As soon as he’d regained his feet, Corim latched onto Jayson, arms encircling his chest and drawing him in close. Curtis appeared in the doorway to the bedroom, caught his gaze and shook his head, although Jayson had already known Corim’s father was dead as well.
He half-carried, half-led Corim outside into the fading sunlight.
“We should head back to the village center,” Curtis said. Ricks had recovered, stepping up to them from one side as he wiped his mouth with one hand. He still shook and his face was pale.
“No,” Jayson said. “Not yet. I need to find Lianne.”
Ricks nodded and Jayson realized that the Legionnaire had been offering him a way out. But he couldn’t leave without knowing for certain.
Pushing Corim away gently but forcefully, he handed the youth off to Curtis and then headed down the path to the road.
His own cottage and lands were not far. He walked to them without speaking, the others trailing behind. He saw the cottage through the last of the trees, then passed through the small gate and garden to the front door. There he hesitated, thinking of the blood and stench in Corim’s home.
But he had to know.
He opened the door.
An invisible hand closed around his throat, choked off his breath, his voice. All of the strength drained from his legs and he slid down into a crouch. He held one hand out before him, as if he could ward off what he saw within, as if he could block it out.
Lianne sat slumped over the small table near the hearth, her head on its side, her blank hazel eyes staring toward the door, as if she’d been watching for him. One hand lay on the table beside her head in a pool of spilled stew, the bowl upside down by her fingertips. The other lay in her lap. The rancid smell of broth and potatoes and onion filled the room, the stew pot still hanging over the long-dead fire.
Corim’s hand fell onto his shoulder and Jayson dragged in a wheezing breath, his throat too tight and raw. He brought his hand down, then heaved himself upright and staggered to the table, knocking against it hard enough it scraped across the wooden floor, the bowls and utensils jouncing. Lianne’s hand slid through the congealed stew, the weight of her arm dragging it off the table. It swung, gelled chunks dropping from the fingers.
A noise he’d never heard himself make escaped him and he reached forward to brush Lianne’s hair, to touch her cheek. Her skin felt unnaturally cold and soft, as pale and lifeless as that of the dwarren’s body in the village center. Unlike Corim’s parents, there wasn’t a mark on her. No blood had been splattered through the house. It was as if she’d died while sitting down to eat.
He knelt down beside her, rested his head against her side and reached his arm around her shoulder. The constriction in his throat shifted down to his chest, so tight it felt as if he’d torn something deep inside his lungs, but he held it in, swallowed it down, his eyes squeezed shut with the effort. His body hitched as he sucked in a deep breath, trying to control himself—
“Lianne,” he murmured.
“She’s—” Corim began, but cut himself off.
Dead, Jayson finished for him. Lianne’s dead.
The constriction that bound his chest tightened, but he found himself getting up, releasing her as he rocked back and stood.
“Let’s go,” he said. His voice was unnaturally hard. “There’s nothing we can do here anymore.”
“WE’LL REACH THE CONFLUENCE today,” Colin said.
Both Eraeth and Siobhaen looked up from where they sat around the fire, Eraeth holding a pan over the flames, the scent of frying eggs drifting up to mingle with the smoke and smells of the hundred fires already burning as the dwarren roused themselves from sleep. With a casual gesture, he flipped the eggs.
“And what will happen once we get there?” Siobhaen asked. Exasperation tinged her voice.
Colin shrugged. “There will be a Gathering.”
“And what does that mean?” Siobhaen snarled. “I’m tired of traveling without knowing what’s going on. We came to the dwarren to find out what they know, but they haven’t told us anything. You’ve dragged us along with this war party without any explanation of why, gone wandering off on your own to visit the sarenavriell, and brought us these weapons that you claim are a gift from the heart of the forest, and yet you haven’t told us anything about what you found out or what they’re to be used for!”
Colin stared at her a long moment, at a loss for words. He glanced toward Eraeth, the Protector meeting his gaze with a shrug.
“She’s right,” he agreed. “It’s frustrating.”
“It’s frustrating for me as well,” Colin said, letting anger touch his voice. “I know as much as you.”
“No,” Siobhaen said, cutting him off. “You know more than you’ve told us. You’ve met with the shamans on more than one occasion since we left the Thousand Springs cavern. I refuse to believe that they’ve told you nothing, and I refuse to believe you haven’t kept something from us.”
Colin considered her intense gaze for a long moment, then said stiffly, “I haven’t told you everything—”
“Ha!”
“—but that does not mean that telling you will make anything clearer.”
“It might help,” Eraeth murmured, removing the eggs from the fire and separating them onto three plates. “We’ve been on edge for the entire underground excursion, not knowing whether we can trust the dwarren, not knowing where we are headed or what we will find when we get there.” He caught Colin’s gaze and lifted an eyebrow in rebuke. “It’s difficult to protect you when I don’t know what I’m to protect you from.”
Colin shifted uncomfortably as he accepted the plate of eggs. He was willing to brush off Siobhaen’s complaints as an effort to gain information for the Order of Aielan, but if Eraeth also felt compromised.…
He sighed. “If I knew for certain, I would have informed you. This is all I know:
“Perhaps eight months ago, something—I assume Walter and the Wraiths—awakened a Well to the east. This Well has a reservoir of Lifeblood greater than any of the Wells we know of, so vast that the Faelehgre believe that it is the source of all of the Lifeblood across the continent.”
“Why?” Siobhaen asked. “Why would they awaken this Well?”
“It will expand the territory that the Shadows can hunt extensively, perhaps as far south as Yhnar, or further.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. There aren’t many humans down that far, and no one has traveled or settled in the Flats or the Thalloran Wasteland. There must be another reason to awaken the Well.”
“Such as?” Colin wondered if Siobhaen would answer, wondered if she knew something she’d learned from Lotaern or the Order, perhaps unwittingly.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what the Wraiths and the sukrael want.”
Both Colin and Eraeth shared a glance. She’d answered too quickly to be lying. “The Shadows want freedom,” Colin said, rubbing his eyes. He’d just rested, but he already felt tired. “They were trapped near the Well and Terra’nor for so long their only goal is to escape it so they can feed. You saw their hunger in the years after the Wells were awakened.”
“No, I didn’t,” Siobhaen said. “I was not born until after the Winter Tree was planted. But that is what the sukrael want. What of the Wraiths? What of this Walter who leads them?”
Colin frowned. Walter wants to kill me, he nearly said, but stopped himself. It had to be more than that. But what did Walter want? He knew what the bully who had beat him in Portstown had wanted: the attentions of his father, Sartori, as well as his respect. That boy had gone on the expedition that had ultimately claimed the lives of everyone Colin cared about, so that Walter could prove himself to his father.
But Walter’s father was dead. He would never find the acceptance he’d craved as a boy, would never be the Proprietor of Portstown, the predecessor of what was now a GreatLord. Was that what Walter strove for now? Power? Did he want to rule as his father had?
&nb
sp; Or did Walter’s wishes no longer matter? Had he been tainted by the Lifeblood to such an extent that the Shadows and their goals were all that mattered now?
Colin shuddered at the thought and unconsciously clutched at his own arm and the marked skin beneath his shirt, an empty pit opening in his stomach.
“The Seasonal Trees,” Eraeth said suddenly, dragging Colin away from his thoughts. The Protector glanced between both of them. “You asked what the sukrael and the Wraiths want. You say they want freedom to roam the land and feed. The only things stopping them now are the Seasonal Trees. They want to eliminate them.”
“Can they do that with a new Well?” Siobhaen asked.
Colin bowed his head, staring into the fire, brow creased in thought. “I’m not certain. The Lifeblood and the Trees have never appeared to interact with one another in any way.” Except that was a lie. In order to create the Trees, he had used the Lifeblood to give their seeds strength, in order to augment their powers so that it would spread across the lands of the three races to protect them, and to make certain the Trees would last for hundreds of years. The Lifeblood was an inherent part of the Trees’ power.
He looked up. “But it’s possible. The Trees appeared unaffected when I checked with the Winter Tree in Caercaern, but I will look again once we reach the Confluence.”
“How?” Siobhaen asked.
“I’ll use the Summer Tree.”
At the front of the dwarren encampment, drums sounded and the dwarren began to stir, tents collapsing as they began packing, fires doused with water from the river cutting down the center of the round cavern they’d chosen as a rest area. Colin glanced down at his eggs. He hadn’t had a chance to eat. Both Siobhaen and Eraeth were nearly done.
Siobhaen caught his arm. “What else? What did you learn from the shamans?”
“The Faelehgre told me to find the Well and do whatever was necessary to find balance again. None of the head shamans know anything of the Source. They only know the Wraiths and the rest of the creatures of the Turning have been gathering in the Thalloran Wasteland, creating an army, one to rival all of the races—dwarren, Alvritshai, and human—combined. They think that the awakening of the Well is a sign that their armies are ready to begin seizing control of all of Wrath Suvane. But it’s all speculation.”
“What do you think?”
Colin paused, then said quietly, “I think the dwarren are correct. They have prepared for the Turning their entire lives.”
All around them, the dwarren were smoothly and efficiently breaking camp. None of the fires remained, all of the tents were down, and the gaezels were already being spread throughout the group.
“Eat,” Eraeth said, nudging Colin’s plate of eggs. “We’ll get the horses and pack our tents.”
Without waiting for a response, he poured a bucket of water onto the fire, smoke and steam rushing upward. Colin began shoveling the eggs into his mouth as Siobhaen headed for the horses. They’d learned from experience that when the dwarren were ready to depart, they wouldn’t stop to wait for the human or the Alvritshai to catch up.
The two Alvritshai had their gear ready by the time Colin finished his breakfast; Eraeth washed the plate clean in the river and stuffed it into one of the saddlebags. The pounding rhythm that signaled the dwarren to move out came a moment before Colin swung himself up into the saddle.
Then they were riding, the dwarren leading them through one of three possible branches from the room, none of them markedly different from the others. As soon as they entered the tunnel, Colin turned his attention to what Eraeth had suggested, that the Wraiths were using this new Well to affect the Seasonal Trees. He had sensed nothing when he checked the Winter Tree in Caercaern, but he didn’t think the Well had been awakened long before that. And from what he had discovered using the Well in the White Wastes, the newly awakened Well in the east was still drawing Lifeblood from the reservoir beneath it. It was still gaining in power and strength. The Wraiths may not have attempted to use it to affect the Trees yet.
But the more he thought about whether it could affect the Trees, the more uneasy he felt.
He needed to see the Summer Tree, needed to touch it as he’d done with the Winter Tree in Caercaern.
They heard the Confluence before they saw it, a slow roar beginning to build beneath the sound of the gaezels’ hooves against the stone of the tunnel. The roar grew, until it thundered through the tunnel, shuddering against Colin’s skin and shivering deeper in his bones. When the noise had reached an unbearable pitch, the tunnel suddenly ended.
Colin had been to the Confluence before, but the immense cavern still took his breath away as the dwarren army spilled out of the corridor and down the short ramp to the main floor. To the north, cascades of water fell from the heights of the rock wall, over a hundred streams and rivers converging on this one location, spilling down from the rock watershed in a torrent. Mist rose from the falls, glowing with the pale green luminescence of the moss and algae that coated the damp, exposed rock around them and from the soft red light coming from the center of the chamber. There, the immense stone floor fell away in two short circular tiers to a red-tinged lake—the Sacred Waters of the dwarren. The roar of the churning water was deafening, but as the column of dwarren raced across the vast open area, a trick of the architecture of the cavern deadened it to a bearable level.
Colin felt dwarfed by the immensity of the room—if it could be called a room. Massive arches, thicker than the boles of the most ancient trees he’d seen in the heart of the Ostraell, curved up from the sides of the cavern, terminating in a huge circle of stone that formed the apex of the dome. Chunks of that stone had crumbled and fallen away over time, the gaps in the flowing architecture glaring, but the structure had withstood the ages well.
To the right of the massive falls, the dwarren had carved out rooms between the pillars and arches. Hundreds of dwarren were gathered along the massive wall and the tiers that led up to its base, yet beneath them, on the floor that surrounded the lake, there were thousands more. Tents riddled the area, dwarren in the armor of Riders milling about, their gaezels corralled off to one side. Others wove among the groups, dressed in the everyday garb of the dwarren, distributing food and blankets. It appeared that another group had arrived shortly before them, their gaezels only now being taken to the main stabling area. The leaders of that group were greeting the Cochen and the Archon, the head shaman easy to pick out of the crowd due to his massive feather headdress.
Colin scanned the bed of activity, taking it all in as the column of dwarren headed directly toward the Cochen and Archon, drums announcing their arrival, but his attention shifted almost immediately to the right of the falls, toward the Summer Tree. It had been planted in the middle of the tiers, the shaft of the seedling he’d brought slammed down into the stone of the cavern’s floor much as he had done with the Winter Tree’s seed in the marketplace in Caercaern. Its roots had cracked the stone as they burrowed and climbed down the tiers, the bole of the tree shooting skyward, although there was no sky for it to find. It had branched almost immediately, spreading outward rather than into the heights, more rounded than the Winter Tree, like a sycamore or oak. Its leaves were the darkened green of summer, as wide and flat as those of the Winter Tree, but not rounded. These leaves came in groups of three and like the oak were serrated. They rippled in a breeze generated by the falls, revealing the silvered undersides in flashes, like reflected sunlight on water.
Colin searched for signs that the Tree was failing, but saw nothing. Beneath the branches, nestled within the giant root system that trailed all the way down to the Confluence, he could see where the dwarren had set lanterns in stone bowls. The light was reflected from the walls of the cavern, providing more illumination than could have been generated solely by the lanterns. A few of the dwarren shamans sat among the roots, kneeling in contemplation or prayer, or tending to the Tree’s needs.
A shout tore Colin’s attention back to the Ride
rs. The column slowed as the three clan chiefs and the three head shamans pulled away to meet with the Cochen and Archon. Colin searched the dwarren already encamped on the tiers, seeking out clan symbols, trying to gauge how many of the clans had already arrived.
He was shocked at how many dwarren had gathered.
“There are approximately ten thousand dwarren in the encampment,” Eraeth said.
“And there are two clans not represented,” Colin added. “I see no groups of Riders from Painted Sands or Broken Waters.”
“Which means what?” Siobhaen asked. The awe of seeing the Confluence for the first time had not yet faded from her face.
“It means that there will be more dwarren joining us shortly. And that I may have time to check the Summer Tree before the true Gathering begins.” He glanced back toward the Tree, distracted.
“Quotl is attempting to catch your attention,” Eraeth said.
Colin swung around to find the elder head shaman frowning in his direction. He nodded toward Colin.
Colin sighed. He wanted to know what had caused the dwarren to call such a large Gathering, but the need to verify that the Summer Tree still held was more pressing. “Follow me.”
He nudged his horse forward, the ranks of dwarren parting for him and the two Alvritshai. As they reached the front of the column, a drum sounded and the entire group broke, scattering toward an empty section of the encampment, bags and pouches already being removed from their gaezels. Dwarren rushed forward to seize the animals’ reins and lead them off to be scrubbed down, combed, and fed.
The Cochen and Archon quieted as Colin and the Alvritshai drew close and dismounted, all of the dwarren considering them with narrowed eyes and taut faces. The Cochen had scars down one side of his face, emphasized by the angle of the chains that draped from the ring in his nose to his ear. Glancing at the intricate beading of his beard, Colin could tell it came from surviving a lion attack when he was younger. The scars made him appear more dangerous and brutal than the other dwarren clan chiefs, which was likely why he’d been chosen as the Cochen.
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