The Summer Tree Read online

  Jennifer looked to Drance, questioningly. His expression was not reassuring; if possible, he appeared even more consternated than before. Jennifer had no idea if she’d done right or wrong, or even of exactly what she’d done, but she was tired of standing in the middle of the street with everyone watching her.

  “Thank you,” she said to Jaelle. “In that case, I will come with you. If you like,” she added, turning to Drance, and to Laesha, who had just scurried up, her new gloves in hand and an apprehensive look in her eye, “you can both wait outside for me.”

  “Come, then,” said Jaelle, and smiled.

  It was a low-set building, and even the central dome seemed too close to the ground, until Jennifer realized, as she passed through the arched entrance, that most of it was underground.

  The Temple of the Mother Goddess lay east of the town on the palace hill. A narrow pathway wound its way further up the hill, leading to a gate in the walls surrounding the palace gardens. There were trees lining the path. They seemed to be dying.

  Once they were inside the sanctuary, the grey-robed attendants melted away into shadow as Jaelle led Jennifer forward through another arch. It brought them into the room under the dome. At the far side of the sunken chamber Jennifer saw a great black altar stone. Behind it, resting in a carved block of wood, stood a double axe, each face ground into the shape of a crescent moon, one waxing, one waning.

  There was nothing else.

  Inexplicably, Jennifer felt her mouth go dry. Looking at the axe with its wickedly sharpened blades, she fought to repress a shudder.

  “Do not fight it,” Jaelle said, her voice echoing in the empty chamber. “It is your power. Ours. So it was once, and will be again. In our time, if she should find us worthy.”

  Jennifer stared at her. The flame-haired High Priestess in her sanctuary seemed more keenly beautiful than ever. Her eyes gleamed with an intensity that was the more disturbing because of how cold it was. Power and pride, it spoke; nothing of tenderness, and no more of her youth. Glancing at Jaelle’s long fingers, Jennifer wondered if they had ever gripped that axe, had ever brought it sweeping down upon the altar, down upon—

  And then she realized that she was in a place of sacrifice.

  Jaelle turned without haste. “I wanted you to see this,” she said. “Now come. My chambers are cool, we can drink and talk.” She adjusted the collar of her robe with a graceful hand and led the way from the room. As they left, a breeze seemed to slide through the chamber, and Jennifer thought she saw the axe sway gently in its rest.

  “And so,” the Priestess said, as they reclined on cushions on the floor in her room, “your so-called companions have abandoned you for their own pleasures.” It was not a question.

  Jennifer blinked. “Hardly fair,” she began, wondering how the other woman knew. “You might say I’ve left them to come here.” She tried a smile.

  “You might,” Jaelle agreed pleasantly, “but it would be untrue. The two men left at dawn with the princeling, and your friend has run off to the hag by the lake.” Midway through the sentence, her voice had dipped itself into acid, leading Jennifer to realize abruptly that she was under attack in this room.

  She parried, to get her balance. “Kim’s with the Seer, yes. Why do you call her a hag?”

  Jaelle was no longer so pleasant. “I am not used to explaining myself,” she said.

  “Neither am I,” replied Jennifer quickly. “Which may limit this conversation somewhat.” She leaned back on the cushions and regarded the other woman.

  Jaelle’s reply, when it came, was harsh with emotion. “She is a traitor.”

  “Well, that’s not the same as a hag, you know,” Jennifer said, aware that she was arguing like Kevin. “A traitor to the King, you mean? I wouldn’t have thought you’d care, and yesterday—”

  Jaelle’s bitter laugh stopped her. “No, not to the old fool!” She took a breath. “The woman you call Ysanne was the youngest person ever to be named to the Mormae of the Goddess in Gwen Ystrat. She left. She broke an oath when she left. She betrayed her power.”

  “She betrayed you personally, you mean,” Jennifer said, staying on the offensive.

  “Don’t be a fool! I wasn’t even alive.”

  “No? You seem pretty upset about it, though. Why did she leave?”

  “For no reason that could suffice. Nothing could suffice.”

  The clues were all there. “She left for a man, then, I take it,” Jennifer said.

  The ensuing silence was her answer. At length Jaelle spoke again, her voice bitter, cold. “She sold herself for a body at night. May the hag die soon and lie lost forever.”

  Jennifer swallowed. A point-scoring exchange had suddenly been turned into something else. “Not very forgiving, are you?” she managed.

  “Not at all,” Jaelle replied swiftly. “You would do well to remember it. Why did Loren leave for the north this morning?”

  “I don’t know,” Jennifer stammered, shocked by the naked threat.

  “You don’t? A strange thing to do, is it not? To bring guests to the palace, then ride off alone. Leaving Matt behind, which is very strange. I wonder,” said Jaelle. “I wonder who he was looking for? How many of you really did cross?”

  It was too sudden, too shrewd. Jennifer, heart pounding, was aware that she had flushed.

  “You look warm,” Jaelle said, all solicitude. “Do have some wine.” She poured from a long-necked silver decanter. “Really,” she continued, “it is most uncharacteristic of Loren to abandon guests so suddenly.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Jennifer said. “There are four of us. None of us knows him very well. The wine is excellent.”

  “It is from Morvran. I am glad you like it. I could swear Metran asked him to bring five of you.”

  So Loren had been wrong. Someone did know. Someone knew a great deal indeed.

  “Who is Metran?” Jennifer asked disingenuously. “Was he the old man you frightened so much yesterday?”

  Balked, Jaelle leaned back on her own cushions. In the silence Jennifer sipped her wine, pleased to see that her hand was steady.

  “You trust him, don’t you?” the Priestess said bitterly. “He has warned you against me. They all have. Silvercloak angles for power here as much as anyone, but you have aligned yourself with the men, it seems. Tell me, which of them is your lover, or has Diarmuid found your bed yet?”

  Which was quite sufficient, thank you.

  Jennifer shot to her feet. Her wine glass spilled; she ignored it. “Is this how you treat a guest?” she burst out. “I came here in good faith—what right have you to say such things to me? I’m not aligned with anyone in your stupid power games. I’m only here for a few days—do you think I care who wins your little battles? I’ll tell you one thing, though,” she went on, breathing hard, “I’m not happy about male control in my world, either, but I’ve never in my life met anyone as screwed up on the subject as you are. If Ysanne fell in love—well, I doubt you can even guess what that feels like!”

  White and rigid, Jaelle looked up at her, then rose in her turn. “You may be right,” she said softly, “but something tells me that you have no idea what it feels like, either. Which gives us a thing in common, doesn’t it?”

  Back in her room a short while later, Jennifer closed the door on Laesha and Drance and cried about that for a long time.

  The day crawled forward webbed in heat. A dry, unsettling wind rose in the north and slid through the High Kingdom, stirring the dust in the streets of Paras Derval like an uneasy ghost. The sun, westering at the end of day, shone red. Only at twilight was there any relief, as the wind shifted to the west, and the first stars came out in the sky over Brennin.

  Very late that night, north and west of the capital, the breeze stirred the waters of a lake to muted murmuring. On a wide rock by the shore, under the lacework of the stars, an old woman knelt, cradling the slight form of a younger one, on whose finger a red ring shone with a muted glimmering.


  After a long time, Ysanne rose and called for Tyrth. Limping, he came from the cottage and, picking up the unconscious girl, walked back and laid her down in the bed he’d made that afternoon.

  She remained unconscious for the rest of the night and all the next day. Ysanne did not sleep, but watched her through the hours of darkness, and then in the searing brightness of the following day, and on the face of the old Seer was an expression only one man, long dead, would have recognized.

  Kimberly woke at sunset. Away to the south in that moment, Kevin and Paul were taking up their positions with Diarmuid’s men outside the walls of Larai Rigal.

  For a moment, Kim was completely disoriented, then the Seer watched as a brutal surge of knowledge came flooding into the grey eyes. Lifting her head, Kim gazed at the old woman. Outside, Tyrth could be heard shutting up the animals for the night. The cat lay on the window sill in the last of the evening light.

  “Welcome back,” said Ysanne.

  Kim smiled; it took an effort. “I went so far.” She shook her head wonderingly, then her mouth tightened at another recollection. “Eilathen has gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “I saw him dive. I saw where he went, into the green far down. It is very beautiful there.”

  “I know,” said the Seer.

  Again, Kim drew breath before speaking. “Was it hard for you to watch?”

  At that, Ysanne looked away for the first time. Then, “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it was hard. Remembering.”

  Kim’s hand slipped from the coverlet and covered that of the old woman. When Ysanne spoke again, it was very low. “Raederth was First of the Mages before Ailell was King. He came one day to Morvran, on the shores of Lake Leinan…. You know what lies in Gwen Ystrat?”

  “I know,” said Kimberly. “I saw Dun Maura.”

  “He came to the Temple by the lake, and stayed there a night, which was brave, for there is no love in that place for any of the mages since Amairgen’s day. Raederth was a brave man, though.”

  “He saw me there,” Ysanne continued. “I was seventeen and newly chosen to be of the Mormae—the inner circle—and no one so young had ever been chosen before. But Raederth saw me that night, and he marked me for something else.”

  “As you did me?”

  “As I did you. He knew me for a Seer, and he took me away from the Mother and changed my fate, or found it for me.”

  “And you loved him?”

  “Yes,” Ysanne said simply. “From the first, and I miss him still, though all the years have run away from us. He brought me here at midsummer, more than fifty years ago, and summoned Eilathen with the flowerfire, and the spirit spun for me as he did for you last night.”

  “And Raederth?” Kim asked, after a moment.

  “He died three years after of an arrow ordered by Garmisch, the High King,” Ysanne said flatly. “When Raederth was slain, Duke Ailell rose in Rhoden and began the war that broke the rule of Garmisch and the Garantae and took him to the throne.”

  Kimberly nodded again. “I saw that, too. I saw him kill the King before the palace gate. He was brave and tall, Ailell.”

  “And wise. A wise King, all his days. He wedded Marrien of the Garantae, and named Metran, her cousin, First Mage to follow Raederth, which angered me then and I told him so. But Ailell was trying to knit a sundered kingdom, and he did. He deserved more love than he has had.”

  “He had yours.”

  “Late,” Ysanne said, “and grudgingly. And only as King. I tried to help him, though, with his burden, and in return he found ways to ensure that I would be left alone here.”

  “A long time alone,” Kim said softly.

  “We all have our tasks,” the Seer said. There was a silence. In the barn out back, a cow lowed plaintively. Kim heard the click of a gate being shut, then Tyrth’s uneven steps crossing the yard. She met Ysanne’s gaze, a half-smile tugging at her mouth.

  “You told me one lie yesterday,” she said.

  Ysanne nodded. “I did. One. It was not my truth to tell.”

  “I know,” said Kim. “You have carried a great deal alone. I am here now, though; do you want me to share your burden?” Her mouth crooked. “I seem to be a chalice. What power can you fill me with?”

  There was a tear in the old woman’s eye. She wiped it away, shaking her head. “Such things as I can teach have little to do with power. It is in your dreams now that you must walk, as all the Seers must. And for you as well there is the stone.”

  Kim glanced down. The ring on her right hand was no longer shining as it had when Eilathen wore it. It glowered, deep and dark, the colour of old blood.

  “I did dream this,” she said. “A terrible dream, the night before we crossed. What is it, Ysanne?”

  “The Baelrath it was named, long ago, the Warstone. It is of the wild magic,” the Seer said, “a thing not made by man, and it cannot be controlled like the shapings of Ginserat or Amairgen, or even of the Priestesses. It has been lost for a very long time, which has happened before. It is never found without reason, or so the old tales say.”

  It had grown dark outside as they talked. “Why have you given it to me?” Kim asked in a small voice.

  “Because I dreamt it on your finger, too.”

  Which, somehow, she had known would be the answer. The ring pulsed balefully, inimically, and she feared it.

  “What was I doing?” she asked.

  “Raising the dead,” Ysanne replied, and stood to light the candles in the room.

  Kim closed her eyes. The images were waiting for her: the jumbled stones, the wide grasslands rolling away in the dark, the ring on her hand burning like a fire in the dream, and the wind rising over the grass, whistling between the stones—

  “Oh, God!” she cried aloud. “What is it, Ysanne?”

  The Seer returned to her seat beside the bed and gravely regarded the girl who lay there wrestling with what lay upon her.

  “I am not sure of this,” she said, “so I must be careful, but there is a pattern shaping here. You see, he died in your world the first time.”

  “Who died?” Kim whispered.

  “The Warrior. Who always dies, and is not allowed to rest. It is his doom.”

  Kim’s hands were clenched. “Why?”

  “There was a great wrong done at the very beginning of his days, and for that he may not have rest. It is told and sung and written in every world where he has fought.”

  “Fought?” Her heart was pounding.

  “Of course,” Ysanne replied, though gently still. “He is the Warrior. Who may be called only at darkest need, and only by magic and only when summoned by name.” Her voice was like wind in the room.

  “And his name?”

  “The secret one, no man knows, or even where it is to be sought, but there is another, by which he is always spoken.”

  “And that is?” Though now she knew. And a star was in the window.

  Ysanne spoke the name.

  He was probably wrong to be lingering, but the commands had not been explicit, and he was not overly prone to let it disturb him. It intoxicated them all to be abroad in the open spaces, using forgotten arts of concealment to observe the festival traffic on the roads to and from Paras Derval, and though by day the charred land dismayed them, at night they sang the oldest songs under the unclouded glitter of the stars.

  He himself had a further reason for waiting, though he knew the delay could not be prolonged indefinitely. One more day he had promised himself, and felt extravagantly gratified when the two women and the man crested the ridge above the thicket.

  Matt was quietly reassuring. Kim was in good hands, and though he didn’t know where Diarmuid’s band had gone—and preferred it that way, he added with a grimace—they were expected back that night. Loren, he confirmed, had indeed gone in search of Dave. For the first time since her encounter with the High Priestess two days before, Jennifer relaxed a little.

  More unsettled by the strangeness of everything than s
he liked to admit, she had spent yesterday quietly with Laesha. In Jennifer’s room the two new friends had traded accounts of their lives. It was somehow easier, Jennifer had reflected, to approach Fionavar in this way than to step out into the heat and confront things such as the children’s chanting on the green, the axe swaying in the Temple, or Jaelle’s cold hostility.

  There had been dancing after the banquet that night. She had expected some difficulty in dealing with the men, but against her will she’d ended up being amused at the careful, almost apprehensive propriety of those who danced with her. Women claimed by Prince Diarmuid were very clearly off-limits to anyone else. She’d excused herself early and had gone to bed.

  To be awakened by Matt Sören knocking at her door. The Dwarf devoted the morning to her, an attentive guide through the vastness of the palace. Roughly garbed, with an axe swinging at his side, he was a harshly anomalous figure in the hallways and chambers of the castle. He showed her rooms with paintings on the walls, and inlaid patterns on the floor. Everywhere there were tapestries. She was beginning to see that they had a deeper significance here. They climbed to the highest tower, where the guards greeted Matt with unexpected deference, and, looking out, she saw the High Kingdom baking in the rigour of its summer. Then he led her back to the Great Hall, empty now, where she could gaze undisturbed at the windows of Delevan.

  As they circled the room, she told him about her meeting with Jaelle two days ago. The Dwarf blinked when she explained how she was made guest-friend, and again when she described Jaelle’s questions about Loren. But once more he reassured her.

  “She is all malice, Jaelle, all bright, bitter malice. But she is not evil, only ambitious.”

  “She hates Ysanne. She hates Diarmuid.”

  “Ysanne, she would hate. Diarmuid … arouses strong feelings in most people.” The Dwarf’s mouth twisted in his difficult smile. “She seeks to know every secret there is. Jaelle may suspect we had a fifth person, but even if she were certain, she would never tell Gorlaes—who is someone to be wary of.”