He braked with enough room for Kell to fall to his knees and wrap his arms around him. “Dad.”
Terandis was half his size, but he was strong enough to pull Kell close. “You found me.”
“I found you,” Kell tried to say, but it got lost.
Terandis held him tight through it all until Kell could probably talk again, but he didn’t want to let go.
There was music coming from up on that platform, and the hum of a small crowd having a good time. The door of Terandis’s cheerful yellow house opened, and a man who looked like a moving willow stepped out.
Kell popped his head up. “Filandior?”
“Kell?” Filandior leapt off the porch to run to him. “Kell!”
And so Kell was obliged to begin the hugging and tears again, but he didn’t mind at all.
Saeldian looked awaywhen it was plain that Kell’s father wasn’t going to spill after that stunt with his chair, for the sake of giving Kell a little privacy for his reunion. But when a dryad camerunning out and started the whole reunion scene over again, Saeldian wished that they could do something other than wait. Jubilee and Lorzok stood by, beaming—Jubilee had shed a few tears, which Kell’s satyr brother had been honored to wipe away with a handkerchief. Timtim raced up and down the pathways, zooming twenty paces away before abruptly leaping into the air to twist and run back, just for the joy of it.
Back here, and probably forgotten, Saeldian watched. They hadn’t said a word while Verandil finally told Kell what had become of Terandis, who had raised Kell as his own son. He’d sent Kell to the Material Plane and turned back to fight at his archfey’s side against an attack in the Hungry War. But Essanderon had fallen, and his power over his domain with him. The survivors fled, carrying a gravely wounded Terandis away.
And that was love, wasn’t it? Terandis loved Kell, so he risked himself to save his human son’s life and sent Kell to Faerûn. Terandis had hoped they would win the battle so he could go back and bring Kell home. But it didn’t turn out that way. No one would ever give so much for Saeldian. Why would anyone?
The forest blurred. Saeldian forced it to stop. There wasn’t anything to cry about, but they were in a rotten mood, and it was right of them to hang back. But when was all this crying and hugging going to bedone?
They glanced around at the house-trees, the flickering fairy lights overhead, and the busy brewhouse that smelled of yeast and slow-grown magic. Was anybody going to unload that wagon? How did you unhitch badgers? Was there anywhere obvious they could go to rest? Saeldian spied a bench sitting by a boulder with a top flat enough to rest a drink on and moved toward it.
The door to the brewhouse opened, and the smell of the magic Saeldian had forgotten to notice rushed out with the witch who emerged from it. She was green—her skin, her hair, the growing leaf-rot smell of her magic. She stared at Saeldian and sniffed, lifting her head to catch the notes of the illusion that covered them, then lowered her head.
Not a witch. A hag. Kell’s family lived in a hag’s domain, and her magic was old, like the trees that stretched taller than thefallen spire that Eightbridge clustered around, growing taller, rooting deeper. She held a big clay bottle and a cup that matched, but Saeldian couldn’t help feeling that stare, passing through them like a slender pin.
And then the hag moved toward them, gliding along the path. “You are not one of the fey, but your magic is.”
Saeldian’s tongue wouldn’t move. They nodded.
The hag tilted her head and examined Saeldian again, pausing for a long moment on the spot where their amulet rested. “You’re tangled in enough bargains to knit a scarf, child. How’d that happen?”
Saeldian shrugged and fought to find something those tangles would let them say. “We’re here to return something that had been stolen. We don’t know how to find the domain. It’s called Hearthaven’s Repose. Do you know it?”
The shine in the hag’s eyes focused on Saeldian. “What can you spare to give me for the answer?”
People thought the Feywild was a place of magic and awe and delicious risk. Saeldian had thought that too, until they found they couldn’t meet anyone who didn’t stick their hand out expecting to be paid for telling the time. “I’m not even sure I could give you the holes in my pockets, ma’am—”
“Mistress.”
“Mistress,” Saeldian replied with a nod. “I will withdraw the question, by your leave.”
“Ha! You’ve made me laugh,” the Brewmistress said. “Payment enough. I do know it.”
Saeldian listened attentively, but the Brewmistress said nothing more.
Finally, Saeldian said, “I imagine your knowledge of the Feywild is quite extensive. I’m glad to know it is real.”
“Oh, youarefun, you grumpy thing,” the Brewmistress said. “I will consider the question further. Step aside. I see someone to welcome.”
Dismissed, Saeldian stepped off the path. The Brewmistress ambled to the cottage where Kell settled beside his father, leaning on him as the news of his coming interrupted the music from theplatform above. Some people floated down on more of those platforms that connected house-trees to the upper level; others flew. But the Brewmistress ignored all of them to walk up to Lorzok and thrust the clay cup into his hands, and when he had it, she uncorked her bottle and poured him a cup.
Lorzok accepted it with a slow, ceremonial nod. He drank, first one tasting sip, and then the whole pint in long swallows.
“I remembered a meadow,” Lorzok said after he’d let out a satisfied sigh. “Perhaps someone thought to grow barley there once, but it was wild and green as any grass. Wild roses spread out on the ground. Flowers of all kinds, the sort that bees like to gossip with as they gather nectar for cold days. Yarrow?”
