The Raven's Shadow by Elspeth Cooper Page B

the immediate, in the now, and given her something to hold on to whilst the strangeness washed over her. But she would never forget that warrior’s blue eyes.
    Tanith looked over at Ailric. His golden skin had a pallid cast and a little frown creased his perfect brows, as if he was vaguely disappointed in something, but that apart he appeared none the worse for his passage through the stones. She was glad for that. Any tender feelings she held for him had long since burned out, but she had loved him once and wished him no harm.
    ‘Will he be all right?’ she asked as Owyn slipped the noose from her wrist. He followed her gaze.
    ‘I think he took no lasting harm, but his head will hurt when he wakes.’ He snorted and jerked the tail of the noose to untie it. ‘Perhaps it will teach him to take better heed in future.’ Mouth set in a hard line, he coiled the rope around his palm and elbow, snapping out the kinks with quick, angry movements.
    Tanith glanced at Ailric again. Passing through the portal without his token had evidently put him in considerable danger. Owyn had said that without it the way back from there was barred to him, but only now did it occur to her that he hadn’t said exactly where there was.
    She dug her own acorn from her pocket and studied it from sharp tip to nubby green cup. Apart from its weight, so out of proportion to its size, nothing distinguished it from any other windfall that might be found on the forest floor. Turning it over in her palm, she thought again about the tingling sensation she’d felt when she first took it.
    ‘Where was that place, beyond the stones?’ she asked. ‘It wasn’t part of this forest, was it?’
    ‘No.’ He did not look at her, busy stowing the coil of rope in his pack.
    There was more to it than that, she was sure of it. ‘Where was it? When was it?’
    He exhaled sharply. ‘There is knowledge I cannot share with you,’ he said, buckling down the flap on his pack. ‘Even if I could, you would need half a lifetime to see it clearly.’
    She frowned, nettled. ‘My people are as old as yours. We are wise to this world.’
    Owyn jerked his head in Ailric’s direction. ‘As wise as yon lover? I warned him to keep the token close!’
    So the forestal had overheard them – enough to come to the conclusion that they were intimate.
    ‘He’s not my lover. Not any more.’ Tanith kept her voice low in case it woke the sleeping Astolan. ‘Please, Owyn. Whatever mistake Ailric made, those stones took us somewhere else , and I want to understand what happened.’
    He stared at her, then turned his head aside, a muscle in his jaw working as he mastered his temper.
    ‘Then I must ask your forgiveness,’ he said. ‘When I say you will need half a lifetime to understand, I do not mean to insult you. It is more that I cannot explain it adequately. Amongst my people, I am not renowned as a teacher.’
    ‘I’ll struggle along,’ said Tanith, and he gave her the merest quirk of a smile. Pushing his pack aside, he sat down cross-legged in the leaf litter.
    ‘Once this world was all forest, from the mountains to the sea. Every wood, every forest that has ever been was once part of that first forest, and in the heart of the wildwood, the trees remember. All those forests exist there, endlessly reflected upon one another. If you have the skill, or a guide, it is possible to move between them, and so cover great distances with ease.’
    ‘So what we saw beyond the stones—’
    ‘Was a memory. Of a battle already lost, and of a warrior already slain.’
    ‘I couldn’t have saved him, no matter what I did?’
    ‘No,’ the forestal said gently. ‘I tried to tell you. He had to die because he was already dead.’
    She remembered the weight of time she’d sensed at the cloven oak. ‘What happens when a tree dies? Are the memories lost?’
    ‘The memory is in the forest. A tree dies when its time is done, for such is the order of things, but its fruit gives