Crown of Renewal

by Elizabeth Moon

  Another Marshal met them as they came into the main courtyard. “A Kuakgan’s come,” she said to Paks. She sounded excited. “He says his name’s Sprucewind, and he asked for you. And he has a tree growing out of his arm.”

  “Good,” Paks said. “I’ll come with you.” She turned to Arvid. “Good Midsummer to you, Marshal Arvid, and you, young Arvid. Gird’s grace—I’ll see you another time, I’m sure.” She went off with the other Marshal.

  “A tree?” Arvi said.

  “That’s what she said,” Arvid said. “Growing out of his arm. Do you think we drank too much spring wine?” Arvi giggled; they walked back to the inn together.

  Marshal-General Arianya stared at the shutter pulled close in her window, wondering if it would not be better to die. No Kuakgan had come to help her, and she knew—hated knowing—that some iynisin magery still remained within her, sapping her strength and making her irritable. She was weakening—more and more she felt absent from herself, distant from everything. Marshals and paladins had tried to heal her, and at first—for a time varying from one day to five—she felt better. But she no longer believed any of them could heal her finally. Prayer led to resignation, but resignation, she knew, would not accomplish what Gird wanted her to accomplish. Nor, she was also sure, would the grim stubbornness it now took to hold on each day, to fend off the grief for mistakes she had made that hurt others, to bear the load of guilt.

  Down the hall came a patter of rapid footsteps. No doubt one of the juniors with some problem. She struggled to sit straighter behind her desk, to banish from her mind, and she hoped from her face, the exhaustion and impatience she felt.

  “Marshal-General—there’s a Kuakgan come.”

  For a moment the word made no sense … then the meaning appeared. A Kuakgan. Who might be able to help her.

  “Thank you,” she said to the boy, who stood there, practically hopping from foot to foot with excitement. “See that he has refreshment, will you? When he has rested, I will seek him out.”

  “But he’s here, Marshal-General! Right here!” The boy—she couldn’t think of his name—turned, and a man in a long green robe came to her door. Youngish, she thought. And—her breath caught. Just below the elbow of his left arm, a small tree jutted out. A small fir tree … Her mind lurched sideways. How awkward it must be to have a tree as long as your forearm sticking out like that …

  “Marshal-General?” His voice was quiet, gentle. He took two steps closer, and she caught the clean sharp scent of the fir tree. “You were attacked by kuaknomi, I am told. You are not well.”

  “Better … but not … well.”

  “I am sorry it took such time to come here, but … there are so few trees.” He had stepped past her to the window and opened the shutter. “It took long to find one willing to share and near enough here.”

  Arianya turned her head from the light pouring through the window; it felt abrasive, like blown sand. “Too bright,” she said.

  “A tree needs light,” he said. “And you need a tree.” To the boy he said, “Can you find a pot, so high and so wide, and have someone help you fill it with good soil?” The boy nodded and left at a run. “All my healing is from the taig,” he said to Arianya. “The life within all living things. You had a dream—a dream of a forest—”

  “How did you know?”

  “Dreams … wander. Your dream sought my aid before word came to me, but I did not know where you were.” He hummed a moment. To Arianya’s astonishment, a butterfly, scarlet and black, floated in the window and landed on the tree on his arm. “With your permission, I would touch your head.”

  “Yes,” Arianya said, staring at the butterfly.

  “Your healing will not be like Paksenarrion’s, for her injuries, and Master Oakhallow’s resources, in his own Grove, were both greater. Let me see …”

  The scent of fir grew stronger; his hands—dry as bark—lay on her head without heat and stroked down to the back of her neck, to her shoulders. She closed her eyes.

  When she opened them again, morning light no longer came through the window, and a great pot stood in the corner of her office, and Paksenarrion was there as well as the Kuakgan. “I must move this tree,” Sprucewind said. “At least for a time, it must live in the pot. Are you feeling better?”

  “Yes,” Arianya said. Her office smelled fresh as a mountain grove.

  “Good. This may be distressing to watch, but do not fear. This young fir and I are not … entirely … one yet.” As he spoke, he changed … The robe he wore seemed more and more like actual moss, and his arm, now draped in moss, more like a gnarled branch, in the hollow of which the smaller tree had taken root. He looked at Paks. “You, having been healed by the Tree, may hold this tree: have a care and do not tug. Like that—yes—and invite it to leave a small home for a larger one. I will urge the separation from within.”

  Arianya was certain now that bark covered his arm … and his face had turned the exact brown she remembered from the spruce trees she had seen on her travels. Slowly, his arm lowered a little, even as needles sprang out of his fingertips … and as slowly, the seedling’s roots slid free of his arm, pale and glistening slightly. Arianya gulped and glanced at Paks. Her gaze was on the little tree, her expression serious but serene. Had she known the tree was literally growing out of the man’s arm … or his limb? But now the last rootlets—spread wider than Arianya had imagined—hung loose in the air.

  Sprucewind hummed; the rootlets quivered. “Now, hold it above the pot,” he said to Paks. “I will sing it in.” She did so. Arianya watched as the Kuakgan hummed and murmured words she did not know. The little tree’s rootlets reached for the soil and then sank into it, spreading, she could tell by the crumbs of soil displaced by the roots. Finally the seedling stood upright in the center of the pot. When Arianya looked at Sprucewind, his hands bore no needles, and his robe—the sleeve once more covering his arm—looked like dark green cloth. His face looked completely human once more.

  The next hours confused Arianya at first. Sprucewind watered the tree, leaned out the window, and hummed. He touched her hands, her head. Meanwhile, the butterfly that had come first was joined by two others, small, with green wings and a few orange spots. A beetle flew in and landed on the tree’s tip. Sprucewind addressed a hiss at it, and it flew away. A bird—an ordinary little brown bird, Arianya thought—landed on the windowsill, then hopped down to the soil, lifted its tail, and deposited a dab of birdlime. Sprucewind held out a finger; the bird hopped on and—when Sprucewind lifted his hand—plucked a hair from his head and then flew away.

  Finally, Sprucewind sat down in the room’s other chair. “You will forgive, I hope, my planting the fir and making it comfortable. It had traveled a long way with me, and we were not, as I said, wholly compatible. Spruce and fir are both conifers but distant cousins, not siblings.”

  Arian had never thought of trees as having family relationships. “Where did you find a fir?” she asked. “We have none near here.”

  “True, and that’s why it took me so long to come. I cannot sustain junipers—such as grow nearby—for even a few days’ travel. I had to find a tree I could carry close enough that I had sufficient sustenance for it. This one came from a speck of a vill northeast of here, across the river. It is near where Paksenarrion came from and is called Three Firs. That was nearest.” He cocked his head. “You offered me refreshment before—would it be convenient to have bread, perhaps cheese—?”

  With the tray of bread, cheese, hard sausage, and pickled redroots, the kitchen sent up both sib and water. Sprucewind took water. “And I advise you to drink the same while we discuss your healing. I will be using what this young tree provides, and it is not compatible with the tree foods usually used in sib.”

  Arianya put down her mug of sib and poured water instead.

  When he had eaten, he leaned back and touched the tree; it shivered, then settled. “We come now to your problem. You do not have any remnant of a kuaknomi weapon still i
n your body, but you do have that poison still keeping your body from healing itself. Both my tree, the spruce, and this fir are apt for dealing with such toxins; both are clean trees, as most conifers are. Close your eyes and breathe deeply.”

  Arianya did so; the fragrance of conifer forest filled the room and her head. When she woke—she had not noticed falling asleep—night had come outside. Across the room, Sprucewind, eyes closed, lay back in a chair with one hand holding a limb of the little seedling … a little seedling surely taller than it had been. Sprucewind’s arm had silvery green needles on it again. And the desk was piled with empty bowls.

  Sprucewind woke as she watched; he withdrew his hand from the tree, and the tree shivered as if he’d shaken it by the trunk. The needles sank back into his arm; the skin smoothed out, changing texture and color. He blinked a few times, then his gaze sharpened. “Ah … we have made some progress.”

  “What did you do?” Arianya asked.

  “I am not sure I can explain,” he said. He hummed; a large moth flew in the window, landed on his hand, then flew out again. “Iynisin poison is distilled of their hate for all living things. They began with trees, but hatred grows, and they came to hate all green life—and all who love it—and then all other life. Their poison affects different kinds of life differently and kills slowly, so as to warp and ruin whatever the high gods intended before death comes. To the Sinyi, their closest kin, it brings a quicker death than to humans. In humans, in whom awareness of self is strong, it attacks that awareness, so they are not as aware of themselves and it makes them irritable, even angry.”

  Arianya shifted in her chair. She had, she knew, been irritable.

  “So first I had to find your heartwood—your real self—and begin … filtering? … yes, that is the word … the poison from you. I think it is not a thing that wound healing, the kind you know about, can do. For me it takes myself and a tree of reasonably close kindred. I let the poison pass through me—”

  “Doesn’t it hurt you?”

  “Yes, but not as much. In a forest it would be easier; I could have the aid of all the trees of my tribe and some of the others as well. But you see—it went from me to the tree, and the tree, small as it is, transformed it to nourishment.”

  Arianya blinked, trying to think her way through that. “How?” she said finally.

  “I am not sure.” He spread his hands. “Too much will sicken us—both the tree and me—and at some point would kill us. But in small amounts—a drop at a time—it can be done without more than effort and a little discomfort.” He tipped his head and gazed toward the pile of bowls. “I do need to eat a lot.”

  “All you want,” she said.

  “And you need to eat a lot, too. I will call on your kitchens again, and then I must sleep for a while. You must sleep in here, with the tree to guard your sleep. Tomorrow we begin again. Healing of iynisin poison cannot be rushed, but I think a few days will be sufficient.”

  Not until the last day was Arianya able to stay awake during the treatments. The Kuakan kept his hand on hers; she watched it stiffen, the skin drying, turning greenish gray before the fine needles of a spruce came up, furring the back of his hand, even as his fingers took on the appearance of twigs. On his arms, the bark was browner … and his face, too, seemed drier, more like bark. She felt a peculiar sensation along her bones, where the ache had been, and then—a sick orange-brown color shriveled the needles of his hand on hers, leaving the barklike skin exposed, then moved up his arm, even as fresh needles sprang from below the others.

  Where he touched the young fir, one branchlet’s needles turned the same sick orange-brown and fell off; the branchlet darkened as if scorched … then recovered, even as the Kuakgan’s hand recovered. One small pulse at a time, each perhaps half the length of his hand long.

  Arianya wanted to stop, but his grip on her hand was firm as a tree’s root. She watched … and his hand abruptly turned a brighter green than before and a green streak ran up her own arm. Her mouth tasted of green—of fir and spruce needles she had nibbled as a child, of every herb in the garden—and for a moment she felt alive in a way she never had. Then it faded as he released her and sat back, his eyes gleaming.

  “It is finished,” he said. “All the poison is gone. Look at the tree.”

  The tree now stood as tall as the pot, every needle crisp and full. Sprucewind’s expression was rueful. “It needs the earth and the root touch of others,” he said. “You will need to find a wagon to haul it somewhere firs grow. It must not die … for then the poison will be released again.”

  “Did any of your—any Kuakgan—know Gird?”

  He tipped his head to one side. “I don’t know, Marshal-General. I doubt it; we avoid conflict if we can. And this was magelord country, wasn’t it? They weren’t fond of us, though less hostile than elves.”

  Arianya felt a nudge—more like a buffet—on her shoulder. “Then I think it is past time we met the people who prefer avoiding conflict to starting it. Not like the elves, who withdraw completely, but … like trees in a grove, touching branch to branch and root to root.”

  “There is some jostling for power,” Sprucewind said. “Trees may be slow, but they do have territorial ambitions.” He smiled.

  “We have a common enemy,” Arianya said. “We ought to make common cause where we can.”

  New Marshals usually had time between being confirmed in their new rank and being assigned to a grange. Arvid reverted to his earlier schedule, going up the hill every day to help out in the archives, where piles of new material had come in from Kolobia as fast as those in Kolobia could bring it.

  All the magelords had been literate, and those in the main stronghold had produced far more writing than anyone realized until they brought it back. Recipes from the kitchen, lists of supplies, little sketch maps, a list of words in a language no one had seen before, recipes for herbal remedies, records of projects begun and finished, with dates referring to a calendar they didn’t know … all in a jumble, large and small pieces of paper, cloth, skin, bundled together, as much as those obeying the elves’ orders to leave could manage.

  Arvid intended to sort out anything having to do with legal matters, since he was still studying the Code with Deinar, but he was fascinated by the hints at the individuals who had lived there as shown by their writings. A cook’s notes on edible local plants, how to recognize them and how to use them. “NOT this” with a drawing of something with three slender pointed leaflets and “THIS” underlined twice with a plant having two slender pointed leaflets, with a sketch of someone bent over and throwing up by the three-leaflet image.

  A little book, pages sewn together with linen thread, detailing the watch-list for—he riffled through it—more than a year. So they had a militia? They were guarding against … what? And how, then, had they been surprised? Each line was initialed … A, S, or RM. He looked more carefully. A must be Aris … no other name given. S would be Seri. RM? He found a page with a line through it and a scrawled “Rosemage” at the bottom with a stylized drawing of a rose, very like the Tsaian Rose.

  In the pile in front of him, he spotted another, similar book and pulled it out; half the pile slid off the desk where he worked and scattered itself on the floor. Sighing, he picked it up and put it back on the desk before opening the book.

  The stylized rose, drawn larger, was on the first page. On the next page, the fine, dense writing began.

  I came to him a woman deeply wounded and a killer.

  He blinked. Was this a tale or something real?

  He was as I had been told, a peasant. Lean from hunger but broad in frame; if a horse, he would have been bred for draft. I did not please him, being mageborn. But this matters nothing for what I have to tell. Let my past be gone, my killings and my savings. For only those who were there know how Gird died, since the tale has grown wings and flown away from the truth. And of us, one has lied.

  Arvid looked around the room. Others were busy on other piles, sortin
g steadily by some rule of their own. He went back to reading. For all the dramatic language of the first page, once the writer got into it, the story of Gird’s last day was told plainly, baldly, with only a few interpolations from the past. It resembled the official version only in that Gird was alive at the beginning, did something heroic, and died.

  No demon. No monster. No valiant defense with a cudgel. A quarrel that began with a mageborn girl and a peasant-born bully, a quarrel that gathered a mob, that would have ended with the girl dead and the mob hunting more mageborn prey, as they had in the last days of the war. This “Rosemage”—the woman who wrote the book—and Luap trying to calm the mob without success. Gird’s arrival; the crowd for once not listening to him.

  A sultry day, threatening storm, the woman had written. “The city stank; the crowd stank; such weather brings out bad smells. And their anger, like a storm gathering. Mine as well, for their stupidity and malice.”

  Gird had said words the woman had not written down—

  Words I never heard before, words that might have made the world itself. From his face, Gird himself did not know what they were, only that he must say them. Then the rage to kill lifted, the evil thoughts; I felt this in my own heart, for I had been angry with those peasants. I could almost see it, the mob’s thoughts in a dark cloud hovering over us all. It seemed Gird saw it, too, for he looked up, not at the mob, as he spoke. They did not see; I asked witnesses later, and they did not see. Then the cloud thickened, and Gird took it in … I saw it happen, though none other has written it. I saw fear on his face, then duty accepted, and his mouth stayed open and the darkness went in, all of it. How he did so I do not know. The gods aided him, Arranha the priest says, but even he cannot explain. Only when the dark cloud was gone and Gird had fallen, having taken the evil into himself and then died, the day freshened and the mob’s anger was gone. We felt sorrow but also relief.