Secret of Dehlyn (The Unclaimed Book 2)

by Kathrin Hutson

  There was no sign of Uishen or the Honalei. There was no sign of the Sylthurst, for that matter, and no one around to tell him what had happened. Or how he’d ended up farther inland than any other man washed ashore. When he slid his feet aside to stand, his boot brushed against his pack, still tightly closed beside his cloak, and the Sky Metal blade glinted in the midday sun. Kherron searched the surrounding trees, wary of accepting this odd bit of luck on his part. No, not luck—he had been snatched from the Sylthurst and the Roaming People’s onslaught just as the river itself had surged to capsize the Honalei and her captain. He hoped that wasn’t entirely true; he hoped Uishen had survived the inexplicable attack. Though waking here with his belongings intact beside him had been entirely unlikely, he could not bring himself to acknowledge how even more unlikely the ferryman was to have experienced the same fortune.

  But if he stayed here, he would never fully know. Rising to his feet, he hoisted his pack, draped his cloak over his arm, and returned the dagger to its sheath at his belt. Then he found the stream a few yards ahead and went to inspect it. With the sun so high overhead, he found it impossible to tell which direction the stream flowed; he’d never needed to discern true north when the roads he’d traveled had taken him directly east. It seemed probable, though, that he walked along a tributary to the Sylthurst, so he followed the glistening water, moving downstream.

  His isolation so far from the river had unsettled him, despite the day’s warmth reminiscent of summer, the breeze, and the comfort of solid land beneath his feet. But shortly after having chosen to follow the stream, he realized how benign that discomfort had been in comparison. The sound of rushing water ahead had spurred him on, and a fervent hope filled him that he’d come upon Uishen beside the quickly flowing river. Instead, Kherron found himself in a clearing, staring at the broadening width of the stream that had led him to a waterfall. And he stood at the base of it.

  Dread overcame him then, as did the vivid memory of the first such set of unnatural falls he’d seen. That one he’d climbed on his way to Torrahs’ cottage—so long ago, it seemed—and it had tried to drown him with the selfsame watery fist that had apparently plucked him from the Sylthurst. Just as that first stream, the one he’d followed now flowed impossibly upriver into the base of the churning waterfall, which foamed and bubbled as it cascaded into a pool as clear and still as glass.

  Kherron could not move, preferring to wonder what madness had overtaken his senses than to allow himself to believe these phenomena were common in Eldynia—or that they had become common only for him. No one else had seen the angry face in that first waterfall, or the furious, bearded man who’d risen in the flames of the Roaming People’s ceremonial fire. But he did not doubt that Uishen had witnessed the rising pillar of the Sylthurst’s waters that had removed the ferryman’s only passenger before destroying his vessel and his livelihood. Perhaps even his life.

  Ashamed of that thought and his part in its probable truth, Kherron did not notice the shape forming in the spray of falling water until a woman’s naked figure had materialized completely. Then his mind went blank but for the sight of her.

  It was difficult to discern her true features; they wavered and shimmered in the light. For a moment, she seemed entirely ethereal—a combination of watery blue, misting white, and crystalline transparency. But within that vision appeared flickers of a nearly flesh-colored hue, which steadily grew across the surface of her body until it seemed she could almost be human and not composed of the stream at all. Then she drifted downward from the center of the falls where she had appeared, her toes touched the surface of the eerily still pool, and she walked across it toward him.

  Kherron tried to swallow and choked, at once terrified and captured by her presence. The feeling of having intruded upon this creature’s privacy burned at the back of his neck, but she did not look at him with surprise or anger. Of course, he could only assume her gaze had settled upon him; while her hair had taken on a golden tinge, swaying around her face as though she were underwater and not above it, her eyes remained clear, swirling pools of light, defined by neither color nor material form. The calm, inviting smile lifting the corners of her mouth reminded him of Dehlyn, and his heart hammered in his chest. Kherron himself stood back from the bank of the stream, immobile and speechless.

  ‘Come.’ The woman’s voice was a song, echoing the burble of the backwards-flowing stream and the rush of falling water. It did not sound entirely female, nor could Kherron be sure true words left her mouth in the way he’d always known. But he understood her all the same. ‘Now we have the time to commune.’ She had stopped at the edge of the stream, seemingly unable to approach him beyond the bank, and extended a hand in welcome.

  Kherron’s feet moved of their own accord, and he stopped mere inches from the woman’s outstretched fingers. Her eyes consumed his attention; the infinite possibility contained within them offered not the uneasy wariness he had expected but a gentle, encompassing peace he had never known. He loved Dehlyn—in whatever way he could for all her secrets and her power, for all the strength of the vow she’d exacted from him. If he was not still acutely aware of the fact that he had never before encountered this woman and could not know her intentions, he would have easily born the truth that, within his very core, he also loved this creature before him. But it was not the same. Admitting that he loved this woman felt like loving himself, and the only thing keeping him from accepting this completely was the small, delicate reminder of all the things he’d learned he could not trust.

  The building roar in his ears echoed the rush of falling water behind her, and he reached out slowly to brush her wavering fingers with his own. Her touch was both cool and warm, like dew drying in the sun, and Kherron took a deep, shuddering breath. Then the roaring in his ears ceased at once, leaving behind a deafening silence. The waterfall behind the woman had stopped—not run dry like a closed dam but frozen in its descent, each glimmer of spraying mist suspended in the still air. He thought at first that time had stopped, as impossible as it seemed. But then a hesitant birdcall rose from somewhere behind him, and the woman inclined her head, her knowing smile widening.

  Kherron’s breath hitched in his throat, but he forced a long, shaky exhale and lowered his hand. Too many unasked questions battled within him, and he could not choose but one to voice. The unexpectedness of such an inability to do anything but stare at her should have alarmed him, he knew, but it was impossible amidst the profound sense of belonging in that moment. And he yearned to uncover the source of it.

  ‘You have not yet found your way,’ she said, her lips moving and yet not moving at all. Kherron blinked, feeling as if he’d failed her for the truth of it. ‘Yes, we know you have tried, and you still have much to learn.’ The woman raised a hand to his cheek, barely brushing it against his skin. He smelled fresh water and new growth and sun-dried stone. ‘We can only do so much to guide you.’

  Kherron’s brows trembled at her touch, and he thought he might cry. “I don’t understand.”

  ‘You have seen us,’ she said. ‘You have heard us. And others have come to you in warning.’ In an instant, the woman’s features shuddered and changed, morphing into the same angry, violent face that had risen from the waterfall by Torrahs’ cottage.

  Taking a surprised step back, Kherron frowned at the image before him, remembering clearly the watery fist that had forced its way down his throat, that had risen in the river before he’d plunged in to save Dehlyn from drowning. The cruelty of those occurrences also brought to mind the raging, vengeful face he’d seen in the Roaming People’s fire, and he spoke without considering his words. “If those were warnings, I would have been safer without them.”

  The woman’s delicate, comforting form returned, and her thin brows creased with concern. ‘Then, your path was uncertain. We could only act to prevent an undecided fate. Now, you have avowed yourself, and you are learning to listen.’

  Once more, Dehlyn’s words had been repe
ated to him by an otherwise unconnected source, and Kherron felt a shift in his understanding; this was not random—not unrelated. His experience of these words and the impossible circumstances in which he found himself were not independent of his duty to Dehlyn and his promise. They were the product of them and perhaps, in some incomprehensible way, the cause of them. But he did not know how.

  “I want no more riddles,” he said softly, closing his eyes in defeat. “Just tell me what to do.”

  ‘That, we cannot do, dear one.’ Her voice carried no hint of warning or irritation; rather, the tenderness of it brought a heavy weight of hopelessness down upon Kherron’s shoulders, and he hung his head. ‘But we can tell you what we know. We can tell you who you are.’

  The heat of shame burned on Kherron’s neck and up his cheeks. The pervading peace and sense of rightness he’d felt, standing before this woman, dissolved as if it had been poisoned. He’d let himself think, for a moment, that he was meant to be here, to see her and commune with her as she’d said. Perhaps to finally understand how he was to fulfill the prophecy dictating his role—of how he was to harness his strange abilities and survive long enough to find Dehlyn. “I already know about the prophecy,” he murmured, unable to open his eyes and return his gaze to her glowing, shimmering face. “I already know what it says I must do.”

  ‘Of course,’ the woman replied, and the unearthly silence of the frozen waterfall stretched unbearably around him. ‘But who you are is not determined by a foreseen future. Only who you might become. The vessel of the amarach had nothing to do with who you were before she chose you.’

  His head jerked up again at those words, and he stared into the unyielding, timeless orbs serving as the woman’s eyes. Only Torrahs had known him before Kherron met Dehlyn, and even then, the old man had only taken an interest in Kherron the day his hammer and tongs betrayed him in the forge. But Torrahs had paid his bond only because of Dehlyn and who he thought Kherron to be. How could the two not be related?

  ‘You should have been returned to us,’ she added with a crease of her delicate brows. ‘To learn how to use the gifts of our kind.’

  “What?” For how little he’d said, his voice had grown remarkably hoarse.

  ‘Part of you belongs to us.’ The woman spread her arms as if to take in the clearing around them—the entire forest—and her gold-tinged hair flowed behind her when she looked up into the sun.

  “I... I don’t...” Kherron swallowed, unable to so much as identify his own reaction.

  When the woman lowered her head again and fixed him with her wide, omniscient gaze, a small, nostalgic smile lifted her mouth. ‘Those who once knew are no longer here, and the old ways were abandoned so long ago. But there was a time, dear one, when all the creatures on this plane rejoiced at the coming of one like you. And it did not happen so infrequently. The woman who gave birth to you could not have known the son she bore. She could not have realized you were meant to grow among us, to commune with the world as humans alone cannot.’

  “You knew my mother...” Kherron could not remember the last time he had contemplated the word, let alone the fact that a role so meaningful in so many others’ lives meant nothing to him. The Iron Pit was all he’d ever known, and he was just another boy who forgot what mothers were and that he could not have existed without one. An unknown wound ruptured within him at the thought, and the woman made of water and light opened her arms to him.

  ‘Come,’ she said, nodding. ‘Let me show you.’

  There was such kindness in those colorless eyes, such love offered in the promise of her embrace. Even if he’d wanted to, Kherron did not think he could have turned away. The pack slid from his shoulder and dropped to the ground, followed by his cloak, and he hardly took notice. His feet moved slowly toward her, crossing the streambank’s line between earth and water, until he stood between her outstretched arms. He barely registered the sight of his booted foot resting steadily upon the surface of the water as if it were solid ground. Then the woman wrapped her arms around him, and he collapsed into her embrace.

  It would have seemed odd to feel the solid pressure of her body against his—of her unexpected warmth as she held him to her breast, her cheek resting gently upon the top of his head—if the visions hadn’t taken him. Kherron felt all these things, but he saw none of it, whisked through time and space to find himself somewhere else entirely.

  A woman knelt at the edge of a lake—a different woman, fully human with long dark hair and gentle eyes. She seemed to be muttering to herself, perhaps praying, though the words passing her lips were the only rite she performed. When she finished, she took a deep breath, gazed at the sky, then stood. A wave of discomfort flowed through Kherron when she lifted the simple, brown, homespun dress from her body and left it on the shore.

  She carried all the beauty of health and youth, strengthened by the self-assuredness of her steps into the cool water of the lake. Her brown hair trailed behind her on the water’s surface, and she stopped when all but her head and the first swell of her breasts were submerged. A soft, lilting song rose from her lips, wordless and joyful, as she bathed. Sunlight glistened on her hair, on her face, on her hands when she trailed them through the water.

  Before her, the lake began to boil, and while Kherron felt the lump of terror in his throat, he was neither there with her nor capable of voicing a warning. The woman froze when she noticed the unusual movement, her song cut short, but she did not flee. She did not look afraid at all, merely surprised, even when the water rose above the surface to take the shape of a man.

  He did not walk across the water but moved through it as if it did not exist, stopping inches from the human in his midst. She stared up at him with the hint of an eager smile, studying his face with wide, open eyes. The man made of the lake itself slowly lifted a wavering hand to cup her cheek, opening his mouth to say something Kherron could not hear. The woman grinned, nodded, and gave herself completely to the creature’s passionate kiss.

  The vision changed in an instant; the trees growing around the same lake wore a vibrant burst of autumn colors against the blue sky reflected in the water. Clothed again, the woman knelt upon the shore, cradling the rounded curve of her belly with one hand. She looked so happy and at peace, harboring the undeniable joy of every mother carrying new life. The lake’s surface rippled in the breeze, and the woman closed her eyes to sing the wordless tune to her unborn child.

  When Kherron saw her again, she stood farther from the lake, her rounded belly huge and straining against the thin blue dress beneath a half-cloak. The trees were bare, the sky grey, and she no longer smiled. Despite the fullness of her womb, the woman’s face had grown thin and weary, the skin stretched taut over the delicate wrist resting across her stomach. Her skin had paled too much—a sickly, bluish white—and when she took a single step toward the lake, her breast heaved as if that simple act were too much for her to bear. She tried to sing again, but a fit of coughing shook her, and when she caught her breath, tears streamed down her narrow cheeks.

  Then Kherron found himself once more standing on the surface of the stream beside the frozen waterfall, wrapped in this new woman’s gentle embrace. His mother’s tears had become his own, and he pulled back from the woman to wipe them away with the back of a hand. “She died, then,” he said, his voice catching in his throat.

  The woman standing before him wore a solemn frown of remorse, and she tilted her head, unaffected by his having stepped away. ‘We believe so.’

  “Who left me at the Iron Pit?” he asked, feeling a sickening rage welling within him. Had there been no one to take him in? No family left of the woman who had given him his life and her own?

  The woman’s head shook almost imperceptibly. ‘We cannot know. The mysteries of this world play out as they will, but discovering that answer does not change who you are.’

  “You did nothing to save her,” Kherron said, wanting to hate this creature before him, wanting someone to blame for the loss of
something he’d never had. “If I should have been returned to you, if I should have been told what I am... She didn’t have to be alone.”

  ‘That is not our way,’ the woman replied, gesturing toward him with an open hand. ‘She was never alone. She had you.’

  Taking a deep breath, Kherron tried to steel himself against the plunging defeat of accepting what he always had—that nothing could have been done, that no one cared, that he could not make anyone pay for what had been hoisted upon him. “That man with her in the river,” he started. “My father...” The words sounded foreign and uneasy coming from his own mouth, fueling his need to act upon what he’d learned. “Who is he?”

  ‘All of us and none of us.’ The woman spread her arms again, this time in a gesture of finality.

  Kherron winced, clenching his eyes shut in irritation. “I said no more riddles,” he hissed, immediately regretting his tone and glancing back up at her again, as if he were a child testing the limits of an adult’s patience. “That’s not how it works,” he added, trying to smooth it over and feeling foolish for pointing out the baser points of human procreation.

  ‘That is how it is,’ the woman said. ‘Every face you have seen, every movement of flame and metal, wind and rain, wood and earth—that is us. We have always been with you.’

  Scowling, Kherron stepped back again, feeling the soft earth of the streambank give way beneath the weight of his boots once more. “You tried to kill me.” The words came out before he could consider their meaning.

  Pealing laughter rang from the woman’s open mouth—an echo of wind through a valley, birdsong at dawn, leaves rustling in the breeze. ‘Never,’ she said. ‘And you have realized this by now.’

  Kherron’s grimace of discomfort betrayed the fact that he had, just recently, begun to believe differently about his odd experiences with the weather, with water and fire and the inanimate objects reacting around him. It seemed odd that he’d been so intent on feeling hunted, on being the target of some otherworldly wish to end his life, when he stood before this creature and still could not find it in him to hate her.