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  “I heated up the stew,” Faelia said. “Shall I fetch it here, or will you come home?”

  Griane got to her feet, shaking the stiffness out of her limbs. She cast a quick look around the hut. Sali was sprawled near her, sound asleep. Mirili still sat by Nemek. Griane frowned when she saw Catha had joined her; the longhut was no place for a woman so big with child, but she could no more send Catha away than the others who had come to keep watch over their wounded.

  “Go home,” Mirili said. “We’ll send to you if we have need.”

  Griane nodded. She couldn’t have slept for long; the heaviness of exhaustion still lay on her. Judging from the dark smudges under her eyes, Faelia was equally exhausted. She rested her hand briefly against her daughter’s cheek. “Thank you. For helping.”

  “I had to do something.” Her voice cracked, and she swallowed hard. “I tried to sleep, but every time I closed my eyes . . .”

  “You saw him.”

  Faelia nodded.

  “I can mix you something to help you sleep.”

  “It won’t help me forget,” Faelia said, her voice soft but savage.

  “Nay.” She took her daughter’s shoulders, the bones sharp under her fingers. “Only time can do that. For all of us.”

  “Can we forget this?” Faelia gestured around the hut. “Or the dead lying outside?”

  “We will never forget. Nor should we.” Griane heard the sharpness in her voice and softened it. “But we will learn to bear it. Because we must.”

  Callie was waiting outside the longhut. His tremulous smile of greeting changed to a look of horror. When she realized he was eyeing her bloodstained tunic, she got down on her knees and took his hands. “The blood is from the men and women who were injured. I had to stitch their wounds and bandage them.”

  “Will they be all right now?”

  She hesitated, then gave him the truth. “Most of them. But some of the wounds were very bad.”

  “Then we should pray for them.”

  “Aye.”

  “And for Keirith.”

  Not trusting her voice this time, she just nodded. Callie studied her, his face puckered with concern. “Don’t worry, Mam. Fa will find him.”

  Young as he was, Callie knew.

  “Of course he will.” Shielding her eyes against the sun’s glare, she saw Nionik and the other elders making their way toward the village. “Children—go home. As soon as I find your father, we’ll join you.”

  “Where is he?” Callie asked, his voice gone shrill with fear. “Did the bad men come back?”

  “Nay, love, nay. He went with the elders to . . . to talk to the man they captured. I’ll find him. I’ll bring him home. All right?”

  Callie nodded, blinking back the tears that welled in his eyes.

  “That’s my good boy.” She hugged him hard. “Go with your sister. We’ll be there soon.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  Gortin and Muina trailed behind the other elders. Urkiat strode past them, but stopped when Muina called his name. His stormy expression only heightened Griane’s anxiety.

  “Is he still up there?” she asked.

  Gortin nodded. “We’ll set a watch tonight in case he—”

  “He went toward the lake,” Muina interrupted.

  “Who? Oh. Darak. Aye. He handled the questioning well—” Urkiat’s inarticulate exclamation made Gortin break off, frowning. “He only had to break—”

  “Tree-Father.”

  Gortin looked offended at Muina’s second interruption.

  “I know you must gather men to cut wood for the pyre. We shouldn’t be keeping you. Or Urkiat,” she added pointedly. “I’m sure you could use his strong arms.”

  “You’re right. Thank you, Grain-Grandmother.”

  “I’m going after Darak,” Urkiat said.

  “Nay,” Muina replied. “You’re going to cut wood.” Her head barely reached Urkiat’s shoulder, but he was the one to back down. With a muttered oath, he strode after Gortin.

  “Dear gods, what happened up there?” Griane asked.

  “Urkiat is young and thirsty for blood.”

  “Damn Urkiat! Is Darak all right?”

  “Nay. But he hides it well. Wait!” Muina’s hand shot out to clutch her arm. “Give him a moment.”

  “Was it that bad?”

  “The boy pissed himself before Darak even touched him. Two broken fingers and he was babbling so fast Urkiat could hardly keep up with him.” The keen blue eyes gazed up into hers. “As for Darak? Well. You know him better than anyone.”

  So she had thought—before this morning.

  “He holds things close. Always has, ever since he was a lad. When he went back to the First Forest, there were those who thought he’d gone for good. ’Twas Darak’s love for you that brought him back and ’twas your love that healed him. And I don’t mean love of the spirit, Griane. ’Twas the comfort of your body he needed then and it’s what he needs now. And you could do with the comfort of his as well.”

  Muina pressed a light kiss to her forehead and walked away.

  He stood in the lake, water lapping around his waist. His skin looked very white. Whiter still were the scars on his back where the thorn tree in Chaos had torn his flesh.

  He bent down to scoop up water in his cupped hands, then straightened and threw it over himself. The droplets sparkled in the sunlight, creating little rainbows around his head before streaming over his shoulders and back.

  He shifted position so that he stood in profile to her and repeated the ritual, shivering a little as the water dripped over him. Again, he turned, this time facing her. Blood stained the bandage on his arm. His eyes were closed, and his lips moved although she heard no words. His shivering was more pronounced now; even from her hiding place in the thicket, she could see the bumps of cold on his arms.

  When he bent a fourth time, she knew this was no simple act of bathing. So might a shaman cleanse himself before conducting a ritual or a hunter before going into the forest. Facing each direction, seeking the power of the four winds, the strength of earth and air, fire and water. Not only washing the body, but cleansing the spirit as well.

  A cloud drifted across the sun, leaving him in shadow as he waded back to the beach. He squatted beside his discarded breeches, his wet hair hanging in snarled tangles. When he rose again, he held his dagger. His lips moved as he raised his hand. Blood blossomed in a thin line across his wrist. He waited a moment, then snapped his wrist, flinging droplets of blood into the water. Twice more he repeated the gesture.

  Three times for a charm—or a curse. Every child knew that.

  He stood very still, head raised as if listening. She held her breath, listening with him. Her heart thudded loudly, nearly drowning out the soft lapping of the waves and the faint rustling of a small animal in the underbrush.

  Tree limbs moaned in a gust of wind. A shaft of sunlight emerged from a break in the clouds. For a heartbeat, Bel’s rays burnished his body. Then the trees fell silent and Bel ducked back behind the cloud, leaving the beach in shadow again.

  He sat down on a rock, arms folded across his knees. His body tensed when he heard her approach, but he didn’t raise his head.

  She pulled off her tunic and walked toward the lake. The shock of the cold water made her gasp. She sifted through the pebbles for a handful of sand, scrubbing the blood of the wounded from her body, washing the stench of death from her hair. By the time she was finished, she was shaking so hard she had to clench her jaw to keep her teeth from knocking together.

  He watched her come out of the water, but his gaze never reached her eyes. She stopped in front of him, willing him to look at her. When he refused, she reached out very slowly, as if to touch a wild creature, and laid her hand on his hair.

  A strangled cry escaped him. He flung out a hand blindly, fingers closing around her wrist in a punishing grip that would surely leave bruises. She eased between his legs and pulled his face to
her breasts, but he kept shaking his head, refusing the comfort she offered.

  His mouth brushed her nipple. A moan shuddered through his body and into hers. Then his lips closed and his arms came around her and he laid his head against her breast. Gently, she stroked his hair and held him until the shaking stopped.

  “Griane . . .”

  “Hush.”

  She led him into the thicket and pulled him down beside her. Blessing Muina’s wisdom, they shared the wordless comfort of their bodies and a respite from the wounds of their hearts.

  Chapter 7

  HE HAD FOUND OUT as much as he could from the boy. He had washed off the raiders’ blood and offered his to the gods for their blessing and their guidance. He had spent a few precious moments with his son and daughter. Only one thing remained for Darak to do.

  Meniad was dead. Gortin must keep vigil over the bodies. And so, in defiance of shame and ancient taboo, Darak made his way to the birthing hut to ask a woman, newly delivered, to rise from her childbed and open the way to the First Forest.

  He found Ennit sitting outside with Muina. Before he could speak, Ennit rose. His mouth worked. “I heard. About Keirith. Oh, Darak . . .”

  Darak held him as he wept. His eyes were dry. He had shattered once, when Griane touched him. Then, in her wisdom, she had taken all his emotions—rage, fear, disgust, shame—and transmuted them to a more primitive need. In her flesh, he found forgiveness and understanding and—for a few moments—oblivion.

  He felt as distant from Ennit’s grief as his own. He had experienced the sensation often when he was a hunter, the strange separateness of being in the moment yet standing apart, observing the prey, the surroundings, and his reactions. His dangerous tangle of emotions had been consumed in the fire of that brief, violent lovemaking, leaving him calm and hollow. But somewhere in the charred remains, an ember of shame flickered.

  He comforted Ennit. He asked after Lisula and the babe. And then he turned toward home, knowing he could not ask Lisula for help.

  He had nearly reached his hut when the shouting penetrated his mind. “Are you deaf, boy?” Muina said by way of greeting.

  “Forgive me. Come inside and sit a moment.”

  She slapped away his hand. “There’s no time to sit. ’Twill be sunset soon. If you’re going to the grove, you must hurry.” Between pants, she managed a hoarse chuckle at his look of surprise. “That’s why you came to Lisula, wasn’t it? To ask her to open the way?”

  He simply nodded without bothering to ask how she knew; little that happened in the village escaped Muina’s notice.

  “Well?”

  “I couldn’t ask. It seemed . . . wrong.”

  “She would have done it. She’s a good girl—loyal and true to those she loves.”

  Another ember blazed to life in the carefully banked fire of his emotions. He took a moment to master his voice before he said, “Aye. She is.”

  “It never occurred to you to ask me?”

  Excitement, hope, fear . . . too many embers to stamp out this time. “You still possess the power?”

  Her face creased in a smile. “Let’s see, shall we?”

  Old as she was, Muina set a brisk pace, although she allowed him to take her arm and guide her through the rutted fields. As they hurried along the narrow forest trail, the familiar peace stole over him—and with it the familiar melancholy.

  This was his place. This was where he belonged.

  He scanned the shadowy depths of the forest as a man home from a long journey might study the face of his beloved. He noted the changes since he had walked the trail at the Spring Balancing: the ducklike quacks of the wood frogs and the distant whistles of the peepers in the wet-lands; the raw slashes on the trunk of a pine where a bear had clawed it; the violets and starflowers that now vied with primroses and snowdrops to decorate the forest floor.

  He led Muina past the boulder, past the partially uprooted birch, and stepped into the glade of the heart-oak. As many times as he had stood here, he still felt the same awe when he stared up at his tribe’s sacred tree. Here, his kin had offered sacrifices in celebration and propitiation, honoring their tree-brothers and their gods and a way of life that had survived plague and famine and the near-destruction of their world. Here, Tinnean had been initiated into the priesthood. And here, too, he had first glimpsed his nemesis after Morgath returned to the world in the body of a wolf.

  Today, no such threat lurked. There was only the wind in the trees and the cooing of wood pigeons roosting in the branches. Through the thin canopy overhead, a few shafts of late afternoon sunlight burnished the uppermost branches of the heart-oak. Shadows cloaked the lower branches, adding an air of mystery to the aura of peace that pervaded the glade.

  Tokens from past rites hung from the branches and nestled among the exposed roots. Birds and animals had long since devoured the gifts of food and berry wine, but the flint arrowheads and bone fishhooks remained.

  He had brought no gifts with him. Instead, he took his dagger and reopened the wound at his wrist. Kneeling before the heart-oak, he allowed his blood to drip upon its roots as he had so many years ago. Then, he had offered his blood so that he—a hunter who had turned his back on the gods—might be permitted to enter the sacred forest and seek his brother’s spirit. Today, he sought only the wisdom and comfort of the spirits who dwelled in the One Tree.

  “Darak. It’s nearly time.”

  Only at sunrise and sunset, when the barrier between the worlds was thinnest, could the crossing be made. He retrieved the thin strip of nettle-cloth Griane had tied around his wrist, but in his haste, he fumbled it. He could feel his face flush as Muina knotted the bandage for him; he hated for others to see his clumsiness.

  Muina, bless her, merely took his hand and led him sunwise around the heart-oak. Three times, they circled the sacred tree, Muina’s chants mingling with the rustle of the dead leaves underfoot. In a strong voice, she spoke the ancient words of permission. Hand in hand, they stepped forward.

  When Fellgair opened the way, it was like stepping from one world into another. The transition was less tranquil with a human guide. The forest blurred, trees melting into smears of gray and brown and green, color and light hurtling past him and around him, and only Muina’s hand to tether him to his body and Muina’s voice telling him that she would return at dawn.

  Her hand slipped free. The nauseating sense of rootlessness faded as the world slid back into place: earth beneath his feet; a circle of giant trees; and in the center of the grove, the heart of this ancient forest, the One Tree.

  Once it had dwarfed the others, a giant among giants. Now all but the birch towered over it. Morgath had destroyed the Tree that had stood in this grove since the world’s first spring. As the world measured time, this one was just a sapling. Yet from the moment of its conception, it had proclaimed the miracle: the One Tree that was forever Two. From those roots, from that slender trunk, two branches forked, one studded with the dark red buds of the Oak and the other drooping under the weight of the spiny leaves of the Holly.

  Darak stepped between the gnarled roots that had once been his brother’s feet and placed his palm on the trunk. In the days following Tinnean’s transformation, the bark had been supple, retaining the faintest warmth. Now only its creamy color gave evidence that this had once been the flesh of a man.

  Not even a man. Just a boy. Keirith’s age.

  Even before his brother’s body underwent its transformation, Tinnean’s spirit had altered. Darak had merely touched the World Tree; Tinnean had dwelled in it. No man could remain unchanged after hearing its song, a song that had echoed in the blood and bones and spirits of every being since the creation of the world. The gods who dwelled among its silver branches, the creatures who lived in the middle world, the spirits of the dead in the sunlit Forever Isles that floated in its roots—the World Tree linked them all. And now Tinnean’s spirit dwelled with the Oak and Holly, forever bound to the Tree-Lords and to the ancient bein
g that was the consciousness of the world.

  Tinnean Tree-Friend, the tale named him. And Darak Spirit-Hunter and Griane the Healer. When they had first crafted the tale, he and Sim clashed repeatedly, the old Memory-Keeper arguing that people needed a hero, while he argued just as fiercely that people needed to know that a hero was only a man—a man who had suffered frostnip and hunger, whose stomach had churned when he first encountered the Trickster, who had screamed in agony when Morgath mutilated his body.

  “They know you froze your arse off,” Sim said, dragging his fingers through his sparse white hair. “Everyone freezes their arses off in winter. That’s not a tale worth telling.”

  “Are we telling a tale or the truth?”

  “We’re telling a tale that conveys the essence of the truth. There’s a difference.”

  “Perhaps we could say your breath froze upon your lips,” Sanok suggested.

  “But it didn’t. Our snot did.”

  Old Sim scowled. “I’ll never make a Memory-Keeper of you.”

  “Then why are you trying?”

  And as he did at least once a day in those first moons, he had jumped to his feet and marched to the doorway of their hut, only to be stopped by Sim’s voice. “ ‘Tell the tale,’ Tinnean said.”

  Darak glared at the Tree. “You might have whispered. Once Griane heard—and the Trickster . . . well, without that, I might have gone on being a hunter. Or a shepherd. Or something other than a gods-cursed Memory-Keeper!”

  The drooping boughs of the Holly moved, stirred by the faint breeze. “And don’t you start, Cuillon. If I didn’t love you both, I’d swear it was a conspiracy. To make the man who didn’t like talking choose the one life-path—the only one, mind you—that relied on words.”

  He stroked the pale trunk of the Tree. “Aye. Well. When Sanok dies, and it’s left to me to tell the tale at Midwinter, I’ll tell my version. And Sim can howl all he wants in the Forever Isles.”

  Old Sim and Sanok. The one had chivvied and chided him as he struggled to master the legends and chants and bloodlines preserved by generations of Memory-Keepers. The other had been infinitely patient, gently correcting his mistakes. It had taken both of them to shape a hunter into a Memory-Keeper. Like chipping flint with a hammerstone, bits of his old self flaking off little by little.