readied with supplies,” he said, ignoring Colin completely.
Before Lotaern could answer, two more members of the Flame appeared. Dressed like Vaeren, they came up behind the caitan and nodded toward Lotaern formally. The Chosen had straightened, assuming the mantle of his power. They were younger than Vaeren, but obviously related, their eyes the same dark gray.
“Is everything prepared?”
“No,” Siobhaen said. “Not yet. There is still one more thing to do.”
When the brothers shot her a curious glance, she moved toward the bowl, knelt on one knee, and lowered her head. Colin could hear her murmuring beneath her breath.
When he looked up, he caught the brothers rolling their eyes. Vaeren gave them a look and with sudden solemnity they both knelt.
A moment later, Siobhaen reached forward and smudged soot along her cheek, the two brothers following suit. Then all three rose.
“Now we are ready,” Vaeren said.
The entire group moved to the main entrance, acolytes pulling open the doors as they approached. Gusts of winter air pushed through, and Colin hoped that the acolytes had thought to include warmer clothes in his own set of supplies. Even as he thought it, one of the acolytes stepped forward and presented him with a second satchel. Inside, he found clothing of an Alvritshai cut and the Order’s colors, a bedroll, bowls and utensils, and other assorted tools for the road.
He pulled the clothing free. “I’ll need to change,” he said to Vaeren and Lotaern.
The Chosen motioned him away. As the acolyte showed him to a room, he and Vaeren spoke to each other quietly, too low for Colin to catch.
A few minutes later, he joined the Order of the Flame outside in the Sanctuary’s plaza, the stone obelisks surrounding them on all sides. The Alvritshai clothing fit, even though Colin fidgeted with its unfamiliar cut, a little too tight in the shoulders for his taste.
Lotaern had just finished a blessing, the Flame members rising. He turned to Colin as they mounted the waiting horses. “Find out what’s causing the storms, Shaeveran.”
Colin didn’t answer the command, merely swinging up into the saddle of his own horse. He remembered when the Alvritshai had been afraid of horses, when he and his family had first ventured onto the plains and met Aeren and Eraeth.
The Chosen backed away, his acolytes following him into the protection of the door’s alcove, away from the wind.
“Why are we leaving in the middle of the night?” one of the brothers asked, barely above a whisper. “Couldn’t this have waited until morning?”
The other brother shrugged.
Colin turned to Vaeren.
“Where to first?” the caitan asked. “Rhyssal House lands to see Lord Aeren?”
“No,” Colin said. “To the Winter Tree. I need to verify that the Trees have not been affected.”
Vaeren’s eyebrows rose in surprise, but he nodded.
They wound their way through the darkened streets of Caercaern, lit sparsely by lanterns or candlelight from high windows, Colin tugging the sleeves of his shirt down over his hands against the chill. Vaeren took the lead with Siobhaen, the two brothers trailing behind. Only a few Alvritshai were out at this hour, hurrying from one spot of warmth to another, bundled up and hunched into their clothes. No one paid them any attention. Most windows were dark, but a few of the shops they passed, mostly bakeries by the strong smell of bread that drifted from them, showed chinks of lantern light. In a few hours, the streets would be bustling with the thousands of Alvritshai that lived in the city, thronged with pull-carts and wagons, the citizens dressed in the loose clothing and conical straw hats of commoners. He glanced toward the third tier, where most of the lords kept their own houses when the Evant was in session, then higher to where the Tamaell resided in the highest of the tiers, towering over the city, but the buildings were lost in the darkness. Then he turned his attention south. The storm he had seen from the top of the Sanctuary had moved too far away to be visible.
Ahead, Vaeren and Siobhaen slowed and he shifted in his saddle, looking up to where the Winter Tree towered above them. They’d reached the wall that surrounded it, had stopped at one of the gates. Vaeren spoke to the Warden who responded to his knock on the heavy wooden door.
The door opened and they ducked through the stone arc of the wall into what had once been Caercaern’s largest marketplace.
Colin remembered what the plaza had looked like the first time he’d been here with Aeren and Eraeth. It had stretched nearly the entire width of the tier, had been twice as long, the colonnades of the Hall of the Evant on the far side appearing distant. And it had been packed with people, tents, wagons tilted onto their sides, blankets spread onto the wide flagstones, and tables of every variety of produce and goods imaginable. It had taken Aeren and his escort nearly an hour to work their way across to the Hall.
Now, the entire area had been transformed to deal with the Winter Tree. The flagstones had been ripped up and soil carted in and packed down to allow for a garden. Trees had been planted on the outer fringes near the wall, but as soon as they stepped inside, Colin could see that only grass grew beneath the shadow of the Winter Tree’s branches, the lowest of which were too high to be reached even by ladder. The Tree obscured the Hall of the Evant, and in the darkness beneath it Colin could barely make out the wide trunk and its gnarled roots. But he could hear the wind in the branches above, thrashing in the leaves, and he could see where the Wardens had established crushed stone paths beneath those branches, winding out and around sculptures of stone and statues, benches and small basins of water.
The gate closed behind them, the Warden who’d opened it appearing nervous. Vaeren turned toward Colin. “What do you need to do?”
“I need to touch the Tree. And I’ll need some time.”
He nodded, then turned to the waiting Warden. “We’ll leave the horses here. Fetch us lanterns, and inform the head Warden that we’ll be at the bole.”
The Warden scurried off; without a word Siobhaen dismounted and headed toward the center of the gardens, the rest following suit.
The branches of the Tree closed in overhead almost immediately, the thrashing of the leaves muted to a soothing rustle. Wood creaked and groaned, but the deeper they moved beneath the Tree’s massive protection, the fainter those sounds grew. The metallic taste of winter tinged each breath, mingling with the acrid and earthy smell of bark as they drew nearer the bole.
Halfway to the trunk, a group of five Wardens arrived with lanterns, the footing becoming treacherous as roots began to break through the earth. The procession-strangely formal now-edged through the roots as they grew more and more tangled, increasing in thickness until they were the width of Colin’s thigh. A moment later, they reached the base of the Tree.
They stood on the root system and stared up into the latticework of branches above, barely within the reach of the lantern’s light. Colin could see the awe of the members of the Flame as they searched the heights, could feel the Tree itself pulsing beneath his feet. He drew its scent in with every breath. The Wardens were unaffected, waiting calmly to either side.
“Wait here,” Colin said. He could have reached down and touched the Tree through the roots at his feet, but he wanted to be closer, nearer to its heart. He left his staff behind, waved away the offering of one of the lanterns, then began climbing the roots in front of him. The satchel proved an annoyance, but he hadn’t wanted to leave the knife it held behind. He clutched the dry, dark bark, and scrambled higher until he’d moved beyond the lantern light, until the bole shot skyward before him. The scent of the Tree enfolded him here, the air no longer chill with winter, as if the Tree were generating its own heat, like that generated by peat in a bog. He settled into position, then reached out and placed both of his hands against the rough bark of the bole and closed his eyes.
The essence of the Tree wrapped around him instantly. Like that of his staff or the heartwood given to him by the Ostraell, it throbbed with life, but this was a thousand times more powerful. It overwhelmed him instantly and drew him in, recognizing him, his taste. He may have gasped; he couldn’t tell, his awareness of the outside world and his body subsumed by the sudden sensations of the Winter Tree itself. Wind lashed at its branches, tossing the leaves to and fro, the trunk swaying beneath the tumult. Far beneath, the roots dug deeper and deeper into the
