"And yet," Sian murmured, "we cannot continue as we are."
"So I hear from the philosophers on my right hand, while those on my left urge me to increase the forces already in play and seal us in, safe as a child in a closet."
"The
keleigh
consumes
kest
," Becca said, remembering Altimere's demonstration. "But throwing down the
keleigh
will—release
kest
in unexpected ways."
"Aptly put," the Queen murmured. "Was Altimere teaching you?"
"No," Becca said, bitterly. "He only needed me to harvest power."
Silence. Sian and the Queen exchanged a glance before Diathen brought her attention back to Becca.
"I feel that we have now reached my subject, Rebecca Beauvelley. I would count it a favor, if you would allow me to know just how such harvesting was done and where this harvested power has gone."
Becca took a breath, tasting cinnamon and apple, watching the play of the silvered green nimbus that limned the lady's slender form.
"My philosophers are studying the necklace and the geas woven into it," the Queen said after a moment. "I fear but little remains of the original working. Altimere is, after all, an artificer of some skill and subtlety; old in his craft. I would hazard that it was the means of harvesting, but—"
"No," Becca said, and it seemed that the flavorful air in the green-shadowed room was too thin, very nearly too hot to breathe. "No,
I
gathered the
kest
; the necklace was to—to control me and bind me to . . . his will."
The Queen tipped her head. "Forgive me. It seems extraordinary that Altimere would require so much to tie you to him. Your name alone—"
"I kept my name!" Becca snapped. "If I had known what it meant, I would have gladly given it away!"
Sian's hand rose, long fingers shaping a sign. It flared, briefly turquoise, and faded as a breeze flowed in amongst the shadows, damp and tasting of salt.
"So," she said, her voice soft as a thought. "You harvested
kest
at Altimere's will, holding your name the while. And yet I do not see that you hold so
very
much power . . ."
Becca hung her head. "I gave it to him," she said miserably. "To Altimere. I—I gave him my power and my future . . ."
"Perhaps your power," Diathen the Queen said, her high voice sharp as broken shell. "
That
can be done. But a
future
cannot be given away, Rebecca Beauvelley."
Becca shook her head. "What is one, out of so many?" she whispered, rocking back and forth now, her maimed arm cradled on her lap.
Diathen shared a worried glance with Sian.
"You must forgive me," the Queen said to Becca, "for having broken your sleep. I can only plead a need to know what Altimere intends. I will leave you now to continue healing—"
"No!" Becca thrust to her feet, and would have fallen except for Sian's hand beneath her elbow. Diathen rose to face her, purple eyes hard.
"I will not have my will overridden again!" Becca cried, feeling a flow of molten gold flowing up her spine. "I am my own person; I hold my own name; I am not a
play
thing!" Sparks lit the gloom: green and gold and crimson. She took a breath. "I
demand
—" she began—
And crumpled into Diathen's arms, asleep before her knees gave out.
They were gentle, and most courteous, Meri admitted, and careful not to overwhelm his senses. Not merely with the arranging of the meeting out-of-doors, where he might feel unconfined, but also in the numbers that they chose to field: himself, Elizabeth Moore, a white-haired elder called Jack Wood, and the sprout Jamie.
The trees would have it that the sprout was fruit of a melding of the Newoman Elizabeth and a Wood Wise named Palin, which strained credulity. Yet, the trees
had
said so, and certainly the shy greens of the boy's aura were more Fey than the hectic and gaudy displays of his elders.
Jamie the sprout carried a chair out of the house and placed it for the elder. Elizabeth Moore settled herself comfortably on the grass between chair and bench; at a sign from her, Jamie settled next to Meri, his cool aura showing yellow sparkles of curiosity.
"Sam sends apologies," Elizabeth murmured. "He's with our mother, in case she should wake."
"I grieve for the elder's illness," Meri answered politely. "May her
kest
soon rise."
"Thank you. We all hope for her recovery."
"No more'n I do," the elder Jack Wood said in a voice like the wind blowing through reeds. "Just her an' me left o' those who walked the hellroad. Stubbornest woman I ever known, that side er this, and I don't think we woulda won through, if not for the tongue in her head, and the wit that drove it."
Meri turned to him. The elder Newman's aura was a complex weave of silvers and blues, as vivid and as dangerous as glass.
"You crossed the
keleigh
?"
The old one laughed, his aura shimmering, and shook his head. "Some long seasons ago, that was! Eliza there was a babe in arms—slept through the whole passage, for all the sound she ever made. Sam, now, he was born this side, same as Gracie an' Thomas an'—"
"And me!" Jamie piped up from Meri's side.
"You!" Another laugh, warm and welcome as new bread. "Ain't no doubt regarding
you
, Sprout."
"No doubt at all," Elizabeth said, with a calmness at odds with the brilliance of her aura. "But the Ranger hasn't come to hear our lineage. His concern is to hear what ails our good friends, the trees."
"Aye, aye!" Jack Wood raised a hand gnarled and spotted like an old branch. "Mind you, now, it was Lucy give the trees our parole back when we first found this spot. And 'twas the trees sent young Palin along to have a look at us. I put myself forward as caretaker, for I'd been a woodsman, back there, and fancied I knew something of trees." He chuckled. "They soon learned me different, and Palin, too, after he brung Lucy back from swearing us to the good lady of Sea Fort."
"So," Meri said carefully, into the silence that followed this declaration. "You have been caring for the trees. The Engenium—the good lady of Sea Fort—had given me to understand that your folk were . . . not tree-wise."
"Nor are we," Jack Wood told him. "I'm no Ranger, young master—far from it! Oh, I'm canny enough to take off a sick limb, and to keep the burrowers away from new roots. But there's a need in the forest of late that I'm not understanding, a—" He moved his hand again, as if fingering the word from the passing breeze. "A—
mistiness
. My lore tells me the stand's old; and in the natural way of things some o' the elders'll be fallin', the same as with Lucy, and—soon enough—myself. This though—I'm thinking this is something different, something . . . not of root nor branch." He sighed and shook his head, sending Meri a rueful grin.
"You'll see why we asked our good lady for a Ranger, eh? It goes far beyond me, and this one—" He jerked his head at Jamie.
"The trees talk to me!" the boy said hotly and the old man chuckled.
"Who said they didn't, eh? But are they speakin' of their affliction?"
There was a pause. Jamie sighed, visibly wilting on the bench, and shook his tumbled head.
"No."
"Nor would they," Meri said briskly, "burden a sprout. We are all as children to the elder trees, and in truth there are those whose thought is strange, even to we who are Rangers." He looked again to Jack Wood. "Surely, though, the trees would speak to their own."
The old man blinked. "Eh?"
"The Ranger means Palin, I think," Elizabeth Moore said from her comfortable recline on the grass, and gave Meri another of her smiles. "Palin wanders," she said softly. "He does errands, for the trees, for the Engenium at Sea Hold, for us, for other Wood Wise—for the Hobs, too, when they ask him. He belongs to the trees, certain enough, Master Vanglelauf, but less to
these trees
than we do." She moved her shoulders in an easy shrug. "We had thought perhaps someone who was tied to the Engenium's lands, as we are . . ."
"Which I am not," Meri said softly.
"But the trees like you!" Jamie said exuberantly. "They're pleased you've come!"
"And so I am pleased to have come," Meri said firmly. He looked, first to Elizabeth Moore, then to Jack Wood.
"I will undertake to identify the problem," he said slowly. "You understand that this will mean that my time will be spent—"
"Can't you use your longeye?" the sprout interrupted. "Sam says you saw our village from leagues away!"
"Seeing is not the same as
going among
," Meri said, patiently, for it was the duty of those elder to teach the young. "In addition, the longeye is a gift of the sea, and is less use than you might think, among the trees."
"I—" began the sprout, and pressed his lips suddenly together as his mother raised a hand.
"You," she said, "have been quite rude enough for one evening, Jamie Moore." She turned her head and gave Meri a smile. "We understand that you are here to aid the trees, Master Vanglelauf. It is what we asked of Lady Sian. Had we wished for a jester, that is what we would have asked her to send."
"And right daft she would have thought us, too," Jack added, with a grin.
Elizabeth nodded, and seemed about to say something else when there arose an outcry from the house across the green, the accumulated power flaring into new and terrifying patterns.
"Gran!" Jamie cried, flinging to his feet, running heedlessly back toward the house, with his mother not two paces behind.
The Newman elder rose more slowly, and turned, staring at the house without moving. Meri gained his feet also—courtesy, he reminded himself, though he trembled at this new display of raw, potent power.
"May I escort you, sir?" he asked, desperately hoping that this proper and polite suggestion would be rejected.
Jack shook himself—"Eh?"—and looked over his shoulder. Meri could see that cheeks were wet.
"Nay, then," he said softly. "That's a gentle offer and I'm obliged, but—I can walk on my own." He shook his head, seeming not to notice the tears that ran into his beard.
"Never thought she'd go first," he said, "and leave me at the last."
Waking was a long, languorous business.
Becca stretched, luxuriating in the smooth slide of sheets along her limbs and the flex of muscle and flesh. She slipped back into a drowse, becoming by degrees aware of the warmth of sunlight upon her face, and a ruddy glow beyond her eyelids. A sweet, riotous scent tickled her nose—roses, lavender, teyepia and gradials—beneath it the prickle of pine and the clean, woody odor of elitch, a touch of turned earth.
She smiled and nestled her cheek into the cool pillow, a little closer to awake now, lazily following the frenzy of birdsong until she smiled and stretched once more.
"You may wish to bear in mind, in the interest of your future well-being," a clear voice said dryly from near at hand, "that one does not
demand
of a Queen. Even so mild-natured a Queen as Diathen."
"Yet it was not the Queen," Becca answered languidly, "who struck me down."
A short silence and then a sigh that sounded more irritated than comfortable was her answer as she drifted inevitably toward the shores of true wakefulness.
"A Queen," Sian said at last, "depends upon those who owe her loyalty to protect her. Does it become necessary for her to raise a hand in her own defense, she cannot afford to be seen as . . . less than strong. Are you awake, Rebecca Beauvelley?"
"For the moment, it seems that I am." Becca opened her eyes and met Sian's sea-green gaze firmly. "Until you decide otherwise."
"This conversation has a familiar odor to it," Sian observed, perhaps to herself. She sat a-slouch at some remove from the daybed, one boot planted firmly on the glass-topped table, the chair tipped precariously back on two legs. She moved her arm in a meaningless sweep. "I grant it may seem mere whimsy on my part, but you must own that twice I've acted to preserve your life."
"A boon," Becca snapped, fully awake now—and fully irritated, "I neither requested nor desired!" She sat up and thrust the covers aside, faintly surprised that these things were allowed her.
Sian raised a thin golden brow. "Come now, would you rather be dead?"
"In fact," Becca answered, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. "I
would
! What do you think I was doing when you interfered with me in Altimere's garden?"
"Seeking clear thought," Sian said, and brought her hand before her face, fingers spread wide, as if in defense. "Do not glare at me, madam! I only repeat what you yourself told me."
Becca snapped to her feet, and flung out her good arm to catch her balance. "I do not—"
"You saw the collar for what it truly was, did you not?" Sian continued. "Certainly, with all the artifice woven into it—forged signature and will-to-fail among the lesser evils that Diathen's philosophers have found!—certainly, you were correct to seek clear thought before attempting to deal with such a thing for the third time. That you triumphed—"
"Had to do with—" Becca bit her lip, while inside her head a deep, amused voice told her,
Good morning, Gardener.
Sian tipped her head. "Had to do with?" she inquired politely, and crossed her arms over her breast, waiting.
Well, and what does it matter, now?
Becca thought angrily.
Surely, I might be excused for having run mad.
"Had to do with the trees!" she snapped. "They came to my aid at the last."
Sian closed her eyes. "A very familiar odor, indeed," she murmured. She raised her boot from the table, the chair crashed down onto four legs, and she was on her feet.
She made, Becca admitted privately, a brave figure, with her hands on her slim waist, her sleeves billowing and bright in the fresh breeze, her legs shapely in their tight trousers, and the cool blue flames outlining her against the air.
For herself, she felt . . . somewhat grubby, her dress draggled with having been slept in, and her hair knotted and none too clean—and the weight, not entirely unfamiliar, of dread anticipation pressing down upon her shoulders.