“We had a deal,” the woman said, her stare pinned on Athan past his raised arrow.
“Deal’s off.” Athan returned the unwavering stare and didn’t lower the arrow.
“Brodan’s balls,” Jenny whispered, the sword in her hand faltering. “I... I know you.”
The raven haired woman side-glanced to Jenny. “And you are such a disappointment, Lilith.”
“Don’t,” Jenny warned, the sword lifting as she shook free of her initial shock. “Don’t you dare say that name, you who cursed it!”
“Who is she?” Dnara asked, stepping into the clearing closer to Athan. “And what deal?”
“Melakatezra, she is,” Jenny answered. “Grand Mageraetas of the Black Spire, where they train us blackropes and conjure up other foul things to do their dirty work.”
“That’s not her real name,” Athan said, lowering his bow. “And I can explain about the deal.”
“Oh yes, please do,” Melakatezra laughed. “I’d love to hear you explain our deal to her.” She abruptly stopped laughing and her black eyebrow raised sharply. “And, how you snuck up on me.”
“Trade secret,” he replied, seemingly undaunted by her powerful display of magic. He glanced over to Jenny and Dnara. “Sorry I’m late. Caught a King’s Guard tail and it took me a day of backtracking through the lower Axe Blades to shake them.” He turned his attention and raised arrow back on Melakatezra. “You wouldn’t have had something to do with that, would you?”
Melakatezra simply shrugged, but her prideful leer left little room to doubt.
“Thought so,” Athan said. “Knew as soon as I spotted the ravens circling over the knoll that I’d run out of time, so I snuck in closer and waited from a nearby tree for her to make her move.”
Jenny huffed. “Damn, soft footed, tree climbing forester... Didn’t trigger none of my traps. Though, neither did she.”
Melakatezra went back to laughing, its sound like a raven’s mocking caw. “Traps are meaningless when you travel on raven wings, but nice effort. Futile, but nice, Lilith.”
“Jenny,” Jenny corrected, pointing her sword at the woman. “Lilith is dead, and you killed her.” Then Jenny swung the sword towards Athan while taking a step in front of Dnara to keep a wall between the two. “And how do you know her, forester? What deal?”
“It’s... a long story,” Athan hesitated when faced with the sharp end of Jenny’s sword.
“Oh, this should be entertaining.” Melakatezra casually moved to the dilapidated stone wall separating the watch tower’s clearing from the rest of the forest. Taking a seat, she crossed her legs, adjusted her skirt and looked calmly at the three. “Well? Do tell them, dear Athan.”
Athan glared across the clearing at her. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be? Fields to burn, children to scare, maybe?”
Melakatezra leaned back with one hand upon the stones. “I’m in no hurry. Men burn fields well enough on their own, and children are too hard to find these days. Besides, I’ve waited this long to collect what is mine. I’m sure I can spare time to hear you spin more lies, sweet boy.” She glanced around his shoulder. “And, where is that lovely brother of yours?” she asked with an arrogant smile. “Still stubborn as a...? Well, you know the rest.”
Anger flashed through Athan’s eyes. “He’s close by.”
“Good. Wouldn’t want him to miss this.” Melakatezra motioned to the clearing. “The stage is yours. Explain to the blackrope and the child how we have a deal you are now attempting to break.”
“I’m no child,” Dnara said, even as she remained behind Jenny’s protective stance.
Melakatezra turned her black, whiteless eyes Dnara’s way. “You are, and always will be, a child to me, pathetically hiding behind the protection of others, unworthy of what has been so erroneously gifted to you.”
“Leave her alone,” Athan demanded, stepping into Melakatezra’s line of sight. “You lied to me; about her, the grove, the blight – everything!”
“Did I?” Melakatezra’s eyebrow rose sharply, the smirk never leaving her lips. “I believe truth is in the eye of the beholder. One would think you’ve learned that particular lesson by now.”
“What I’ve learned,” he replied, “is that you speak in nothing but deception and half-truths.”
“Birds of a feather, dear boy.” Melakatezra’s smile warped into a mocking glee. “Birds of a feather.”
Athan’s hand fisted at his side, but he offered no further rebuttal. In that moment, when he stood so openly mocked and unable to argue against his own likeness to the feather adorned woman, Dnara’s heart sank down into her chest. Half-truths and lies. Stories spun with ease on a kind voice, and a hand openly offered that she had unquestionably accepted since he found her in the grove. And he found her, she now realized, because he’d known exactly where to look.
“Athan?” Dnara stepped out of Jenny’s protective stance.
Athan glanced her way then lowered his eyes. The shame he felt was so easy to see, and it caused a new kind of pain she had been inadequately prepared for. Clutching the fabric of her dress above where her heart beat rapidly with anxious tremors, she asked for a truth she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear.
“Athan, the day you found me... It wasn’t by accident, was it?”
The clearing went quiet, and it felt like the whole world leaned forward to hear Athan speak a single, truthful word. And the word he spoke was, “No.”
With that one word, the delicately crafted cage he’d built to keep her close and trusting cracked apart. Shadows seeped in to coil around her ankles. Athan had not been a kind stranger who had come upon her prone figure in the mud, saved her out of the goodness of his heart and carried her in his arms to safety. It had been a planned, orchestrated compassion to win her trust, to draw her out of the Thorngrove and to have her follow him wherever he led her. An invisible, tightly tethered collar made not of metal and starstone, but of soft smiles, gentle glances and sweetly spun lies.
Dnara did not feel the first tear that fell as it slid slowly down her cheek, nor the second. She couldn’t feel anything. Not the pounding of her heart, not the way her fingernails dug into the meat of her palm, not the burning in her lungs as they urged her to breathe, and not the light touch of the wind as it struggled to exist in this knoll of dead trees, mad cackling ravens and broken stone walls. She stood in the clearing, staring at him, feeling nothing but emptiness within a rising black sea.
26
The ravens cackled in their mad laughter from the branches overhead and Rupert’s ears twitched as his head bobbed in a want to pull his reins free. Jenny stood on feet solidly moored to the earth, her sword held steady but flicking first to Melakatezra then to Athan then back once more to the black haired woman. Jenny’s uncertainty of who to fight, of who to protect Dnara from, spoke a truth Dnara herself couldn’t bear.
“I’m so sorry,” Athan said, lifting his gaze up to her. “I intended to tell you everything, I swear, but I ran out of time.”
“It is the equinox,” Melakatezra pointed out from her place casually seated on the crumbling stone wall. “Which is why I’m here; why we’re all here. And let’s be honest, dear Athan, you’ve had plenty of time to tell her everything, if you had been absolutely certain of your decision before now.”
“That’s not true,” Athan argued. “I knew the moment she woke up in my campsite that things weren’t exactly as you’d said they would be. I just... I needed more time to decide, and then...” He glanced Dnara’s way, his eyes wet and red. “Then I wasn’t sure how to tell you the truth, Dnara, without it destroying everything between us.”
“Everything between-” Melakatezra cut off her own words, raised a hand to her painted lips as her eyes widened, then she threw back her head in boisterous mirth that sent the ravens into another discordant cacophony. The dead-wooded knoll and ghost filled tower reverberated with the sound of their sardonic harmony rising up into the starless night, growing louder and louder until
abruptly it ended, plunging the clearing into a condescending silence. Melakatezra stared across the clearing at Athan, the smirk on her lips sharper than the blade in Jenny’s hands. “You fool.”
Athan’s fist tightened. “Shut up.”
“And so it was,” Melakatezra continued her proclamation. “The downfall of man.”
“Not our downfall,” Athan claimed. “Our salvation. ...And my reason to fight for what I thought had been long ago lost.”
The black sea of shadows gathering at Dnara’s feet recoiled and the wind tried once more to reach her. She couldn’t hear its whispers this time; her heartbeat pounded too loudly. The look in Athan’s eyes reached out to the pain in her chest, and she wanted to understand why.
“What do you mean?” she asked, and Athan’s eyes filled with anguish.
Melakatezra stood up from her place at the wall, clucking her tongue and walking towards Athan. “My poor, foolish boy. You see? She doesn’t understand; she can’t understand. It wasn’t created to comprehend such things.”
The wind stopped its whispering and the sea calmed as Dnara looked to the woman for answers Athan seemed unable to give. “I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t, child,” Melakatezra responded, an unexpected compassion weaving its way into her aloof expression. She raised a hand and directed it towards Athan. “He’s in love with you.”
Her words struck Dnara in the chest, causing a sensation both of fear and elation. She’d read many stories in Keeper Ishkar’s books, learning what it meant to be angry, to overcome adversity, to stand firm with bravery and how to run with fear. She understood pain, being alone and feeling out of place. She’d even come to understand joy, and the security of having Athan near. But, love?
She felt attached to Athan, that was true, but her feelings beyond that had become muddy and lost in the sea churning at her feet since he’d revealed his deceit. Perhaps there may have been love there, somewhere deep down and undiscovered, but now it lay buried under a growing ache in her heart, a painful sting running along the scars on her arms and a festering anger that threatened to drown her. Even staring wide-eyed at the world, she couldn’t bear to look at him.
“I don’t... I...” her words stumbled over themselves and still the tears fell. “I don’t understand.”
“I know, child, I know.” Melakatezra reached for her, hand stretching past Jenny’s blade. “The ways of man make little sense, even to themselves.”
“Enough,” Athan said, eyes closed, head bowed and hands fisted. “It doesn’t change the fact that the deal is off. I’m not giving her to you, I know damn sure Jenny won’t, and it’s clear, by some rule of the magics involved, that you can’t simply take her, so you might as well go back to whatever blight infested hole you flew out of!”
“Such brave words,” Melakatezra cooed, her hand stopping short of brushing Dnara’s cheek.
“True words,” Jenny said. “You take one more step towards Dnara and I’ll see how many of them feathers I can cut off before you start bleeding shadows.”
Melakatezra’s gaze coasted slowly to Jenny then narrowed. “Veshna’ri oso ir’anhsev.”
The strange language came in hushed syllables from Melakatezra’s lips like buzzing bees, spoken both forwards and backwards at the same time. It resonated with a reverberating cadence from deep within her throat, as if the words were tangibly pulled from the earth like an ancient monolith to which all the ravens bowed their heads in silence. The rhythmic sound trailed up Dnara’s spine, reaching into the recesses of her memory. Sometime before, someplace long forgotten, she’d heard the language before.
Next to her, a loud thunk struck the ground. Jenny had dropped her sword and gone still as a temple statue, eyes unseeing and mouth stuck open. The once strong willed blackrope sank mutely to her knees then fell over onto her side, lifeless. Around the clearing, the ravens cawed madly and Rupert reared back, hooves hitting the earth in furious thumps.
“Jenny!” Dnara crouched down and took Jenny’s stiff form into her hands. Brushing Jenny’s silver hair aside, Dnara could see the woman lived but could not move, frozen in time by whatever spell Melakatezra had cast. “What have you done to her?!”
“One does not create pets without ways to control them,” Melakatezra said coolly before returning her attention to Athan. “Now, where were we?”
“You were leaving,” Athan said, taking two long strides closer to Dnara’s kneeling form. “Without her.”
“Was I?” Melakatezra’s eyebrow rose sharply and an amused smirk returned to her lips. “It seems you haven’t learned the most important lesson of all.” Her smile evaporated and her gaze turned daring. “I always win.”
“Not this time,” Athan replied boldly, setting this arrow back against the bowstring. “I’ll not give her to you, no matter what you do or the lies you speak.”
“Oh, my dear sweet boy.” Melakatezra laughed, and the ravens laughed with her, paired together in some private joke. Dnara found the sound unnerving, but less so than what Melakatezra said next. “She has never been yours to give.”
The words stunned Athan into an open mouthed silence, the arrowhead unbalancing against the bow and confusion marring his brow. Melakatezra nodded in approval at Athan’s lack of rebuttal then held out her hand. She held it out, not to him, but down to Dnara. Dnara stared at the open palm, feeling as if she had been there, within that very moment, before.
“She cannot be taken nor given,” Melakatezra informed while looking at Athan. “It is her choice, and hers alone.” And with that, Melakatezra took her gaze off Athan and made an offer with more sympathy in her eyes than had been expected. “Come with me, child, and I will show you the truth of this world, and your part in it.”
Looking at the empty hand, Dnara could not deny the curiosity growing within her, even as the wind made its own desire clear. It tugged through her hair and ruffled Melakatezra’s feathers in a want to separate them. The ravens let loose another clamor, but Melakatezra stood regal, unflinching, her gaze penetrating. Dnara could see this woman carried a great knowledge, a knowledge which she offered to share, and the yearning to take her offered hand pulled hard on Dnara’s heart. As Dnara reached towards the offered hand, she asked, “What truth?”
Coming to his senses, Athan stepped further between them, breaking the hold of Melakatezra’s gaze. “Don’t listen to her. She speaks nothing but lies.”
Melakatezra let out an irritated sigh. “I have never lied to you, Athan. It’s not what I do. Lying is tiresome, and there is no reason for it when the truth serves my purpose so well.”
Athan’s arrow wielding hand fisted the shaft and pointed the sharpened stone head at Dnara. “You said Dnara created the blight!”
The wind around Dnara died as the shadows swelled around her ankles. “I- I what?”
“I never said she created the blight,” Melakatezra responded calmly in the face of Athan’s growing anger. “I said she is responsible for the blight. Two very different things, one being false and the other true. That you chose to ignore the difference is on you, Athan.”
“Stop twisting words!” Athan shouted, both of them ignoring where Dnara sat, her eyes wide at the words being spoken between them. “How can she be responsible? She expelled the blight from Penna, and from Elizabeth Whitehall!”
“One does not create pets without ways to control them,” Melakatezra answered coolly.
“And stop speaking in riddles!” Athan shouted louder, his anger carrying up to the dead tree branches where the ravens responded with shouting of their own. “Whatever truths you’re offering will be tainted by your own malcontent. I may not be able to speak your true name, but I know it, and know that nothing good ever comes from what you offer.”
Melakatezra remained placid, her expression a mask of unreadable indifference. “And there it stands, the arrogance of man. You see one small piece of the tapestry and believe you know everything, smugly thinking you can alter what has been
weaving itself into existence for over a thousand years. You understand nothing. You are but the blink of an eye in existence, Athan, one tiny thread that is so easily unraveled. Even now, your emotions betray you like a petulant child. Your ignorance will be your undoing, just as it was your brother’s.”
“Shut up,” Athan hissed past clenched teeth, the arrow shaft snapping within his fist.
“You think you know me, boy?” The thin line of Melakatezra’s lips broke into an amused grin. “Why don’t we ask your brother what truth he thought he knew?” Melakatezra looked past Athan to the dark forest behind. “I know you’re there, child. We are connected now, you and I. Why not show yourself, Treven?”
“Treven?” Dnara whispered the name into the night as wide-eyed she looked to Athan for explanation.
Athan looked down to her, past the broken arrow in his fist, but offered only an apology for more things he had intended to tell her but had chosen not to. “I’m so sorry.”
And from the woods, a large silent shadow emerged, with tawny brown skin, ears that twitched at the ravens overhead and big black eyes that had always held more intelligence than a mule should have. Treven’s nostrils flared in a snort and his withers tremored. Those clever eyes were locked on Melakatezra, and if mules could glare, Treven’s expression would be full of rage.
“There’s a good boy,” Melakatezra said then sighed softly. “Oh, now don’t give me that look. It’s not my fault your brother is as much a fool as you and has backed out of our deal.”
When the Wind Speaks (Starstone Prophecies Book 1) Page 23