Sian stood under the big elitch tree, brave in her leggings and shirt. She appeared, to Becca's eye, well-rested and in possession of her temper. On her left stood Meripen Vanglelauf, hands behind his back and legs braced wide, and on his left Sam Moore, arms crossed over his chest. On Sian's right stood Elizabeth Moore, face calm, and hands folded before her.
Gathered in a loose semi-circle before them were perhaps three dozen folk, ranging from the greybeard with his stick to a babe in a sling at his mother's breast.
Good morning, Gardener, a deep voice echoed inside her head. I am called the Hope Tree. You are welcome to shelter beneath my branches.
"Thank you," she whispered, feeling tears start to her eyes, as Sian looked up and saw her.
The Engenium inclined her head gravely, and raised her hand, beckoning with long, elegant fingers. Becca went cold, her feet rooted to the ground. Sian wanted her up there, in front of the entire village? She—
Peace, Gardener. Sian means to arrange for your protection. And a new seedling in the grove is known to all.
True enough, she thought, swallowing. True enough.
Still, it was—hard, harder even than walking through Altimere's garden, past the flowers on which she had been raped, through rooms where she had serviced Altimere's guests. Her stomach twisted, and she was abruptly sorry for her simple breakfast of tea and bread.
Somehow, she made it to the little group at the front of the crowd. Elizabeth Moore smiled at her and took a step sideways, making room for Becca to slip into position at Sian's immediate right.
"Good sun, Rebecca Beauvelley. I trust you slept well?" Sian sounded positively courtly. Becca looked up into intent, sea-colored eyes.
"I slept well," she acknowledged, which was true, if not entirely true. "Thank you," she added, belatedly.
The Fey inclined her head and turned to face the assembled villagers. Slowly, the gesture rich with meaning, she placed her fingertips together, raised her arms to the height of her shoulder, and spread them wide, as if offering an embrace to all of those gathered.
"Good sun, people of New Hope. I am Sian, Engenium of Sea Hold, keeper of your oath, protector of your land. Today, I bring you a duty, and a warning."
There was a little stir at this, though none of the faces Becca saw expressed dismay. Curiosity, rather, and a little intrigue. Sian lowered her arms, slowly.
"First, your duty." She extended a long hand, caught Becca' wrist, and stepped forward, Becca, perforce, went with her.
"This is Rebecca Beauvelley, who crossed the keleigh in company with a High Fey. Queen Diathen in fair Xandurana requests on her behalf the boon of your hospitality, until such time as she is required at court. Rebecca Beauvelley is a healer and a gardener."
Speak to them, Gardener, the Hope Tree urged her.
"Good sun," she said, her voice thinner than she liked. She cleared her throat, and raised her chin, meeting the eyes of the old man who had spoken to her last night, and told her that there were not many in New Hope who knew what an Earl was.
"I am pleased to offer my skills for the greater good," she said, the words coming somewhat easier off her tongue, "and in return for the care of myself, my horse, and my servant."
The old man gave her a toothy grin, and an easy nod. "That's right, Missy," he said. "And the trees talk to you, don't they?"
"They do," she answered. "The trees have been very kind to me."
"That's well, then. Ye can help young Master Vanglelauf to figure out what's gone amiss with ours."
Becca swallowed bile, refusing to think of the one-eyed Fey and what service he was likely to require of her.
"I will do everything in my power," she said faintly, "to assist the trees."
The old man gave her another nod. "That's right," he said again, and pointed his long chin at Sian. "Is there other news, Lady?"
"In fact, Jack Wood, there is. I must warn you all that strange Fey may come into your village. They may say that they are sent from the Queen, or from me. Direct all such visitors to Master Vanglelauf, who will remain here as my emissary and the instrument of my will."
That created something more of a stir among those who stood in deference to their Lady's word. Indeed, Becca felt a frisson along her own nerves, and wondered if Sian had touched them all with her power.
"I have," Elizabeth Moore said from her place behind Becca, "asked the trees to call Palin and Vika in to us, as well." There was a pause, as if the woman had smiled. "After all, Master Vanglelauf must sleep sometime."
"These strangers are enemies of the Queen?" a sandy haired man called from the crowd. "Should we arm ourselves, Lady?"
"With the permission of the headman and the tree-kin," Meripen Vanglelauf's cool voice sliced effortlessly through the minor babble arising from this question. "With their permission, I will set wards, and request that the trees be vigilant for us. It should not come to fighting."
"Indeed," a woman cried from very near to Becca, her voice thin and shrill, "it ought not come to fighting! Fey can enslave with a look! The best answer is to hide yourselves in the wood!"
Becca gasped, belatedly recognizing her own voice, and pressed her fingers against her lips.
The green was silent, saving the movement of a breeze through the branches stretching above them all.
"In fact," Sian said, calmly, "that is not ill advice. It is better for Fey to deal with Fey, especially when there may be, as John Culdoon surmises, opposing political goals in play. You are of the land, by your oaths and by your actions. The land will protect you, and the trees will shield you. Use these gifts wisely, and all will be well."
She looked out over those assembled, to the right, and to the left.
"I hold your oath," she said and it seemed to Becca that the very air shimmered with the force of her words. "I carry your lives next to my heart. You may be at peace, under my protection."
Becca shuddered, tasting the ghost of peppered wine score her throat. Protection.
Sian's word is good, Gardener. She does not hold her duty light.
Becca swallowed, stomach roiling. Beside her, Sian raised her arms to shoulder height and curved them inward until her fingertips touched, then lowered her joined hands to her waist.
"Good sun. Good growth. Good travel," she said. "Until we meet again."
"Good sun, Lady!" "Until again!" "Travel safe, Lady!" the chorus of well-wishes washed over Becca, leaving her feeling limp and strained. Blindly, she turned and walked away from Sian's side, past Elizabeth Moore and away.
No one tried to stop her; no one joined her. She had no clear notion of where she was going, only that she had to get away, to be by herself and order her thoughts.
"Hope Tree?" she whispered.
Gardener. What would you?
"Do you know where Rosamunde—my horse—is?"
There was a pause, in which she still somehow felt the tree's presence, though it did not speak. Slowly, she became aware of a picture growing inside her head, of a lean-to sheltered by a larch tree. Inside the lean-to, shoulder pressed against the gate—was Rosamunde, ears perked forward as if she had seen Becca approach.
Becca felt her heart lift. She blinked, disoriented by the vividness of the picture inside her head. Another blink brought the world around her into focus. Behind her, she heard voices—Elizabeth Moore and Sian—and the sounds of people returning to their daily business. Ahead of her, she saw the green, and Gran Moore's house, with its attached workroom and side-garden. To her left . . .
To her left, and some distance past Gran Moore's house, along a sort of grassy avenue, she saw the hint of a fence covered in winberige blossoms, and the corner of a roof, shrouded in larch leaves.
"Thank you, Hope Tree," she whispered, and began to walk down that grassy avenue.
A dozen steps along, she heard a whinny, and an emphatic snort, as if Rosamunde were scolding her for being so slow.
Laughing, Becca began to run.
* * *
There was, Altimere admitted to himself, a degree of risk involved in what he planned to do—risk to his liberty, to his continued survival, and to his plans for the Vaitura, and the keleigh. Still, an artificer did not falter because of risk. Indeed, as his teachers had carefully instructed him, risk was the heady land that lay between can and cannot, where all things are possible.
Still, the mists had not yet succeeded in making of him a fool, and he had prepared as well as he could. A bell-jar wrung from the sticky mists sat upon a similarly constructed worktable. It was like enough to the arrangements previously known to his subject that he felt it would not rail against its confinement—out of habit, if nothing else.
It did trouble him, that his sole raw material remained the mist. He had reasons—compelling reasons—not to wish the mists to taste what he would draw to him.
He checked his precautions once again, and flicked his finger against the bell-jar, smiling slightly when it rang.
The bond between those who had shared kest was strong, and the bond between student and teacher.
But the bond between the creator, and that which was created—that was a special and potent bond, indeed.
Altimere shaped the thought of his artifact—his great work, though it seemed so small. He shaped the thought lovingly, building detail upon detail, until it stood in his mind as vividly as if the actual construct hovered before him.
When he was satisfied with his detail and his concentration, he flicked his finger once more against the glass, and spoke a single word.
"Come."
* * *
"It would have been mannerly," Meri said, "to have allowed me to know beforehand that I was going to be burdened with your will."
Sian gave him a sidelong glance. "Perhaps it would have been, Meri, but a moment's thought would surely have shown you that I had no other options."
"I think you have another option," he said, as they walked beyond his nest and toward the threshold to the forest.
"Do I? Teach it to me, by all means."
"You might take Diathen's hostage to Sea Hold. Indeed, I would call that your only option, rather than leaving her here 'mong Newmen, with no protection save one ill-used and befuddled Ranger."
"I think you give yourself too little credit, Meri! It is hardly like you. As to taking Rebecca Beauvelley to Sea Hold—I dare not."
"Dare not?" He stopped to stare at her. "You dare not burden Sea Hold, which has stood in the teeth of storm and sea, and weathered not only the last war, but two before that—with one Newoman?" He raised a hand to Sian's elevated eyebrows. "I grant her untrained and heedless, but she certainly mounts no threat to Sea Hold. To this village, however, and to those whose oath you hold, she is a threat, indeed. And that before we come to the matter of "strange Fey" who may have an interest in her failing to return to Diathen's hand." He laughed, mirthlessly. "Who shall be shown to me, shall they?"
"Meri, you must have slept poorly; you are not usually this humble of your abilities. There may be strange Fey. Equally, there may be no one at all. And in any wise, I still do not dare bring her to Sea Hold—not while she is bound to a sunshield."
He opened his mouth—and closed it with a sigh.
"Precisely." Sian bowed, put her fingers to her mouth and whistled.
"At least tell me," Meri said, as they stood awaiting the answer to her call, "if it is Altimere the Artificer than I may expect to entertain on behalf of the lady."
Sian sighed. "Cousin," she said softly, "I cannot say. Altimere the Artificer has disappeared, and Councilor Zaldore with him. Their lack is the reason the Queen's Constant was put to recess."
"Zaldore . . . " Meri frowned. "She who sent the geas to me under your name."
"That very Zaldore," Sian agreed, as the shadows shifted, and grey Brume ambled up to her.
"My very good friend." She reached out to stroke his nose tenderly. "Wilt bear me home?"
The stallion blew, and bowed. Sian threw a leg over his back, settling as he rose. She smiled down at Meri.
"You are a hero, Cousin."
"It pleased some to say so, based on a single action, taken many sunrises ago," he returned. "It bears recalling that there has been much that I might have done better, since."
Sian laughed, and Brume turned, moving from a walk to a canter with seamless grace.
He waited until they were out of sight, then turned back to the village, sending his thought ahead to the elitch.
Where might I find the Gardener, Elder?
* * *
"Not a mark on you!" Becca ran her hand wonderingly over Rosamunde's shoulder, across her barrel and flank. Horsehair flowed like silk beneath her palm, no tears or rents apparent. Rosamunde blew and stamped, twice, the muscles moving sweetly, with no hitch or grab.
Becca laughed. "Yes, all you like and more! But you must allow me to be amazed—and so very grateful." She stroked Rosamunde's flank again. "You must not take such terrible risks for me," she whispered, her voice choked with tears. "You and Nancy—I do not deserve either of you."
She moved forward. Rosamunde bowed her head, allowing Becca to stroke her soft nose. "I wonder if Nancy can saddle you?" she murmured. "Perhaps she can; there is nothing she has not been equal to, yet. Perhaps I will even be allowed to ride you, in-between sleep and servitude." The tears, conquered once, rose again. She leaned her forehead against Rosamunde's neck and bit her lip. "You will think me the greatest goose alive," she whispered, "but I have allowed myself to be bound again."
Rosamunde muttered, perhaps in irritation, for which Becca could hardly blame her. Surely it was not ridiculous to hope that one's rider could preserve her liberty for more than a day?
Rosamunde trilled a welcome. Becca stiffened, then turned, expecting perhaps Violet Moore, come to cajole or bully her errant patient into taking a nice nap.
Meripen Vanglelauf—her new protector! Becca thought bitterly—leaned against the gate, his arms crossed on the top rail and one booted foot braced against the bottom.
He was, Becca saw, with a catch in her throat, as brown as Elyd had been. Her friends' face had been rugged and weary, but someone, she thought, had used Meripen Longeye hard.
The sun fell full on his dark face, illuminating a stern study of hard lines and hollow cheeks. A scar slashed pale and shocking across his left cheek, and another, through his right eyebrow, across the stern brow, vanishing into his hair. The patch over his right eye was leather; the left eye was as green and giving as glass. As he had been last night, he was dressed in woodsman leather, breeches and vest over a shirt that was all the colors of the forest. His hair hung in a loose tail over one shoulder; the breeze toyed with locks of brown, auburn and black. There was a knife sheathed on the right side of his belt, and an elitch branch thrust through it on the left. His tattered aura was all but invisible in the bright sunlight.
Rosamunde trilled again and walked out from under Becca's hand, thrusting her nose at the Fey, as if his caresses were not only her due, but welcome.
"Lady, we have celebrated each other once already this day."
Rosamunde thrust her nose again. The Fey paid the required toll, absently, and looked beyond her. Becca's stomach cramped, but she kept her chin up and met that green glare firmly.
"You have no high opinion of Fey," he commented, his light voice expressionless.
"I am certain that it must reflect poorly on me, to have formed a low opinion of persons who enslave others, and hunt those they deem to be their inferiors." Becca heard her voice shake, as if she were ill, and indeed, she did feel ill, weak and uncertain of her balance. She walked forward, though it brought her closer to him, and put her hand on Rosamunde's flank, hoping to draw courage from contact with that high-hearted lady.
"Unbind me," she said to Meripen Vanglelauf. "I refuse you."
He sighed, and tipped his head, perhaps so he could see her better from his single eye. "Yes, so you had said. Believe me, please, when I say that the last thing I would wish to do is bind a Newman."
"Then why have you done so?" she snapped.
"I have not done so," he snapped back, rapier quick.
"Oh? And I suppose you didn't throw that bit of bone at me last night when Sian was trying to murder Nancy—"
"When you had angered Sian to the point of nearly binding you herself?" he interrupted. "Which she would have instantly regretted—not to mention that it would have been no good thing to have done before her oath-sworn?" He straightened from his lean on the gate, his right hand dropping to the hilt of his knife. "You were provoking a disaster, which I attempted to disarm."
"By binding me." Becca was shaking, her nerves clamoring with fear, anger, and disgust.
"I have not bound you! Do you wish a demonstration?" He straightened, and flung his left hand out, as imperious as Altimere himself. "Rebecca Beauvelley, come here."
Becca fell back a step, tasting peppered wine along the edge of her tongue.
Meripen Vanglelauf smiled, grimly, and swept her a sarcastic bow.
"Thank you."
Becca shook her head. "Am I," she said slowly, "a free woman, utterly in control of my own will and destiny?"
Astonishing, he laughed. "Oh, certainly! As much as I am!" His hand moved more swiftly than her eye could properly follow it, seeming only to touch his pouch and there—as last night!—the white bone was tumbling through the air at her.
Becca stepped aside, right hand fisted at her side. She would not be tricked twice! she thought as the object tumbled closer. Of itself, her crippled left hand rose slightly, palm up, fingers cupped.
The bone dropped gently onto her palm.
Becca moaned, and stood staring at it: a perfectly white, circular bone, with . . . petals, perhaps, embossed in a circle 'round its center. Snagged at the center were two lines of spiderweb, twining lazily together—one green-and-blue, very like the ragged aura that blew about Meripen Vanglelauf; and the other bright gold, just like the light that sometimes dripped from her own fingers.
Shivering, nauseous, she forced herself to look back to him.
"The last time I was bound to a Fey," she said, her voice high and unsteady, "it was through the means of a necklace. Now I am bound by a bone. The difference is, if you will pardon my saying so, immaterial. Release me."
"You are not bound," Meripen Vanglelauf told her and it seemed to Becca that his voice was more panicked than haughty. "We are bound! Can you not see it?"
She stared at him, then down at the object in her hand, with its meager adornment of silken light. Aura-stuff, she thought. Very well.
"We are bound," she said, keeping her attention on the thing she held, "by this object?"
"The sunshield. Yes."
Becca weighed it, feeling the prick of tiny dry spines against her palm. It was, to all of her senses, dead; whatever intelligence that had once informed it had long fled. How it could bind anything was beyond her ability to know. However, a healer did not need to know precisely how easewerth worked upon the nerves to know that it dulled pain.
She closed her fingers around the . . . sunshield, feeling sharp edges cut into her skin. There was a roaring in her ears, and she felt as if she were about to swoon, but surely, surely, there was only one thing to do?
The roaring grew louder as she turned her hand over and opened her fingers.
There was a flash of green and gold as the sunshield tumbled to the ground. She marked its landing place well, raised her foot, encased in its sturdy shoe . . .
"No!" Meripen Vanglelauf's shout reached her even over the thunder in her ears; a tree's Gardener, do not! rattled the inside of her head.
There was a flare, a cold snap—and her back was on the ground, her vision a spangle of silver and turquoise, and Rosamunde was lipping her skirt. The air moved, and she turned her head to the right in time to see Meripen Vanglelauf snatch the dead whiteness of the sunshield from the grass at her side, and scuttle away, as if she were some fearsome beast that he had approached too nearly.
"Are you mad?" He was on one knee, back against the gatepost, fist pressed over his heart. His voice was shaking—he was shaking, Becca saw, and his brown face looked muddy.
"If I am, it's no small wonder," she returned. "Help me to stand."
"No," he answered starkly, pressing even tighter against the post. He held his fist out to her, as if she could see through his fingers to what he protected. "This is a sunshield! You cannot destroy it."
Becca twisted, and fell, panting, her limbs too weak to support her. "You say that it's bound us—this sunshield. The only rational thing to do is destroy it." She tried to sit up again, braced against her crippled arm, and again fell back.
"This is absurd. Help me up."
"No," he repeated, looking faintly ill. "You do not snare me that easily."
He came to his feet, fluid as a cat, his fist down at his side. With his other hand, he touched the elitch branch thrust through his belt, and visibly took a breath.
"You are a danger to this village and to yourself," he said, clearly and quite calmly. Then, he turned and was gone, as if he had walked from the sunlight into shadow.
Becca closed her eyes, feeling tears gather. Rosamunde blew against her hair.
"Yes, no doubt I do look ridiculous," she said. "Oh . . . " She took a hard breath.
"Nancy," she whispered. "Help me up, please."
* * *
First, she baited Sian, then she tried to destroy the sunshield. Meri reached the central elitch and all but collapsed against it.
"Rebecca Beauvelley has a will to die," he said, staring up into the dense branches.
Ranger, that was so, but she has learned better. The thought of the trees is that she requires training, and the opportunity to grow with her own kind.
"There is no one here to train her," Meri said, closing his eye, and leaning his head back against the wide trunk. The sunshield . . . He shuddered, seeing her raise her boot, hearing again the crash of the invisible wave that knocked her off her feet, to lie helpless, the sunshield less than a hand span from her side.
It had taken every bit of his courage to dart over and snatch it up to safety, skittish as a tree-mouse and just as sensible. Her aura had drawn him, brilliant and horrifying, and there had been a moment—scarcely a moment—when he had thought himself caught by her influence, as unfettered golden strands wafted toward his poor protection.
"Hero, indeed," he muttered, and laughed, weak and wobbly.
There is yourself, the elitch said, interrupting these shameful memories.
Meri blinked. "Eh?"
To train her, the elitch said. Someone must, for you spoke sooth when you said that she is a danger to herself and to those who shelter beneath my branches.
"I cannot train her!" That dazzling aura, so warm and compelling . . . "She would drink me dry and not even celebrate the vintage."
Not so. You can teach her better, Ranger.
Oh, yes, he could teach her better, Meri thought bitterly. But to do so would require a closeness—not quite a melding, but a willful sharing of kest, the thought of which simultaneously excited and disgusted him.
"No," he said, and pushed away from the support of the tree. The sunshield, he replaced in his pouch, after another long glare at the threads of kest captured at its heart. To his left, he heard Newman voices, and also to his right. His stomach cramped, and he shook his head, angry with his weakness.
He needed to go out, he thought, among the trees, where there were no Newmen with their brilliant, seductive auras. He needed, in fact—
"Wards," he said, recalling the pledge he had so recently made. "I must set wards."
If the tree—any tree—heard him, they vouchsafed no answer.
* * *
Despite his best efforts, the bell-jar remained empty. There had been even not the faintest flicker of kest to indicate that his command—tied to the artifact with the strength of a geas, for of all the things he would willingly lose, this was very nearly the least—there had been indication that his command had been heard.
Altimere closed his eyes and waved a hand, vanquishing table and jar. With his other hand, he fingered a handkerchief out of the warm mists and blotted the moisture from his face.
He had, he thought, allowed Rebecca too much freedom, amused as he had been by her foolish antics. Who better than he knew the power of a name?
It would perhaps be worth wondering, once he was free of this place, just who was the bigger fool.