Longeye (33 page)

Was the sound of hooves from the rear getting louder?

The path ahead twisted—and vanished into a confusion of deadfall and scrub trees.

Becca twisted to the right—the hoofbeats
were
louder; and she could hear angry snorts. Ahead—ahead the path narrowed into a tunnel, branches and shadows woven together overhead.

"In there!" the Ranger panted, but she needed no urging to dive into the tunnel and run on, shoulders bent and pack scraping the indistinct ceiling.

From behind came a shriek of utter fury, reverberating along the walls of their sanctuary. Becca sobbed and clapped her hands over her ears, stumbling on as the walls of the passageway grew thinner and the light faded to black, starless night.

She was not running now; she was groping her way, hands before her, glad of their golden glow, though the light pierced the dark barely a step ahead.

"Can you," she gasped, when she felt she had regained enough breath to power her voice, "see in the dark?"

"Somewhat," came the winded reply. "But not in this."

"If we should come to a precipice . . ."

"Hold a moment, and I will take the lead."

"So you may have the honor of falling to your death first?" Becca asked. She heard a gasp from behind her, and was sorry that she had not seen how the laugh had altered his face.

"Wait," he said, then. "There's light ahead."

She squinted. "I don't— Yes. I do see it. Let us hope that there isn't a unicorn waiting for us at this side."

"What," Meripen Vanglelauf said as they inched onward, "is a unicorn?"

"A storybook creature, on—the other side of the
keleigh
," she said. "Have you never seen one?"

"This is my first," he admitted. "What is their service?"

"They honor maidens," she said. "Mind! The tunnel turns downward."

The slope became more pronounced, running down toward a toothy oblong of light. Becca ran the last bit, to keep her footing, and burst from the cramped darkness, her pack scraping on thorns and rock, into a wide sandy field pocked with weeds.

Meri crouched at the end of the tunnel, staring out at a bleached and dying land. There was not a single tree within the sight of his shorteye, and the air tasted of sand. In the near distance, a structure loomed, built of stone and murdered trees. He leaned back into the comforting darkness and swallowed against the surge of sickness. Newmen! Had they killed every tree on the land in order to build that terrible dwelling?

Becca the Gardener was on her knees, taking up a handful of sandy soil as if she hoped to learn something from it—perhaps, he thought, she sought after the manner of its doom. For himself, he had seen enough. There was indeed a hole in the hedge.

"Gardener," he called. "Let us return."

She looked up at him, her face vague, as if she had forgotten him entirely.

"Return?" she repeated. "No, we cannot."

"There is nothing more to see," he said, keeping his voice sweet. The emotion quivering along the
kest
-bond was something akin to pain, and, though he did not understand her service, certainly he could imagine that a gardener would only be distressed by this wasted place. "The Brethren told true. We take it now to Sian, and she to the philosophers."

"No," she said again. She dropped the handful of sand and pointed at the monstrous structure of wood and stone. "That is—that is my father's house! I grew up here!" She turned to stare at him where he sheltered yet inside the tunnel.

"What has happened?" she cried. "How could the land have died so quickly? I have only been gone a matter of months—perhaps, perhaps a year. This—" She waved a despairing hand, indicating, Meri thought, the desolation surrounding her—"what could have caused this?"

"That is why we must take this to the philosophers," he said, reasonably. "Come, Gardener."

"You may go," she told him, rising to her feet and turning her face away. "Your service is not here. Mine is."

With no further ado, and without a word of farewell, she walked off, away from him and toward the house that she claimed as her own.

Meri watched her leave, walking balanced and determined, very much, he thought, like a Ranger returning to her own wood after a weary wandering. For himself, he would no sooner set foot on this tainted, terrible land than—

His muscles twitched and he was jerked up unceremoniously, banging his head on the ceiling of the tunnel.

"No," he whispered, but the sunshield heeded his plea not at all. Bound, compelled, he walked after the slim, determined figure, stiffly for the first few steps, as horror induced him to fight the compulsion, then at a light run, as he accepted his doom and raced to catch her up.

She would go 'round by the kitchen, Becca decided, and she would ask Mr. Janies to bring her to Dickon. She would ask him not to mention her visit to Mother, and, most especially, not to Father. Not until she had discovered the nature of the calamity that had overtaken them. A surprise, she would say. A surprise visit. Mr. Janies had been her friend, before. Perhaps he still was.

The front gate was open, the proud spearheads in desperate need of paint. How, she wondered, had all this happened so quickly? Surely, she was looking at the result of years of neglect, not mere months, and yet—

Panic closed her throat; gasping, her heart squeezed with horror, she almost fell, threw out a hand and braced herself against the gate.

From behind her came a sound—as of a choked-off scream. She shook her head, turning, and found Meripen Vanglelauf on his knees in the dust, one shaking hand extended to her.

"That metal . . ." he whispered hoarsely. "Come away."

"Metal—?" She stared at him. "It's only iron."

"It burns, and the wounds do not heal." He shivered, and turned his face aside, as if the very sight of the gate pained him. "Root and branch, Becca!
Come away!
"

Carefully, she let go of the gate, and looked down at her palm. Satisfied, she walked back to his side, and knelt.

"Look," she said gently, as she would speak to a raving and frightened patient. She dared to touch his shoulder, pained to feel him shiver so. "Meripen. I'm not hurt."

Slowly, he turned his head, stared at her unmarked hand. His face was damp with sweat, horror etched along the austere lines . . .

Becca raised her hand and touched his face, tracing the pale scar across his left cheek. "You crossed the
keleigh
," she said softly, knowing it as surely as he had told it out. "And someone—one of my people—did this to you."

He closed his eye and bowed his head; she felt a flare of agony, saw for a confused moment limbs bound in iron chain, the corrosive wounds weeping; a stone floor and a woman's naked body convulsing, an iron bar thrust inside of her—

Her stomach rebelled. She swallowed—and again, forcing the sickness away.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, inadequately. "I— Why did they do this?"

"Is there some act that we might have performed that would justify it?" he asked, bitterly. "Faldana died of their treatment, and I, too, had she not given up the last of her
kest
to me." He gave a shuddering sigh. "They wanted to learn how we had made the gold piece the market woman demanded as payment for a loaf of bread."

"A gold piece for a loaf of bread?" Becca asked, but—it would have been obvious that the two were strangers. And what plain woodsman had such hair as Meripen Vanglelauf? A canny woman might make of such strangers what she would, and gold was more certain wealth than a pitcher.

As for making the coin—that she thought, dismally, would have been no trick at all for one trained in Fey philosophy.

"No," she said to Meripen Vanglelauf's bent head. "There is nothing you could have done that would have justified such treatment."
Nothing?
she asked herself.
What of Altimere?

"I am ashamed for my people," she said, and that was true, whatever had befallen her at different hands.

He shook his head. "The trees were at pains to remind me that the folk at New Hope Village were not the same sort," he said, his voice sounding only weary now. "It is the same with us—as you know to your sorrow."

She cleared her throat. "Why are you here?" she asked him. "I had thought you on your way back to Sian."

He made a soft sound; it might have been a laugh.

"The sunshield binds us, even here."

Becca sat back on her heels, and glanced over her shoulder at the house.

"Meripen, I must go into this—into my—home, and speak to my brother. I—the land here was bountiful when I left it, mere months ago. The Landed—we are stewards of the world! I must know what has happened, and if there is—if there is anything I might do to repair this . . ."

He nodded, though he did not look up.

"There is iron," Becca persisted, "in the house. Will the sunshield allow you to wait for me here?"

He sighed and raised his head, his face calmer now. "I doubt that it will allow us to become far separated," he said. "And I would rather not be forced." He looked past her, to, she thought, the gate. "All is well, so long as I do not touch it."

She looked at him sharply. "Is that true?"

"As true as it can be," he answered. "I will stand behind you and keep my hands close."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I—"

"It is your service," he interrupted, rising to his feet with a fraction of his usual grace. He held his hand down to her, and after a moment she took it and allowed him to raise her to her feet.

The kitchen garden at least was well planted, though the plants were not as lush as she recalled. Perhaps, she thought, her time in the Vaitura had altered her sense of what a proper garden ought to look like.

Or perhaps, she thought, it had not.

She paused with her hand on the latch of the kitchen door. "This is iron," she said softly. "The room we are coming into—"

"I will keep my hands close," he assured her, "and my wits about me." A twisted smile accompanied that last.

Becca nodded. "I will—it may be that my brother will be angry, at first. If he says anything that—please remember that he is largely ignorant of the Vaitura, and has . . . much cause . . . to be displeased with me."

Meripen inclined his head. "I will be meekness itself," he assured her.

The latch worked and the door came open, quietly. A glance at the hinges showed them in better repair than the front gate, but there! Cook would never have tolerated anything slovenly about her kitchen.

The kitchen . . . that was dark, the fire cold, without so much as a string of onions hanging from the rafters. Cook's worktable was littered with dirty dishes—the house crest, Becca saw, that was brought out only on grand occasions.

Becca stood by the table, feeling ill and not a little puzzled.

"Mrs. Janies?" she called softly. "Cook?"

No one answered her.

Surely, she thought, they would not have just
gone out
with the kitchen in such a state? She tried to imagine the scope of the disaster that would permit dirty dishes to remain on Cook's worktable for more minutes than five—and failed utterly.

"Well," she said, for Meripen's benefit. "I suppose we had best look in the library, then."

She was uncertain now, and growing more deeply distressed with every dead and dusty room they entered. Meri followed her closely, trying to ignore the taint of
iron
in the air, and to keep his wits about him, as he had promised.

Certainly, it was a melancholy enough place that they wandered, but free—thus far—of active dangers. He hoped, for the ease of Becca's heart, that she found her kinsman soon, but that event was becoming to seem less likely with each door she threw open.

"The ladies' parlor." Her murmur was surely for herself. He followed, mindful to step lightly on the scarred wooden floor, and was only two steps behind her shoulder when she turned the knob gaily painted with honeycups and pulled the door wide.

Unlike the other rooms they had opened, this one was bright with sunlight, and overfull with furniture, books, and a bewildering array of objects. A man sat behind a table piled high with textile, his aura an unfortunate glare of orange and grey—the whole flashing into crimson as he leapt to his feet.

"Thieves! Enter at your peril!"

Meri's hand dropped to the hilt of his knife. Becca stood where she was, alert, but to his eye unalarmed, so he did not draw, but waited, his wits very much about him.

"I am Miss Rebecca Beauvelley, the Earl of Barimuir's eldest daughter," she said, with a haughtiness very nearly approaching that of a High Fey. "Pray let my brother Richard know that I am here and desire to speak with him."

"Richard." The Newman standing behind the table at the center of the cluttered room tipped his head to one side. "That would be Richard Beauvelley?"

"It would," Becca said coldly.

The Newman laughed. "You gypsies have no end of gall!
I
am Richard Beauvelley, madam! What d'you make of that?"

"Only that you are obviously in your cups, sir, and therefore of no use to me. Pray call for someone who is less disadvantaged. I would like to speak to my brother today."

Another laugh, some grey edging the scarlet. Meri shifted, his fingers tightening on the comforting hilt of his knife. In his judgment, this Newman traced his kin-lines more closely to Michael and his lord than Elizabeth Moore or Jack Wood.

"Certainly, Your Highness," the Newman sneered. He brought his hand up from behind the table, and pointed a cylindrical object at Becca. "Go, now, or I
will
kill you."

Becca lifted her chin, her aura showing significant flares of anger amid the swirls of confusion.

"Tell me what has happened here," she said. "I have been away for some . . . little . . . time. Some calamity has befallen the land and I would learn what it is. Are the whole of the Midlands afflicted?"

"You must have gone away from the world," the Newman commented, and if his hand did not waver, yet he made no more threatening movements.