“It’s time, Rook,” Fer said with a glance at the sky. He could tell she was nervous by the way the bees whirled around her head. She was right to be nervous, being summoned by the High Ones like this. They would feel no friendship toward a half-human girl; he knew that much.
The sky had grown dark; just a shadow of pink and gray lingered in the west, where the sun had set. “Will you be able to keep up with us?” Fer asked him.
As an answer, he reached into his pocket, pulling out the shifter-bone, which he popped into his mouth. The feeling of the change washed over him, his hands and feet hardening into hooves, his back lengthening, his mane and tail flying free, and a blink later he stood beside Fer, a black horse with yellow eyes, stamping and snorting and ready to run.
Fer stood staring at him, wide-eyed. She’d never seen him shift into a horse before. Good. Maybe that would help her remember that he was a puck, and not some tame thing.
Then she looked away. A star had appeared in the sky, a spark hovering just over the trees. “Come on,” she said. Her bees zoomed around the clearing and then shot away, toward the star.
Phouka, taller and broader, shoved Rook aside with his shoulder. Fer grabbed Phouka’s mane and swung herself onto his back. The wolf-guard, carrying a sack over her shoulder, climbed up after her, and they clung to Phouka’s back as he reared. He hit the ground running, straight toward the star, and Rook pounded after them with the fox-girl and her mount falling into line behind him.
Stay close to the new Lady, Asher had ordered. Get through to the nathe.
On through the forest they raced, dodging trees, twigs swiping across their faces, leaves and bushes and ferns blurring into a swirl of green and darkness. Ahead, Fer clung to Phouka’s mane and lifted her other hand, waving it to the side as if she was brushing aside a curtain. Opening the Way.
Rook followed Phouka as he leaped, and they shot like arrows through the night, toward the star, which flew toward them, a bolt of lightning-brightness that was suddenly all around them.
Six
Fer felt the change as Phouka’s hooves left the ground and swung up into the Way. She felt Fray’s strong arms around her and knew the wolf-guard would not fall off. Beside them, Rook galloped with his mane and tail streaming behind him. Farther back, Twig and her goat-mount raced through the blinding star-whiteness.
Squinting, Fer spotted a shape like a glass globe hurtling through the air toward them; a blink, and the shape was a whole world, and then Phouka’s hoofs landed like feathers settling on short, emerald-green grass.
Rook, still in his horse form, trotted up beside her, his ears pricked.
Behind them lay a wide lake gleaming in the summer sun like a huge silver mirror enclosed by low green hills.
Was this it? The nathe? It felt strange. The air was warm, but with ribbons of freezing cold twisting through it.
Lots of Ways opened here, she realized, in the lake. Ways to other lands like her own Summerlands, and—she could feel it like a shiver under her skin—to the human world. That would make sense, for the High Ones to live at the meeting of all Ways. She felt a tingling in her own hands and looked down at them. They looked ordinary—long fingers, ragged nails, a scabby scrape on the back of one she’d gotten climbing the Lady Tree. Her hands felt full of power, though, as if she could reach out in this place and sweep open all the Ways and step through to any land or any other world.
That was good, the power feeling. It might help her prove to the High Ones that she was the true Lady of the Summerlands. She clenched her hands around the power, as if she could hold on to it, so it would be there when she needed it.
Phouka snorted and stamped. Fer patted his neck and slid to the ground, which felt solid under her feet. She turned and saw, about twenty paces from the silver lake, what looked like a high wall. Fer walked closer to see it better. It was a wall, but it was made of leafy vines as thick as her wolf-guard Fray’s burly arms. The vines were woven tightly together and they pulsed like bulging veins.
Overhead, the sky was the silver color of the lake, with lighter clouds drifting across it. A glassy sun leaned toward the west. The grass under her feet gleamed, as if tipped with crystal. The air seemed to glitter with a cold light, even though the breeze was warm.
“Is this it?” asked Rook, sounding doubtful.
Fer looked aside to see that he’d shifted from his horse form and stood with his hands on his hips, staring at the wall. Keeping their distance from him stood Fray, Twig, and Twig’s goat-mount. The waning sun cast their shadows long upon the ground.
“This has to be it,” Fer muttered to herself. It was where the bees had led them. But there wasn’t any way to get in, at least not that she could see. The weird thing was, the vine-wall didn’t curve, the way it would if it were built around something. It just went straight on in both directions.
Now what?
Her bees hovered over her head, weaving a pattern and speaking to her in a low grumble-hum. Hmmmzmmm. She still couldn’t understand what they were saying, but they didn’t seem angry or upset. Fer stepped closer to the wall, and the vines swelled as if the net was tightening, determined to keep her out.
“Careful, Lady,” Fray said.
“Careful,” echoed Twig softly.
“It’s all right,” Fer murmured. She felt again the power in her hands—a Lady’s power for opening Ways—and reached out to rest a hand on one of the ropy vines. It felt rough under her fingers, and clammy. The same tingly feeling she got when opening a Way swept through her. Blinking, she stepped back and wiped her fingers on her shorts.
After a moment, the vines twitched and pulled apart like a curtain rippling open, and three people stepped out right in front of her. All three were tall and as slender as willow trees, with rough brown skin and greenish-blond hair, two men and a woman. They wore embroidered coats and boots that reminded Fer of her mother’s fine clothes, the ones she had packed in saddlebags on the back of Twig’s mount. They were well armed, with long knives in sheaths at their belts and bows and quivers of arrows slung over their shoulders. Guards, then.
The willow-woman stepped closer and looked Fer up and down with glittering green eyes. Her lip curled a little as she surveyed Fer’s patch-jacket and shorts and bare feet, but her eyes widened seeing the bees that hovered over her head.
“We greet you,” the willow-woman said with a graceful nod that Fer guessed really should have been a bow, to be proper. “You are Gwynnefar?”
Fer frowned. They hadn’t called her Lady Gwynnefar. Not a good sign. She found her voice. “Yes, I am.”
“We are nathe-wardens,” the willow-woman went on. “We serve the High Ones and we are to welcome you to this place.” She looked past her at Fray and Twig. “These are your servants?”
Fer opened her mouth to say no, when Fray interrupted.
“She’s our Lady,” Fray said, folding her burly arms. Twig nodded, and folded her skinny arms too.
“Very well,” the warden said. She examined them again, this time looking more carefully at Rook. She frowned, and her hand went to the knife at her belt. “What is that creature?”
“Don’t you know a puck when you see one?” Rook said, grinning.
As Rook spoke, one of the willow-men whipped out his knife. “That’s the puck who attacked me and stole the High Ones’ letter!”
The other two nathe-wardens unslung their bows and jerked arrows from their quivers. Rook thrust his hand into the pocket of his shorts, grabbing for his shifter-tooth.
It was going to get bloody. “Stop!” Fer shouted, and stepped between them with her hands raised.
The wardens froze with their bows half-drawn. The other willow-man gripped his knife.
“The puck is my friend.” Her bees zoomed in a wider arc, circling around Rook and then back to her, weaving golden patterns against the silver sky.
“Ah,” the nathe-warden said with a sneer. “So the puck is tame, is he?”
In an instant, Rook’s
hand flashed from his pocket, the shifter-tooth was in his mouth, and a huge black dog lunged past Fer, knocking the warden to the grass. Her bow went flying. Rook put his paws on the warden’s shoulders and snarled into her face.
Rook spat the tooth out and became a boy again. “No,” he growled down at the nathe-warden. “Not tame.” He climbed off the guard, shoving his shifter-tooth back into his pocket.
The warden snatched up her bow and got to her feet. “This puck is unbound,” she hissed, “with allegiance to none but his own kind.” She fit an arrow to the bowstring and drew it back. Her eyes were keen, sighting down the arrow, straight at Rook’s heart. “He will not be admitted.”
“Just wait a minute,” Fer said, and turned and stepped between the wardens and Rook. If they loosed their arrows, they’d shoot her in the back. “That wasn’t exactly helpful, Rook,” she said softly. “But if you want to come with me, I won’t leave you behind. Do you still want to come?”
He hesitated. Then, “I do, yes.”
Why did he want to come, that was the question. Was it really to cause trouble? He was a puck, after all. He’d been very careful to remind her of that. And she had both Grand-Jane’s and Fray’s warnings about pucks to consider.
But Rook was her truest friend. He hadn’t done anything to change that. Not yet, anyway.
She looked straight into his eyes. She was taking a big risk, and she wanted him to know it. “They could turn me away, and then I won’t be able to prove to them that I’m the true Lady of the Summerlands.”
He scowled. “Don’t put that on me, Fer. It’s your choice.”
“I know,” she answered. “I choose to trust you.” She turned back to the wardens. “You’re right that the puck is not bound to me by an oath. He’s here because he is my friend. Will you let him in?”
The leader of the nathe-wardens hesitated. “This is an unheard of thing, for a puck to be allowed into the nathe.” Then she lowered her bow. “But we are under orders to admit you for the competition, so we have no choice. If you will be responsible for this puck’s actions, he will be admitted.”
Fer took a deep breath, hoping she wasn’t about to make a big mistake. “I do take responsibility for him.”
“Very well.” The nathe-warden slid her arrow back into its quiver; then she turned and motioned gracefully at the opening in the vine-wall. The other two wardens moved aside. “Come,” she said. “Enter.”
Fer stepped into the nathe.
Seven
Rook was about to follow Fer and her people through the opening in the vine-wall when two of the nathe-wardens grabbed him, and from behind, the other one looped her arm across Rook’s throat.
“Puck,” the warden hissed into his ear.
He struggled, but their arms were like supple willow branches—too strong.
“Get off,” he gasped.
The warden choking him increased the pressure. He twisted in their grip, then went limp, hoping to fool them into relaxing their hold, but they didn’t let go. Curse it, were they going to kill him? He hadn’t even done anything yet! Black spots swam in front of his eyes.
The warden behind him loosened her arm, and Rook caught a breath. He felt a sharp jab at his back through his shirt—a knife.
“We know you’re no friend of that part-human girl, no matter what she says,” the warden hissed, her breath hot in Rook’s ear. “Pucks are friends to none but their own. We know you’re here to bring trouble. If we catch you, Puck, you’re dead.”
The wardens let him go with a shove, and he went stumbling through the opening in the vine-wall. He whirled to glare at the nathe-wardens.
They stalked coolly past, one of them resheathing his knife.
These wardens knew their business. And they meant what they’d said about killing him. Tricky. He’d have to be extra careful.
Behind him, the vines twisted together, sealing them all inside. “The problem with a place like this,” Rook muttered to himself, “is that it might not be so easy to get back out again.”
It was in a puck’s blood to not like being closed in anywhere. There had been too many times when a Lord or Lady had discovered what they called a “nest of pucks” in their land and had sent warriors to burn them out and hunt them down, if they could catch them. So pucks always found a way out—a way to escape—if they had to.
He eyed the wall. It was high, but it looked climbable.
He knew what he had to do, now that he’d gotten in. Nathe-wardens or not, it should be easy enough to slip away and get started on his brothers’ puckish plan.
But things were already getting more complicated than he would like. He’d felt a strange pull in his chest when Fer had called him her friend, and it had gotten stronger when she’d stepped between him and the drawn bows of the nathe-wardens. It was as if a thread had spun itself out from her heart to tie him to her. Maybe his brother-pucks were right, and Fer did have some kind of binding magic.
He was a puck. He would not be bound to Fer, not by an oath, and not by anything else, either, including friendship. Concentrating, and growling in the back of his throat, he snapped the thread in his heart.
Fer and the rest had gone on ahead, but one of her bees bumbled against his ear. The buzz sounded loud, almost as if the bee was trying to tell him something. He brushed it away before it could sting him, and followed.
So far the nathe was forest, but not a clean, open forest like Fer’s land. Here the trees were thick and gnarled, ancient and crowded together, and, as evening drew on, darkness gathered in their branches. The trees grew in an absolutely straight line, as if they’d just stepped back to make a path, and they’d close in again once Fer and her people had passed. Their branches met overhead so it was as if they were walking through a darkening green tunnel. The air was damp and smelled strange. He sniffed, knowing his dog-nose would make more sense of it. It smelled old, that was it. And stuffy.
It made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. The forest seemed to be closing in around him, and no puck liked to be stuck in a place he couldn’t get out of, especially a place like this.
Fer set aside her worry about bringing Rook into the nathe. She’d keep an eye on him and ask Fray to watch him too, but she had other, more important things to deal with right now.
Even though it wasn’t hers, she could feel this land. The grass on the path tickled her bare feet, and below that she felt the land’s stillness. It was old, and it didn’t like change. It didn’t like her, either. The oak trees along the path seemed to lean over her, threatening and so ancient that she was like a firefly to them, a brief flash of life that would be gone soon enough. Still, they wanted her gone now; they could sense she was partly human, and that meant she was no kin of the ones who lived here.
Fer shivered and followed the wardens deeper into the nathe.
It was early evening, the same time that she’d left the Summerlands when the first stars were appearing. On down the path they went, the forest gloomy and silent all around them. Her bees, hovering just over her left shoulder, sounded very loud in the stillness. Then, up ahead, she spied what looked like a huge storm cloud massing above the thickly gathered trees.
No, it was gray and mossy—like a low mountain.
As they got closer, the path ended and the forest opened onto a wide lawn, and she saw that it wasn’t a storm cloud or a mountain.
“The nathe,” said one of the nathe-guards, with a sweeping bow. “The home of the High Ones, and the place where all the Lords and Ladies are gathering to witness the contest that will decide the next Lord or Lady of the Summerlands.”
Hearing them talk about the competition like that made Fer’s stomach clench. She didn’t even know yet what kind of contest it would be. Well, she had come here to win, and that’s what she would do. She took a steadying breath and looked where the guards were pointing.
In the gray light of evening, the nathe loomed dark over the lawn, steep-sided like a castle, with towers that reached i
nto the night sky like piled clouds. But it wasn’t made out of stone, Fer realized, as they circled the lawn on a narrow path paved with white pebbles. The nathe looked like it had grown up out of the ground, as if it had been there for thousands and thousands of years. As they got closer, she saw, by the light of torches set along a courtyard before it, that the nathe was covered with moss and rough, gray bark; gray, leafy vines pulsed across its walls in places, like veins. Like the outer wall they’d met at the edge of this land. Maybe it really had grown here, a castle-sized, mossy tree stump. Maybe it had roots that went way down into the ground.
She realized that she’d stopped, staring, and Rook waited beside her. Behind them stood Twig and Fray.
“I don’t like the look of this place,” Rook muttered.
The nathe was strange, Fer thought, but it wasn’t really scary. Many windows that reminded her of gleaming cats’ eyes peered out of the bark walls; they weren’t square, like regular windows, but oblong and gnarled, as if the walls had grown around them. The towers grew straight, like stubby tree trunks lopped off at the top, with no branches. Gnarled, rooty stairways led from many doorways down to the courtyard, which was bustling with people coming and going.
“Come,” said the warden, and waved her hand toward the nathe. “It grows late. I will show you and your people—and the puck—to your rooms.”
Fer started to follow, when she heard a sharp whinny. Turning, she saw that one of the wardens had started leading away Twig’s curly-horned goat. Phouka was standing with all four hooves planted, refusing to go.
“Do not worry,” the warden said, gliding to Fer’s side. “They will be well looked after in the High Ones’ stables.”
Fer stepped closer to the horse. “Is that okay, Phouka?” she whispered, and rested her hand against his neck. “I don’t think you can get in there.” She pointed at the looming nathe before them.
Winterling 02: Summerkin Page 4