Twenty-two

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Saro slipped free of the Queen and ran into the Hunter's path.

For an instant, facing him, she stood in snow. Winds snarled like wolves around them, the flame in his horns streamed wildly behind him, the black moon rose above the fire, hung in a mist of white. A word filled her mouth; it meant him, she knew, but she could not find it to say it, and she could not find him, in that masked, feral face crowned with fire and horn. Voices cried at her beyond the snow-streaked winds as he rode toward her; they were the cries of startled, fleeing birds.

Saro.

Found, she thought, transfixed in the Hunter's eye. Found. And as the snows of memory melted away and light fell over them both, she felt bewildered and impatient with both their mute faces, as if neither belonged in that falling light, in that wood.

Saro, a bird cried. And then again, in the prince's voice, "Saro!"

She whirled. Talis stood beneath one of the fuming oak trees. Light ran like a live thing behind him, through every branch, every leaf; even its roots, beneath the ground, sent up an eerie web of light. His lenses were flashing in that brilliance, at Saro, at the Hunter; at Atrix, who vanished suddenly under a whip of light; at the Queen, who stood spellbound, her eyes on the Hunter, tears like hard cut jewels glittering down her face.

"Saro!" Talis called desperately, as the dark hounds flowed toward her and she felt their hot breath on her skin. His lenses flashed again, and she caught her breath in horror.

The hounds reached her, milling through the soft air like thunderbolts, silent yet, dangerous, about to explode after the lightning struck. But she had no time for their coal eyes. Talis moved, with a strange, underwater slowness, snagged a strand of light from the oak between his fingers. His eyes went to the Hunter; his hand began to rise.

Something flashed through Saro, as if she were oak, struck and burning with power. Her throat moved; sounds and shapes tangled together, fighting to get out. Something struggled free, dropped out of her mouth, but it was only a hard jewel of light. Talis' hand arched high, stopped. Light wove through his fingers. A small, dark bird pushed its way out of Saro's mouth, and flew, panicked, crying her word in its own language. Tears dropped, cold and diamond-hard, from her eyes. The light flared in Talis' hand. Then an arrow of white fire streaked from the Hunter toward Talis, and Saro felt something that was not bird or jewel, but torn out of her breath and blood and heart, shaping the one word she knew.

"Saro!" she cried, and Talis' face swung toward her. The Hunter's fire struck the edge of his lens and shattered it.

The power flung him back against the oak. He slid limply; its light wove a gleaming web around him. Its roots lifted long, swollen fingers to grip him as he fell, hold him fast to earth. He shuddered once, his face turning blindly toward the Hunter, and then lay still.

Atrix appeared beside him suddenly, kneeling, one hand on Talis, the other uplifted toward the Hunter, whose hounds flowed in a dark circle around the oak. The Hunter, his eyes fixed on the fallen prince, rode inexorably as night, his hand rising again, his horse's hooves beating an unswerving path toward mage and prince as if what stood before him were of no more substance than air or light. Another word struggled out of heart and need, and the memory of a harsh winter night; Saro screamed, "Father!"

The horse reared above her; she saw a confusion of hooves and sky and glowing trees. Then hooves thudded down like stone beside her, and the horse stood still as stone. She watched her father's face emerge beneath the Hunter's face, as it emerged in her memory. His eyes changed color, black fading to the light, dusty gold of ripe acorns. She felt her own face change then, lost expressions and memories surfacing, reshaping her as he found her among his own memories. His eyes loosed her finally, to find the Queen standing among her trees, the tears melting now, burning down her face.

"Saro," she said. "Ilyos."

He made a sound that might have come out of the split heart of an oak. His gaze swept across the trees; the shimmering webs of lightning withdrew into them. He lifted his hand: Mist the colors of leaf and light gathered around them, so that they stood together in the private wood of memory.

He bent carefully under the weight of the burning horns. His trembling hand touched Saro's face.

He breathed her name. She closed her eyes, felt his touch, in memory, on an endless summer day. "I can say them now," she whispered. "All the words you taught me before I learned sorrow."

He made another sound, a word with no shape that spoke of sorrow. His hand slid away from her to the Queen, who had come to stand beside Saro. He caught her tears in his fingers.

"You are crying." His voice shook. "You could never cry before."

She caught his hand in hers, held it to her eyes, her mouth. "I learned," she said into his palm. Still gripping him, she reached out to Saro, held her tightly, wiping her tears in Saro's hair. Saro twisted her hands into her father's cloak, clung to it, her eyes moving from face to face, as she saw her strange past unfold from green wood to stone kitchen, to wood again, from their child to no one's child, and now the Hunter's child.

"I saw you," she told him, feeling the tears on her own face. "In my cauldron. In my dreams. Drawkcab, you said to me. Your eyes found me."

He shook his head wordlessly. "Some part of me found you," he said at last. "Some part of me must always have been trying to return." He was silent again, struggling with his own past; she saw the shadows of it in his eyes, the Hunter's face lying in wait beneath his face. He whispered, "I did not even see you. You were nothing to me. If you were something I did not hate, then you were nothing. And then you spoke, and summoned out of me what you had loved."

"You changed, then." The Queen's hand loosed Saro, stroked her hair, then held her again. Saro gazed into her eyes, remembering the gold and dark, remembering her voice, her touch, and how she thought she would have those things forever. "One moment you could not speak; you were a small, pale, shadowy wraith; you could not remember me- Then you spoke and broke the mage's spell yourself."

Saro turned suddenly in her hold, looked back; her father's mist his past and future. Sorrow burned, she learned then, like dry kindling, like scalding water. "I had to," she said to him. The words ached in her throat. "I saw you kill Prince Talis, long ago, in my wash-cauldron. I tried to learn to speak, to warn him. But I saw what I saw. There were only words for that."

"Prince Talis."

"He was kind to me." She swallowed pain again, which seemed to come with language. "His eyes saw me. 'Death' was the last word you taught me."

His face twisted away from her. "It is the only word I know now."

"Ilyos," the Queen said urgently, and he looked down again, a terrible darkness fading from his eyes. "Ilyos. Stay with us. You have found my wood again. You have found us. Stay."

"This is a dream," he said wearily. "This is only a dream. I am Atrix Wolfe's making. If I could stay-if somehow I could unweave myself from his spell and stay-I would burn these woods again with memory. I was born that night. These Hunter's hands are my hands, these hounds and burning horns are mine. I died that night. There is nothing left of Ilyos but memory." His voice faded; he gazed at her, remembering. Her face grew still then, tearless. Saro sensed something waking in her, a word growing, secret and very powerful.

"Stay," the Queen said softly. "If you are nothing but memory, then stay. Here among my memories."

He started to speak, stopped. Words passed between them, without shape, without sound. He began to tremble; the Queen's hold tightened on his hand.

"Stay," she said again. But Saro heard other things, the secret language beneath words. The Queen clung to them both, her eyes moving back and forth between their faces, gathering memories like flowers. Her face blurred suddenly, the fire and ivory of it melting in the fire in Saro's eyes.

"How could I have forgotten you?" Saro whispered. "How could I have looked at you and not known you?"

"I never forgot you," the Queen said fiercely. "Not for a breath. Not for a dream." She looked at her consort again, crowned with fire, trapped in night. "She broke the mage's spell over herself. And over you. It is your power she inherited."

He drew breath soundlessly. "This is what you want."

"Yes." A tear fell, glittered in the light between them. "Yes," she said again. "I want this. I want you here in my thoughts. In my wood. You fought your way past the mage's spell to find us here. You still have that much power. Free yourself. For my sake. And for yours."

His face grew quiet, then. He was still, looking at the Queen, and she at him, until the green wood and the golden light seemed to become the world in Saro's memory, that held all time and no time within it. He loosed the Queen's hand finally, touched her lips with his fingers.

Then he looked at Saro. "I thought I knew what sorrow is," he said. "Now I must leave you, and now I know."

The rich, still light around them turned silver with the smoke of smoldering trees. Atrix knelt among the oak roots, his eyes closed, his hands moving futilely over the thick, living bindings that held Talis to the earth. The prince's body seemed to be disappearing in a weave of root; the ground crumbled slowly beneath him, opening into darkness under the tree. A word leaped out of Saro; the mage's face, strained and desperate, lifted sharply. For an instant, the unmasked face of the Hunter, the Queen's pale-haired consort, stunned him. Then he rose swiftly, as the Hunter, his hounds swarming out of shadow and leaf, rode as if to run down the mage, and the prince behind him, and the oak itself.

Atrix flung up a hand before the dark wave of hounds broke against him. "Ilyos," he cried. "Wait-" The Queen's consort gave him no more time. The mage turned to fire, a burning circle around the oak, shielding Talis within it. Saro, racing the hounds, plunged into what stopped them: There seemed no great difference between the mage and what burned beneath a simmering pot. Her mind flowed into fire; she heard its voice, its secret, feathery language. The oak roots under her bare feet moved away from her, as if she, too, burned. She shook fire out of her hair as she knelt beside Talis. A root shifted; he slid a little, deeper into the earth.

A sound jerked out of him, as if he felt himself falling, and Saro froze. She stared down at him, hearing the hard, startled pound of her heart. "Talis," she said, but he did not answer. She gripped the roots over him desperately, and heard the oak's ancient, dreaming voice.

… Trouble in the wood… bone into tree, hold deep, holdfast, bone into wood, breath into fire, deep, bone into root, bone into wood, human into dreams… hold bone and dream deep in the root…

"No," she said to it. Beyond the fire she heard a hound yelp sharply; the ground shook. "I want this human. You have no use for him."

I must bury him, deep, where no human eyes will ever look.

A root tightened across Talis' chest. He flinched, gasping for air too heavy to breathe. Sweat rolled down his face. She touched his cheek gently, and he moved again. One eye was crusted with blood behind the shattered lens; his other eye fluttered open, stared at her senselessly. She turned back to the oak, keeping her voice and hands calm despite her terror, patting Oak as if it were a weeping mincer, or a kitchen dog.

"I am Saro, daughter of the Queen of the Wood, and I want this human back. What can I give you in return?" The fire billowed too close; she pushed it away as if it were a windblown tapestry, and it settled back. The oak was silent; the wood was not, nor was the color of the fire always familiar. She tried again. "Tell me what I can promise you. You are very old, and he is too young to bury. All his dreams will be too young."

He was given to me…

"I will ask the Queen to come and sit among your roots and comb her hair and sing…" The words came out of a song, she remembered; as she spoke, she heard the Queen singing to her. The oak roots shifted slightly.

The Queen.

"She will come, if I ask."

The Queen of the Wood.

"She will come with her crown of gold and her golden comb, and she will sing to you and braid your leaves into her hair."

The Queen of the Wood…

The roots around Talis eased, began to pull away from him, bury themselves again in the earth. He struggled, murmuring incoherently, trying to sit and straighten his lenses at the same time. The lenses slid out of his shaking hand, dropped. Blood pooled in his eye, ran down his cheek. He wiped it with his sleeve and winced, then blinked Saro clear through blood and hot, shimmering air.

"Saro?" he said tentatively, as if the ring of fire, blazing with mages' lights, worked such changes on her face that he no longer recognized her. But his hand knew her; his fingers found her wrist, circled it tightly. "Saro?"

"Yes," she said. He groped for his lenses, to see her more clearly, then stared down at them. The shattered lens of her dark vision struck her mute; there seemed suddenly too much to say, and again no words with which to say it. She put her hand to her mouth. "I thought he killed you."

"Nearly."

"In my cauldron, I thought you died."

He slid the lenses on, looked at her. A word moved in his throat; he spoke it after a moment. "You saw this?"

"In my cauldron. I saw the-I saw my father. I saw this happen. But I could not speak-I went to you but I could not speak-" She felt the tears, hotter than the fire, burn in her eyes; she felt herself trembling. He stared at her, still gripping her wrist. "I had to say this. But I could only say my name-"

"I heard you." His voice shook. He put his arm around her, drew her close, so close she felt his heartbeat, his unsteady breathing against her hair. "You were down in the kitchen learning magic because of me?"

"You were kind to me," she said. He made a sound, of wonder or pain; his hold tightened.

"I did nothing-"

"Your eyes saw me." She paused, gazing back into those strange, bleak years. "No one ever saw me," she whispered. "They saw a dirty pot, or a clean pot. I saw myself like that. I did not remember where words came from. I never needed them until I saw the Hunter-I saw death-" She pulled away from him suddenly, remembering. "And I saw someone else in the cauldron, crying out to warn you. But I never knew-I never knew who it was or what word she cried until now."

He made the little, inarticulate sound again. "She cried sorrow," he said. He took her hands, bending over them; she saw the blood in his hair, where he had struck the oak. She felt his lips on her fingers, and then his cheek. The fire roared over them suddenly, color melting through it; he lifted his head, swallowing. "Atrix. How can he still be fighting? How can he have the strength?" He rose with an effort, catching his balance against the oak.

"Atrix is the fire. It's my father fighting him. Fighting against the spell. My mother wants my father to stay in the wood with her."

"I don't understand." He leaned dizzily against the tree, staring at her out of one good eye. "Why must he fight Atrix Wolfe for that? Atrix would not stop him. Does he just want Atrix dead? Or is there something more to that spell than just Atrix and your father-?" He reached out to her, as she began to fray into flame. "Saro-"

"My father knows me now." She touched him still. "Wait."

But, reappearing on the other side of fire, she almost did not know her father.

The Hunter's horse and hounds had disappeared. Her father stood among the trees. Instead of horns, he wore a flaming crown of oak branches. His hands were webbed with twigs and leaves; his feet were rooted to the ground. His skin had hardened, darkened; his acorn eyes reflected the fire that was Atrix Wolfe. The mage did not fight; as fire, he engulfed every flare of power that Ilyos threw at him. Her father's battle never stopped, except for the moment when Saro appeared, freeing herself from the mage's fire, and they stared at one another.

Saro saw her mother watching from the green shade. Her face held the still, intent expression; she no longer wept. Her face changed color with every flash from her consort's hands and burning crown. She did not take her eyes from Ilyos, but as Saro came to her, she reached out, pulled Saro close to her.

"What is he doing?" Saro breathed. "Why is he still fighting the mage?" Her mother did not answer, only watched as each gesture her father made drew another leaf among the lightning weaving through his hair, another ring of bark around his skin. The boughs crowning him seemed to arch closer and closer to the mage's fire, as if to drink from it; as fire streaked from the branches, leaves formed in its wake, hard and bright as jewels at first, then slowly flushing with life. His arms were growing stiff, rising, arching, bending more and more slowly, his fingers long and slender, branching with new twigs.

He stopped moving finally, both hands upraised. His face was still visible, planes and hollowed contours of bark, his open eyes, his mouth.

He said, "Atrix Wolfe."

The fire drew together, slowly shaped the mage. Talis stood behind him, clinging to the oak. The mage, his face waxen in the sunlight, did not take his eyes from Ilyos. He stumbled against a root, swaying with weariness, and almost lost his balance. He spoke finally, heavily,

"Is there no other way?"

"None," said the Queen's consort. Atrix looked away from him then, to the Queen. She met his eyes, her own face white within the wild fall of her hair.

"None," she whispered, her voice as dry and brittle as falling leaves. Atrix looked back at Ilyos.

"Sorrow," he said, his voice shaking, and lifted his hand.

Bark ringed Ilyos' eyes and mouth, smoothed his body until there was only a suggestion of what had been human in the knots where branches lifted away from the trunk, and in a vague profile that seemed, in the dreaming light, at last to have grown peaceful.

Saro moved. Her bones seemed heavy as wood, her steps as unwieldy as a sapling pulling up its roots and walking, but she reached the tree finally, put her arms around it. She heard the Queen say wearily,

"Go now. No. Do not speak again in my wood. Just go."

Saro, still clinging to the tree, turned her face, saw Talis' white, frozen face turn to her, as he stumbled away from the oak. He could not speak. He tried, and then his eyes closed. Atrix caught him as he fell. Saro said nothing, though she felt words gather in her, secretly. She watched, as sunlight burned around her, the wood growing so bright and strangely beautiful that the mage with the prince in his arms, having no place in it, finally faded away.