“Meralonne—” He stopped himself.
“You are no longer under his command. Avoid him at all costs if you encounter him. Do not attempt to reason with him; do not attempt to engage. It is . . . likely that he will not remember who you are.”
And he understood the frailty then. This was the first major encounter of its kind that Sigurne had faced without Meralonne, and he thought that the whole of her fear was not his absence, but what his presence might mean in the end.
He turned to the warrior-magi; he gestured. To their hands came the weapons that Meralonne had taught them, at great cost, to summon. They summoned them now.
Gyrrick had no intention of closing with his enemies, for his was a bow. He was mage, not archer, but these arrows did not require that he be one; in some fashion, they were of him; they flew true because he was mage-born.
* * *
• • •
Sigurne turned as Gyrrick and his warriors departed, remembering the bitter council argument that had produced them. Remembering as well that she had been on the losing side. Inhaling, she turned; she lifted a hand. On it, a ring rested, and in the growing light of dawn, it glowed faintly.
The High Wilderness
Follow the trees, Jay had shouted, as Shadow leaped into action. Don’t step off the path they make. She was gone, the great, gray cat sprinting ahead of the rest of her companions.
Angel watched her retreating back. He lifted his hands in den-sign and lowered them again; she wouldn’t see any of the words he might have signed.
Terrick assessed the situation with a brief grunt and began to jog, not sprint, in her wake. The Winter King turned to Celleriant and the bard before he, too, leaped into action. Adam and Shianne, upon his back, would remain close to Jay. Angel would be too far behind.
He felt the urgency of that, the emergency inherent in it, but understood why Terrick had not chosen to sprint: they didn’t know what waited them at the end of this line of metallic, faintly glowing, trees.
“What are you doing, boy?” Terrick barked, slowing as Angel slowed.
He didn’t answer. The leaves, like the metallic leaves that adorned the trees in Jay’s forest, did not fall; they were not Ellariannatte, not living and growing in a fashion akin to normal trees. Silver, gold, and diamond were not, after all, living things—not in the world that the den inhabited.
These trees, like those, were unnatural. They were not the product of nature; they were, as the other three, the product of dream, desire. And in Jay’s forest, when a leaf fell from one of those trees, it fell for a reason.
He did not understand how, or why, but what Jay planted was hers. Even here, in the middle of the unclaimed, winter wilderness. He understood why they were not to stray from the path made of roots and covered by crowning branches; more than that, she did not explain, and Angel—as any member of her den—did not require immediate explanation. That would come later, if it came at all.
He could not ask her what she wanted done; she had already told him. They were to follow these trees. They were not to step out from under their odd shade; they were not to find flatter, more comfortable ground to traverse. But leaves had fallen, and they had fallen by Angel’s feet.
He turned to glance back; he had not come far from the first of the trees she had, by leaf, planted.
“What are you doing?” Terrick demanded.
Since the answer was self-evident, Angel didn’t reply. He retraced his hasty steps to retrieve the leaves that had fallen, and realized, as he did, that each tree seemed to shed one. Only one. The leaves were cold, but not icy.
Terrick, however, said nothing else. His impatience was almost a physical force, but he understood that the imperatives of the wilderness did not conform to the imperatives of the oathsworn; that what Angel now did might be necessary in some fashion to the Lord he had sworn to serve.
As they resumed their pursuit of The Terafin, each tree shed a single leaf; Angel gathered them all.
8th day of Lattan, 428 A.A.
The Common, Averalaan
Jester did not trust the fox, but that wasn’t surprising; Jester trusted no one outside of the den. He accepted the cats because Jay accepted them, but understood that beneath the veneer of selfish, squalling, spoiled brat lurked death. The fox was cunning in an entirely different way. Cunning, ancient, and not without power of his own.
He rose from the bow he had offered the three men, the motion graceful and yet, at the same time, artless.
“My Lord will grant you free passage out of her lands.” There was a subtle shift in tone, the softness of obvious, proffered respect being shed. “But the denizens of these lands are hers; she has claimed them all.”
“All?” Even at this distance, Jester could clearly see the speaker. He could hear the scorn offered in that single word.
“Even so.”
“The mortals do not recognize your Lord,” the man replied.
“It is not required. They are hers.”
“How long have we slept, that you have forgotten us? Slept we so long that the worlds have forgotten even the echo of our names?”
“We have not forgotten,” the fox replied. This time, there was no grace, no elegance, in the words; there was the edge of anger, the warmth of it. Jester didn’t understand why, and that was not his concern. “But mortals exist a handful of years, no more, as they habitually did. They remember, deeply, the things that touched them, the things that scarred them, but even as we, their memories last the length of their lives, no more.
“They have stories, of course; so, too, the firstborn. But those stories are not experience, and the echoes they hear, they attach to their personal experience.”
“And how much has this world changed,” the second Sleeper said, “that the mortals dare to gather here, at the heart of our domain?”
Birgide stiffened.
“How much has it changed that they dare to hinder us? How much has it changed that they offer us safe passage through lands that they barely grasp?” As he spoke, he lifted a hand.
A sword came to it. As it did, the shield that he carried—that they all carried—caught fire, but it was a blue fire that scarred vision, burning itself into Jester’s eyes. Had the shield itself boasted heraldry, or even the shape of words, he might have remembered it forever, might have spoken what he saw aloud, just to attempt to eject it.
There was nothing there. Just the shape of a shield, and beside it, fire caught in the shape of a blade.
The fox, however, did not step back; he did not appear to notice the blade at all. “Barely grasp? How long have you slept, little hunter, that you have forgotten me?” As he spoke, he grew; the ground beneath his feet almost buckled. He gained not only height, but fur; his shoulders broadened, his hair spread to cover the whole of his golden form. In the light of the armaments the Sleepers carried, Jester could see that his hands had sprouted long, curved claws.
The Sleeper did not move. But the other two now drew their swords as well.
“Think you that I would serve a paltry, insignificant lord? Think you that such a lord could rule me?”
“What is he doing?” a familiar voice asked from behind Jester. Jester did not turn, although he recognized the voice. Or perhaps because he did. Meralonne APhaniel had landed.
Jester understood that Jay believed he was one of the Sleepers; that he alone had not been condemned to the captivity of sleep by the gods in the distant, almost unknowable past. But he had seen Meralonne, had known him, known of him, for half of his life, and not even when the magi gave himself over to the fierce exultation that drove him when he fought for his life had he been the equal of these men.
“Warden.”
Birgide’s eyes were closed and remained so. Her jaw was clenched and her arms, stiff and trembling; Jester’s hand, where it grasped hers, was almost numb, the knuckles white.
“Where are the heralds?”
Jester did turn, then. Meralonne’s sword hadn’t come to hand yet, but he wore the armor of the Arianni, and his eyes were flashing silver. He seemed, to Jester’s eye, to have gained inches of height, and his hair, as it sometimes was, was caught in a wind that touched nothing else—although the wind’s howl could be heard, clearly, from the ground beneath the overlapping branches of the Kings’ trees.
“Warden,” Meralonne said again, “where are the heralds?”
“We haven’t seen—” Jester began.
Meralonne lifted one imperious hand, cutting Jester off without actually looking at him. His gaze was fixed upon Birgide, as if by gaze alone he could force her to divulge the information.
Birgide’s mouth moved, lips trembling. “They are . . . not here.”
“Where are they, Warden? Where? It is urgent.”
Birgide shook her head, and Jester, reaching out with his free hand, caught Meralonne’s arm. And almost lost his own, the sword came to the mage’s hand so quickly in response. Meralonne’s eyes were liquid silver now, and whatever guise he had adopted to live within the Order’s halls was so frayed and fragile, light could be seen almost beneath his skin.
He was, Jester realized, as much of a danger—to them all—as the Sleepers, nameless, on the stairs of their giant cathedral. He released Meralonne, his hand numb and tingling.
“You are brave, ATerafin. Brave and foolish beyond belief. So, too, your Lord. This is why a mortal was never meant to be Warden; Birgide is not even talent-born; she has no touch of the wild in her that the forest did not lend to her itself. A Warden sees the land, boy. A Warden knows when those lands have been breached.
“And if the heralds are not by the sides of the men they were created to serve, they are elsewhere, within these lands, and they now have power they did not have when they blindly searched, and searched, and searched. Do you understand?”
He could feel each word hit the silent Birgide like a blow.
And Jester said, in the quiet way of a man who has made his choice and will accept any price that choice demands, “She is Warden because Jay wanted her to be Warden.”
“And now, she will pay for that desire, that choice. If she values this city and the mortals who crawl across its pathetic surface, she will pay.”
In the distance, Jester heard the shouting change tenor. Voices that had been raised in fear were now raised in panic through the human alchemy of terror. He turned and turned again as he heard the crack of wood. He was ATerafin, but he was not a leader, not a ruler. Here, now, the only person in sight who mattered was Birgide.
Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.
* * *
• • •
The Sleeper who had first spoken raised his voice again, and this time, Jester heard that voice deliver the essence of, the very heart of, command. His body vibrated with the syllables; he could not translate them, but he understood them regardless. The man was speaking to the wilderness.
And the wilderness, in the form of the fox who was no longer small enough to be carried in anyone’s arms, replied. This word, he did understand.
Jewel.
The Sleeper laughed, his voice a rumble of warmth and surprise. Smiling, he spoke again. The earth moved beneath Jester’s feet, beneath Birgide’s—but no, it was not the earth; it was the overlapping roots of the Ellariannatte.
He heard the leaves above his head rustle, as if in a gale.
And the fox, once again, spoke a single word. The same word. The same name.
A third time, the Sleeper spoke, and a third time the wilderness replied. The fox then said, “She is mortal, our Lord, and her reach is subtle, but roots grow deep, as you yourself must remember; we are an old, old land. Not even for the sound of your beloved and absent voices will we be swayed. She is our Lord.”
* * *
• • •
Meralonne did not sheath his sword. He gestured, his lips twisting in a brief grimace, and Jester thought he had attempted to summon his shield—for he had no doubt that a shield had once existed. None came.
Birgide almost buckled, as if at a physical blow, but Jester could now see why: the Sleepers had shifted position; the third of their number, who had remained silent, gestured almost casually at the wall of Ellariannatte that Birgide had constructed in an attempt to somehow contain them.
It had been a wasted effort; trees broke, and trees fell at the simple motion.
He spoke and spoke again, and the trees continued to crack; Birgide’s hand clutched Jester’s as if that grip was the only thing that now kept her on her feet.
The fox did not turn, nor did he take a step forward. He stood, as if he were one of the trees.
But when the first man raised voice again, the fox said, “The wind hears you, but you are not Lord of these lands, and the wind understands the will of the Lord in this place. The earth will not waken at your command; the water will not rise. Not without her permission, and she has not given it.
“I say again that my Lord offers—with all due respect—safe passage through her lands. She will not contain you, will not cage you, will not demand recompense for the damages done should those damages be minimal.”
And the prince of the ancient wilderness raised sword and said, “These lands are not hers.”
He brought the sword down, driving it through the stone beneath his feet.
The stone rose up around him, carrying him, and Jester remembered the two rooms in Avantari that Jay had transformed without will, without intent.
Meralonne said, “Warden,” his voice soft, his gaze almost transfixed upon the Sleepers. “Hold the ways shut for as long as you can.”
Birgide bowed her head but did not lift it. In a trembling voice, she said, “I cannot hold the trees and the ways, both.”
Meralonne did not tell her to abandon the trees. “ATerafin,” he said to Jester, “I leave the Warden in your care.” He glanced once at his shieldless arm and shook his head.
“It is time.”
Jester expected him to leave as he’d arrived: in the folds of the wind. Meralonne had been given permission to summon the wind. Or perhaps the wind had been given leave to respond. Regardless, he chose to walk.
Jester had seldom seen Meralonne engage an enemy.
But as Meralonne walked toward the back of the fox, as he walked toward the Sleepers, Jester wondered if he had any intention of engaging this enemy at all.
* * *
• • •
People streamed into streets that were, even now, edged in trees that had not existed the evening before. They were bewildered, but these trees were the Kings’ trees, and they had grown up in a city in which the Kings’ trees were, if not common, familiar. Children in the holdings had gathered those leaves as if they were flowers. Children from the Isle had done the same, as The Wayelyn knew; he had gathered them himself, surrounded by frowning guards and an extremely disapproving mother.
He shifted his hold on his instrument as he surveyed the streets. There wasn’t so much a crowd as a congested stream; people were wide-eyed, confused; he was certain that some of them were not entirely certain they had yet escaped sleep.
And he could understand that; the shadows of a new tower—one that stood in place of Moorelas’ statue, fell across that portion of cobbled road that was not shadowed by the high branches of new trees, with no risen sun to cast them. None of the buildings in the Common, none close to it, approached those trees in height, although several might boast similar age.
Even as he watched, those trees continued to grow; their roots broke cobbled stone, dislodged the earth beneath it, and began to intertwine, forming a rough and uneven road, a path that no longer had anything to do with what had once been familiar terrain.
Tallos called his name. Wayelyn.
He did not
turn. He greeted the sleepy and the terrified, smiled at the children who were old enough not to fear strangers, but young enough not to resent condescension. Yes.
You are certain?
Through the trees. They form a path.
Not, Tallos replied almost primly, an easily traversed one. You are certain?
The Wayelyn bit back a sigh. Yes, Tallos. I am certain. You were, perhaps, not attending Solran?
I heard her, was the testy reply. The full force of Tallos’ bard-born voice expressed the heart of his irritation—and the heart of his irritation was fear.
There was, about the city, a hint of shadow, a cold wind that spoke of death. But the voices raised here were not the voices raised in the Henden of 410 A.A; the people who wandered these reformed streets were not, yet, doomed. There was something that could be done to save them, or as many of them as they could reach; death was not the only kindness the bards could offer.
Today they did not sing sleep. Did not sing death.
The Wayelyn, in that Henden, had not been among those bards. He had been with his House, with Wayelyn, a symbol of the rule of order, a symbol of strength.
He was here tonight.
To the chagrin of his House Council, he had armed himself not with title, not with obvious wealth—although he was wed to both—but with lute. He felt a small pang of guilt; had felt it the moment the great cathedral—if that had even been its function—had risen from the ground. There would be panic, on the Isle.
But the Isle was not yet under siege.
Through the trees, he repeated to Tallos. His tone conveyed the barest hint of disapproval; Tallos was not a young man; had not been young in that Henden that had scarred them all. Solran, however, had not asked him to stay within the confines of Senniel. In The Wayelyn’s opinion, a request would have met with the stone wall of Tallos’ resolution.
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