Sapling: The Broken Halls

by Dan Gillis

  There were concerns to see to rather than wondering upon the ranks of an old extinct Order. There were others who needed him, and he would seek to serve them always … with all his might. The thought carried a tender feeling through his heart.

  “Your dwelling, Initiate, is much like your mind - full of clutter and trivial sentiments. Clean it up. Now.”

  Aragil - Alacritor: Master of the House, Life and Preservation

  Quarters Inspection

  The Broken Plea

  NURIL HAD FELT IT.

  After arising early under the soft light of dawn, they progressed toward Syrion in a somewhat uneventful ride. It had all changed in an instant. A powerful surge passed through her and drew forth an audible gasp from her frame. She reigned in her steed and dismounted quickly. Ebyn and the others in the Blade escort pulled up nearby with curious faces. Nuril waved them off sharply even as she stumbled forward. Finally, she fell to the cold ground and clutched her throbbing chest.

  Shifting her riding cloak she carefully withdrew the dagger from its small sheath at her waist. She placed it upon the ground delicately and sat back upon her knees and breathed in deeply. Her heart was pounding terribly - her pulse erratic. Removing the dagger did nothing to ease her burden. Something was tearing at her very soul and her body was crying out in distress.

  She had only felt such anguish once before. In her mind the past came rushing back upon her senses as a hungry huntress for the kill. She reeled as her mind echoed the thrumming within her bosom.

  “Stop this, Kadyn! Enough playing about!” the woman chided from behind the cloth wrapped securely around her face. The mountainous terrain was challenging enough when she could see. Yet, despite her nervousness, she trusted him implicitly. When she stumbled, her husband held her steady from any harm. Her other arm was securing the burden in her womb.

  “Patience, Elayn. I am sure it's around here somewhere,” the young woodsman teased. She was finally growing accustomed to the new name and smiled behind the makeshift veil. “Actually … hold on one moment. Ah yes, I knew we should have turned back there. We are in my other farm. I must have lost my way.”

  “I doubt such a moment in your life exists,” she gibed back. “I am losing patience for this game.” Her voice was playful but carried a hint of warning. This wasn’t lost on the young man.

  “Just a little farther … Alright, here we are.” He unwound the cloth slowly, removing the layers of her anxiousness. Her eyes adjusted and set on the rough-hewn cabin before her. It was nestled perfectly between two fruit trees which were bursting in full blossom. Wooden beams criss-crossed in elegant patterns through the rustic structure. The scene was complete with the subdued chatter of the forest. Even the dormant heights of Racur were obscured in the pleasant scene. The woman raised a hand to her mouth, speechless.

  “When did you?”

  “After working the pasture fields each day. Remember those ‘extra chores’ I mentioned?” She smiled and shook her head incredulously.

  Together they stepped through the threshold into a new weave of life.

  * * *

  Nothing could have prepared her for the overwhelming agony of the birthing or the inexpressible joy which followed. It had only been days since the child was delivered. There had been complications and recovery had been slow but her husband was a bulwark of strength.

  The new babe was quietly resting in the cozy down-filled bedding next to her mother. The infant’s face was full of warm light - the gentleness of innocence.

  “Dearest Tehsa …” Elayn sang out as she caressed the newborn’s face. The babe shifted slightly in sleep and cooed contently. The mother continued her song.

  Dearest Tehsa born from me,

  All my hopes live on in thee.

  May all your days be bright,

  Shine on! As Llian of light.

  Yours forever my heart to keep,

  Rest now dearest, in thy sleep.

  I will watch and guard thy place,

  Sleep on! Until our next embrace.

  The home was a haven of peace, a refuge from the storms of the past. Yet, despite the security she felt from the sturdy walls, a great torrent broke the peaceful moment. It broke through the doorway in the form of her husband. Kadyn charged into the room in a great fluster.

  “Hurry! Quickly! We have to go now!” Fear betrayed his usual collected demeanour. His eyes were wide as he dashed about the room grabbing certain essentials. The woman rose up swiftly even as the child broke from sleep into a soft cry.

  “Kadyn, what is it?” she asked, even as her body protested sharply against the movement. Her voice shifted its pitch mid-sentence as the pains stabbed through her midsection. It was still too soon after the birthing. The woodsman came to her quickly, discarding what he carried onto the bed. He guided her to a sitting position with a steady tenderness. His vain attempts to mask the trepidation in his voice was commendable.

  “They’re coming, Elayn, strange beasts and handlers from Racur - they are swarming forth in great streams even now. Lliankor! That desolate mountain lay quiet for too long and I played the fool for thinking we could live in its shadow. All we have done here …” Suddenly her husband was back in the moment and he shook his head to clear his thoughts. “Can you make it?” he asked in a voice mixed with fear and concern. In a moment her feet were upon the floor and she took up a swaddling blanket.

  “Just like before … pass her to me. Kadyn, look to your duty, I will do mine.” His face was puzzled for a moment and he nodded slowly. Cradling Tehsa with tenderness, Kadyn placed her lightly in the arms of her mother. He set to collecting the remainder of the essentials into a sturdy pack. In haste, many things were left or forgotten. Elayn knew she was never to return to this home. Her eyes immediately drew to the nightstand. While cradling her child, she reached down, fumbling with an ornate encasement which had rested contently in its new space. Kadyn noticed her plight and without a word strode over and took the gilded box from her quickly, depositing it into the pack. As it passed into the bag, the hinge swung ajar and she heard a soft clatter upon the wooden floor. In vain she searched with her eyes for what had fallen. Her precious brooch had tumbled out of sight and she was entirely unable to reach its location. Necessity and haste drove the longing from her mind.

  In minutes, the home was empty once more.

  Elayn strained and gasped as she felt her abdomen burning with pain. Their flight through the woods was impeded by her condition. She knew this and cursed even as she dodged through brambles and branches which tore at her skin and clothes.

  Deep warbled baying penetrated through the brush. Their scent would be simple enough to follow but Kadyn had dealt with tracking predators before. He uncapped a small vial and dabbed the smallest amount of a brown paste upon each of them. He withdrew a neck scarf and, placing a rock within the folds, whirled and sent it flying away from their line of escape.

  In minutes the strange sounds of pursuit were moving away. The mother pressed on while the babe whimpered in protest of the rapid changes. Tehsa had remained silent for the most part largely due to the swaddling. She could not perceive what was going on around her other than the jostling of haste.

  Kadyn came near to Elayn. There was hope in his eyes. “I need to lead them off again. I will need time to double back the scent and set the decoy. Move twenty spears to the north - there is a thick copse of red willows. Your scent will be masked if you close yourself within them.” She nodded even as he kissed her forehead softly. She smiled and dismissed him with a wave of her arm. Smiling confidently, his sure feet moved noiselessly away.

  Elayn stepped carefully into the brush and cringed at every snap of a branch or deadwood. Kadyn was the master of the woods, she was a blundering Gnarel. She glanced down into the bundle in her arms. Tehsa was breathing softly, with eyes bright and alert staring back at her.

  “Thank you, dear one,” she whispered softly. She stepped again and forced down the impulse to cry out in pain. Her
head dropped instinctively and her gaze fell to the ground.

  It was then she saw something upon the ground glistening in the morning light. Her eyes traced the same colour back along where she had walked.

  Blood.

  She looked to her boots and saw the cause of what her mind had calculated. The unseen and unhealed wounds of birth had given way. Thin streams of blood coursed down her legs onto her boots. Her sleeping gown had covered the evidence for a time. Her legs trembled and she nearly lost her footing. Perhaps it was the sight of the blood or the clarity of the dilemma at hand that caused her to falter.

  She stopped to consider what to do. She was in too much agony to attempt to clean the blood or stop it. She needed to heal. Simple matters like this were so easily handled by her Mihyl of the past. Now her frenzied mind could come to no certain solution. How long could she last? Like the wounded prey of the hunt, her own blood would lead them true.

  Then her mind recalled a small flowing stream nearby which could afford her a chance to break the scent or even a chance of washing away the blood. Yet this was a deviation from her destination. With Kadyn away, she had to be where he would expect. He may not be able to find her again in their silent trek.

  Closing her eyes for a moment, she made her choice to stay the path to the copse.

  The strange infernal baying drew fear from her heart as water from the well. They had found her scent, her blood. She moved as quickly as her body would permit, clutching her babe firmly while stumbling and fording her way through the foliage. Another part of her soul called out to her, anxious from disuse. She could sense the Root, tantalizingly near. A simple gesture within would flood her with power enough to contend with her enemy. Yet her oath was stronger still, which she maintained as a sign between her new life and the misery of the past. Also, she was in no condition to form the turbulent weaves of the Root.

  She pressed onward to make the copse in time.

  Kadyn barged through the far line of trees, his face full of alarm. From Elayn’s vantage point within the willows she could see him looking upon the ground even as he glanced in the direction of the incessant howling behind. He looked to her position, locking to her eyes. His expression changed after a moment and he smiled at her again with knowing affection. She spied tender words mouthed softly upon his lips. He took the pack from his shoulders and threw it far from him into the brush. She watched as he withdrew a knife from his belt and drew it across his hand. She gasped silently as she perceived his intent even as he raised a finger to his lips. Divining his intent, she shook her head in protest. It was to no avail.

  Kadyn walked along her path and masked her scent with his own. At the last minute he backtracked his scent away from the willow copse. It was then they burst as a wave from the trees. The beast trackers at first and then their masters.

  She could not detract her eyes from the scene. She had seen countless deaths, most at her own hands. Somehow, she had grown to deeply love this man whom she had known for only a relatively brief time. He had taken her in and made a home and family. As the beasts tore at his body, he made no sound. He would not allow her to live with the memory of his agony.

  Somewhere amidst this awful scene, she grasped the Root. Whether done unconsciously or not she could not tell. The power was a sweet flood after an age in a desert.

  Almost in an instant her tired and damaged body convulsed and she sunk down to the ground. The pain was near unbearable and yet in her determination she did not release her gaze.

  She clutched her child close even as her free hand twisted through the air. There was no hesitation. The weaving was ingrained in her memory from countless hours of study and practice.

  A spark of light leapt jubilantly from her outstretched fingers. It fractured and split into misshapen shards of hot energy which traced through the air toward the foe.

  The clearing was suddenly full of tormented howls and screams. The hounds of Racur writhed and kicked out against the unseen enemy that assaulted them. Calls of alarm soon replaced the last of the whimpers. The handlers ran forward, their heads turning this way and that.

  Elayn stifled the urge to weep and it caught in her throat. The awful spasms within her abdomen were nothing in comparison to the horror before her eyes. The ravaged remains of her husband were just as her feelings - too close to ignore. Tehsa began to wriggle in her blanket. It would be moments before she would cry. Elayn knew this much of her new child. She only had seconds to act. The enemies were too great in number for her to combat in such a weakened state. Then, amidst the clamour and commotion in the wooded glade, she found a moment of clarity. A terrible and awful plan took form.

  She would not permit them to take her child.

  She stretched out to the Root within her mind. A terrible struggle ensued as her physical frame resisted what her mind was determined to do. Perhaps it was a mother’s instinct repulsed by her desperate plan. It may have been the revulsion of the power that would overcome her in agony once again. It felt to her as though a real barrier was being erected between her and the Root.

  Whatever the cause, she could not connect to the power which passed beneath her, so tantalizingly close.

  “Please,” she pleaded softly. Young Tehsa’s whimpering grew into crying. Then a fury of wailing. The enemy looked to the wood and the source.

  “Dear Mother, please … give me the strength,” she cried out in feeble desperation. It was no use. She felt the connection sliding away until she was completely desolate in her grief. Cries of alarm were dangerously close. She grasped a pointed dead branch in desperation but it was in vain.

  The enemy seized upon her and wrenched the woman from her place. As she tumbled between the trees her arm released the babe involuntarily.

  In that moment, a strange sound filled the woods, from the height of the willows to the depths of every burrow. It was a sweet and terrible thrumming crescendo, full of fury and anger. It startled all the assailants and they clasped their hands to their ears in fright. Within their respite of turmoil and disorientation, she thought for a moment she saw a man standing silent at the far side of the clearing, with Kadyn’s pack in hand. The figure seemed poised and unperturbed by the chaos all around her.

  Then there was nothing, the clamouring surge of her foe obscuring her vision. Her assailants ran from the field in desperation or succumbed to madness. They dragged Elayn roughly with them even as she cried out in terrible anguish. It was a broken plea - all of her hope passing into sorrow.

  “Tehsa!”

  It mingled with the awful splendour of Aerluin’s might.

  * * *

  “M’lady?” Ebyn’s voice carried through the harrowing memory. Nuril’s head had slipped back with her eyes clenched tight. The tension was easing, the hammering in her heart finding solace in the present. Stretched lines of strain softened slowly as her face touched the light that was escaping the peaks to the east. The cascades of long, dark locks shifted as she straightened herself.

  Very slowly, she grasped the blade which lay on the ground before her. Replacing it, she stood slowly with practiced grace. Ebyn and the others had kept their distance while she passed through the moment. Nuril was unaware of how much time had transpired and it wasn’t clear whether any of the others had felt the surge in the Root.

  “Ebyn, just before we stopped, did you sense anything?” The Ignitor raised an eyebrow and turned himself slightly in the saddle. He looked back from where they had been riding in contemplation. After a moment, he turned and shook his head silently. Nuril said nothing more. The moment had passed and now she was drawing attention to a matter that was beyond their reckoning.

  She strode to her waiting mare. Pulling herself upward, she gave her command to the party to ride on.

  As she pressed her mount into a brisk trot, many thoughts lingered in her mind. What had happened to cause such agony of the soul? Nuril had felt the pangs through the Root, transferred with potency from a place far from where they rode. That degre
e of magnitude was not possible without a form of amplification. The only rational explanation lay with Deepstone. It had been done before, where Root sensitives became attuned to the same token. She suspected the dagger at first, but it was still quite dormant. It was clear that she and another shared a link through a Deepstone artifact.

  The puzzle of this new revelation was both compelling and maddening. The ride for the former One Seat of Khyvla no longer passed away idly.

  “Cold logic is but an unstable dam against the flood of feeling. Sometimes there’s naught else but to weep.”

  Meryn - Imbertor: Master of Deep, Dark, and Rift

  Infirmary

  The Weave of the Making

  THE HOWLING OF THE WIND was incessant. The girl floundered in the rapids of power below, as all the elements were thrown into confusion. A pang of guilt fell across the Wilder’s heart. How he despised what he had become … how callous to observe her suffering, to see the Preceptor’s manipulative hand guide her to a dark end. She had changed so much from her infancy. ‘So dependent she was then, and now how she fights to find herself,’ Rhagal thought as he felt her unleash the power, grateful for his distance and Mother’s gift of true sight so many years past. “She struggles against herself and without a mentor she’ll have no chance to find the balance.” Nisa looked on silently at the scene. The guardians had awoken from their slumber and moved swiftly toward the girl. The black beasts’ eyes moved from the girl to the approaching forms. Rhagal felt her tail thrash about as her yellow eyes studied the girl.