“You just described every day of the past two hundred years,” she muttered. “Really, Runt, you’d better hope that this tunnel lets out in a village. These two need help, fast. I don’t think my blood’s going to do much more on its own.”
“Do you mean to say that dropping them from a great height didn’t improve their condition? My, you are an expert, aren’t you? Come along, then, before both of them die on us.”
She swallowed her retort, focusing on how she was going to handle them. “Okay. What’s your plan?”
“Pardon?”
He was powering on like this was going to be easy. “For moving them. What am I doing, dragging them on the ground? Carrying one toward you, then coming back for the other?” Either way, just thinking about it made her sweat. The air was close down here, and damp.
“My plan is for you to work it out for yourself,” he called. “Come, now! If you don’t dilly-dally, and nothing ferocious devours us, we’ll be aboveground in no time.”
But by the time they saw the light, her mind was as pulped as her hands had been. She’d expended so much heat healing the pain in her back and the gashes on her knuckles that her head was pounding. The tunnel never seemed to stop curving, and more than once she convinced herself that she’d lost an addict down some unseen fork. Her clothes were soaked, and there wasn’t a drop of spit left in her mouth. By now, all she could think of was food and drink, to the exclusion of everything else—she couldn’t even be sure that the addicts were alive, as it had been hours since she’d remembered to check their vital signs.
She couldn’t see Hollis, though, and he drifted far ahead.
More than once, she wondered if that had saved him.
It wasn’t sunshine that greeted them at the end of their path. The light was greenish-gray, and buckets of rain were pouring down the wide ramp that led to the open air.
“Ach.” Hollis frowned as he stepped into a puddle at the foot of the ramp, his burlap skin caked with dirt. “We lost the whole night down here.”
“Maybe our friends have horses,” whispered Ashlan, dragging the woman up beside the boy.
“What friends?”
She pointed. “Whoever dug that.”
The ramp was surrounded by a great, loose wall of displaced earth—except for a tidy path cut directly through its center. A shovel still jutted from the pile beside it.
“No horses,” came a curiously lilting, reedy voice over the rush of the rain. “A bear, though.” There was a thoughtful cough. “I am not the bear. And the bear is not alive.”
Hollis stepped back, his button eyes wide. “We can’t just walk up there,” he whispered. “That could be anyone!”
“What’s our option?” said Ashlan. “The tunnel is blocked, and I’m not leaving these two to die. Not after all this.”
“Could you hurry up?” said the voice. “You took longer than we thought. The food is cold. So are my toes.”
“I’m going.” Ashlan lifted the woman’s limp body for what she hoped was the last time.
“You can’t be serious,” hissed Hollis. “That’s a lunatic, with untold powers!”
“A lunatic,” said Ashlan, “with lunch. Do what you want.” She carried the body to the top of the ramp, then stopped abruptly.
Somehow she hadn’t been prepared for the actual bear. Standing upright, it was startling enough, little more than a piebald hide sagging over yellowing bones. Then it moved, lurching toward the shovel whose handle stood diagonally in her path, yanking it free with a surprisingly fluid motion. Its black lips flapped raggedly around its fangs, giving it an air of menace that its dull eyes belied. The fur of its chest swung, too, hanging open around some bright object that was splayed between its ribs with twine—a small, painted canvas, she saw, as it planted the shovel and came to a stop.
She peered at the painting, where robin’s egg blue and a rich, yolky yellow swirled around a curious illustration.
Curious, because it wasn’t a rune that seemed to animate the bear, but the likeness of a distant, ethereal face.
The face of the tall, paper-white woman with ink-stained fingers who stood beside it.
In her way, she was no less startling than the bear. Though her bare feet were muddy, she was quite dry, protected as she was by a vast, floating blanket of darkness. Some weightless substance of pure, shining black hung over her head, anticipating every diagonal drop of rain, writhing out to protect her from wetness.
As this otherworldly umbrella roiled, blotting out half the sky, the woman gave another pensive cough. “She’s almost dead, you know.” She stretched a stained finger toward the addict’s limp body, not looking at either of them. “You’ll want to put her in the sledge, with the other survivors.” Something seemed to occur to her, and she peered into the space over Ashlan’s shoulder. “Unless you wanted them to go—home?”
She stood a full foot taller than Ashlan, broad but slender. Her long hair was clean and combed, but full of burrs. She was dressed in hand-stitched furs and hides, festooned in feathers and animal bones, with the curled foot of a blackbird hanging from a length of twine around her throat.
“Home?” said Ashlan.
“Oh.” The woman smiled, her eyes seeming to focus five feet past the back of Ashlan’s head. “Not your home, of course. I meant death. You don’t want them to go to death.”
“No,” said Ashlan softly, wondering if Hollis might be right. It didn’t matter: the safest course was to humor her until they knew what she was after. “No, I don’t.”
“Then we’ll heal them, you and I.”
“You, uh—you sure you can?”
This was an absurd question to ask of anyone controlling a dead bear and a cloud of living night, and Ashlan regretted it immediately.
The woman looked irritated, then stroked a feather hanging from her hair, which seemed to calm her. “I am sure. I rarely heal—humans, other than myself. Never, really. But on the behalf of so esteemed a visitor, I’d be happy to. How many others have you brought?”
She’d heard them talking already, so there was no point in trying to hide Hollis. “Two. One other wounded, uh, human.”
The woman arched an eyebrow, glancing down the ramp. “Rest assured. Between what I know and what you are, they will be well in no time.”
“What I am?” Ashlan’s heart thudded. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes. You do.” She looked disgusted, and rubbed at the feather again, more rapidly this time. “What need has an immortal to pretend? What company have you been keeping, Lady?”
“Look, you seem a little confused. I’m not—”
The darkness leaked out above Ashlan’s head, an angry, shining mantle that looked ready to swallow her whole.
Untold powers.
Regardless of the chances it stood of doing her any permanent damage, playing coy suddenly felt like a terrible idea.
“Okay,” said Ashlan, shifting the limp weight in her arms. “So I’m—different. From most people.”
The woman barked mirthlessly. “You are not some—carnival act,” she said, as if it was painful to explain this aloud. “A contortionist is ‘different from most people.’ You are not a person at all, Lady.”
“Look.” Ashlan nearly lost her grip on the body in her arms. “You obviously don’t know me.”
“No. But the gazing-tree does,” said the woman, looking up into the cloud.
Something about the phrase niggled at Ashlan’s memory.
Of course. The weird, burnt-looking oak beside the path of thorny vines. Hollis had leaned against it, and it had slumped away from his hand.
It’s a gazing-tree, he’d said, wiping his hand furiously on the earth. You’ve never heard of them? Something to do with the Gone-Away, or so they used to say at the Court of Cru. Their wood was lousy with them.
And the clump of tree he’d displaced had drifted off—into a cloud of soft, black spores.
This woman’s umbrella was made of them, Ashlan reali
zed, peering up. At its edges, she could see the spores reaching out—and being rebuffed, by some unseen force, into a shape they were constantly resisting.
“That’s a tree?”
“Not currently,” said the woman. “But that’s what people call them, isn’t it? At one time, they were the sensory apparatus of Gone-Away Nex. Well, some say they belonged to Gone-Away Nunce, but that’s absurd—He barely had a brain, let alone one that spanned five kingdoms. But such are the problems of a modern translator of ancient Ethian.” She smiled to herself. “There was a time when each of the Gone-Away had their representatives in this world. Some, like the gazing-trees, yet remain, but they are—adrift, you might say, now that their gods are dead. This one,” she said, making it whirl with a gesture, “has decided it is mine, and I asked it, long ago, to keep watch for someone like you. You must have passed by another one yesterday, and the ward went off. I was napping, and it came streaming inside to tickle me awake.”
Ashlan struggled to keep her face blank. “Someone—like me.”
“Yes. You could not all be gone, of course—where would you go?—but I thought perhaps you were gone from here. I longed to meet you, but I couldn’t blame you for leaving. This wood was once so much more than a drainage ditch for the wars of Eth.” She flicked her wrist, exasperated again. “Oh, put her down before you exhaust yourself.”
Ashlan struggled to push all this from her mind. There was no reason to believe a thing this madwoman said. She wanted something from Ashlan, that much was clear—and Ashlan would need to negotiate with her, quickly.
“Where did you want me to put her?”
“Behind Umber,” said the woman, crouching down to peer at an earthworm that writhed in the muck at her feet.
“Behind—”
“The bear.” She pointed at a cape of serrated leaves woven into a long train that was tied to the bear’s shoulders with red and green ropes. So much was happening out here that Ashlan hadn’t even noticed. “I call him Umber. I call myself Tanka. Tanka Equinox.”
“Tanka.” Ashlan laid the body down behind the bear, grimacing as she looked at the blackened wreck of the woman’s right arm.
The hellfire had taken her hand, and half her forearm. Charred bone extended inches beyond anything that could still be called flesh. If Tanka could heal this, she was a miracle worker.
“I’m Ashlan Ley,” she said, turning away. “Or did you already know that?”
“Of course I didn’t,” she murmured to the earthworm, as if only it could understand Ashlan’s profound silliness. “The gazing-tree told me you were near, Lady Ley. It did not peruse the contents of your mind, or eavesdrop on your conversations. It simply sent a branch to tell me you had come. And so I asked it to dig toward you. Being what you are, I assumed you could easily feel its presence, and use your considerable powers to follow its path.” Her face fell. “I can see now that this was—overly optimistic.” She stood, and sniffed. “And now our tea is cold.”
“Right. I’ll, uh, I’ll get the others moving, then. Be right back.”
Ashlan trudged through the mud and into the tunnel, shaking her head.
Being what she was?
She had felt something, though.
A tug from below the earth.
She put it out of mind. Forgetting things might well be the only area of expertise she had any faith in.
“Why are you being so polite to her?” whispered Hollis, hidden in the darkness.
Ashlan turned on him. “What did you want me to do, Runt? Kick her in the shins and find out how strong her bear is?” Sighing, she peered back at the ramp, hoping the rain was loud enough to cover their bickering. “She’s crazy, yeah, but she’s calm. Let’s just keep her that way. She wants to have a tea party, so let’s play along. Unless you’d rather stay here, and have me send your regrets?”
“No.” He fiddled with the golden buttons on his waistcoat. “This is my expedition.” He brushed himself off, aggressively. “Is she—frightening to behold?”
Ashlan lifted the boy, grunting. “Compared to what, exactly?”
Hollis stood by the ramp. “Follow my lead, and do try not to muck this up.”
He waddled up confidently enough, then flinched as a sheet of rain struck his face. “Greetings!” he called when he’d recovered himself, giving a courtly bow. “My name is Hollis Runt, and I am the leader of this motley crew. My thanks for your unexpected and timely aid!”
“Lady Ley?” shouted Tanka as the cloud above her expanded to twice its size. “Why is that—thing talking?”
Hollis recoiled. “I beg your pardon!”
“He’s a mannikin,” said Ashlan, standing very still, hoping Hollis had the wit to do the same. “Like—like your bear. Animated by enchantment.”
“Like my—no.” Tanka frowned. “No, no, no. Umber is pleasing to the eye. And does not talk. This is a mobile excrescence in the shape of a doll.”
“Come now!” cried Hollis, pointing a finger up toward her. “You may be powerful beyond reckoning, and bully for you—but there is no excuse for such rudeness, madam!”
Ashlan was surprised to find her ire rising. “Hey, Tanka, could you, uh—go easy on him?”
“You would like me to treat it like a person?” Tanka cocked her head. “But it is a construct. A childish forgery of the city. A cage built of meat and words. And its rune-work is weak.”
“My rune-work has held for a full century!” Hollis shrieked.
“I don’t know about weak,” Ashlan muttered, feeling too defensive to control herself.
“Yes,” said Tanka, glaring. “Weak.” The black cloud had begun to descend, forming a bulwark behind Tanka that took Ashlan off guard. Even Hollis seemed cowed enough to shut his mouth.
Tanka seemed satisfied with their continued silence. “You should have a servant that better suits you, Lady Ley. I will happily paint you a helpmeet, when our work is finished.”
“Servant?” said Hollis quietly, balling his fists. “ ‘Servant,’ did you say? Why, I’m afraid you misunderstand, Tanka Equinox.”
“Easy, Runt,” said Ashlan, “let’s not—”
“I am no one’s servant,” snapped Hollis, “and I have taken too much abuse in my day to pretend otherwise. Your ‘Lady Ley’ is my employee, and this,” he said, gesturing broadly, “is my enterprise. I will be happy to treat with you, and I am by no means ungrateful for whatever help you might give, but I demand that you give me the respect I am damn well due.”
“Umber!” shouted Tanka, waving a hand. “Take the boy.”
Dropping its shovel, the bear lurched toward Ashlan, scooping the body from her arms with shocking swiftness. Its paws were surprisingly agile as they laid him down on its leafy sledge. Turning away, it lumbered toward a grand, hollow tree in the distance, around which a wooden ramp spiraled. Its bark was swallowed in new growth, and near its elephantine boughs, Ashlan spied carven windows alive with flickering lights.
“Tell the doll I meant it no offense,” said Tanka. She curled her fingers, and a long, black wisp emerged from the cloud, hissing down into the earth beside them, freezing both of them where they stood. “But it distresses me to think of you serving anyone. Much less—well. You belong to this wood, Lady Ley, as surely as it belongs to you.”
“I don’t know who you think I am,” Ashlan murmured.
That was all she could manage to say. She and Hollis had turned to gape as the wisp became a stream. As it flowed, it settled rapidly into the outline of a gazing-tree twice the size of the one they’d seen along the way. The spores were gushing in, root-first, filling its shell with an inky solidity as they shoved piled earth out of their way.
“It is clear,” said Tanka, “that you don’t. And that is no impediment, Lady Ley. You must walk whatever path you have found under your feet. It is not mine to question, nor to divert. But it does seem to be leading to my door, wouldn’t you say?”
Ashlan turned from the shining leaves. Tanka seemed to be waiti
ng for her approval. Somehow this was more unnerving than any show of force.
“I mean.” She glanced down at Hollis. “That all right with you, boss?”
“Hm!” The word seemed to help him find his tongue. “So long as whatever business you have with Ashlan Ley can be conducted while you tend to the junkies,” he said, waving helplessly at the treehouse where they’d already disappeared, “I have no objection. As I said, I’m not ungrateful in the slightest for any aid you might give us! Or have given. I—I believe this little fracas was largely due to the long and frustrating night we spent underground. May we put it behind us?”
Tanka gave no sign that she’d heard him. She was still staring at Ashlan, waiting.
“Um.” Ashlan struggled not to stare back. “How about that tea?”
“It is cold,” said Tanka, striding suddenly into the rain, leaving the cloud of spores to finish unraveling.
Ashlan and Hollis stood for a long moment, watching her go.
“Runt, I think you’re going to have to play the silent partner a while,” whispered Ashlan, stepping slowly away from the looming shape of the gazing-tree. “This is—I don’t know what this is. But it could probably kill you faster than I could react.” Across the lawn, Tanka began to climb the spiraling ramp. “You good with that?”
“Yes. So long as we are clear,” he whispered back, “that your new friend has eaten too many mushrooms without a guidebook.”
“Agreed. So let’s just find out what she wants and get out of here.”
Hollis nodded, staring balefully at the gazing-tree. “As soon as possible.”
Tanka waved from a platform at the top of the treehouse, then stepped through a broad doorway curtained with hanging white moss, which swung behind her as she disappeared within.
“For your sake,” said Hollis, striking out, “let’s hope that bear can cook.”
It wasn’t moss.
Whatever white substance dangled from the doorway, sliding cold and rubbery across the nape of Ashlan’s neck as she followed Hollis inside, it wasn’t moss. Her whole body shuddered as she struggled through thick strands of the stuff. Once through, she twisted her arm behind her back in a futile attempt to brush the clinging sensation from her skin.
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