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spinning around to face her pursuer. "The fact is that I'm not a healer! I don't know enough!"
    "You know more than you think, right now." Sam's voice was calm, with an edge that suggested to Meri that it was hard-won. "Mother told me you were learning your lore well and that she was certain that you would be her equal or better."
    "Gran died !" Violet shouted, and suddenly, she was bent sideways, like a bird protecting a broken wing. Her voice wavered, blurry with tears even as her aura sharpened painfully with the force of her grief. "She died because I didn't know enough to save her!"
    "She died because it was time," Sam countered, which was, Meri thought, only common sense. The Newman stepped forward and gathered the girl into his arms, their combined auras thundering against Meri's senses.
    "Violet," Sam murmured. "I know. We all expected Gran to be with us forever. I know that you haven't had your complete training. You've been flung from 'prentice to master all of a sudden. But I know you can do it; Gran knew you could do it."
    The girl continued to sob. Meri saw their silhouettes through the blare of their auras: the girl with her head against Sam's shoulder as he gently stroked her hair, offering comfort and, perhaps, common sense.
    Hidden from the two Newmen by the kindness of the tree, Jamie Moore moved—and stilled, which Meri considered well done. Their presence would only increase the girl's grief and Meri, for one, had no wish to approach that hectic aura.
    "Listen," Sam murmured. "What if I ask the Engenium to send us a Fey Healer for a little time? Just until you find your feet and get over the—"
    "No . . ." the girl moaned. "Fey heal by—even Father—he knows the plants, but he draws on their kest . The process of making a poultice, or brewing a restorative tea—it's not what they do . . ."
    Delicately, Meri queried the trees, receiving a bewildering series of images: a white-haired woman working over a table, drying leaves, grinding roots, making pastes and liqueurs . . .
    The healing arts , the elitch added, take many forms .
    So it would seem , Meri replied, bemused.
    "Let us send for another healer," Violet sobbed against Sam's shoulder. "Before I kill someone else in my ignorance."
    "Send?" Sam sounded honestly baffled, as Meri, his fingers clutching knife hilt, went cold all over. "Where would we send, child? As far as I—and Lady Sian—know, we are the only folk of our kind on this side of the hellroad."
    "Then send to the other side!" Violet cried.
    There was a moment of charged silence before Sam answered, his voice chilly. "You are overwrought. Come, let me take you inside. You should have a cordial and go to sleep. Rest is what you need."
    "Sam—"
    "No," he said firmly. "We will talk again after you have rested. In fact," his voice grew a little louder. "It is time for Jamie to seek his bed, as well."
    He turned, then, guiding the bent and still weeping girl back toward the house. Jamie sighed and shifted away from the tree.
    "Sam's got good eyes," he said. "Even Father says so." He sighed again. "I'd better go." He danced back a step—then darted forward, touching Meri on the shoulder as if they were comrades of the branch. "Thank you, Master Vanglelauf."
    "You are welcome, Jamie Moore," Meri murmured. "I think that Sam is correct; rest if you can, and survey your thoughts when you are calmer."
    The boy nodded. "That's exactly what Gran used to say," he murmured, his voice husky. "Root and branch, Master."
    "Root and branch, Sprout," Meri answered, and watched the child slip away through the shadows.
     

Chapter Three
    Becca paused, her hand on the vine-wrapped gate, staring. Unlike the overpruned, stringently controlled grounds around Altimere's country house, the garden here in Xandurana had been—well, scarcely a garden at all. An exuberance of green life, the plants had clamored over each other, mixed willy-nilly, grudgingly ceding a few handspans to the thin walkway. It