Heartwood (Tricksters Game) (49 page)

Maggots could eat away the rotting flesh. Brogac could cleanse the wound. But she had no maggots, no brogac, only a handful of heal-all.

She shook her hair out of her eyes. “Fetch the waterskins. Cuillon! Over there.” She hacked a strip of wool from her mantle, thrusting it toward Cuillon when he crawled back with the waterskins. “Wet this and clean his hands. Use the Summerlands water.” Cuillon sloshed water onto the cloth, splashing them both. “Don’t waste it!”

“I am sorry, Griane.”

“You’re doing fine. Like this. Be firm.”

“But he … he is bleeding.”

“The blood will wash the wound clean. Don’t worry. Darak can’t feel it.”

As if to give lie to her words, he moaned.

“That’s … he’s just dreaming.”

She squeezed out most of the pus and probed the wound. Small chips of bone shifted beneath her fingers.

“Wipe his face, Cuillon. With the plain water.”

She sliced strips from her tunic to use as bandages and laid out her tools: dagger, bone scraper, heal-all. “Cuillon. I have to cut the poisoned flesh away. You must hold Darak’s arm still. Sit on it if you have to.”

“Aye, Griane.” He was very pale, but his expression was determined.

She wiped her palms on her breeches and grasped the dagger. Her hand shook. Cuillon looked up. “You can do it, Griane.”

Mother Netal, help me.

As if the prayer had invoked her, she heard the old healer’s voice, as clearly as if her teacher stood behind her.

Cut deep, girl. Press out as much pus as you can. Scrape away the dead flesh. Let the wound bleed. Then wash it with that fancy water of yours.

Despite her fear, Griane smiled.

Do the same with what’s left of his fingers. But don’t use those silvery leaves just yet. Just bandage him. Not too tight. When the swelling’s gone and the seepage is clear, you can seal the wounds.

Darak convulsed when she made the cut, but Cuillon held him until he slipped deeper into unconsciousness. She worked quickly, her fingers moving as surely as if they had performed this procedure a dozen times. And always, Mother Netal’s voice guided her.

When Cuillon helped her strip him, she saw the full extent of Morgath’s brutality. She kept her horror in check while she cleaned the wounds, applied a poultice to the raw flesh on his arms, and lightly bandaged the weeping sores on his back.

By the time they had dressed him again, the light was gone and she was sweat-drenched. She moved the bag of charms so it wouldn’t chafe the wounds on his chest and felt something round and hard under her fingers. She tore open the bag and withdrew the spirit catcher. Silently, she held it out to Cuillon. He touched it with one tentative forefinger. They both gasped as it blazed with green fire.

“The Oak. Cuillon, it must be the Oak.”

He nodded, but his gaze shifted to the dead Tree. When she pressed the spirit catcher on him, he shook his head and curled up next to Darak, his back to her. She tucked the spirit catcher back into Darak’s bag. She and Cuillon could warm him, but perhaps Tinnean and the Oak could offer him healing beyond her powers.

Her fingers touched something soft inside the bag. A long strand of hair.

Only when she was sure Cuillon was asleep did she permit herself to weep.

C
OLD AIR AGAINST his face. Something soft under his cheek. A girl’s voice, repeating his name.

“Darak? Can you open your eyes?”

Dead leaves fluttered like moths. Patches of blue sky peeked through the branches. The sun was rising behind a fiery cloud. A white face floated in the middle of the cloud. Griane’s face. Her eyes were the blue that burned at the heart of a flame and her hair stood out like the spines of a hedgehog.

“Darak, can you speak?”

She must be worried. Otherwise, she’d just order him to speak.

“Your. Hair.”

Her hand flew to her head. Her tremulous smile shifted into a scowl. She blew up fast and roared down on him, fiercer than any blizzard. He closed his eyes while she told him that she’d been marking a trail and it had worked, hadn’t it, and if she’d known he was only going to save one bit of hair, she might have saved herself the trouble of chopping off all the rest. When she started in on how she had pulled out so much in the last three days that it was a miracle she wasn’t completely bald, his eyes opened again.

“Three days?”

“Since you walked into the grove. You had a high fever. It’s gone now, but you gave us both a fright, and if you ever scare me like that again—”

“The Forest-Lord.”

“What?”

“Did you see him?”

“Nay. Did … did you?”

He wasn’t sure. Judging from the look on Griane’s face, it must have been a fever-dream, after all. Then he remembered the touch of that warm paw.

“Spirit catcher.”

Cuillon’s face loomed next to Griane’s. He felt his hand being lifted. Even through the bandages, Darak could feel the bag of charms. “They are here, Darak.” Cuillon’s smile seemed more like a grimace.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Lie still,” Griane said. “You’ll ruin all my good work.” The scolding was familiar, but her smile was as false as Cuillon’s. Then he saw the Tree looming behind them and understood.

He struggled to rise, but even without their restraining hands, he hadn’t the strength. All he could do was shake his head. Struath and Yeorna dead. His body crippled. And all for nothing. He wanted to weep, to shout, to demand an explanation from the Maker who had allowed this to happen. But they were watching him, their desperate eyes begging him for hope. This brave, skinny girl and this ancient spirit, trapped in a body that could no longer contain it. All that remained of his pack.

You spend your life, trying to be strong for those you love. Not wanting them to see your uncertainty lest they be afraid, too.

He controlled his features, waited until he could trust his voice. “As long as the Oak’s spirit lives and the Holly’s, there is hope.”

“I should have stayed,” Cuillon said. “Then the Holly would be alive.”

“With the Oak dead, the Holly might have died, too. And taken your spirit with it. Isn’t that so?”

“I … perhaps. I do not know.”

“And you never will.” Heedless of the pain, Darak laid his hand over Cuillon’s. The rough gray flesh extended up his arm, disappearing into the torn sleeve of his tunic. Time was running out—for Cuillon and for Tinnean.

“We’ll find a way to restore the Tree.”

“How?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know,” he repeated in a gentler voice. He fumbled for words to comfort him and again found his father’s. “Let it go, Cuillon.” So easy to say. So hard to do. “There is a way. There must be.”

That night, he dreamed of Tinnean. His brother stood in the shadow of the dead Tree. The spirit catcher’s fire blazed through the branches, clothing the naked boughs of the Oak in Midsummer green. The light made Tinnean seem taller, but his laugh was just the same.

Wiry arms wrapped around him, so much stronger than he remembered. He kept pulling away to look at Tinnean, then seizing him, pulling him close, as if he might escape again.

“You’re back.”

Tinnean laughed again. “Nay, Darak. It’s only a dream.”

“But you will come back.”

“Aye.”

“How? Tell me how.”

Tinnean rolled his eyes. The familiar expression of impatience sent a jolt through him, just like touching the spirit catcher.

“You know.”

“I don’t.”

“You’ve already seen.”

“When? What did I see?”

“The Tree.”

“The Tree is dead.”

“Not that one.”

Tinnean slipped out of his arms. Darak reached for him, desperate to keep him, but his body was leaching into the Tree, his flesh changing to creamy bark, his fingers branching into twigs that sprouted leaves as blue as speedwell.

Darak jerked awake, his cry drowning out the twitter of birdsong.

“Are you all right?” Griane asked. “What is it?”

“Nothing. A bad dream.”

The dream returned the next night. Tinnean no longer laughed and the green light of the spirit catcher flickered uncertainly. He woke the third night to find his hand clenched around the bag on his chest.

His fingers twitched as if his flesh still held the dream-memory of clasping his brother’s hand. That memory led to others. Walking along the shore with Tinnean, cradling the small fingers between his as if they were as fragile as the birds’ eggs they had stolen from the nests in the marshes. Watching the Northern Dancers flash green and white in the night sky, Tinnean’s fingers tugging his each time the colors flared. Squeezing those fingers hard to capture Tinnean’s wandering attention as he instructed him how to take a sighting on the point of the Archer’s arrowhead, promising that the star could always help him find his way home.

He had hoped his ordeal on the tree would satisfy the gods. Now he knew they wanted more. If it were only the gods, he might refuse; a man always had the right to choose his own path. But how could he refuse Tinnean? The dreams were clear and unrelenting. When he’d begged his brother not to ask this of him, Tinnean simply sighed. When he’d pleaded with him to wait until they found another way, Tinnean said that there was no other way. When he’d offered himself instead, Tinnean smiled and said this was his responsibility, his choice, his gift.

In the end, though, it rested with him. To deny Tinnean this terrible gift or bestow it. To keep Tinnean’s spirit safe or set it free. To hold him or let him go.

The darkness overhead was yielding to light. It must be closer to dawn than he realized. Then the heavens pulsated, light streaming earthward, and he knew the Northern Dancers had returned.

A bolt of light illuminated the Tree. Another stretched out beside it. Together, they arced together over the grove, crackling and hissing in the music of the Dancers. Their shapes changed with the music, now curling up like smiles, now twisting into spirals, then breaking away to join a third arc.

Bathed in their light, the Tree seemed to come alive again, broken branches reaching skyward, dead leaves glowing. The jagged scar on its trunk danced with the luminous ribbons of light. The circled trees took up the rhythm, limbs moaning as if in ecstasy.

The hairs on the back of his neck rose as the dance passed over him. His temples throbbed as they had when Morgath invaded him, and he was equally helpless to withstand this assault. Even with his eyes shut, the light penetrated him. It found each of the places Morgath had touched: the cheek he had caressed, the lips he had kissed, the genitals he had fondled. It burned his flayed arms and scarred chest and maimed hands. And still the light danced, into his mind, into his spirit, seeking out the hidden places where shame and guilt crouched, where the desire to control lay, where the desperate hope that life might return to what it once was still clung.

With a power as relentless as Morgath’s, the light illuminated each dark corner of his spirit and scoured it with cold fire. He pressed his lips together to keep from crying out and waking the others. Only if he allowed the dance to continue would he find some measure of peace—for Tinnean and for himself. As if the Dancers recognized his acceptance, they grew quieter, their touch gentler. The merciless fire dwindled to a pleasant glow and then to embers.