Lysa listened to the wedding as if it were a battle report.
Torren had expected as much.
She sat near the low fire with Konnan asleep against her thigh, one heavy pale arm thrown over the fur as if even dreams had displeased him. The boy was not yet a year old, but he already took up more space than age allowed. His white hair caught the firelight. His red eyes were closed.
For once, the hollow had quieted before he woke it.
Torren sat across from Lysa with Lady Forlorn still sheathed across his back. He had not yet taken off the black leather harness. The road from the Painted Dogs camp had left stone dust on his boots and cold in his knees. Savar and Morna had eaten quickly and gone to their sleeping hides with the strange silence of children who had seen more than they wished to explain.
Lysa had noticed that before she noticed anything else.
"So," she said. "Hokor married fire."
"Karra," Torren said.
"Burned Men blood."
"Yes."
"Then fire."
Torren gave a small nod. "Dolf's cousin."
"Dolf came himself?"
"Yes."
Lysa shifted Konnan before his weight numbed her leg. "Then it was not only a wedding."
"No."
She looked pleased by that, not because she liked the Burned Men, but because she preferred men to show their knives before hiding them.
"Hokor tied Painted Dogs to Burned Men," she said.
"He did."
"Good."
Torren watched her face. "You do not ask if that troubles me?"
"Everything that makes men stronger troubles someone. Better it troubles others first."
That sounded like Lysa.
The fire cracked between them.
"He is not a boy now," Torren said after a while.
"Hokor?"
"Yes."
"He was not a boy when Harrag died."
"No. But there is a difference between being made older and becoming chief."
Lysa accepted that.
"And the bride?" she asked.
"Karra stands where she wants to be seen. She does not lower her eyes. She mocked him before his own camp, and he laughed."
"Good."
"You say that often tonight."
"A wife who cannot shame a chief when he needs it is just another hide in his tent."
Torren almost smiled.
"Dolf wants steel," he said.
"Of course he does."
"I gave Hokor a sword. Karra an axe."
"The smith's work?"
"Yes."
Lysa's eyes narrowed slightly. "So Burned Men saw."
"Yes."
"And Painted Dogs saw."
"Yes."
"And Hokor knew you meant them to."
"Yes."
"Good."
This time, Torren did smile.
A little.
"You have become easy to please."
"No," Lysa said. "You have become easier to understand."
That was not the same thing.
Konnan made a low sound in his sleep, a thick, angry breath that seemed too old for an infant. Lysa placed one hand on his chest without looking down. The boy settled under her palm.
"And the twins?" she asked.
Torren looked toward the sleeping hides.
"Savar burned his fingers."
Lysa's hand stilled on Konnan's chest. "Fire?"
"Small fire."
"Small fool."
"He wanted what he thought Burned Men scars meant."
"That is the danger."
"I told him."
"I will tell him again when it hurts enough to listen."
"Morna prayed at their tree."
Lysa looked up then.
Not sharply.
Not with fear.
"The Painted Dogs tree?"
"Yes."
"She should have."
Torren studied her.
Lysa looked toward the dark where their daughter slept. "It saw them born. A child does not insult the first eye that watched her."
"She brought a leaf back."
"Good."
"You think so?"
"The old gods are not goats tied to one post," Lysa said. "They look through trees. Here. There. Wherever roots drink deep enough and men remember to be afraid. If Morna prayed where she began, she did right."
Torren said nothing.
Lysa watched him over the sleeping bulk of Konnan.
"What did Nella say?" she asked.
"She said trees remember slowly."
"That old woman likes saying things that crawl under skin."
"She told Morna not to ask the tree to remember too much."
Lysa snorted softly. "A useless warning for that girl."
Outside, the hollow breathed in its sleep. Somewhere lower down, a goat shifted against a pen. Farther off, the forge gave one soft settling tick as banked coals broke and fell inward.
Torren reached for the clasp of the harness across his chest.
Lysa watched him.
"What?" he asked.
"You came back with wedding smoke in your hair and worry under your eyes."
"There is much to worry over."
"There always is. This is different."
Torren loosened the strap. Lady Forlorn shifted against his back.
"Hokor is building something."
"He should."
"Yes."
"You do not like that it is not yours."
Torren looked at her.
Lysa did not look away.
"The mountains do not need one hand," she said. "Even yours."
"I know."
"Knowing is not liking."
"No."
Konnan stirred again. This time his eyes opened.
Red in the firelight.
He stared at Torren as if he had been waiting for that answer.
Lysa pulled the fur higher around him. "Sleep," she told the child.
Konnan did not.
Torren looked at his youngest son for a moment longer, then finally removed Lady Forlorn and set the sheathed greatsword within reach.
He slept badly.
Three nights later, Morna woke him before the dark had begun to pale.
"Father."
Torren was awake before the second word.
Morna stood beside the sleeping hides, barefoot, hair loose, face white in the low dark. She had not touched him. She had not needed to.
"Father," she said again. "Savar."
Torren's hand was already on his knife.
"Where?"
"The trees."
Lysa rose at the name.
Not woke.
Rose.
One moment she was under the furs with Konnan heavy beside her. The next she was on her feet, knife in hand, hair falling wild over one shoulder.
"What happened?" she asked.
Morna looked toward Savar's sleeping place.
Empty.
Torren saw the empty hide then.
Cold entered him more cleanly than a blade.
"Did he call?" Lysa asked.
"No."
"Then how do you know?"
Morna swallowed.
For the first time in a long while, she looked her age.
"He was afraid too loudly."
Lysa's eyes flicked to Torren.
Konnan stirred in the furs behind her, one pale fist opening and closing. The child did not cry. His red eyes opened into the dark.
Lysa looked down at him, then at Morna.
"Stay with your brother."
Morna's head snapped up. "Savar is my brother."
"The one who can still be carried away is here," Lysa said. "Stay."
Morna's lips parted.
"Stay," Lysa repeated, and this time it was not a mother speaking. It was a command.
Morna looked toward the upper dark.
Then she knelt beside Konnan.
Torren was already moving.
He did not take Lady Forlorn.
There was no time for harness and sheath and greatsword.
He took the knife.
Lysa followed barefoot with hers.
The path to the twenty trees had never seemed so long.
The night was windless, yet the red leaves above the grove moved before they reached it. The white trunks stood in their broken ring, pale as bones in moonlight, carved faces watching from every side. The roots coiled through earth and stone, thick and white and dark where old sap stained them. The grove held its own cold.
Then Torren heard the sound.
Not a scream.
Worse.
A choked, broken breath, kicked out of a body that had forgotten how to own itself.
"Savar," Lysa said.
They found him between the roots of the central tree.
He lay half on his side, half on his back, as if the roots had caught him when his own limbs betrayed him. His heels beat the earth. His fingers clawed at white wood hard enough to tear skin. His head struck once against stone before Lysa reached him.
Torren dropped beside his son.
"Savar!"
The boy's eyes were open.
Only the whites showed.
No red. No black. No pupil.
Just pale, blind white from lid to lid, staring past the grove into something no living eye was meant to hold.
"Savar!"
His body bucked under Torren's hands. Strong. Too strong for a child asleep, too blind for one awake. Lysa caught his head and held it against her lap before he could strike stone again.
"Hold his arms," she snapped.
"I have them."
"Better."
Savar's mouth opened.
No sound came at first.
Then words.
Broken ones.
"High," he gasped.
Torren went still.
Lysa looked at him. "What?"
Savar's back arched.
"High tree. Higher than snow. Higher than birds."
Torren's hands tightened around his son's wrists.
"No," he whispered.
But Savar kept speaking.
"Red leaves. All red. All watching."
Lysa bent over him. "Savar, look at me."
The boy did not.
He could not.
His eyes were nothing but white.
"Dogs," he choked. "Crows. Burned men. Painted faces. Stone teeth. Moon men. All there. All under it."
Torren felt the grove fall away.
Years vanished.
He stood again in thin air, before a weirwood at the highest place in the mountains, where snow and sky and gods had no border. He saw clans kneeling. Faces painted. Faces burned. Stone Crows. Painted Dogs. Burned Men. Moon Brothers. Men who hated each other kneeling beneath red leaves. A figure before the tree.
A figure he had never fully seen.
He had carried that vision like a coal under the ribs for years.
Now his son was burning on it.
"Before who?" Torren demanded.
Lysa's eyes cut to him. "Torren."
"Before who, Savar?"
The boy's jaw worked.
No answer came.
Only breath.
Then, very small, "I could not see his face."
Torren stopped breathing.
Savar began to shake harder.
"White," he whispered.
Lysa's face hardened. "What is white?"
"Too much white." Savar's fingers clawed at Torren's hands. "Bone. Snow. Tree. Skin. I do not know. I do not know."
"Savar," Lysa said, and there was fear under the command now. "Enough."
"Fire under the roots," the boy said. "Not burning them. Feeding them."
The leaves above them rustled though no wind moved.
"Blood on snow. Smoke with no wind. Horns under stone. A black blade. A red eye. A boy with—"
His body jerked so violently Lysa had to throw herself over his shoulders to keep him from striking the root behind him.
"Stop it," she hissed at the dark. "Stop."
The grove did not answer.
A voice came from behind them.
"Do not drag him from the roots."
Lysa turned like an animal.
The Tree Speaker stood between two pale trunks, her hair loose, her cloak thrown over one shoulder as if she had come from sleep and something older than sleep. Her eyes were fixed on Savar.
For once, even she looked careful.
"He is my son," Lysa said.
"And something is passing through him."
"Then stop it."
The Tree Speaker stepped no closer. "A river does not stop because a mother hates drowning."
Lysa's knife flashed in the moonlight.
Torren did not tell her to lower it.
The Tree Speaker looked at the knife, then back at Savar.
"This is not punishment," she said.
Lysa's eyes narrowed.
The Tree Speaker's gaze moved to Torren. "Nor did it come because the girl prayed beneath another tree."
Torren said nothing.
Lysa looked at him sharply. "You thought that?"
"No."
But some hidden part of him had wondered whether the leaf had brought a path with it.
The Tree Speaker saw enough.
"The old gods do not belong to these twenty," she said. "Nor to the Painted Dogs tree. Nor to the high tree you saw in snow. They see where roots remember. They test where blood calls. They judge where men think no one watches."
Savar shuddered between Torren's hands.
His white eyes did not blink.
"This is not because Morna prayed," the Tree Speaker said. "The girl did what a child should do. She greeted the eye that saw her first. The boy is not paying for that."
"Then what is this?" Lysa demanded.
The Tree Speaker looked down at Savar.
"An eye opening hurts."
Torren's mouth went dry.
"Names," the Tree Speaker said.
Torren looked up.
"Call what is his," she said. "Do not fight what has him with hands. Hands are too small."
Lysa's jaw tightened.
Torren looked down at Savar.
The boy's eyes remained milk-white and empty. His breath came too fast. His wrists strained in Torren's grip. Dirt and blood marked his fingers where roots had scraped them.
"Savar," Torren said.
The boy did not hear.
Torren lowered his voice.
"Savar. You are not there."
His own throat felt tight.
"You are under the twenty. Your mother is here. I am here. Morna heard you. Konnan waits below. You were born beneath the Painted Dogs tree, and it remembered you. You live in my hollow, and these trees know you. Come back angry if you must. But come back."
Savar's mouth twisted.
A sound came out.
Not a word.
Torren leaned closer.
"Savar."
The boy gasped.
His white eyes blinked once.
Twice.
Then the pupils returned.
Tiny at first. Lost in panic. Then widening into terror.
For a heartbeat, Torren saw no recognition there.
Only a boy dragged too quickly from somewhere too large.
Then Savar saw Lysa.
His body broke.
Not badly.
Not like bone.
Like a bowstring cut.
He sagged so suddenly Torren nearly lost his grip. Lysa pulled his head fully into her lap and held him there with both hands. Savar dragged in air, one breath, then another, then another. His face crumpled with fury at what his body had done.
"I did not—" he tried.
"Breathe," Lysa ordered.
"I am."
"Better."
His eyes filled.
He tried to turn his face away.
Lysa did not let him.
"Breathe."
He did.
Torren released one wrist slowly, then the other.
Savar's fingers curled into the front of Lysa's tunic and held there as if he meant to tear it or never let go.
His eyes found Torren next.
Red again.
His own again.
"I saw you," he whispered.
Torren's throat tightened.
"Me?"
Savar's mouth trembled.
"I do not know."
That frightened Torren more than yes would have.
More than no.
The Tree Speaker came closer now, slow enough for Lysa not to strike her. She crouched near Savar's feet and looked at the roots around him. One root was stained with fresh blood from his torn fingers. Another seemed darker than it had before, though moonlight lied often in the grove.
"He opened," she said.
Lysa's head snapped up. "He is a boy."
"Yes."
"That is not an answer."
"It is the wound."
Torren looked at her. "Greensight?"
The Tree Speaker's face did not change.
"What men call a thing does not make it smaller."
"Did the trees do this?" Lysa asked.
"The trees watched."
"That is not an answer either."
"No," the Tree Speaker said. "But it is true."
Savar shivered.
Lysa pulled him tighter against her. "Can he walk?"
The boy's pride moved before his body did. "Yes."
He tried.
He could not.
Torren lifted him.
Savar made one weak protest and then stopped, perhaps because he was too tired, perhaps because he remembered being small only after the grove had made him smaller.
Lysa rose beside them.
The Tree Speaker stepped back.
"Do not let him sleep alone," she said.
Lysa gave her a look sharp enough to cut hide.
"I did not need a tree to tell me that."
They descended in silence.
Morna waited at the shelter mouth with Konnan in her arms.
That stopped Lysa where she stood.
Konnan was too heavy for Morna to hold easily, but she had dragged him half into her lap and braced him there with both arms. The baby was awake. Wide awake. His red eyes shone in the dark. He had not cried. Not once. His pale hand gripped a fold of Morna's sleeping hide.
Lysa hurried to take him.
"Konnan woke?" she asked.
"Yes," Morna said.
"Cried?"
"No."
"Then what?"
Morna looked at Savar in Torren's arms.
"Listened."
No one spoke.
Konnan's eyes remained on Savar.
The boy turned his face away as if ashamed to be seen by a baby.
Torren laid Savar down near the fire. Lysa wrapped him in furs, checked his head, his hands, his tongue, his eyes. Practical love. Fierce love. Love that looked first for blood, swelling, fever, breath.
Morna stayed near Konnan.
The baby did not look away from Savar until Lysa forced milk on him. Even then his red eyes remained open, furious at being made small by hunger.
Savar slept before dawn.
One hand stayed clenched in Lysa's sleeve.
Morna sat awake beside Konnan, the red leaf from the Painted Dogs tree lying in her lap. She touched it once, gently, as if greeting something that had come from far away and still belonged.
Torren stood at the mouth of the shelter and looked up toward the twenty trees.
Years ago, one tree had shown him all the mountains kneeling.
Now twenty had shown his son.
And another tree, far behind them in the Painted Dogs camp, had remembered his children without jealousy.
The old gods did not live in one trunk.
They watched through many.
That did not make the vision clearer.
It made it hungrier.