Fantasy trilogy. Two men on a quest to tell a man's family about his death. Spoilers ahead.

[Doris]

The first book of this trilogy was a compilation of short stories that was merged into a book. I remember first reading one of the short stories in Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine in the late 90s or early 2000s. I later found the second book at the Dollar Tree. I thought that the author was Orson Scott Card but have not been able to find them in any of his bibliographies.
The trilogy begins with a man who rescues someone from a shipwreck and vows to tell the man's family of his death. He sets out on this quest with a bag of stones from the beach by his village. This first quester is a tall, thin, black man. Spoiler, they turn out to be gemstones. He is soon joined by a greedy fighter who believes he is going to the man's family to get treasure. The fighter is a short, stocky man. They are then joined by a large, black, talking cat.
There is one chapter about how they make it through a valley of fighting flowers that almost managed to kill them and eat them.
Another chapter is told from the perspective of a tree who was transplanted by a storm from its forest to a desert. The three questers' visit set in motion a transplant back to the trees original forest.