Laras stepped away from the cliff, he didn't wait for an answer. The Duke was beaming like summer but, as Laras had instructed, he kept silent, as did the rest of his nobles, although with sullen resentment clear on the lot of them.
"Well done, Your Grace. They'll get the message more strongly if they think one man alone did this."
"Well," Duke Kon said, "that is more or less what happened. I see you are not all boast, Magician."
Laras bowed slightly. "I am no boast at all, Your Grace. What I say I can do, I can do, and more beside."
After a little while the scout returned to make his report. "Maybe seven in all escaped the rocks, including the chief. I got my first good look at him. It was Jarban; I'd swear to it!"
Now Duke Kon did laugh. "Old Patan's son, and none other! This is even better."
"Yes," Lord Polas said eagerly. "If we seize him now, we'll have proof of who is raiding!" The man looked as if he was halfway to giving the order, but the duke stopped him.
"Lord Polas, bless you, but that isn't what I meant. They've all had a hand in it, from time to time. If we seize this boy his father will just claim a bit of youthful high spirits in joining a band from another chieftain. He'll pay a token ransom or not—he has other sons—and the tale will be stale by the time it all sorts out. Let him go home to his father as he is now, in shame, his warband shattered, and no loot! Eh, Master Laras?"
Laras nodded. "He'll fall all over himself relating the power of the great magician that Fellmark has in its employ. In fact, I wager by the time he returns there'll have been a battle with a horde of demons and who know what else, raised at my command. If there's half a brain left the highlands there won't be any more raids to amount to more than cattle theft."
"Suppose you're wrong?" Polas said.
"Then, as I said, next time I will drop the sodding mountain on the lot of them."
"That would seal the pass," Duke Kon pointed out. "There is some legitimate trade with eastern Wylandia and the Highlands."
"Quite so, Your Grace, and even more reason Wylandia should pay some attention. They don't want this pass closed any more than you do. If their king doesn't have stern words with some and the edge of his sword for the others, I'll be astonished."
"I am often astonished at what happens contrary to my expectations," Polas said dryly.
It took a bit of doing, including a word from the Duke, but Lord Polas was dissuaded from tracking down any other survivors. He wasn't such a fool that he couldn't see the sense of Laras's plan. The more people spreading the tale of this day's business, the better. Still, the man was clearly put out about donning all his armor and not getting to kill anyone. Laras knew that resentment of his presence, influence with the Duke, and his raw power would make Lord Polas and the rest of the nobles see him as a threat and move against him, sooner or later. Laras was pretty sure he could defend himself if it came to that, but the Duke would never tolerate a war between his magician and his nobles. In that sense, his loss was inevitable so he tried not to dwell on it.
I'll have to leave. The only question is when.
Laras, for all his triumph over the raiders, felt a little sad. Being a magician was proving a lonely profession. He wouldn't trade it for anything, but that didn't change the fact. More, he knew that the Third Law was waiting for him, and he'd never gain it as Duke Kon's servant.
Amaet, why haven't you summoned me?
That evening, Laras got his answer while he slept and dreamed of destroying mountains.
THERE'S MORE TO THE FIRST LAW THAN BREAKING ROCKS, she said.
Because it was a dream, and the presence of Amaet filled Laras with great joy and happiness, he was moved to answer her with more truth than tact. "Blessed One, I like breaking rocks."
She smiled at him then, and Laras's joy was complete. WELL, THEN. PERHAPS I CAN FIND SOME NEW STONE TO BREAK. YOU'VE BEEN PATIENT, LARAS, AND IT'S TIME I REWARDED THAT. IT’S TIME TO SEEK OUT MARTA, BLACK KATH'S DAUGHTER.
"Marta..." The name was familiar, in the sense that a fact that you once knew and forgotten is familiar. Then he remembered. "What do you want me to do with her?"
I WANT YOU TO DESTROY HER.
"Oh."
IS THAT ALL YOU CAN SAY? I THOUGHT THIS YOUR FONDEST WISH.
"Blessed One, I was angry with her and no denying it. Yet everything that has happened to me since she shut me in that cave...well, the joy of knowing you, the power I've acquired... It's all I've ever wanted! In a way, I think I should thank her."
YOU MAY THANK HER IF YOU WISH. BEFORE OR AFTER, IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE TO ME.
"If this is your wish, then of course I'll obey," Laras said.
A RELUCTANT SERVANT IS A POOR TOOL, LARAS.
Laras shook his head firmly. "I am not reluctant. Whatever you wish, that is what I wish also. Yet it hardly seems fair. Unless much has changed, she is no match for me now."
SHE HAS THE FIRST LAW, LARAS, AND WHILE YOU HAVE THE SECOND AS WELL, IT WOULD NOT BE WISE TO UNDERESTIMATE HER.
"I will not," Laras said. "How do I find her?"
NO NEED. WHEN THE TIME IS RIGHT SHE WILL FIND YOU, IF YOU GO WHERE I TELL YOU AND DO AS I SAY.
Laras listened very carefully to Amaet's instructions. They seemed simple enough and, he had to admit, there was a certain irony and justice to what Amaet had in mind. When she smiled at him, all seemed right and wonderful. Yet, in the back of his mind and buried so deeply that the Laras who worshiped Amaet would never see it, there was another Laras. One who couldn't help feeling that, whatever justice there was in Amaet's request, it did seem a little pointlessly cruel. It was the same Laras who, that day at the cave near Black Kath's home, had struggled to keep from becoming a fiend and would have lost in the final test. He lost now.
"Whatever you wish, Blessed One."
Amaet leaned close, so close Laras could feel her honeyed breath, and whispered the Third Law.
*
Marta and Bone Tapper and Yssara were three days out of Karsan. Wittanplace was still a few days away, but the weather remained mild and the last lingering traces of snow were gone even from the deeper parts of the woods. Marta had taken the cart far off the main road to make camp at the edge of an empty meadow as evening approached. Darkness closed in around them, turning the trees into shadows. Now Yssara chewed the remnants of his supper. Bone Tapper perched on a dead chestnut tree near the campfire, just looking at her. Marta brewed tea and pretended not to notice.
"How do you do that?" he asked.
"Make tea? It's fairly simple, for all that it needs to be done right."
Bone Tapper flapped down from the tree and landed across the campfire, just out of reach. "I wasn't speaking of tea. I want to know how you stay so angry."
Marta frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"What I said. During your time with Brother Akaen in the archives I thought perhaps you had calmed down but, no, you were simply distracted. And you still don't look well. Are you sure you're not feverish? I think something is eating at you."
"I am not angry," Marta said, very slowly and clearly, "and I'm not feverish, and nothing is 'eating at me.' Though I will admit to being distracted for while. That's over now."
"No, Mistress, you were angry before your mother died and you're angry now. Oh, I'll admit that you don't rage, you don't shout—often—but you're still in a slow roiling fury. How do you do that? I've never been able to stay angry for more than a day or two, regardless of the provocation."
"Speaking of provocation..."
Bone Tapper just sighed. "You don't want to talk about it."
"There's nothing to talk about." Marta strained tea into an earthenware mug. "Do you want some tea?" Bone Tapper just shuddered and Marta smiled. "I'll assume that means 'no.'"
She sipped the drink, enjoying its warmth and the relative silence once Bone Tapper settled back into sullen quiet.
I am not angry...
Marta looked around, suddenly. "Bone Tapper, did you hear something?
"
The raven shrugged. "No. What was it?"
"I'm not sure." Marta lowered her voice to a whisper. "Go take a look around the camp."
Bone Tapper launched himself into the air without further discussion and disappeared into the dark sky. Marta took the rest of her tea and moved away from the campfire so as not to be quite so visible to any lurkers. She considered moving closer to Yssara but then she'd never really associated the obstinate beast with safety. She let her eyes adjust to the greater darkness and scanned the trees on the edge of the meadow.
I should never have camped out of the open, even so far from the road.
Marta kept listening, and she heard the sound again. Indeed, she was pretty sure that she'd never stopped hearing it, not since they'd made camp. It was faint, fading into the background until, on some level, she'd paid it no more mind than the crickets singing around them. Yet this sound was not singing.
Someone is crying.
As soon as she put the feeling into words, she knew she was right. The sound was clearly that of someone weeping, so faint that it barely reached her consciousness, but it was there. Marta turned her head this way and that, but couldn't find a direction to the sound, try as she might. Bone Tapper finally returned and settled grumpily on her shoulder.
"Sensible precaution, but needless," he said. "There's no one out there. Not on the road, not in the woods for nearly half a league. I'm certain."
Marta shook her head. "Someone is. I hear weeping," Marta said. "Don't you?"
Bone Tapper looked at her. "I don't hear anything. Perhaps you're just tired."
Marta shrugged. "I am tired. Very tired. That doesn't change what I hear."
Marta walked across the clearing to the opposite side. There were a few stumps there, and upon closer examination Marta saw clear signs of an axe. "This isn't a natural meadow. This land was cleared at one point. A farm?"
Bone Tapper shook his head. "Too small. And if these stumps say true, there'd be a sign of a house or something if such had ever been built here."
"Then why would someone go to all the trouble?"
Bone Tapper shrugged again. "Why does anyone do anything toward an idea that doesn't become real? Maybe someone thought this would be a nice place to farm and then realized there wasn't enough water nearby. Or some local lord wanted the land for hunting and made them change their minds. Maybe someone died. Pick whatever answer you like; likely you'll never know the real one."
Marta thought perhaps Bone Tapper was right. She made two circuits of the clearing and was no closer to finding the source. She did decide that, if something close to an echo of a whisper could be measured at all, the sound was easier to hear by the area where the stumps hadn't been completely cleared. Marta walked by what appeared to be the stump of a large cedar and then stopped, frowning. She stood there for a very long time.
"Bone Tapper, this stump is crying."
"That's not possible."
"Unprecedented," Marta said, "at least in my experience. Impossible? No. I tell you it's so."
Bone Tapper hopped down from her shoulder and cocked his head at the stump. "I'm trying, Marta. My hearing is more than passable. I hear nothing."
"Maybe it's something you can't hear with your ears."
Marta kneeled down beside the stump and placed her hands on each side of it and invoked the First Law, but it told her nothing she didn't expect to find. Places where the rot had taken hold, places that the axe had damaged the wood but left it in place, a thousand places that the remainder of the stump could be shattered.
There was one place only where it could not be broken.
Marta felt for that spot, tried to understand what the wood was telling her. What it told her that this was not wood, part of the tree and yet not part at all. A separate thing, and yet not. It made no sense, Bone Tapper was right about that, but Marta finally understood that it was this thing, this one unnamed, indestructible thing that was crying.
Not knowing what else to do, Marta got cross. "Stop that! I'm trying to help you."
The crying stopped. If it was a sound she no longer heard it. If it was a feeling she no longer felt it. The crying was replaced with words Marta could understand, not loud but clear enough.
Who are you?
"My name is Marta, Black Kath's Daughter," she said aloud. "Who are you?"
What came then was not a word, but rather sound and feeling together, the sound and the feel of two tree limbs rubbing together in a high wind, the touch of bark on bark, the creaking of wood and the rustle of thousands of leaves. It was the 'feel' part that made Marta shiver in a mixture of nervousness and excitement. For that one instant Marta felt what the creature felt, to be a part of something large and alive. To know what it knew then. To know what it knew now. A stump, slowly rotting away.
"You're a leata, aren't you?"
Yes.
A wood-spirit, for want of a better description. Something that shared the life of certain kinds of trees, even though it was not a tree. Born of the tree and dying with it. Marta had heard the fairy tales, of course but, as with the craja in the cave, Marta was finding more truth in old stories than she had ever suspected. Here was a leata and, also like the spirit revenant in the cave, it was trapped.
The tree is transforming. Not rot away!
It took Marta a few moments to comprehend what the creature was telling her. Marta touched the stump again. She risked the use of Power again, since this was for her own understanding. The leata had not asked her for anything. Yet.
"There's a great deal of resin in the stump. It's hardening. It may lie in the ground for a thousand years or more. Not gone but not a tree, either."
Trapped!
Marta nodded. In the normal course of things, when a tree died its body would rot away, releasing its spirit companion. This tree stubbornly refused, and its spirt might not be freed for years...if ever. "Let me think—"
Help me!
Marta swore, softly. Now it was no longer a matter of curiosity and kindness. She had been asked for help. That carried a price and, because Marta had no choice, she knew the price.
Bone Tapper had been watching what, to him, must have appeared a one-sided conversation for several minutes. "Mistress, what is going on here?"
"There's a spirit trapped in this stump. She's asked me for help." Until she said the word 'her' Marta hadn't even realized that she knew the spirit was female.
"Can she afford you?"
Marta didn't answer right away. Her mind ran through a list of possibilities, each quickly considered and quickly discarded. She finally shook her head. "Absent gold—and where would a leata get money—the price is service for twenty years, in physical form. She couldn't do that even if she wanted to."
"So turn her into a cat or something."
Marta glared. "Turn what into a cat? The stump isn't her body!" She addressed the spirit again. "I'll try to help you, but I want you to tell me something: have you seen a man pass this way, traveling alone, within the last season?"
"What would she see with?" Bone Tapper asked.
"What does she hear with, cry with?" Marta snapped. "She sees, she hears, she feels! More than you do, I think. Be of some use and describe Treedle in his human form. I've never seen it."
Bone Tapper eyed the stump suspiciously, but he did as he was told. "A large man, fair, curly red hair. Well favored, I think. I'm no judge of that."
I did see that one, or one much like him. No more than three turnings of the sun gone.
Marta blinked. If that was true, they were much closer than she'd hoped. "Three days ago?" she said aloud, mainly for Bone Tapper's benefit. "He must have found a place to winter before Wittanplace, if that's where he's gone."
Will you help me? The creature repeated, pleading.
"Yes," Marta said. "I will help you."
Now Bone Tapper glared at her. "Marta, have you taken leave of your senses? This creature's debt, and so soon on top of Feran's? Have you learned nothing?
?"
Marta shrugged. "I haven't learned as much as I need to learn. Yet I do think I know what I'm doing."
Marta walked back to the campfire. It had died down to embers in her absence, but it only took a few moments to get it going again. She gathered up several of the remaining small branches and shavings that she'd used for tinder, and took them with her back across the meadow and piled them at the base of the stump. She peeled back several strips of the cedars rotting bark and added that to the mix. Then she took a small knife and carefully shaved several pieces of the resin-rich wood, and added that to the pile. She could feel the leata's presence, watching her intently.
"Just what do you think you're doing?" Bone Tapper asked.
"I would think that would be obvious, even to a feather brain like you. I'm going to burn the stump. It only has to be destroyed. There's no rule that says I have to use Power. For this favor, the information she gave is quite enough...not that I wouldn't have done it anyway—"
Marta stopped. She'd touched a Law. The same Law she’d sensed twice before. She knew it. She felt it almost like a physical presence, very close. Marta tried to reach out for it, to understand as she had that day at the cave, in a time that now seemed like ages past though she knew it hadn't been that long. Marta tried, but she couldn't quite reach it, couldn't hold it in her mind and say its proper name. Something given, something taken? Yes, it had to do with that, she was certain. But what? The understanding would not come, the meaning remained hidden. It was a glance, an encounter, but not a meeting. Marta almost screamed in frustration, and when Bone Tapper spoke again she very nearly screamed at him.
"Won't this hurt the thing?"
Marta forced her attention back to the here and now, forced herself to keep her mind clear. She turned back to the forlorn spirt. "Will it?"
Yes...very much. Please hurry.
Marta didn't hesitate, for she knew that if she did she might not be able to go through with it. She gathered a new bundle of dead wood, just large enough to fit well in her hand, and she set the end ablaze in the campfire. In a few moments the tinder by the stump had caught and was burning hot.
Ahhh...
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