"You are a liar," she said, trying to keep the edge of panic out of her voice.
Or you are a fool, her captor replied.
"At least let me see you."
I have something different in mind, dear guest. Something else to show you.
Before Angharad could protest, before she could light the rowan twig with her witcheries, the presence in her mind wrapped her in its power and took her away.
6
The perspective she had was that of a bird. She was high in the oak that held the treewizard's house, higher than a man or woman could climb, higher than a child, amongst branches so slender they would scarcely take the weight of a squirrel. The view that vantage point gave her was breathtaking— the endless sweep of forest and moor, striding off in opposite directions. The sky, huge above her, close enough to touch. The ground so far below it was another world.
She had no body. She was merely a presence, like the presence inside the treewizard's house, hovering in the air. A disembodied ghost.
Watch, a now-familiar voice said.
Give me back my body, she told it.
First you must watch.
Her perspective changed, bringing her closer to the ground, and she saw a young man who looked vaguely familiar approaching the tree. He looked like a tinker, red-haired, bright clothes and all, but she could tell by the bundle of books that joined the journeypack on his back that he was a scholar.
He came to learn, her captor told her.
Nothing wrong with that, she replied. Knowledge is a good thing to own. It allows you to understand the world around you better and no one can take it away from you.
A good thing, perhaps, her captor agreed, depending on what one plans to do with it.
The young man was cutting footholds into the tree with a small axe. Angharad could feel the tree shiver with each blow.
Doesn't he understand what he's doing to the tree? she asked.
All he understands is his quest for knowledge. He plans to become the most powerful wizard of all.
But why?
A good question. I don't doubt he wishes now that he'd thought it all through more clearly before he came.
Angharad wanted to pursue that further, but by now the young man had reached the porch. He had a triumphant look on his face as he stood before the door. Grinning, he shoved open the door and strode inside. The presence in Angharad's mind tried to draw her in after him, but she was too busy watching the footholds that the young man had cut into the tree grow back, one by one, until there was no sign that they'd ever been there. Then she drifted inside.
Look at him, her captor said.
She did. He'd thrown his packs down on the floor and was pulling out the books in the treewizard's library, tossing each volume on the floor after only the most cursory glances.
"I've done it," he was muttering. "Sweet Dath, I've found a treasure trove."
He tossed the book he was holding down, then got up to investigate the next room. After he'd gone, the books on the floor rose one by one and returned to their places. Angharad hurried in after the young man to find him already in the third room, dancing an awkward jig, his boots clattering on the floorboards.
"I'll show them all!" he sang. "I'll have such power that they'll all bow down to me. They'll come to me with their troubles and, if they're rich enough, if they catch me in an amiable mood, I might even help them." He rubbed his hands together. "Won't I be fine, won't I just."
He was not well looked-upon, her captor explained. He wanted so much and had so little, and wasn't willing to work for what he did want. He needed it all at once.
I understand now, Angharad said. He's—
Watch.
Days passed in a flicker, showing the young man growing increasingly impatient with the slow speed at which he gained his knowledge.
It was still work after all, Angharad's captor said.
"Damn this place!" the young man roared one morning. He flung the book he was studying across the room. "Where is the magic? Where is the power?" He strode back and forth, running a hand through the tangled knots of his hair.
Can't he feel it? Angharad asked. It's in every book, every nook and cranny of this place. The whole tree positively reeks of it.
She felt her captor smile inside her mind, a weary smile. He has yet to understand the difference between what is taken and what is given, he explained.
Angharad thought of ghostly harpers in a marsh, Jacky Lantern's kin, pressing a harp into her hands. Not until she'd been ready to give up what she wanted mostas misguided a seeking after power as this young man's was— had she received a wisdom she hadn't even been aware she was looking for.
She watched in horror now as the young man began to pile the books in a heap in the center of the room. He took flint and steel from his pocket and bent over them.
No! Angharad cried, forgetting that this was the past she was being shown. We can't let him!
Too late, her captor said. The deed's long past and done. But watch. The final act has yet to play.
As the young man bent over the books, the room about him came alive. Chairs flowed into snake-like shapes and caught him by the ankles, pulling him down to the floor. A worktable spilled clay jars and herb bundles about the room as it lunged towards him, folding over his body, suddenly as pliable as a blanket.
Flint fell with a clatter in one direction, steel in another. The young man screamed. The room exploded into a whirlwind of furniture and books and debris, spinning faster and faster, until Angharad grew ill looking at it. Then,just as suddenly as it had come up, the wind died down. The room blurred, mists swelled within its confines, grew tattered, dissolved. When it was gone, the room looked no different than it had when Angharad had first entered it herself. The young man was gone.
Where... ? she began.
Inside the tree, her captor told her. Trapped forever and a day, or until a mage or a witch should come to answer the riddle.
Before Angharad could ask, the presence in her mind whisked her away and the next thing she knew she was lying in the bed once more, the coverlet lying slack and unmoving. She sat up slowly, clutching basket and rowan twig in her hands.
"What is the riddle?" she asked the empty room.
Who is wiser, the presence in her mind asked: the man who knows everything, or the man who knows nothing?
"Neither," Angharad replied correctly. "Is that it? Is that all?"
Oh, no, the presence told her. You must tell me my name.
Angharad opened the wicker basket and looked down at the tiny fingerbone. "The wizard in the tree— his name is Fenn. The boy I met is what he could be, should he live again. But you— you live in the tree and if you have need of a name, it would be Druswid." It was a word in the old tongue that meant the knowledge of the oak. "Puretongue was your student," she added, "wasn't he?"
A long time ago, the presence in her mind told her. But we learned from each other. You did well, dear guest. Sleep now.
Angharad tried to shake off the drowsiness that came over her, but to no avail. It crept through her body in a wearying wave. She fell back onto the bed, fell into a dreamless sleep.
—
When Angharad woke, it was dawn and she was lying at the foot of the giant oak tree. She sat up, surprisingly not at all stiff from her night on the ground, and turned to find Fenn sitting cross-legged beside her pack and staff, watching her. Angharad looked up at the house, high in the tree.
"How did I get down?" she asked.
Fenn shrugged. He played with a small bone that hung around his neck by a thin leather thong. Angharad looked down at her hands to find she was holding the rowan twig in the one, and the basket in the other. She opened the basket, but the fingerbone was gone.
"A second chance," she said to Fenn. "Is that what you've been given?"
He nodded. "A second chance."
"What will you do with it?"
He grinned. "Go back up that tree and learn, but for all the right re
asons this time."
"And what would they be?"
"Don't you know, treewife?"
"I'm not a treewife."
"Oh, no? Then how did you guess Druswid's name?"
"I didn't guess. I'm a witch, Fenn— that gives me a certain sight."
Fenn's eyes widened slightly with a touch of awe. "You actually saw Druswid?"
Angharad shook her head. "But I know a tree's voice when I hear it. And who else would be speaking to me from an oak tree? Not a wet-eared impatient boy who wanted to be a wizard for all the wrong reasons."
"You're angry because I tricked you into going up into the tree. But I didn't lie. I just didn't tell you everything."
"Why not?"
"I didn't think you'd help me."
Angharad gathered up her harp and pack and swung them onto her back. Fenn handed her her staff.
"Well?" he asked. "Would you have?"
Angharad looked up at the tree. "I'm not dead," she said, "and I don't feel mad, so perhaps I've become a poet."
"Treewi—"Fenn paused as Angharad swung her head towards him. "Angharad," he said. "Would you have helped me?"
"Probably," she said. "But not for the right reasons." She leaned over to him and gave him a kiss on the brow. "Good luck, Fenn."
"My song," he said. "You never gave me my song."
"You never needed a song."
"But I'd like one now. Please?"
So Angharad sang to him before she left, a song of the loneliness that wisdom can sometimes bring— when the student won't listen, when the form is bound to the earth by its roots and only the mind ranges free. A loneliness grown from a world where magic as a way of life lay forgotten under too many quests for power. She called it "The Weeping Oak" and she only sang it that once and never again. But there was a poetry in it that her songs had never had before.
When she left Fenn to his studies in the wizard's oak, that poetry took wing in the songs that she sung to the accompaniment of her harp. It joined the two parts of a bard that she already had, slipping into her life as neatly as an otter's path through the river's water. She continued to range far and wide, as tinkers will, but she was a red-haired witch, following a bard's road into the green, which is another way of saying she was content with what she had.
7
Rutner Spenn stood under the awning of Boyll's Meat Mart and scanned the noon crowds that filled Carlisle's market square. He was a rounded individual with a head like a moon, thin limbs sprouting from a figure that appeared to have taken the mold for its shape from a child's ball. His bald pate gleamed in the sun when he stepped forward, thinking he'd seen the man he was looking for, but he stepped back under the awning once more when he saw his mistake.
The market was a hubbub of activity. Merchants, farmers and fishwives cried their wares, customers argued the prices. There were singers on two of the square's corners, jugglers on the third, a storyteller on the fourth.
If it existed, it was available in Carlisle. The town was a free state trading center set on a small island just off the Festian coast, connected to the mainland by three bridges and a ferry service. Northward, war raged as the Allies fought the Saramand, but judging by the uninterrupted commerce and jollity in Carlisle's streets, one would think that the war never existed— and certainly one would not realize that the enemy lines lay a scant hundred miles north of the town.
But listening closely, farmers could be overheard complaining of the troop movements through their fields, and here and there in a sheltered alleyway, ragged figures could be seen stirring as the day wore on, missing a limb or an eye, their tattered clothing the familiar mottled green and brown of the Allies' foot soldiers.
Spenn had no time for either. The man he sought was neither a veteran nor a farmer. Impatience nattered in Spenn's thoughts and he had to forcibly concentrate on not shifting his weight restlessly from one foot to another. It would not do for potential customers to see his impatience, but he couldn't help worrying. He'd been away from his own shop for a good half-hour now and who knew what poor bargains his wife had made in the time he was gone. The woman had no head for business.
Just as he was seriously considering his return, he spotted his man.
"Kellin!" he called through the crowd.
Browdie Kellin was as thin as Spenn was stout. The fine cut of his clothes hung untidily from his rake's frame, his disheveled appearance only accentuated by the wild mass of curly brown hair that topped his stoat-featured face.
Spenn relaxed, his impatience forgotten as Kellin made his way through the crowd.
"Are you still acquiring odd curios?" Spenn asked when the other man had joined him under the awning.
"My principal is still interested in such items," Kellin allowed.
Spenn smiled. "And is he still carefully cloaking himself in anonymity?"
"He is," Kellin agreed. He looked pointedly at the basket by Spenn's feet. "What do you have for us?"
"Not here," Spenn said. "Come by the shop after closing. And bring a heavy purse. What I have for you is rare beyond your imagining."
"What—"
Spenn shook his head, cutting Kellin off. "This is not the place for such discussions," he said. "Come by after closing. You won't regret it."
With that, he hefted his basket and walked off, leaving Kellin under the awning, his curiosity suitably piqued.
—
Kellin didn't make his appearance until mid-evening, but Spenn's impatience was completely fled by then. Once the hook was in, he could spend a month in dickering and discussion without any need for hurry. He dealt in antiques and curios, so most of his items were one of a kind. When he knew the customer for a particular piece, he no longer fretted about the time it took to strike the deal. All that was important was for how much the item was finally sold.
His wife was in their apartment above the store when he let Kellin in and ushered the lanky man into the back room. There were two seats set on either side of a small lacquered wood table there. On the table was a lantern, a tray with two china mugs and a teapot, and a lead box.
Once they were seated, Spenn poured them each a serving of tea, then opened the lid of the box to take out a small square-shaped object, wrapped in silk and tied shut with braided goat's hair. He set the object beside Kellin's tea mug.
"What is it?" Kellin asked. "And how much?"
Spenn shook his head. "Look first, then we'll talk."
He watched Kellin's face as he undid the braiding and folded back the silk to reveal an ebony puzzle-box inlaid with silver patterning. He smiled as Kellin began to trace a finger along the silver pattern, shivering and putting it quickly down. Spenn knew what Kellin had just felt— a dark shadowy whisper in the back of his mind that cat-pawed up and down his spine. He knew, for he'd experienced the exact same sensation when he'd purchased the item. The puzzle-box made him uneasy for no reason he could fathom; but that very uneasiness was what had let him understand just what it was that had fallen into his hands.
Kellin's gaze rose to meet Spenn's. "What is it?" he asked again, but this time his voice held the proper note of awe.
"Wizard's work," Spenn said. "And it's old— you can tell your principal that. Incredibly old. I can't even begin to date it."
Kellin nodded, then cleared his throat. "Ah..."
Spenn understood immediately. He wrapped the puzzle-box once more, tied off the braiding, then replaced it in its lead container. As soon as he closed the lid, the room seemed brighter. Shadows withdrew and it was easier to breathe. Spenn felt uncomfortable each time he exposed the object, but he knew the surest way to sell its authenticity was for the buyer to experience its discomfort firsthand, before the bargaining began.
"Lead blocks the influence of witcheries," he explained.
Kellin nodded as though he'd always been aware of that— something that Spenn doubted; but he let it pass.
"How did you acquire it?" Kellin asked.
"From one of my agents in Sauwait. The
artifact itself was found in one of the lost cities of the Kharanan. Apparently a Khohr tribesman discovered it in a tower that was uncovered for a day or two before the sands swallowed it again."
"Are you saying that this is an authentic Kharanan artifact? That it predates the coming of the sands?"
Spenn nodded.
"Impossible."
Spenn merely reached for the lid of the lead container once more, pausing when Kellin shook his head.
Smiling again, Spenn picked up his tea mug instead. He took a sip and regarded Kellin over the brim of the mug.
"You felt its power," he said as he set the mug back down on the table beside the lead container. "That could come from no reproduction."
"Yes, but the ancient Kharanan civilizations... they're no more than legends."
Spenn shrugged. "Perhaps. Let me remind you of another legend. Did your mam ever tell you the story of Fair Lazny?"
Kellin slowly nodded. "He killed the Witch Queen of the Graen."
"Do you remember how he did it?"
A frown furrowed Kellin's brow before he replied. "With a magical artifact— a child's top that, when it was spun, created a pattern in the air that swallowed the Witch Queen."
"Such artifacts were called glascrow," Spenn said. "There were any number of them it seems, if the old tales are to be believed. There was a dagger, a bowl, a spear, a child's hoop..."
"How do you know this?"
"It's my business to know such things."
Kellin nodded. "Fair enough. And you believe that this"— he indicated the lead container with a movement of his chin— is one such object?"
"I'm convinced of it."
Kellin said nothing for a long moment.
"Your principal... ?" Spenn prompted.
"Is quite interested in such things," Kellin admitted.
"How much?"
"Ten thousand— in gold."
"Impossible!"
Spenn shrugged. He'd take a third of that and still make a tidy profit, but he had no intention of letting Kellin know that.