Thirteen
Talis woke.
He woke in a dream of the wood, he thought dazedly, raising his head. No true oak grew that shade of gold, though that gold was what the eye looked for in the golden oak. No true grass felt so silken, no true shadow laid a swath of such dark velvet across it. No true leaves burned that tender and fiery green in the morning light. The long grass glittered under a web of jewels. He moved his outflung hand, touched a jewel and it melted down his finger like a tear.
Three white hounds.
He stared at the tear of dew, remembering.
Three white horses.
One white stag with golden horns, trying to outrun the fire in its horns.
The black moon rising in a crown of horns.
Atrix Wolfe.
He rolled onto his back, blinking at the sudden light glancing across his lenses. White birds soared out of the oak into light. He dropped his lenses on the grass, hid his eyes in the crook of his arm and watched the Hunter, blood running from his mouth, eating the page out of a book.
Eating words.
For a moment, Talis tasted the dry, cloying parchment again in his own mouth. He tried to kill me with words…
He heard horns.
He recognized them immediately: Burne, hunting again after last night's wearying hunt. How had it ended? Moonlight… Burne riding toward him down a long shaft of moonlight… Something had happened; he had fallen; Burne had missed him in the dark. So the King had returned to the wood.
Talis slid his lenses on and rose. He felt, and knew he looked as if he had been dragged for a mile or two behind a horse. The horns sounded close. He waited, standing under the oak, searching the wood for movement, color. An arrow, snicking past him, struck the tree above his shoulder. His brows lifted; his lenses slid. The tree gave a sudden shudder, leaves rustling, whispering. Talis ducked behind it. The deer the arrow hunted burst out of some bushes, ran deeper into the wood.
He saw the hunters then, fanning out in front of him, some pursuing the deer, others searching the wood. As he stepped out from behind the oak, he saw Burne.
The King rode toward him; he stepped clear of the tree's shadow, calling urgently as his brother rode past him: "Burne!" The King turned his mount abruptly beneath the oak. Talis saw his expression, a mingling of hope and confusion, change as he circled among the flickering shadows. He said wearily to their lanky, fair-haired cousin Ambris, who reined his mount where Talis had stood a heartbeat earlier,
"She must have some reason for taking him. Surely she'll give us some sign, some message. She wouldn't just take him, for the sake of taking something human. Would she?" He sounded unconvinced. Talis, standing between the horses, said through clenched teeth: "Burne."
"I don't know," Ambris said heavily. "Didn't the mage tell you?"
"He didn't know, either. All she ever did was shoot him, in his dreams."
"Burne," Talis said, amazed; his voice shook.
"Well, then," Ambris said. "She might have taken him for any reason. Any reason at all. He's young and likely looking, it's spring-"
"Ambris," Burne said irritably.
"Well, you asked. I don't quite understand what you think she is. If you're thinking she is what I think you're thinking, and she took him lightly and carelessly as they take humans, then we might be old men before she tires of him."
"Burne," Talis whispered. Not even the King's horse flicked an ear in his direction.
"Fine," Burne said explosively. "As long as she sets him loose before I die. What are you saying? That I shouldn't bother looking for him?"
"No, but-"
"I warned him. I tried to. You don't offer your heart to what shapes itself out of water or light or white birch. But would he listen?"
"They never do," Ambris said, and Burne's face reddened; his mouth clamped shut on a word. Ambris added hastily, "It's likely she wants Talis for some important purpose, and she'll give us a message. Or he will. She is not a monster, the mage told you, but a mystery."
Talis felt his bones melt into air and light with horror. "Burne!" he screamed, trying to hold the King's reins. "Am I dead?" He might have been the leaves talking above Burne's head, the wind trying to grip the silver-scrolled reins. I'm a ghost, he thought, cold with terror. Like the ghosts of Hunter's Field. This is how they feel… Except that they must remember dying, and I can't remember…
"What exactly did Talis say about her?" Ambris asked.
Message, Talis thought desperately. Message.
"She was more beautiful than dreams and that was why he didn't hear the boar charging him, or the hounds, or the horns, or all of us shouting at him to move."
Ambris grunted. "So that was it. She could have warned him. Did she want him dead?"
"How do I know?" Burne shouted. "Why would she want Talis dead?"
"I don't know," Ambris said. "Why would she ride without a face through a mage's dreams? I don't understand any of this. I'm just trying to-"
"Do you think she was luring him to his death?"
"I don't think," Ambris said carefully, "we should assume anything beyond what you saw. He ran down a shaft of moonlight and was taken by the wood. He must be here somewhere."
"Do you think," Burne said starkly, "it's because of all the animals we kill?"
"No," Ambris said emphatically. "I don't. Nor the trees we cut and burn. So don't ask that."
Burne's face lifted toward the leaves that rustled now and then, like slow, ancient breathing; boughs creaked like old bones. "Do you think-" Talis heard him ask tentatively as he knelt on the ground in front of the King's horse.
"No," Ambris said again.
Stones could speak, if he could hold them; the ground could speak, if he traced his name through dead leaves. He brushed at them; they moved, responding to his touch in one world or the other. Burne, he began to write.
"When the mages come from Chaumenard," Ambris said, "they'll help Atrix Wolfe, they'll know what to do."
"Mages," Burne said tightly. "Nothing they taught him could save him from this."
"Maybe you're wrong," Ambris argued. "Maybe he'll find a way to save himself."
Burne grunted dubiously. Leaves lifted, swirled over Talis' word. "What can she want?" Burne asked helplessly. "At least she could tell us that." He urged his horse forward abruptly, over what was left of his name. Talis, crouched stubbornly in the horse's path as it rode through him, caught a glimpse through its eyes of leaves and light and a pale, misty shadow on the air that humans could not see.
I ran down a shaft of moonlight, he thought, trembling with the aftermath of horror. I was taken by the wood. Maybe I'm not dead. Wonder eased through him, then; he leaned against the oak, looking around him at the bright, golden world. Maybe I'm in her wood…
"But," he asked the oak, "where is she?"
The oak did not answer. The hunt had passed; he heard its horns in the distance. He searched for some sign, some message, saw only the dreaming oak, the birch with its leaves of green fire.
"I don't," he whispered, "even know your name."
"I am the Queen of the Wood," she said. He whirled and saw her standing where a birch had been. Or had he only imagined the birch? "That is all you need to know. My name is as old as this wood; it is never spoken in your world."
He was mute, gazing at her, wondering, if he touched her hair, would it burn like fire, wondering what her eyes had seen to make them at once so powerful and so troubled. He had bridged worlds; he could not seem to bridge, with a touch, the step between them. He knelt finally, scarcely knowing what he did, gathered cobweb cloth blowing between his hands, and raised it to his lips.
"Tell me," he said, his eyes closed, her silk against his mouth, "what you want."
"And you will do it."
"Yes."
He felt her hands light, like small birds, on his shoulders, and he stood, dazed again by the light in her hair, in her eyes. "You ran from me last night," she reminded him.
He made a helpless gesture, remembering the confusion of hunts. "I know. I was torn. There were too many-"
"Too many hunters," she said softly, her eyes narrowed, glittering dark and amber. "There was my hunt-"
"And there was Burne-"
"Burne?"
"The King of Pelucir."
"Ah. The human hunt. He is still troubling my wood."
"He is searching for me. Last night, I was searching for him, to warn him-I was afraid for him-"
"Afraid?"
"Of the third hunt."
"Yes," she whispered. He saw her hands close, her face close, smooth and pale as ivory. "The third hunt… I heard the cry of the Wolf."
He was silent again, gazing at her, his eyes wide. "The White Wolf," he said finally, "of Chaumenard."
"Yes. I called him in his dreams. Where is he?"
"I don't know."
"Find him." She moved closer to him then, her silks flowing on the wind, one hand falling like silk on his bare wrist. "Find him for me. Bring him into this world. He cannot seem to find his way here, though I have called him again and again-"
"Him." His voice was flat. "Atrix Wolfe."
Her face opened slightly at the name. "Yes."
"You couldn't call him here. So you called me."
"To bring him here," she said. "Yes. Because no other human knows both him and me, to bridge the boundary between our worlds."
He opened his mouth, closed it. His eyes closed; his lips caught between his teeth. He tasted blood before he spoke again. "He killed my father."
He heard the faintest of breaths, a butterfly flying out of her mouth. "I need him," she said inexorably, and he opened his eyes to stare at her.
"For what?" he asked in amazement. "You are powerful enough to pull me out of my world. Why do you need a human mage?"
"Because I need him in the human world."
He swallowed, feeling chilled again in the soft spring light. "He is very powerful. I can't find him if he doesn't want to be found. And," he added, precisely, bitterly, "I do not want to find him."
He heard a slightly more substantial sigh, of cobwebs torn, or thousand-year-old tapestry threads breaking apart. "Then," she said as precisely, "you will never return to Pelucir. You will remain here forever, human in an inhuman time and place. No doubt you will forget Pelucir eventually. But Pelucir will never forget you: the prince who vanished in the wood on the hill and never returned."
He drew breath to shout at her. The shout dissolved into fire, burning down his face. He tried to turn away; she seemed everywhere. He closed his eyes; the hot tears ran between his lashes. "The thing that hunts him killed my father." His voice held no sound. "On Hunter's Field. He made the Hunter that hunts him. It was a war between kings, men-Pelucir had no mage. No sorcery to fight his sorcery."
"Who could?" Her voice sounded hollow now; she averted her face, hiding a sudden flick of memory. "He is the greatest living mage."
"He is a lie. He tried to run from what he had made-tried to hide. But it found him."
"And I found him. And I want him, before he and this monstrous thing he made destroy each other."
He opened his eyes finally; she blurred behind the tears caught in his lenses. He made some impatient, despairing sound; she slid them from his face. He felt her fingers brush his skin; a tear clung to one fingertip. Mesmerized, he watched her gaze at it, then touch her own face with it.
"I could never cry," she whispered. "I envy you."
He felt his throat burn again, this time with wonder, with pity. "Why? What have you lost?"
"Love," she said simply. "Sorrow."
He was mute, staring at her. The tear hung like a cut jewel below her eye. He lifted his hand, touched it, and it fell, glittering, to the grass. "No one cries for sorrow."
"I know." She closed her eyes, her face upraised, fierce and desperate, pale as ivory in her autumn hair. He touched her cheek again, his lips parted, not daring to breathe. He touched her mouth. She opened her eyes then, as if waking. Her lips grazed his fingertips. Then she took his hand in her hands, and held it still. "No one cries for her. I cannot cry, and I think that where she is, no one would care to cry for her. That's why I need the mage. And you. I cannot cross into your world to look for her. You can cross boundaries; you can show the mage the way to me. He could break the spell on her, and bring her back to me."
"Who?" Again his voice held no sound.
"My daughter. My Saro. My only child." She paused, searching his face. "You said her name."
He whispered, "I said 'sorrow. '"
"Sorrow," she said. Then: "Saro."
"Saro." He was silent again, watching the shadows and golden lights in her eyes, how expression breathed across her face like wind across water, changing a curve of bone here, a hollow there. He could, he realized slowly, stand there for a season or three and watch her, while leaves the color of her hair drifted down, and the tall birch rose out of snow whiter than the snow. He forced himself to speak. "How did you lose her to the human world?"
Her eyes narrowed; he glimpsed the night in them, the queen who rode without a face through the mage's dream. "She vanished out of this world. Years ago, by mortal reckoning. I have been searching for her that long. I cannot find her here; therefore she must be there. Yet I hear no tales of her from your world; no one dreams of her. She is disguised, hidden in some way. My bright, sweet Saro. I dream of her, trying to speak to me, but I cannot hear what she is saying; her words make no sound."
"Sometimes-" He stopped, started again. "Sometimes I see a woman in my dreams. With my eyes. I can't hear what she is saying, either."
"Saro is not dead. We change, when we are very old. You see us all around you in the wood. But death is for humans."
"My mother is dead. She died the night my father was killed. The night I was born. They told me… it was as if she knew. As if she saw him fall. And so she died." His eyes dropped, hidden from her; he waited, while she considered that argument. But she only said,
"Such matters you must take up with the mage when I am done with him. But first you must find him. You bridge worlds. You saw what he only dreams. If you can find me, you can find him. I want his mage's mind, his mage's eyes, to find my child in your world."
"Have you seen," he asked evenly, "what he made? What came alive and hunted him last night?"
"Yes." There was no pity in her face, no expression at all.
"If he is hiding from that, what makes you think I can find him?"
"I saw him enter my wood, carrying you in his arms. If you don't find him, he will find you."
He slid a hand beneath his lenses, over his eyes. "If I put myself in enough danger, you mean."
"You will find him and persuade him to help me," she said. "It is your only hope of escape from this world. Your only path to Pelucir."
He shifted a little, felt her hold on his hand tighten. His mouth tightened. "He has no reason to care."
"Then," she said softly, "you must find him a reason to care. You have odd powers: You walk between worlds, you see what the White Wolf only dreams. You must remember, though, that if you try to return to your world, you will only wander like a ghost among those you love. Like the shadow I became when I followed you. A reflection. A dream. Until the mage is found, you are hostage in my world."
He caught his breath to protest. Burne, he wanted to say to her. The childless King of Pelucir. "How," he asked reasonably, his voice shaking, "do you expect me to survive what the mage made to destroy us?"
He saw no mercy in her eyes; for a moment she did not, or could not, speak. Her hands were gripping his hand; he waited, feeling her tremble.
"They watched him," she said finally, her face colorless as mist. "From within the wood, when he cast that spell. Saro and my beloved consort. He and she had some human blood; they could see and hear what I could not. Saro seemed open to your world with the intensity of her curiosity. My consort watched with her. And so." Her breath rose and fell. "And so. When the greatest human mage worked his spell on your battlefield, he shattered the weakened boundary between our worlds and pulled my Saro into yours. In what shape, I do not know. I can only guess. By what he did to my consort, who was, himself, among the most powerful in my world. I saw him changed. Warped out of shape and trapped in the mage's terrible spell. I watched him ride away from me onto your battlefield."
Talis felt the blood drain out of his face. Cold shook him; even her hands on his could not warm him. He opened his mouth to speak, could make no sound.
She nodded. "That is what the mage is fighting. His own power. And my consort's enormous power, twisted beyond any recognition."
"Oh," he said without sound. His hands moved, drew at her, slender wrist, elbow, shoulder, until he had gathered all of her into his arms, and held her, feeling sorrow with all its thorns bloom in his heart. He felt her face drop finally against his shoulder.
"So you see-"
"Yes," he whispered, seeing the Hunter in the keep destroying spells, seeing the full moon rising in a tangle of oak, the mage standing under the oak, looking across Hunter's Field, watching his past and his future ride toward him in the dark. "Yes."