“Yes. And it is not just about trees; there is the water—”

“Water?” Now Dorrin looked a little frightened.

“All that live need water; to us springs are sacred. Taig-sense lets you find water and know if it is good.”

“Magelords had water magery,” Dorrin said. “When I first came here—”

“What?”

“There was a cursed well. I … the gods helped me take the curse off, and water came.”

Arian waited, but Dorrin did not say more. “Let me show you,” Arian said finally.

For a moment, Arian thought Dorrin would refuse, then she shrugged and pushed back her chair. “If you can do it and Kieri can do it, I suppose I can at least try,” she said.

“We need to go outside,” Arian said.

“At night? In this cold?” But Dorrin kept moving. “We’ll go through the house to the garden,” she said. “I want a wall to break this wind.” She picked up a candle lantern on the way, and led Arian down a long straight passage that turned suddenly, went down three steps, then led to a door Arian thought might be under her own bedroom windows. “Here we go,” Dorrin said. She pushed the door open and went out, waiting for Arian and then pulling the door closed.

Across the garden, in the lee of the wall, the wind bit less. Dorrin put the candle lantern on the ground.

“Now what?” she said.

Arian extended her own taig-sense, feeling for the tree with the strongest flavor of life. An apple tree, the oldest in the little orchard, gnarled but unafraid and still looking toward its next flowering. “Here,” she said, laying her hand on one of the limbs. “Put your hand here, next to mine.” Dorrin did so. “Do you feel the life in the tree at all?”

“I can tell it’s alive,” Dorrin said. “It feels different than a dead limb. Is that all it is?”

“No,” Arian said. “Only the beginning. Now feel down the trunk, to the roots … there in the ground, the roots spread away into the soil … they are as alive as the tree. Can you feel them?” As she spoke, the taig spoke clearly to her, tree to tree all the way back to Lyonya. She pushed that aside for the moment.

“Something,” Dorrin said. “I’m not sure … it’s like a thread of … of light or warmth or something …”

“Follow it,” Arian said. “There will be a spreading again; that is another tree.”

“It feels—I can’t say how it feels—oh!” Dorrin pulled her hand away.

“What?” Arian felt the tree’s reaction, as sudden as Dorrin’s.

“Something touched me!”

“Put your hand back,” Arian said. “The taig wants to meet you.”

Dorrin put her hand down and for a long moment was silent, still. Arian felt the taig reach again, and this time Dorrin did not pull away.

“It’s all alive,” Dorrin said. Her hand trembled. “All of it—I can feel it—”

“Can you feel anything of its mood?”