It was impossible to tell precisely when the city became the countryside. Eventually, the road began to wind a little more among the trees, the shrubbery grew thicker and even less restrained, the now-and-then glimpse of an open window or the gable of a wooden roof grew rarer, and then ceased altogether.
They rode single-file, and at a rapid walk, Sian in the lead. The road was wide enough for them to have gone side-by-side, but Becca wished to be alone with her thoughts.
Such thoughts they were! She had no notion of the geography of the Vaitura; indeed, she could not recall having seen a map of the land in the books she had struggled to decipher in the library at Altimere's country seat. There had been not even been a map on the wall, which in retrospect was odd. Her father had a large and handsome colored map of the Midlands over the fireplace in his library at Barimuir House. She wondered at herself, that she had never noticed the lack in the library at Artifex. Surely, she thought, a great and elder lord living so close to the border would have maps at hand? Then she thought again. Perhaps there had been a map, after all, and Altimere merely willed her not to see it.
It came over her all at once, a longing for those days before she had fully understood what she had agreed to, in her ignorance and her folly. When she had believed herself safe, cherished, protected.
Loved.
Tears rose to her eyes, and she wanted nothing more than to be in her bath, ignorant and happy, Altimere lounging carelessly at the water's edge, his hair gleaming in the candlelight, the crimson dressing gown falling open over his smooth white chest.
Beneath her, Rosamunde's purposeful walk changed in response to her rider's inattention. Becca drew a shaky breath and adjusted her seat; Rosamunde's gait smoothed, and her ears flicked, as if to say, "Next time, I shall not be so gentle with you!"
"You are a marvel of patience and forbearance," Becca murmured, her voice choked with tears. "Indeed, indeed, I will try to deserve you."
Rosamunde snorted, and ahead of them, Sian looked back.
"We will rest after we have crossed Horn's land, Rebecca Beauvelley," she said. "Stay close and do not dawdle."
Becca swallowed a hot retort with the last of her tears, reminding herself that Sian had every reason to be doubtful of Becca's horsewomanship, after the display in Altimere's courtyard, but to assume her in need of rest after so short a time in the saddle as this! Altimere had coddled her, unwilling in the extreme to try her physical strength. But he had never suggested that riding should exhaust her or that she might tire more easily than a three-year-old.
Sian does not know you, Gardener, and she is of two branches. On the one branch, she wishes to be away. Yet on the second branch, she would not risk your health.
"Because the Queen requires my testimony to strip Altimere of his honors and remove him from his place on the Constant, you mean," Becca muttered.
The concern we hear has to do with your health, Gardener. She considers that you have borne much, and before your roots were well-set. This decision that you had taken, to end your growth, she fears it as a sign of a deeper malaise, which has not yet been cured. There was a pause, and then.
To end your own growth . . . that thought is unsettling, even to trees.
"Trees die," Becca muttered, as Rosamunde followed Brume 'round a corner in the path. "Certainly," she added, "Fey die." She shivered in the sunlight.
And sometimes trees and Fey too die at a time or in a manner of their own choosing, the tree said inside her head. But to choose a death without first making a repository of what you have learned, and to make disposition of your kest—that is alien to trees and to Fey.
Becca bit her lip and looked down between Rosamunde's ears. The voice in her head had sounded stern, censorious. Yet, what did trees know of subversion, lies—of betrayal? A tree was a simple thing; it grew or it did not. A tree could not be forced to murder a friend or be used as bait, to trap for the unwary.
Ahead, Sian raised her hand, signaling a stop. Becca obediently pulled up, raising her chin when the Fey woman turned in the saddle.
"We are fortunate that the Queen's artificer is elderly and prone to napping," Sian said. "The shortcut is still in place." She beckoned with long fingers. "Come here."
Becca urged Rosamunde forward until they were side-by-side with Sian. Rosamunde whickered as they drew up, and Brume turned his proud head to look down at her.
"Attend me, Rebecca Beauvelley," Sian said sternly, and Becca determinedly met her eyes. "Our journey from fair Xandurana to my own holding by the sea is made shorter and less wearing by use of a particular piece of artifice. To invoke it is expensive of kest, and some find it unnerving to traverse. But it is far less enervating than riding long days across the Vaitura. Look ahead and behold the construct of which I speak."
Frowning, Becca did as she was told. At first, she saw only trees, and the path, and a pair of redbirds playing tag in mid-air, twittering gaily to each other.
One of the birds dashed upward, wings flashing, and she saw it, beyond their bright busyness, like dark draperies moved by a slow, malicious wind.
"The keleigh!" she gasped and turned to stare at Sian. "Is your home beyond the Boundary, then?"
"Beyond the Boundary?" Sian repeated. "How would that be?" She shook her head. "As to the nature of the artifice, you are both correct and incorrect. The substance and force are like unto the keleigh, but this is smaller, and transient. We shall ride but a small distance, yet cover leagues. This shortcut has been raised as a courtesy to the Queen's Constant, and will not maintain much longer."
Becca's eyes were drawn again to the bruised and billowing air. "I understand," she said.
"Good. Now, as I have said, some find the transition unsettling, though very few so much that they choose instead to ride the entire distance between Xandurana and their own lands. You may bandage your eyes, if you wish, and I will lead you."
"Why should I bandage my eyes?" Becca demanded, though in truth the movement of air against air was . . . disturbing. "I have crossed the keleigh itself, with my eyes open and my horse under my hand."
Sian's eyebrows rose. "Did you indeed," she murmured. Before Becca could reply, she inclined her head with every indication of courtesy. "I had no wish to offend you," she said, and took up reins.
"We go, before the gate is sealed. We will ride as hard as Brume allows, for he is the best judge in the places between. Keep hard by us. When we emerge, we will be on the border of Horn's land. Follow us closely; and do not for any reason dismount. Horn dislikes travelers, and has been known to harry stragglers on the road. We will rest once we have come under Sea Hold's branches. Do you understand me?"
Did the Fey think she was a child or a witling? Becca thought, a hot retort rising to her lips.
To Sian, as to us, you are the veriest sprout, Gardener.
Becca swallowed and inclined her head. "I will follow closely," she said, keeping her voice soft with an effort. "And I will not dismount until you give me leave."
"I have your word," Sian said, and it seemed that her voice echoed against the warm breeze, a thing of substance, and of portent. Becca tensed, expecting—what? she asked herself. A strike? A compulsion.
Apparently ignorant of the apprehension she had caused, the Engenium had turned away.
"By your grace, old friend," she said to her horse, and Brume walked deliberately forward.
"Now us," Becca murmured, dry-mouthed, into Rosamunde's ear. "This will be as nothing to you, brave heart." She glanced down to where Nancy sat on the saddlebag, her hands gripping the strap. "Stay there," she said sternly. The tiny creature nodded vigorously as Rosamunde stepped forward, toward the billowing curtain of power.
* * *
The wood grew darker, as if he had walked the day down into night. The voices of birds and the sounds of those others who lived among the trees faded into silence. Even the breeze stilled. The still air was surprisingly warm, and tasted of dead greenery.
Meri paused beneath the branches of an elitch, and pressed his palm against the trunk.
"I am Meripen Vanglelauf. Is there any small service which I might be honored to perform for you, Elder?"
Silence was his answer, stretching uneasily along the quiet air. At last, Meri took his hand away, stepped back and bowed.
"Elder," he murmured.
Straightening, he settled his bow, and touched the elitch wand in his belt. Thus comforted, he walked on, ever deeper into the dim, breath-caught wood.
* * *
Brume vanished between one step and the next, sublimated into the chancy air. Becca took a breath, glanced down to be sure of Nancy, and prompted by a memory both compelling and confusing, tucked her crippled left hand between the saddle and Rosamunde's warm withers.
"Stay close," she whispered, something that felt like laughter and terror combined cramping her chest, then there was the veriest flutter against her cheek and they were in.
Heat struck her face, followed by a slap of cold; wind skirled, lashing Rosamunde's mane, and casting mist into Becca's eyes. She blinked it away and shook her head, trying to banish the persistent fizzing sound. Leaning forward, she sighted a horse-sized disturbance in the mist, outlined in a wash of turquoise, cantering.
She leaned forward, and Rosamunde increased her pace, though it seemed that the turquoise-dyed shadow was pulling ahead of them.
Becca could not hear her hooves strike over the clamor in her ears, and a man's voice, as plain as if he rode beside her—
"Rebecca! Come here; I want you!"
The mist swirled, the voice was lost, even as she turned her head, and surely there was a face, right there, inside the tricksy air? A man, his hair bright in the mist, and a long, white hand outstretched to—
Sunlight broke the vision, the mist ahead was sundered, and she could see green fields, with trees in the distance, and on her right hand a rolling hill.
Ahead, Sian, the Engenium of Sea Hold, pulled her horse around, her face perfectly expressionless as Becca rode toward her.
"Look," she said, and nodded.
Becca looked over her shoulder, at the dusky curtains twisting in a turbulent, unfelt, wind. From somewhere, a chime sounded, so pure and sweet that tears rose to Becca's eyes. A blade of sheer silver light split the uncertain air; the curtains folded, collapsed—and vanished. Behind them was only a country lane, winding and pleasant, and the sun, high over the trees.
"What would have happened," Becca asked, her voice thin in her own ears, "if we had still been—in—there?"
"Why, then we would have become wanderers in the mist," Sian answered, her own voice somber. "Doomed to dwell in the places between."
Becca looked at her, but Fey woman's face was as stern as her voice. "It is said that a rider may hear the voices of the heroes who fell to the keleigh, inside the shortcuts and the by-paths."
"This . . . " Becca swallowed to settle her suddenly rebellious stomach. "The path we took was not the keleigh, you said."
"It was not the keleigh, yet for the space of its existence it partook of the same energy, and existed in the same plane. What is lost at the Boundary may be seen in the mists of a conjure-bridge, far inland. But it may never be recovered."
Sian shook her head suddenly, as if she cast such dire thoughts behind her, and turned her horse. "Come. Let us put this place behind us."
* * *
It was hot in this place, and the mists were—surely!—thicker. Altimere shifted in his chair. His back hurt, and he was parched.
From time to time, he heard things. Chimes, hoof beats, a glissade of harp strings, voices. He knew them all for phantoms, produced by his own ears in defense against the on-going tedium of silence.
Enclosed by ghosts and mist, he grappled with his loss.
The necklace, the great artifact that tied his Rebecca to his will, kept her turbulent nature compliant, and her intellect confused—the necklace had been destroyed.
It was, naturally, possible for the necklace to give up its form and substance and return to the elements from which he had shaped it. He was no fool, to think that an artifact once found useful would undergo no future sea change which transformed it from favored tool to implacable enemy. One had only to witness the keleigh to see the folly in that.
However, it would have been rank folly to have built a wide vulnerability into so powerful an artifact. He had done all within his considerable skill to ensure that the only two persons who could break the necklace were himself—and Rebecca.
That Rebecca had found the fortitude and focus to overcome the disincentives that had been forged into the necklace at its making—was . . . difficult to encompass. And yet, he could conceive of no other, now that his own teacher, Sanalda, had passed on to greater wisdom.
His mist-stuffed ears could not hear his laughter, so he could not judge its temper.
Passed on to greater wisdom—that was what they had said, back before the fall of civilization and the sundering of the world. Now, those who would be truthful might say, who had been extinguished by her pupil's ambition.
Something had gone amiss, when he had used Rebecca to—mincing no words!—murder Sanalda. It had hardly been the best use of his tool, but more—the bond between teacher and student was not lightly sundered, nor was the act likely to leave either unscarred. If—
He stiffened in his chair, caught by that last thought. Surely, the bond between teacher and student was potent, as was the bond between those others who regularly shared kest.
Such as himself and his pretty Rebecca.
Scarcely had he articulated the thought than hope blazed, his kest rose and he flung his will against the mist.
Rebecca! Come here! I want you!