"Were you in the war, Elyd?"
The stable boy turned, Rosamunde's saddle in his arms, and gave her a hard stare out of stone grey eyes.
"Do I look like I was in the war?" he snapped.
For all his peevishness, he walked light around the horses. Becca followed him and stood to one side, watching as he put the saddle gently on Rosamunde's back.
"How would I know?" she asked reasonably. "Altimere was in the war—"
Elyd snorted. "Oh, aye, he was in thick of it, no mistake there."
"Well, then," Becca persisted, "why can't you have been, also?"
He brought the belly strap under and tightened it with a steady, unaggressive pressure, shaking his head the while. "Because I'm not an Elder Fey." He gave her a sideways glance. "Very few of the Elders left—nor should there be, for what they'd done."
Becca blinked. "What they'd done?" she repeated. "But—what did they do?"
Elyd sighed heavily. "There's books about nothing else, you know."
"Doubtless there are," she retorted. "And I would read them, if some people were a little less jealous of their time."
"It's not my job to teach you to read," he said, snappish again. He turned away to pick up Drisco's saddle. "I'm a stable hand."
"I know that," Becca said, "and I'm sorry. I wouldn't trouble you at all except there are only you and Altimere to teach me, on this whole vast estate. If I'm to learn how to read, it must be one or the other of you who helps me, and Altimere—"
"Is continuously busy with his work," Elyd interrupted and pulled the cinch tight across Drisco's belly. "I know."
"Well, then," Becca said, as he went to get the rest of the tack, "you can see why I have to ask all these idiotish questions. I'm very fortunate that you and Altimere both speak my language, at least!"
Elyd turned, giving her a look that was perilously close to pity. He shook his head and returned to his task.
"I don't speak your language."
Becca laughed. "But of course you do! We're talking even—"
"We're talking, right enough," he said. "But I'm no more speaking your language than you're speaking mine, no matter what either of us hears."
Becca studied his craggy brown face, and after a moment decided that he was serious. "How do we understand each other, then?" she asked quietly.
He shrugged. "The trees whisper your meaning to me. Perhaps they do the same for you."
"The trees?" Becca frowned. "No, I hear your voice, directly."
Another shrug. "Likely some artifice involved, in that wise—don't ask me what it is! I'm Wood Wise."
Wood Wise, as Becca had come to learn, were the foresters of this world beyond the Boundary. And if Elyd was ignorant of Altimere's work, he was absolutely eloquent in regard to anything that set roots in the ground and put forth leaves to soak in the benediction of the sun. It was from him that she had learned the names and habits of the unfamiliar plants in Altimere's extensive gardens. She doubted not that the trees whispered to him, so comfortably did he move among them.
"Are you riding today, or not?" His voice was sharp, bringing her out of reverie.
"Yes." She gave him a smile, and extended her hand. "Elyd, forgive me for badgering you! It must be maddening to be required to explain what the least child knows! You must think me utterly mad—and unschooled, besides!"
She had meant to make him smile, and ease the strain between them. But Elyd—Elyd stood as one transfixed, staring down at her extended hand.
"Come," she prompted softly, "cry friends, Elyd, do."
He took a breath, and cast a furtive look into her eyes, seeming in that moment a wild thing and utterly alien to her. Then—
"Friends," he whispered harshly. His hand darted forward, callused fingertips barely brushing her palm, then he turned away, dropping lightly to one knee, his hands ready to receive her foot.
Becca smiled and stepped forward. He tossed her neatly and was astride Drisco by the time she had gathered the reins into her hand and leaned over to whisper proper greetings into Rosamunde's waiting ear.
"Where?" Elyd asked shortly, and she cocked a whimsical eye at him.
"The Wild Wood?" she returned, mischievously.
His eyes flew to hers, such longing in them that Becca felt the heart squeeze in her chest. Tears pricked her eyes—and then he was leaning over to pat Drisco's withers.
"The Wild Wood being out of the question," he said, his voice excruciatingly even, "is there another ride that would please you?"
Rosamunde shifted, stamping her foot with energy, and Becca laughed. That was decided, then.
"The southern field," she told Elyd. "Rosamunde wants to run."
They rode in silence for a while, the horses walking mannerly side by side. A breeze came up, damp against Becca's face, and she looked up at the sky.
"It won't rain until evening," Elyd said, in answer to her unspoken concern.
She shook her head at him. "And how do you know that?"
"The trees," he answered, and gave her a brief, sideways smile. "They are sometimes wrong, but not often. We'll have time for that run the lady commanded."
Becca laughed. "Rosamunde rules us all, does she not?"
He blinked, then inclined his head. "She does, at that," he agreed.
"I wonder," Becca said, as they passed along the border of the water garden, "how you came to serve Altimere?"
The silence stretched so long that she thought he didn't mean to answer her, then he spoke, so low that he might have been murmuring encouragement into Drisco's ear.
"He is one of the last Elders. His House is old and he is awash in kest. Of course I serve him."
Which, Becca thought crossly, was scarcely more informative than his continued silence would have been.
The path widened somewhat, and there was the meadow, ahead and to the right, down a short slope, the fence that kept the Wild Wood at bay a full furlong distant. Rosamunde quivered, her yearning translating into Becca's yearning.
She leaned slightly forward in the saddle, tucking her heels and stirrups up gently, and whispered, "Good girl," before she looked to Elyd and let Rosamunde have her head with the word they all waited for.
"Go!"
Rosamunde ran, outstripping Drisco in the first moment, and the very wind in the next. Meadow grass flowed beneath them like water, and still they ran faster. Where Elyd and Drisco were—Becca neither knew nor cared. The whirlwind of their passage, the exhilaration of speed—that was all, everything. Enough.
Ahead, the fence! Becca leaned, and Rosamunde turned right, running along the barrier, slowing of her own will, until, quite suddenly, she stopped, ears pricked, and nostrils wide, staring across the fence.
Into the Wild Wood.
Biting her lip, Becca scanned the wood, shadows deep beneath the branches even now, at midday. Rosamunde was alert, not alarmed, but—concerned. Yes, definitely concerned.
Beneath the trees, at the near edge of shadow—was that—
What was that?
Rosamunde snorted, lightly, and the thing in the shadows jumped like a squirrel for the nearest tree. Except it wasn't a squirrel. It was—
Perhaps it was a man. A bandy-legged man scarcely higher than her stirrup, with a tufted tail and—
"Are you mad?" Drisco stormed up, driving between Rosamunde and the fence, Elyd blocking Becca's sight of the—thing—as he grasped her bridle.
"We stopped," she said mildly, and pointed over his shoulder toward the edge of the wood. "Elyd, what is that?"
He turned his head briefly, then looked at her again, anger—no. Fear in his face.
"I don't see anything," he said harshly.
"You did!" she snapped. "There was no other reason for you to set Drisco between it and us!"
"You are not to go under the trees!" Elyd snapped back.
"And why not?" Becca took a hard breath, to cool her temper. Elyd was her friend, and truly, he would know the dangers of the Wood far, far better than she.
He shook his head. "You are not to go under the trees," he repeated, stubbornly.
"Very well," she said, trying to keep her voice calm. "We did not go under the trees—and did not intend to go under the trees. I am sorry to have alarmed you, Elyd." She leaned forward and put her hand over his, where he still gripped Rosamunde's bridle.
He froze, and Drisco under him, the two of them seeming to have been carved of the same vast block of mahogany.
"Elyd?" Even as Becca frowned, her fingers moved, delighting in the taut knuckles and firm flesh. His hand was warmer than Altimere's, his pale eyes fixed in a glazed fascination on her face, like a mouse, frozen under the scrutiny of a cat.
Becca laughed, and leaned back, removing her hand. "Well, you needn't look as if I were going to eat you!" she cried. "You are unhandsome, sir! I only want my reins back."
Elyd licked his lips, and closed his eyes—and dropped the bridle.
"It's time to return," he said, tonelessly. "I have duties."
The breeze was off the land this morning, bearing the scent and the vigor of green growing things. Meri paused on the seaward path and turned his face uphill, filling his lungs; feeling the tug toward home.
The faint, and perhaps wholly imaginary, tug toward home. Still, he needed no beacon to guide him to Vanglewood. He had walked the path so many times his feet surely knew the way. . . .
He winced slightly as the elitch switch in his belt developed a sudden sharp edge and dug into his side.
"I gave my word," he muttered, and resolutely turned his face away.
The path he had chosen to the ocean's edge was the quickest. It was also the steepest, and, unless one had spent considerable time at Sea Hold, was indistinguishable from a goat track.
When he was a youth, it had been Meri's favorite way down, the hungry crashing of the waves upon the toothy rocks below adding a thrill to the descent. He had taken it as a mark of his mixed heritage, for it was said that the Sea Folk thrived on danger. His mother was pleased to express the opinion that dancing on daggers was a folly of youth. Especially those youth with wooden heads.
It came to him, halfway down, and sweating his balance among the treacherous stones, that his mother had perhaps been correct.
Still, he had chosen the path, and he was damned if he would turn about and climb an almost perpendicular hill strewn with shattered rock to find a safer route. Even his foggy-headed younger self had known better than that ascent.
The flat stone walk which led to the pier was only a half-dozen careful steps distant. Meri, poised on shifting stone, distinctly remembered leaping this last distance, which, given the almost complete lack of footing, was perhaps not as mad as it now seemed.
Except for the probability of landing badly, falling and dashing what might be supposed to be one's brains out, or skidding on the damp walk and plummeting into the sea or—
The rocks with which he had achieved his uneasy truce turned abruptly beneath his boots, destroying his balance. Instinct sent him into a leap, knees high, arms extended like wings, and he hit the walk solid, boot heels hammering the rock, breath leaving his lungs in a shout.
For a moment, he stood there, knees bent, arms half-furled, then slowly straightened and looked about him.
It seemed that his mode of descent had gone unwitnessed, which was, upon reflection, too bad. Perhaps a song celebrating Meripen Longeye's graceless descent of Sea Hold would instruct those who hallowed heroes.
Or perhaps not.
Meri shook his head and looked out over the bay. Only a few ships in; and the tide on the turn. He had come down here to the sea's edge for a purpose, and, as he seemed to have survived the descent, he had best get on with it.
One more deep breath, the air thick and tasting more of sand than salt, and he was moving, down the walk until it met the pier, then another jump—a hop, really—to a soft landing in wet sand.
The sea lapped the shore tamely here at this hour, lulling those who did not know it into the belief that all was protected and safe. He supposed he would be safe enough—and in any case, he did not see that he had a choice. Sian held his word, thereby binding him to this place, among these folk. And while the Sea Folk were in no wise as . . . fierce in their acquisition of kest and of precedence as were the Elders, yet there remained a distinct danger in standing amongst them protected only by Sian's will.
Not, he thought wryly, unlacing his shirt and pulling it over his head, that Sian's will was to be discounted; even as a child she had been noted for her willfulness. It was rather that she could not be everywhere, and even Sea Hold might not consider itself bound to protect one who was empty of kest as a—
Light burst before his eyes, shockingly real. A blaze of hot blues and molten yellows. For a moment, he hung, his will suspended, kest rising, his whole being yearning to merge with—
The vision faded. Meri was on his knees in the wet sand, retching.
He shuddered, and pushed himself to his feet. Deliberately, he shook the sand out of his shirt and folded it onto a dry rock, yanked off his boots and put them up, as well, his belt following. For a moment he stood with the elitch wand in his hand, while he looked out over the turgid ocean.
"It were better," he murmured, "if I might seek the trees. I thank you, Elder, for your care."
He pressed the branch to his lips, then put it atop his shirt, stripped off his pants, folded them, walked to the place where the wavelets lapped the hard sand and the ledge fell away, through layers of shifting blue and green—and dove into the ocean.
The water was like acid along his skin, the salt entering each scar as if it were a fresh wound. Meri's muscles convulsed, his breath locked in his chest, and he was sinking, bound for the bottom of the bay like a boulder. He had a moment to appreciate the irony of the sea's healing before the pain vanished, his muscles warmed and he kicked for the surface.
His head broke water, and he drank air in noisy gasps, raising his hands to skin sopping tendrils of hair off his face.
Eventually, his gasping stopped, his breathing deepened and he lay back upon the water. The sea held him as firm as any comrade's arms. For a long time, he stared up at the sky curving like an egg blue bowl above him, dotted here and there with frivolous, curly white clouds. He thought to lift the patch over his right eye, but in the end he closed the left, and let the sea have its way with him.