Free Leaves of Flame by Joshua Palmatier

He turned to Colin as they mounted the waiting horses. “Find out what’s causing the storms, Shaeveran.”
    Colin didn’t answer the command, merely swinging up into the saddle of his own horse. He remembered when the Alvritshai had been afraid of horses, when he and his family had first ventured onto the plains and met Aeren and Eraeth.
    The Chosen backed away, his acolytes following him into the protection of the door’s alcove, away from the wind.
    “Why are we leaving in the middle of the night?” one of the brothers asked, barely above a whisper. “Couldn’t this have waited until morning?”
    The other brother shrugged.
    Colin turned to Vaeren.
    “Where to first?”the caitan asked.“Rhyssal House lands to see Lord Aeren?”
    “No,” Colin said. “To the Winter Tree. I need to verify that the Trees have not been affected.”
    Vaeren’s eyebrows rose in surprise, but he nodded.

    They wound their way through the darkened streets of Caercaern, lit sparsely by lanterns or candlelight from high windows, Colin tugging the sleeves of his shirt down over his hands against the chill. Vaeren took the lead with Siobhaen, the two brothers trailing behind. Only a few Alvritshai were out at this hour, hurrying from one spot of warmth to another, bundled up and hunched into their clothes. No one paid them any attention. Most windows were dark, but a few of the shops they passed, mostly bakeries by the strong smell of bread that drifted from them, showed chinks of lantern light. In a few hours, the streets would be bustling with the thousands of Alvritshai that lived in the city, thronged with pull-carts and wagons, the citizens dressed in the loose clothing and conical straw hats of commoners. He glanced toward the third tier, where most of the lords kept their own houses when the Evant was in session, then higher to where the Tamaell resided in the highest of the tiers, towering over the city, but the buildings were lost in the darkness.Then he turned his attention south.The storm he had seen from the top of the Sanctuary had moved too far away to be visible.
    Ahead, Vaeren and Siobhaen slowed and he shifted in his saddle, looking up to where the Winter Tree towered above them. They’d reached the wall that surrounded it, had stopped at one of the gates. Vaeren spoke to the Warden who responded to his knock on the heavy wooden door.
    The door opened and they ducked through the stone arc of the wall into what had once been Caercaern’s largest marketplace.
    Colin remembered what the plaza had looked like the first time he’d been here with Aeren and Eraeth. It had stretched nearly the entire width of the tier, had been twice as long, the colonnades of the Hall of the Evant on the far side appearing distant.And it had been packed with people, tents, wagons tilted onto their sides, blankets spread onto the wide flagstones, and tables of every variety of produce and goods imaginable. It had taken Aeren and his escort nearly an hour to work their way across to the Hall.
    Now, the entire area had been transformed to deal with the Winter Tree.The flagstones had been ripped up and soil carted in and packed down to allow for a garden. Trees had been planted on the outer fringes near the wall, but as soon as they stepped inside, Colin could see that only grass grew beneath the shadow of the Winter Tree’s branches, the lowest of which were too high to be reached even by ladder. The Tree obscured the Hall of the Evant, and in the darkness beneath it Colin could barely make out the wide trunk and its gnarled roots. But he could hear the wind in the branches above, thrashing in the leaves, and he could see where the Wardens had established crushed stone paths beneath those branches, winding out and around sculptures of stone and statues, benches and small basins of water.
    The gate closed behind them, the Warden who’d opened it appearing nervous. Vaeren turned toward Colin. “What do you need to do?”
    “I need to touch