moment, then turned his head slightly and gave a low call. Not a howl. Not a shout. Just a sound shaped to travel a short way through mist.
A reply came from somewhere behind the roots.
The spearman looked back at Torren. "You come with us."
"Good," Torren said.
"Good?"
"I was starting to think I would walk in circles until dark."
The bowman on the right snorted. "He talks plain enough."
"Plain men still lie," the spearman said.
"Then keep watching me," Torren said.
"We are."
...
The settlement sat around the great tree without seeming to touch it too much.
Shelters were built between roots, not on them. Platforms curved around the larger roots and left gaps where bark showed through. Small fires burned low under stone covers so smoke did not fill the fog. People moved quietly, but not like Milk Snakes. There was less hiding here. More care.
Torren saw the two bloods before anyone named them.
Some people wore mist-grey paint, carried bows, and kept to the outer paths. Others wore bark strips, red thread, or carved wooden pieces at their throats. The difference was clear enough, but they were not separated. Children moved between both. Women carried water together. Two men, one with grey paint and one with bark at his wrist, were arguing over a broken stretcher while a third told them both to shut up and lift.
So not enemies.
Not one clan either.
Near a flat root platform, two chiefs waited.
The first was a lean man with grey in his beard and a cloak that blended almost perfectly with the fog. His eyes moved constantly, checking the paths, the guards, the shelters. The second was broader, younger maybe, with red thread braided into his hair and a wooden charm shaped like a leaf hanging at his chest. He stood closer to the great tree, one hand resting near but not on the bark.
The spearman stopped Torren before them.
"Cael," he said, nodding to the lean man. "Mist chief."
Then to the broader man. "Maron. Tree chief."
Torren nodded to both. "I came from the Red Smiths."
Cael looked at the bronze pin. "We see that."
Maron looked at the pack. "Tarn sent you?"
"He sent me to the first mist stone. I came the rest of the way."
"Why?" Cael asked.
"Cough. Fever. Bad breathing. Red Smiths had it. Milk Snakes had it. Howlers, Moon Brothers, Black Ears, Burned Men, Stone Crows, Painted Dogs. It is moving."
Cael's face did not change much. Maron's did.
"We had men with Tarn," Cael said.
"Yes."
"Did he tell you what happened?"
"Some."
"That means no."
Torren did not argue.
Maron asked, "You brought a method?"
"Yes. It helps some. Not all. It needs clean bowls, boiling water, steam, measured sap-water, bitterleaf, willow, pine if you have it. Your own Tree Speaker should handle your own trees."
Cael glanced at Maron. "He came ready to annoy the right people."
Maron's mouth tightened. "Our Tree Speaker is not easily annoyed."
Before Torren could ask, a young woman came running down one of the root paths. She stopped short of the chiefs and bent to catch her breath.
"Mother Maera says call the pale one."
The change was immediate.
No one argued. Cael stopped watching the outer paths. Maron's expression shifted from caution to something closer to concern. The guards looked at Torren differently now, as if he had become less a stranger and more a message they did not understand.
Torren looked from one chief to the other. "Mother Maera?"
Maron said, "Our Tree Speaker."
Cael added, "And more than that."
"Is she sick?"
Cael looked at him. "She is old."
"That was not my question."
"It is the answer until she gives another."
Torren decided he disliked that answer but was too tired to fight it.
Maron stepped aside. "Come."
...
They took him to the base of the great weirwood.
The mist thinned there, though Torren could not tell why. Maybe the roots changed the air. Maybe the fires were placed carefully. Maybe it only felt thinner because the white trunk was so large it gave the eye something to hold.
Mother Maera sat in a low chair made of root and wood.
At first Torren thought she was asleep. Then her head turned before anyone spoke. She was older than anyone he had ever seen. Her face was so lined that no single wrinkle stood apart from the others. Only patches of hair remained on her scalp, thin white clumps tied back with red thread. Her eyes were pale and clouded. Blind, or close enough.
A middle-aged man knelt beside her, adjusting a blanket around her knees. He had careful hands and tired eyes. He looked at Torren with more interest than suspicion.
"Osric," Maron said quietly. "Her keeper. Her next, if the gods allow it."
Mother Maera clicked her tongue. "Do not call him that while I am alive. It makes him stand too straight."
Osric sighed. "You told me to stand straight yesterday."
"Yesterday you were slouching."
Cael lowered his head slightly. "Mother."
"Mm. You brought him?"
"Yes."
Her blind eyes turned toward Torren. "Come closer, pale boy. I cannot see you from there."
Torren stepped forward, then stopped at what felt like a respectful distance.
Mother Maera frowned. "Closer. I said I am blind, not patient."
Osric's mouth twitched.
Torren came closer and sat when Osric pointed to a low root beside her. He kept the pack in front of him where everyone could see it.
Mother Maera leaned slightly toward him. "You smell like smoke, wet stone, and other people's trouble."
"I have been travelling."
"That is one word for it."
She coughed then.
Torren stiffened before he could stop himself.
The old woman laughed, and the laugh became another small cough. Osric gave her a cup. She waved it away, then accepted it anyway.
"You jumped," she said.
"You coughed."
"At my age, that is not always plague. Sometimes the body is just rude."
Torren did not know what to say, so he said nothing.
"Good," she said. "You can be quiet. That helps."
Maron spoke from behind him. "Mother, he says he brought a method for the sickness."
"Yes, yes. Red sap, steam, boiled water, fear in every bowl. We will speak of it."
Torren looked up sharply. "You know?"
"I know what people shouted before bringing you here. I am blind, not buried."
Cael let out a short breath that might have been amusement.
Mother Maera patted the root beside her. "Sit properly. You look ready to run."
"I might need to."
"If you run in this fog, you will hit a tree and embarrass everyone."
Torren sat properly.
...
She did not ask about the method first.
That unsettled him more than if she had challenged it. He had expected suspicion, questions about sap, warnings about the great tree, maybe demands that he explain himself before the chiefs. Instead Mother Maera leaned back, breathed slowly, and asked him where he had first seen the sickness.
"My own camp," Torren said.
"Who?"
"My brother. Others before him."
"Your brother lives?"
"Yes."
"Good. That is why you are still walking like a person with something to prove."
Torren looked at her. "You cannot see how I walk."
"I heard you sit down. Same thing."
Osric gave Torren a look that said not to argue every detail. Torren ignored it, but he still did not argue.
Mother Maera turned her face toward the great trunk. "I was little when the tree first spoke to me. Not with words. People say that because it sounds cleaner. It was not clean. I got lost in the mist and cried until I had no voice left. They found me under that root."
She lifted one thin hand. Osric guided it to the root beside her chair.
"I started dreaming after that. Not every night. Not always true. Some were only dreams. Some were not. No one made me Tree Speaker. That is not how it happened. First one woman asked what I had seen. Then one family. Then a chief who pretended he was not asking. After a while, people stop pretending."
Torren listened despite himself.
Behind him, Cael and Maron stood quietly. That told him more than their introductions had. They were chiefs here, yes. But this old woman's words sat above theirs in the fog.
Mother Maera continued, "Every ten years, if winter and war allow it, the Tree Speakers of the mountains meet."
Torren looked at her. "All of them?"
"Not all. Someone always dies. Someone always refuses. Someone always gets lost and claims they meant to. But many."
"I did not know that."
"No. Chiefs like to think they are the only ones speaking between clans. Tree Speakers let them think many things."
That sounded like something the Painted Dogs' Tree Speaker might enjoy far too much.
"What do you talk about?" Torren asked.
"Bad winters. Sick trees. Lowlander roads. Strange births. Dead springs. Dreams no one wants to carry alone. Which chiefs are becoming fools. Which young fools may become chiefs."
Cael muttered, "That part is rude."
Mother Maera smiled. "That part is useful."
Torren felt the hidden voice stir.
Information network among religious authorities. Potential political significance high.
Torren kept his face still.
Mother Maera's blind eyes moved toward him again, and for one uncomfortable moment he wondered if she had heard something inside him. Impossible. Still, the thought made his skin tighten.
"When I was younger," she said, "thirty maybe, the gods gave me a dream that would not leave."
The mist moved around the roots. No one interrupted.
"I saw a man white as heart trees. Not a child. Not old. White. He stood above the clans. Not with a sword at their throats. They were gathered. Angry, frightened, proud, still themselves. But gathered. Behind him was a castle in the high stone. Higher than any chief's fire. From there, the white man ruled the mountain."
Torren did not move.
He felt every part of his body become too still. His hands were on his knees. His pack was by his foot. The great weirwood rose behind the old woman, white bark and dark eyes, and he suddenly hated the color of his own skin.
The hidden voice spoke.
Prophetic claim detected. Reliability unknown. Symbolic overlap: albinism, weirwood imagery, inter-clan consolidation, elevated fortification.
Torren thought, Stop.
The voice stopped.
Mother Maera laughed softly.
Torren's head snapped toward her.
"You cannot see my face," he said.
"No. But I can hear a boy stop breathing when a story puts a hand on his throat."
Torren swallowed. "I did not stop breathing."
"Close enough."
Cael and Maron said nothing. Osric watched Torren carefully, not with fear, but with concern.
Mother Maera leaned back. "Do not look so hunted. I did not say it was you."
"Then why tell me?"
"Because you came."
"That is not an answer."
"It is the one I have."
Torren looked down at the roots. His first instinct was anger. The second was fear. The third was to reject all of it because old women, dreams, and white trees had already taken too much room in his life.
"What if it means nothing?" he asked.
"Then it means nothing."
"You tell people things like this often?"
"No." She smiled faintly. "Most people are not white as heart trees."
Torren did not smile.
Mother Maera's voice softened a little, not much. "Not every thing seen becomes true. I have seen children live who died by morning. I have seen dead men speak who never rose. I have seen chiefs become beggars and beggars become bones. The gods show roads. They do not drag our feet."
Torren looked at her. "So I can ignore it."
"You can try."
"That sounds like no."
"It sounds like you are young."
That annoyed him enough to make him feel steadier. "I came because people are sick."
"Yes," Maera said. "That is why I called you before the chiefs buried you under questions."
Cael said, "We would not bury him."
Mother Maera turned her blind face toward him.
Cael added, "Not quickly."
Maron sighed.
Torren almost laughed. Almost.
Mother Maera held out one hand. Osric placed a cup in it this time before she asked. She drank, coughed once more, and waved away Torren's immediate concern with two fingers.
"Age," she said. "Mostly."
"Mostly?"
"Everything is mostly."
Torren gave up trying to win that one.
She pointed toward Osric. "Now tell him your red measure. Slowly. He will remember it better than I do."
Osric straightened. "Mother—"
"Do not argue. You will be Tree Speaker when I am gone, unless you become unbearable before then."
"I am already unbearable."
"Not enough."
Torren opened the pack.
Mother Maera turned her head toward the sound of the horn caps being set out. "After that, tell me who is dying. Not who is important. Who is dying first."
For the first time since entering the valley, Torren felt the ground under him become practical again.
He lifted the bone measure.
"Bad breathing gets steam first," he said. "Not stronger sap."