And she heard its voice. She heard the name it spoke.
Yes, Corallonne replied, although Jewel had not spoken of it aloud. “Yes. Come, Jewel.”
“But it’s—”
“Yours, yes.”
She blinked; her companions and their natural setting were restored. The thunderous quality of Corallonne’s multitude of voices was hushed, muted. “But why?”
Shadow and Night had returned from their violent outing. They were stepping on each other’s feet. Snow whacked the side of Night’s face with his tail. Shadow muttered boring under his breath. Or as much under his breath as he ever did.
Corallonne ignored them all. “Why do I allow something so foreign into the heart of my forest?”
Shianne was clearly wondering the same thing; she looked as if she were on the verge of speech but could not yet decide how costly words might be.
Jewel nodded. She could, if she strained, now hear the breeze of her own forest; she could hear the tinkling of decidedly metallic leaves.
“You do not understand the nature of gifts, of giving, if you can truly ask that question.”
“I do not understand your decision either,” Calliastra said.
Jewel tensed.
“No, sister,” Corallonne replied, the words soft and heavy with despair. “But I am not you; you are not me. What I require would not, and could not, sustain you.” She turned once again to Jewel. “You have given me some small part of yourself. I have allowed it to grow here because I understand what it means, and what it has meant, to you. You will not remove it—you cannot, now—and you will not demand, of me, something similar in return.”
“It would not be wise,” Shianne said, voice neutral, eyes downcast.
“And you, child of my sister, are as confused as Calliastra. You feel that this will diminish me.”
“She feels that it could,” Jewel said, coming to the rescue of a woman who needed none, and aware of it. “That I might use it to find purchase in the wilderness that otherwise bears your name.”
“Yes, Jewel. It is a possibility. It is a vulnerability, if you will. But you cannot know life without vulnerability, and you cannot know joy. It is a risk, always, to accept the things that are given; some things are not given freely. It is an act of hope, if you will, and I am ancient, you are young. I seldom make mistakes.”
“Not never,” Calliastra said.
“I do not hold you responsible for that,” Corallonne replied, her voice softer, her eyes darker. “You are what you are; you are the child of your parents.”
Jewel said, “Can’t we be more or different? I’m the child of my parents, but I’m not—”
“You are mortal. Mortals have a freedom of choice, of hard choice, that the ancients do not have. We envy it,” she continued, “but we do not envy or even understand its cost.” And, so speaking, she glanced at Avandar, who said nothing.
The Ellariannatte was at the height of its majestic growth; its buds had opened, and its leaves were in full flower high above their gathered heads. One leaf, and only one, broke loose of the branch that held it aloft, and it fell.
Jewel reached for it without thought, catching it before it touched the earth.
“These are ancient trees, and they have voices, and their song is sweet. It reminds me of youth, and the hope and dreams of youth before we spent them so foolishly. It reminds me of home, Jewel.”
But this was her home.
“Yes. It is my home now. It was not always so. You think the trees were called the Kings’ trees because of your Kings. That is not, however, the whole of the truth, or even the majority of it—and the trees do not care, one way or the other.”
But we do.
Shianne’s eyes widened; Celleriant’s did the same. Although one was pregnant and mortal, for a moment they looked almost like twins.
Corallonne’s expression lost joy, gained gravity. She turned to the lone tree and held out her arms, as if to embrace it.
The tree did not change; its bark did not alter; it did not open in any obvious way. But a man stepped out of its shadows, its shade, and she recognized him. Jewel had seen him once before, in the dream in which she had found and woken those stricken by the sleeping sickness, a world, or many worlds, away.
His skin was brown, bark brown, where once it had been gold; his eyes were green. His hair was green as well, but it was not precisely hair; it was vines or new branches or some mix of those.
But his lips were turned in a ready smile; his expression was gentle. He looked down at Corallonne—he looked down at them all, he was that tall—and he offered her a bow. There was the hint of a creak in it, as if branches were moving, but it was a graceful and complete motion.
“Do you, then?” Corallonne asked, an answering smile in her eyes, supported by the warm, full curve of lips.
“We do, All-mother. It has been so long since we have woken, so long since we were asked to watch and guard in our slumber. It has been so long since we have heard all but the barest whisper of the wilderness, we feel young again.” He then turned and offered a second bow—to Jewel. “Lord.”
She was discomfited.
Corallonne was not. “Will you remain as guest in my domain?”
“It is not as guest that I was planted,” the tree replied. “But I am content. You offered such joy and such hope before you allowed me to be planted, and that pleased me greatly.” At Jewel’s expression, he chuckled. “You did not ask my permission?”
She nodded, wordless at the thought of the other leaves she now carried.
“My permission, Terafin, is not required. Do you think I will resent you? Are you afraid to abandon me?”
She was afraid of all these things but she hadn’t been until he had stepped through the trunk of the tree.
“I am not a slave,” he told her. “I am a servant.”
“But I didn’t—”
“No. I am not mortal. While you live, I am yours. If you perish and no other is strong enough to hold the lands in which I am planted, I will be other. But being yours is not a burden to me, and it does not greatly change my nature. I am content to be here, far from the horns of war. I will carry word to you if word becomes necessary.”
“You cannot expect that war will reach my own lands so soon?” Corallonne almost demanded.
“It is our belief—it is the belief of the oldest and most dangerous of my kind—that war will reach all lands in less than the span of a mortal lifetime—her life. I am hers, Corallonne—and I am yours while you allow it. What she cannot do, I will do.”
Corallonne seemed greatly pleased, even joyful. She caught his hands in both of hers, and he allowed it.
“And now?” she asked.
“I ask a boon of you,” the tree replied as if this were expected. “My Lord needs travel, and she is unfamiliar with the roads she must traverse.” He glanced at Adam. “The boy is coming to know them.”
“You do not wish to chance your Lord’s safety on the knowledge of young Adam.”
“No, I do not. But I trust Adam because she trusts Adam. It is not his intent that is in question; it is the destination to which he must, in the end, travel. They are not, I fear, the same, although the roads overlap for some while yet.”
Corallonne stiffened, but did not release his hands, “You were young,” she said softly, “when I was young. You and your kin. I marveled at what you built; I grieved for what you destroyed. But that was ever the nature of the ancient and the wild—as powerful, as beautiful, as the storms.”
“But perhaps more enduring,” he replied, smiling down at her. “Yes. I wish you to take my Lord home. The way is clear to you; it will never be so clear to her.”
“If she is home, she will not fulfill the task she has set for herself. It is not from home that she will find the Winter Queen.”
“No,” he replied gravely, his voice smooth as new bark. “And yes. You will not reach your sister, and you,” he added, turning to Calliastra, “will not, even if
you condescend to try.”
“I will not try. I am generous enough—but only barely—not to interfere with the attempts of the mortal. Ariane can rot in the netherworld, neither Winter nor Summer Queen—it is what she deserves for her pretension.”
“Pretension?”
“She wished to be Winter. To be Summer. And because she was Ariane and firstborn, the whole of the world knit itself to her desires. And her desires? They were exalted, respected, valued.” If words were containers in which bitterness could be held, these ones were too small for what Calliastra attempted to pour into them.
The ancient gazed down at her almost sadly; Corallonne stiffened. “She did not attain her role, or undertake the responsibilities of it, without permission; she traveled, she bartered, and she warred—but war was her last option. It was costly.”
“Yes. And we see the costs now, and I see no reason that she should not pay them.”
“But I do,” Jewel said quietly. “Your world was vast and ancient. You’ve seen the rise and fall of empires. I know one Empire. It was there before I was born. I don’t want to watch it fall—everything I love is in it.”
“And your love is to be reason enough?” And oh, the scorn, the derision, in Calliastra’s voice. Her hands were balled in fists, and those fists shook; Jewel understood instinctively that now was not the time to reach out to her in any way.
“It’s reason enough for me,” she said quietly. “I’ll spend my life on it, one way or the other.”
“And would they do likewise for you?” She meant to needle; it was petty.
Jewel said, voice much softer, “Yes. Some already have. They’re probably waiting by the bridge for the rest of us to join them—and when we do, I want to be able to tell them that I fought, too. I did everything I could.”
“Mortals.” Calliastra’s anger fled into the lines of her quieter petulance and resentment.
The newly planted arborii attempted to come to Jewel’s aid. “The Oracle herself has seen no road that she can travel. If she had seen a road that Evayne a’Nolan could travel—”
“What road is forbidden her?” Calliastra demanded. There was so much resentment in her, so much anger.
So much pain.
“The road,” he replied, “that might lead her to her half sister. It is she upon whom the Oracle pinned her hopes these ages past—but even she cannot find the way.”
“And you expect Jewel to do what you believe—incorrectly—that none of us can?”
“No, Firstborn. We hope. There are things that even the Oracle cannot clearly see—you understand why. You intend to accompany my lord on her journey.”
“I am not—” Calliastra pulled herself up short. She spoke her mind, much as Duster had, but could see when her own declarations might embarrass her. “I have nothing else to do. I am restless, and there is war where she walks. There is war almost anywhere she stands.”
“Ah. Then your interests are kin to the interests of the eldest.”
Cats yowled in outrage—but so did Calliastra. Jewel kept her expression stiff, but it was difficult—and Shianne chuckled, which made it worse.
Jewel muttered a brief Torran imprecation and stalked over to the nearest cat. She placed a hand firmly on Shadow’s head. “It was not an insult,” she told him firmly.
“It wassssssss.”
“It was an observation, Shadow. If you don’t want people to make observations like that, you’ll need to change the behavior that allows it.”
“And me?” Calliastra asked, voice of velvet death.
Jewel squared her shoulders. “And you as well, of course.”
This put Shadow in a better mood and Calliastra in a worse one, which was not ideal. But Jewel understood that she could not back down when she was right, not in front of people like Calliastra. Not in front of people like Duster.
“I’ll take you,” Jewel continued, when Calliastra’s speechlessness extended the brittle silence. “I’ll take you with me if you want to come. But my home is my home; the people in it are not food. I’m sorry,” she added, her voice softening in spite of her screaming instincts. “I may be leading them all to death, in the end—but not that death. Can you live in a city without feeding?” It was a flat question.
“As well as you can,” Calliastra countered.
“I can’t.”
The firstborn did not reply, not directly. She glared at Shadow and said, “What do you eat in her pathetic, mortal city?”
“We don’t need to eat. We’re not mortal. Only mortals are stupid enough to need food.”
“It’s how we were made,” Jewel told him, frowning.
“Yes, and? You have power. You. The healer boy.” He sniffed. He was never going to like Adam. “Why don’t you change?”
“You don’t honestly think that we can physically alter ourselves enough that we don’t need to eat?”
Shadow yowled. To Corallonne he said, “You seeeeeee? Stupid. Stupid.”
Corallonne’s lips twitched, which did nothing to discourage the gray cat. “You have patience, Terafin. I grant you that. Your race is often in such a rush to live to the fullest the small number of years granted them, they lack that patience, and the lack is costly.” To the man whose hands she still retained, she said, “I will do as you ask, if it is at all safe for me to do so. I am not welcome in the high wilderness where it is not claimed.”
“It is not unclaimed,” the man replied, the bark of brows rising in near-outrage.
“But it is not claimed as I have claimed my own, or as my sisters have claimed theirs. You cherish her as Lord because you are awake—but you are not of her; she has not remade you.”
“Ah, but she has, Corallonne. When we are with her, we dream of home, and some of us have begun to make it. It is not her home, not as she sees home—but we have taken what we can out of her desire. It is like fire’s warmth, without fire’s cost.” And his eyes glimmered then, with a hint of red.
The red caught Calliastra’s attention. Shadow, however, sniffed and turned his nose up.
“Then sleep, if you will, you and your companions. In my dawn, I will wake you and we will walk. There may be some small difficulty, and I believe at least one of your cats has managed to snarl himself in the tangle.”
“Nothing can kill the cats,” Jewel said, with utter conviction.
“The cats can be transformed; they are part of the ancient wilderness.”
“Yes. Is the tangle sentient?”
Corallonne did not appear to understand the question.
“I’ve had the cats turned against me once, by the Warden of Dreams.”
“You have seen our brothers?”
“More than once.”
“They trespassed, then.”
“More than once,” Jewel repeated, with more emphasis on each word to give the sentence a kind of ugly color.
“They were never completely cognizant of the boundaries and borders that divided lands.”
“Meaning they couldn’t be bothered to respect them?”
“I think it likely that at times, when focused on their own pursuits, they did not perceive them. Are they well?”
“At the moment, yes.” She turned to the tree.
“They are well. They are perhaps a trifle bored, but they have done no further damage.”
Corallonne’s eyes widened as the implication of the ancient’s words sank roots. “You have imprisoned my brothers?”
“I have offered them hospitality,” Jewel countered, “where they offered me death. And worse.”
“Worse?”
“The death of my kin. But if you will travel to my lands, you will be able to speak with them.”
“Then it is settled,” Corallonne said. “Tomorrow I will do more than try, Terafin; I will succeed.” To the tree, she said, “I will require your aid.”
“Indeed.”
The Hidden Wilds
Carver walked ahead of Ellerson, in the tunnel forged by the passage of the weight
y, gold-tinged bear. He had no other word to describe the creature and, in truth, wasn’t certain that bear was accurate; bears were not creatures that he had encountered in his life in the streets of the hundred holdings. He’d heard stories—everyone had—but had assumed that bears were almost mythical. More mundane than dragons, far less real than dogs.
No dogs would have broken decades—or more—worth of winter ice simply by standing or walking on it. And no dogs who somehow could would move so damn quickly. Were it not for the boots left them by ancient peoples who had deserted this place, the tunnel would have been a godsend.
It was Ellerson, not Carver, who called a halt to their rapid progression. “Eldest.”
The bear paused and turned, its golden eyes baleful. “Yes?”
“If you cut this track through the snow for our use, it is not necessary.” When the bear failed to acknowledge this—and Ellerson waited some seconds before he continued—he added, “We were gifted boots that make passage across the snow possible. It is how we traveled as far as we did. And if we are being hunted—if we will be hunted—we wish to disturb as little of the landscape as possible.”
The bear cocked his head to the side, as if struggling to translate the words into something that made sense. His eyes narrowed, his brow furrowed; it was an oddly human expression. “I am not,” he finally said, “certain what you fear.
“These tracks will be seen, yes—but you cannot make them as you are now; it is likely that anything that hunts you will assume these tracks were made by me.”
Ellerson was silent. It wasn’t a hesitation. Carver had seen this silence a few times before. He waited now, as he had every other time.
“We have no wish to seem ungrateful,” the domicis began.
“Mortals often say this when they intend to seem exactly that. You are suspicious?”
“Say, rather, that we are cautious.”
“How cautious could you be and end up here?” The bear snorted, his breath visible in the winter air. He also scratched his nose, a black, damp patch of skin. “How could you end up here at all? It is vexing, and it taxes my mind. I am famously lazy,” he added.
Ellerson’s response was a dubious glance at a trench that now seemed to stretch for a mile. Or more.
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