“When Regni told me,” Ohean said, “I knew it was true. He put things together on his own, and when he told me the story I knew it made sense.
“Not that it wasn’t whispered, not that some did not suspect. You wished. I almost knew. On the Isle, when I began to regain my memories, I sensed it, but I thought it could not be time to tell you.
“When I knew who I was… Such a time had passed,” Ohean said. “And all of us have remained here, in this world, across the sea. There was no going back, and I did not trust the reason I remained. Always waiting. In this life, when I finally loved you, I had put out of my mind the possibility that you could be…” Ohean stopped, turning his head. “That you could be yourself.”
“I know it,” Anson said. “But I don’t remember it. Maybe one day I will remember it whole.”
“I don’t know that it works that way,” Ohean said. “I think that even though you were Iffan… Iffan was Iffan and only someone you lived as for a time. Like a dream.”
“Do you know that for sure?” Anson said.
The look on Anson’s face was calculated and challenging and Ohean said, “No. Having never been you, I could not tell you that for sure.”
Anson touched Ohean’s cheek.
“I’m sorry I made you wait so long,” he said.
“Well, you won’t leave me now.”
Ohean raised an eyebrow and gave him a playful smile.
“No,” said Anson. “Not ever.”
Kenneth walked through the little paths of deep blue flowers, touching the blossoms, smelling the small white flowers hanging through the trees, and he started when he looked up and saw a familiar figure walking beside the Lady of the Rose and the Lady Nimerly.
“Essily.”
“Kenneth, we are well met at the end of this long road.”
“Are we, Lady?” Kenneth said. “I mean at the end of this road?”
“It seems we are all being drawn together in this place, at this time,” Essily said. She wore, for once, a pale, pale blue, and in her pale hair were star flowers and pink blossoms like little kisses. The three ladies looked on him with a love that was more than simple kindness, even Celandine. Essily’s face was graver and older and far more beautiful than it had been at her old house and, once again, when he looked upon Celandine, he noted that when he turned his head there were wings, but when he looked at her directly, nothing.
“I know who I am,” he said. “At last.”
“I think, by the look on your face, that you know who you were for a time. There is such water here,” Celandine said, taking his hand, “as to let you see yourself fully, see back even before you were born. Such a drink would heal you, but such wisdom is not for the world into which you will go. And you will go out of here soon and live long in that outer world.
“There is much in store for you, Kenneth,” Celandine said, “and much happiness. But what that joy may be is for you to know and not for me to tell.”
A shouting broke the quiet of the woods and they all looked up.
“My Lady! My Ladies!” called a raucous voice. “All come to the Glade .”
The three ladies nodded to Kenneth, and they walked on ahead. Here, in this wood, there were no twigs or roots to trip over, and the space was clear as a carpet.
Celandine went ahead of them, and Fennel stood before her and also someone who looked like a man with the face of a hedgehog, a long hedgehog with a mannish face, prickles all up and down his back, carrying a spear of green wood.
“My Lady, King Feldor of the Wood Folk is here, and he has come to quarrel with his son for taking sides with the people of Chyr.”
“Then doubtless,” The Lady said, gazing at Essily as she approached, “he has a quarrel with me.”
Now Anson and Ohean, Theone, Soren and Arvad were approaching, and the newly named Inark was with the Lady already. There was a trumpeting from the eastern edge of the woods, and then came a small host of people, many who looked like Fennel and were headed by a version of Fennel in legs and arms which seemed to grow out of their bark casings though some seemed to be nude and covered in green shininess like the inside of a leaf, and there were the squatter mushroom folk who reminded Theone of the Dwarves. She whispered to Inark, asking what had become of them.
“Andvari has gone back to gather his troops. However these folk feel about fighting for you, Andvari knows where he stands.”
“My Lord Feldor,” the Lady Celandine spoke, rising to receive the hostile wood lord, “in Maia’s name I greet you and all your host. I was preparing to call a council of war, but I see you have already brought it.”
“Look at you,” Anson said, sitting down on the ground beside Dahlan, who was sitting on a rock.
“You look as dazed as…. Well, as I feel.”
“But this is your world,” Dahlan said. “Wizards and…. Dwarves and magic swords and…”
“All of this is new to me,” Anson said. “None of it is like anything I ever saw in Westrial, though I think I will be seeing it very soon in very many places.”
Anson sighed and he said, “You know… It’s not that it’s my world. It’s THE world, and we set limits on it, but the limits have been removed.”
“Well, that’s very philosophical,” Dahlan said, “but I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to do. There are no cities for me to defend and no prophecies for me to fulfill.”
“You’re better than a prophecy. You’re the Prophet.”
“That is nonsense,” Dahlan said.
“Come with me,” Anson said, standing up and surprising himself by a small groan.
“Where are we going?”
Anson did not answer, and Dahlan followed him across the glade, through trees until they found Ohean, who was standing there, seemingly waiting for them.
“Yes,” Ohean said when Dahlan had spoken to him. “I will get you a horse. Do you know your directions?”
“Of course!”
“Ride a day southeast to the coast, to the place the villagers called Marvel Head.”
“Very well,” Dahlan nodded. “And then?”
“And then wait.”
Dahlan looked doubtful. His shoulders were a little hunched, his brow furrowed.
“And what else?”
Ohean blinked and Anson remembered that he had been raised as a prince, both of the Rootless Isle and of Rheged, and expected to be obeyed.
“And,” he now said, “I suggest you start now. Anson, find the boy a horse.”
Ohean turned and left them to it, and Anson obeyed.
The people of the wood were many shapes and sizes and they all stood about the King who said, “Lady, well you know we have come to call no council.”
“And why not?” Essily spoke. “The Son of Destruction crosses the waves. Even now he engages the navy of Chyr, and before long he will set foot on this soil. Behind him are his Hands, and with them the Masters of the Hand who wield the Dark power from beneath.”
“What is that to us?” said Feldor. “See,” he pointed to Theone, “she already bears the Stone that was lost. When have the children of men ever engaged in our affairs? Why should we engage in theirs? Their concern is not for us, well then neither should the People of the Wood be concerned with them.”
It was Celandine who spoke now, and she said, “Your words are foolish and betray your lack of wisdom. For it was in the very beginning that the Children of Men stood with you, and Mahonry who crossed the waves in the very ancient days was a constant aid to the People of the Woods. There was marriage between you and they, then and in the time of trouble, in the days of your father’s father which even if you have forgotten, Lord Feldor, I have not.”
“The People Under the Earth are gathering,” Ohean said. “Not long ago, the Fiery One himself burst out of the Pit, I and this witch beside me, confronted him.”
“But he escaped,” Inark said. “He went up and up, and maybe even now, his spirit is in this world.”
“Your son has gathered his men to us,” said Ohean, “and he knows what is at hand. You speak as one without memory. How can it be that you have forgotten what Chyr is? How can it be that you have forgotten the very meaning or the word, or that you have lost the name? And have you forgotten the Great Tree? Aye, you have, else you would never have brought your ragtag army with you and demanded, ‘What is Chyr?’ You would have known, and you would have come before this company with a better tone.”
As he spoke the wood grew darker, and Ohean seemed to rise higher and higher. His right hand was cupped as a claw, and it grew with him, filling with light, and then there was light, and the birds that had silenced sang again.
“You are Ohean,” Feldor spoke.
“I am Ohean and much more.”
There was silence, and then a voice from above them, over Ohean, said, slowly, “Chyr is the land. Chyr is the land forever. Why should we let the foot of perdition stand upon it? The People of the Forest are the people of the Land, why should they allow folk who do not possess the blessing to enter the land, to harm the land?”
Theone, who stood across from Ohean, already saw what Anson was beginning to see. The oak tree behind him was stretching and swaying, and the pattern of bark indentations had swirled into a gnarled face. By now his voice was echoed, and it was the voices of many trees.
“Why should we be as the dry earth of other lands, lost of their blessing, lost of their words? Why should we let the sons of destruction destroy our homes, march over our lands?”
“We are the trees and the leaves of the forest. Why should they leave our forest waste? We are the voice and the land of Chyr.”
And now there were others stepping out of the wood. Maidens in sheer gowns of copper that seemed somehow, fragile as paper, ladies in white birch robes, brown faced young men in bark tight trews, some bare chested. The more Anson looked at them, the more they looked like trees, like birches and elms and willows, but when he looked away, or indirectly, they seemed as men, and they were gathering in number.
One, a tall maiden with hair the color of sun through leaves, advanced, and she took the crown from Feldor’s head and went directly to Gennel, placing it on his.
“Now hear the voice of the Forest, now Gennel is our King. We are the oldest of the People of the Woods, so old and ancient where we end and where the forest begins there is no telling.
“Look well on me, for I am the Spirit of the Forest. In days of old my name was inpronouncable, but now it is Finagra. Rule wise, preserve us, remember the Green Tree, my sister. Remember her land, which is in danger even now.”
Gennel bowed, but before he could say anything, one of the birch bark lads, with a nearly flat face and mouth that opened like a flap, called, “Away to the plains! Away to the plains! Gennel my King, we will meet you there.”
And then there was a great stomping and storming and suddenly, Ohean felt an uprooting and unsettling behind him as the tree lifted its tendrils from the ground and moved on. Whole portions of the forest were moving, and this went on and on for some time, clods of dirt falling, crashes coming. The Companions, wisely, stood together. Nimerly, Essily and the Lady Celandine were unaffected. When it was done, even Gennel and his people were gone, and there was no Feldor either. The woods seemed very still, and very, at least Inark thought this, unmagical.
“Our work is nearly done here,” the Lady Celandine said. “This wood, by right, was never mine. I will depart for the south, and Essily and Nimerly will come with me. But your work, defending the Crystal City, begins today.”
“I am rested enough,” Kenneth said with the closest thing to a smile he had worn for days. To Arvad he still seemed weary, but he was happier now.
“Gennel is King of the Wood,” Celandine said, grasping the hands of Anson and Theone, “but you are the King and Queen. As of yet, you do not know what that means, but soon you shall. And Gennel will. His armies are yours. Both of yours, and you will both need them. Very soon.”
Anson looked doubtful. He turned to Theone.
“I don’t know how to be a King. I only know how to be a general. A soldier.”
“And I don’t even know that,” Theone said.
“Well, then leave it to one who does,” Essily said, placing a light hand on Kenneth and another on Soren’s.
“A King rules. A general conquers. Now and again some do both, but that is not usually the way of it. Here,” she said raising herself on the tips of her toes and kissing Soren on his large forehead, and then Kenneth. “Receive my kiss. May every shadow pass away, and the spirit of all wisdom descend upon you. Walk on,” she said, stepping away. “Walk on and all shall be made clearer soon.”
Ohean spoke a few words with Essily and the Lady, and then the Lady gave a thing to Ohean, slipping it inside his cloak, and they began to walk in the direction of the departed forest folk. As they did, Celandine called out: “Hail Ohean, the Ancient One who crossed over the Sea! Hail the King who was lost but lives again, Hail Theone, Queen of the Race of Gozen lost. Hail Inark, the Red Witch who gained her power in the worlds beneath. All Hail to Kenneth and to Soren, who bear the Black Blood of Gozen and possess the secret skill. Fair thee well, all fair well!”
