THE WHITE FOREST of Innis Lear grew from the heart of the island, thick and ancient and full of shadows. It began a mile north of Queen’s Keep, extending up like an outstretched hand toward Dondubhan Castle and the Tarinnish in the north, reaching toward the eastern coast through Errigal lands, and in the west just creeping into the Taria dukedom and its capital Astora City, the largest city on Innis Lear.
Though sometimes called the Royal Forest, for these days its entirety was held in the queen’s name by the Earl Hartfare, most folk preferred the older name.
The oaks guarding the southern border were massive trees, and between them was a road, dirt packed and narrow, but clearly marked by midnight blue flags bearing the Child Star emblem.
Banna Mora rode across the threshold, leaving behind bold sunlight in favor of cool green dapples and the gray glint of morning dew. She breathed deeply, grateful to be entirely free of aches, pain, and nausea; she was healthy and strong, in leather armor and an open brown jacket. She and Rowan Lear were on their way north to Connley Castle, following behind Sin Errigal who had wished to return for the birth of her newest great-niece or -nephew. The old duke would travel slowly by wagon, turning the full-day’s journey into at least three, and Rowan had persuaded Mora to this diversion.
Birds trilled and the air lived with drifting seeds and spears of sheer white sunlight cutting through from the thick canopy. A brook gurgled nearby, slipping around rocks that gleamed like iron and silver.
Rowan sang.
A rambling riddle-song at first; his voice broke pleasantly around Mora, and she relaxed in the saddle. This borrowed horse shivered with energy, but obeyed her slightest motion. When they left the forest behind again, Mora promised her a solid run.
A shower of water and nuts plopped down around Mora as the tree above her shivered. She gasped and lifted an arm to block the tiny, sharp seeds.
Rowan said something in the language of trees. Hiss hiss whisper Banna Mora hiss, it sounded like to her. Then, “I’ve asked it to behave.”
Mora frowned back at the tree, then spread her glare to encompass the entire forest. “Why shouldn’t it behave?”
“You haven’t even said hello.” There was teasing in his voice, and Mora narrowed her eyes at him.
Unlike her, Rowan was not dressed for battle or formality. His blue robe hung open off his shoulders, over an undyed linen shirt and plain black pants. Even his boots slumped, worn and well loved. His sword rested flat across his mount’s rump, attached to the saddle just like his pack and rolled blanket. All that white-gold hair had begun the morning braided in loops, but it was so fine wisps trailed free.
Though Mora wished to think he appeared nothing like a prince, she couldn’t lie to herself: he was exactly what a prince of Innis Lear should be. She sighed heavily. “Teach me to say hello.”
Surprise filled his face, swiftly replaced by arrogant humor.
They rode in silence for a few moments, then he said, “Say this,” and followed it with a short phrase of puffed air and whispers.
Mora did her best.
A breeze blew back at her, making the leaves above dance.
“What did I say?”
“Hello, as you asked.”
She repeated the word. Hello.
Rowan smiled. “It more specifically means something like, ‘I ask that you welcome me,’ but ‘hello’ suffices.”
“Does it.”
His smile took a turn toward sublime.
Mora nudged her horse faster, and it shot immediately forward. Behind her, Rowan’s laughter echoed.
For hours she rode ahead, alone, and after the first two she paused at a fork in the path. One way shifted slightly west, the other continued due north. No sign nor marker indicated which was the proper path. Mora supposed she’d have to wait for Rowan and might as well dismount to stretch and relieve her bladder.
But she’d only just tensed to swing her leg over when the wind blew, spinning around her in sunwise circles, then sped off down the western way. The thin, leaning trees shook their leaves, and curling, dead leaves from last year tumbled along the ground.
The northern path waited quiet and still. Puffs of seeds hung in the air, caught in hazy peace.
Though the contrary nature of her mood—her personality—urged her to turn into the quiet north, to deny the wind, Mora was neither a fool nor spiteful, and so she let the wind pull her west.
Hello, Mora said, and again, Hello. Practicing.
Hello, the wind replied after her third attempt.
She gasped, and the wind gasped back, mimicking her noise exactly.
Because she was alone, or at least without human company, Mora let herself smile just a little bit.
The horse trotted happily, and Mora patted her neck, so at ease that she put tiny braids into the horse’s rough flaxen mane. The breeze stuck with her, humming, if wind could be said to hum, and Mora supposed on Innis Lear it might. She warmed sufficiently that sweat gathered in the small of her back and she shrugged out of her jacket, laying it over her horse’s withers. Then Mora stretched, touching the lined braids on her own head. Trin had spent three hours last night weaving Mora’s hair back from her forehead and temples. They felt slightly crooked to Mora’s exploring fingers, but Trin would get better with practice. The ends were loose in a flare at the back of her skull.
She ate two of the carefully wrapped boiled eggs as she rode, stopped at the stream to water herself and the horse, and continued on, letting her mount choose their speed. The horse seemed as content now to meander as Mora herself, and she managed to slip into a state of peace.
Enough time passed that Mora believed she’d chosen the wrong path and Rowan had continued north. Good that she could take care of herself, camp, hunt—though it would be a challenge with only sword and knife. A snare would do, or perhaps she could catch a fish. If not, she carried enough cheese and bread and wine to get her easily through tomorrow as well. So long as she pointed the horse’s nose in the same direction, there was no part of the White Forest more than three days ride across.
So unconcerned was Banna Mora that it was rather a surprise when the path widened into a meadow, and before her rose a huge limestone temple.
Pale walls climbed at least twenty feet, swarmed by dark green vines blossoming in white and gentle blue. The grass grew to her horse’s knees, but for a path around the entire building. Mora slid to the ground and followed the path. The horse wandered behind her, munching on the last summer grass. Mora didn’t care, though she ought to have.
This was the old star cathedral, protecting a navel well. She’d been here before as a very small child.
Four arms spread in each of the cardinal directions, and some of the heavy stones crumbled slightly. As she circled the cathedral, Mora squinted in the bright sun. High overhead the clouds that at dawn had been thick now striped the sky in sheer waves. Three violet butterflies danced a few feet above her head, bobbing in the tender breeze. They reminded her of her little brother, though she’d not seen him in years.
Mora’s body fell still and her heels seemed to stick to the ground. Her brother was caretaker here. Rowan had said so.
The Witch of the White Forest.
Hello, she whispered, and then took a deeper breath to push the phrase stronger.
The wind lifted, too, pressing grass against her knees with a whisper of its own.
There came a reply, clear in the language of trees. But Mora did not understand it. She marched back to the front of the cathedral, the south, where waited a thick wooden door carved with flowers and grinning earth saints and tiny birds. It stood half open.
“Hello?” she called in plain Learish. “I’m not fluent in tree tongue.” And Mora knew she spoke like an Aremore royal, despite her Learish birthright.
“Oh, hello!” came a hurried response. The voice sounded from above.
Mora backed up, bumping into her horse. The animal shifted against her fondly.
“I apologize,” the voice came again, as a young man walked easily along the top of the southeastern wall, a neckbreaking distance from the meadow floor. He was nearly naked, but for a loincloth draped loosely from his hips. He had curling brown hair, narrow shoulders, and bright tan skin. Mora could see no more against the brilliant blue-and-white sky. He said, “Most visitors here know the language of …”
The young man lifted a hand to shade his eyes. “Banna Mora?”
She put her hands on her hips. “Come down, Connley!” she snapped. “Carefully, before you …”
Mora trailed off, too, and they stared.
She wished she could see his face clearly.
After a long, still moment, Connley whispered in the language of trees, moving away, along the southeast wall at a much faster pace than Mora was comfortable with. The wall was two feet thick, but it wouldn’t matter if he tripped on a vine or some crumbling stone scattered beneath him. She followed him around the side.
When Connley reached the eastern arm of the cathedral, he followed its length and spoke again—it sounded like a gust of wind and sprinkling rain. But the tree nearest the wall bent, reaching a branch as thick as Mora’s leg out toward him, and Connley stepped onto it light as a bird. Mora thought her heart would stop.
He grasped another branch, then walked fast and sure down through the tree, until he reached the trunk and climbed the rest of the way like a human instead of a wild spirit.
Mora took a deep breath and waited for him to face her. First, her little brother touched his palm to the tree’s gray-brown bark and murmured, and only then did he turn.
As with her grandmother Sin, Mora had not seen Connley since she’d left for Aremoria. He’d been five. Only eight herself at the time, all her memories of him were distant and dreamy, memories in which their parents played full parts. Butterflies and singing wind, a mobile made of scarlet leaves, and quiet—she remembered best of all that he’d been ever so quiet as a child, unless he laughed. And always there was dirt on his face.
Just like there was now.
Two streaks of charcoal or thick gray paint had been carefully applied, beginning under his eyelids and pulling toward his jaw. The stark color brought out the green in his irises. She didn’t remember his eyes at all, but now he was grown, she recognized their Aremore father’s: light brown with rings of green in the center. Likely Connley did not know himself they were Corius March’s eyes. His skin was darker than she’d thought, though living nearly naked under the sun might account for that. He was slightly shorter than her, small seeming, but stout and hard muscled. Not a threat to her unless he was fast.
Except for the magic. If he was the Witch of the White Forest—already, so young—there was no telling what he could do. That tree had lifted him from the cathedral wall.
And evidence of that power was etched into his flesh. Hash-mark scars spoke voiceless spells against his skin, just under his left collarbone, in a line along the opposite hip, and in tiny rows down both inner forearms. A spiral had been scarred just over his navel. Around his neck hung a leather thong with three sleek, tawny feathers.
Mora had not the slightest idea what to say to him. Fortunately, Connley seemed to be suffering the same problem; he stared at her, too, expression lost.
They’d written sporadically as children, but she’d made less of an effort when Rovassos named her his heir, and when she’d led the pack of Lady Knights and everything in her life had been set and happy. It had hardly mattered to Mora, then, to be friendly with her Learish cousins. Her leash had been too tight, she realized now.
“Banna Mora,” he said again, and Mora was annoyed he’d found his voice first.
“Connley,” she replied.
“You, ah …” He glanced behind her, then to either side. “You’re alone? I was expecting …”
“Rowan? He moved too slow.” Mora gestured dismissively.
Connley nodded, then licked his bottom lip. “Do you want … are you thirsty? We can see to your horse. She’s tired.”
He didn’t move. Mora didn’t move. She felt she should say something profound. Embrace him. Find a memory to share. “I am. And you … Rowan doesn’t wear proper clothes, either.” She put the authority of a commander in her disapproval.
Once more, Connley glanced past her, clearly hopeful not to be alone with her very much longer.
Mora grunted and turned to her horse.
Connley had a small cottage built between two large ash trees a short walk from the cathedral. The ashes’ limbs wove together to form the skeleton of his roof, which had been thatched with lavender and smelled like paradise. As she unsaddled her horse and rubbed her down, Connley said softly, “You can let her loose. She’ll be safe to forage on her own here.”
“Is that what you do?” Mora asked.
Her brother nodded with a smile. “The forest provides. I have a garden, and gifts always from Hartfare and others who come to taste the navel waters.”
“You aren’t a star priest.”
“I leave that to Rowan, among others.”
“What were you doing on the wall?” Mora demanded.
“Sweet-talking the vines to let go some of their suckers on the east. The wall needs to last. One of the oaks has agreed to host that vine.” With that casual statement, he ducked barefoot into his cottage. Mora wasn’t sure if she should follow.
She stood alone in the shade, wondering how she’d come to this, so off-balance, so unsure of her authority.
The White Forest murmured all around, delicate and merry.
Connley nudged his door back open and emerged, in trousers now and holding two clay cups. “Honey wine?”
Even knowing how quickly such sugary alcohol overwhelmed her, Mora eagerly accepted.
Together brother and sister settled on a log whose bark had been scraped away, and the wood polished to a cherry shine. The ends were carved with hash-marks.
The offered wine was clear and delicious, and Mora drank too fast. To her relief, her brother seemed content to sit quietly. A blue butterfly fluttered to them and landed on Connley’s knee. Mora stared at it; she could make out individual scales on its wings, which together were as large as her hand. It gently batted those wings and crawled a finger’s-length up Connley’s thigh. He put his hand there, and it hopped onto his knuckle.
Her brother lifted the butterfly nearer to his face, smiling at it.
That decided her: he was not of this world. Mora huffed—a laugh, a snort, she wasn’t even sure herself.
Connley took her amusement gracefully, and with his other hand pointed into the tree above them. She glanced up, startled, to see a small owl perched there, staring down at her with round yellow eyes.
In the middle of the day.
“She’s watching you,” Connley murmured.
It was a ghost owl, with a creamy, heart-shaped face and tiny white beak. Her shoulders were a light brown, tawnier as the wings tapered back. Speckles dripped down her belly, and her talons gripped the branch carefully, without gouging bark. Hello, Mora said in the language of trees.
The owl seemed to shrug.
Connley laughed prettily. “Birds aren’t always interested in talking.”
Glancing at her brother, Mora realized the feathers he wore down his chest were ghost owl feathers.
“Not hers,” Connley said, “but probably related.”
“You’re so odd,” Mora said, giving in to the urge to be blunt.
His smile faded and the cast of his expression turned almost grave. The blue butterfly lifted off his knuckle with a few lazy strokes of its wings. Shivering, Mora realized Connley suddenly seemed ageless. Wise, magical, an illusion cast by the forest itself, a projection of its spirit.
The dark turn of her thoughts disturbed her. She longed for the clean lines of civilized Lionis; cut glass and stone-carved flowers, cobbled roads and limestone arches linking the buildings. Manicured trees and blossoms that carefully spilled from window boxes.
“I was raised by the forest,” Connley said finally.
Guilt bit at her: she ought to have insisted he come to Aremoria with her, after their parents died and she had a place of her own. But he’d had Sin Errigal and all the Errigal cousins to keep him safe. She’d chosen her home.
Connley touched her wrist, so lightly she saw it more than felt it. “Don’t, sister. You were raised by a city. By libraries and warriors and a king. I wasn’t unhappy. I’m not. This is my cradle, this island.”
It was too intimate for having known each other again a mere hour. She withdrew her hand and glanced back at the ghost owl. The moment she met the bird’s gaze, the owl spread her wings and leapt off the branch: not a whisper in the wind as it skimmed over their heads, dipped up and over the cottage, and vanished.
Mora felt oddly alone.
Then: singing.
The wind pushed her hair off her ears and delivered a low, distorted song.
She knew Rowan Lear’s voice, but also that he was some miles away still.
A succession of shivers pulled down her spine and Mora finished the cup of mead.
But Connley’s face lit with unadulterated relief. “Rowan,” he said, pushing to his feet. “I’ll—I’ll meet him.”
And then Mora was truly alone with the forest, the wind, and her discomfiting uncertainty.
STARS DAZZLED IN the black sky when Mora woke.
The men had attempted to give her the narrow cottage bed, but she’d rolled her eyes and spread her blanket upon the ground outside. So thick was the grass her sleep was immediate and comfortable, much better than most camping she’d experienced as a soldier. The hot mushroom soup and honey wine in her belly helped, assuredly.
Silence—utter silence—greeted her waking. Instead of rich and peaceful, the midnight forest felt oppressive. Wrong.
Mora held her breath and kept very still, but there was nothing: no night frogs or whispering breeze, no shivering plants or crickets or concealed hunters. She could hear the beat of her heart.
On her feet fast, Mora quietly loosed the knife from her shin sheath and gripped it backward, holding it close before her like shield and weapon both. Rowan was not on his bedroll. Sneaking carefully on her toes, she went to the cottage door: it opened easily, and inside was dark. “Rowan? Connley?” she whispered. Nothing.
She felt her way to the window and unlatched the shutters: starlight filtered through, but it was scant. Mora peered at the small room. The bed was empty, that was certain, and she saw no sign of either her brother or of struggle. He and Rowan had both left her alone by their own choice.
Anger spurred her outside and down the path to the cathedral. Her knife remained in hand and she maintained her quiet movement, aware danger might still be present, though doubting it.
The cathedral shone dully against the night sky, and it was barely brighter in the meadow, without trees to block the stars. She stormed to the south to find the door open enough to walk through, so she did.
Mora stopped. Starlight fell down from the open sky—there was no roof at all, as was the case with most such cathedrals, even the one in Lionis. The dark sanctuary opened before her. Its limewashed walls had been painted with black constellations and bright flower-bursts of red, blue, yellow that she could just barely make out.
The prince and the witch were at the heart of the cathedral, where all four arms came together in a cross, with the navel well in its center. Rowan leaned his hands on the stone rim, peering down into it; his white-gold hair spilled free, falling against the well and even into it, being so very long. Across from him Connley touched the well, too, but his head was tipped back to the stars above.
One of them was speaking softly, or was it a song?
As Banna Mora stared, she heard another noise: water. A gurgle, growing louder but still only like the murmur of a slow stream.
Then Rowan leaned back. Water appeared like a black, rippling mirror of the sky, rising to the edge of the well. Mora’s lips parted in surprise. The water halted, the surface dancing calmly there, licking at the ends of Rowan’s hair and the tips of his fingers.
Connley dipped his hand into the water, and brought it, dripping, to his mouth.
“I hope this will clarify my prophecies,” Rowan murmured.
“You still argue with the stars?”
“Everyone does who converses with them—their voice is a growing babble.”
Though Mora was certain she’d made no sound, Rowan’s head snapped toward her. Connley followed his gaze.
“Banna Mora,” Rowan said tenderly. He beckoned for her. “Come taste the rootwater of Innis Lear.”
She stared at the black eye of water pressing up from the well. It pulsed, and though she’d never admit it to any but herself, she’d have sworn it was the same rhythm as her heartbeat.
“No,” she said, and backed away, eyes stuck to that water until her reaching hand found the corner of the threshold and she stepped out through the narrow opening, into the meadow again. Her heel caught on loose earth and grass scratched at her boots.
Mora breathed a gasping, deep breath, then went determinedly back to her bed.