Leaves of Flame

by Benjamin Tate

  “Such as?”

  “Such as the knife that you carry.” Lotaern did not drop his gaze from Colin to the satchel slung across his chest where the knife rested, wrapped in chain mail, but Colin tensed anyway. “That knife may be the only weapon we have against the Wraiths, the only object that can kill them. It cannot be lost. If you travel alone and the Wraiths find you…” He let the thought trail off, then added, “We cannot allow it to fall into the Wraiths’ hands.”

  Colin’s knuckles turned white and with conscious effort he forced himself to relax. He’d spent the last one hundred and twenty-­seven years since the Accord more or less alone. He’d traveled the land, worked with the Alvritshai, the dwarren, the Faelehgre, searched for the Wells and created the Trees, but almost always by himself, isolated, withdrawn from the world. Even the time spent with Aeren, Moiran, their son Fedaureon, and Eraeth eventually ended, the Lord of House Rhyssal drawn into the politics of the Evant, Moiran focusing on their new son and the Ilvaeren and the economic stability of the House. Colin had found himself visiting them far less often than immediately after the Accord, preferring the seclusion of the Ostraell and the white ruins of Terra’nor.

  But Lotaern was correct: the knife had to be protected, guarded. Entrusting it to one person, even himself, could not be allowed. His isolation would have to end, unless he gave the knife to someone else, and that he would not do. Not until it had been tested and proven effective. Not until another weapon like it could be made.

  And not until Walter was dead.

  His shoulders slumped, although he let his anger darken his face, allowed his reluctance to tinge his voice. “Very well,” he agreed. “I’ll allow an escort of the Order. No more than four, I’ll want to travel as swiftly as possible. And they will follow my orders only.”

  And if the need arose, he could always abandon them. They could not hold him prisoner, could not contain him.

  He saw the same thought flicker through Lotaern’s eyes, but the Chosen turned to Vaeren. “Assemble the group. You’ll lead, but use only members of the Flame. Take whatever you feel is necessary from the Order.”

  “I’ll want to take Siobhaen.” When Lotaern hesitated, Vaeren added, “She’s the best warrior you have, the most skilled with the Light.”

  Lotaern grimaced. “Very well.”

  “Also Boraeus and Petraen.”

  The Chosen’s eyebrows rose. “Both brothers?”

  “The two work well together.”

  “Fine. Send word and have them gather here by dawn.”

  “No.”

  Both Lotaern and Vaeren turned toward him in surprise. Colin knew it was petty, but he didn’t like the sudden loss of control he felt. “If you want me to have an escort, assemble it now. I’ll give you an hour.”

  “There’s no reason—­” Lotaern began, but Colin halted him with a look.

  Vaeren nodded, sent his fellow member of the Flame off in search of the two brothers, then gave Colin a threatening glance before stalking off into the depths of the Sanctuary, leaving Lotaern and Colin alone.

  Colin watched his retreating back. “He doesn’t approve of me.”

  “He doesn’t revere you, as so many within the Order do, acolytes and Flame alike. He sees you as a threat to the Order, to me.”

  “Do you?”

  Lotaern met Colin’s gaze, held it for a long moment. “You are not Alvritshai, not part of the Evant, and you have your own motivations, your own agenda. But the greatest threat you represent is that you are… unpredictable.”

  Colin smiled. “Thank you.”

  “That was not a compliment.”

  Colin turned away from Lotaern’s scowl and moved into the depths of the main chamber. One of the acolytes looked up from his prayers at the scuff of his feet on the flagstone floor, then reached forward, rubbing his fingers in the soot that had stained the low stone pedestal beneath the wide bowl, spillover from when the bowl was filled with fire. He smudged the soot onto his cheek beneath his eye, as Colin had seen Aeren do so long ago, when he’d first met Lotaern. Then the acolyte rose and drifted from the chamber.

  Colin moved to the edge of the bowl, where the acolyte had knelt, and stared into the empty depths. The scent of oil was stronger here, as if it had leached into the stone of the basin. The contours of the room amplified the sounds surrounding him, but blurred them as well. He heard murmurs from the depths of the Sanctuary as acolytes conversed, the scuffle of feet, and the flutter of wings from a bird trapped in the upper reaches of the chamber.

  He glanced up and caught sight of the bird as it flitted from one of the stone-­carved arches above to another, settling in a corner niche, its brown coloring blending into the gray of the stone.

  “I never intended the Winter Tree to be a burden,” he said suddenly, his voice louder than he expected in the depths of the room. “I thought you’d welcome the protection it would bring the Alvritshai from the Shadows. I thought I’d have your support.”

  Behind, he felt Lotaern still, then shift forward into the chamber. In the eighty-­odd years since Colin had arrived with the Winter Tree’s seed in hand, they had rarely spoken of that day in the Evant. Even while working on the knife with Aielan’s Light they had carefully skirted the topic.

  When the Chosen finally spoke, his voice was guarded. “I did welcome the protection, as did all of the acolytes and the Order of the Flame. The years without it, with the sukrael attacking Alvritshai lands, were horrible. The Flame and Phalanx did their best to protect the Alvritshai, but the sukrael were too difficult to track and attacked at random, without warning. The Phalanx could not harm them, their swords useless, and so they were relegated to evacuating towns and villages and cities when necessary, or diverting the sukrael with their own lives. And the Flame…”

  He’d moved into the periphery of Colin’s sight, and Colin saw him shudder. “I went there with them, of course. We tried to use Aielan’s Light against them, and it worked to some extent. The Light burns them, harms them. But to be effective we needed to prepare, which meant we needed to know where the sukrael were going to attack ahead of time. If we arrived after the attack had begun, the sukrael would simply flee before we could bring Aielan’s Light to bear.” He shook his head, mouth pulled down in a grim frown. “It was hideous: the loss of life, the panic of the people within the sukrael’s hunting ground, the uncertainty. The Order couldn’t offer anyone solace.”

  He turned to look at Colin directly. “You brought them solace with the Winter Tree. You allowed them to return to their land and resume their lives. But the way in which you brought the Winter Tree.” His face tightened with anger. “You should have brought it to me. I should have been the one to present it to the Evant. Its power obviously fell within the domain of the Order, not the Evant, not Lord Aeren nor the Tamaell. I should have been given time to plan, to find the best location for its planting. It should never have been placed in the center of Caercaern, in the marketplace!”

  Colin’s gaze had dropped from the bird toward Lotaern. He didn’t like the assumption of authority he heard in the Chosen’s voice, nor the fact that Lotaern felt his authority rose above that of the Tamaell. “The placement in the marketplace was a mistake. I did not realize that it would quicken so fast.”

  “That doesn’t matter now. It was planted in the marketplace, and has since been walled off, the plaza now a garden sanctuary maintained by the Order.”

  Controlled by the Order, Colin thought. Aeren had told him how Lotaern had sealed access to the Tree from the Evant, how he’d established Wardens to care for it even as the Flame guarded it and kept it from the Alvritshai, all with the sanction of the Evant, most of whose lords welcomed and feared the Tree’s power at the same time. It had become another way for Lotaern to control the Alvritshai, and through the lords, the Evant.

  If Lotaern expected Colin to apologize for bringing the Tree to Aeren first, or to the Tamaell, he would be disappointed.

  They heard Vaeren’s appro
ach, his boots thumping through the chamber, moving swiftly, accompanied by the footfalls of another. Both the Chosen and Colin turned as the caitan of the Order of the Flame appeared in the foyer, his gaze flickering with irritation before he caught sight of them near the bowl. He and the woman, Siobhaen, approached, both dressed in the armor of the Flame, wrists banded with metal, the heavy cloth over their chests emblazoned with the stylized white flames of Aielan, boot heels harsh on the flagstone floor, although Colin noticed that Siobhaen’s tread was much softer than Vaeren’s. Siobhaen’s long black hair was pulled back into a braid behind her head and she caught Colin with a sharp, searching glare, her light brown eyes flicking up and down once. Colin felt as if he’d been sized up and dismissed in the space of a heartbeat and straightened in indignation. Her features were narrow, made more severe by having her hair pulled back, but softened by small silver earrings.

  Vaeren had changed into different armor as well, something more suited to traveling long distances. His hair had been tied back with a length of leather. “I’ve ordered the acolytes to bring horses to the main plaza for us, readied with supplies,” he said, ignoring Colin completely.

  Before Lotaern could answer, two more members of the Flame appeared. Dressed like Vaeren, they came up behind the caitan and nodded toward Lotaern formally. The Chosen had straightened, assuming the mantle of his power. They were younger than Vaeren, but obviously related, their eyes the same dark gray.

  “Is everything prepared?”

  “No,” Siobhaen said. “Not yet. There is still one more thing to do.”

  When the brothers shot her a curious glance, she moved toward the bowl, knelt on one knee, and lowered her head. Colin could hear her murmuring beneath her breath.

  When he looked up, he caught the brothers rolling their eyes. Vaeren gave them a look and with sudden solemnity they both knelt.

  A moment later, Siobhaen reached forward and smudged soot along her cheek, the two brothers following suit. Then all three rose.

  “Now we are ready,” Vaeren said.

  The entire group moved to the main entrance, acolytes pulling open the doors as they approached. Gusts of winter air pushed through, and Colin hoped that the acolytes had thought to include warmer clothes in his own set of supplies. Even as he thought it, one of the acolytes stepped forward and presented him with a second satchel. Inside, he found clothing of an Alvritshai cut and the Order’s colors, a bedroll, bowls and utensils, and other assorted tools for the road.

  He pulled the clothing free. “I’ll need to change,” he said to Vaeren and Lotaern.

  The Chosen motioned him away. As the acolyte showed him to a room, he and Vaeren spoke to each other quietly, too low for Colin to catch.

  A few minutes later, he joined the Order of the Flame outside in the Sanctuary’s plaza, the stone obelisks surrounding them on all sides. The Alvritshai clothing fit, even though Colin fidgeted with its unfamiliar cut, a little too tight in the shoulders for his taste.

  Lotaern had just finished a blessing, the Flame members rising. He turned to Colin as they mounted the waiting horses. “Find out what’s causing the storms, Shaeveran.”

  Colin didn’t answer the command, merely swinging up into the saddle of his own horse. He remembered when the Alvritshai had been afraid of horses, when he and his family had first ventured onto the plains and met Aeren and Eraeth.

  The Chosen backed away, his acolytes following him into the protection of the door’s alcove, away from the wind.

  “Why are we leaving in the middle of the night?” one of the brothers asked, barely above a whisper. “Couldn’t this have waited until morning?”

  The other brother shrugged.

  Colin turned to Vaeren.

  “Where to first?” the caitan asked. “Rhyssal House lands to see Lord Aeren?”

  “No,” Colin said. “To the Winter Tree. I need to verify that the Trees have not been affected.”

  Vaeren’s eyebrows rose in surprise, but he nodded.

  They wound their way through the darkened streets of Caercaern, lit sparsely by lanterns or candlelight from high windows, Colin tugging the sleeves of his shirt down over his hands against the chill. Vaeren took the lead with Siobhaen, the two brothers trailing behind. Only a few Alvritshai were out at this hour, hurrying from one spot of warmth to another, bundled up and hunched into their clothes. No one paid them any attention. Most windows were dark, but a few of the shops they passed, mostly bakeries by the strong smell of bread that drifted from them, showed chinks of lantern light. In a few hours, the streets would be bustling with the thousands of Alvritshai that lived in the city, thronged with pull-­carts and wagons, the citizens dressed in the loose clothing and conical straw hats of commoners. He glanced toward the third tier, where most of the lords kept their own houses when the Evant was in session, then higher to where the Tamaell resided in the highest of the tiers, towering over the city, but the buildings were lost in the darkness. Then he turned his attention south. The storm he had seen from the top of the Sanctuary had moved too far away to be visible.

  Ahead, Vaeren and Siobhaen slowed and he shifted in his saddle, looking up to where the Winter Tree towered above them. They’d reached the wall that surrounded it, had stopped at one of the gates. Vaeren spoke to the Warden who responded to his knock on the heavy wooden door.

  The door opened and they ducked through the stone arc of the wall into what had once been Caercaern’s largest marketplace.

  Colin remembered what the plaza had looked like the first time he’d been here with Aeren and Eraeth. It had stretched nearly the entire width of the tier, had been twice as long, the colonnades of the Hall of the Evant on the far side appearing distant. And it had been packed with people, tents, wagons tilted onto their sides, blankets spread onto the wide flagstones, and tables of every variety of produce and goods imaginable. It had taken Aeren and his escort nearly an hour to work their way across to the Hall.

  Now, the entire area had been transformed to deal with the Winter Tree. The flagstones had been ripped up and soil carted in and packed down to allow for a garden. Trees had been planted on the outer fringes near the wall, but as soon as they stepped inside, Colin could see that only grass grew beneath the shadow of the Winter Tree’s branches, the lowest of which were too high to be reached even by ladder. The Tree obscured the Hall of the Evant, and in the darkness beneath it Colin could barely make out the wide trunk and its gnarled roots. But he could hear the wind in the branches above, thrashing in the leaves, and he could see where the Wardens had established crushed stone paths beneath those branches, winding out and around sculptures of stone and statues, benches and small basins of water.

  The gate closed behind them, the Warden who’d opened it appearing nervous. Vaeren turned toward Colin. “What do you need to do?”

  “I need to touch the Tree. And I’ll need some time.”

  He nodded, then turned to the waiting Warden. “We’ll leave the horses here. Fetch us lanterns, and inform the head Warden that we’ll be at the bole.”

  The Warden scurried off; without a word Siobhaen dismounted and headed toward the center of the gardens, the rest following suit.

  The branches of the Tree closed in overhead almost immediately, the thrashing of the leaves muted to a soothing rustle. Wood creaked and groaned, but the deeper they moved beneath the Tree’s massive protection, the fainter those sounds grew. The metallic taste of winter tinged each breath, mingling with the acrid and earthy smell of bark as they drew nearer the bole.

  Halfway to the trunk, a group of five Wardens arrived with lanterns, the footing becoming treacherous as roots began to break through the earth. The procession—­strangely formal now—­edged through the roots as they grew more and more tangled, increasing in thickness until they were the width of Colin’s thigh. A moment later, they reached the base of the Tree.

  They stood on the root system and stared up into the latticework of branches above, barely within the reach of the lant
ern’s light. Colin could see the awe of the members of the Flame as they searched the heights, could feel the Tree itself pulsing beneath his feet. He drew its scent in with every breath. The Wardens were unaffected, waiting calmly to either side.

  “Wait here,” Colin said. He could have reached down and touched the Tree through the roots at his feet, but he wanted to be closer, nearer to its heart. He left his staff behind, waved away the offering of one of the lanterns, then began climbing the roots in front of him. The satchel proved an annoyance, but he hadn’t wanted to leave the knife it held behind. He clutched the dry, dark bark, and scrambled higher until he’d moved beyond the lantern light, until the bole shot skyward before him. The scent of the Tree enfolded him here, the air no longer chill with winter, as if the Tree were generating its own heat, like that generated by peat in a bog. He settled into position, then reached out and placed both of his hands against the rough bark of the bole and closed his eyes.

  The essence of the Tree wrapped around him instantly. Like that of his staff or the heartwood given to him by the Ostraell, it throbbed with life, but this was a thousand times more powerful. It overwhelmed him instantly and drew him in, recognizing him, his taste. He may have gasped; he couldn’t tell, his awareness of the outside world and his body subsumed by the sudden sensations of the Winter Tree itself. Wind lashed at its branches, tossing the leaves to and fro, the trunk swaying beneath the tumult. Far beneath, the roots dug deeper and deeper into the earth and stone of the mountain, reaching for underground streams and the nutrients of the soil; reaching also for the heady pulse of power that Colin recognized as Aielan’s Light deep within the mountain. The Tree sensed that power, strained for it, recognized it as a part of itself.

  All of those were outside influences. In its heart, at its core, Colin settled into the surge of sap, the fluid rush of the Tree’s life. It enfolded him with warmth, with a shuddering, coruscating sensation of motion, smothering him from all sides. He let it course through him, reveled in its amber strength, its power tinged with the white of Aielan’s Light and the rose of the Confluence, and then he stretched out along that power and tested its reach. He searched for flaws, for signs of disease or weakness, reaching farther and farther, to the fringes of the Tree itself, stretching out beyond the confines of Caercaern, out into the surrounding lands where the power of the Winter Tree held sway. The farther from the Tree he roamed, the weaker that power became, but he didn’t sense any damage.