The figure beneath the branches did not move.
Torren kept one hand near the wrapped length of Lady Forlorn and the other on Konnan's shoulder. The boy stood half behind him now, no longer pretending the clearing was only another place to be studied. That was good. There were things a child should fear before he tried to understand them.
The thing across the clearing was shaped like a man, but larger. Much larger. Its shoulders were broad enough to seem carved from the trunk behind it. Antlers rose from its head, pale and uneven, though Torren could not tell whether they grew from bone, helm, or old wood. Its cloak hung in dark green folds. Beneath it, the body was thick with muscle.
Then another stepped from behind a tree.
And another.
And another.
They came without haste, from trunks Torren would have sworn had hidden nothing. Green cloaks. Leather. Bark. Bronze rings gone dull with age. Antlers, horns, branch-crowns, some simple and some twisted high above their heads. The smallest stood taller than any man in Torren's host. The tallest made even Harron Stoneback seem like a boy half-grown.
Torren felt his back tighten.
He had expected watchers. Spirits perhaps. Tree-speakers. Old men with rites and riddles.
He had not expected giants in green.
"What are they?" he asked inside himself.
No answer came.
Torren's jaw hardened.
He tried again.
"What are they?"
Silence.
Not the cold, waiting silence of the voice choosing its words. Nothing. A cut cord.
For the first time since the voice had entered his life, Torren stood without it and knew it.
The antlered man before him spoke first.
"You crossed the water."
The words were Old Tongue, but old in the mouth. Rougher than the mountain speech, deeper than Harrik's northern remnants, shaped by a time before the language had been broken into valleys and clans.
Torren lifted his chin.
"I am Torren, son of Harrag, of Pale Roots. King of the Mountains. This is my son, Konnan."
The antlered man looked from Torren to the boy.
"We already know who you are."
Konnan's hand tightened in Torren's cloak.
Torren did not look down.
"Then who are you?"
"Rhunor Oakhand," the man said. "Keeper of the western shore."
The other green men said nothing. They only watched. Their stillness was worse than threat. Men about to attack shifted their feet, measured distance, looked for fear. These did none of that. They stood as if they had already decided what would happen and were only waiting for Torren to reach it.
Torren let the quiet stretch.
No one filled it for him.
"I came for answers," he said at last.
Rhunor's eyes did not change.
"The answers you want may not please you."
"A bad answer is better than not knowing."
A few of the green men laughed.
It was not loud. It was not kind. It sounded like stones rolling under roots.
Rhunor inclined his head.
"Then you will receive your answers. But not from me."
Behind Torren, the great weirwood stirred.
He turned at once.
Branches shifted without wind. Leaves whispered in layers, red against black. From behind the trunk came two small hooded figures. At first Torren thought they were children. Then he saw how one leaned heavily on the other, how the helper's hands clutched the cloak with long, thin fingers tipped in claws.
Konnan stepped back.
Torren felt it and moved his hand fully onto the boy's shoulder.
"Stand," he said softly.
Konnan stopped moving.
The two figures came before the weirwood. The one who had been helped stood with effort, bent beneath a cloak too large for its body. The other steadied it and then lowered its own hood.
Konnan made a small sound before he could stop himself.
They were not children.
Their faces were narrow and old in ways human faces were not. Their ears came to soft points. Their eyes were too large, dark and bright at once. Their hands were clawed. The younger one watched Torren with sharp caution. The older one, the one barely standing, seemed frail enough to be broken by wind.
Then it smiled.
The smile made the green men look young.
It turned its head toward Rhunor.
"Why always so cryptic, Rhunor?"
Rhunor bowed his head slightly.
"Habit."
"Bad habit."
The old creature looked back at Torren.
"Your tongue would break on my name. Call me Root."
Torren stared despite himself.
Root's smile widened.
"Do you know what I am?"
"I have heard things," Torren said. "Children of the Forest. Singers. Those who sing the song of earth."
Root nodded.
"Not as ignorant as most."
Konnan looked up at Torren, then back at Root, still half behind his father.
Root noticed.
"You brought a cub to old teeth."
"He is my son."
"Those are often the same thing."
Torren did not answer.
Root's humor faded as quickly as it had come.
"Now tell me what you saw."
Torren looked at the great tree, then at the green men around the clearing. Every face waited. Every trunk seemed to listen.
He considered holding part of the dream back.
Then he remembered the cold in his bones and the crow above his tent.
"I saw a lake," he said. "An island in its middle. White trees. Too many to count. I fell from the sky onto it. It was night."
Root listened without blinking.
"There were children running between the trees. Shadows. Human. Not human. I could not tell. Something pulled me before a great weirwood. It made a sound. A roar, or a wound trying to speak."
The clearing had grown quieter.
"Then ice came from behind the tree. It covered the roots, the leaves, the island, the lake. It reached me. I woke freezing."
Root closed its eyes.
For a while, no one spoke.
Then the old singer opened them again.
"So the time draws near."
Torren's brows drew together.
"For what?"
Root did not answer.
Instead it touched the younger singer's arm, steadying itself, and looked past Torren toward the trees.
"Do you know why this place is holy?"
Torren almost said because the old gods lived here. But that was a child's answer, and this was not a child's place.
"No."
"The Pact was sworn here," Root said. "When your kind came with bronze, fire, horses, axes and hunger, you cut the forests because forests stood where you wished to stand. You cut the white trees because you feared the faces watching you. We fought. We sang the rivers against you. We woke roots. We broke lands. You killed us with bronze and flame and numbers. Long years. Too many dead for either side to remember kindly."
Root's voice did not rise.
That made the old anger in it worse.
"At last, men and singers grew tired of filling the earth with bones. Here, on this island, the First Men swore to leave the weirwoods standing. They took the old gods into their hearts. We gave them peace where we could not give them forgiveness."
Torren looked at the white trees.
"You were there."
Root smiled without warmth.
"I came for the singers when the Pact was carved. I remember the men who swore it. I remember the ones who broke it."
Konnan shifted.
"What happened to the giants?"
Root turned those large dark eyes on him.
"Your kind killed them."
Konnan swallowed.
"Why?"
For the first time, Root's voice sharpened.
"Not all of you. Most. Enough. Your kind forgot its roots. Forgot the songs beneath its feet. Then came foreign gods. Clean gods. Cruel gods. Gods that hated what they could not command. Trees were cut. Groves burned. Giants hunted. Singers driven north into cold and dark."
Konnan's face changed.
Not fear this time.
Shame, perhaps, though he did not know what to do with it. His shoulders drew in slightly, as if Root had named a crime he had not committed but still felt pressing on his skin.
Torren saw it.
"I did not come here for a history lesson."
Root looked at him.
Then laughed.
"So impatient."
Above them, from the branches of the great weirwood, came a harsh call.
"Gak."
Torren's head lifted.
The crow sat on a high branch, black against red leaves. Two ordinary eyes watched him. Between them, the third opened.
Cold moved through Torren again, but not like the dream. This was thinner. A finger along the spine.
"So you sent it," Torren said.
Root looked up.
"Me?"
The singer laughed again, softer this time.
"No."
It raised one clawed hand toward the bird.
"Why do you not come down?"
"Gak. Gak."
The crow dropped from the branch in a sweep of dark wings and landed on Root's head as if it had done so a thousand times. The younger singer stiffened. Root only sighed.
"Rude thing."
The crow clicked its beak.
Root looked back at Torren.
"It is not mine. Not as men understand owning. It is the last true greenseer."
Torren said nothing.
"The world has a memory," Root continued. "Most men live too quickly to hear it. Trees hear more. Blood hears more. This one hears too much. Past, present, roads that may yet be walked. Not all. Never all. But more than flesh was meant to carry."
"Where is it?"
"Beyond your Wall, bound to a weirwood older than your kingdoms."
Torren stared at the crow.
The bird stared back with three eyes.
"What does that have to do with me?"
Root's face lost the last of its amusement.
"You will take its place."
"No."
The word came at once.
Several green men shifted.
Root did not.
"The old gods have chosen your line."
"I have mountains," Torren said. "A crown. Clans that have barely learned to obey one law before testing another. I have sons. A daughter. A wife who would burn this island stone by stone if I did not return. I will not crawl into a tree beyond the Wall and call that duty."
Root tilted its head.
"Then it will be one of your children."
Konnan went very still.
The crow spread its wings.
"Chosen. Chosen. Chosen."
The word was cracked, ugly, half-croak and half-human. It did not belong in a bird's throat.
Konnan pressed closer to Torren without meaning to.
Torren looked around the clearing. The green men watched. The white faces watched. Root watched. The crow watched with three eyes.
For the first time since stepping onto the island, a clear thought cut through him.
I should never have come here.
He forced it down.
"You want me to go beyond the Wall?"
The crow snapped its beak.
"No. No. No."
Root rolled its large eyes toward the bird.
"No," it said. "Lucky for you, the crow says you have such a place in your mountains."
The bird bobbed its head.
"Pale. Pale. Roots. Roots."
Torren's mind went at once to the grove at home. Twenty weirwoods. White trunks. Red eyes. The place where his children had been named beneath old leaves. The place where the voice had first become something more than madness.
"No," he said softly.
Root heard him.
"Yes."
"When?"
The crow leaned forward.
"Ten. Ten. Ten."
"Ten what?"
"Moons," Root said.
"No."
The old singer's mouth curved.
"No?"
Torren stepped closer.
"You ask me to give myself to gods while men below sharpen steel. The Andals will climb again. The Faith will feed them grief until grief puts on mail. The Vale is broken, not dead. My host is new. My law is new. My roads are not finished. The mountains are not strong enough."
The crow beat its wings.
"Ten. Ten."
"No," Torren said again.
The clearing tightened.
Green men watched Rhunor. Rhunor watched Root. Konnan watched his father.
Root looked up at the crow.
"The boy is right."
The crow went still.
Torren's eyes narrowed at being called boy, but Root was older than the kingdoms. To it, perhaps, he was.
Root continued.
"After what the boy did, the Andals are bound to climb the mountains again."
The crow erupted.
"No. No. No. No."
Its wings slapped Root's hood and the air around it. The younger singer flinched. One green man took a step back. Root lifted a clawed hand and caught the crow lightly around the body.
"Calm down."
"No. No."
"You know he is right."
The crow struggled a moment longer, then stilled.
Root released it.
Torren kept his voice hard.
"I need thirty years."
The crow's head snapped toward him.
"No."
"Thirty."
"No. No."
Root sighed.
"Ask for the sky and then look wounded when clouds refuse."
Torren did not bend.
"I need time."
The crow clicked its beak rapidly. Its third eye blinked. Then, in a voice rougher than before, it croaked:
"Fifteen. Fifteen."
Root looked at Torren.
"It says fifteen years. If I were you, I would accept. That is more than he got."
Torren looked at Konnan.
The boy was watching him with wide red eyes, understanding pieces and fearing the spaces between them.
Fifteen years.
Not enough.
More than ten moons.
Enough to make Savar a man. Enough to harden the host. Enough to teach Konnan what could be taught. Enough, perhaps, for Morna to know whether the trees meant to love her or eat her.
"Fifteen years it is, then," Torren said.
The crow opened its wings.
"Gak. Gak. Gak."
It lifted from Root's head, circled once above the clearing, and flew into the dark between the weirwoods.
The silence after it left was almost worse.
Root watched the place where it had vanished.
Then it turned back to Torren.
"Since we agreed, you will stay here for a moon's turn."
Torren stared.
"No."
Root made a small pleased sound, as if Torren had become predictable.
"I must return to the mountains."
"You will."
"Now."
"No."
"My absence—"
"Oh, spare me."
The words cracked across the clearing with such dry contempt that even Rhunor glanced down.
Root leaned more heavily on the younger singer but its eyes stayed sharp.
"One moon will not break your mountain crown. If it does, it was already broken."
Torren's anger rose.
"The host is new. The clans—"
"Will bite and boast and test the edges of the pen you built. Let them. You think kingship is standing where every man can see you? No. Kingship is what men do when they cannot."
Torren opened his mouth.
Root cut him off.
"Your mind has a door in it, boy. It opens too far and your body shakes like a leaf in frost. You heard whispers and thought them weapons. You looked through beasts and thought that was sight. What comes will crush you if you meet it as you are."
Torren said nothing.
Root stepped one slow pace closer. The younger singer moved with it, careful and silent.
"A moon's turn. We begin preparing you. Breath. Blood. Root. Dream. Pain, likely. Do not look so offended. Pain is how flesh admits it is being changed."
"I did not come to be remade."
"No one ever does."
Konnan shifted under Torren's hand.
Root noticed and looked down at him.
"And the cub will learn to be afraid without becoming useless. That may save more lives than your pride."
Torren's fingers tightened once on Konnan's shoulder, then eased.
Root's voice softened, but only a little.
"What you call a burden is also a blessing with teeth. With training, you will reach farther. Hear clearer. Know where enemies gather before they climb. Know what they say when they think stone and distance hide them. You would throw that aside because one moon bruises your plans?"
Torren held Root's gaze.
"My plans keep my people alive."
"Then improve them."
The answer landed cleanly.
Torren hated that.
He looked at Rhunor. The green man's face gave nothing away. He looked at the surrounding watchers, at the white trees, at the great weirwood behind Root, at Konnan beside him.
No chatbot answered in his skull.
No voice stacked the risks.
No cold assessment told him what choice was coherent.
Only the island waited.
Root saw his silence and smiled.
"Then we are agreed."
Torren had not agreed.
But the trees around him seemed to have heard otherwise.