Its roots made the earth rise in ridges spreading out from its base. Its breadth would have matched six men laid end to end. Even in the an’Cróan forest, it seemed improbable for such a tree to exist—yet it did. Three more anmaglâhk stood sentry before the opening in its base.
She would have found this unusual enough, as Father did not need to employ guards in Crijheäiche. It was as if they waited for something.
Were they waiting for her and Osha?
One sentry stepped into her path. She paused, expecting him to move aside.
“I have orders to bring Osha directly to Most Aged Father.”
The sentry did not move, and then the sound of light but shuffling steps rose from inside the tree. The curtain covering the opening pulled back, inward, and Dänvârfij stared in confusion at the woman who appeared.
Tosân’leag, elder of the Avân’nûnsheach—the Ash River clan—was dressed in a deep maroon robe. Immediately following her appeared Sheadmarên, a female elder of the Coilehkrotall—the Lichen Woods clan—the clan of Sgäilsheilleache. Last came a thin, diminutive male.
He was barely two-thirds the height of an’Cróan but as dark and amber-eyed. He wore only loose breeches of roughly woven material torn off at the knees. Blue-black symbols decorated his arms, torso, and his neck up to his cheeks, and twisted cords of grass bound parts of his wild hair.
Rujh, chief of the Äruin’nas.
It was said that his people had lived here for ages before the ancestors of the an’Cróan came seeking a new homeland. The Äruin’nas were now part of the people, though they lived separately, and Rujh sat for them on the council of elders like any of the an’Cróan clans.
All three elders wore dour, troubled expressions, though Rujh’s was tainted with an edge of spite, as always. Tosân’leag was an elder of a clan of scholars; she and Rujh barely tolerated each other, and yet they appeared together.
To Dänvârfij’s knowledge, none of the elders ever entered Most Aged Father’s dwelling tree, nor did he appear before them unless summoned or some event required his presence. Only the Anmaglâhk went inside the great oak—and only those called to do so. That non-anmaglâhk had stepped into Most Aged Father’s sacred home left Dänvârfij’s mind blank.
“What is happening?” she asked aloud before thinking better of it.
Tosân’leag looked at her with eyes both hard and dread filled.
“Tread carefully, young one,” she said. “I see churning waters ahead for your caste ... that may drown us all.”
Rujh would have usually made some guttural rebuke at such prophesying, but he made not a sound and burned Dänvârfij with a glare. Sheadmarên simply stared at the ground, though once she made a quick glance beyond, perhaps toward Osha.
Dänvârfij feared something of what had happened between Sgäilsheilleache and Hkuan’duv might have already spread. All three elders turned away, and the sentinel anmaglâhk stepped aside.
It took another instant before Dänvârfij realized she was to enter. Tosân’leag’s obtuse warning kept her feet rooted in place, though Most Aged Father was waiting.
“Are we going in or not?” Osha asked dully from behind her.
Of all strange reactions she could not explain, she looked back at him and asked, “Will you come?”
He did not look at her but stepped past to the doorway and vanished through the hanging. Dänvârfij followed, keeping up with Osha, and descended the steps inside.
They emerged into a large earthen chamber, a hollow space beneath the massive oak. Thick roots arched down all its sides to support walls of packed dirt lined with embedded stones for strength. Glass lanterns hung from above and filled the space with yellowed twilight. In the chamber’s middle was the tree’s vast center root.
As large as a normal oak, the heart-root reached from ceiling to floor and into the earth’s depths.
A thin voice carried from that center root and filled the earthen chamber.
“Come to me.”
Dänvârfij stepped closer, rounding to the heart-root’s front. The oval opening in its earth-stained wood was hard to spot from the side. It was as natural as the steps that grew out of the inner walls and the roots that supported the tree’s great bulk over her head. She heard Osha step closer, behind her. He did not move again until she entered.
The interior of the heart-root’s smaller chamber was more dimly lit than the outside. Its inner walls appeared alive even in stillness. Hundreds of tinier root tendrils ran through its curved surfaces like taupe-colored veins in dark flesh. Those walls curved smoothly into a floor of the same make, where soft teal cushions rested before and to the sides of a pedestal that flowed out of the floor’s living wood. The back wall’s midpoint bulged inward as well to support the pedestal.
Wall and floor protrusions melded into a bower, and among the copious dried moss therein, two eyes stared out from a decrepit form. Once he would have been tall, but he was now curled fetal, with his head twisted toward his visitors.
Dänvârfij stood in awe of the founder of her caste—Aoishenis-Ahâre, Most Aged Father.
Thinned and dry white hair trailed from his paled scalp around a neck and shoulders of bare shriveled skin draped over frail bones. His triangular elven face was little more than jutting angles of bone beneath skin grayed by want of daylight. Deep cracks covered features around eyes sunk deeply into their large slanted sockets, and his amber irises had lost nearly all color. All that remained was a milky yellow tint surrounded by whites with thread-thin red blood vessels. Cracked and yellowed fingernails jutted from the shriveled and receding skin of his skeletal fingers. His once-peaked ears were reduced to wilted remnants.
But to her, he was “Father.” Who but he could survive so long ... lead for so long?
The heart-root of the oak had been carefully nurtured from the living wood since the tree’s first day sprouting from the earth. Some said he had planted this tree with his own hands to sustain him for the sake of fulfilling the people’s future needs.
Although Dänvârfij longed to ask him why the elders had come, it was unthinkable for her to speak first in the presence of Father. Then she noticed someone else standing in the shadows of the near right wall.
Juan’yâre—Ode of the Hare—had become Most Aged Father’s new Covârleasa after the half-undead monster, Magiere, had tried to kill Fréthfâre. Dänvârfij did not know Juan’yâre well but instinctively did not trust him. Too much about him struck her as sly and deceptive, even his physical appearance. His small-boned stature and boyish features made him appear youthful, though he’d been assented by his jeóin thirty years ago to take his place among the caste. At least he was unfailingly loyal to Father, and in the end that was what mattered.
Father turned his head upon the moss with great effort and looked to Juan’yâre.
“Leave us. Wait in the outer chamber.”
Without a word Juan’yâre slipped out, and Father turned his milky eyes on Osha.
“My son,” he said coldly, “have you betrayed your caste?”
Osha’s tight expression melted into sorrow and pain, but his answer was firm. “Never ... Father.”
The patriarch’s tone instantly softened. “I did not think so, but it had to be asked.” He motioned with two fingers of a limp hand that did not lift from the moss. “Come tell me what happened.”
Osha stepped nearer, his stiff anger fading, and his voice sounded almost numb. “I can tell you no more than what I have through my word-wood ... before reaching our ship. Sgäilsheilleache had sworn our people’s oath of guardianship, which cannot be broken. He upheld it while Magiere, Léshil, the sage, and the majay-hì recovered the artifact they sought. And even beyond to see them safely home, as he should have. But Hkuan’duv ... and ...” Osha’s anger returned. “Hkuan’duv—and Dänvârfij—they tracked us into what the humans call the Everfen. The greimasg’äh ordered Sgäilsheilleache to turn over what had been recovered. Sgäilsheilleache refused, as was right by his guardianship. And they ...”