Longeye

by Sharon Lee

  From the joy and brightness of the sentinel trees, they stepped into a pure lucent beauty, sunlight like liquid gold gilding leaves as bright as emeralds. Peace wafted on the sweet breeze, and before them stood an elder tree gently wrapped in lichen, its red branches so broad that New Hope Village could easily have sheltered beneath them. Birds flew between the branches, and a streamlet wound, silent and silver, around its roots.

  Vanglewood, I am home, he sent, feeling Becca's hand warm and relaxed in his. I have one more duty to perform in the name of the Vaitura. When that is done, I wish to return and never more to roam. He paused, feeling a pang, then took a breath of lucent air and bowed his head. I ask it, Vanglewood.

  There was a pause, then a rustle of the perfect leaves, sounding almost as a sigh.

  Long have you served the trees, Meripen called Longeye. The trees would reward you as you have asked.

  Meri shivered . . .

  However, Vanglewood continued, the word like a knife to his heart. You have been chosen for another, and greater, service. Vanglewood is no longer yours.

  "What?" In his shock, he cried aloud, his voice ruffling the flow of the stream. Vanglewood, what cruelty is this?

  The breeze caressed him, and Becca's fingers squeezed his. He grew calm, and yet—

  The mark of the Alltree is upon you, son-Meripen, and on the Gardener as well. Vanglewood is no longer yours.

  Despite the rich air, he could not breathe. Vanglewood—his trees were denying him, but—

  Vanglewood, the Alltree is—

  The mark of the Alltree, Vanglewood interrupted, its thought sharp, is upon both of you. Vanglewood relinquishes its claim. There was another pause, then, infinitely gentle. Vanglewood remembers, son-Meripen. You are not lost, while these trees endure. Go, now.

  Altimere felt the cold glow well before the Rangers began to show signs of disquiet; eventually it was Skaal who came to him requesting that he walk "very quietly, very quietly on all fronts," if he could.

  He damped his questing kest, felt it vibrate in resonance to power. His whole body informed him that nearby was a well of power the like of which he had not seen since he had stored the energy of Rebecca's magnificent triumph in Xandurana.

  The Rangers followed their own advice, stepping with care as they climbed a grey hill toward a grey sky. They approached the hillcrest cautiously, Skaal whispering.

  "They are raising power. They are returning the forests that gave up their kest to build the keleigh, returning them to the Vaitura."

  All thought stopped; his breathing caught, his hands went still.

  Only long experience kept his horror out of his face and stance. The thought that he could not form before. Now—now he remembered.

  This was a paradoxical situation; the trees ought to be gone entire, their memory as nothing, the heroes who had given them over dust and less than dust.

  He tried to do the equations in his head and failed.

  "Come, Altimere. Soon enough they'll know we watch. Best to see what you will before they amend seeing!"

  Seeing was unsettling: Skaal whispering the names of forests and groves, pointing to this section or that section of the grand plain below was the more unsettling.

  The equations jumbled and came together twice, three times:

  If these trees were returned, the very fabric of the world would collapse. Kest, which could be neither created nor destroyed, would become chaos. Thought and will would die.

  He looked below and saw the folly of the keleigh, and knew it to be his own.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  They walked among silent trees in silence. The air was no less rich, though it failed, in the face of the tragedy that had befallen Meripen, to intoxicate. Becca walked quietly, and tried to think what she might say to soften the blow he had received. To lose at one strike his home, his family, and the hope of his future? Truly, there was nothing to stanch such a wound.

  The heart-tree though . . . she frowned. The heart-tree had said that he had the mark of a greater service upon him. Perhaps he was looking to his hurt, first, forgetting the second portion of the tree's message.

  "What," she asked tentatively, "is the Alltree?"

  That gained her a stinging glance from a hard green eye. They walked on, with birds singing and scolding, and flutterwisps dancing along a bank of honeycups. Becca had resigned herself to being a silent tourist among these beauties, when Meripen Vanglelauf sighed.

  "The Alltree," he said slowly, "is a myth. A story to lull sprouts to sleep."

  Becca thought about that as they passed under a culdoon. Meripen raised his hands, and she heard his thought, May two eat from your bounty?

  Eat well, the tree answered, as two fruit dropped into the waiting hands. Eat joyfully.

  Thank you, Meripen sent, and Becca echoed him, not wishing to be rude.

  Thank you, culdoon.

  You are welcome, both. Be at peace in this wood.

  Meripen swayed a very slight bow, handed a fruit to Becca, and continued onward.

  Holding the culdoon between her two hands, Becca walked with him, thinking still.

  "How could you—and I!—bear the mark of a—a myth?" she asked, which was possibly an impertinence. "Surely the heart of Vanglewood is wise beyond even—"

  "Perhaps," Meripen interrupted, apparently following his own line of thought. "Perhaps Vanglewood mistook the—essence—of the world beyond the keleigh—which must seem strange and disturbing—"

  "For the Alltree?" Becca shook her head. "Must it be a myth?"

  "If it is not, then it has been holding itself aloof for—why, since before the keleigh was made! It—" He paused, the culdoon halfway to his mouth, and stared at her.

  "The Brethren," he said.

  "The Brethren?" Becca shook her head. She'd been told that the race had a reputation for mischief, but—"Surely even a Brethren would not go so far for mischief as to—"

  "No." He held up his hand. "The Brethren said to me—you were resting from your healing. He said that there was much of the Gardener in me—meaning your gift of kest—and more, of the Alltree. I thought it a bit of foolery, but—" He extended his hand to her.

  "Tell me," he said, "please, precisely what you did, when you renewed me."

  Becca stared at him, feeling her face warm to the roots of her hair.

  "I—your lips were blue, and, and you had stopped breathing," she stammered. "And I recalled that Nancy had—when I had renewed—" She cleared her throat and looked away. "I kissed you. That and the twig from the elitch—"

  "The twig from the elitch," Meripen said softly. "Which elitch?"

  "Why . . ." She raised her fingers to her lips. "The Hope Tree. But—"

  He closed his eye. "What became of the twig, after?"

  "I don't know. I fell into a swoon, then the Brethren woke me, and you came awake—"

  "Yes. And I don't recall any twig particularly, but—"

  "It said—it said, 'My gift, given freely, from the top of my crown to the deepest roots,' " Becca murmured.

  Meripen sighed, opened his eye, and gave her a wan smile.

  "Well, and the Brethren had said that Longeye doesn't know everything," he said wryly. "The Hope Tree, eh? That shelters Newmen beneath its branches, and accepted Lucy Moore's oath—and Elizabeth's. Does it make you wonder, Becca Gardener, if the Newmen came there by chance?"

  "Since I don't know where they came from . . ." she said, turning with him and continuing to walk.

  "They came from beyond the keleigh, which they call the hellroad. The place they left, so Palin tells me, was called Hope Village. Their lord was at war with another of his station. Lucy Moore convinced the folk that it was better odds in the keleigh than staves against bows, and led them here, where they founded New Hope Village, and Lucy gave her oath to the trees."

  Becca bit into the culdoon, considering.

  "You think," she said eventually, "that the Hope—your pardon!—the Alltree, guided Lucy to itsel
f. But—why?"

  "It is said that the roots of the Alltree bind the world together," Meripen said. Kneeling, he pushed the culdoon pit into the soil and covered it with leaf mold.

  "Does the keleigh," Becca wondered, "cut the world in half?"

  "I believe my philosophy tutor would have it that the keleigh separated the Vaitura by one handspan—not merely a wall, but a discontinuity of time and effect."

  Becca blinked. "Forgive me," she said. "I will need to think on that."

  "By all means. On the rare occasions that I revisit the issue, it continues to baffle me." Meripen shrugged. "I am no philosopher, nor an artificer." He glanced up at the sky beyond the leaves.

  "There is someone I should speak with," he said suddenly, "ere we," his voice caught and he cleared his throat, his head bent so that he seemed to study something of note on the forest floor. ". . . ere we—quit—this wood."

  Becca waited.

  After a moment, Meripen nodded, as if coming to an agreement with himself, and set off a brisk trot.

  Becca bent and pushed the culdoon pit into the soil and covered it. That done, she dusted off her hands, rose, and ran after.

  "Ranger." The Wood Wise slipped out of her tree and bowed, which was bold indeed for Wood Wise, saving that Meri marked how her hands trembled and how she stood rooted scarce a step beyond the trunk of her tree. "What is required?"

  After one quick look at his face, she kept hers averted, and did not acknowledge Becca at all. Meri thought of insisting that she honor the Gardener, then decided such insistence would discommode both the Wood Wise and Becca herself, who stood to one side, wide-eyed in amaze.

  "I have discovered in my wanderings a new and dangerous tree," he told the Wood Wise. "Though they have the seeming of ralif, elitch, or other familiar tree, these strangers are silver, and they have no voice. One that I saw seemed to become a portal for a mist-wraith, which drank of my kest."

  The Wood Wise swallowed and nodded at the ground. "We have knowledge of these trees, Ranger," she whispered. "We have lost—we have lost Nim, and also Ralix, who was only a sprout. We shun them, but it grows difficult, for more and more of them come to be amongst the true trees, and we—we have our service, Ranger."

  "Have you sent—" Meri asked, around a dread so great it seemed to freeze his very kest—"to the heartwood?"

  Another nod. "I went myself, Ranger. Vanglewood . . ." She raised her face and Meri could see tears and a lurking horror in her eyes. "Vanglewood had no knowledge of these trees, Ranger, and no advice to give us. Ulo—very nearly we lost her, as well, for she took an axe to the tree that swallowed Ralix."

  "Did she? What happened?"

  "The axe bounced on the first strike, and the second. On the third, Ranger, it broke, and—and the tree consumed the kest so released. Ulo said, later, that it seemed as if a shadow had come between her and Vanglewood, and she felt a . . . a desire to offer service to this tree. She remembered, though, what it had done to Ralix, and she ran away, into the deep wood. I—the trees say she is with a ralif, sleeping."

  "It is with the trees," Meri said, with a firmness he did not at all feel. "That is well. Now, can you tell me where these silver trees are?"

  "Where?" Her brow furrowed and he felt a pang for forcing so difficult a question upon her. "I—they are along all of our paths, Ranger," she said slowly; "but more plentiful, in the West."

  "In the West," he repeated, numb now with dread.

  "Yes, Ranger," the Wood Wise said humbly.

  Sea Hold lay to the west.

  "Thank you," he said and extended a hand to touch her shoulder, wincing for her trembling.

  "Will you not aid us, Ranger?" That was bold, too, despite her fears. Her wet face showed an uncertain hope. He was, after all, a Ranger; it was his service, to aid them, and, thus, to aid the trees.

  But Vanglewood had failed her.

  "I go now," he said gently, "to find those who will aid us all. Be wary; keep the sprouts close; ask the trees to root you, if it seems you are being drawn too close into danger." It was nothing she would not do without his saying out the list, but it was all that he had for her, now.

  "I go to the Engenium at Sea Hold, to beg her help," he finished, watching the hope die out of her face. "This is nothing that Wood Wise can mend; nor even a Ranger."

  "I understand," she said, staring down once more. "Travel quickly, then, Ranger," she whispered, and added, so soft it was barely louder than a thought, "Gardener."

  She took a single step backward, and vanished from sight, though he could feel her curled with her tree, taking sore-needed comfort.

  He marked out the pattern, and confirmed with his Rangers that it was always the same.

  "They get larger," Cai told him. "It seems, the more trees they evict, the more they can evict, if you understand."

  Cold with horror, Altimere understood very well.

  The power that they raised—potent, cold and silver—that was something else again. Focused chaos, he thought, and suitable, perhaps, for moving the undead. For himself, however, he wished living kest in the pattern, for he had no interest in arriving in the Vaitura as a wraith.

  Happily, there were five sources of kest standing with him, and the pattern was very simple, indeed.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  "How much further?" Becca asked. They were resting in the center of a frizenbush following a dinner of morel, vinut, and bonberry. Meri was stretched out on his side, head pillowed on his arm, and it was only the fact that he looked every bit as weary and as grimy as she felt that allowed Becca to preserve any pride at all.

  "If we sleep until moonrise, then run the night, we will raise Sea Hold at dawn," he said, drowsily.

  Becca sighed. They had already run two nights—between the trees, not through them, which would, so Meri had told her, have been the quicker route.

  "We cannot risk it," he'd said, as they sped through groves littered with ghost trees. "What if you or I leapt from a true tree into one of—those? We would be lost, like that poor sprout."

  The lost sprout weighed on him, she knew, and the poor mad Wood Wise who had tried to chop the offending phantom down. What weighed on him more, as she had learned these last few days of travel and infrequent rest, was the violation of Vanglewood.

  "You could not have stopped them, if you had been there," she'd said. "Indeed, you might have been among the first to be lost, when the Wood Wise called you to help them."

  He had laughed then, somewhat. "I have—just a little!—more sense than that," he'd told her, and rose from that resting place, reaching down to help her rise. That time, they'd run on well into the night, surprising the dawn into a shout as they raced across a high windswept ridge.

  Becca stretched out on her side, tucked her head into the crook of her arm, and considered his face, just a handspan from her own.

  "Meri?"

  "More questions?" Which had become a joke between them.

  "Only one," she answered, soberly. "What will Sian do?"

  For a moment, it seemed as if he had forgotten to breathe. Then, he sighed, and opened his eye to consider her.

  "I don't know," he said. "It—if I am to speak of hope, then I hope that, somewhere at Sea Hold or at Xandurana there is a philosopher who has been studying these phenomena and will have crafted an answer. Sian is the Engenium of Sea Hold; her power is not that of Diathen, speaking as she so rarely may with the support of her Constant, the trees and the Vaitura, but—Sian's power, though lesser, is unfettered."

  He fell silent.

  "That is your hope." Becca said after a moment, hearing her own voice fuzzy with sleep. "What is your expectation?"

  "Is that two questions where one was promised? We only have till moonrise to rest."

  "But—"

  "Peace. My expectation, though perhaps fear is the better word, here—is that there is no such brilliant and foresighted philosopher among Sian's court, and so they will send those they have, who are not inconside
rable, for Sian does not tolerate fools. And they will work and strive and expend kest in great quantity, only to find that none of what they have wrought has been fruitful."

  "And then what will happen?" Becca asked, fear making her shiver though the air was warm and the frizenbush protected them from the breeze.

  Meri shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "But I fear for the Vaitura, and I very much fear for the world." He gave her a tired smile. "Sleep now, Questioner, or shall I say the word?"