The Wounded Weave

The tree contained pressure instead of a road.

Rishi remained bodily himself, but distance ceased to pass beneath his feet. Wood held the shape of his shoulders. Sap moved cold along his skin without wetting it. His lungs pulled air from somewhere that had never known sky.

Maeril’s hands remained on the staff. He knew that before he knew where his own hands were.

The worked wood between them carried the insistence of her grip. She was beside him, though beside had become a relation rather than a direction. Aestra held that relation ahead of them. Her fear moved through the living passage like a small, fierce pulse refusing to be lost inside a larger one.

Root touched root.

Water climbed fine channels through darkness. A wounded tree pressed its warning into the soil. Another answered. The message did not travel in words or follow the clean speed of thought. It passed as altered pressure, bitter sap, a closing pore, a root turning away from what should have fed it.

The forest carried them through those answers. Blood remained in Rishi’s veins. His knees stayed bent against living force. His scarred hands held the staff while the root system moved the complete weight of him through a distance his feet never crossed.

The wrongness found them once.

Cold struck upward through the passage. The living fibres around Rishi’s ribs tightened. Maeril’s grip slipped the width of one finger.

He turned both hands against the staff.

She caught it again.

Aestra’s pulse flared through the wood, and roots diverted around the cold as water divided around stone.

Then the distant duskwood recognized the relation she carried.

Everything pulled.

Rishi came back to ordinary distance on his knees.

Wet leaves burst around him. Bark released his shoulders with enough force to pitch him forward. His hands struck a broad root, skin scraping against its ridged surface. Air entered his lungs sharp with sour sap and spring water.

The staff landed crosswise beneath him. Maeril was still holding it.

She emerged at his right in a spill of fine roots and torn white flowers, folded around the wood between them. Her boots found no ground. Rishi caught her upper arm before she rolled into the channel beside the root.

Aestra was already half out of the central duskwood while the living passage still held Rishi’s robes. The tree released her with a cracking sound. She struck the ground on both feet, staggered, and ran toward the dryad.

Rishi pushed upright.

The same oval clearing opened around them.

The shallow stone basin lay to the right. Grey leaves crowded its water now, more than had floated there in the night. To the left, the fallen limb still wore its moss, but the small white flowers had closed. The gate-like roots through which he had entered hours ago stood at the far approach.

Behind Aestra, the ancient duskwood bled black through another opened fissure.

The dryad remained against it.

One of her knees had entered the root beneath her. Bark climbed her thigh as if the tree could no longer decide which shape to preserve. Her split arm hung at her side. Aestra reached her, caught the unbroken hand, and pressed it against her own chest.

Maeril rose beside Rishi and released the staff.

The air crackled against her fingers.

She drew her hand back. A thin blue spark traveled between two wet roots and vanished into the spring with a hiss. The smell of burned sap rose through the sourness. Somewhere beneath her boots, a working tried to complete itself and failed.

She had spent the night imagining a sick tree. There was a sick tree in front of her, and a dying person held against it. Through both ran an arcane structure so large that she could feel it continuing beyond the limits of her attention.

She crouched beside the root where the spark had passed. Her hand hovered over it. The pressure met her palm unevenly: a pull toward the tree, a sudden check, then a return along the same course that should have carried it away.

“Rish. Wait.”

He had reached the dryad. Her unbroken hand lay open toward him.

“She knows me.”

“I know. Give me a moment before you let her hurt you again.”

Aestra turned from the dryad. Her hands were still clasped around the offered arm.

“She does not want to.”

“Wanting has very little to do with what is happening here.”

Maeril took a slow breath and followed the nearest strand of the working with two fingers. She could not see it continuously. Moisture gathered along one edge, brightened where two lines crossed, and dispersed when the strain moved on. She watched three pulses before reaching for her own magic.

A narrow ward formed above the root.

The next pulse bent it toward the duskwood. Maeril let the ward give, feeling for the direction in which the pressure wanted to travel. It should have continued beyond the spring. Instead, it struck something below the basin and returned through the living wood.

The dryad doubled over.

Aestra cried out with her.

“There.”

Rishi had caught Aestra beneath one arm. He lowered her against the tree and waited until she could hold herself upright.

“I felt it.”

“Can you feel where it goes?”

“Back into her.”

He looked down at the root under his foot.

“Then through the others. They are all trying to carry it.”

Maeril kept the little ward in place. A heavier strand pressed across it from a direction she could not follow, forcing the first out of its course. She looked up at the canopy, then toward the spring, trying to find where that second strain began.

It went beyond everything she could see.

“A drunken mythal leaning on the wrong wall,” she said.

Rishi watched her face.

“The tree is the wall.”

“Can you move it?”

“The whole thing? No.” She shifted her hand, and the ward straightened a little. “I may be able to stop this part falling through her while someone who understands the rest gets here.”

The dryad’s fingers closed on empty air. Rishi looked at them, then back at Maeril.

“What do you need?”

“The staff. Across these two roots. Keep the worked side toward me.”

He brought it over. One end rested on the root beside the duskwood; the other reached the ridge above the channel to the spring. Maeril moved it twice before the wards she had made lay across the strained junction rather than beneath it.

The familiar wood steadied her own small working.

Rishi knelt at the end nearest the dryad. He put one hand on the staff and offered her the other.

Her fingers closed around his wrist.

Rishi’s breath shortened. His fingers tightened on the staff, and beneath Maeril’s palm the little ward bent toward him instead of the waiting earth.

“Through the wood,” Maeril said. “Let me carry the strain. Tell me when it changes.”

He kept his hand open in the dryad’s grasp.

Her next shudder moved through his wrist into the staff. Maeril caught the pressure at the crossing and turned it toward the root beyond the spring. Water slapped the basin’s rim. The staff jarred between their hands.

The dryad drew a breath that did not break halfway through.

Aestra lifted her head.

“Again.”

“Was that better?” Maeril asked.

“It reached the ground. Before, it came back through my eyes.”

Maeril waited for Rishi’s nod before adjusting the ward.

Rishi’s shoulders braced before Maeril felt the next pulse.

“Here it comes.”

Maeril held the crossing open. Aestra listened through the bond and told them where the pressure still caught.

One small root loosened its grip on another.

The improvement was so slight that Maeril almost distrusted it. Then the dryad’s split arm lowered from its rigid bend and rested against Rishi’s shoulder.

He had been kneeling with his heels beneath him. Now he eased one foot forward, taking the weight without pulling on the injured wood. The staff moved with him, and Maeril’s working trembled.

“I need room.”

She shifted her knee out of his way.

“There. Slowly.”

The dryad leaned against him.

Maeril felt a second pull gather at the crossing. It followed the staff toward Rishi instead of passing into the ground. His chest rose with the dryad’s. His mouth opened, but no word came.

“Rish.”

He stopped. So did the breath.

“She is reaching inside.”

The dryad’s fingers tightened around his wrist. Aestra made a low sound and brought both hands to the place where they touched.

“She is afraid you will go.”

Rishi looked at the dryad’s face. Her gaze held his.

“I will stay while we do this.”

He turned his wrist gently in her grasp. She did not release it.

“But you must let me.”

Maeril had taken her supporting hand off the root. Two fingers rested against the ward in the staff, ready to close it. She watched his face without speaking.

The dryad’s grip loosened.

Rishi drew his hand back until a gap opened between their palms. He took one unhurried breath. Then he placed his palm against hers again.

This time she followed him.

He let the rhythm slow. Maeril lowered her hand back to the root, and the ward received the next strained pulse without buckling. Aestra’s shoulders eased. She stayed close to the joined hands, her attention moving between the dryad’s body and the living wood beneath them.

The Grove grew quieter.

The black sap did not clear. The fissure in the duskwood remained open. But for several breaths the tree stopped splitting, and the spring ran into its basin instead of rising against the rim.

Maeril felt a dangerous lift of hope.

We can hold this part, she thought. With time, with enough hands—

Rishi raised his head.

One of the birds beyond the clearing had stopped calling.

The woman with the white streak in her dark hair stood between the gate-like roots. Her spear lay along her forearm, clear of the bark. The younger huntress entered to her left with a fighting staff in both hands and her bow across her back.

Behind them came a cloaked woman between two guards.

The dryad drew Rishi’s hand toward her chest.

He let her feel his palm once more before easing free. Aestra took his place, keeping both her hands around the dryad’s unbroken one.

“One moment,” Maeril said.

The white-streaked woman continued toward them.

Maeril closed her small ward by degrees. The supported strand settled back against the root. The returning pressure made the dryad flinch, but the crossing held long enough for Rishi to lift the staff without tearing the working open.

He rose with the wood between both hands. Maeril stood beside him and kept her fingers over the ward until the last light faded from it.

The leader crossed to the spring and planted her spear. The younger huntress took the ground to her left. The cloaked woman stopped near the gate, enclosed by her guards.

Maeril looked from the spear to the dryad, whose breath had begun to catch again.

“We have found where it is hurting her,” she said. “We need help holding it.”

The woman’s gaze passed over the staff, their hands, and Aestra at the tree.

She did not lower her spear.