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  At last, he removed to some small distance from the nest, sank to the ground, and put his back companionably against a dozing culdoon tree. Night had come on, and the early stars were preening. Meri pulled out his knife and began to tend it, less for necessity and more for the comfort involved in performing so commonplace and usual a task.

  "If sleep is denied me, I might as well begin my task in the wood this night," he murmured, his voice hardly louder than the purr of whetstone down blade.

  It may be that your task here is not yet done, the deep voice of the elitch answered, and Meri sighed, without needing to ask what was meant.

  "Tell me of this Palin Nicklauf," he said then. "He wanders, so I'm told, and serves the needs of trees and Engenium alike. Has he no wood of his own to tend?"

  Lightning flashed—but no. It was merely the Newmen's grief, blaring for a moment, then falling. Surely, Meri thought, the Elder had sublimated by now.

  Palin Nicklauf is his own wood. The elitch spoke slowly, its thought forming with a degree of uncertainty marked in a tree—and said no more.

  His own wood? Meri wondered. And how did that come about?

  There was no immediate answer from the tree, which was not, on reflection, entirely surprising.

  Ranger, the elitch spoke again. Shallow roots bear the fruit of fear.

  "So I have heard, and so was I taught," Meri said politely, his attention more than half on the knife.

  My roots are deep and I shelter many. Allow me to give a gift.

  The whetstone stopped its steady stroke. Meri closed his eyes, hearing Faldana's broken whisper, pleading with him as he held her shattered body. "Beloved, allow me to give the gift. You may live. I . . . cannot."

  "I . . ." He cleared his throat. "Elder, I am honored by your regard, but—I am so weak, and you are so mighty . . . I fear that your fires would overwhelm mine. Let me . . . grow in the usual way. A slow settling is surest," he added, which the trees in Vanglewood had been particularly fond of quoting at a sprout.

  Silence, as if the tree pondered, then—

  You are the best judge of your own health, Ranger. The gift is yours, should you need it. Only ask.

  "Thank you," Meri whispered, his throat tight with emotion.

  It is the trees who thank you, Meripen Vanglelauf.

  Bemused, Meri tested the edge of his blade with his thumb. Satisfied, he slid it away, stowed the whetstone, and considered what other comfortable, needful task he might be about to while the night—

  There was a sound, to his left and ahead, as if a foot had been set unwarily among the leaves and grasses.

  Meri tipped his head, listening as the steps, soft, but perfectly audible, moved toward his nest. Whoever approached must assume him asleep, so carefully did they move, saving that one misstep only. Their breathing, however—that was noisy, and irregular, as if they labored under strong emotion.

  "Jamie Moore," Meri said, pitching his voice no louder than the whisper of the breeze through the trees.

  The footsteps hesitated, then sounded again, moving toward Meri's position at the base of the culdoon.

  The boy was disheveled, his brown face pale, and sticky with recent tears, his quiet aura stitched with crimson. His task, Meri thought with a private sigh, as the trees had foretold.

  "Sit," Meri invited, patting the grass beside him. "And say what is in your heart."

  It was more collapse, but however it was done, the lad was facing him, properly cross-legged, his hands flat on his thighs.

  "Why did the trees let Gran die?"

  The boy's voice was unsteady, as well it might be, bearing the burden of such a heart-question—indeed, the question. Wood Wise, even Rangers, tended to believe that the trees were all-powerful. It seemed inconceivable that beings so old and so wise could be limited in any way, and yet—

  "Even trees die," Meri said softly.

  Jamie sniffled. "But trees, they share themselves with the whole forest," he said. "Their thought doesn't die."

  Root and branch. Who expected such insights from a sprout?

  "It is true that their wisdom endures," Meri agreed; "but the voice—that one, distinctive and unique viewpoint—it is gone forever. The forests may learn and treasure, but the forests have learned from, and treasure, many." He paused, considering the boy's bowed head, and the tender curve of his exposed neck. Young he might be for these questions, yet he had asked and so deserved an answer, in fullness.

  "It is the best we may do, Wood Wise, Newman, or tree, to pass on our knowledge and our dreams to the ones who come after, so that those things we have learned are not lost, and our good deeds stretch beyond us, while our ill deeds are not repeated." He paused again. The boy did not lift his head, but there was a certain set to his shoulders that said to Meri that he was listening—and thinking.

  "Your gran, then," Meri continued slowly. "She was old and very wise, was she not?"

  Jamie sniffled again, and nodded without raising his head. "She was our herbalist, and our doctor, and our historian." He raised his head at last and met Meri's eye. "She came over the hellroad—you heard Jack tell it. She said—she said her hair was as red as Violet's when she walked in, and the color of salt when they came to settle, like she'd walked down thirty years in that one crossing. Martin Kinderman, his hair went from grey to black, and the lines melted out of his face, though there were still old thoughts in that young head of his . . ." The boy's voice had taken on a cadence unlike his own, as if he were retelling a story he had listened to many times before, in the storyteller's own voice. "He died soon after they settled, like the youth was an illusion, and Gran, she kept on, not changing at all past the change that she'd already borne, caring for us. She asked the trees if we could stay and she gave the Engenium at Sea Hold our whole-oath, that we would serve her and her lands. And here we've been ever since."

  "You were born to this land, Jack Wood said," Meri murmured, when a moment or two had passed and the boy had not taken up the threads of his tale.

  "There's six of us second-borns," Jamie said slowly. "The Engenium at Sea Hold . . . Gran swore to her that we wouldn't outgrow our land, and— Father says the land holds us to our oath."

  Of course the land holds them to their oath, Meri thought. And it also explained why Sian was so certain of her secret band of Newmen. She held the oath of the Old Woman, which was potent, indeed. But—the Old Woman was gone, passed beyond oaths and the Engenium, alike. Meri took a breath.

  "Did Sam renew the oath when he came to be headman?" he asked, carefully.

  Jamie nodded, and Meri felt a flutter of relief. "Sam picked up the oath and Mother renewed our kinship to the trees," he said solemnly—repeating, Meri suspected, a lesson learned but perhaps imperfectly understood. No matter. The Newmen were bound, to the Vaitura no less than to the trees themselves. Mischief could always be done, of course, but such ties were potent.

  "It seems that you are well-situated here," he began—

  Brilliance shattered the night, confusing Meri's senses, so that he flung an arm up to shield his eye. Came the sound of running feet, sobs, a shout—and he was up, his back against the culdoon, his hand on his knife. He fingered the hilt, but did not draw. Beside him, likewise braced against the tree, was Jamie Moore, his breathing quieter now.

  "Violet!" The shout came again, and now Meri recognized the voice of Sam Moore, though he had never heard it carry such a depth of pain.

  "No!" A girl's voice, clearly distraught, the girl herself the merest suggestion of shadow behind the blare of her aura. "Sam, leave me alone!"

  "Violet, I know you're upset, but you can't just refuse—at least think about it!"

  "I have thought about it!" the girl cried, spinning around to face her pursuer. "The fact is that I'm not a healer! I don't know enough!"

  "You know more than you think, right now." Sam's voice was calm, with an edge that suggested to Meri that it was hard-won. "Mother told me you were learning your lore well and that she was certai
n that you would be her equal or better."

  "Gran died!" Violet shouted, and suddenly, she was bent sideways, like a bird protecting a broken wing. Her voice wavered, blurry with tears even as her aura sharpened painfully with the force of her grief. "She died because I didn't know enough to save her!"

  "She died because it was time," Sam countered, which was, Meri thought, only common sense. The Newman stepped forward and gathered the girl into his arms, their combined auras thundering against Meri's senses.

  "Violet," Sam murmured. "I know. We all expected Gran to be with us forever. I know that you haven't had your complete training. You've been flung from 'prentice to master all of a sudden. But I know you can do it; Gran knew you could do it."

  The girl continued to sob. Meri saw their silhouettes through the blare of their auras: the girl with her head against Sam's shoulder as he gently stroked her hair, offering comfort and, perhaps, common sense.

  Hidden from the two Newmen by the kindness of the tree, Jamie Moore moved—and stilled, which Meri considered well done. Their presence would only increase the girl's grief and Meri, for one, had no wish to approach that hectic aura.

  "Listen," Sam murmured. "What if I ask the Engenium to send us a Fey Healer for a little time? Just until you find your feet and get over the—"

  "No . . ." the girl moaned. "Fey heal by—even Father—he knows the plants, but he draws on their kest. The process of making a poultice, or brewing a restorative tea—it's not what they do . . ."

  Delicately, Meri queried the trees, receiving a bewildering series of images: a white-haired woman working over a table, drying leaves, grinding roots, making pastes and liqueurs . . .

  The healing arts, the elitch added, take many forms.

  So it would seem, Meri replied, bemused.

  "Let us send for another healer," Violet sobbed against Sam's shoulder. "Before I kill someone else in my ignorance."

  "Send?" Sam sounded honestly baffled, as Meri, his fingers clutching knife hilt, went cold all over. "Where would we send, child? As far as I—and Lady Sian—know, we are the only folk of our kind on this side of the hellroad."

  "Then send to the other side!" Violet cried.

  There was a moment of charged silence before Sam answered, his voice chilly. "You are overwrought. Come, let me take you inside. You should have a cordial and go to sleep. Rest is what you need."

  "Sam—"

  "No," he said firmly. "We will talk again after you have rested. In fact," his voice grew a little louder. "It is time for Jamie to seek his bed, as well."

  He turned, then, guiding the bent and still weeping girl back toward the house. Jamie sighed and shifted away from the tree.

  "Sam's got good eyes," he said. "Even Father says so." He sighed again. "I'd better go." He danced back a step—then darted forward, touching Meri on the shoulder as if they were comrades of the branch. "Thank you, Master Vanglelauf."

  "You are welcome, Jamie Moore," Meri murmured. "I think that Sam is correct; rest if you can, and survey your thoughts when you are calmer."

  The boy nodded. "That's exactly what Gran used to say," he murmured, his voice husky. "Root and branch, Master."

  "Root and branch, Sprout," Meri answered, and watched the child slip away through the shadows.

  Chapter Three

  Becca paused, her hand on the vine-wrapped gate, staring. Unlike the overpruned, stringently controlled grounds around Altimere's country house, the garden here in Xandurana had been—well, scarcely a garden at all. An exuberance of green life, the plants had clamored over each other, mixed willy-nilly, grudgingly ceding a few handspans to the thin walkway. It had hardly been possible to move in the garden without stepping on leaves, bending stems, or endangering flowers. She recalled her efforts to prune and thin the overfull beds, not to impose order or artifice, but to give the plants room—and she recalled how they filled in again, almost before she had cleared the clippings away.

  She remembered that last day, sitting on the bench beneath the elitch tree, duainfey leaves in her lap, green life rioting all about her, and the tree-or-trees sharing her thoughts.

  "What has happened?" she breathed.

  You spoke to us of seasons, of an orderly march from seed to seeding, each plant according to its nature, all according to their kind. The memory was buried deep, but the trees recall.

  It was true, Becca saw. All of what she knew to be summer plants were sere, as if kissed by autumn. The breeze, however, was not autumnal, but springlike, precisely as always, nor had the height of the sun in the sky shifted by so much as a finger's width. Across the gate, the thin walkway lay uncontested all the way to the back door of Altimere's house.

  "Trees," she said.

  Yes, Gardener?

  "Is Altimere at home?"

  "He is not," Sian said from just beyond her left shoulder. "If he were, we should be hearing the bells, summoning all of the Queen's Constant to their places at the table."

  "He might have no wish to—to bruit his return about," Becca said. "And trees might notice what others do not."

  "Depend upon it, the trees of this city notice much, and forget little. But they do not notice all, and things may be hidden from them. Also . . ."

  Becca looked over her shoulder and up, into a pair of ironical sea-colored eyes. "Also?" she repeated.

  "It is well to recall that trees—wise as they are and amiable—are . . . naïve with regard to certain matters. I rejoice in a cousin who is Wood Wise—as unpredictable and as willful as anyone might wish. Leaving aside what his kin might make of him, he is much beloved of the trees, and even he owns that their thought is sometimes beyond him."

  Altimere, the voice was loud inside her head, has passed beyond our ken, Gardener.

  Becca's heart lurched. Was he dead, then? Was she free of him at last, and truly? Her eyes filled, the tears making the garden into a wonder-weave of greens and silvers. She blinked, clearing her eyes, her hand gripping the gate so tightly her knuckles ached.

  Sian reached past her to work the latch. The gate swung open, and Becca staggered, unbalanced, into Altimere's garden.

  "Forgive my hastiness," the Engenium said, dryly. "I have been long absent from my own country and yearn to be on the road to home." She slid a steadying hand beneath Becca's elbow. "Gather your belongings quickly, Rebecca Beauvelley."

  As simple as that. And yet, Becca thought, as she walked up the pathway, each step a compromise between fear and necessity, how could it be otherwise? Sian was High Fey. Exalted, and full of power. She could have no fear of meeting Altimere, of having her will overridden and her good name destroyed, all in the service of another's ambition.

  Becca's feet slowed on the path. Mindful of Sian at her back, she forced herself to move on, knees trembling. There was the place where they had taken her, one with his manhood in her mouth, the other buried in her anus, while Altimere—her protector!, who had named her a treasure of his house, whom she had trusted, once, and found fair—while Altimere had looked on, his protection withheld, even the false wantonness stripped from her so that her abusers might fully savor her anguish . . .

  "Rebecca Beauvelley?" Sian's voice was low, tinged with an emotion Becca in her agitation could not name. Perhaps it was concern. Or perhaps it was only boredom.

  Becca bit her lip, drawing blood, trembling where she stood, unable to go on, the events of that night before her eyes, overlaying even the bank of sweetcarpet where she and Benidik . . .

  "Rebecca Beauvelley?" Sian's voice was sharper, now.

  Becca cleared her throat. Benidik, she thought. Benidik had promised. She did not believe that the Fey woman cared—she would not believe so much of any Fey again. But Benidik . . . might be careless. She had been in Zaldore's train, which meant she was no friend to Diathen the Queen. It might be that Benidik would see advantage to herself, in letting the evidence to Altimere's crimes slip away.

  "I ask," she gasped, her voice odd and breathless, her eyes on the sweep of purple
flowers, recalling promises made in the throes of passion. "I ask that I be placed in the care of the High Fey Benidik. Until such time as the Queen has need of me."

  Behind her, Sian laughed. "You do not circumvent the will of a Queen so easily, Rebecca Beauvelley! My problem Diathen has declared you to be and my problem you shall, I fear, remain, until such time as she declares elsewise. Gather your things, now, and quickly."

  It had, Becca told herself, been worth the asking, though she might have known Sian would refuse her. She forced her feet to move again on the path, and raised her hand to wipe at her cheek, unsurprised to find that it was wet.

  Sian is not an ill friend, Gardener, the tree or trees said for the second time. She is canny, and strong, and sometimes wise.