"Is that what just happened now? You fell asleep and dreamt, right here while riding with me?" she asked him.
"No, it isn't like that at all!" he tried to tell her. "It's not sleeping; it's a sort of magic, I think. Anyway, I saw something, Astyræ. White, ghostly white, out there, off in the distance." He pointed as he explained. "And I swear to you I heard it calling to me, calling me straight ahead!"
"What was it that you saw?" she asked him, trying her best to temper her wary thoughts.
He struggled to find the words to explain himself. "I don't ... I can't really say for certain. It was bright though, and my heart tells me that it can be trusted. That it is good."
"Perhaps this is why people had such a hard time believing you there, groomsman," she playfully teased him with a raised brow and a half-grin, doing her best to lighten the air of the moment. "You're not making much sense, you know."
"Fair enough," he said, his eyes alight with a self-deprecating smile. "But I don't think that is why they never believed me."
"Oh?" she asked, all the more curious now.
He rode for a beat or two, staring off into the darkened distance, willing whatever light he had just glimpsed to show itself to him again.
"Cal? I'm only teasing. Please tell me why," she said sincerely.
"Honestly?" he said. "I think it was because they were afraid to hope that maybe, just maybe, I was right. That there might indeed be something bigger than themselves out in the wild, unknown places in this world. They were afraid to believe me."
She stared at him as they rode, his eyes fixed on the horizon and her gaze fixed upon this blonde tree man who had rescued her from her own darkened fate. "I understand. I promise I do."
"Oh?" he returned the playful teasing.
"I do," she said as a wave of shame washed over her pearl complexion. "I do."
"Well, why don't you tell me then," he said, concern now coloring his previously playful expression, as he motioned Farran closer to the large chestnut. Cal was about to press the question when Deryn flittered up to meet his gaze. The Sprite guardian shook his head with a grace that Cal could not help but silently understand. He nodded his reply and the blue-winged Sprite came back to rest upon the front of Cal's saddle.
Cal placed his hand upon her slender shoulder, and his eyes did their best to read the history that was so illegibly written upon her saddened face. She reached up and covered his hand with her own for a breath of a moment, then blinked away the gravity that held their gaze captive to each other, looking instead towards her horse and swallowing the words she might have spoken. He sighed, and brushed her golden hair behind her ear before returning his gaze to the forest in front of them.
The three of them rode in silence as the untold narratives of their own stories held their tongues captive by the power of their own disgraces. The innumerable trees with their massive trunks seemed to pass by without ceasing, for the strength of the Greywood was mightier and more vast than any of the forests of Haven, and Cal was grateful for such a monotonous distraction.
"Do you remember what these lands were like? Before the sorceress came to power?" Cal asked her finally, breaking the quiet.
"I don't, no. But I have heard stories; the elders loved to tell them," she said with a sad smile. "This part of the world was once illuminated with a beauty all its own—or at least that is what I heard as a little girl."
"You mean … a light?" Cal asked.
"Yes. The light of the Jacaranda. They say that Deryn's kind once protected the borders of Aiénor, and that their violet trees held both evil and ugliness at bay," she recalled aloud. "Dardanos was young then, not much more than a wandering tribe who had sought to make a new life in the cleft of the Itzal Valley. Our ancestors were befriended by the Sprites; even the High Queen Éimhear once blessed our forefathers, speaking great words of life and of powerful magic over our people."
"I can only imagine what this world must have been like, with my kin free to bestow great deeds of love upon this wild tapestry," Deryn thought aloud.
"It was paradise," Astyræ blurted out. "Or, that is what the legends say. My grandfather would tell me of the great flowerings, when the mighty Jacarandas would grow ripe and give birth to swarms of Sprite children. Such a feast the High Queen would hold in their newly winged honor that all the kingdoms of men could not help but pay homage to these great protectors of beauty."
"Do your people ever speak of such histories?" Cal asked his blue-winged guardian.
"They do," Deryn replied. "Though their words are laced with much more sadness and longing. The song of the Sleth Aodh; the voices of the heralds can still be heard singing its ancient lament throughout the bowels of Islwyn. For the betrayal of Niniané, daughter of the High Queen, sister to my own Queen Iolanthe, was what first set the course of Aiénor upon this dark and bloody path."
"I am sorry, Deryn," Astyræ said earnestly. "I did not mean to bring up such pained memories for you. I merely ..." Her words trailed off as the weight of yet another failure threatened to imprison her voice.
"It was not your failure that brought such woe, nor should you take responsibility for it," he said with a kind smile. "The death of so many of my kind will always carry for me a deep and utter grief … but that does not mean that we were not once great in number and stature and strength. It is good to remember the good; both things and times, my lady."
"Were you there?" she asked curiously. "When the High Queen blessed my forefathers?"
"Long have my days been in Aiénor, but alas, my half-sister; I am not nearly that old," he said with laughter in his eyes. "I was born in the grove within the mountain alongside the daughters of the Queen, well after your people had built their great towers."
"Did you ever know the High Queen?" she asked.
"I did, once," he said slowly as the gravity of that recollection watered his luminous eyes. "I was but very young in the years of my kind, and her daughters Niniané, Iolanthe, and Gormlaith had taken me for a playmate. Brave, she called me that day; a brave little bird. And ever since that moment I have done my best to live up to her assessment of me."
"Well," Cal said confidently. "I think that the High Queen would have been proud of you indeed, my winged friend. I do not want to know where I would be without your bravery."
"Three daughters?" Astyræ said curiously. "My grandfather never mentioned any children, let alone three."
"Yes, indeed," Deryn confirmed. "The fruit set apart. Éimhear tended to the three blossoms herself, and by the blessing of our Great Father the three princesses were given to us."
"Well, this is strange," Cal interjected with an intrigued expression. They stopped the horses, looking around them at a most unexpected sight: a great clearing in the midst of the massive forest. "What is this place?" Cal asked the violet-eyed woman as his eyes beheld the oddity of this glade. Here, in the very heart of the rich soils and heavily timbered forestlands of the Greywood, was what seemed like a barren scar on the landscape.
"Have you ever seen such a place?" he asked Astyræ as she slid off the large chestnut and walked to the center of the clearing.
"Yes, groomsman, that I have. My people call these places the Ágoni gi, the beautifully barren. My grandfather told me that in the rape of the Sprite trees, as the monster Šárka feasted upon their burning bark, the earth wept in tears of glass." She reached down into the sandy soil and let the teardrop-shaped shards of woe fall through her fingers back down upon the ground.
"What do you mean? Are you saying … do you mean a Jacaranda once grew here?" Cal said, trying to make sense of her mournful words.
"Yes, groomsman. One of the violet trees of beauty once flourished here in this very place; that is, until it burned."
Deryn flew down from his perch atop the silver steed until he rested his leaf-shaped boots upon the glassy soil, reverently surveying the unsettling sight.
"Long were we known as Sprite friends!" she said as she knelt down to console her little c
ompanion. "And even now the few of us true Dardanian who remain in this darkened world would still honor the winged brotherhood of our past. I cry your pardon for this atrocity, Deryn."
"It is said that Éimhear herself is buried beneath the glass of the fired remains of the royal tree, Fionnuala, entombed at the very site of her royal birth," Deryn whispered. "I have been hidden away all these ages, never to see the aftermath of such insatiable evil, such reckless destruction. Now that I have beheld this, I know that the High Queen left her reflective mark of beauty, even in her death."
"I am sorry, my friend," Cal said as he dismounted Farran. "Perhaps one day, before all of this is said and done, we will find your Queen and tell her that all was not lost in the death and the fire."
The blue-winged guardian looked up from the ravaged landscape, the shimmering fragments in the crystalline soil now the only traces of the ancient trees of beauty. He met the gaze of his friend, and his silent, sad smile said a thousand unspoken words. Cal returned the soundless kindness with his own.
"Are there many more places like this one?" Cal asked Astyræ as he beheld the paradox of the glittering beauty upon such a wasteland, noticing how the veins of glass spread in the pattern of long-consumed roots from the dead Jacaranda.
"There are. My people thought them to be both sacred and haunted, so for the most part they have been undisturbed," she told them. "My grandfather never once took me to see one; I had to do that all on my own. He said that he had never met a Sprite in all his days and he surely never wanted to meet one of their ghosts." She spoke with a wry smile, doing her best to lighten the weariness of the moment, and then ... then another thought caught her mind. "The whole world does not believe that you or your kind exist anymore, little Deryn," she said suddenly, her emotions caught up in the compelling implication of this notion. "And if that is true, then perhaps ... perhaps she doesn't know, either."
Cal's face registered just what this violet-eyed woman was suggesting, and he snapped his head quickly around to look at his friend. "Perhaps it is I that should have been guarding you all this time?" Cal wondered aloud.
Deryn grew uncomfortable with all the attention, and he shook his head defiantly in response. "No, my friends," he said as he flitted up to meet their star-struck gazes. "Our people, my kind—we are tasked with the tending to and the defenses of beauty, not power! Do not bestow upon me a deference that is beyond my kind, for our Great Father has long known the truth of our fruited purpose."
"But what if you were hidden for such a time as this?" Cal wondered. "To exact your revenge on the evil of this world and reclaim the lands of your people!"
Deryn smiled a kind smile as he met the excited gaze of his charge. "No, Cal. My people haven't any lands to reclaim, or vengeance to unleash—though I do not doubt that we were indeed hidden for such a time as this."
"What do you mean, Deryn?" Astyræ asked him.
"I mean that my purpose is not to defeat the sorceress—though if given the chance I will surely fight her—nor is it to remain hidden and protected any longer. My purpose now is only to point the way to beauty and to protect those who choose to seek the light … those who dare to hope. For it is by the light of beauty that hope might yet be revealed." He spoke with a depth of understanding, as his tiny, azure eyes grew wet with conviction. "It is hope, hope that helps us to believe that this darkness is indeed not the end of Aiénor. Hope that compels our feet to keep pursuing, to keep searching, to keep dreaming that there is yet a light to be found, hidden somewhere in this world of ours. Hope that reminds us that pain and evil, lust and death, will not, in the end, consume the heart of our created identity." He flew down and grasped one of the teardrops of glass in his tiny hands, and then in a whir of blue he flew back to punctuate his message. "Why else would evil have struck its first blow upon the trees of beauty, my friends? If you rid the world of inspiration, what hope would we dare to live by?"
The light seekers stood for a moment, enraptured by the truth, caught up in the gravity of the Sprite's words.
"But it would seem, wouldn't it, that even in its death, beauty still reflects the light of its purpose," Cal said finally as he held out his hand and bid his winged guardian to rest. "Look about you, Deryn. The light of beauty still remains, it still dances and colors this wild place, illuminated by the violet light of our collective hope."
"So it does, Calarmindon Bright Fame." Deryn smiled a true, satisfied smile. "So it does, indeed."
"Come on now," Cal urged them all. "This is as good a place as any for us to make our rest. I do not think that we will stumble upon the halls of Shaimira today, but we have indeed found a good place."
"Agreed, groomsman," Astyræ offered.
The three of them sparked a fire on the rim of the Ágoni gi and tethered their horses to a great laurel tree whose branches hung low to the ground, making for themselves a place to rest. High above them, in the boughs of a massive soldier pine, perched a violet-eyed Owele, Edur, taking watch over the hopeful company as they slept. Off in the eastern distance, an angry storm began to brew. The Owele could hear the sounds of deathly screams and ominous thunder as it began to roil and grow under the haze of a black cloud of hatred.
Soon, Edur spoke silently in the wind. None will be safe, and evil will invade once again. May you rest and recover, light seekers, your hearts washed white in the peace of HE who is calling you further.
That night Cal dreamed in visions of old, of the destruction of the mighty Jacarandas and the death of so much beauty, and he wept in his sleep for a loss he had never himself endured.
Chapter Forty-Five
THE REMNANT CONTINUED THEIR NORTHWARD march while the wind howled a cold song about them. The ground, though illuminated by the violet light of their faint hope, yielded not much more than scrub brush and willow grass. The trek along the war-littered road threatened their sprits, but as they remembered the fallen bodies of the brave guardsmen on the path behind them, they knew that they must continue onward.
Scouts positioned themselves a few hundred paces beyond the main body of the host, but they could not venture much further than that, nor could they scout alone, for the strength of their fragile violet vision lay firmly in their proximity to each other. The closer that they were together, the brighter their hope lit up the darkness about them. As the scouts ventured further away from the group, their hopeful resolve could not help but wane in the silence of the solitary.
"Do you know how much further the altar is?" Keily asked the white-bearded corporal. "In all my days hunting these lands, my father would never permit me to venture this far away from his thirsty patrons."
"It is hard to say, my lady," Johnrey replied. "The lands about this road have changed greatly over the years, and it has been quite some time since I have been on a scouting detail."
"I hope it is soon enough," she said. "I don't know how much more stamina this group has in them today; we could all use some place safe to rest our weary bones."
Johnrey turned and looked behind them. The siege fires of the enemy were still burning off in the distance; their green and amber hues danced in the north winds and reflected their devastation in his old eyes. "Even when we get there, I am not sure I will feel safe enough to rest at all."
"Well, we have to rest, whether we feel safe or not," she told him. "Let's just hope that there is some place we can find some cover from whatever hells lurk here in these outlands."
"Lieutenant!" came shouts from the scouts. "Lieutenant, I think that we have found it!"
A rumble of curiosity rose through the remnant, for it was doubtful that many—if any—had ever left the safety of the walled city, let alone traveled the North Road to the foothills of the Hilgari.
"What do you mean?" Marcum asked. "What do you mean that you think that you found it?"
"Well," the guardsman paused, searching for the right way to explain himself. "You will have to just see it for yourself. It's there, just on the other side of that hill."
"Secure it, then," Marcum ordered. "Take a dozen bowmen and form a small perimeter, make sure that it is safe—or, at least, safe enough."
The scout looked unsure of himself, but nodded his understanding and left to carry out his orders.
"Johnrey," Marcum said, beckoning his last remaining officer over to his side as they continued their march towards the altar. "Prepare the men for a few more hours of duty, see that they have some strength left within them this day. Let them know that once we have made a camp and secured it, we will make sure they all find a bit of rest … for we all will need to rest if we ever hope to make this next leg of the journey."
"Yes sir," the old officer agreed, the exhaustion thick upon his raspy voice. "I'll make sure the men are ready enough."
Marcum and Johnrey reached the top of the hill and looked upon the Northern Altar of the Priest. The remnant of Haven who stood closely behind them gasped in audible shock as they saw the horror before them. Where there once stood a monument to honor and duty—a sacred relic of the Priests and their flints— now stood nothing less than a monster, a defilement, a mockery of Haven.
"What in the damnable dark?" Marcum murmured as he beheld the large, black raven's wings that protruded grotesquely from the holy altar. Words foreign to the eye—but sinister nonetheless—were hastily painted in white overtop the inscription of the edifice, and there at the base of the monument now lay the capstone of the altar itself, as though its very head had been decapitated.
"I won't sleep here!" shouted an older man from the group. "I would rather take my chances back on the bloody battlefields!"
"What kind of evil does such a thing?" asked a nursing mother.
"The same kind of evil that sacks a city and devours her strength!" came the nervous voice of an archer.
The Ravenous Siege (Epic of Haven Trilogy Book 2) Page 41