“So she thinks!” Olikea exclaimed happily.

“I do not wish to part with that item,” he told her firmly. “It means much to me.”

She turned to look at him in the dim and shifting light cast by the lantern bearer. Soldier’s Boy glanced at her and away. “It would please you if I bore you a child?” she asked. Her delight was evident in her voice.

Soldier’s Boy was startled and spoke perhaps more harshly than he intended. “It would not please me to trade away something that Lisana treasured as much as she treasured the Ivory Child. It was important to her. I would keep it to honor her memory.”

Olikea took half a dozen more strides in silence and then said with sharp bitterness, “It would serve you better if you learned to value the efforts of a woman who is here rather than preferring your memories of someone who is a tree now.”

I heard the hurt behind her harsh words. Soldier’s Boy heard only the disrespect to Lisana and the other tree elders.

“I suppose you must strive to be important now,” he said sharply. “For you know you will never earn a tree for yourself.”

“And you think that you will?” she retorted angrily. “Remember, at the end, a Great One is at the mercy of his feeders. Perhaps you should seek to build a bond and some loyalty, so that when your time comes, there will be someone to take your body to a sapling and fasten it correctly and watch over you until the tree welcomes you.”

That was as savage a threat as any Speck could ever offer to a Great One. I felt his shock that she would dare say such a thing reverberate through our shared soul. I would have, I think, sought to mollify the woman, as much for the deep injury she obviously felt as for my own future well-being. But Soldier’s Boy said only, “You are not my only feeder, Olikea.”

They both fell silent. Darkness was closing in around us now, making it difficult to see the terrain we crossed. We followed the beach, but our path gradually led us farther and farther away from it until the crash of the incoming waves was a muted whisper. Our trail took us up a gentle rise through an open field, and still not a word was spoken between the two.

So it was that they were at odds as we approached Kinrove’s encampment. I had pictured a campsite with tents and cook fires. When we crested the small hill, what we looked down on was far more like the temporary encampments that a military force on the move might set up. It was a small town of folk, with a perimeter marked by torches and straight streets between the sturdy pavilions. It was also, I perceived, a substantial walk away, and even though our journey would be downhill, the darkness was deepening every moment and my legs were already weary from the long day of standing and walking. I could feel Soldier’s Boy’s displeasure at the situation. A sound like distant music, oddly muffled, reached us.

A few more steps, and the sensation was not mere displeasure. A sudden wave of dizziness swept over him, followed by the clench of nausea. He groaned suddenly and halted, swaying. Strange to say, the lantern bearer leading us had already stopped. Even as Soldier’s Boy took long, deep breaths to counteract his queasiness, the man lifted his lantern and waved it in three slow arcs over his head. Then he grounded it again and waited. The vertigo swirled Soldier’s Boy around again and then, just as suddenly as it had come, it was gone. Soldier’s Boy took a deep gasping breath of relief and next to me Olikea did the same. As he recovered, a question came to me, one that I thought desperately important. I pushed it strongly at Soldier’s Boy. “He guards his boundaries. Why? What does he fear?”

I could not tell if I’d reached him or not. He made no response to me.

For the first time, our lantern bearer spoke directly to us.

“Kinrove’s guardians will admit us now. Kinrove, Greatest of the Great Ones, will quick-walk all of us to his pavilion.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

KINROVE

I had no more time to ponder who or what Kinrove guarded against. To be presented with the idea that he was powerful enough to quick-walk our entire party down to him from such a distance was unnerving. But the lantern bearer said only, “Walk with me,” and stepped out. We followed, and the night blurred around us. In a single step, we stood before a grand pavilion. That show of raw power was nearly lost on me as I looked about at the display of might that greeted us. Ranks of torches illuminated Kinrove’s pavilion and the open space that surrounded it. The music I had heard in the distance now sounded all around us. A fine dust hung in the air, the smell of burning tobacco was thick, and everywhere crowds of folk churned past us. The sudden assault on all my senses overwhelmed me for a few moments as I struggled to make sense of the scene around me.