CHILDREN OF AMARID

by DAVID B. COE

  “Jaryd?” Sartol asked, his eyes narrowing. “What makes you think that Jaryd had a ceryll?”

  “The blue mage-fire that we saw came from Jaryd.”

  “You know this?”

  Baden nodded. “Long ago, I had a vision of Jaryd as he would appear after he came into his power. The ceryll he wielded in that vision glowed with the same blue fire that Trahn and I saw tonight.”

  Without another word, Baden began to search the thicket for clues that might help him explain Orris’s actions. Trahn and Sartol did the same. As he passed by Jessamyn’s body, Baden paused and, bending carefully so as not to startle the white owl, he reached down and closed the Owl-Sage’s eyes with his hand. The owl hissed at him again, but she did not fly.

  “Baden!” Sartol called from just a few feet away. “I think I found the answer to your first question.”

  Baden stepped hurriedly to where the Owl-Master rested on one knee. Trahn had stopped moving and had turned his attention to Sartol, but he did not come nearer.

  “Look at these,” Sartol said, indicating several thick pieces of wood laid out side by side on the ground.

  Baden nodded slowly. “Torches. Of course. We’d need them if we were going to enter the grove without our cerylls.” He shook his head, a rueful smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “It was just like Jessamyn to get them herself, rather than sending someone else.”

  Sartol smiled at the remark. “Yes,” he agreed, “I suppose it was.” He stood, as did Baden. “But what could Jessamyn preparing torches have to do with Jaryd finding a ceryll?” he asked.

  Baden ran a hand through his wet hair and sighed. “I don’t know,” he replied finally. “I just don’t know.”

  “I’m not sure that we have the luxury of taking a lot of time to figure that out right now,” Trahn commented, approaching the two Owl-Masters. “If Sartol is right about Orris—and,” he conceded grudgingly, glancing at the Owl-Master, “that does seem possible—we need to return to Amarid before Orris does, and warn the others. The Owl-Masters also need to select a new sage; the Order shouldn’t be without one for very long.”

  “But if Orris is intent on killing Alayna and Jaryd,” Baden countered, “shouldn’t we remain here to protect them when they emerge from the grove?”

  Trahn placed a hand on Baden’s shoulder. “They may already be dead, Baden.”

  “But they may not be,” the Owl-Master returned pointedly.

  “Maybe we should split up,” Sartol suggested, looking from one man to the other.

  Baden nodded. “Good idea. I’ll stay here.”

  Trahn shook his head. “You have to go back; you know you do. As an Owl-Master, you have to be there to choose the new Owl-Sage. I’ll wait here, and I swear to you in Arick’s name,” he pledged, “that I’ll guard them from Orris and from any other danger, or I’ll die in the attempt.” Trahn held his friend’s gaze until Baden acquiesced with a reluctant nod. Then he turned toward Sartol. “I expect that the masters will make you the new sage. Congratulations,” he offered without irony.

  Sartol inclined his head slightly. “Thank you, Trahn. I’d be lying if I said that I’d never wished to be sage. But I’d gladly have postponed this distinction for many years in return for Jessamyn’s life.”

  “We know that, Sartol,” Baden responded kindly, “but Trahn’s right. As Owl-Masters, you and I are obliged to act in the interests of the Order and of Tobyn-Ser, even if this exacts a toll on us personally. I believe that Trahn is also correct in predicting that the masters will select you as the new sage; I know that I’ll support you. I don’t envy you, though—this is a difficult time to assume leadership of the Order.”

  Sartol smiled briefly. “For that reason,” he said with meaning, his pale eyes fixed on Baden, “I’ll have to choose a capable first. I’d like you to consider the position, Baden.”

  The offer caught Baden off guard. After a brief pause, he nodded once, but he said nothing.

  “Baden and I will leave with first light,” Sartol declared, taking control of their discussion. “We’ll take two of the horses and we’ll bear the staffs of Jessamyn and Peredur. Trahn, as soon as you learn what’s happened to Jaryd and Alayna, use the Stone-Merging to contact us and let us know.”

  “Of course,” Trahn assured them, gazing at Baden.

  “In the meantime,” Sartol continued, his tone growing more solemn, “we should build a pyre for the Owl-Sage and her first.”

  The three mages began gathering wood for the funeral rites, and they spent much of what remained of the night placing the timber in two large piles set side by side on the open ground by the camp. Just before dawn, as the first hint of light touched the eastern sky, Baden and Trahn returned to the cluster of trees to retrieve the bodies of Jessamyn and Peredur, and bear them to the pyres. Jessamyn’s owl still sat vigilantly on the dead woman’s arm, but she flew to a low branch when Baden stooped to lift the Owl-Sage, and she followed as Trahn and Baden left the thicket.

  “Guard yourself on this journey, Baden,” Trahn warned quietly, as they carried the sage and the first back toward the camp. “I know that you and Orris were at odds much of the time, but I still find Sartol’s story hard to accept. If he is lying, then he’s a traitor to the Order, and your life will be in danger.”

  “I hear you,” Baden replied. “I’ll watch my back. But you do the same. If Sartol is telling the truth, then you may have to face Orris by yourself.”

  Trahn smiled, although his green eyes gleamed fiercely. “If Orris did kill Jessamyn and Peredur, then he’d best keep his distance.”

  Baden grinned. “I’m going to miss you, my friend. Arick guard you.”

  “And you,” the Hawk-Mage returned.

  They reached the pyres, where Sartol waited for them, and without speaking they lifted Jessamyn and Peredur onto the mounds of wood.

  Then standing shoulder to shoulder a short distance from the pyres, the three mages lowered their staffs and prepared to ignite the timber.

  “With wood and fire, gifts from Tobyn and Leora, we release the spirits of Jessamyn, Daughter of Amarid, and Peredur, Son of Amarid,” Sartol intoned. “Open your arms to them, Arick and Duclea, and grant them rest.”

  With the last word of Sartol’s invocation, fire leapt from the cerylls of the three mages—yellow from Sartol, sienna from Trahn, orange from Baden—and enveloped the branches at the bottom of each mound. Despite the rain, which had slowed to a drizzle, the wood began to crackle, and the flames climbed slowly through the pyres to claim the bodies of the Owl-Sage and the first.

  Baden faced a long journey, potentially a dangerous one, and he knew that as tired and grief-stricken as he was, he would need to remain watchful as he rode north with Sartol. Still, he allowed himself to weep silently for Jessamyn. She deserved that much, and he could not have done otherwise.

  “Farewell, friend,” he whispered, watching the flames reach toward the lightening sky. “Arick and Duclea grant you rest.”

  At that moment, as if on cue, the sage’s white owl flashed overhead, pausing briefly to hover high over Jessamyn’s pyre, and then continuing on northward, back toward its home in the cool reaches of northern Tobyn-Ser.

  * * *

  He didn’t give a thought to where they were running; it didn’t seem to matter. Sartol had blocked Alayna’s burst of power and then his own without effort. And that had been with Ishalla and Fylimar right there on their shoulders. For all Jaryd knew, Alayna might have been perfectly capable of fighting off Sartol with Fylimar battling the Owl-Master’s bird. But he had no idea how he had created that first blast of blue flame, much less how he was supposed to summon up another one without Ishalla’s help. So he had grabbed Alayna’s hand and fled, blindly, through the tangle of branches and undergrowth, and then across the grass, and finally into the protective darkness of the forest. Even as he ran, even as he had to drag Alayna with him because she could not accept that her mentor had just tried to kill them, he braced himself
, expecting at any instant to be struck down by a killing explosion of mage-fire from Sartol’s ceryll. Then he heard shouting, saw bursts of yellow and amber light reflected by the rain-soaked leaves of the trees in front of them, and, without pausing to see what had happened, he and Alayna plunged into the woods. Still he led her forward, not yet convinced that they had escaped danger. It was only when the flashes of light no longer reached them, and the shouting had faded, that Jaryd and Alayna finally slowed to a walk and began to wonder where they were.

  It did not take them long to figure it out. Once they stopped moving, and their racing pulses and ragged breathing eased back toward normal, the realization came swiftly. The dark power that they had perceived when the company first regarded Theron’s Grove from the safety of the ruins was magnified a thousand times here in its heart. Malice pulsed from the ground and the trees, pounding mercilessly at their senses; even the rain dripping from the leaves above seemed to burn as it fell on their faces and hands. Alayna’s ceryll continued to glow with its vivid purple hue, and the blue light from the ceryll within the tree limb that Jaryd carried still shone through the gap in the wood. But both stones appeared muted here, as if stifled by the darkness of the grove.

  “You know where we are, don’t you?” Alayna whispered.

  Jaryd nodded. “We’re in the grove.” His voice sounded loud and strange in the repressive silence of the forest.

  “Good thing you told me to start carrying this staff,” she quipped.

  Jaryd laughed in spite of himself. In this darkest of all places, where no mortal man or woman had ventured in hundreds of years, Jaryd laughed, and Alayna with him. And in that moment, a realization hit him, and he thought, I could fall in love with this woman.

  Their laughter passed quickly, however; Jaryd forced himself to turn away from that last thought. He and Alayna were in Theron’s Grove, and for all they knew, Sartol was waiting for them just beyond the trees, ready to kill them if they managed, somehow, to escape from the unsettled spirit of the First Owl-Master.

  “We have to leave this place,” Alayna declared in a tense voice. “Now.”

  “I know. But not the way we came in. Sartol’s there.”

  Alayna made a small gesture of impatience or denial; it was hard to tell which. “I still can’t believe it,” she murmured. “He tried to kill you.”

  “He would have if you hadn’t thrown your mage-fire at him,” Jaryd told her. “You saved my life.”

  “Why would he do that?” she went on, as if she hadn’t heard him. “I don’t get it.”

  Jaryd gripped her shoulder. “Alayna, listen to me. We have to get out of here. We can figure out Sartol later, but right now, we have to find a way out of here.”

  She took a breath, then nodded. Jaryd glanced around them, trying to get his bearings in the impenetrable darkness. They had come in from the west, and while he had not kept track of their progress through the forest as closely as he should have, he felt reasonably confident that they had continued in the same general direction. He had no idea where Sartol had gone, but the Owl-Master was only one man; he could not keep watch on the entire perimeter of the grove. If they circled back to the south, they would emerge from the woods closer to the camp, and to whatever help the others could offer.

  “I think we want to go this way,” Jaryd said, pointing to the south, he hoped. “But if you have another idea, I’d be happy to hear it.”

  Alayna shook her head. “I’m completely turned around. I’ll follow you.”

  A sudden flapping of wings brought a shuddering gasp from Alayna and sent a cold wave of panic through Jaryd’s entire body. An instant later, when Ishalla alighted on his shoulder, he nearly screamed in fear.

  “I think that’s the first time since I bound to Ishalla that I actually forgot about her,” Jaryd commented, stroking his hawk’s chin

  “Under the circumstances, I’m sure she’ll forgive you,” Alayna replied shakily. “Is she all right?”

  “I think so. How about Fylimar?”

  “She seems to be fine.”

  Jaryd took her hand. “Good, then let’s—”

  “Jaryd, look,” Alayna said in a voice that chilled his blood.

  He knew what had come before he turned. He heard it in her tone; saw it in the shrinking fear that twisted her delicate features as she stared over his shoulder, her eyes wide and her cheeks abruptly colorless. The grove appeared brighter than it had a moment before. He knew what that meant as well. Pivoting slowly, Jaryd saw a diffuse emerald-green light moving toward them through the trees, shimmering like moonbeams on a windswept lake, and clinging like rain to the branches and leaves so that they themselves seemed to glow. Had he not been standing in Theron’s Grove, Jaryd would have thought this display as beautiful as the shifting curtains of light that graced the autumn sky each year on the night of Leora’s Feast.

  But the Night of Light was more than two months away. Staring with wonder and horror at the approaching radiance, Jaryd discerned a figure walking at its center, its aspect vague at first, but gaining substance with each step until Jaryd found that he could make out certain details. The figure had a long, full beard and thick, shoulder-length hair that would have been grey if not for his green luminescence. Deep lines creased his face, but though his countenance made him appear aged, he carried himself like a young man, straight-backed and alert. On his shoulder, as spectral and radiant as he, sat a large falcon with a dark head and back, and markings on its face that made it look mustached. And in his hand, the man carried a long, wooden staff, at the top of which, where there should have been a ceryll, the wood had been splintered and charred.

  “Should we run?” Jaryd breathed, never taking his eyes off the ghostly figure in front of them.

  “Do you really think we’d make it?” Alayna whispered in reply.

  He shook his head.

  “Neither do I,” she agreed, “but if we run, I’m sure he’ll kill us. We might as well stay and try to talk to him.”

  Jaryd took a deep breath and nodded.

  The specter drew closer, and, as he did, Jaryd saw his eyes. They were hard and bright as cerylls, a far cry from the soft green glow that surrounded him, and they carried within them a hatred and bitterness that had raged for a thousand years. Seeing those eyes, feeling themselves encompassed by the baleful gaze, Jaryd and Alayna quailed.

  And then it was that they first heard the voice of Theron’s unsettled spirit. “Can you offer one reason,” the Owl-Master asked, his words rolling like thunder through the grove, “why I should not kill you both?”

  Ishalla and Fylimar squawked nervously and raised their slate-colored wings, although neither bird tried to fly. Immobilized by Theron’s piercing glare, his body trembling violently, Jaryd somehow mustered the courage to speak. “I’m Jaryd,” he said in a faltering voice. “This is Alayna.”

  “I know who you are,” the spirit rumbled impatiently. “I know who all of you are: the dead ones, the traitor, all of you. And I know why you have come. None of that concerns me. Tell me why I should not kill you; that, I would find amusing.”

  “We’ve done nothing to give offense,” Alayna told him, sounding small and frightened.

  “Your presence offends me!” Theron roared. “For a thousand years, I have tolerated no encroachments on my solitude, and I certainly have suffered no fools or pretentious children. Others who came went mad before they died. That could be your fate as well. Now I will ask one last time: why should I spare your lives!”

  “If you know of the dead ones and the traitor,” Jaryd answered quickly, “then you also know that we’re not here by choice; that we only entered the grove to save our lives.”

  The Owl-Master’s eyes narrowed, and a grin flashed across his face. “How ironic,” he remarked maliciously. “Besides,” he continued, his tone now guileful, “your group traveled a great distance to be here. Surely you would have entered this grove eventually, even without the traitor at your backs.”

&
nbsp; I’m playing a very dangerous game, Jaryd thought to himself, with a spirit that has walked this land for a thousand years. I must be crazy.

  “Yes, we would have,” Alayna joined in, “but only to seek your counsel, and only as part of a delegation that would have included the Owl-Sage and the First of the Order.”

  “This, I take it, is meant to impress me,” Theron said with disdain. “It does not. Nor does it deceive me: you came to accuse me of crimes against the land, and to keep me from doing further damage. By persuasion, if you could; by force, if necessary. Isn’t that so?” The spirit’s tone was contemptuous, but something in his manner told Jaryd that he and Alayna had forestalled their deaths, at least for the time being.

  “Yes, it is,” Jaryd confirmed, “that’s precisely why we came.” Clearly, there would be no deceiving the Owl-Master; but, perhaps, if they spoke to him candidly . . .

  “Fools!” Theron spat. “If I have chosen to take my vengeance, finally, after all these centuries, do you really believe that a handful of mortal mages could stop me?” He indicated the illuminated grove with a gesture. “Look around you. I am power itself, as are all the Unsettled. We are all walking incarnations of the Mage-Craft.” He leveled a rigid finger at the mages. “Don’t you see!” he thundered, causing the ground beneath them to shake. “You are nothing against me,Children of Amarid! ” A bolt of green fire flew from his hand, passing between Jaryd and Alayna and crashing loudly into a tree behind them. Jaryd stood appalled, unable to respond, and half expecting to die in the next moment. But instead, the Owl-Master went on. “I was every bit as responsible for the discovery of the Mage-Craft and the founding of the Order as he was. And they send children to speak with me, children carrying Amarid’s Hawk.” He lanced Alayna with his glare. “That is what they call them now, is it not?” he asked.