with the shadows of unseen leaves. Around its roots bright black rings marked where Samarand had scattered the bones. Each of the priests was enveloped by a hazy nimbus; a gray umbilicus traced from their chests to Samarand's. Their auras pulsed with the tune of their words. Dante looked on a power he'd never imagined possible, and still they added to it.

  "Larrimore's going to try to protect her," Dante said softly.

  "I'll se
e to him, then. You stay with Samarand."

  "Thanks."

  Dante had never seen the nether in any form but small, swift parts that sometimes gathered in swirling orbs or shifting planes. It was ever moving, amorphous and unbounded as water. As he watched, the priests ceased their chant and held up their hands and the disordered shadows snapped into a stark geometry of lines between them and Samarand and the White Tree: she at its nexus, six dark lines converging from the priests to a single point at the middle of her back and emerging from her front to meet six equally-spaced points on the branches of the tree. Samarand held her arms perpendicular to her body and dipped her fingers in the slow currents passing from priests to her to Barden, as if it were bathwater in need of testing. Minutes went by that way, the silence broken by the splitting of the wind through the bony branches, by the cough of one of the men at the wagon, by taut, whispered words among a couple of the soldiers. Dante began to feel a tension in his nerves, almost like an all-over sting, but it was never quite enough to hurt—more of a constant vibration, like the strings of his body were being plucked by the forces being summoned to the tree. A high whine sounded in his ears. He fought the urge to slap at a bug that wasn't there.

  "How about this," Blays mused. "Take her down, then run away from the priests and back toward the troop. Steal a couple horses. Ride hell bent for leather."