“It is who you are, is it not?” The woman, small as a waif, gently placed the lute beside her lap, but she kept one hand resting on the instrument.
He ignored her question. “And who might you be?”
Her voice remained meek, “I am Nee’lahn, of Lok’ai’hera.” She raised her eyes to him as if expecting him to recognize the name.
Lok’ai’hera? Why did that stir a memory? He tried to remember, but he had been through so many towns and villages. “And where is that?”
The woman shrank farther from him, withdrawing inward. She slid the lute from its cover. Again the red wood seemed to stir in whirls in the lamplight. “How soon you forget, Er’ril of Standi,” she whispered to her lute.
He sighed, tiring of this dance. “No one has called me by that name in hundreds of winters. That man is long dead.” He crossed to the window and pulled away the threadbare curtain. Men with torches milled in the courtyard. Many others carried buckets and shovels. A wagon pulled up, and men crowded into the rear. The two draft horses pulling the wagon had to be beat with switches to haul such a load. Er’ril watched the wagon lurch away toward the road. To the west, an orange glow rimmed the foothills.
He suddenly shivered, remembering when he had last stood in this cursed valley. Then, too, he had stared out an inn’s window toward fires in the hills.
He spoke with his back turned. “Why do you seek me?”
In the reflection of the glass, he saw the bardswoman bow her head and finger the strings of her lute. The lonely notes softened the hard edges of the room. “Because we are the last.”
Her notes continued to draw him from this room, pulling him to a faraway place. He turned to her. “The last of what?” he mumbled.
“The last whispers of power from the distant past, of Chi.”
He scowled. He had come to revile the name of the spirit god who had abandoned Alasea to desecration by the Gul’gothal. His voice hardened. “I bear no such power.”
She tilted her head, totally obscuring her small face with the fall of her hair. “You have lived for five centuries, yet you doubt your power?”
“It was all my brother’s doing. He did this to me.”
She whispered a word. “Shorkan.”
Er’ril started slightly at the mention of his brother’s name. He raised an eyebrow and looked closer at the woman. “How do you know so much about me?”
“I have studied the old stories.” She reached out a slender finger and pulled aside a stream of blond hair to reveal a single violet eye. “And ancient words: ‘Three will become one and the Book will be bound.’ ”
“Old words from a forsaken time.”
Her eye narrowed at him. “You are no longer like the man described in the stories. That man rescued the Book, protected it. He searched the lands, trying to raise resistance to the Gul’gothal overlord. That man is rumored still to be roaming the land.”
“Like I said, old stories.”
“No, the same story.” She let her hair fall back over her face. “It continues to this day.”
Er’ril sat on the windowsill. “How did you recognize me?”
She cradled her lute in her lap and strummed the strings a single time. “The music.”
“What? What does your lute have to do with this?”
She caressed the edge of the lute with the tip of a finger. “Beyond the Teeth, deep in the depths of the Western Reaches, there once stood an ancient grove of koa’kona trees. Do you still know them—the koa’kona, the spirit trees? Or have you forgotten them, too?”
“I remember one that stood in the center of A’loa Glen.” His mind’s eye pictured the sun setting through the tiered branches of the single koa’kona tree, its blossoms like sapphires in the twilight. “It grew higher than all the thin spires of the city.”
Nee’lahn sat straighter on the bed and revealed her face fully for the first time. There was a sudden longing in her voice and eyes. “Does it still flower?”
“No. Last I saw it, the brine of the sea had rotted its roots.” Er’ril noticed his words seemed to wound her. “I believe it is dead,” he finished softly.
Er’ril saw a tear roll down her cheek. She continued, a sadness edging her words. “The grove was called Lok’ai’hera, the Heart of the Forest. It—”
Er’ril stumbled to his feet, suddenly remembering. Lok’ai’hera! Like a river cresting its banks during a flash storm, the memory came to him. He pictured his father smoking his pipe at the kitchen table, one hand rubbing his full belly. The clarity of the memory weakened his knees. He pictured the spiderweb of broken blood vessels on his father’s nose, the way his breath whistled as he pulled from his pipe, the creak of his chair on the plank floor. “My father . . .” he mumbled. “My father once told me about his journey to such a place in his youth. I always thought it a fable. He boasted of nymphs wedded to tree spirits, wolves as tall as men, and trees as thick around as our house.”
“Lok’ai’hera is not a fable. It was my home.”
Er’ril stayed quiet, picturing his own home. The memory of his father brought back a rush of old images, pictures he had been trying so hard to forget: he and his brother playing hunt-and-seek in the fields, the harvest celebration when he first kissed a girl, the way the plains seemed to stretch forever in all directions. “I’m sorry,” he said to her. “What happened to your home?”
Her shoulders wilted. “It is a long tale of a time before your people first stepped upon the land. A curse was placed upon our spirit trees by a foul race called the elv’in.” She seemed to draw inward, away from the dusty room.
Er’ril could hear the ancient pain that still ached her heart. “These elv’in of whom you speak,” he said, speaking into her silence. “I have heard other tales of the silver-haired wraiths. I thought them creatures of myth.”
“Time transforms all truths into mere myths.” She raised her eyes to him briefly before again lowering her face. “You of all people should know this, Er’ril of Standi. To most, you are myth and legend.”
Er’ril remained wordless.
She continued her story. “Over countless years, we sought a way to stop the death of our trees. But the Blight, the ancient curse of the elv’in, spread. Leaves turned to dust in our fingers; branches sagged, riddled with grubs. Our mighty home dwindled down to a small handful of koa’kona trees. Even these last few were doomed to die until a mage of your people came and preserved the last of our trees with a Chyric blessing. But as Chi’s power vanished from the land, the Blight returned. Our homes once again began to die. Trees that had thrived since the land was young failed to flower. Strong limbs began to droop. And with our trees, our people began to die.”
“Your people?”
“My sisters and our spirits. We are tied to our trees as you are to your soul. One cannot live without the other.”
“You—”
She brushed her fine hair from her face. “I am of the nyphai.”
“You’re a nymph?”
A tiny scowl scarred her lips. “So your people have called us.”
“But my father said you couldn’t live more than a hundred steps from your trees. How can you be here, half a world away?”
“He was wrong.” Nee’lahn placed a hand on her lute. “We must be near our spirit, not the tree. A master woodwright of the Western Reaches carved this lute from the dying heart of the last tree . . . my tree. Her spirit resides in the wood. Her music is the song of ancient trees. She calls to those who still remember the magick.”
“But why? The time of magick is long dead.”
“Her song draws others like her, those with traces of magick, to her, as a lodestone draws iron. I have been traveling the countryside playing her music, probing for those with power. Her music allows me to see into the mind’s eye of the listener. I saw what you remembered as I played: the towers of A’loa Glen, the fields of your home in Standi. I knew who you were.”
“But what do you wish of me?”
“A cure.”
“For what?”
“For Lok’ai’hera. I am the last. With my death, so die my people and our spirit. I must not let that happen.”
“How am I supposed to help you?”
“I don’t have that answer. But the oldest of our spirits and her keeper had a vision on her deathbed.”
Er’ril sighed and rubbed at his temple with his one hand. “I am sick of visions and prophecy. Look where it has brought me.”
Her voice swelled with hope. “It has brought you to me, Er’ril of Standi.”
“You are placing too much significance on this chance encounter.”
“No, the evening is full of portents.”
“Like what?”
“The elder’s dying vision was of Lok’ai’hera sprouting to green life from red fire—a fire born of magick.” She pointed out the window. “Fire. And now you—a creature of magick—are here.”
“I am not a creature of magick. I am a man. I can be maimed like any other.” He pointed to his missing arm. “I can die like any other. Only . . . only the blessed gift of aging is denied me. And that bit of magick is more curse than gift.”
“Still, it is enough,” she said firmly. “Fire and magick run the night.” Her eyes glowed the same color as the jewel-like blossoms of the lone tree in his lost A’loa Glen. “It is a beginning.”
9
THE SCREECH OF the winged beast split the darkness like a butcher’s ax. The creature had been tracking them throughout the night. With the cry echoing in her ears, Elena added her weight to help haul Mist up the wall of the dry gully.
Joach’s arms strained on the lead as he pulled on the horse. “It has our scent,” her brother said between clenched teeth. “We need to leave Mist and run!”
“No!” Elena said fiercely as she slid down the dry streambed to get behind the horse. Mist’s back hooves had sunk to the pasterns in the loose dirt, bogging down the horse. Exhausted, Mist did not even struggle to free herself.
Elena fought her way to Mist’s rump. She ran a hand across the horse’s feverish skin. Sweat dripped and steamed in the cold air from the beast’s quivering flanks. “I’m sorry, Mist,” she whispered as she reached for the horse’s tail. “But I’ll not let you give up!”
Elena gripped the horse’s tail and hauled it back over the horse’s rump, bending it cruelly. “Now move your butt, girl!” She smacked Mist’s hindquarter with one hand and yanked harder on the tail with the other.
Mist snorted explosively and bucked herself free of the dirt, throwing Elena to the bottom of the gully. Landing on her backside, she watched with satisfaction as Joach, guiding and pulling on the reins, hauled the horse out of the trap.
A second screech suddenly burst across the foothills. It sounded closer.
“Hurry, El!” Joach called to her.
Elena didn’t need his prodding. She was already on her feet and digging her way back up the loose wall of the streambed.
Once up top, Joach pointed. “Millbend Creek is only a few leagues that way.”
Elena shook her head. “We need to hide, now! The creature is too near.” She grabbed Mist’s reins from Joach and pulled the horse in the opposite direction—toward the blazing fire.
“El, what’re you doing?”
“The smoke will cloak us better and confuse the nose of the hunter. Now hurry! I know a place we can hide until it loses interest.”
Joach followed, his eyes on the burning orchard. “That’s if we don’t get fried first.”
Elena ignored her brother, trying to keep track of familiar markers. The smoke and her thundering heart confused her concentration. Was this the right way? She thought she recognized this area of the orchard, but she wasn’t sure. She searched as she raced with Mist in tow. Yes! Over there! That old stone shaped like a bear’s head. She wasn’t mistaken. This was the place.
Darting to the left, she waved to her brother to follow. Hidden in a wild hollow ahead lay her goal. Suddenly the blanket of smoke obscuring the stars overhead billowed as something huge shot past just a stone’s throw from their heads. Elena could almost feel its weight pressing down on her as it flapped over them. It flew toward the gully from which they had just fled.
Joach’s eyes were wide in the meager light from the nearby fires as he stared at her. She recognized in them the terror that gripped her own heart. If they had tried to make a dash for the Millbend, they would have been easy targets. Joach nodded for her to continue, no longer objecting to their path toward the flames.
Elena led the way, quickly but as silently as possible. She allowed herself a soft sigh of relief when she spotted the Old Man. Leading Mist, Elena entered the small patch of wild forest sunk in a shallow hollow, an uncivilized oasis among the orderly orchard rows. She pushed through the brambles and led the way to the center of the hollow.
“Sweet Mother,” Joach whispered as his eyes first saw the Old Man. “I can’t believe it.”
Hulking before them stood the dead husk of a massive tree—not one of the spindly trunked apple trees, but one of the ancient giants that towered here long before humans first entered this valley. Eight men with linked arms couldn’t reach around its trunk. The top of the tree had long since fallen away, leaving only this ragged stump with a single thick branch pointing toward the sky.
“I found it while exploring,” Elena said. She spoke in hushed tones, not to avoid the ears of the winged hunter but in respect for what stood before her. “I call him the Old Man.”
She led the way to a long black split in its bark. “It’s hollowed out inside, a natural cave. We can—”
A screeching roar of rage exploded across the valley. The hunter had realized that its prey had slipped its snare.
Without another word, Elena and Joach tumbled inside the embrace of the Old Man. Even Mist didn’t balk at sliding inside with them. The hollowed chamber in the heart of the wood was roomy enough to have allowed a small herd of horses to enter with them.
The first thing that struck Elena as they sheltered within the tree was the Old Man’s smell. The pervading reek of decaying apples under the boughs of the orchard never penetrated the fresh, woody scent of the tree. The air here was redolent with pine oils and a hint of chestnut. Though the tree was long dead, its scent persisted, as if the Old Man’s ancient spirit still hovered within the husk of the once proud giant. Even the choking smoke wafting now through the orchard could not push away the Old Man’s presence.
Elena reached a palm to rest tenderly against the wood. Somehow she knew the Old Man would protect them this night. As her right hand touched the wood, she felt a cool calmness spread up her arm to her heart. And for just a moment, she thought she heard words whispered in her head, like a voice reaching up from a deep well.
Child . . . of blood and stone . . . a boon . . . seek my children . . .
She shook her head at her foolishness and removed her hand from the tree. Wrapping her arms about her chest, she dismissed the voice. It was just this night of terror echoing in her head.
Joach stepped beside her, and without a word, they each reached a hand toward the other. Joach squeezed her fingers tightly as they both listened to the night. Eventually the screeches faded in the distance. They had fooled the beast and confused its tracking, and it had apparently abandoned its chase—at least for now.
Joach peeked his head out of the tree’s heart and surveyed the orchard. “We must leave now,” he said. “The fire is on us. We’ll be trapped in it if we don’t hurry.”
Elena nodded, though she regretted leaving the companionship of the Old Man. She led Mist out and was instantly assaulted by the sting of smoke on eyes and nose. She glanced over her shoulder. The fires lit the entire horizon behind her! Its devouring howl rolled toward them from the heights.
“We must hurry,” Joach said, pushing through the wall of brambles. “We still have along way to go to reach the creek.”
Elena followed. Soon they cleared the hollow and raced across
the orchard. Elena kept glancing behind her. They were hunted again, but this time by roaring flames.
Her last sight of the Old Man was its one outstretched branch. It was afire, like a drowning man in a sea of flames, waving for help.
With tears in her eyes, she turned away. Strange words still echoed in her head: Seek my children.
“I CAN’T BELIEVE Bruxton’s boy would do such a thing!” The wagon driver, a gnarled root of a man, pounded his buckboard with his fist. The other men gathered in the back of the wagon grumbled hot words. Several shook shovels above their heads.
Rockingham leaned over the pommel of his winded horse toward the wagon. “His father sent for the seer.” He pointed a thumb to Dismarum, who rode a smaller filly tethered to his mount. The old man bent with his cowl over his face, rocking as if half asleep. “His father sent for us to try to get the boy and girl some help.”
“But those children . . . you’re saying his father actually caught the two together? He saw the abomination with his own eyes?”
Rockingham nodded. “In the barn. Like dogs, they were, not caring that they were brother and sister.”
A satisfying flurry of gasps arose from the rear of the wagon. Rockingham suppressed a twinge of a smile. This was too easy, wicked words to incite the hidden fears of every family. He pulled his riding cloak tighter over his shoulders. Down the dark road ran a cool wind from the mountain heights. Rockingham glanced to the nearby smoldering foothills. The blaze still occasionally spouted plumes of flame as it stretched through the orchards.
A squeaky voice rose from somewhere in the cart. “And when you got there, what happened?”
Rockingham righted himself in his saddle to again face the wagon. “We found the boy with an ax. His mother lay bloody at his feet; his father already long cold on the dirt.”
“Sweet Mother!”
Several townsmen pressed thumbs to forehead in a warding against evil.
“And the girl child, she had already set torch to barn and house. The boy came at us with his ax as soon as we appeared. I was forced to guard the blind seer and retreat.”
Wit'ch Fire Page 9