Longeye

by Sharon Lee

  Gardener, you must remove your will from him! Another, softer, though no less urgent voice crept into her abused head. Quickly!

  "I . . . I . . . no," she whispered. "He mustn't come near me. It would be terrible—"

  Gardener, it may already be terrible. He is only a sprout, and you have overridden his will. Release him!

  Becca cringed. Overridden his will—just as Altimere had overridden hers. And yet—

  "I don't know how," she moaned.

  Ranger! Awake!

  "You don't need to shout," he muttered with a sigh for the loss of the comfortable drowse. "What's amiss?"

  The Gardener has put a geas upon Jamie Moore, the ralif told him, its thought very rapid, indeed. He walks toward the shadow-wood, and the trees cannot turn him.

  Chapter Seventeen

  He heard the trees whispering even before he saw the sad flutter of the boy's aura, ahead of him, and bearing steadily toward the baleful silver gleam of the shadow-wood.

  Meri stretched his legs, ignoring the unsteadiness in his own stride and the conviction that there was little enough he could do for the sprout, even when he caught up, except turn him from the wood, and, perhaps, bear him company.

  The trees regard you, Jamie Moore, an elitch murmured. We marvel at a sprout so brave and true, and stand in awe of the Ranger you will grow to become.

  You may stop, sprout, and rest, a ralif urged, 'round the croonings and caresses of the culdoon and the larch. The Gardener's geas is not that you must walk forever.

  What precisely is the geas? Meri asked that one. The sprout was steps away, now; he could hear ragged breathing, which told him that Jamie Moore was weeping. He swallowed a surprisingly potent jolt of anger. Yes, very good! he thought angrily. Enslave a child and blight his spirit!

  It is believed that the Gardener imposed the geas in error, the ralif told him.

  I'll grant it an error, indeed, Meri growled. But the geas—?

  Go away! Rebecca Beauvelley's voice screamed inside his head. Walk away from me now and never come back! Even as a reflection from the memory of trees, the blast of power that accompanied that doom made Meri gasp and snatch after his own feeble kest.

  "Root and branch, no wonder the sprout weeps," he muttered. "His head must still be ringing!"

  Ahead of him, the boy went to the right, around a fallen branch too tall for him to go over and too low to duck beneath.

  Meri drew a burst of energy from the very core of his bones, leaped the branch, and caught the child as he came back to his path.

  "Jamie." He put a light hand on a thin shoulder. The boy tried to walk on, but he exerted pressure—sufficient to hold him in place against the ground.

  "I can't," the boy whispered raggedly. "Master, she sent me—I have to—but I don't want to go away and never come home again!" he wailed.

  "I know." Meri crouched down, a hand on each shoulder now, lightly, lightly, and his face level with the boy's wet face, looking into the wide and miserable blue eyes. "Jamie, listen to me, eh?"

  "Ye-es, Master. But I have to—"

  "You are under a geas," Meri interrupted ruthlessly, "and it is very true that there is something that you cannot refuse to do. Were you charged to walk constantly with no rest, and without food?"

  "I—" The sprout took a deep breath, and Meri marked how he trembled even as he centered himself. "No," he said, though tentatively. "I—I am to walk away from her and never come back."

  "Well, then," Meri said, keeping his voice light, "there's no harm in stopping for a meal with a friend, then, is there?" He rose and lifted his hands from the boy's shoulders.

  Jamie began to walk.

  Meri spun 'round ahead of him and again put both hands firmly on his shoulders. "Jamie!"

  "I—" He hiccuped in distress. "Master, I must keep walking."

  "No," Meri said sternly. "That is not the geas upon you."

  "But—"

  "Heed me, sprout! A geas will fill you up with itself, if you allow it. You would be wise not to allow it. You can stop walking, whenever you will. Do so." He lifted his hands.

  Jamie jerked forward half a step—and stopped, hands fisted at his sides, his aura shot with determined threads of brown.

  "Good," Meri said approvingly. "Now, seat yourself, please, and gather your strength. Would you like a culdoon?"

  "Yes, Master," the boy said. "Thank you." Wisely, in Meri's estimation, he folded his legs and sat where he stood, his hands pressed flat on his thighs, as if to keep his legs from moving.

  Meri slipped over to a nearby culdoon tree, which willingly gave of its fruit, and returned to sit cross-legged on the ground, his knee pressing companionably against the boy's.

  Jamie devoured his fruit as if he hadn't eaten in days, and sighed when it was gone. He looked around him, his eyes losing focus. Meri felt his knee jerk, and gestured with his culdoon.

  "So, how did you happen to find yourself with a geas on your head, Jamie Moore?"

  The blue eyes sharpened, though the boy rocked forward, as if he meant to rise, then thought better of it.

  "I was night-walking," he said, keeping his eyes on Meri's face. "Mother doesn't like me to do, so I don't go far afield, only 'round the village, and the trees who know us."

  Meri nodded, and did not say that a sprout of tender years ought not to go night-walking without an elder at his elbow and that Elizabeth Moore was wise to dislike her son's solitary nighttime rambles. Instead, he allowed that the night was very agreeable and inquired if the ramble had been a good one.

  "It—until. That is," the boy stammered and shook his head. "I had only been out for a little while, wandering the green, watching the stars dance and listening to the trees dream. I drifted over toward Gran's house, to—to see how the bitirrn fared." He gave Meri a sidewise glance. "I know it's ill-tempered, but it does like a visit now and then, and it isn't too much for me, so—"

  "Of course," Meri said smoothly, though he had never known a bitirrn to care for anything a Ranger or a Wood Wise might do. "What happened in the garden?"

  "Well . . . Miss Beauvelley was there, and her aura was bright and so—strange. She was crying and kneeling down in the dirt in her nightdress. I thought she might be hurt, or—so I asked her—very gently!—I asked her if she was in need of assistance."

  Meri finished his culdoon and nodded encouragingly.

  "I—it was if I had woken her. She—she fell back and she screamed at me, and I had to turn and walk away—had to, Master!" The blue eyes were filling with tears again.

  Meri reached out and patted Jamie's knee. "I'm certain that you did have to," he said seriously, "for that is the nature of your geas." And, he thought privately, a very poorly crafted geas it was. Never come back was fairly—or unfairly—plain, but the injunction to walk away wanted some care. How far was "away"?

  "Do you think you've walked far enough?" he asked Jamie. "Perhaps we might build a nest here, as we are true brothers of the wood." The notion of trying to sleep so near to the cold shine of the shadow-wood appealed to him not at all, but he doubted his ability to turn the boy from his path. Only Rebecca Beauvelley could do that, he thought. Away from me, indeed!

  Meri sighed. He could feel Jamie vibrating as the geas worked on his muscles. Soon, he would have to rise, to walk. It was not a matter of will against will so much as will being bludgeoned by sheer, brute force. Rebecca Beauvelley's geas might have no finesse, but she had loaded it with frightening amounts of power.

  "Master, I—"

  "Stay." He put his hand on the boy's knee, pressing him down, feeling the geas warm his hand, though it was nothing to do with him. To hold the boy, he needed to break the geas—and only the binder, or the one bound, could do that.

  "Master?" Jamie's voice was high, shaking with need.

  "Fight it," he said, desperation clawing at his heart. "Jamie. Deny it."

  "I—cannot!" the boy wailed, and came to his feet as if jerked upward by a string.

  Meri
rose rapidly, and ran two steps to catch up with that rapid walker, his route as straight as a plumb line, toward the eerie silver sheen.

  "Jamie, you do not wish to go under those trees," he said.

  "I don't," the sprout agreed miserably. "I want to go home."

  "Hold on to that desire," Meri urged. He caught the boy's arm and hauled him to a stop. "Focus your will. I—" He extended his hand. "I will help you. My kest to yours, sprout. Willingly."

  The boy hesitated, his feet shuffling against the forest floor. His hand rose, and Meri held firm, though his heart quailed. He had so little—and yet he could not allow—it would be murder or worse to send the boy into that wood. If there was a chance . . .

  The small, grubby hand wavered; fell. Meri swallowed relief strongly flavored with shame.

  "Jamie?"

  The boy shook his head. "What if it traps both of us?" he asked, his voice dull and unchildlike. "The trees need you, Master."

  He turned and began again to walk, though it seemed to Meri that his steps were slower.

  There must be something—something he could do, at least to turn the lad's steps, if not to break the geas entire. If—

  . . . away from me . . . The tree-memory of Rebecca Beauvelley's voice screamed inside his head.

  Away from her.

  The thought had scarcely formed than his hand was in his pouch. They crackled against his fingertips as he withdrew them and carefully separated one from the other. The first he replaced in his pouch. The second, he stretched between his fingers: a long strand of glossy brown hair, crackling with golden kest.

  Her kest, he thought, leaping in front of Jamie Moore.

  Away from her.

  The shadow-wood breathing cold against his back, he bent and put the strand atop the forest floor litter, directly in the boy's path.

  Jamie screamed.

  "How far?" Becca asked.

  Her nightdress was an irredeemable rag, and her bare feet were possibly in the same case, but those things did not matter. What mattered was that she had done the unforgivable—what she had once thought was impossible. She had imposed her will over the will of another person and forced him to act as she desired.

  She was a monster, no better than Altimere—worse! for at least Altimere had possessed a plan, a reason to make some sense of her suffering. She—she had planned nothing, but had senselessly struck out at a child, and if she died this night, it would not be until after she had found Jamie Moore and repaired her error.

  "How far?" she panted again.

  This time there was a ready answer.

  Very near, now, Gardener.

  She nodded and ran on, sobbing for breath, her side on fire. Ahead, she saw a silvery gleam, which she thought might be the moon, lost again as she ran through a stand of slender new-growth.

  On the far side, she realized the glow was not the moon at all, but a hard shine obscuring the forest ahead, while it illuminated two figures.

  One of the figures screamed, high and hopeless, spun about and began to walk, rapidly, unsteadily, in a straight, uncompromising line. The silver light snagged on tumbled brown hair; the breeze brought her the sound of soft sobbing.

  "Jamie!" She altered her own path, running directly toward him. "Jamie!"

  He screamed again, did Jamie Moore, and collapsed to the ground, where he lay, curled into a ball, his arms folded over his head, as if to protect himself from the blows of an enemy.

  She took another step, suddenly afraid that he was having a fit. Had her mistreatment driven him into an epilepsy?

  "Jamie—"

  "Stop!" That voice was all too familiar.

  Becca stopped from sheer surprise, and stared over the fallen boy into Meripen Vanglelauf's ravaged face.

  "Break the geas," he said, each word falling as hard and distinct as a pebble.

  "He's ill," she said, in agony for the boy's distress. "I need to—"

  "Break the geas, woman! He'll be well enough then."

  On the ground between them, Jamie Moore whimpered.

  Becca dropped back a step, shaking her head.

  "I don't know how," she whispered. "I don't know what I did."

  There was a long pause. Becca swallowed, took a step forward, and jumped back again when the boy cried out.

  "He's in pain," she said then, her eyes on the crumpled figure. "I did this. Please, if you know how to undo it, teach me."

  "Withdraw your will," Meripen Vanglelauf said, slowly. Becca opened her mouth, but he raised his hand, forestalling her protest.

  "Look at him—at his fires. Do you see where they are dimmed?"

  Obediently, Becca looked down at the boy. His aura—his "fires"—were pale, cool greens, as fine and as flowing as silk, excepting one blotch of tarnished gold along his left side.

  "I see it," she breathed.

  "Your fires overlay his," Meripen Vanglelauf said, the cool calmness of his voice steadying her nerves. "This is subjugation; he neither accepts nor welcomes it. In time, if they are not withdrawn, your fires will erode his, until it is your kest alone that informs him."

  Becca shuddered, and sank to her knees, her eyes on the blight that lay so heavy upon the fresh green colors.

  "What must I do?"

  "To break the geas, you must remove your influence—reclaim your fires."

  Horror shook her. "I— The only way I know is to—is to lie with—" Her voice choked out and she wished nothing more than to run into the forest and hide herself. She kept her head down, and her eyes on the boy's pitiable form.

  "You do not seek a melding here," Meripen Vanglelauf said, as matter-of-factly as if they discussed the weather. "What you performed was no act of sharing, for the betterment of both, but a selfish act of power. Call your fires to you. Accept your action, which is yours alone."

  She leaned forward, staring at the area of tarnish, like rot, she thought, and extended her hand, seeing the golden light drip from her fingertips.

  "I reclaim my kest," she said slowly.

  Was it some trick of her new vision, or did the blight on the boy's aura change shape?

  "Again," Meripen Vanglelauf said softly.

  "I reclaim my kest," Becca repeated. This time, the change was obvious; the golden spot floated above the cool green fires.

  "It must be three times," he said inexorably.

  Becca drew a breath, tasting the heat that wavered in the night air.

  "I reclaim my kest."

  There was a boom, as from a sudden thunderstorm, and a flash of molten gold light, piercing her from belly to brain. Crimson stained her vision; she swayed on her knees, shook her head—and there was Meripen Vanglelauf, kneeling on the ground beside Jamie Moore.

  "Well done," he said coolly, putting his hand on the boy's shoulder.

  Jamie flopped over onto his back, so loose and graceless that Becca gasped.

  "Not again!" she cried.

  Sian's cousin looked up, his single eye cold.

  "He's fainted," he said, "and no wonder. It was a heavy burden for a sprout to carry. You might have been kind, and merely immolated him. What were you thinking?" The last was not calm at all, though it stopped short of a shout.

  Becca hung her head, feeling drained and near to swooning herself. "I thought that I was a danger to him, and that it would be best if he never came near me."

  "And so you proved yourself a danger to him," Meripen Vanglelauf said. He finished arranging the boy's limbs to his satisfaction, gathered him up, and stood.

  Becca struggled to her feet, gasping at the protest of cut flesh. Her burned hand was screaming for treatment. She cast about her, seeing the familiar shape of easewerth in the silver glare from the—

  She straightened, squinting.

  "Are those," she said, not believing, "trees?"

  "In a manner of speaking, they may still be trees. Certainly, they were once."

  "That's—wrong," Becca said.

  "Yes," Meripen Vanglelauf agreed from behind her. Sh
e turned to stare at him and he lifted one shoulder in a defensive shrug. "It's wrong. And no—I don't know how to make it right."

  He turned, the boy in his arms, and began to walk back toward New Hope Village.

  Becca snatched up a handful of easewerth and followed, crushing the leaves in the palm of her burned hand as she went.

  Chapter Eighteen