Chapter 7

I woke late and lingered over my campfire and my breakfast. It would take only a half day's riding to get to where I was going, and anytime today would be a fine time with me. The skies had cleared again and it was nice to wait for the chill of the night to abate before setting out. Deak seemed to appreciate it, along with the relaxed pace. He tossed his head now and then and nickered at me softly when he did. Perhaps, like me, he was chasing Vulkai cobwebs out of his mind.

Remembering my dreaming conversation, I stopped to gather a little more yellow cedar when I spotted it along the way. I didn't see another sassafras tree, but spotted an old beech growing near a small sump alongside the trail. There was a small clump of aerial root growing from a fork near a fork in the trunk and I took the opportunity to collect a few small pieces of it.

I found the little pool, looking just as I remembered it, the majestic Chestnut, steeped in its ancient magic still sheltering the pond and the area around it. I might have set my furs beneath the chestnut tree, but there were a lot more burrs on the ground there than I remembered from my previous time here. I realized that the Chestnut had something for me as well and collected some of the still green burrs from it, wanting the green, spiked pod itself rather than the nut it protected. The burr, my beech root and the cedar I'd collected would burn in the fire tonight and give me access to something akin to the dreaming I'd done the night before. The longer I stared at the tree the more I thought that perhaps my finding these things along the way was less the coincidence I'd assumed and more by Gaen's design.

Winter had not come to this pool, as it still hadn't truly come to much of the forest yet. It was on its way though, and I wondered how this chestnut, with its ancient magic would fare. I suspected it would retain its identity and character no matter what else happened to the rest of the north wood, and that it would, as it had both times I'd been here, seem like early summer here.

I could hear the wolves while I made my dinner. They were much more distant tonight, but they seemed set on reminding me that they were near. I still wondered about the different attitudes they seemed to have when we had met in the dreams the night before. I knew from my studies that the Vulkai were one of the elder races, but one of those greatly changed by mankind's coming to Gaen. Not all those who been changed by man's ascendancy appreciated the changes, that was true, but the Vulkai had been one of those in the early days who had seemed to accept the changes with enthusiasm. I had said that they had once been high in Gaen's favor, and in a sense that was true. The Vulkai were far more closely tied to Gaen and her magic than many of the elder races. Unfortunately, as some thought, this left them far more susceptible to Gaen's influence, and they perhaps more than any of the elder races had been transformed by Gaen's adjustment to the presence of man.

When it grew dark enough, I brought out my kit and set myself up by the fire as I had the night before. I set wards, even though I felt that in this place I was as safe as I could be anywhere outside of my master's tower, and with the wards in place and my tea brewed, I set about achieving my goal. This would be more than a simple casting of myself into the dreaming.

I hoped to summon Ilesa, to whatever extent she could be summoned, and through the dreaming form a bridge by which we could communicate.

The tea would take care of the dreaming, but the summoning, which was a related bit of wizardry, though of a far more concrete and formal form than the dreaming was, was a little more complicated. To start it, I threw the chestnut burrs into the fire and as soon as I saw the color of the flames changing in response, I began Aendra's Call, summoning magic of an ancient and potent sort.

With the structure of the sounds ringing about me and the smell of the smoke pulling at the edges of my magic, I let the magic loose about me. I felt my magic tremble and dissipate at the edges as Gaen and the dreaming acted on it. The magic needed words and I felt them come to me and pass my lips almost without any action of my own.

Woman of the wood and river
Lady of lake and tree
lost love and savior
hear my song and come to me.

I sang the words as if they were chorus to the rest of song that was the calling spell, coming back to them again and again at the appropriate time, pushing my magic out further and further and letting Gaen and the dreaming impose themselves on the edges of it more and more until just when I began to worry that there would be no response, the world changed about me.

Suddenly it was no longer night but I was still beside the pool, but with a winter sun low in the sky before me and the cold, sharp smells of the dead of winter were carried to me on a frozen wind that fluttered around me in frantic gasps. From the center of the pond a figure rose, dressed in blue and white, a staff of brown and green in one hand and white crow perched on the opposite shoulder.

"Pacasin," the figure spoke, and as it drew closer, I could see it was Ilesa's face, but pale and cold.

"Ilesa," I answered, and the figure smiled.

"You have found me, but too soon, I think. Now is not the time for us to be together again."

"I know," I agreed, wondering at the ease with which I did. "But now I can go on, knowing that it is possible, some day that we will."

"I will wait for the day, and wish it could be sooner than it will, but Gaen will do what Gaen does, and things will work out as they must and when they must."

"I will miss holding you in my arms until then," I said with soft resignation.

"And I wish I could hold you in my arms," she answered. "All I can do is ease your way a little, perhaps."

"Can you tell me the truth of what happened then, back at Hoartongue Keep? How you saved me, and what it meant? I've been making guesses, but none seem likely to be able to confirm their accuracy."

"I can, a little. Old Loam taught me many things in the days between our meeting him and our arrival at the keep, but the most important thing I learned was how strong and deep my connection to the forest of the north was ... and is."

"It was that connection that saved me, wasn't it?"

"Yes, but it was a near thing. The forest itself offered to save you, if I would agree to something I had not been willing to agree to before that very moment. I did not quite sacrifice myself for you, but I did choose a path that I might not otherwise have chosen."

"You took on the forest, didn't you?" I asked. "You became the north wood."

"In a way," she had come to the edge of the pond as we spoke, and I had walked to meet her. We stood a foot apart and it might as well have been a thousand miles. I felt the echo of a chill wind with her every motion.

"Winter comes to the Vale, and with it, the north wood becomes what it once was. To be able to achieve this transformation with man's presence on Gaen, man had to be a part of it. So I had to be a part of it. With me, the north wood once again become the Winter Wood."

"You then are the Winter Wood?"

"I am not quite the forest in its entirety, nor is the forest quite all of me. I am ... Queen of the Winter Wood and not the Winter Wood itself, but the differences are ... small."