Sustained by that nourishment, the pair made good time during the morning's climbing, and just as the sun reached the summit of the sky, Goodtree found herself suddenly looking downward. Rocky slopes fell away before her, less steeply but otherwise much the same as the ones she had climbed. But beyond them stretched a green plain to which spring had come sooner than her own, and at the edge of sight the misty blur of a forest.
With an odd throb almost like Recognition she identified it, seeing in her mind's eye green, leafy spaces friendlier than the woods of home. She took a deep breath, scenting the sweetness of sun-warmed grasses mingled with the crisp mountain wind.
I will go there—someday I will go see, she promised herself, but memory of the Wolfriders tethered her. Whether she had been running toward something, or only running away, she understood now that she could not leave them behind. For the first time it occurred to her to wonder what the tribe was doing now.
With a sigh Goodtree turned away from the tantalizing vista ahead and looked around her. She was standing in a cleft in the hills. To one side gray stone sheered upward to a jagged crown barely softened by a straggle of stunted pines. In the other direction, two ridges met and plunged downward in a jumble of rock and trees cut by the silver ribbon of a mountain stream. As it neared the pass, the canyon opened out into a small meadow, but the stream turned southward, toward the distant forest she had seen.
It was an omen, thought Goodtree as she considered the canyon once more. Getting up that would be difficult, but not much harder than parts of the climb she had already made. And she felt a growing curiosity about the source of that little stream.
Carefully Goodtree began to climb, but as the summit grew nearer, she scrambled more quickly, caution fading so gradually she never knew when it disappeared.
Acorn clapped his hands to his head with a cry.
Fang stopped short as Lionleaper turned. Another stride brought the songshaper's wolf up to them and Lionleaper slid from Fang's back to catch the other elf as he fell.
"What is it? Did something hit you?" The warrior looked wildly about. Behind him he saw the rest of the tribe, stretched out in an irregular line across the rolling plain. The plain! What could drop on Acorn here? Swiftly he scanned the shivering grasses, searching for any sign of an enemy. But he saw nothing, and the sensitive noses of the wolves found no trace of any foe.
Joygleam jogged up beside them, her lean features creasing in concern. "Is he ill?"
"No—" said Lionleaper. "I don't know, but I'm afraid—" He could not voice the words. Acorn moaned and stirred against him, then relaxed once more.
"Afraid, warrior, because sickness can't be faced with a sword?"
"No!" Lionleaper glared at her over the singer's head. "Acorn thinks he's been sensing Goodtree. He said she was all right, traveling straight across the plain ahead of us, except when she stopped to look at the longtooth kill, and your trackers say the same. I'm afraid something's happened to her, and he is picking it up somehow."
The hunter sobered abruptly. "Dead?"
"I don't think so." Lionleaper swallowed, not liking to think about what might happen to Acorn if Goodtree died while they were mentally connected this way.
He looked down at the limp form he held. Once he had despised the song maker, frustrated because he and Goodtree shared something which the warrior could not understand. It would have been easy to hate Acorn now, linked to her in a way that none of them understood. He had thought at first that this bond somehow meant Recognition, that he had lost any hope of Goodtree's love—but he had never heard of such a connection even between the most devoted of mates. And now his anxiety for Goodtree had swallowed up all lesser emotions; as he felt the other elf shudder in his arms his heart was wrenched by an odd mixture of pity and envy for his pain.
"He can't ride—what do you want us to do?" Joygleam asked practically.
Lionleaper stared at her. He knew that she had had to perform the final mercy for comrades more than once when they were wounded beyond bearing on hunting expeditions far from home. They had had no healer in the tribe since Willow had died.
I don't know! You're older than I am—why are you asking me? he wanted to shout at her. He was perfectly sure now that he would not have taken the chieftainship if they offered it to him on a white wolfskin. But for now he had to pretend he could do it-—he had to hold together long enough to find Goodtree—alive... And he was suddenly determined that when that happened Acorn would be alive too.
"Let's make camp now. We can tend Acorn here and let the weaker ones rest while the hunters go after meat."
Joygleam nodded, and presently they settled Acorn on a soft bed of furs where a hillock curved around and provided a little protection from the wind. And Lionleaper stayed by him, smoothing the damp hair back from his brow and giving him water when he began to stir. But it was dawn of the following day before he came back to consciousness fully and told them that Goodtree had hit her head, probably in a fall, but she was on her feet and on her way once more.
Her vision still blurred if she turned her head too quickly, but Goodtree kept moving. She had come to herself just as the sun was lifting above the eastern peaks, to find Leafchaser licking her face anxiously. She hurt everywhere there was a where, but she was lucky to be alive and intact, and she knew it. There was no excuse for the carelessness that had made her miss her footing and fall. She told herself that whatever she was seeking would still be there when she arrived, but even now she found herself hurrying.
The way had grown easier, but the pines through which she was moving now had been forced to grow at an angle by the pressure of the wind, so that the evidence of inner ear and eye conflicted; she found herself inadvertently leaning so that they would seem upright. Finally she closed her eyes, and gripping Leafchaser's thick ruff let the wolf lead her through the wood.
The wind deformed those trees, but they changed, and survived... She wondered then, Have we elves also changed to survive this world, and if we have, what were we like when we began?
Only the wind answered her, and she could not understand what it was whispering. The brisk touch lifted the damp tangles of pale hair from her brow and tingled on her skin. It sang in her blood, stimulating her circulation until the throbbing in her head faded finally away. The wolf stopped then, and Goodtree let go of her and opened her eyes.
Below her lay a circular valley—no, a cup, a crater in the heart of the mountain with a round lake in its center that blazed back the brilliant blue of the sky. There was meadowland around it, and groves of trees like none in the Everwood, all in exquisite miniature.
Goodtree gave a great sigh. There was a feeling here that set an odd tremor rippling through her belly—the same shiver that came to her sometimes when Acorn told his tales. There was power here; she could feel it, and she would seek it even if it proved too great for an elf-woman to bear.
She folded the lionskin and laid it down, slipped bow and quiver off her shoulder and set them atop it, and the long-bladed spear after. She would not need them where she was going. She must pursue this path fasting now. She pulled off her doeskin tunic then, and leggings and boots as well, scarcely noticing as the wind pebbled her pale skin. The Wolfriders went to their soul quest naked as they were born.
**Leafchaser, I am going down there. You must guard these things for me and let none come after until I return. Do you understand?**
Amber eyes stared into hers for a moment, then the wolf pushed her cold nose into Goodtree's hand. **Come too ... hunt for you...**
**No! No hunting! I have to go alone! Please stay here and guard!**
The great wolf sat down, head slightly averted, tongue lolling as she panted in the thin air. She could not remember when Goodtree had tried to find her name before, and failed, but she recognized the finality in her elf-friend's sending. With a gusty sigh, she sank the rest of the way down and looked up at Goodtree.