"There it is! Stop it before it finds the trees!"
The shout was followed by a horn-blast, and howls of the sort that small boys are wont to make when they have the barnyard cat on the run, and beneath it all the sound of hoof beats, pounding against the land.
Brume lengthened into a gallop, mane flying, Sian low on his neck.
Becca threw herself forward. "Follow!" she cried.
Rosamunde needed no more urging. She stretched into her silk-smooth run and was through the long corner in a flash, bursting out into a wide clearing.
Becca shook the hair from her eyes. Ahead, Sian and Brume raced, angling to the right, where three horses bearing three of the High Fey were at full gallop through the long grass, in hot pursuit of what Becca at first thought must be a rabbit.
Bandy legs flashed, a tufted tail slashed among the weeds. Becca urged Rosamunde to greater speed, angling as Brume did, to get between the exuberant riders and the desperate wild thing—one of the very wild things that Elyd had warned her against!
"What's this! They'll spoil the sport!" One of the pursuing Fey shouted. "Fendri, your cord!"
Becca looked up, seeing the rider farthest from her throw a long line weighted with stones into the air over his head. The cord danced between long white fingers, stones blurring. The quarry threw itself forward, the weeds catching at its scanty breech, cuts and scrapes showing on one hairy forearm. It carried one hand tucked into the opposite arm-pit, which put its gait off, and that hand was bleeding—profusely.
"Stop!" Sian's voice rang clarion across the clearing, echoing back from the trees they had just quit. She threw her hand out, and a turquoise wave burst from her fingertips, rolling across the grasses toward the three riders—
Who passed through it as if it were the merest nothing.
"You have no power of command here!" the middle rider shouted—and in that instant, the farthest rider loosed his cord.
Becca leaned; obedient, Rosamunde flung herself at right-angles, making a turn that should have broken her back and her rider's too, and was flying over the hard ground, hooves thundering.
They would be too late, Becca saw with anguish. The spinning cord cut the air with horrifying quickness. Even if she and Rosamunde got between it and the fleeing creature, however would they bring it harmlessly down?
The cord whistled by, two horse-lengths ahead and well above Becca's reach—there was a flash of jeweled wings, the cord stopped in mid-flight, spinning crazily in place as Nancy held onto the center, feet braced against the air, wings spread as the cord spun slower, and slower—and stopped altogether, hanging limp from tiny hands.
Becca pulled back on the reins and Rosamunde danced to a stop.
"Well done, Nancy!" she cried, even as the hunted creature threw itself to the ground and rolled between Rosamunde's hooves, where it cowered, its good arm over its unkempt head.
"You have no power of command here!" The center youth cried again, but his horse stuttered beneath him, as if unsure of its direction, then stopped as Brume pushed forward and Sian snatched the bridle.
"Warded land or no!" she snapped. "It is against the compact to hunt the Brethren, as well you know it, Narstaft!"
"I know that you are interfering in a private affair!" the youth shouted petulantly, to Becca's ear.
Bright colors flashed at the edge of her vision, she looked up—and bit her lip to keep from laughing aloud. Two arm-length's above her head, Nancy was solemnly skipping rope with the captured hunting-cord.
"That is mine! Return it!" Fendri, who had thrown the cord, commanded, his voice flattening the grasses. A whimper came from the creature trembling between Rosamunde's feet.
Up in the air, Nancy stopped her game and stood pensive, wings half-furled, hunting-cord held negligently in a diminutive hand, head tipped consideringly to one side. As clearly as if it were happening, Becca saw her maid toss the cord above her head, twirling it until it was less than a smear upon the air, and release it to its owner.
"No!" Becca cried out and raised her hand, sparkles of gold dripping from urgent fingertips. "Nancy, please take the cord over to that larch and loop it gently in the topmost branch."
"That is not acceptable!" the owner of the cord shouted. He took a breath, his outline beginning to show distinct flashes of red. "I demand—"
"Be quiet, you fool!" Someone snapped. Becca gasped, belatedly recognizing the voice as her own. "Or be sure that she will return it—and break your neck into the bargain! Go, Nancy."
"Is that a threat, Wood Wise?" The High Fey urged his horse forward two reluctant steps, his seat so stiff it was a wonder, Becca thought, that he remained horsed at all.
"It is a statement," she said, flatly.
"They do grow bold, don't they?" He looked to his companions, neither of whom seemed inclined to support him, then back to Becca. "What is your name?" He spat the last word as if it tasted vile.
Becca drew herself up, pretending not to see Sian's sharp sign of negation.
"My name is Rebecca Beauvelley," she said, into a sudden, perfect and windless silence. Sian shook her head.
"Rebecca—By the architecture of the sky!" the youth Sian held swore. "It's Altimere's pet!" His horse stamped, as it caught its rider's horror.
Rebecca pulled herself up—and this time heeded Sian's signal. Bad enough to have named herself. To assert that she was her own woman, free of Altimere's influence, would be fatal.
Might already have been fatal.
"Perhaps you would consider betaking yourselves back to the safety of your house," Sian said in a voice that was too soft to reach Becca as clearly as it did. "Before word reaches the Grand Artificer that you have been discourteous to one who accepted his protection."
It went hard against their grain, Becca could see that, for they were high-blooded young men, but prudence won out. The quiet rider, who sat closest to Becca, turned his horse first and walked sedately away, not looking back.
After a moment, Fendri the cord-thrower turned his horse and followed.
"Release me," the center youth, Narstaft, snapped at Sian. "I wish no quarrel with Altimere."
"Your father, who has attained wisdom, and old age, wishes no quarrel with the Queen," Sian told him. "Be assured that I will write to him that his youngest son believes it sport to hunt the Brethren, despite the covenant."
Narstaft licked his lips, but—credit where it was earned—he did not look away.
"There is no need for you to trouble yourself, Engenium," he said quietly. "I will tell him of this encounter myself."
Sian nodded, and loosed his reins. "Good."
The youth turned his horse and rode away in the wake of his companions. Sian waited, watching, and Becca did likewise. When they had all three passed under the shadows of the trees—only then did Brume turn and walk toward them.
"That was remarkably foolish," Sian said, with, Becca admitted to herself, a great deal of restraint. "If you cannot control that artifact—"
"I have no need to control her," Becca interrupted. "She does admirably on her own."
"Between the pair of you, we are fortunate that we came out of that encounter as well as we did." She closed her eyes, took a deep breath—and exhaled. "Come," she said, "let us ride on. There is good resting place just a little further on."
Becca shook her head, and slid off of Rosamunde's back, staggering where she landed.
"What," Sian demanded, "are you doing?"
"This—Brethren," Becca said, moving around to where the creature yet crouched between Rosamunde's hooves—"is wounded. I am an herbalist and a healer. It is my duty to do what I am able to ease pain and comfort the infirm."
She heard a loud exhalation of breath from above her as she knelt next to the shivering creature, but the Engenium said only, "Of course."
* * *
Meri walked deliberately onward, mindful of where he put his feet among the shattered twigs and spiteful stones. He slowed, the air pressing him down. His head felt stuffed with old leaves and it seemed as if his blood moved sluggish in sediment-clogged veins.
Still, he went on, drinking from the water skin Elizabeth Moore had insisted he carry, and which he had thought a slight against his skills as a Ranger.
Now, it would seem that the lady knew more than she had said, for he dared not stop, at all, in this leaden, unnatural place—and certainly he could not dare to drink, though he passed a stream that seemed to run fresh enough, and a pool so clear he could see the pebbles resting beneath the still water's surface.
He shivered, trying to think—to think of the calamity that could have caused this, for here was not merely an elder wood in the final segments of its life. No, there was something else at play here; something he could not name, and horrifying, which nonetheless tantalized and teased his feeble kest, and it seemed to him that there were Newmen—no! There was Michael himself with his clever blade, and seductive aura, half-tucked behind a drooping pine, smiling a promise of pain and desire . . .
"You are false! A dream conjured of shadow and dust!" His voice was louder than he had intended, sounding curiously flat on the dead air. Michael's phantom shattered, becoming merely a random pattern of leaves and branches.
Meri raised the water skin and took a meager mouthful. When the flask was resealed and hung back in its place, he called out again.
"I am Meripen Vanglelauf, Ranger and Wood Wise, here at the service of the trees!"
There was no answer.
Meri walked on.
* * *
"Well, I can't treat it if you won't let me see it," Becca said tartly.
Wounded hand still tucked close under its arm, the Brethren stared at her. Its eyes were dark yellow, ringed with black, not quite the eyes of a beast—and not quite the eyes of a man—framed by black lashes as stiff and bristly as a scrub brush.
It closed first one eye, then the other, and turned its face away. Slowly, the wounded hand crept from its hiding place, until it was out, curled in on itself, the bloody back half-extended to Becca.
She sighed in relief.
"Thank you. I will be as gentle as I may be, but I do have to examine it, and it may hurt you. Please do not think that I am attacking you, or willfully causing you pain."
Her patient made no answer. Indeed, Becca thought, as she leaned to examine the offered appendage, she had no reason to believe that it could speak.
The hand was gory, blood gluing the plentiful coarse hairs together. There was no evidence of crushing, however, and it showed a full complement of four fingers and thumb, each capped with a horny nail.
Becca lifted her canteen and poured water over the wounded member. Blood and mud sluiced away, showing two long cuts in parallel, shallow toward the knuckle and deeper toward the wrist. Both began bleeding again, but slowly. She put the canteen aside and leaned forward.
"I am going to touch you," she told her patient, and did so, probing along the cuts. The Brethren shuddered, and she froze, but it made no other move. Letting her breath out quietly, she turned the hand over to inspect the leathery brown palm.
"There does not appear to be anything lodged in either cut," she said, turning the hand back over and lowering it slowly until the palm rested on her knee. "And they are already starting to crust over. This is excellent. However, you would not want your hand to become infected. I am therefore going to put fremoni salve on it and wrap it with a clean cloth." She considered the creature's profile, its hair wild and tangled around its ears.
"Nancy," she said, turning to look for her maid, who was hovering at shoulder height. "Please bring me the white pot."
The little creature flitted to the various vials and pots Becca had asked her to lay out from the saddlebag, lifted the white one and settled it by Becca's knee, uncovered and ready for use.
"Thank you, Nancy," Becca murmured, her eyes still on her patient's odd profile. "I will need one of the clean cloths in a moment."
Glancing aside, she scooped up a generous portion of fremoni salve, and said, "This will sting. That means the medicine is working."
She smeared the salve onto the cuts, coating them well. Her patient twitched, muscles bunching, and for a moment she feared—but it only sighed gustily, and stared steadfastly away from her.
"Very good," Becca said truthfully. "Now we wrap it."
The cloth was to her hand; she nodded her thanks to Nancy and bound the creature's wounds, taking care with the knots and hoping that the bandage would last a day.
"There!" she said brightly, as Nancy bore the pot away. "Keep this clean and covered and in a week you will scarcely know you had taken hurt."
"Keep shy of Narstaft's bird traps and you'll not take hurt again," Sian said, dryly. Becca jumped, having forgotten the Engenium's presence in the necessity of tending the wounded creature, and looked over to where the Fey woman lounged in the grass, her head propped on one hand.
"Not bird trap," came a low, growly answer from Becca's erstwhile patient. The creature turned its massive head, eyes wide and yellow and staring at Sian. "Brethren trap."
They shared a long stare, the creature and the Fey, before Sian sighed. "Is that true?"
"Is it a lie?" returned the Brethren
"Very likely it is not," Sian conceded. "But I haven't the time to deal with it now." She leapt to her feet, light as thistledown, and bent to offer a long hand to Becca.
"Now that your duty is done, herbalist and healer, may I humbly ask that we ride on?"
"Of course," Becca said, coolly. She put her hand carefully into Sian's as if she, as much as the creature she had just treated, were a wild and unpredictable beast, and was raised to her feet.
"Nancy—" she began, turning.
But her medicines and books were already gone, and Nancy was pulling the belt tight on the saddlebag, her wings flashing brightly in the sunlight.
Becca nodded. "Thank you, Nancy," she said quietly.