Longeye (27 page)

"Still alive?" The voice was, perhaps, slightly more interested in a live one. Meri wished that whoever it was would leave him to sleep, and take the rasping bark with him.

"Here, let me have a look." The scraping stopped, and Meri felt warm fingers against his forehead.

"Let be!" he snapped, and heard a faint growl from somewhere nearby.

"Bit of spark in 'im yet," the voice said approvingly. "Here, then, lad, have a drink. Nay, nay, I'll hold the bottle."

Water, tepid and tasting of the skin, splashed into Meri's mouth. He reached, suddenly desperate for more, choked, swallowed, gasped, and cried out when the stream was withdrawn.

"You want to rest a bit before you take more," the voice told him. "Which you'd know, if you had your wits about you."

Meri licked the last drops of water off his lips, opened his eye, and glared into a face as brown and seamed as elitch bark beneath a shock of hair the color of old wheat.

"I
have
my wits about me," he said, his voice little more than a raddled whisper.

The other Wood Wise nodded approvingly, eyes the merest leaf-green slits in his worn face. "Certain you do! Which is why Vika and me found you sleeping snug against an Old One, and looking to be sharing the Long Dream."

Meri blinked, and sat up, turning to stare at the pine he had reclined against so comfortably. An Old One, indeed, and on the edge of its final sleep, but strong enough, still, to overwhelm a thin-
kest
ed Ranger and pull him down into the dreaming.

"Oh." He closed his eye. "You'd think I was just sprouted." He sighed, and looked to his rescuer. "My thanks, Brother." He got a knee crooked, pushed himself awkwardly up—and would have toppled right over again if the other hadn't grabbed his shoulder and steadied him.

"No need to rush matters," he said. "If it were me, I'd take a bit to savor my luck."

"Luck?" Meri shook his head, carefully.

"I'd call it luck that you've enough
kest
left to warm yourself." The other jerked his head toward the lowering shadow-trees. "That wood's no friend to our kind, nor to any other, I'll warrant."

"I allow you to be right," Meri told him. "Have you been inside that wood?"

The other laughed and settled back on his heels, withdrawing his hand slowly. "No, nor will I! There's too much that's precious riding my shoulders, and it's a burden I'll risk for nothing you can name."

"I wonder you walk so close, then."

That earned him a crooked smile and a sideways glance from those vivid, half-closed eyes. "We just skirt the edges, Vika and me. Shortest route from someplace to someplace else. Why go inside, yourself?"

Meri took a breath and carefully drew his legs up, one at a time, until he sat cross legged and erect.

"Have you some waybread to spare?" he asked.

"Here you are." A broken bit appeared between two gnarled fingers.

"My thanks." Carefully, he gnawed off a corner. Now that his limbs were strengthening, he felt
kest
beginning to warm at the base of his spine. "I was sent by the Engenium at Sea Hold to help the Newmen at New Hope Village learn what was amiss about the wood that sheltered them," he told the other Wood Wise. Something moved at the edge of his vision. He turned his head and stared into the slitted red eyes of a sizable woods cat, its brindled fur making it all but invisible against the grass.

"Vika?" he murmured.

"That she is," the other said, and gave Meri a nod. "I'm Palin Nicklauf—and you'll be?"

"Meripen Vanglelauf." Meri cleared his throat. "I've met your sprout, Jamie."

Palin laughed, and offered the water skin again. "Had all sorts of ill luck, haven't you?"

Meri drank, prudently, and put the skin aside. "I found him likely, and well schooled."

"There's praise, coming from the Longeye," Palin said. His face shadowed. "I heard the boy's plea to the trees. Has young Lucy given up her
kest
?"

"She has," Meri confirmed, and paused to chew more waybread. "Her apprentice blames her own lack of skill."

"Aye, well, that's Violet in the shell." He shook his head. "It's hard for the young to accept the failures of youth."

"Of Jamie—" Meri began. Palin raised a hand.

"The trees tell me the sprout was under a geas last night, and won free by your kindness."

"It's . . . somewhat more complicated than that."

"What isn't?" the other said rhetorically. "I'd hear the tale if you've a mind to tell it."

Meri recruited himself with another sip from the skin. "You'll have heard of the Gardener."

"Will I? The elitch and ralif scarce speak of anything—or anyone—else."

That was, Meri thought, chewing a bit of waybread, a detail that had escaped him. Trees often babbled of their favorites—but it was mostly the culdoon and the larch and the other more foolish trees. Elitch and ralif were not only more sensible, but saw further.

"They do see something," he acknowledged, giving Palin a nod. "What it is, I don't know, even after having some dealings with her."

"Asked?"

"Not in so many words."

Palin grinned. "Nor have I. More fun to guess it out, though I might change my mind on meeting her. Why put a geas on the boy?"

Meri looked him in the eye. "It was an accident."

There was a pause, while Palin traded him glance for glance, then nodded, just once.

"An accident," he said, his voice utterly bland. "Might've befallen anyone."

"She displays an aura like . . . Newmen," Meri said slowly. "Unlike the Newmen of—of my acquaintance, who seem . . . unaware of the inner fires, and blind to the auras of others, she—Rebecca Beauvelley—is aware of her own power and of the auras of others. She has, however, not been trained in the slightest. Jamie frightened her, so I make it out to be, and she shouted at him to go away from her and never return, never realizing . . ."

"Never realizing that she was no more like Violet or Eliza or even Lucy—hot, brilliant, and powerless—if ever she had been."

"Why is that?" Meri asked suddenly.

"Eh? No talent for it, and no one to teach them, I expect. As for yon pretty Gardener—"

Palin's voice chopped off, and he became so still he seemed to vanish into the forest air.

Meri froze where he sat, scarcely breathing. The constant undertwitter of birds and other creatures had died away; not so much as a flutterbee moved.

From inside the shadow-wood came . . . sounds, as of something . . . hunting.

Vika flowed through the scant grass like a whisperbreeze, ears back, tail low. She paused some distance from the place where living forest became undead wood, and Meri saw her hackles rise.

With infinite care, and not half so much grace, Meri crept forward until he was at the woods cat's side. He was not particularly surprised to see Palin on the cat's other side.

The sounds within the shadow-wood continued, but nothing showed itself.

"I don't like that," Palin breathed.

"Nor do I," Meri answered, thinking of the creature that had beset Rebecca Beauvelley, and trying very hard not to think of the amount and kind of damage such a monster might do at New Hope Village.

His wards were pitiable things, Meri thought. They would protect nothing. And the Elders drowsing here could hardly be expected to rouse—

Warmth at his side, growing rapidly warmer. He moved his arm slowly, his eye on the shadow-wood, and pulled the elitch wand out of his belt.

Will you watch
, he asked it,
and warn?

Aye
, it whispered, and Meri smiled. He brought it 'round before him, unsurprised to find a fresh hole in the mold, into which he slipped the slender branch. He pressed the hole closed with his fingers and then went back, pushing with elbows and knees, until he was under the branches of the sleepy pine, Palin and Vika with him.

"That'll do," the other Ranger said, and rose to his lanky height. At his knee, the woods cat stretched, her yawn exposing a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth.

Palin held a hand down, and Meri was not too proud to take it.

"Try your legs, Brother, and see how you stand."

Meri came to his feet, feeling the crackle of
kest
against their joined palms.

"Nay . . ." he protested, slipping his hand away.

Palin tipped his head. "What's amiss? It's nothing more than you were willing to do for the sprout, so the elders tell me. I'm hale, and you could use the aid. Brother."

"The last one to give me her
kest
died of it," Meri said slowly, feeling the black edge of that moment, when he knew that her gift would be her doom—and knew that he would accept it . . .

"I'm hale," Palin repeated, and nodded toward the village. "Best we go on, if you're able. Eliza'll take a piece out of my bark, if I don't show myself soon."

"And that," Becca said, meeting Violet's eyes firmly, "is what happened. I will perfectly understand if you do not wish me to live in your grandmother's house, or to subscribe to my teaching in anything."

The girl glanced down at her lap, which was filled with gathered marisk, and Becca bit her lip, recruiting herself to patience. This was Violet's decision to make and
truly
she would understand if the girl did not wish to have the almost-murderer of her brother under roof.

"It must be difficult," Violet said slowly, "to have had these virtues thrust upon you without receiving training in their use." She expertly stripped the blossoms from a marisk stem, frowning as they tumbled down into the basket.

"Father believes that a race of halflings might serve the land best." She gave Becca a slight, sidewise smile. "Which is where you'll see Jamie and me."

"Your mother had said as much this morning, when I went to see how your brother did," Becca admitted, sorting the corish root according to size. "Have you received training in the use of
kest
?"

Violet shook her head. "I'm Mother's child. The trees do not talk to
me
."

Becca frowned. "That seems less halflings and more half," she observed, and Violet giggled.

"It does, but that was their bargain. And who is to say that, when I'm ready to marry, that I won't bear a Ranger-to-be? I think . . ." She paused while she stripped another stalk. "I think that,
over time
, as more intermarriages happened, that fewer children would be born either tree-wise or not." She slanted a sideways glance at Becca. "Father takes the long view—Gran used to say that he was practically a tree, himself."

Becca laughed, and it seemed that she heard an echo inside her head.

"I wonder," she said, then; "have you ever spoken with a Fey healer?"

"The nearest I've come to a Fey healer is Father," Violet answered. "Mother called for him to come, so you might ask him any questions you have." She grinned. "He might even answer.

"For that matter," she said after she had put her basket down and piled the stripped marisk stalks to the side, "Master Vanglelauf will know as much as Father, since they are both Rangers. All I know is that a Fey in need of healing merely asks a particular plant for some of its virtue."

Becca blinked. "Is your father prone to jokes?" she asked.

"Sometimes. But I've noticed that when he most seems to be joking—then he is speaking nothing but the truth. Gran said that some of what he said sounded like tall tales because he didn't have our words."

"And the rest of what he says perhaps only sounds outlandish to those who are not . . . intimately knowledgeable of the Vaitura?" Becca guessed.

Violet nodded, shaking out her skirts. "Would you like some tea? I think that—"

She stiffened, as if she'd heard something—and a moment later Becca heard it, too: a high, weird wailing sound that seemed to echo off the branches, then die.

"Father's home!" Violet cried, and ran toward the bottom of the garden.

Becca set aside the corish root and rose, following more sedately, reaching the end of the path in time to see Violet throw herself into the arms of a disreputable-looking fellow in worn leather. He caught Violet up and spun her around as if she were a child in nursery, his laugh echoing hers. A little behind him stood a large brindled cat, tufted ears cocked alertly, one shoulder companionably against Meripen Vanglelauf's knee.

He . . . looked slightly more robust than he had when they had parted earlier, which relieved her considerably. The pale tatters of his aura seemed a deeper and more subtle green; the comparison with the rich brown and orange of Violet's father's aura was, however, telling.

"Good evening, Master Vanglelauf," she said politely.

The green eye speared her. "Good evening, Rebecca Beauvelley," he answered, distantly. He nodded down at his companion. "This is Vika."

Since it seemed that he wished her to do so, she bowed slightly to the cat. "Good evening, Vika. I am pleased to make your acquaintance."

"And she's pleased to make yours," a strong, rough voice assured her.

She turned to see that the other Ranger had set Violet on her feet and stood with his arm around her waist, considering Becca from leaf-green eyes. He smiled, easily, but without impertinence, and gave her a nod.

"I'm Palin Nicklauf. You'll be the one the trees have named Gardener?"

"Rebecca Beauvelley," she said, returning his nod. "Yes."

"Then I'm as pleased to meet you as Vika is," Palin Nicklauf said.

"Perhaps . . . not," Becca said, with difficulty. "I'm afraid that I have been the . . . agency of some harm befalling your son."

"So the trees told me."

Becca braced herself for anger, but Palin's voice was perfectly easy and calm.

"Master Vanglelauf tells me there was no malice in it, and that he's charged to teach you better. Is that so, Longeye?"

"That's so," Meripen Vanglelauf said composedly, though Becca felt a spark of anger for the casual cruelty. "Palin."

"I hear." The other Ranger gave Becca a grin. "The Hope Tree tells us the sprout's awake, Gardener, wanting both his dinner and a walk under leaf. I think we'll find his hurts to be only what any sprout might find, in the process of setting his roots." He turned to look at Violet.