The Book of Atrix Wolfe

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  He started to speak, stopped. Words passed between them, without shape, without sound. He began to tremble; the Queen’s hold tightened on his hand.

  “Stay,” she said again. But Saro heard other things, the secret language beneath words. The Queen clung to them both, her eyes moving back and forth between their faces, gathering memories like flowers. Her face blurred suddenly, the fire and ivory of it melting in the fire in Saro’s eyes.

  “How could I have forgotten you?” Saro whispered. “How could I have looked at you and not known you?”

  “I never forgot you,” the Queen said fiercely. “Not for a breath. Not for a dream.” She looked at her consort again, crowned with fire, trapped in night. “She broke the mage’s spell over herself. And over you. It is your power she inherited.”

  He drew breath soundlessly. “This is what you want.”

  “Yes.” A tear fell, glittered in the light between them. “Yes,” she said again. “I want this. I want you here in my thoughts. In my wood. You fought your way past the mage’s spell to find us here. You still have that much power. Free yourself. For my sake. And for yours.”

  His face grew quiet, then. He was still, looking at the Queen, and she at him, until the green wood and the golden light seemed to become the world in Saro’s memory, that held all time and no time within it. He loosed the Queen’s hand finally, touched her lips with his fingers.

  Then he looked at Saro. “I thought I knew what sorrow is,” he said. “Now I must leave you, and now I know.”

  The rich, still light around them turned silver with the smoke of smoldering trees. Atrix knelt among the oak roots, his eyes closed, his hands moving futilely over the thick, living bindings that held Talis to the earth. The prince’s body seemed to be disappearing in a weave of root; the ground crumbled slowly beneath him, opening into darkness under the tree. A word leaped out of Saro; the mage’s face, strained and desperate, lifted sharply. For an instant, the unmasked face of the Hunter, the Queen’s pale-haired consort, stunned him. Then he rose swiftly, as the Hunter, his hounds swarming out of shadow and leaf, rode as if to run down the mage, and the prince behind him, and the oak itself.

  Atrix flung up a hand before the dark wave of hounds broke against him. “Ilyos,” he cried. “Wait—” The Queen’s consort gave him no more time. The mage turned to fire, a burning circle around the oak, shielding Talis within it. Saro, racing the hounds, plunged into what stopped them: There seemed no great difference between the mage and what burned beneath a simmering pot. Her mind flowed into fire; she heard its voice, its secret, feathery language. The oak roots under her bare feet moved away from her, as if she, too, burned. She shook fire out of her hair as she knelt beside Talis. A root shifted; he slid a little, deeper into the earth.

  A sound jerked out of him, as if he felt himself falling, and Saro froze. She stared down at him, hearing the hard, startled pound of her heart. “Talis,” she said, but he did not answer. She gripped the roots over him desperately, and heard the oak’s ancient, dreaming voice.

  …Trouble in the wood…bone into tree, hold deep, hold fast, bone into wood, breath into fire, deep, bone into root, bone into wood, human into dreams…hold bone and dream deep in the root…

  “No,” she said to it. Beyond the fire she heard a hound yelp sharply; the ground shook. “I want this human. You have no use for him.”

  I must bury him, deep, where no human eyes will ever look.

  A root tightened across Talis’ chest. He flinched, gasping for air too heavy to breathe. Sweat rolled down his face. She touched his cheek gently, and he moved again. One eye was crusted with blood behind the shattered lens; his other eye fluttered open, stared at her senselessly. She turned back to the oak, keeping her voice and hands calm despite her terror, patting Oak as if it were a weeping mincer, or a kitchen dog.

  “I am Saro, daughter of the Queen of the Wood, and I want this human back. What can I give you in return?” The fire billowed too close; she pushed it away as if it were a windblown tapestry, and it settled back. The oak was silent; the wood was not, nor was the color of the fire always familiar. She tried again. “Tell me what I can promise you. You are very old, and he is too young to bury. All his dreams will be too young.”

  He was given to me…

  “I will ask the Queen to come and sit among your roots and comb her hair and sing…” The words came out of a song, she remembered; as she spoke, she heard the Queen singing to her. The oak roots shifted slightly.

  The Queen.

  “She will come, if I ask.”

  The Queen of the Wood.

  “She will come with her crown of gold and her golden comb, and she will sing to you and braid your leaves into her hair.”

  The Queen of the Wood…

  The roots around Talis eased, began to pull away from him, bury themselves again in the earth. He struggled, murmuring incoherently, trying to sit and straighten his lenses at the same time. The lenses slid out of his shaking hand, dropped. Blood pooled in his eye, ran down his cheek. He wiped it with his sleeve and winced, then blinked Saro clear through blood and hot, shimmering air.

  “Saro?” he said tentatively, as if the ring of fire, blazing with mages’ lights, worked such changes on her face that he no longer recognized her. But his hand knew her; his fingers found her wrist, circled it tightly. “Saro?”

  “Yes,” she said. He groped for his lenses, to see her more clearly, then stared down at them. The shattered lens of her dark vision struck her mute; there seemed suddenly too much to say, and again no words with which to say it. She put her hand to her mouth. “I thought he killed you.”

  “Nearly.”

  “In my cauldron, I thought you died.”

  He slid the lenses on, looked at her. A word moved in his throat; he spoke it after a moment. “You saw this?”

  “In my cauldron. I saw the—I saw my father. I saw this happen. But I could not speak—I went to you but I could not speak—” She felt the tears, hotter than the fire, burn in her eyes; she felt herself trembling. He stared at her, still gripping her wrist. “I had to say this. But I could only say my name—”

  “I heard you.” His voice shook. He put his arm around her, drew her close, so close she felt his heartbeat, his unsteady breathing against her hair. “You were down in the kitchen learning magic because of me?”

  “You were kind to me,” she said. He made a sound, of wonder or pain; his hold tightened.

  “I did nothing—”

  “Your eyes saw me.” She paused, gazing back into those strange, bleak years. “No one ever saw me,” she whispered. “They saw a dirty pot, or a clean pot. I saw myself like that. I did not remember where words came from. I never needed them until I saw the Hunter—I saw death—” She pulled away from him suddenly, remembering. “And I saw someone else in the cauldron, crying out to warn you. But I never knew—I never knew who it was or what word she cried until now.”

  He made the little, inarticulate sound again. “She cried sorrow,” he said. He took her hands, bending over them; she saw the blood in his hair, where he had struck the oak. She felt his lips on her fingers, and then his cheek. The fire roared over them suddenly, color melting through it; he lifted his head, swallowing. “Atrix. How can he still be fighting? How can he have the strength?” He rose with an effort, catching his balance against the oak.

  “Atrix is the fire. It’s my father fighting him. Fighting against the spell. My mother wants my father to stay in the wood with her.”

  “I don’t understand.” He leaned dizzily against the tree, staring at her out of one good eye. “Why must he fight Atrix Wolfe for that? Atrix would not stop him. Does he just want Atrix dead? Or is there something more to that spell than just Atrix and your father—?” He reached out to her, as she began to fray into flame. “Saro—”

  “My father knows me now.” She touched him still. “Wait.”

  But, reappearing on the other side of fire, she almost did not know her father.


  The Hunter’s horse and hounds had disappeared. Her father stood among the trees. Instead of horns, he wore a flaming crown of oak branches. His hands were webbed with twigs and leaves; his feet were rooted to the ground. His skin had hardened, darkened; his acorn eyes reflected the fire that was Atrix Wolfe. The mage did not fight; as fire, he engulfed every flare of power that Ilyos threw at him. Her father’s battle never stopped, except for the moment when Saro appeared, freeing herself from the mage’s fire, and they stared at one another.

  Saro saw her mother watching from the green shade. Her face held the still, intent expression; she no longer wept. Her face changed color with every flash from her consort’s hands and burning crown. She did not take her eyes from Ilyos, but as Saro came to her, she reached out, pulled Saro close to her.

  “What is he doing?” Saro breathed. “Why is he still fighting the mage?” Her mother did not answer, only watched as each gesture her father made drew another leaf among the lightning weaving through his hair, another ring of bark around his skin. The boughs crowning him seemed to arch closer and closer to the mage’s fire, as if to drink from it; as fire streaked from the branches, leaves formed in its wake, hard and bright as jewels at first, then slowly flushing with life. His arms were growing stiff, rising, arching, bending more and more slowly, his fingers long and slender, branching with new twigs.

  He stopped moving finally, both hands upraised. His face was still visible, planes and hollowed contours of bark, his open eyes, his mouth.

  He said, “Atrix Wolfe.”

  The fire drew together, slowly shaped the mage. Talis stood behind him, clinging to the oak. The mage, his face waxen in the sunlight, did not take his eyes from Ilyos. He stumbled against a root, swaying with weariness, and almost lost his balance. He spoke finally, heavily,

  “Is there no other way?”

  “None,” said the Queen’s consort. Atrix looked away from him then, to the Queen. She met his eyes, her own face white within the wild fall of her hair.

  “None,” she whispered, her voice as dry and brittle as falling leaves. Atrix looked back at Ilyos.

  “Sorrow,” he said, his voice shaking, and lifted his hand.

  Bark ringed Ilyos’ eyes and mouth, smoothed his body until there was only a suggestion of what had been human in the knots where branches lifted away from the trunk, and in a vague profile that seemed, in the dreaming light, at last to have grown peaceful.

  Saro moved. Her bones seemed heavy as wood, her steps as unwieldy as a sapling pulling up its roots and walking, but she reached the tree finally, put her arms around it. She heard the Queen say wearily,

  “Go now. No. Do not speak again in my wood. Just go.”

  Saro, still clinging to the tree, turned her face, saw Talis’ white, frozen face turn to her, as he stumbled away from the oak. He could not speak. He tried, and then his eyes closed. Atrix caught him as he fell. Saro said nothing, though she felt words gather in her, secretly. She watched, as sunlight burned around her, the wood growing so bright and strangely beautiful that the mage with the prince in his arms, having no place in it, finally faded away.

  Twenty-three

  Atrix stood on Hunter’s Field.

  The Queen’s vanishing wood had left him there, the green mist of leaves and the lovely light fading around him, then showing him a startling reflection of them: the wide green field across which his shadow stretched endlessly, and the dazzling late-afternoon light which drew the shadow of the King’s castle across half the field. He looked around a little dazedly, expecting the crags and harsh winds of Chaumenard. Then he settled Talis more securely in his arms, to take one last step into the castle, where he could finally see how much damage his twisted making had done to Pelucir’s heir.

  He could barely see to take the step. Sun streaked across his eyes, burned painfully; his heart, too, seemed scored with fire. He wanted to turn to stone where he stood, a dark monument to the dead on Hunter’s Field. He wanted to return to the Queen’s wood, bury himself in the ground over which the Queen walked, and never speak or think again. But he could not turn to stone with the prince of Pelucir unconscious in his arms, and he had to seek, not the Queen of the Wood, but Burne Pelucir. The burden in his arms was a shadow’s weight; it was his heart, carrying all the memories of the field, the sorrows of the wood, that made any movement he might make futile, any direction wrong.

  He blinked his vision clear of tears or weariness or light, whatever blinded him, and saw the Hunter.

  The Hunter stood in the light as if he had just been made, forged out of night and fire and the raven’s eye, his horns holding not only the dark moon, but reaching out to swallow the setting sun in the sky. He seemed, in daylight, an impossible spell for Atrix to have cast, or for any mage; he belonged to no one, and all of Atrix’s battles meant no more to him than the upraised swords of warriors he had left splintered in the grass around them. He did not even look at Atrix. His dark gaze and the eyes of all his hounds were on the prince in Atrix’s arms.

  Atrix felt all the fierce and icy winds of Chaumenard sweep through him at once. His shout, so loud it was at first soundless and then shattered windows in the castle, drew faces to the walls and turrets. He heard answering shouts, as guards saw what stood in daylight on Hunter’s Field: the Hunter and his maker and the heir of Pelucir, motionless in the mage’s arms. Atrix turned away from the sun, hid Talis within his shadow on the grass. Then he pulled apart his making.

  He drew the fire out of the horns and scattered it across the field. He sent the dark moon spinning into the sky, where it hung like a dark eye, watching, expressionless. He felt the ghosts of Hunter’s Field rousing around him then, and loosed the hounds among them. Pulling at an arm or dragging down a horse and rider, they snapped at memory, at air. He drew ravens out of the Hunter’s mind and sent them swirling around the Hunter, so that when Atrix grasped his horns, there was only a mass of feathers beneath them, jabbing heads and dark wings beginning to fleck with blood. He held the Hunter’s horns and shaped a starving deer beneath them: They dwindled to carry time and famine instead of the hidden moon.

  He swept away the ravens and looked into the Hunter’s eyes.

  The Hunter stood again in light, carrying the new moon and the ancient fires in his horns, his hounds at his knees, his horse as black as night beside him. All of Atrix’s power had troubled him little more than dead leaves blowing against him. Atrix, staring at him, trembling, asked helplessly, “Who are you? Out of what battlefield of the heart did I summon you?”

  “Xirta Eflow.”

  The battle trumpets of Pelucir sounded from the castle. The gates swung wide; Burne Pelucir led an army of household guards and guests and scarred, seasoned warriors onto Hunter’s Field. They flowed into a single line spanning the field behind the King. Atrix heard their secret fury and dread clamor across the silence. The Hunter, scenting it, turned and mounted his dark horse. He paused, his dead moon-eyes holding Atrix’s eyes. “Drawkcab,” he said. “I am what you see when you see Atrix Wolfe.”

  His hounds streaking like shadows across the windblown grass, he rode to meet the King.

  Atrix, stunned for a breath, felt his own name shock through him, in a heartbeat so powerful and painful, he thought his heart had broken.

  Then he reached into his dreams to shape a making that would stop the Hunter on Hunter’s Field.

  He made it out of leaves and light, and warm, scented air so still that time seemed to end within it. He made it of the golden shadows of white deer, and the gold in their eyes, and in the leaves lying in a pool of sunlit gold around the oak. He took the paths of sun and moon, wound them together, ivory and gold, and braided into them the dreaming noonday shadows, the misty shadows of the moon. He took the fierce beauty in the owl’s eye, the flight of white doves soaring into light, the leap of hare beneath the moon, the lightning tangled in the golden oak.

  He reached backward into memory, beyond the endless winter night, and found, buried
behind the Hunter’s eyes, all he had loved in Chaumenard.

  Barren crags and ancient forests, winds scented with honey, wolf, wildflowers, swift water so pure it tasted like the wind, deep snow lying tranquilly beneath moonlight, summer light cascading down warm stone under sky so bright it held no color: These he put into his making. Tranquil nights he spent within stone, listening to parchment pages rustle around him while the stars turned overhead, the magic in young mages’ eyes, quick and lucent as flame, he spun out of memory into magic. He took the Healer’s powerless past and turned it into power: the newborn animals in his hands, trembling with their first breaths; the faces of children who roamed with him, their eyes alive to every color, every shadowy movement in the underbrush, their voices, calling him Healer; his healing hands. Shapes he had taken in his long life mingled together as swiftly as his body remembered them: the white owl in winter, the golden hawk, ferret and weasel and mink, stone, wind, the tree smelling of sun-soaked pitch, water thundering over stone, endlessly falling, the stag that drank the water, the White Wolf. He remembered faces he had loved, of friend and lover, teacher and ruler, their eyes speaking his name, Atrix Wolfe, beginning to smile; he worked that name in their eyes into his making. He fashioned with what came to him, what had freed itself out of his heart, so quickly he did not know what he shaped. He only knew that something grew out of him, blazed brighter and brighter in his eyes, until, trying to see his making, to set it free on Hunter’s Field, he could see only light.

  He turned blindly, standing, it seemed, in the eye of the sun. Then he heard the odd silence on the field, as if, around him, no one moved, no one even thought. The light faded at his sudden fear; he began to see again, a rippling corner of Talis’ cloak, his hand lying in the grass. Color returned to the world: green, the black of his shadow, the prince’s face staring up at him out of one unbroken lens, and one lens splintered and flecked with blood.

  Talis swallowed, but he could not seem to speak. Then he smiled, and Atrix saw the magic, quick and lucent as flame in his face, and the name his eyes gave back to the mage.