by Jason Denzel
Vlenar walked at his typical quick pace, his eyes darting everywhere, as if expecting attackers to leap out of the grass to attack them. He wore his leather armor and carried both his sword and an unstrung short bow on his back. Two sheathed belt knives rested on his back beside the natural spikes protruding from his fitted armor.
Pomella increased her pace as they crossed the lawn toward the tree line and the towering hedge wall that now marked the border of Kelt Apar. Seeing it up close for the first time, she frowned. It was built primarily of tightly packed dirt, stone, and grass. It could be climbed, she supposed, but it was too high for large crowds to scale, and too dense to easily topple.
“How do we get through?” Pomella asked.
Vlenar considered the wall and glanced back toward the tower. “Cccall Oxxxillian.”
Pomella nodded and tapped the air with a finger. The air rang with the sound of a silver bell as it previously had for Vivianna. A heartbeat later the ground rumbled and broke apart. The Green Man emerged from the cracks and holes that appeared. He towered over Pomella and her horse. His pebbled eyes softened when he saw her. “You called, Mistress?”
“Vlenar and I need passage through the wall.”
Oxillian lingered his gaze upon his creation. Perhaps it was her imagination, but Pomella thought she saw a frown touch his face. “Of course,” he said.
Another rumble, this one far louder than the previous one, washed over Pomella. A narrow, rectangular passageway, just wide enough for Pomella, Vlenar, and Quercus to pass through, opened in the wall nearby. A handful of people stood on the opposite side, peering into Kelt Apar with wide, surprised eyes. Vlenar’s tongue zipped out before he hurried ahead to secure the temporary tunnel.
Pomella studied the Green Man. No matter how many times she saw him, often on a daily basis, she marveled at the intricate details of how he was crafted. He always looked more or less the same, but his eyes, beard, and other features were formed from slightly different rocks or grass or other materials. But always she could see deep thoughts and memories behind those eyes. She thought of what Hizrith had said regarding talking with those who had lived on Moth a long time.
“Ox,” she said, “are you familiar with the name Lagnaraste?”
Oxillian considered her. “I’m sorry, Pomella,” he rumbled. “It sounds familiar, but if it involves Crow Tallin, I’m sad to say my knowledge is woefully limited. The closer we come to its peak, the more my mind becomes muddled.”
“Why’s that?”
“My senses become overstimulated,” he said. “It is as though I hear every voice on the island, and feel every hand grasping me at once. I do not understand it, but I somehow lose myself during that time.”
A memory from seven years ago trickled into Pomella’s mind of Ox, with a body formed of jagged rock, covered in blood and impaling a bandit with his massive fist.
“Are you … safe … to be around during that time?” she asked.
He smiled down at her. “Yes,” he said. “I am told I become withdrawn. I do not remember anything until Treorel passes.”
“What do you think of this?” Pomella asked, nodding toward the wall.
“I do as the High Mystic commands,” he said.
“I know,” Pomella said. “But surely you have an opinion?”
He continued to study her for a long moment. Pomella wondered how much he saw, how much he could sense about her. “Nobody has ever asked me that,” he said.
“Really? You’ve been here nine hundred years and nobody has asked your opinion of what goes on?”
“I’m like the landscape,” he said. “Ever present, never changing, as reliable as the rising sun. That is all.”
Pomella’s heart went out to him. She knew he was capable of complex emotion, having experienced it many times before. But she’d never truly wondered if Ox ever felt lonely.
“Well, I want to know what you think,” she said.
He looked from Pomella to the wall. “Crow Tallin is a time of great stress, during which everyone, including the High Mystic, is prone to making mistakes. I don’t know if this wall is one, but I’m reminded that the only thing that matters in the end is the will of the Myst.”
“Now you sound like a Mystic,” Pomella said with a grin.
“When you live with them for nine centuries, some ideas stick around,” he said, returning the smile.
Pomella reached up to place a hand on his. “Thank you,” she said.
“Travel safely,” he told her. “Summon me if you require assistance. I know your voice best of all, and even with the muddled confusion of these days, I believe I could find you.”
Pomella patted his hand in thanks, then tugged Quercus’ reins and led him through the tunnel. Vlenar waited on the opposite side, perhaps five long strides away. The roof of the tunnel loomed above her almost menacingly as she passed beneath. A trickle of dirt tumbled down in front of her.
When she cleared the exit, the wall rumbled to a close, puffing a cloud of dirt. Pomella considered the crowd of people gathered nearby. Most of them appeared to be commoners, but Pomella saw two or three that were well dressed enough that they could’ve been merchant-scholars. They looked at each other, then back to her. A man in the back of the crowd ran east. Vlenar watched him go until Pomella put a hand on his shoulder to reassure him everything was fine. She didn’t want the ranger tackling more people.
The rest of the gathered commoners parted to make room for Vlenar to pass. The laghart ranger commanded his own fearful presence. Pomella wished he wouldn’t scowl so often. She knew him to be a quiet, dedicated ranger, one who loved the island. She’d even witnessed him making a joke on occasion. Seeing these people stepping away from him in fear made her sad.
Pomella followed him north. The shade from the trees masked the sun’s heat and the familiar scent of evergreen and oak mingled around her. As she entered the Mystwood, the faces in the crowd shifted from Vlenar to her. Their expressions slowly turned from fear and uncertainty to ones of recognition and happiness. Whispers whistled through the people like wind between trees. Somebody spoke a single word, “Hummingbird!”
A hand reached toward her, seeking to brush her cloak. It belonged to a woman old enough to be Pomella’s mhathir. Deep grooves cut beneath the Goodness’ gray eyes. Pomella wondered what would prompt such a person to leave her home and stand at the edge of Kelt Apar. Had the fay affected her? Or had she come hoping simply to see the High Mystics? Or come to see Pomella?
Pomella lifted her fingertips and touched the woman’s hand.
Another hand reached for her, and another. Pomella met each hand. Soon dozens reached in a gentle and unthreatening manner. She drifted through the people, passing from hand to hand. Hardly anybody spoke except to whisper her name or “Hummingbird!” again.
One girl, not much older than Pomella had been when she’d left Oakspring to attend the Trials, held both hands out toward her. “Please, Mistress! Take me as your apprentice!”
Pomella gaped at her in surprise. “I—I’m sorry, I can’t,” she said, and instantly regretted the disappointment she’d given the young woman.
More hands reached for Pomella, crowding out the girl and her continued pleas to take her as an apprentice.
Hector and Ena flew above everyone’s head. Pomella willed them to Unveil themselves, so that everyone gathered could see them. She did that often, hoping that their appearance would show them that the fay were not always to be feared. A couple of people reached toward the birds, but none came close to touching them. The hummingbirds trailed silvery smoke behind them, and a few people let it drift across their fingers.
A flicker of movement in the depths of the crowd caught Pomella’s attention. She turned toward it, perhaps expecting to see Berrit, but the face watching her wasn’t his. It was a young man in a rough canvas hood and gray cloak sporting a patchy scruff of black fuzz across his face. Pomella’s heart leaped with irrational fear. He looked exactly like a younger versio
n of her fathir. But how could that be possible? Her fathir was dead.
Realization washed over her.
“Gabor,” Pomella whispered.
Her brother had grown much in the last seven years, but there was no mistaking his darker skin and features that, like her own, stood out so prominently on Moth. He stared at her, eyes narrowed, before turning and vanishing into the crowd.
Pomella wanted to stop and follow him, but he was gone. She wanted to believe it hadn’t been her brother. Her gaze lingered in that direction another handful of moments. She made a promise to herself to investigate her brother’s whereabouts after Crow Tallin ended. She wondered if he’d even want to talk to her.
Before long, the wall and crowd of people around Kelt Apar faded from view, hidden behind the Mystwood trees, leaving Vlenar and Pomella alone.
“I willl ssscout a shhhort dissstanccce ahhhead,” Vlenar said. “Waittt hhhere for Vivvviannna.” They had traveled together many times, so the routine was familiar to Pomella. Vlenar did his job well, but she also suspected he enjoyed the isolation of going before everyone else, seeking the safest, most efficient path.
“Wait, Vlenar,” she said.
He glanced back at her.
“I need to do something. Alone. Will you wait here for me? Vivianna will meet you here soon.”
“Whhhere are you going?”
“I need to meet someone. Can you trust me?”
His slitted eyes narrowed and his tongue zipped out.
“Please,” she asked. “I will be back before nightfall.”
“We havvve limittted tttime!” he hissed.
“I know,” she said seriously. “But this is important.”
He glared at her but eventually nodded. “Whiccch directttion?”
“I don’t know exactly,” she confessed. She glanced skyward and called Hector and Ena. They buzzed down into her palm. Leaning forward, she whispered a name to them.
“Find him,” she said. “And lead me there.”
A tiny wave of fear rippled from the birds, but they zoomed northeast. Pomella turned to Vlenar again and passed Quercus’ reins to him. “I’ll leave markers. Look for me before nightfall.”
* * *
Pomella strode through a Mystwood she hardly recognized. With Treorel’s arrival in the sky, the woods had come to life with fay activity. Hundreds of silver creatures flew above her in the trees or scampered across her path. She walked with a purposeful stride, keeping her eyes on Hector and Ena, who led her by racing ahead and pausing in order for her to catch up.
Over the years, she’d come to know many parts of the Mystwood, but no matter how often she explored it, the land presented her with new secret grottos, clearings, and caves. She loved the mysteries it held, and counted herself fortunate to have a life that generally offered her the opportunity to range over its seemingly endless paths.
The deeper into the forest she traveled, the thicker the trees grew until the canopy of limbs above was so thick she could no longer see the sky. Her boots sank into the thick bed of dry leaves and needle fall that possibly hadn’t been touched by humans in decades, if not longer. A chill that wasn’t entirely born of the air made her tug her cloak tighter around her shoulders.
The hummingbirds led Pomella to a small clearing with a pond that resonated with her memory. The long branches of a gnarled tree bent low over the water’s surface. Vines and moss hung like curtains from those branches. Pomella eased toward the water’s edge. She searched the tree for the being she’d come to see.
“Mantepis!” she called. “I would speak with you! Come out.”
Nothing but shifting shadows moved in the tree’s branches. Pomella frowned. “Go find safety,” she murmured to Hector and Ena, remembering that the last time they’d come here Mantepis had expressed interest in gobbling up her hummingbirds.
The Myst wafted through the clearing like a steady fog. Pomella tapped the end of her staff into the water and stirred it as if it were soup in a cauldron. She slipped her boots off and tiptoed into the lukewarm pond.
“Mantepis!” she called again.
“My master wishes to know what you want,” said a voice behind her.
Pomella spun, holding her Mystic staff up. Her eyes widened as a tall man with skin darker than her own emerged from the shadows. Swirling tattoos covered much of his upper body, stretching from his neck, across his bare chest, and down his forearms.
Pomella’s pulse raced. “By the Saints,” she breathed. “Quentin.”
He was a shadow of the dashingly handsome man she’d known doing her apprentice Trials. His shoulder-length braided hair had been shaved, and his once muscular body had thinned to little more than skin-wrapped bones. He studied her with clouded eyes, giving no indication that he recognized her.
Pomella stepped toward him. “What happened to you?” she said, although she thought she knew part of the answer. At the end of the Trials, Yarina had branded him Unclaimed for his role in the conspiracy to murder her.
Her eyes drifted toward the shoulder-height branch he held in his hand. A Mystic staff. She’d never seen an Unclaimed holding one. Her mind raced with questions.
“Why do you wish to speak to my master?” Quentin repeated.
“Your master?” Pomella said as a sense of dread crawled through her gut.
“Master Mantepis is a wise and powerful Mystic,” Quentin said in a monotone voice. “I am fortunate to be his student.”
“Oh, Quentin,” Pomella said. There’d been a time during the Trials where the two of them had encountered the strange fay creature who had tried to entice Pomella with an offer of apprenticeship. Mantepis had accurately predicted that Yarina would choose a noble-born successor over Pomella, and had encouraged her to return to him when the High Mystic rejected her. Pomella had briefly considered his offer in the time between Yarina’s selection of Vivianna and when Lal had taken her as his student.
“You apprenticed yourself to him,” she murmured.
A flicker of life lit Quentin’s face for a moment, but it vanished quickly, leaving the clouded tarnish.
“My master wishes to know—”
Pomella turned her back to him and addressed the tree. “Don’t play games with me, Mantepis! You’ve had your joke, but it’s not funny. Show yourself or I will pull you from Fayün by your writhing tail!”
“My master—” Quentin droned on.
“Mantepis!” Pomella yelled.
A cloud of swirling silver coalesced in the branches of the tree. Pomella tightened her jaw as the head and body of a snake appeared, nearly as wide around as she was, with four spindly legs that poked out of his scaled hide. His legs gripped the large branch he rested upon, although they likely weren’t necessary for him to keep balance. The rest of his bulk wrapped itself around the branch as if squeezing it. Silver fire flicked over the length of his scaled body.
“You’ve got some jagged nerve,” Pomella said, nodding toward Quentin.
Mantepis flicked his forked tongue out. Amusement danced on his face and in his voice. “Pomella AnDone, champion Mystic of the common people!” he hissed. His mouth did not move as he spoke, but a clear voice emerged from him. “I see you like my pupil? He’s been quite faithful these past years.”
“You’ve destroyed him,” Pomella said.
Mantepis slithered farther down his branch, slinking closer to her. “Oh, no. Your High Mystic saw to that when she made him Unclaimed. Such a harsh punishment for the crime of being loyal to his family.”
“Yah, well, he nearly killed me and the High Mystic.”
“So you believe he should wither as an Unclaimed rather than become a Mystic under my tutelage? How very … noble of you, Mistress AnDone.”
“He’s not a Mystic,” Pomella said, trying not to grit her teeth. “He’s your slave.”
“He doesn’t believe that,” Mantepis said. “Ask him.”
“Master Mantepis is a wise and powerful Mystic,” Quentin said with the same expressi
on as before. “I am fortunate to be his student.”
Pomella continued to focus on Mantepis, refusing to turn around. “You’re vile,” she said.
“For a Mystic, you are very quick to judge!” Mantepis hissed. “I’m beginning to regret revealing myself to you. You’ve learned very little in your time with Faywong. He and the young High Mystic have apparently coddled you.”
Pomella stepped forward. “You will speak with respect for my master. Grandmaster is a greater Mystic than you could imagine.”
A strange laughter emanated from Mantepis. “He was great, once. But he chose a different path, now didn’t he?”
“I didn’t come here to have you insult my mentor,” Pomella said.
Mantepis lowered himself closer to her, unfolding one of his thin legs so that it dipped into the water. “Then why did you come here? Other than to mock my apprentice.”
“I need to know who or what Lagnaraste is,” Pomella said.
Mantepis’ tongue flicked in and out repeatedly. His slitted eyes narrowed. It struck Pomella as a very laghart-like reaction. “Of course you do,” he said with some bite. “I’m not surprised the High Mystics tell you nothing. Perhaps they think even less of you than I. Go back to your master and beg for the scraps of his wisdom. I have no time for overeager apprentices.”
Pomella dissolved the spark of anger before it could ignite a firestorm. Instead, she raised a serene sense of calm, and let that wash over her. Within that mind-set, she pulled on the Myst, letting it flood her with surprising speed and power. Her Mystic staff flashed outward, touching Mantepis, and she spun completely around as if hurling a fishing rod.
The forceful motion surged with the Myst and ripped Mantepis from the tree. His massive body flailed in the air as Pomella slammed him into the pond. The water barely rippled, reacting only to the steps she took. But the snakelike creature thrashed all the same as if she were drowning him.
Pomella called the Myst again, using it to rush the pond water around her legs and lift her high into the air. She loomed above Mantepis, Mystic staff held wide, her hair blowing with unseen winds of Myst.