Longeye (28 page)

"I'm to your mother, now, sweet flower. Are you coming?"

"Yes!" Violet exclaimed, and gasped in the next breath, throwing Becca a conscious look. "I—that is . . ."

"Go." She waved her hand with a smile. "I have a good deal of thinking to do, and it's been too long since I've had leisure to putter in a workroom."

"Thank you!" Violet darted forward and kissed Becca on the cheek. Turning, she caught Palin's hand and the two of them skipped diagonally across the garden, Vika the cat flowing like silk beside them.

Face warm, Becca touched her cheek, as if her fingers could find the shape of the girl's kiss. A simple, chaste kiss of friendship, she thought—and took a hard breath against a chest that was tight with tears.

She remembered then that she was not alone, and turned toward Meripen Vanglelauf, likewise abandoned.

But the Ranger and his tattered aura were gone, withdrawn to his own devices while she stood, confused.

"Well," Becca said, and went resolutely up the path. She had said that she wanted to putter in the workroom, had she not?

At the bench, she paused to pick up the basket of marisk blossoms that Violet had stripped before marching on to the kitchen door.

Meri dropped into his nest, arms wrapped around himself, and concentrated, on the smell of the grass, the muttering of a tree-mouse, the creak of limb and trunk . . .

"Root and branch," he whispered, and rubbed his cheek against the cool grasses that made up his couch. "She is too beautiful."

Slowly, his
kest
subsided; slowly, the clamor to meld and lose himself in her brilliance faded. Slowly, he began to think.

Ranger, are you well?

"Becoming well, Elder, thank you," he muttered, flopping over to his back. A breeze wafted through the culdoon's branches and skipped over to dry the sweat from his brow. "I have simply . . . forgotten . . . what it is like to be . . . vulnerable to the power of others. I have not been so thin since I was a sprout."

Perhaps you should meld with the Gardener
, the elitch said.

"No!" He sat up, then collapsed again to the grasses, one arm flung across his eyes.

You would gain much
, the elitch persisted, un-treelike, unless one recalled that the trees of one's home forest often guided a sprout's first few meldings.
Truly, Ranger, the trees fear for you.

"The trees need not fear," Meri tried to say, but the falsehood stuck in his throat. In truth, the trees were right to fear; and yet—to meld with Rebecca Beauvelley; she would be a part of him forever, as Faldana was. He could not . . .

He could not meld, he thought wearily. He could not set worthy wards. He could not solve the shadow-wood. Verily, the forest was littered with his could-nots! The wards, at least, might be solved, but Palin had refused to assist him.

Will you speak with him
? he asked the elitch.

Palin carries his charge
, the answer came, surprisingly sharp.
We do not ask more of him.

Elder, if I do not have some help, someone to set—

Behind the shelter of his arm, he blinked, seeing in memory the extravagant beauty of her, golden flames traced with green, scarred with crimson. An aura such as the Vaitura had not seen—possibly in the length of a memory as long as that of Altimere the Artificer. An aura and the ability to use her
kest
.

"I will take her with me tomorrow," he said, speaking aloud so that he could measure the words against the twilight. "She can set the wards. I will show her one of mine—she has eyes to see!—and bid her follow the pattern. It will be a lesson . . ."

Indeed, he thought, well pleased with himself; it would be a lesson, and a stern one. Nor would it require any intermingling of the teacher's
kest
with the student's.

It may be that the Gardener can riddle the wood you saw for us
, the elitch added, which Meri chose to hear as further approval for his plan.

Smiling, he curled over on his side, settled his cheek into the crook of his arm—and plummeted into sleep.

At noon, or midnight, according to his watch, Altimere was attacked by a winged creature with a woman's head. It shrieked insults at him, and drove sharp talons at his face.

He threw a dart of
kest
at it and it blew apart into mist and feathers, leaving behind the echo of a scream.

An hour after the attack, he came across footprints in the soft material by the stream's edge. Some were boot-clad, some barefoot, and some were a vague smudge as if who walked there was unused to leaving tracks, or too little in the world to do so.

Altimere paused, chest tight, with an odd sparkle at the edge of his vision. In a moment, he was again master of himself, and walking once more.

Following the footprints, Altimere came to a pile of five goodly stones. Wedged between the stones was a flat bit of silvery wood with short names and marks scratched upon it.

It was a strange record he looked at, and showed a certain intelligence and certitude of purpose. Studying the cryptic notes, Altimere pieced together a history.

One Dusau Meerlauf, wandering through the strange mists, had come by the stream and followed it . . . and at some point had come across his own steps, as it were. Having undertaken, like Altimere, an attempt to record time and place, Dusau Meerlauf had been the first to inscribe his name on the wood—perhaps he had created the primitive tablet and gathered the stone splinters that served as pens. In any case, Dusau Meerlauf inscribed his name as D. Meerlauf, and left two slash marks. At some point, Kluka Xanlauf and Cai Vanglelauf came by together: C. Vanglelauf and K. Xanlauf, and added a slash each . . . and two stones to the pile.

Then came Varion Fanelauf, solitary . . . and perhaps between, extra visits by the original D. Meerlauf, whose record now was nine slashes, while Cai and Kluka showed five, Varion Fanelauf showed four, and Joda Meerlauf, last comer, showed two.

Wood Wise or Rangers all
, Altimere thought, which was no bad thing, saving they seemed as trapped as he was.

Still, they showed amongst them a certain native ingenuity and an understanding that their plight might be ameliorated if they could band together with others: precisely the understanding he had lately come to!

Hope shuddered painfully through Altimere's chest. Five others. The
kest
of five, even five depleted Wood Wise, plus his own surely . . . might . . . be sufficient to win out of the
keleigh
and back into life.

He must, he thought, meet these intrepid Wood Wise—very soon, indeed.

He drifted on a raft of ralif branch and elitch leaf, borne up by salt waves, and soothed by a tender breeze. There were sweet nuts and tart culdoon to dine on, and wine made from dawnderi blossoms. He knew he was asleep, and that the sleep was a gift; he sighed and pulled it more tightly around him and sank deeper into the—

Ranger! 'Ware! 'Ware! The wards are breached!

The stars were out and Violet had not yet returned. When Becca stepped into the garden, she heard excited voices, laughter, and a glissade of notes from a stringed instrument. Light blazed from Elizabeth Moore's house, supplied equally by candles and the fanciful fires of auras. It seemed the whole village had turned out to welcome Palin Nicklauf back home—though, perhaps, Becca thought, New Hope was not so much Palin's home as a place where friends and kinfolk could be found.

She hesitated, wondering if she ought to join the crowd of well-wishers and merrymakers. It was a situation that required nice judgment and she had never been more than moderately proficient at this sort of social equation.

In the end, she turned away from the noisy, glittering party and walked to the bottom of the garden, where it was quieter, and where she might perform her experimentation in peace.

Silver stood among the living, and a cold glow crawled along the ground. Meri slammed to a stop, his arm around a thin birch, and stared at the elitch wand that he had planted a dozen paces out from the edge of the shadow-wood. Between him and it there was now a grove of undead trees, glowing cold and unnatural against the night.

His wards—were gone, unmade, he supposed. The elitch wand stood where he had planted it, aura hectic, a shadow-tree not three handspans away.

"Elders, wake and know your peril!"

His words fell like stones out of the dead air. Not even the birch he embraced stirred.

Who hears me?
he sent, hoping that his thought at least would be unimpeded.

I hear you
, the answer came back, prompt and strong, but the voice belonged to none of the trees he knew.

Show yourself
, Meri sent.

Very well
.

Directly before him, perhaps eight paces out, was the silvery seeming of a ralif. The voice seemed to originate there, though it was unlike that of any ralif Meri had ever conversed with. Perhaps it followed, he thought, that trees so unnatural would find even their voices altered beyond recognition.

Carefully, he loosed his hold on the slumbering birch and stepped away from it. Before him, the ralif glimmered balefully, growing uncertain in outline, until it was as insubstantial as mist.

A figure stepped forward, to stand with legs braced inside the tree's foggy outline. The mists obscured his form, and the hard silver shine hid his fires. Still, Meri felt a tug, as of kinship, or memory.

I am Meripen Vanglelauf,
he sent;
Ranger.

The indistinct figure bowed slightly, and straightened, hands tucked into his belt.

I am Vamichere Pinlauf, Ranger
.

Meri shivered.

Vamichere Pinlauf went into the
keleigh
with his wood during the last days of the war,
he sent.
He is a hero and his name one to conjure with
.

They begged me to leave them!
The anguish in the other's thought was raw enough that Meri felt a scream build in his chest.
My trees! I to continue while they were unmade? No, a thousand times, though the Elders would have their damned boundary despite us—an it cost every life in the Vaitura!

Meri swallowed. There could be no doubting that this . . . shade . . . was Vamichere Pinlauf. Though how it was manifest, and what it was about . . .

What do you here, Vamichere Pinlauf?

There are heroes
, the other told him, his thought now eerily calm,
in the mist
.

So my betters have taught me
, Meri acknowledged.
They taught me also—what is lost to the
keleigh
is never recovered.

All honor to your masters, Meripen Vanglelauf, we have found a way.
The other motioned with a mist-softened hand at the shell of the tree he stood in.
We have found a way to remove those things which are lost to the keleigh—to push them out again into the daylit world.
He gestured again.
My trees live again.

Horror shuddered through Meri.
No
, he sent.
No, Ranger . . . they do not live
.

They must! We have liberated them!

The shout nearly split Meri's head. He went back a step, caught himself, and took two steps forward, feeling the unnatural shine that was neither aura nor
kest
cold against his cheek.

Perhaps they have been too long within the
keleigh, he said, pity filling him. The silvered trees were terrible—wrong—and yet—if Vanglewood were to slide into the
keleigh
, would he not bend every effort to succor it?

The trees you have liberated have no kest, Brother
, he sent as gently as he could.
They have no voices.

My wood is not dead!

No
, Meri answered;
but neither is it alive.

Silence. The figure in the mist seemed to shrink in on itself.

Perhaps
, Meri suggested.
They require . . . you.

A ghostly laugh echoed through his head, discomforting.

We have together pushed all manner of life from out of the mists, yet—heroes that we are—we cannot ourselves step free.

Meri looked about him, at the dying trees and the undead, and back, again, to the mist-shrouded figure. He took a deep breath, and forced himself forward—one step, two steps . . . three . . . the cold energy burning his skin . . . and held his hand out.

Perhaps what you need . . . is someone to pull.

Easewerth's aura was a dim indigo, difficult to distinguish from its leaves. Becca knelt down carefully beside the small planting at the bottom of the garden, and considered what she saw. By those signs she knew to look for—leafing, stem-strength, color—the plants were exceedingly healthy. Sonet might have complained that they were leggy, but Sonet liked her plants bushy and low to the ground.

"Best they keep their virtues close than waste them in trying to fly" was what she had used to say, and then look sour when Becca pointed out that they were each abjured to turn their faces to the sun and grow as straight as they could.

By those signs she knew less well—color and depth of the aura—it seemed that the easewerth she studied was goodly and strong. She extended her hand, slowly, and felt a thrill along her fingers.

"Please," she said, "may I have some of your virtue?"

Nothing happened; she neither heard a voice inside her head, as she had half-expected that she might, nor felt a seepage of slow indigo into her blood. She
did
feel the molten gold at the base of her spine begin to warm, and rise.

Mindful of her earlier misadventures, she dropped her hand, closed her eyes, and concentrated on breathing until the warmth subsided.

There must, she thought, be some art to regulating the flow of one's inner fires. With her, it seemed to be nothing or conflagration—which Meripen Vanglelauf, his aura in tatters, then extinguished with a word.

"Very well." She took a particularly deep breath, hoping to cow her eager fires, and extended her hand once more.