The Blood of Ten Chiefs (27 page)

Darkness had fallen while she was still retracing the tangled paths of memory. Exhausted, Goodtree fell into a fitful sleep in which her unconscious replayed all the incidents of her cubhood with implacable clarity. Only when the rising sun illuminated the grove with a glow that was almost silvery, as if it were being filtered through clouds, did she awaken, or rather, shift consciousness, for she could scarcely feel her body now.

That was the solution! It was the flesh she wore that prevented her from communicating with Stormlight and Tanner—she wondered why she had not understood that before. If she could leave the clumsy thing behind her, perhaps she could catch up with them.

Breathing slowed and grew shallower; sight fixed on the flutter of golden leaves and then lost focus; senses shut down until Goodtree was only a point of awareness hovering in a haze of light. But it was not enough for her to lose herself, however pleasant it might be. What she was seeking lay elsewhere. Her spirit strained like a pup struggling against the birth-caul, and suddenly she felt warmth like the she-wolf's tongue dissolving the last constrictions, and she was free.

**Mother? Father?** Familiar presences flowed comfortingly around her. **Myr ... Lhu ...** Goodtree recognized the two she had known as Tanner and Stormlight.

**We are here ... we have always been with you ... could you not feel our love?**

With that answer, Goodtree received from them a totality of acceptance that healed wounds that had festered in her spirit for far too long. Freed, she sank deeper into the magic, awareness expanding to encompass it. Myr and Lhu were only part of something larger, a multiplicity of glories which she gradually recognized as the essence of the world around her, as real as the physical appearances she had known.

And as she perceived them, Goodtree named them, understanding with that act the inner truth of tree and flower and stone. She knew how the rootlets of the grasses spread through the rich soil, sensed the absorption of nutrients from the earth and the transformation of sunlight into energy, and more deeply, the cell-deep changes that made the plant grow.

But the grasses were only marginally aware. It was far more rewarding to touch the deep enduring life of a tree, its spirit encircled with rings of memory. Now, the tree's upper branches rustled and swayed in the wind, but its trunk recorded its biography. One year had been dry and hard, another so cold that heartwood cracked; lightning had scored a shapely trunk, and the tree was still slowly curling bark over the scar; floods had bared roots and torn branches away. All these things Goodtree remembered, and with them understood the internal patterning that enabled the tree to adjust to trauma and still continue to grow.

Some emptiness within her that no bond with elf or wolf had been able to fill accepted union with the trees and was satisfied. And in that knowledge she understood her own essence at last and named it.

Neme! I am Neme! And this is my true home!

Neme perceived the minimal life-processes of her own body, and understood how its elements would nourish the trees around her when the last tenuous connection between flesh and spirit faded away. Then she would be part of the grove forever. She would never again have to deal with failure or loneliness or fear.

Seeking that union, Neme's spirit quested outward. Beyond the Golden Grove, oak and beech woods whispered the same response to the rising wind. She felt their movement as if she herself were moving, sensed their leaves' adjustment as clouds dimmed the light, knew the strength that rooted them, understood even the layering of soils and the structure of underlying stone.

Ever more widely her spirit expanded. Now she perceived the roots of the mountains, where hidden earth-fires burned still. Awareness identified Acorn and Lionleaper, keeping their patient vigil beside the wolves, and felt them flinch beneath the first stinging drops of rain. Neme sensed how the land folded downward to the pass and without surprise she perceived the Wolfriders camped beside the stream.

The rain fell with a sudden fury, and the elves and wolves scurried for the dubious shelter of the bank. Neme's body was wet now as well, but that did not concern her. She was too fascinated by the way the leaves gave to the pressure of the rain, and the soil absorbed the water that fell.

Here at the top of the world, the soil was stretched as thin across the stone as the skin of a starved beast over its bones. Water soaked swiftly into what earth there was, and when the soil could contain no more, began to pool in hollows and sheet across bare stone. She rejoiced as thunderclaps shook the heavens, rock trembled, and more rain poured down.

The little stream was becoming a torrent. Water leaped from every outcropping, scoured every crevice, funneled through every fold in the stone, tugging loose pebbles, leaves, and fallen branches free and carrying them onward, at first sluggishly, and then with gathering power.

The flood grew quickly. In the time it would have taken an elf to shoot a quiverful of arrows and gather them up again, the stream had changed from trickle to torrent. Now the upper canyon roared with the rush of swirling waters. Small branches gouged at the banks and tangled in larger ones to form temporary dams until the growing force of the waters blasted both free. Collecting and bursting in stages the river rushed downward, scouring all that lay in its path, and Neme's spirit shared the explosion of raw energy.

**When the waters reach the pass, the Wolfriders will be swept away...** came the thought of her mother. The statement held neither accusation nor sorrow. It was simply an observation, leaving her own response free. Neme felt a tremor shake her spirit as emotions she thought she had left behind her with her body stirred. Why should the plight of bodied creatures move her?

**If the flood takes them they will only be transformed, and become as we are now...** she protested.

**Those who were left behind cannot survive without them,** came her father's reply. **The Wolfriders will be no more.**

In the canyon, the waters roared like a longtooth balked of prey. The communication of the elves was timeless, but the flood was growing fast.

**Isn't it better to be like this, without the anxiety of the search for food and shelter, the body's pain at wounds and the spirit's pain at loss?** Was she arguing with her parents or with herself, now?

**Or without the pleasure of tasting fresh meat, feeling the warm caress of the sun or the cool kiss of rain, without the delight of a lover's touch and the warm weight of a cub in your arms?** Emotion throbbed in her mother's thought now.

**We chose the adventure of living as physical creatures! Without that, we could not be what we are now!** her father added passionately. **If the tribe dies, all that we have suffered and learned will have been in vain!**

But it was her mother's words that struck home, as truly as one of Stormlight's spears. Memory was like a fire exploding through Goodtree's being. Vividly she remembered Lionleaper's strength and Acorn's sensitivity. Joygleam's dour fortitude and Freshet's unflagging humor; from the oldest beard to the smallest tousle-headed cub she remembered them, and as a mother loves her cub she loved them, knowing all their faults and virtues, and all at once her own fears were forgotten in a greater agony.

As if a bowstring drawn to the breaking point had been suddenly released, Goodtree's spirit snapped back to her body again. She convulsed and moaned, soaked and shaking with cold, so confused by the abruptness of her transition that for precious moments she was not sure where she was or why.

Then a fresh gust of wind sent needles of rain against her, and she pushed herself upright with a cry. The grove was a maelstrom of thrashing branches, and the wind howled louder than any wolves. She strove to focus her will, sending with all her strength to Joygleam, Chipper—any of the elves in the pass.

But they were too far, or perhaps too distracted by the storm, to hear. Gathering her strength once more, she reached outward to the peak above the valley, and was rewarded by an incredulous response from Acorn.

**Flash flood's coming down the canyon! Can't reach the others—send—they have to climb out of the way!**

**Yes! I'll try—**

More faintly, she heard Lionleaper vowing to go with Fang to warn them. But could they be in time? Sobbing, she collapsed back to the muddy grass, letting her spirit expand once more into the elemental chaos around her. Again she rode on the wings of the wind and felt the force of the waters that were hurtling down the canyon.

She could see, also, the tiny figures of the elves and their wolf companions, huddled sodden and terrified. But the chaos rushing down upon them filled the canyon well above the rocks where they had taken refuge. If Acorn's message had reached them, they had not understood it, and Lionleaper could never get to them in time.

**NO!** Goodtree did not know to whom she was sending, but she could not lose them, not now, when she had just understood how much she loved them all!

**Mother! Father! Help me!**

**We have no power in your world—use what you have learned!**

Learned? But what did she know except that those she loved were going to die, and she was helpless to prevent it? And what had she learned in her vision besides her name?

And at the thought, as if she was Recognizing herself, the syllable that was her soulname resounded once more in her awareness. Neme ... a sound which held the essence of all that she had experienced, the totality of living strength and green, growing things ... and trees...

And trees! She understood their slow transformations, but if she could somehow accelerate those processes—

—With no more time for thinking, Goodtree thrust her awareness toward the canyon, finding roots deep in the walls just ahead of the waters. A sharp nudge set a loosened rock-face clattering toward the streambed; diverted waters sluiced earth after it, but she knew that would not hold for long. There, where the earth had fallen, tangled masses of brambles now swung free. Pouring all her concentration into them, she stimulated growth and sent them reaching greedily for the rocks that had fallen into the stream.

Nothing could get through a bramble patch—she knew that from painful experience—but a sufficient force of water might wash the whole mass away.

Above the brambles grew sortie twisted pines. With a frantic apology, she wrenched the roots free, launched two of the bigger trees downward to strengthen the dam, slid several saplings after them in a shower of earth, and stimulated them to lace powerful roots through all the rest.

And then there was no more time to do anything. With a roar like the world ending, the flood funneled down through the canyon, struck the logjam, and burst upward in a fountain of muddy spray.

Goodtree thrust her consciousness into the heart of the dam, reaching out to each vine and tree and tendril like a warchief sending to her fighters, rallying, compelling, holding them to their places through sheer force of will. She shuddered to the buffeting as storms of water strove against her; held on while the pressure crushed her, and then clung still harder until she knew no more...

Like a longtooth balked of its prey the snarling waters tore at the unexpected barrier. Streams spouted between rocks and poured over the top of the dam in a hundred waterfalls. Gradually, the level behind it fell, but by the time the water reached the shallow streambed above the pass, the Wolfriders had all scrambled to safety on higher ground.

As if the flood had been no more than a cub's tantrum, the clouds were brightening, separating, and letting the spring sunlight through. Light glittered on wet rock surfaces, and glowed in the steam from soaked soil.

Clinging to one of the pine trees that had remained on the rim of the canyon, Lionleaper stared down at the disorganized tangle below in wonder. Floodwaters could do strange things, he knew, but it was hard to believe that a construction of such complexity could have been achieved by chance. And yet, if it had not been chance, what power had saved them?

"It feels like magic—" said Acorn, leaning nervously over the edge. "Timmorn's blood! What a song this is going to make one day!"

"Let's not start talking about stories until we know the ending—" Lionleaper answered grimly. "We still don't know what happened to Goodtree!"

"There will be a song, perhaps my greatest, whatever the outcome. I know the power that drives me..." Acorn straightened with a sigh. "But there will be no joy for me in the making of it if the ending is tragedy." He met Lionleaper's eyes soberly. His face was smudged, and damp brown hair clung close to his skull; scarcely a sight to charm a maiden. But Lionleaper supposed he looked no better. He could scarcely bear to wonder what condition Goodtree was in now.

"Have you felt—" The warrior could not finish his question, but Acorn understood him.

"Nothing—not death, not life. I get no sense of Goodtree at all..."

"Well let's go find her then!" said Lionleaper explosively. "And if that cursed she-wolf of hers tries to stop us I'll strangle her!"

Goodtree swam up out of endless depths of darkness to awareness of pain that almost sent her back again. But someone was calling her, not by her soulname, but with a depth of anguish that compelled her attention. She took a deep, aching breath, letting awareness extend to limbs that felt as if they had been beaten with sticks. Exhalation became a moan, and abruptly she was shivering.

**High ones! Her skin is like ice! We've got to get her warm somehow!**

The sending had a familiar flavor, but she was too tired to identify it. She felt motion; her body was turned, and another naked body pressed against her back. She tried to curl up to protect her belly, but someone else was there, holding her close, and her feet touched the familiar rough warmth of wolf-fur.

**Leafchaser?** After an unmeasurable time Goodtree summoned her wits sufficiently to grope for the touch of her old friend's mind. She felt a kind of anxious amusement in return.

**Silly cub! Don't leave me behind again!**

Well perhaps she was a cub at that. Certainly she was curled up like a cub with its litter-mates, all tangled together. Returning circulation was gradually ceasing to be painful; she sighed and pressed closer to whoever was holding her, wondering where she was.