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Chapter Fifteen

Becca paused on the threshold of the workroom, taking time, as she hadn't done, last night or this morning, to look about her. It was an ordered and orderly place, with cords of drying leaves, braids of wild onion, and clusters of lavender hanging from the rafters. Other ingredients were sorted meticulously into drawers and baskets on the shelves over one worktable, while more shelves held pots of salve, tonics, tinctures, and twists of herbs.

It was all so familiar and comfortable that she felt her eyes prick again. Really, Becca, she scolded herself, blinking the tears away, when did you become a watering-pot?

A small sniff came from inside the room, followed by another. It would seem, then, that she was not the only watering-pot at hand.

Violet Moore stood at the worktable against the far wall, her back to the door. She was pulling down baskets and peering into drawers, touching twists of this and branches of that—doing inventory, Becca thought, stepping carefully into the room—or mourning.

"Gran always kept ahead," Violet said, though she did not turn her head. Perhaps she was speaking to herself. "I'll need to go out tomorrow for more cadmyon and marisk."

Becca came 'round to the girl's right, watching as she stretched to take down a basket. "Cadmyon or marisk, I would think," she said. "One blooms in spring, the other in fall." No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she wished them back. How foolish—

Violet turned her head with a smile.

"You must know seasons!"

"Indeed, I have been long enough in the Vaitura to recall that here there are no seasons," Becca said, irritation sharpening her voice. She smiled, to show that her anger was for herself, and not for Violet. "I had been trying to teach the garden at Xandurana to heed a proper cycle, but I fear it was an uphill road."

"It seems to me that seasons only make some things rare when they are most wanted! Surely it is better to have everything available at all times, so that supplies may be replenished as they are needed, rather than hoarded and told over."

"Perhaps it is," Becca said slowly. "In Xandurana, it had seemed to me that the plants constantly risked themselves in the crush of everything growing at once, but it may be that I am wrong—or that the benefits reaped outweigh the risk. Certainly, I have never seen such results as you achieved here." She raised her unmarked right hand.

"The land is rich with virtue on this side of the hellroad," Violet Moore said, shyly. "Gran said that. Even seeds that were sung into the land, and so grew more potent plants—over there—she said, didn't have half the virtue as wild gathers do on Lady Sian's land."

"Certainly, there is no overnight healing on the other side of the keleigh," Becca said, "no matter if the seeds were sung over!"

"Well," Violet said, pulling down a basket and frowning into its depths. "Much depends on the injury. Your hands were cut, but the bones were whole. If I'd had to splint your fingers or your arm, you would not have seen so swift a healing." Stretching high on her toes, she put the basket back. "We need corish root, too. Well." She gave Becca a sidelong glance. "Let me show you the rest of the house, then we can do a survey of the garden."

"There's no need for me to see the rest of the house, surely?" Becca protested, though she followed Violet through an interior door and into a wide room.

"Indeed there is!" the girl said, briskly. "If you are to be our healer, then this will be your house."

"Stay! Sian did not bring me to be your healer!" Becca cried, stopping in mid-step.

Violet turned to look at her.

"You were at the Speaking," Becca told her, sharply. "I am here only until the Queen sends for me." Seeing the girl's eyes widen, she softened her voice. "And, besides, I would not wish to usurp your place, Miss Moore. You are the healer here."

"I don't know enough!" Violet wailed. "Gran had not released me; I was still her 'prentice when she—she—"

"No one ever knows enough," Becca said, as Sonet had once said to her. "We do as much as we can, as well as we can do it. And we learn, from our mistakes even more than our successes." She sighed at the girl's stricken face. "I will teach you as much as I can while I am here. But I cannot think that I will be here for very many days." And who knew, she thought bitterly, what Meripen Vanglelauf's sunshield might require, other than the right to knock her to the ground and hold her helpless at whim.

She sighed. Nancy had helped her up, straightened her clothing and made her presentable again. There were only the bruises on her rump and her pride to testify to her misadventure.

Becca shook herself, and looked about for a happier topic of consideration.

"This is a very pleasant room!" she said to Violet Moore's anxious eyes. "I would be very happy to guest here, but—"

"You must stay somewhere," Violet interrupted, "until the Queen wants you. It might as well be here. I live here, after all, and it will be—be convenient for you."

Ah, Becca thought, and smiled to herself. "That sounds a reasonable plan," she said to Violet. "I will be pleased to stay as your guest, though you will have to bear Nancy, who I own is odd."

Violet nodded seriously. "I'll be glad to have you and your servant," she said, and this time Becca did not smile. For here was a way to fill the house with voices and motion, and to keep at bay the malicious whispering shadows of guilt.

Violet moved her hand, showing Becca the door opposite them.

"The kitchen is through here," she said, beckoning Becca to follow her. "And the garden just behind."

"You know," she said, after Becca had duly admired the pots hung on their hooks and the neat cooking hearth. "There's a saying we have here—'I'll do it in a Fey's hurry.'"

Becca tipped her head. "And that means?"

"In the sweet by-and-by," Violet said, pushing open the door and stepping out into the garden. "The Queen may not call you as soon as that."

* * *

Setting wards is a tricky business at best. Factor in monsters from beyond the ken of trees, and it approached impossible.

Meri took his time walking back along the track. He noted the near invisible traces of Brume's passage, but saw no signs of another horse until he had passed beyond a wide curve that put New Hope Village out of sight.

There, he found signs a-plenty. He followed what must be Rosamunde's hoof prints off the path and into the brush, frowning when he found wisp of fur and a misplaced clod. Rebecca Beauvelley had let them understand that she had designed and executed her own escape, and yet here it would appear that she had enlisted aid.

Or had she?

Meri crouched down, the better to study the signs. Brethren were as curious as cats. It could have been that one had dawdled nearby, enchanted by the Newoman's aura, or the novelty of someone riding blindly into the wood after dark.

So. The Brethren had waited, here, and then had followed—?

Meri raised his head, seeking, found the sign again, further on, and rose, finding the place where its path intersected the horse's route—and where the Brethren took the lead.

"Well," he murmured, "it would appear that Rebecca Beauvelley has allies."

The Gardener dressed his wounds, a ralif offered. He was obligated to come, when she sent for him.

"Obligated," Meri muttered. The Brethren were usually more canny than to allow themselves to become obligated. Still, it could have happened—and especially if there was blood in it.

He followed the trail, admiring its essentially linear tendency—Brethren in the lead, horse following, dainty of her footing, but clearly moving in haste, but with no attempt to conceal themselves. That seemed odd to him. Had they thought that Sian would not come after? Or had all the care gone to putting distance behind them before they went to ground? If the Brethren had a lair nearby—but would it lead a Newoman there?

It was then that he found the frizenbush, and understood the Brethren's plan.

Straight into the heart of the bush went the tracks, and so did Meri. At the hollow center, he shook his head in disgust at the wreckage of twigs and leaf, the hopelessly muddled ground, and the broken gap in the sheltering branches, already beginning to weave themselves tight.

Meri hunkered, needles sticking into his back, and considered what he saw before him. The Brethren had thought to hide them in the frizenbush, trusting it to shield them from Sian. Which it might have done though Meri thought Brume would not have been so easily fooled. Also, there was the question of Rebecca Beauvelley's cursed brightness. Even the natural dampening powers of the frizenbush might have been overcome by such a display.

He frowned down at the hopelessly churned soil. Had they found the monster hiding in the heart of the bush, waiting for prey?

No, he thought, after a moment. That rupture in the basket of branches had been made from something thrusting inward. Meri leaned forward, spying a fan of bloody drops across blue-green branches. Someone, he thought, had scored a hit. His wager was that it had been Rosamunde, though that might have been his new-found affection speaking.

He came to his feet, scrutinizing the branches for a sign of the mare's departure. A glitter of dusty gold drew his eye upward, to a long strand of brown hair caught among the needles. No need to ask to whom that belonged. Carefully, he reached up, untwisted it from the needles and slipped it into his pouch.

"She has," he said to nothing and to no one in particular, "less wisdom than a seedling."

There was no answer, which was, he supposed, just as well.

He stepped through the branches and considered the options available to him. The end of Rosamunde's flight, he knew, and though it was probable that he should follow it, if only to be sure that the mare's idiot rider hadn't left any other rag-tags of kest strewn carelessly about, it would seem that backtracking her pursuer's route would be the more . . . instructive.

* * *

It was hot.

It was always hot in this place. No matter if he sat, or walked or slept or thought, the heat did not abate.

If he wished, he could indeed produce a breeze, but it failed to cool unless he invested more of his thought and energy than he wished to give, and in the end he was just as uncomfortable for all that he was master of himself.

He had begun to wonder, recently, if this unremitting heat were a deliberate, and vital, segment of Zaldore's plan of betrayal. His preference for comfort and order were well-known. Perhaps she had confused preference with need, and plotted that he would use all of his time and expend all of his kest seeking comfort, rather than rescue.

That he had turned his thoughts first to rescue proved yet again that he was Zaldore's superior, in all ways. That he had failed in his attempts to secure that rescue . . . well. He was not defeated yet.

If only it were not so hot.

He did miss his Rebecca, not only for her kest that he might draw on to his own benefit, or for the additional small comforts that she might offer, but for her naive observation. One to whom everything was strange must naturally ask questions of an elder. And he had found Rebecca's questions—very often—illuminating. It was a matter of thought and direction.

For example! It had been he, Altimere, who had realized that the very rotation that contained the keleigh created a spiral that might be traveled by those of good fortitude and a strong mind, and since the first one or two dispatched to attempt this theory had not returned, he had gone himself to prove it.

He done much walking between the worlds. While he was not so foolish as to think that he knew the keleigh in all its changeable faces, yet in his travels there, he had seen torrent and snowstorm, wind, anomalous fogs, and, yes, heat. Nothing endured, within the keleigh; all and everything was subject to change.

This heat, changeless and unremitting . . .

He shook a kerchief out of the mist and mopped his brow, noting that he was leaning against a ralif, and trying to recall if he had caused it to be there.

That was one of the known dangers of traversing the keleigh, after all; its nature clouded not only vision, but also thought and recall.

Heat.

He was no ordinary adventurer, to have so often ventured into the other world, but a seeker after truth and insight. To some he was a philosopher. But no, that would not do. Altimere was no mere philosopher, observing and analyzing, only to write a report which was bound into a book, of interest only to other philosophers.

No, he was a creator of the first water, an artist of artifice.

He slipped his hand into his pocket, feeling for, and finding, the top he had used in his demonstration of kest and motion. Top in hand, he stood there, recalling the party, and Zaldore's interest. It seemed very long ago.

Waving his hand to inform this odd world that a glass cube now existed on the generosity of his will, he spun the top onto the cube and watched it, absorbed, thinking of the heat.

The artificers—they named themselves mechanics—of the world beyond the keleigh were fine craftsmen; he admired their ability to work with objects of stern form and gain understanding of their peculiar natures. He marveled at their ability to build new devices that were based, not on generations of lore, but on self-acquired knowledge and perception. Those mechanics and chemists and mathematicians were much closer to him in thought and practice than the courtly philosophers who never dared venture into danger to prove their cherished theories.

The top twirled slower and slower, till, at last, it toppled over.

Heat!

In that other world, he had seen demonstrations, theoretical and practical, regarding the nature and workings of heat. Heat was the key to moving things, heat was the key to melting things. Heat could be added, but the act of compression could also produce heat. Constraining and shrinking the room available to a gas concentrated it, and made it hot.

Sometimes, to the point of explosion.

Now he snatched up the top, now he grabbed away the table of glass, now he stared into the mist, recalling experiments going well, recalling the glorious explosive failure of the steam wagon.

He sat down at the base of the ralif.

There was not one wall between freedom and himself, but two.

Zaldore had much to answer for.

* * *

The monster's trail more subtle than he had expected, given its entirely unsubtle attack on Rosamunde. Meri followed with interest, marveling at the creature's lightness of foot. Perhaps it had assistance?

"The Low Fey who were partners in the attack against the Gardener and her allies," he said to the trees. "Are they known to the trees?"

There was silence while he back-tracked his quarry around a clutter of brush and low-growers.

Such arise from time to time, Ranger, a culdoon said diffidently. The eldest think their kind is recent and not well-rooted.

This was hardly useful, but culdoon were not wise. And it was notable, Meri thought, that it was one of the lesser trees who had made answer, while the great ones remained silent.

"Thank you," he said. "It would be . . . of interest of me, to hear when the trees next notice another branch of this Low Fey."

We will watch, Ranger, the culdoon promised, which Meri knew that it would do, until it forgot.

The ground sheltered by the low-growers was damp; Meri clearly saw the imprint of the monster's hooves, growing more defined for the next half-dozen steps, as if it had leapt in and landed hard—

From nowhere.

Meri stopped, staring at the ground. Directly before him the hoof prints were carved into the damp soil, precisely as if the monster he back-tracked had leapt down from a height, and landed firm, an illusion made more compelling by the fact that there were no prints, nor any other sign of passage beyond.

He cast along the angle, looking up, but there were no trees in the proper place or of necessary height to produce those prints. The wood here had given over to low-growth for a space, as if there had been a fire, or—

A gleam of silver beyond the bowing fronds of a tall weed captured his eye. His belly froze, but he forced himself to creep forward, as if stalking dangerous game, and keeping the good green of living plants all about him.

There, only a few steps past those green fronds under which he now sheltered, was the flat shine of silver against the air, and the cold sense of something neither alive nor decently dead.

Meri shuddered. The . . . apparition hovered twice his height above the floor of the forest—a flat rectangle of dead air, boiling with languid grey mists.

It was, he thought, glancing behind him for another look at that first, impossible pair of hoof prints, high enough to account for their angle and depth.

Meri sat back on his heels and closed his eye.

"Did they—the Low Fey—accompany the beast out of this . . . thing . . . ?"

Yes, Ranger, the culdoon answered. They rode on its back.

"Is that object—of—the keleigh?"

There was no answer.

Meri opened his eye, glaring at the rectangle. Its edges seemed to be becoming less . . . definite, smokier, and he had a moment's dread, that the mists it enclosed would, unconfined, pour free out into the unsuspecting wood.

The edges continued to fade, and the mists, as well, until—abruptly—it was gone, leaving behind a disagreeable taint on the air.

"How," Meri asked the wood about him, "am I to ward against that?"

There was no answer.

After a time, he rose and, taking care with it, crafted a simple repulsion ward. He reasoned that it did no good to spend a great deal of kest—even had he a great deal of kest to expend—to ward a road that faded in and out, and might never manifest in this exact location again.

When the ward was in place, and he had rested, he spoke to the wood.

"It would assist me, a Ranger in the service of the trees," he said formally, "if I were informed of the manifestation of such beasts and Low Fey as attacked the Gardener yestereve."

His words echoed slightly, as if they traveled a great distance. Meri waited, and at last came the thin, papery voice of a very old elitch, indeed.

We will be vigilant on your behalf, Ranger.

* * *

Violet had decreed tea and bustled off to make it, leaving Becca blessedly, if temporarily, alone on the bench beneath the bittern tree to overlook the garden.

It was a pleasant place, with neat rows of cultivated herbs, clusters of vegetables, and a border of mary's gold; winberige grew with abandon over a low arbor, heavy fruit nestled amid alternating leaves of dark green and parchment. The air was a-buzz with honeybees, and gay with flutterwisps, their wings almost as brilliant as Nancy's.

Becca sighed. Despite having been long months in the Vaitura, the mingled dry leaves and green among clusters of the same plant struck her eye—and her gardener's heart—as wrong.

"Was the Vaitura always without seasons?" she asked, expecting no answer, nor did she receive one for the space of time it took a flutterwisp to drink its fill from a mary's gold bloom and rise on the back of the sweet breeze.

There were seasons, a voice—a very old voice, so it seemed to Becca—said laboriously. There were seasons, and great storms of rain, and lightning, and snow.

"Why did it change, then?" she asked, when it seemed clear that the tree was not about to speak further.

It changed . . . the old voice wavered, as if uncertain of the meaning of either her question or its answer. It changed, it said again, more definitively.

"But something must have precipitated it," Becca argued. "Change does not simply occur."

A light step and the clink of pottery warned her. She pressed her lips firmly together. It would not do to be seen talking to herself, she thought.

"Thank you," she said, as Violet Moore set a cup on the bench next to her. She picked it up so the girl would have room to sit, and sipped cautiously.

She smiled as the simple taste cleansed her mouth: fremoni tea, sweetened with honey. Comfort in a cup, as Sonet had used to say.

"Well," the girl said, with a brightness that sounded forced to Becca's ear. "What do you think of our garden, Healer?"

"I think it a very fine basic medicinal garden," Becca said truthfully. "All of the healer's friends are present, saving those—such as marisk, cadmyon, and corish root—that do not thrive under cultivation. I wonder . . . " She paused, and sipped her tea, considering the sudden thought. But really, she said to herself, why not?

"I wonder," she continued, "if I might plant something of my own here?"

Violet opened her eyes wide. "I don't see why not," she said, and without a doubt the bright tone was forced. "After all, this is your garden."

* * *

Rosamunde's trail was considerably less subtle than that of the monster which pursued her. She had simply attempted to outrun her attacker, and thus preserve her rider's life. Meri could hardly fault her; indeed, the simple strategy might have served her well, indeed, had she been a full Fey horse, rather than a quarter-breed accustomed to the very different horrors that prevailed on the Newmen side of the keleigh.

Or, if she had been pursued by a creature bound to the laws of the land.

He marked the moment that the monster left off its pursuit; it had paused, and sunk back on its haunches, the action driving its hooves deeper into the ground, and from that ungainly position it had leapt, small stones and crumbs of soil rolling away from the scars in the ground.

Afraid of what he might see, Meri nonetheless sighted along the line of that jump, but if there had been a similar fog-filled rectangle overhead last evening, it had since dissipated.

Unsettled, he continued, following Rosamunde's trail alone, now, until he came to the place where they had been beset, the enemy that should have fallen behind suddenly appearing at the fore.

He stood there for a dozen heartbeats, surveying the scene, the torn trees and trampled ground a fitting setting for the monster that his arrow had dropped not a hand's span from Rosamunde's front hooves.

The monster was not where he had left it. He had not, by this time, expected that it would be.

In the interests of thoroughness, he searched the area until he found the place where it had leapt into reality again, and he searched again, with his back against a ralif tree, for any untoward workings or unclaimed kest, but all he found was another strand of Rebecca Beauvelley's pretty hair, sparkling gold among the disordered grasses.

He untangled it and and put it with the other one in his pouch, his thoughts on darker matters. Deliberately, he crossed back to the ralif and put his back against its trunk.

"There was the carcass of a beast here," he murmured, tipping his head back and closing his eye.

Ranger, there was. It went to mist. They all do.

"All?" Meri opened his eyes in startlement. "How many have there been?"

Ranger—across how many sunrises? The elders believe that they have become more common.

"Will it aid anything to set wards here?"

There was a pause, not long enough for him to grow restive.

The elders believe that a simple ward, such as you have constructed once this day, will suffice. A much shorter pause, then, You may draw upon my kest for the working, Ranger.

Meri sighed.

"Thank you," he said softly, regretting the necessity, yet unable to deny the need.

He centered himself carefully, brought the image of the ward to the front of his mind, and drew a green draught of the ralif's kest. His blood sparkled, the air tasted of brandy, and the wind filled his ears with seductive music. The image of the ward faded, and he panicked, terrified that he had drawn more than he could administer in his reduced state.

Will is the master of power, his mother's voice told him sternly from memory. Apply your will, Meri Wooden Head, or learn to enjoy subjection.

He took a deep, intoxicating breath, and concentrated his will. The ward wavered to the front of his thought; he touched it with the tree's rich kest—and shouted wordlessly as it blazed into actuality, spitting green fire; shouting dismay and distress.

Meri shook his head, not terribly surprised to find himself on his knees. He pushed to his feet, shivering in the absence of the tree's power, and made an unsteady bow.

"My thanks," he said to the ralif.

Our thanks, Ranger, the tree replied. You serve the trees well.

* * *

"What is this?" Violet unwrapped the cloth to reveal the gnomelike rootlings. "I don't think I've ever seen anything like."

"It's called duainfey," Becca said, from her seat on the bench. Violet had refused to allow her down in the dirt, and had claimed the planting as "'prentice work." Becca tried not to let her disappointment show, while vowing that she would soon give herself the pleasure of working among Lucy Moore's plants.

"Those were given me by my mistress, on the other side of the keleigh, with her own 'prentice book. The entry there claims it a rare plant, even in its home land. I had planted some at—in my garden in Xandurana, and they took well to the soil there. It may be that they will flourish here, too. I would like to have a supply, for it has its uses."

Violet picked one of the rootlings up, turning it over curiously.

"Mind your fingers!" Becca cried. "They exude an oil, which will raise blisters." She held out her hand, showing fingers innocent of any mark, and Violet laughed.

"Yes, very good," Becca said, with a smile of her own. "But, truly, Violet, I was burned; my fingers would still show the scars from the blisters, if your superlative healing not reft them from me."

"Well." Violet put the rootling briskly on the ground, and studied her own fingers. "I don't appear to be burnt," she said, holding her hand out to Becca with a smile. "But I will be careful. How are these planted?"

"Roots down and spread, and buried only half-way," Becca said. Violet nodded and reached for the hand-spade.

"What are its uses?" she asked, her attention on her work.

Becca hesitated, which was, of course, ridiculous.

"It has several uses," Becca said slowly, wondering at her reluctance. Violet was learning the healing arts, and there were several plants hanging in Lucy Moore's workroom that gave surcease from pain.

"One leaf-tip, taken by mouth, is said to bestow clear sight. A tea made from dried leaves purifies the blood. The fresh leaves, taken by mouth, give release."

Violet looked up at her, brown eyes wide. "Release?"

"Surely you have been taught that healers have a duty to see that needless suffering not occur. Sometimes, release is all that we can give."

Violet nodded, looking down again, though she did not immediately continue with her work. "Gran did teach me," she said softly. "But, I don't, that is, I haven't—"

"Release is a gift," Becca said gently; "terrible, but a gift, nonetheless. It is not given often, and that is as it should be."

Violet finished planting the first rootling and reached for another.

"Have you," she asked, "ever given the gift, Miss Beauvelley?"

Becca closed her eyes, remembering the feel of the leaf in her mouth, the pleasant wash of warmth in her blood.

"No," she said softly, "I have not."

 

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