Season of Sacrifice (10 page)

Exhaustion. Swimming. Alana longed to close her eyes, to rest her head across her arms. She sobbed as she read, recalling Maddock’s bravado, transmitted through his woodstar. He might be foolish; he might be rash. But he was so
alive
. Or he had been. Before his bavin winked out of existence.

So alive…Alana kept returning to her shock when she first sensed the man’s attraction to Jobina. A blush had spread across her own cheeks as she felt the warmth of his speculation. And Maddock had thought of
her
as well, of Alana. He had criticized Landon for not acting quickly enough, for not securing Alana as a helpmeet and a bride. Did that mean that Maddock thought of
her
that way? Did that mean that the handsome fisherman desired her?

The woodsinger shook her head, dragging her attention back to her search. Parina Woodsinger. The ancient journal. Thoughtgrasping, whatever that might be. Mindcloaking.

The sun had arced across the sky when Alana finally found the passage she sought.

“This morn, I spiritlearnt another power of the most puissant Tree, which left me fair astonished.” Parina’s writing was hurried, as if she had rushed to get all her words recorded before she could forget them, before the energy of her discovery could dissipate. “As I wrote before, I woodsang a bavin for Tarin Fisherman to guidelight him and his fleet in the nightdark spring storms. Tarin Fisherman, though, did not return the bavin for woodhoming when he came back to the People. Instead, he gave the woodstar to his bairn Merinda, as if it were a childguard, a gamepiece. I was most displeased at the affront to Our Tree, but I spirit-talked to my Tree-bound fairsisters, and I held my tongue because the woodstar’s heartpower was even then fading, in the lifeseep way of all woodstars.”

Alana stumbled over the passage, forcing her way through Parina’s complex phrasing. The woodsinger had been tending the Tree in an ordinary fashion, bringing it water from the Sacred Grove, singing to it about the latest happenings among the People. She had been recounting a squabble between two of the village goodwives, when the oak had suddenly thrust into her mind, hurtling her attention toward Merinda’s bavin.

Even as Parina reeled at the Tree’s initiative, even as she tried to shake off her startled dizziness from having her mind thrust in an unplanned direction, she glimpsed what was happening back in the village. Tarin’s daughter slept in her cradle, the bavin strung around her pudgy infant neck. Merinda slept in her cradle, but her breathing had stopped. Her heart still beat; her mind still sent child-thoughts along the woodstar’s thread. But her breathing had stopped.

Parina realized that it was hopeless to run all the way from the Tree to the village. The distance was too great. The child would be long dead by the time the woodsinger could alert anyone. Even as the woodsinger cried out in anguish, though, an idea sparked deep inside her mind, an idea that seemed to come in equal parts from the Tree itself and from the scant handful of woodsingers who had lived before Parina.

“And so,” Alana fought to make out the excited scrawl, “I thoughtgrasped the bavin. I called upon the most glorious, most puissant Tree, reaching into its core of cores, where the greenest heartwood runs deep. I harnessed the powers of all the Guardians, air and earth, fire and water, as they are woven together in the Tree’s green heartwood. I spun those powers into a thread of whitelight, of purest thoughtlight, and I cloaked those powers around the bavin. I drew the Power of the Tree into mine own thoughts, and I touched puir Merinda, thoughtgrasped the still-breathed bairn. Through the bavin, I acted on the child. I made her awaken and breathe. Blessed be the Tree and all its puissance.”

“Great Mother,” Alana breathed. She had never made any attempt to touch the Tree’s heartwood. It was so distant, so deep, buried beneath so many lifetimes and generations of the People. Now, though, with Parina Woodsinger’s words sprawling like a map, Alana gathered her thoughts to try.

Reaching toward the Tree on its promontory, she felt the hordes of awakening woodsingers like soft cobwebs strung across the path to the Headland. She sensed their concern about the trio of pursuers, about the mission Alana was attempting to guide. She sensed their goodwill, and their wishes that they could help. But she also sensed their lack of knowledge, their contentedness with the aspects of the Tree they had always known, had always loved. If any of them had ever known Parina’s thoughtgrasping, they had forgotten it lifetimes ago.

Taking a deep breath, Alana pushed herself deeper, to the threshold where she had left Parina Woodsinger the day before. The weight of the Tree hulked above her, the burden of greenwood and bark and heavy, leafy branches. Alana fought for another breath, pushing against all that weight, all that ancient history. Now, she could scarcely make out the whisper of the other woodsingers, far above her, closer to air and water, earth and fire, to the Guardians and the People.

Alana hovered for another dozen heartbeats, afraid to take the next step, afraid to wait, near the Tree’s very core. Then, envisioning the extraordinary words she had seen scrawled across the ancient parchment page, she caught her breath and pushed across the border, across the ring of ancient bark that had long since been compressed around the Tree heartwood.

“Fairsister!” Parina Woodsinger exclaimed. “Well met!”

Alana reeled at the force of the greeting, amazed at the strength of Parina Woodsinger’s voice in her own peaceful home. “Fairsister,” she managed to whisper, and her own words sounded as if they were drenched in honey, made heavy by centuries of sap and wood.

Parina laughed, a throaty sound that made the space around Alana tremble. “And are ye ready to thought-grasp, fairsister?”

Alana managed to say a single word. “Yes.”

“Then let me show ye about the heartwood. Let me guidelight ye to the thoughtgrasp path.” Parina stepped toward Alana and extended one long-fingered, impossibly ancient hand. Alana grasped it tightly and caught her breath, watching as Parina showed her the last step she needed to take, the last step into the core of the Tree’s ancient heart.

Even with Parina beside her, Alana was panicked by the changes in her body as she gave herself up to the heartwood. Her own heart slowed its beating, matched its pumping to the impossibly slow convulsions as the Tree sucked water and sustenance from the earth. Her breath sighed away, spread thin as the Tree gathered precious air from its leaves, from the new morning sunlight.

Before Alana could panic, though, before she could step back from Parina’s “thoughtgrasp path,” she saw what the ancient woodsinger had discovered. She saw a different bond between the Tree and its bavins, a different thread spun out across time and space. The line was brilliant white and so fine that, even from the heart of the Tree, Alana could only see it if she cocked her head at a particular angle. Standing in the core, though, Alana understood how she could tug on that impossibly fine thread, how she could twist the fibers of earth and air, the balance of fire and water. She saw how she could touch the woodstar at the end of the filament, how she could nudge it to return her action. She could make the holder of that bavin move. She could find Maddock and manipulate him through his own bond to his woodstar, through his own incredibly thin-spun thread of white light.

Now that Alana had made her discovery, though, she could hardly recall why she’d been searching. It took all her thought to remember to expand her lungs, to let her heart beat deep within her chest. She needed all her concentration to remember life and living. It was too hard to think here, too hard to remember the world, the People. Too hard to think of anything other than the Tree, the Tree with its golden sap, its green-leafed light, its heavy, comforting bark.

Alana barely managed to think a question at Parina.

“Yes,” the ancient woodsinger answered, a puzzled smile in her voice. “Ye can thoughtgrasp from the surface. Now that ye mindknow the whitelight, ye can heartfind it whenever ye must. But why would ye ever want to leave the heartwood?”

Alana tried to think an answer, tried to explain why she could not stay in the old world, in the ancient times, back at the beginning of the Age. She tried to explain, but she found she had no words left inside her mind, inside her heart. She fought to remember Maddock. Maddock and Landon and Jobina. Reade and Maida. All the People. They depended on her.

Alana fought for words, for thoughts, for explanations, but she was reduced to vague pictures, blurred images, distorted by the weight of time and distance and heavy, oaken wood. There was a man who wore a bavin, a man whose woodstar had gone missing. A man who must be found, who must be helped….

Even as Alana struggled to remember the name of that man, even as she tried to remember why she needed to reach across the land, she felt Parina sigh. The ancient woodsinger shook her head, and her laughter was sad. “Go, then, fairsister,” she said, or maybe it was the Tree that spoke, or maybe Alana only said the words to herself.

Then Alana felt herself pushed away, shoved through the heartwood’s thin and ancient barrier. The shock of life outside the Tree’s core hit her like an icy wave, and she was too stunned to move, too startled to swim back toward the bark-covered surface. She marveled at her fingers and her toes, her heart and her lungs. She felt her body like a miraculous invention of the Great Mother, the shaping of all the Guardians.

“Farewell, fairsister!” Parina cried, and the words brought back more thoughts to Alana’s mind. “Good luck!”

She remembered that she had a mission. She had a goal. She was supposed to find a thread, one single, white thread in all the world…. She began the long swim through the Tree’s rings, but not before she twisted back, twisted around to gasp at Parina, “Thank you!”

“You’re welcome, fairsister.” Parina’s laughter rolled through the Tree’s rings, bubbling to the surface, helping Alana float past the other woodsingers, back to her village, back to the People.

Alana came to her senses in her cottage, as stunned and disoriented as if she had been far beneath the sea. Her heart pounded inside her chest, thundered with a regular rhythm that was almost painful. She felt a new awareness of her body, of her trunk and her limbs, and of the fine muscle and bone of her fingers.

And beneath it all, around it all,
through
it all, she felt the shimmering white thread that the Tree had spun to its bavin, the thread that she could pull and weave, the thread that stretched from the Headland to Maddock’s woodstar. She felt it like a physical force, a knotted thread that pulled her across the land.

Alana needed to anchor herself, though, before she ventured along that shimmering path. She needed to secure herself to the Headland so that she did not get lost across the distance. With bark beneath her fingers, with wood beneath her hands, she would remember the long road back to the People. She would remember why she reached out to Maddock, to his bavin, why she reached out to guide his actions and lead him in his attempts to rescue the children.

Alana scarcely remembered to extinguish her smoldering reed lamp before she tore off to the Headland and the Tree.

Gasping at the force of her newfound knowledge, the woodsinger collapsed across the giant oak’s roots. She ignored the earth that stained her patchwork cloak, and forced herself, instead, to focus on the power Parina had shown her, on the fine white line that linked the ancient oak to its farflung bavin. Closing her eyes to cut out distractions, Alana stretched her thoughts across the land, across the powers of the Guardians of Air, the Guardians of Earth. She sensed the strength of her new weaving, the force of her recent discovery. She was ready to pull Maddock’s woodstar, to haul the man to safety.

But she could not thoughtgrasp Maddock’s bavin.

She could not find the woodstar, not with the shining white filament. She could not bridge the distance with that narrowest of threads. The line stretched from the Tree across the land, but then it frayed to nothingness, to emptiness. Alana retraced her steps and tried again, then a third time. No matter how carefully she followed the thread, though, how carefully she stretched the white light toward the trackers, she could not reach the distant woodstar.

This was not fair! She had journeyed deep and studied hard; she had read through the night and trusted herself to the heart of the ancient Tree. She had learned to see the white thread of thoughtgrasping, but all to no avail. The tracker was as lost as if she had spent the previous day laughing and sleeping and flirting with the village boys.

Maddock was lost. The rescuers were gone.

Alana fought to swallow a cry of disbelief. Her incredulity was chased by a wave of fury. The old words were
useless
. Hopeless. As ridiculous as sending a trio of fisherfolk to do battle against all the arrayed might of Smithcourt.

Even as Alana raged against the injustice of the world, though, she heard her own furious thoughts. The People had sent a
trio
. They had sent Landon and Jobina, along with Maddock. Even if Alana could not reach Maddock’s bavin, she did not know that Landon and Jobina were lost. They might have survived the attack on the barn. They might have survived the flung knives, and the fire, and the fury of the village folk. Jobina might have lived to sing the Song of the Dead for Maddock; she might have led the warrior’s soul to rest with the Guardians. Landon might have dug a grave for Maddock.

Jobina and Landon might, even now, be riding after Reade and Maida, more intent on rescuing the children than ever before. Exhausted, possibly wounded, strangers to the land beneath their horses’ hooves…And if that was the case, then the rescuers would need all the help that the Guardians could give them, all the assistance that Alana could manage.

Alana might not be able to reach Maddock’s bavin, but she could try to touch her first-sung woodstar. She could stretch across the land to Reade. And if she could harness Parina’s tricks with the boy’s bavin…If she could make Reade understand that he was being followed, that he would be saved….