Longeye (19 page)

Becca laughed. "Yes, all you like and more! But you must allow me to be amazed—and so very grateful." She stroked Rosamunde's flank again. "You must not take such terrible risks for me," she whispered, her voice choked with tears. "You and Nancy—I do not deserve either of you."

She moved forward. Rosamunde bowed her head, allowing Becca to stroke her soft nose. "I wonder if Nancy can saddle you?" she murmured. "Perhaps she can; there is nothing she has not been equal to, yet. Perhaps I will even be allowed to ride you, in between sleep and servitude." The tears, conquered once, rose again. She leaned her forehead against Rosamunde's neck and bit her lip. "You will think me the greatest goose alive," she whispered, "but I have allowed myself to be bound again."

Rosamunde muttered, perhaps in irritation, for which Becca could hardly blame her. Surely it was not ridiculous to hope that one's rider could preserve her liberty for more than a day?

Rosamunde trilled a welcome. Becca stiffened, then turned, expecting perhaps Violet Moore, come to cajole or bully her errant patient into taking a nice nap.

Meripen Vanglelauf—her new protector! Becca thought bitterly—leaned against the gate, his arms crossed on the top rail and one booted foot braced against the bottom.

He was, Becca saw, with a catch in her throat, as brown as Elyd had been. Her friend's face had been rugged and weary, but someone, she thought, had used Meripen Longeye hard.

The sun fell full on his dark face, illuminating a stern study of hard lines and hollow cheeks. A scar slashed pale and shocking across his left cheek, and another, through his right eyebrow, across the stern brow, vanishing into his hair. The patch over his right eye was leather; the left eye was as green and giving as glass. As he had been last night, he was dressed in woodsman leather, breeches and vest over a shirt that was all the colors of the forest. His hair hung in a loose tail over one shoulder; the breeze toyed with locks of brown, auburn, and black. There was a knife sheathed on the right side of his belt, and an elitch branch thrust through it on the left. His tattered aura was all but invisible in the bright sunlight.

Rosamunde trilled again and walked out from under Becca's hand, thrusting her nose at the Fey, as if his caresses were not only her due, but welcome.

"Lady, we have celebrated each other once already this day."

Rosamunde thrust her nose again. The Fey paid the required toll, absently, and looked beyond her. Becca's stomach cramped, but she kept her chin up and met that green glare firmly.

"You have no high opinion of Fey," he commented, his light voice expressionless.

"I am certain that it must reflect poorly on me, to have formed a low opinion of persons who enslave others, and hunt those they deem to be their inferiors." Becca heard her voice shake, as if she were ill, and indeed, she did
feel
ill, weak and uncertain of her balance. She walked forward, though it brought her closer to him, and put her hand on Rosamunde's flank, hoping to draw courage from contact with that high-hearted lady.

"Unbind me," she said to Meripen Vanglelauf. "I refuse you."

He sighed, and tipped his head, perhaps so he could see her better from his single eye. "Yes, so you had said. Believe me, please, when I say that the last thing I would wish to do is bind a Newman."

"Then why have you done so?" she snapped.

"I have
not
done so," he snapped back, rapier quick.

"Oh? And I suppose you didn't throw that bit of bone at me last night when Sian was trying to murder Nancy—"

"When you had angered Sian to the point of nearly binding you herself?" he interrupted. "Which she would have instantly regretted—not to mention that it would have been no good thing to have done before her oath-sworn?" He straightened from his lean on the gate, his right hand dropping to the hilt of his knife. "
You
were provoking a disaster, which I attempted to disarm."

"By binding me." Becca was shaking, her nerves clamoring with fear, anger, and disgust.

"I have not bound you! Do you wish a demonstration?" He straightened, and flung his left hand out, as imperious as Altimere himself. "Rebecca Beauvelley, come here."

Becca fell back a step, tasting peppered wine along the edge of her tongue.

Meripen Vanglelauf smiled, grimly, and swept her a sarcastic bow.

"Thank you."

Becca shook her head. "Am I," she said slowly, "a free woman, utterly in control of my own will and destiny?"

Astonishingly, he laughed. "Oh, certainly! As much as I am!" His hand moved more swiftly than her eye could properly follow it, seeming only to touch his pouch and there—as last night!—the white bone was tumbling through the air at her.

Becca stepped aside, right hand fisted at her side. She would not be tricked twice! she thought as the object tumbled closer. Of itself, her crippled left hand rose slightly, palm up, fingers cupped.

The bone dropped gently onto her palm.

Becca moaned, and stood staring at it: a perfectly white, circular bone, with . . . petals, perhaps, embossed in a circle 'round its center. Snagged at the center were two lines of spiderweb, twining lazily together—one green-and-blue, very like the ragged aura that blew about Meripen Vanglelauf; and the other bright gold, just like the light that sometimes dripped from her own fingers.

Shivering, nauseous, she forced herself to look back to him.

"The last time I was bound to a Fey," she said, her voice high and unsteady, "it was through the means of a necklace. Now I am bound by a bone. The difference is, if you will pardon my saying so, immaterial. Release me."

"
You
are not bound," Meripen Vanglelauf told her, and it seemed to Becca that his voice was more panicked than haughty. "
We
are bound! Can you not see it?"

She stared at him, then down at the object in her hand, with its meager adornment of silken light. Aura-stuff, she thought. Very well.

"
We
are bound," she said, keeping her attention on the thing she held, "by this object?"

"The sunshield. Yes."

Becca weighed it, feeling the prick of tiny dry spines against her palm. It was, to all of her senses, dead; whatever intelligence that had once informed it had long fled. How it could bind anything was beyond her ability to know. However, a healer did not need to know precisely how easewerth worked upon the nerves to know that it dulled pain.

She closed her fingers around the . . . sunshield, feeling sharp edges cut into her skin. There was a roaring in her ears, and she felt as if she were about to swoon, but surely, surely, there was only one thing to do?

The roaring grew louder as she turned her hand over and opened her fingers.

There was a flash of green and gold as the sunshield tumbled to the ground. She marked its landing place well, raised her foot, encased in its sturdy shoe . . .

"No!" Meripen Vanglelauf's shout reached her even over the thunder in her ears; a tree's
Gardener, do not!
rattled the inside of her head.

There was a flare, a cold snap—and her back was on the ground, her vision a spangle of silver and turquoise, and Rosamunde was lipping her skirt. The air moved, and she turned her head to the right in time to see Meripen Vanglelauf snatch the dead whiteness of the sunshield from the grass at her side, and scuttle away, as if she were some fearsome beast that he had approached too nearly.

"Are you mad?" He was on one knee, back against the gatepost, fist pressed over his heart. His voice was shaking—
he
was shaking, Becca saw, and his brown face looked muddy.

"If I am, it's no small wonder," she returned. "Help me to stand."

"No," he answered starkly, pressing even tighter against the post. He held his fist out to her, as if she could see through his fingers to what he protected. "This is a
sunshield
! You
cannot
destroy it."

Becca twisted, and fell, panting, her limbs too weak to support her. "You say that it's bound us—this sunshield. The only rational thing to do is destroy it." She tried to sit up again, braced against her crippled arm, and again fell back.

"This is absurd. Help me up."

"No," he repeated, looking faintly ill. "You do not snare me that easily."

He came to his feet, fluid as a cat, his fist down at his side. With his other hand, he touched the elitch branch thrust through his belt, and visibly took a breath.

"You are a danger to this village and to yourself," he said, clearly and quite calmly. Then, he turned and was gone, as if he had walked from the sunlight into shadow.

Becca closed her eyes, feeling tears gather. Rosamunde blew against her hair.

"Yes, no doubt I do look ridiculous," she said. "Oh . . ." She took a hard breath.

"Nancy," she whispered. "Help me up, please."

First, she baited Sian, then she tried to destroy the sunshield
. Meri reached the central elitch and all but collapsed against it.

"Rebecca Beauvelley has a will to die," he said, staring up into the dense branches.

Ranger, that was so, but she has learned better. The thought of the trees is that she requires training, and the opportunity to grow with her own kind.

"There is no one here to train her," Meri said, closing his eye, and leaning his head back against the wide trunk. The sunshield . . .  He shuddered, seeing her raise her boot, hearing again the crash of the invisible wave that knocked her off her feet, to lie helpless, the sunshield less than a handspan from her side.

It had taken every bit of his courage to dart over and snatch it up to safety, skittish as a tree-mouse and just as sensible. Her aura had drawn him, brilliant and horrifying, and there had been a moment—scarcely a moment—when he had thought himself caught by her influence, as unfettered golden strands wafted toward his poor protection.

"Hero, indeed," he muttered, and laughed, weak and wobbly.

There is yourself
, the elitch said, interrupting these shameful memories.

Meri blinked. "Eh?"

To train her
, the elitch said.
Someone must, for you spoke sooth when you said that she is a danger to herself and to those who shelter beneath my branches.

"I cannot train her!" That dazzling aura, so warm and compelling . . .  "She would drink me dry and not even celebrate the vintage."

Not so. You can teach her better, Ranger.

Oh, yes, he could teach her better, Meri thought bitterly. But to do so would require a closeness—not quite a melding, but a willful sharing of
kest
, the thought of which simultaneously excited and disgusted him.

"No," he said, and pushed away from the support of the tree. The sunshield, he replaced in his pouch, after another long glare at the threads of
kest
captured at its heart. To his left, he heard Newman voices, and also to his right. His stomach cramped, and he shook his head, angry with his weakness.

He needed to go out, he thought, among the trees, where there were no Newmen with their brilliant, seductive auras. He needed, in fact—

"Wards," he said, recalling the pledge he had so recently made. "I must set wards."

If the tree—any tree—heard him, they vouchsafed no answer.

Despite his best efforts, the bell jar remained empty. There had been not even the faintest flicker of
kest
to indicate that his command—tied to the artifact with the strength of a geas, for of all the things he would willingly lose, this was very nearly the least—there had been indication that his command had been heard.

Altimere closed his eyes and waved a hand, vanquishing table and jar. With his other hand, he fingered a handkerchief out of the warm mists and blotted the moisture from his face.

He had, he thought, allowed Rebecca too much freedom, amused as he had been by her foolish antics. Who better than he knew the power of a name?

It would perhaps be worth wondering, once he was free of this place, just who was the bigger fool.

Becca paused on the threshold of the workroom, taking time, as she hadn't done, last night or this morning, to look about her. It was an ordered and orderly place, with cords of drying leaves, braids of wild onion, and clusters of lavender hanging from the rafters. Other ingredients were sorted meticulously into drawers and baskets on the shelves over one worktable, while more shelves held pots of salve, tonics, tinctures, and twists of herbs.

It was all so familiar and comfortable that she felt her eyes prick again.
Really, Becca,
she scolded herself, blinking the tears away,
when did you become a watering-pot?

A small sniff came from inside the room, followed by another. It would seem, then, that she was not the only watering-pot at hand.

Violet Moore stood at the worktable against the far wall, her back to the door. She was pulling down baskets and peering into drawers, touching twists of this and branches of that—doing inventory, Becca thought, stepping carefully into the room—or mourning.

"Gran always kept ahead," Violet said, though she did not turn her head. Perhaps she was speaking to herself. "I'll need to go out tomorrow for more cadmyon and marisk."

Becca came 'round to the girl's right, watching as she stretched to take down a basket. "Cadmyon
or
marisk, I would think," she said. "One blooms in spring, the other in fall." No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she wished them back. How foolish—

Violet turned her head with a smile.

"You must know seasons!"

"Indeed, I have been long enough in the Vaitura to recall that
here
there are no seasons," Becca said, irritation sharpening her voice. She smiled, to show that her anger was for herself, and not for Violet. "I had been trying to teach the garden at Xandurana to heed a proper cycle, but I fear it was an uphill road."

"It seems to me that seasons only make some things rare when they are most wanted! Surely it is better to have everything available at all times, so that supplies may be replenished as they are needed, rather than hoarded and told over."