“Watch out up there!” Hanna called nervously. She was answered with the sound of her brother’s laughter. She spotted Cilla shaping what appeared to be a mouth in the broad trunk.
Overhead, Kevin was building an eyelid over the second large eye.
A beautiful giantess began to appear. Hanna held her breath. The woman’s features were soft and strong, her eyes set wide apart, her nose broad and flat, her lips full. The tree woman, all of shining black, was coming slowly into view.
The Wind-taken had come a long way to build her.
Hanna had discounted Tymm’s gift back home on Enness Isle. Her little brother was handy, that was all. She’d never counted it as magic. She saw the wrongness of that now. If she’d looked a little closer at Tymm and the others earlier, she might have been able to see why they were chosen. By age six, Cilla had become a gifted weaver, selling small rugs and blankets for a goodly price at the Brim market. And hadn’t Kevin said the three children from Othlore were at the top of their class in Restoration Magic?
Making, mending, restoring; from the littlest to the largest, they were all doing that now. But who had chosen them from every land, brought them on the east wind? Hanna still didn’t know.
The large head was fully formed now, with long, silky hair that flowed down her neck and back.
“Arnun. World Tree,” Yona said, gazing into its branches with awe. The other Othic folk were murmuring among themselves, so the name came across the air in small waves. “Arnun, wife of Kwen of old.”
They all went down on their knees before Arnun.
Tasting the mountain dust in her mouth, Hanna rose again with the rest. The branches were moving now. Arnun gazed down at the hollow places still in her trunk and said, “Gather the rest of me.”
The children worked even faster. Hanna and Taunier collected more black wood fragments and gave them to the Wind-taken, who nimbly climbed about her branches, adding pieces here and there. Arnun sighed contentedly while they worked, as if she were being bathed and dressed by many attendants and liked the feel of it quite well. She now stood more than forty feet tall, and still she was growing, her shining black figure very much alive against the darkness behind.
“Who among you heard my fragments calling?”
Hanna stepped forward and bowed. “I heard them speaking, Arnun.”
“You are the Kanameer.”
“I am.” Hanna marveled at how easily she said this now.
“So it was you who led the clever-handed ones here. The ones the Old Magic blew east from your world to ours,” said Arnun.
“The Old Magic was the one who sent the great wind?”
“None else would have the power to gather the ones who could restore me. The Old Magic works to keep things whole. How can you not know this, Kanameer?”
“It’s just that when the east wind came, I thought it was evil. It took the children from us. We were afraid.” Hanna remembered her terror when the wind stole Tymm, the gust that had blown her down when she had tried to stop it. She was just getting used to the idea that the wind was a part of the Old Magic. It had carefully chosen children from many lands of Noor to help rebuild this half of the World Tree.
None of the Wind-taken had been harmed; they seemed, in fact, quite happy to be doing the task they’d come here to do. One boy was whistling as he pieced together long black roots at the base of Arnun’s trunk.
Arnun said, “Tell me how it went in your world.” She said this as if she expected a story to entertain her while she was being groomed. Hanna spoke of the long journey that had brought them here, of everyone in Oth and Noor who’d done their part to bring the Wind-taken to Arnun. She told Arnun about Miles and the meers who’d sailed from Othlore, and the dragons who’d brought her to the azure deyas of Jarrosh.
“I essha this,” said Arnun at last. “The dragons guard Kwen far away in Noor.”
“The dragons can return home to Oth if we find a way to join the worlds again.”
“Join.” Arnun said this wistfully, as if she were considering the word for the first time. “I reach for Kwen, and he is lost to me. We are the same World Tree. I in him and he in me. But our time has long been over.”
She blinked her large, dark eyes at Hanna. “It is the age of the azure trees. They bridge Noor and Oth together now. But you would not have come here if they were strong.”
Hanna covered her mouth and glanced at Taunier’s troubled face. She’d left that part out, not knowing how to tell Arnun.
She summoned her courage to say the rest. “The azures are all dead. The Cutters poisoned them and chopped them down. They didn’t know the azures were the greatest trees in Noor.” That wasn’t completely true. They’d wanted the best and largest trees for timber. The Damusaun had warned them what would happen, and the Cutters hadn’t listened. She corrected herself. “They didn’t understand or believe that cutting them down would make all the other Waytrees fall.”
“Have humans lost all contact with the Old Magic?” said Arnun. “Do they not see how we all touch one another?” Lines stemmed across Arnun’s face. Hanna was afraid to answer, worried Arnun might crack and break apart again. But the tree was waiting.
“They … wanted the best timber.”
“Timber.” Arnun shuddered. Her trunk shook, and pieces began to fall.
Hanna put out her hands. “Don’t let yourself break again, Arnun.”
The children climbed down the branches and scattered. Gathering the newly fallen wood, they scaled the lower branches and began to patch the hollow places in the tree.
“It was not yet time for the azures’ age to end,” said Arnun. “There are no trees with roots deep enough to replace them. And so the breaking of the worlds.”
“If the children build you, Arnun, will you be able to bring the worlds together again?”
“Tesha yoven. This is what the children came to do.” Arnun’s voice was soft and proud as a mother’s when she spoke of the Wind-taken. “But the magic weakens with the worlds so far apart. Even the Old Magic needed the help of the azure roots to cradle the Wind-taken, until the Kanameer could come and bring them the rest of the way here.”
Hanna trembled, thinking of how delicate the balance was, how easily she could have failed her quest. It had taken all her courage to leap down into the black hole on Mount Olone. If Evver had not encouraged her, she would have turned away. Tymm and the other Wind-taken would have remained forever cradled in the azure roots, waiting for the one who would not come.
“We are here now, Arnun,” she said. “We can help you bind the worlds.”
“I cannot bind the broken alone. Kwen’s heart has hardened into stone.”
“Are you sure?” asked Taunier.
Arnun peered down at him a moment. “You are the Fire Herd,” she said.
Taunier bowed.
“You can warm a heart of stone, Fire Herd, but you cannot bring it back to life once it is dead. The future grows behind me, and it is Darkness Come.”
Hanna’s throat ached. They’d come too late. She tried to hold back her tears. Was it all to end here, with a dark wave taking everything and everyone she loved? A sob was building in her chest, but she would not let it break. Evver’s last words rode atop the wave instead. They came out unsteadily, but loudly enough for Arnun. “The Azure King told me, Feel the ground beneath your feet as you walk. Heart to root, remember the ones who hold you up.”
Arnun sighed. “I cannot find Kwen’s roots, Kanameer. He is in Noor. My own roots will not reach that far across the dark.”
Hanna turned. Even as she and Taunier were addressing Arnun, the Oth folk, Zabith, and the Wind-taken were collecting more shining black wood pieces behind them. “The Old Magic called the children here to build you again, Arnun. They can extend your roots.”
Taunier tugged her shoulder. “No,” he whispered. “Don’t ask the children to go out there.” His eyes darted briefly toward the Outer Darkness looming behind Arnun.
“It’s
our only way home,” said Hanna. “Evver and the deyas can’t hold the worlds together for long. Oth will darken, and we’ll all disappear with it, unless the World Tree joins again.”
“The wind spirits could take us home,” he whispered.
“Can you see the coastline? It should be just down there at the base of the mountain.” She pointed to the wall of dark. “Yannara Sea is lost. Where is Noorushh blowing now?”
Hanna realized as she said this why it was so still and silent here on the cliff. In the coming dark, even the wind had died. Taunier seemed to read the frightened look in her eyes. He clenched the muscles in his jaw and drew his shoulders back.
“Too late to reach out,” Arnun said above them. “The darkness moves against my back. I lose all feeling where it touches me.”
Hanna heard scrabbling sounds coming from her rucksack. Thriss wriggled out and flew up to a high, black branch.
“Thriss, come back here, now!”
“What is that pip doing here?” demanded Yona.
“Nothing. I didn’t mean to bring her, only—”
Yona’s eyes narrowed as she pointed at Thriss. Hanna caught the sylth’s menacing look and jumped in front of her. “Please don’t hurt her. She’s just a hatchling.”
Arnun brought the branch with Thriss up to her eyes for a closer look. “Little terrow,” she said with a chuckle, “have you come to guard me?”
“Yessss,” Thriss answered. She took off and circled the enormous tree, blowing a long, blue flame before her.
“Thriss!” Tymm shouted.
His friends joined in, “Thriss! Thriss!”
The tiny dragon flitted higher and flipped over in the air. A deep, rich laugh poured from Arnun’s mouth.
Hanna went down on her knees, jamming shard after shard into her pockets. “Quick!” she called. “Bring those pieces here. Arnun needs roots. Longer roots!”
At the base of Arnun’s smooth trunk, Hanna passed Tymm the black wood fragments and went for more as his small hands feverishly built long, spiraling roots into the dark.
THIRTY-SEVEN
THE HEART OF THE WORLD TREE
After Kwen was buried under earth,
a vast forest sprang up here in Yaniff.
—THE DAMUSAUN
It had taken many hours to dig into the side of the crevasse. The dragons followed the coiled white roots deep into the earth. Young and old, large and small, all claws were put to work delving out a great cave that cradled the base of an enormous tree trunk.
The Damusaun flew Miles, Eason, and Breal through the gaping hole and into the cavern. Sunlight slowly seeped into the opening, and the wind blew in, as the dragons came in ones and twos. Wings rustled as taberrells and terrows folded them against their sides. The younglings backed away from the trunk and huddled by the adults along the rocky walls, all taking in the World Tree. Silence filled the cave.
The massive bone-white trunk lay on its side. Most of the felled tree was still buried in the earth, but the part they’d uncovered was imposing enough, broad and heavy as a toppled fortress. Gigantic coiling roots plunged sideways and down, and one stretched out the open mouth of the cave. Miles noticed the pale light bathing the root that fanned out like a giant skeletal hand. He rubbed his sore back where the white wood had pinched him too tightly.
Day was ebbing. The shaft of sunlight that entered the cave caught the dancing dust motes about the base of the trunk. How tall it would be standing on end, he could not imagine. The mammoth base was magnificent. Breal nudged his hand, his tail wagging slowly. Miles glanced at the dragons lining the walls of the cave. They seemed to need to hold their distance from the male half of the World Tree, part of the living tree their ancestors had guarded from the beginning.
Miles kept his right hand on Breal’s soft head and waited. Tonight the moon would rise full: Breal’s Moon. It was the night of crossing for the dragons, but how could a dead tree, however grand, offer a way to Oth? A tiny red beetle crawled along the patterned bark, like a brave explorer in a new world. Did Kwen’s bark feel warm as wood or cold as stone? He’d like to know the answer to that, but no one, not even the Damusaun, had dared touch the mighty trunk.
Sunlight abandoned part of the cave mouth, and shadows shifted in the cavern. The change seemed to signal the queen, who bowed near the roots. “Dragon Bridge, great World Tree. We have brought the one you saved.”
Miles tensed. Why was she speaking about him like this? He’d been ready to fight, to do anything and everything to prove himself to the Damusaun. But falling into those jutting roots had been sheer accident. And anyway, what did she think he could do with the tree now?
The she-dragon brushed her wing against the trunk. “Kwen,” she whispered. “Noor and Oth are split in two. We need you to awaken and bind the worlds again.”
“NoorOth. NoorOth. Bridge the worlds,” the dragons chanted softly, their voices rough yet smooth as rapids.
Miles thought of what the queen had said: When youth fails, we return to ancient things.
“Kwen,” said the Damusaun. “Abb nayn kwii onan. Zuss. We gift you with our warmth. Awaken.”
“Abb nayn kwii onan. Zuss,” chanted the rest, and they sent blue flames all around the great trunk to warm the tree to life. Miles ran his hand along Breal’s neck and watched the shining blue against the white surface of the bark.
“Awaken,” he whispered. Their flames might still warm the tree to wakefulness. Surely, this magnificent tree could bind the worlds.
Some of the taberrells began to sing, while the rest went on sending out streams of fire. The Damusaun ran the backside of her claw along Kwen’s white trunk, waiting as a healer waits to sense a change in a patient, as the dragons sang their song again and again. At last the queen shook her head. “He is cold.”
Eason spoke. “Damusaun.” She did not look his way, but she was listening.
“There is a line from an old desert song I learned as a boy. It says, ‘The heart awakens from within.’”
“We know this song,” said the Dragon Queen, “but we would only damage Kwen if we cut into his center ring to find his heart.”
Miles’s flesh prickled as he watched the red beetle disappear into a small crack. A strange idea was forming in his mind. “I’ll go in, Damusaun,” he said impulsively.
“How would you do that?”
“There was a student at the meers’ school on Oth thirty years ago, a girl named Yarta who could shape-shift into smaller and smaller things, birds, mice, and insects.” Miles turned to Eason for support and met a frown of concern. He pressed on.
“Once,” he continued, “she shifted smaller still into the song lines of eOwey, the vibrations all of us are made of.” Surely, the dragons and his teacher knew far more about eOwey’s life-song than he? Hadn’t the Damusaun spoken of the Old Magic that connected all things? “I could do that myself. Shape-shift very small. Form into vibration and go into the heart of the tree.”
The queen lowered her head. “This human girl, this Yarta. She saw with dragon’s eyes.”
“What do you mean, Damusaun?”
“We dragons see this vibration. I see you now that way, Miles, and though you stand very still, the millions upon millions of glittering motes that gather to be you are dancing.” Her eyes were bright as she looked about the cave. “We are all this, my brother and sister dragons, this cave, the great World Tree. All dance within vibration in the song and breath of eOwey.”
She tipped her head and peered down at Miles. “Do you see this?”
Miles frowned, thinking. He’d felt a kind of tingling when he played his ervay, as if every part of himself were coming awake, but he didn’t see it—he felt it. Once when his breathing stilled in meditation he thought he’d caught a glimpse of movement, specks of glitter swirling, but the vision had vanished in three breaths. It was only when he’d entered the lit lands of Oth that he’d seen everything around him sparkling, thrumming. The very air had seemed to dance with life.
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The Dragon Queen was waiting for his answer, and, with her, Meer Eason and all the dragons by the white World Tree.
“I saw this dance once in Oth, but I cannot see it now, Damusaun,” he confessed.
“Your eyes are too small,” she said. “But this learned meer you called Yarta had vision. What became of her?”
Miles wiped his sweaty palms on his shirt. Yarta had been a student, not a meer, but he didn’t correct the Damusaun. There was more to Yarta’s story, parts he’d rather not tell. The second time Yarta had tried the experiment she’d vanished into thin air and never returned. Meer Eason knew the truth, for Yarta’s disappearance was told as a cautionary tale to all the first-year students. Since that time the art of shape-shifting was considered much too dangerous to teach to apprentices.
Eason crossed his arms. “You should not do this, Miles.”
“You are my Music Master,” answered Miles. “But I’m a meer in my own right now.”
Meer Eason looked alarmed. He turned to the queen. “It is a difficult shift, and surely the most dangerous kind.”
“Damusaun,” Miles said hesitantly. “Yarta vanished the second time she tried the shift. She never came back.”
There was an uncomfortable rustling in the cave as Meer Eason spoke, casting more doubt. “Even Wielder Meers who have practiced Othic meditation years and years to understand what Yarta did have not dared to follow where she went.”
Miles hadn’t done his regular meditation practice since they’d left Othlore. If the Wielder Meers who were skilled shape-shifters couldn’t make the change …
“Are you sure you wish to try this?” asked the Damusaun.
“Yes, Damusaun.” Blood sang in his ears. “Hanna, Tymm, and Taunier are in Oth with the other Wind-taken.” He glanced at Meer Eason. “If this is the only way to rebuild the bridge that binds the worlds and bring them back to Noor, I have to try.”
His heart wanted it. His body did not. He was terrified at the thought of shrinking down smaller and smaller.