Cast in Sorrow

speaking the ancient tongue that Sanabalis had once used to tell a race the story of its birth; he was speaking a variant of High Barrani. She could catch one word in three, but the words she did catch made no sense.

She waited, folding her arms across her chest; those arms shot out when the bubble around the Barrani servant began to flicker. “Don’t drop him!” she shouted at the small dragon. The small dragon squawked. Kaylin was too far away to make a grab for Gaedin as he lurched in midair.

His eyes widened; she saw gold ring his irises and then he was gone.

Serian said, “that was not a failure on your part.”

“What did he say?”

“I will not repeat it,” she replied. “But I think I understand what has happened. Gaedin is safe. He will probably be deeply chagrined, but I believe we will find him in the heart of the green.”

“If we reach it.”

“If, indeed, we reach it.” Serian began to float toward Kaylin. “He recognized the rune.”

“You can’t see it.”

“I have very, very limited abilities in that regard; magery was not my gift. But if I heard him correctly—” A polite phrase, because if Kaylin had heard him there was no way that the sharper-eared Barrani hadn’t. “It is in style and substance similar to runes that exist only in one place.”

“The heart of the green.”

“Yes.”

“Is someone responsible for drawing those runes?”

“If you mean, are they placed there by the Barrani, the answer is no. Not directly. Not even, to my knowledge, indirectly—but as magery was not my gift, there may well be knowledge that was not given to me. But they inform some of the unusual architecture at the heart of the green.

“I think there was enough variance that Gaedin was not entirely certain; he spoke the words of greeting and return, and the rune responded.”

“He disappeared.”

“I believe he returned, Kaylin. He will be displeased with that return; if we do not follow soon, Lord Lirienne will be likewise discomfited.”

“And you won’t—”

“No. If Gaedin had realized what the results of that tentative phrase would be, he would not have uttered it. I admit that being your servant has been an unusual challenge; we were both surprised at our deployment. Unless the green chooses to displace me, I will remain by your side.”

The dragon had once again turned his stare into the ruin of the tree side. “All right, all right. Take me to it.” She wanted roots beneath her feet. She could climb; she could cling to vertical surfaces with a little preparation. Hovering, wingless, over a distant river in the poor light of the cavern, was still disturbing.

* * *

Kaylin didn’t know a lot about trees.

Her expertise in wood involved chopping it and carrying it in the yards of the Halls of Law. This was not that kind of tree.

“Is this tree somehow planted in the heart of the green?”

The line of Serian’s lips thinned. “The tree, as you call it, is indeed planted in the heart of the green.”

“What do you mean, as I call it? What does it look like to you?”

“It looks very like the roots of a great and ancient tree. There are no trees within the whole of the West March or beyond it, in the darker forests, that have reached the age of this tree; it is singular in all ways. It is said that it speaks. I have never heard its voice,” she added softly.

Kaylin almost touched the tree; her hand stopped before it made contact with the ragged sharp edge of newly broken bark. Gleaming liquid that might be mistaken for sap caught her attention.

“Lord Kaylin?”

“The tree—it’s infected. Infested. Something.”

Silence. It was bad silence, but at this point there was no way it could be anything else. Serian moved; she seemed to have more control of her movements than Kaylin had. Kaylin glared at the small dragon.

Serian made no attempt to touch anything, but her eyes alighted on the dark, running blackness Kaylin had assumed was sap. She closed her eyes, her lashes a dark, trembling fan against her pale skin. “I believe I understand.”

“Explain it to me?” she said, in frustrated Elantran.

“The tree destroyed part of itself.”

“What caused it?” Kaylin asked.

“I do not—as you must guess—know. Rumor says that you are a healer. That you became kyuthe to the Lord of the West March because of that singular gift. He does not resent you, and he does not fear you—and that was unexpected. The Barrani do not expose themselves to—”

“Healers? No. Believe that I’m aware of just how much they hate it.” She was afraid to touch what she could barely think of as a wound. Even in the darkness, she could see the scintillation of color flowing in the liquid, and if the Barrani of the West March insisted that this black mess wasn’t the shadows that plagued the fiefs, Kaylin couldn’t see what the difference was.

She examined the tree; very little of the dark infection was visible. If the tree had destroyed some part of itself in an attempt to be rid of it, that said something about the tree. “I’ve never tried to heal a plant before.”

Serian looked mildly offended.

Kaylin hesitated for one long minute, and then placed her hand on the tree’s bark, instead of the jagged edge of its wound. She closed her eyes as the marks on her skin began to warm. It is a tree, she thought, but kept her nervous defiance to herself. Most trees didn’t ditch large chunks of themselves in fancy, magic explosions. They certainly couldn’t write, and the rune was complicated enough that it hadn’t happened by accident.

Most trees didn’t think.

* * *

This one did.

The problem with healing—from Kaylin’s perspective—wasn’t the exhaustion it left in its wake, although it could certainly have that effect. It wasn’t the physical contact, and the sudden knowledge of the limits of another person’s body; it wasn’t even the sense that, while she healed, there was little separation between her own body and her patient’s.

There was just as little separation between thoughts, between identities. She could feel and sense what they could feel and sense.

She didn’t know what the tree would offer. And the tree seemed content to offer her nothing. A lot of nothing. A great, endless darkness. She wasn’t even certain that she was connected to the tree at all; she saw a lot of what she assumed was unlit cavern.

But there was texture to the darkness, and it was a texture she didn’t like. She remembered what she’d done with the Barrani who had been injured in their skirmishes with the forest Ferals. They’d been infected—by bite—with the same transformative shadow, and she’d forced it out. Torn it out. Which had left injuries that could be healed the normal way.

Her arms were burning, but it wasn’t the usual heat. It took her a moment to realize it wasn’t her marks— although they were warm—but the sleeves that covered most of them. It was the dress, the blood of the green. She felt a moment of sick fear because she knew she was worth far less than the dress to the denizens of the West March.

But the dress was somehow of the green. And the tree, if she’d understood anything—and given how little sense things made, that was questionable—was its heart. She opened her eyes and saw that the sleeves were...flowing. They were drifting off her arms as if they were liquid.

As if they were blood, Kaylin thought.

She really hoped the rest of the dress didn’t follow suit, because appearing stark-naked anywhere in the West March was almost at the top of her list of things Not To Do while on vacation. Dying was the first item.

She closed her eyes again, and this time, she whispered into the silence on the inside of her head. She