The weight on Ember’s shoulders seemed almost physical. The whole Eleven Domains. In the back of her mind she had kept the south as a way out—if she failed, at least her people could go there; they would lose everything they had built in the north, but they would not die. Now there was no refuge anywhere.
The river flowed calmly beneath them, occasionally flicking her face with spray, and the willow branches lifted from the great roots and trunk like a fan, creating a living screen which trembled gently with each breath of wind. She was in a tree. No doubt. But although her eyes knew that, to her feet it felt like solid ground.
Ash went first, and they followed him, the river sweet and gentle below.
Two-thirds of the way across there was an intricate entanglement of trunks—the other tree was an alder, and its paler, smoother bark swept in curls and knots around the crinkled willow.
Ember paused before she stepped across onto the alder. Here, in the middle of the stream, she could feel a faint swaying from the trees, and the river rushing below seemed a long way down. Yet her fear had left her, and even the horses went across calmly. Ember took the step onto the smooth gray bark, and felt a small shudder run through the alder.
The alder still had its catkins, busy with bees, but its leaves were growing, so that they walked down into a darker green than the willow, a rushing windy green where leaves tossed on side branches and Ember’s hair was lifted into a plume that streamed downriver. The breeze was making Ash’s clothes billow and puff, but he kept his jacket snug over Merry’s eyes.
Ahead of them, Cedar had reached the other side and leaped down, his chestnut scrambling off eagerly and immediately beginning to crop the sweet grass by the base of the tree.
Tern was next, and then it was her turn. The alder roots were not as long as the willow’s, so the angle was steeper here and Thatch chose to simply jump off, pulling Ember down with her. It was a wild leap. Her arms flailed at the air and she tumbled, letting go of the reins, but she fell onto grass and lay, winded, staring up at the intricate lattice of alder branches which shut out the sky.
Ash led Merry down more carefully, but he didn’t come over to see how she was. He stood still, staring at something. His bow was in his hands, arrow at the ready.
“Princess,” he said, his tone making her scramble to her feet and whirl to follow his gaze.
A man watched them from the edge of the alder’s shade. His face was in shadow and his hands were hidden. He was more a silhouette than a figure. Tall, very tall. Brown. Brown clothes, leather maybe, brown hair, long to his shoulders and shaggy, browned skin. Her eyes adjusted some more to the light and she began to make out his features.
A long, solemn face, not young but not old, deep-set eyes. Brown eyes. Eyes that lit with amusement as she brushed her clothes off and tried to regain her dignity. Oh, she knew those eyes.
“My lord Elgir,” she said, her voice as tart as Martine’s ever had been, scolding a dairymaid. “How nice to see you finally in your own body.” She paused for a beat, judging it carefully. “That is your own, is it not?”
Amusement broke out across his whole face, transforming it from solemn to mischievous.
“Aye, this is me, for what it’s worth.” His voice was as dark as his hair, but soft, like fur. A voice that gave nothing away. He came forward and Ash moved instinctively to stand beside her, but she put a reassuring hand on his forearm. There might be danger here, but Elgir wouldn’t just attack her. “I’m sorry if you resented my other form—most wouldn’t have noticed.”
He clicked his fingers to the dogs and Grip immediately pranced up to sniff his hand and be scratched behind the ears. Holdfast held back, tail down as if she weren’t sure of what she was smelling.
“We have been forced to notice more than that,” Ember said, unrelenting. “Where is my man Curlew?”
“The one who tried to ride past my guards?” he asked, smiling with disarming candor. “He’s in the high trees, I think.” He gestured beyond the curtain of leaves and Ember looked out. The curve of the river had brought them around so far that the ridge which had been on their right now stretched up ahead of them. It was crowned with trees, enormous things which stood higher, surely, than any mortal tree could.
Elgir glanced at Cedar, who was staring at him intently, and smiled a small, secret smile. “They’re cedars,” he said. Cedar blinked and looked up at the far trees, drawing a breath as though there was some significance to their species.
“You are not going to turn into a tree,” Ember said firmly. She glared at Elgir. “Don’t even think about it!”
He was taken aback. “Turn into a tree?” he said. “Why would he do that?” He had been thrown off balance by the idea, and Ember was glad of that. Better off balance than laughing at them.
“It happens,” she said shortly. “Take me to my man, if you please, my lord.”
“Well,” he said slowly, “I’ll take you to the high trees, but from there you must go alone. I’m no hand at climbing.”
“It’s hard, when you’re used to four feet, isn’t it?” she asked sweetly, and he shot her a look that was a mixture of surprise and admiration. She’d seen that look before, in younger men who had thought to cozen the warlord’s daughter and found it was harder than they’d anticipated. The memories bolstered her confidence. Strange it might be, but this was a warlord’s stronghold and, in some way, she was back in known territory. A place for civilized conversation, which her mother always said was more vicious than any battle. She was gripped by urgency, the need to move and move quickly.
As they walked out of the alder’s shade and along a clear path through the long grass, she became less certain that she was anywhere near civilization. The meadowland near the river was broken up further back into a series of glades, bounded and linked by trees. She’d thought them coppices, earlier, the kind of managed wood all villages had nearby, but now she saw the trees in them were too old and huge to have ever been coppiced.
Yet, they had been managed. Like the bridge, the growth of these trees had been controlled, twisted into shapes more like houses than living plants. Some had branches growing straight and flat from the trunk, and these had platforms made of intertwined boughs, so closely laced that it was like good wickerwork, but solid as a floor. A small child sat on one of these, her bottom resting amid living leaves, her hand stroking a small branch as another child might stroke a cat.
Ember paused, looking up at the child, who stared back down at her with interest. The first human apart from Elgir they’d seen—or was she? There was something about the texture of her skin, a slight shimmer that reminded Ember of heat haze on a road, or moonlight on water.
“Hello,” Ember said. Elgir looked on, his face unreadable, but his stance relaxed.
The child opened her mouth and replied, but the sound was more like birdsong than language. Ash laughed, delighted, and the girl smiled at him.
“Hello,” she said to him. “This is my tree.” There was an accent to her words and she said them carefully, as a stranger to the language might. But her pride in the tree was unmistakable.
“It’s beautiful,” Ash said. She nodded and rose, climbing swiftly up, showing off as children did. Her face peered down at them from behind leaves, and she smiled again, then disappeared, giggling.
“Your daughter?” Ember asked Elgir politely.
“I have no children,” he said.
He led the way forward, staying just a little ahead of Ember as they kept on, passing trees which had grown into rooms and towers, the long sinuous branches curling and twining so that there were no straight lines anywhere. Lime trees, beeches, elms, even oaks had been coaxed or enchanted into use. Not every tree, not every group of trees. The birches were too small, the aspens too weak, and willows were uncommon, it seemed, away from the river. But chestnuts and walnuts, and old, old alders. In one copse, several yews made an aerial village, their branches forming corridors as well as rooms, the boughs forming a lattice for a may hedge, dripping white with blossom. And on the outside of most of the clumps, fruit trees grew: cherry and apple and pear. She wondered what it would be like to wake up in a bed surrounded by cherry blossom.
In between, the glades were full of food plants. Berry canes, hazel bushes, apricots trained against the trunks of other trees for shelter, and vegetables, their distinctive tops scattered at random: onions and carrots, small wild leeks and dandelion greens, sallet and parsnips.
What looked like wilderness was a farm, but who was tending the crops? And how were the grazing animals, which were everywhere, kept from the human food? Deer were great destroyers of early crops, and Ember couldn’t believe they wouldn’t have tried to get to this feast. But Ember caught glimpses of them, happily grazing in the meadowlands, just a little way away from the glades.
That was an enchantment the farmers of Last Domain would like to learn.
They had seen no one but the little girl, but there were sounds all around them, birdsong and animal calls, wind and water. Ash came up beside her and said quietly, “Those birds sound a lot like the little one.”
Ember listened more closely. Were people talking to each other, over their heads, watching from the network of rooms and walkways which seemed to stretch from one side of this valley to the other? It was a disquieting thought, and she shivered. It was also a breach of protocol.
“Where are your people, my lord?” she asked.
Elgir turned to her and waved a hand.
“Around,” he said. “Watching you. We have few visitors.”
That was clear enough.
“Why did you bring us here?” she asked.
He stopped and the others behind them had to stop too, the horses huffing a little and shuffling, the dogs coming forward to nose Ember’s hand. Holdfast still stayed a little away from Elgir, but Grip treated him like a long-known friend. Elgir looked up at the nearest tree, a giant beech which wound its branches into a tall tower with small openings. A tower walled with leaves, she thought. They must freeze in winter.
“I brought you here because you carry power with you,” Elgir said eventually, choosing his words. “And power is dangerous left uncontrolled, but it is more dangerous when it is unknown. To protect my people, I had to discover more about you.”
That’s a lie, Ember thought. Or rather, it’s the truth but not the deeper truth.
“No other reason?” she prodded. He lifted his chin, as the elk at the stream had done, to stare down his nose at her.
“There is probably another reason,” he said, voice soft as moss, “but I do not know it.”
And that was the truth. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ash nod, once, and knew he’d heard truth, too. Cedar moved forward, as if pulled unwillingly.
“Is it your spells that have shaped this place?” he asked. Now that was dangerous, to ask an enchanter about his power, but Elgir’s face cleared and he answered readily.
“Mine, my father’s, his father’s… and other friends.”
“Human friends?” Ash cut in. Elgir laughed.
“Sometimes,” he said, and it wasn’t clear if he meant that some of his friends were human, or that his friends became human sometimes.
Ember decided to leave it at that until they had Curlew back.
They moved through glade after glade, past treerooms and towers and winding stairs made from branches. The air was full of the scent of sap and mayflower. She couldn’t help asking, “What happens when the leaves fall? How do your folk stay warm during the winter?”
He looked sideways at her, amused again. “Some leave,” he said. “Some find other shelter. We manage, as we always have.”
And somehow that put images into her mind of birds migrating and badgers burrowing and bears curling up for their winter sleep. Elk, she knew, continued to graze through the winter, eating birch bark and buried grass.
The ground began to slope upward, and Tern, behind them, began to move faster, pushing them forward. He was right, Ember thought. They should be hurrying.
“Where will we find our sergeant, my lord?” she asked. “And in what case?”
“How he’ll be depends on him,” Elgir said. “That spell is a strong one, to safeguard my people.”
“It was not safeguarding anyone,” Cedar said. “It was coercing.”
His voice was not disapproving; more like a teacher’s, or a storyteller’s, explaining something to a child.
Elgir dropped back to walk next to him, and Ember listened intently. They were alike, these two, in looks and walk and manner—saturnine and complex, hard to predict. Perhaps Cedar could understand this lord better than she.
“In your case, that is so,” Elgir acknowledged. “But the spell was not made just for you.”
“What are you protecting, up there on the plateau?”
“Some of my people need that space,” Elgir said. “You may see them yourself, some day.” His tone was final; no more discussion. But Cedar pressed him.
“You control the ghosts of former warriors,” he said. “Like the enchanter Saker, who once almost destroyed our world.”
Elgir shrugged. “You think they were real ghosts?” He smiled, narrowly, in challenge. Bull elk, Ember thought. “Would I constrain my own people and deprive them of their chance at rebirth?”
“Well, would you?” Cedar retorted. Elgir laughed.
“Only if they wanted me to,” he said.
The slope steepened and Elgir said, “Leave the horses here,” when they came to the next glade, a small grassed enclave fed by a stream which was half waterfall, sliding down over rocks into a pool. From a small glade to the right a horse wandered over, whickering happily. Blackie, Curlew’s mare, looking just fine. The dogs greeted her, bounding at her heels, teasing her. Feeling more hopeful, Ember and the others unsaddled the horses. Merry rolled in the grass and then shook herself to her feet. Tern got out their nosebags, but the horses ignored him, crowding around Elgir instead. He was talking to them, softly, in a language she didn’t know. They listened. Nuzzled his arm. Blew breath into his face, as if he were a friend. His voice ended on what was clearly a question, and all of the horses huffed or whickered or whinnied in answer, then turned to graze. The dogs lay down in the sun and stretched, quite content.
“No need to hobble them,” Elgir said. “They will wait for us.”
None of them commented. He was an enchanter and he had just done enchantment in front of them. It was enough for him to be deposed by the Warlords’ Council, because no warlord could be an enchanter, but Ember doubted he ever considered the council at all. This land might be called the Northern Mountains Domain, but it was no part of the country she had grown up in.
The high trees began at the very top of the ridge, which was not peaked but flat, as though someone had run a knife along the top to smooth it. The scent of evergreen was very strong as they climbed; not pine, not even the familiar odor of the cedarwood chests her mother kept blankets in; these were the living trees, and they smelled of life, heady and invigorating. The scent filled her lungs and made the climb easier, lifting her up.
These trees did not seem to have been enchanted. There were no entwined branches, no rooms with green lath floors. The trunks rose high and straight, and only far above their heads did the branches sweep out. They were close together: leaning back, Ember could see that far up the branches did intertwine with each other, but whether that made rooms or floors or walkways she couldn’t tell.
“You will find him on the highest level, I believe,” Elgir said.
“How do we get up there?” Tern asked, voice squeaking.
“Most of my people fly,” Elgir replied.
How useful, Ember thought dryly.
“And the others?” she asked.
“They climb the saplings.”
At the edge of the ridge, before the tall trees cut off the sunlight, smaller trees were growing. These had branches all the way to the ground, but they were spindly, still, and didn’t reach quite high enough for an easy transfer to the more solid trunks.
“You are not climbing up there,” Ash said flatly.
She glared at him. Didn’t he have any idea of protocol? No. Of course not. Farmers and bowyers rarely did. She would have to excuse that.
“My cousin,” she said to Elgir, “fears for my safety.” Family were allowed license which other courtiers were not. Even if Elgir held no real court, she had to maintain her father’s dignity.
“You are not cousins,” Elgir said. It wasn’t a question. His face showed only mild interest.
“An honorary title,” she said. “Ash’s mother was adopted by my mother as a baby. Technically, we are not blood kin, but we are certainly family.”
“Nephew,” Elgir said. “Honorary.”
Ash laughed. “She tried calling me that, once,” he said. “But I’m a year older, so I didn’t think it was right.”
Ember couldn’t help smiling at the memory. “You pushed me into the pig trough,” she said.
Nodding, Elgir looked from one to the other. “Family,” he said. “But not blood kin. And that may matter, one day.”
Cedar shivered at his words, but Ember couldn’t tell if it was a warning. Sight, perhaps? There were too many unchancy things around here and she was beginning to feel dizzy, like a child who’d been spun around too many times in Seeking Blind.
“You’re not climbing up there,” Ash repeated. He held her gaze until she nodded. “You stay with her,” he ordered Cedar, then turned to Tern. “Come on, lad.”
He tossed the jacket he’d been carrying to Cedar, but he gave his bow to Ember, and she took it with due ceremony. He opened his mouth to say something, but she cut him off.
“Yes, I will look after it,” she said. Laughter lit his eyes. She wanted to reach forward and kiss him, to lean her body against his full length and feel his muscles move against her, his arms come around her. Her hand began to move, without her willing it, to touch his face, but she pulled it back before he noticed. Her shoulders ached with the effort of not touching him.
“That’s my princess,” he said. He stood with his hand on the trunk of the highest sapling, looking up, his face clearing of all emotion. She wondered what he was thinking. “With your permission,” he said, but he was talking to the tree, not to her.
Elgir nodded in approval.
“She grants you passage,” he said. Ash swung up into the lowest branch and began to climb, Tern close behind.