“I still fear I’ll never know love again,” she said quietly.
Arman cut across the two strides that lay between them. His transparent figure loomed, and his long nose protruded out grossly as his swarthy face looked down on her. “Maybe not. But there is more in living than the bounty of having a lover.” His eyes, full of compassion, softened the words. “Gere is a good man. It is obvious—and not just from the whispers in the halls—that he cares for you. And despite your refutations, your eyes speak of desire too… I do not wish for your unhappiness, but if you can perceive this in yourself, be true to it.”
“Or be like a house upon a graveyard,” she intoned to herself.
“I try to avoid cliché when dispensing advice,” Arman replied, winking at her with tender mirth. “You are strong, Colette. Seek the bounty that is before you. You have much here to find. And if that path becomes the bethaidas in Massada, follow that to its bounty too.” His hand lit upon her forearm with a delicate caress. “You are as a sister to me. I love you with immense fondness.”
His words were a soothing balm. They seemed to fill her with courage, purpose. Somehow, she would live and be a woman of honor and love and benere. Somehow. “Thank you, Arman. I love you, too.”
Colette had not intended to do so, but she reached her hand into a small, hidden pocket that she had sewn into the inner lining of her clothing specifically for this: the summejere. She plucked the silver whistle out and cupped it in her palm. The tip glinted as it met the light of the lanterns. She hesitated only briefly before extending her hand and holding it out to the juile.
“The summejere,” he said, recognizing it. He leaned over to stare at the tiny piece. The item had the edges of familiarity, but it had been so long since his fingers had graced its surface, and even then his time with it had been brief.
Colette nodded. “From Pearl. It was Bren’s.” She looked down at her empty hand as Arman delicately lifted the tiny object. A look of regret passed across her face, but only for a moment. Arman did not see.
“Why do you part with it now?” he asked. His onyx eyes bore into her with an intensity that nearly made her toes quiver.
“I know not.” Her voice, she was surprised to see, held a strength, a sureness that marked her when she walked in intuit. He heard it too, for his eyebrow lifted slightly, and he nodded to himself; intuition and foretelling were not leashable traits. They came as the wind and left without sign.
The juile bowed deeply, and his gray robes swished like fountains in cascade. “It has been bountiful.”
Tears stung her eyes as she dipped in turn. “Bountiful indeed, brother.”
“I leave at dawn tomorrow. But I will return if you need anything. Just whisper. I will run with robes flapping.”
He embraced her again, ducked through the low doorway, and was gone.
CHAPTER 28
To study benere is to study to live.
-Genesifin
Colette had not delayed speaking to Gere. The disappointed clansman had accepted her decision to maintain romantic distance, and although peace filled her from the choice, she still stung with sorrow at the pain she had witnessed in his eyes. He now avoided her, and it grieved her that this resolution would likely mean the loss of a dear friend. There was little she could do but respect his imposed space.
Colette yearned for things to change. She found comfort in her companionship with Harta, but the woman was routinely absent or busy with the business of the bethaida. Her shifts in the garden were regular, but even there she stirred with restlessness. Her heart was parched for more…but what?
And her dreams.
When night came, she dreamt of Brenol. Every night. She saw his dark jade eyes, his coppery hair, his wild and disheveled appearance. Her dreams followed him as he wandered forests and fields with filthy face and hollowed features. He roamed her mind with dispassionate solitude, and when she awakened, her heart ached all the more, for she felt not only the loss of him, but a strange sorrow for the mysterious and dwindling figure.
I will never let him go if I continue like this. I’m haunted by things I cannot change…
Colette glanced around the room. Mari had arranged her little carved people neatly in her play corner. Most of the figures formed a ring, but in the center was a lone piece. It was human, but whether Massadan or Tindellan, she could not guess. Colette crouched down to examine the little toys and lit a single finger on the figure in the center. A sudden ire bubbled up within her, and she toppled all the pieces together in a crowded mess.
Suddenly, she blinked and stood decisively. She stepped out in the hall and, with the flick of a wrist and the peal of her bell, stood ready.
A small child of about twelve orbits, lanky and lithe, arrived with bemused expression. “Yes, my queen?” She opened her palm out in a Tindellan gesture of respect. Colette had been told it was indicative of the willingness to serve or give.
Colette smiled easily at the little urchin and slid her own slender hand into the outstretched palm. “Will you show me what you do?”
The girl’s blonde curls bobbed slightly as her chin jutted back in suspicion. Her pale blue eyes were the shade of faded cornflower. “What do you mean?”
Colette dropped down to a squat. She was now a head too low, but it seemed to put the girl at greater ease. “I don’t have anything to do. Will you please show me how the berida works? What the servers do? I’m interested.”
A confusion clouded the light blue eyes, but the pale face nodded. As she led Colette, her gaunt features remained fixed and serious. She did not try to extricate her hand, but the moment Colette loosened her grip, the girl slid from its hold.
“What’s your name?” Colette asked quietly.
The child glanced sideways. “Hazel.”
“How long have you worked as a server?”
Hazel wrinkled her nose in thought. It made her look even younger. “Several seasons. Almost a whole orbit.”
“Do you like it?”
The question received an even longer stare and no vocal response.
Colette halted and tugged at the child’s sleeve gently, coaxing her to pause in the empty corridor. The dim light from the lantern tinged their faces with a golden glow.
“My queen—” she began.
“Hazel,” she interrupted mildly. “I’m not trying to hurt you or get anything from you. Truly.” Her emerald eyes reached out to the child, pleading. “I just want to find a place here. I want to know how your people live and survive and all that happens. I want to be a part of this place, to fit in.”
A flurry of emotions darkened the thin face, but eventually Hazel nodded. The girl’s shoulders loosened, and a sly smile slipped onto her Tindellan features. “I don’t know if you’ll fit in here, though. The berida is mostly children.”
“Scoffed from within, scorned from without?”
The urchin ran the words through her mind like beads through hands. Eventually she nodded. “I guess so.”
Colette smiled. “I’m already both of those things. I think I will enjoy your company and learn something new as well…unless you’d have too much difficulty with it?”
“I would be honored, my queen.”
She began to step ahead to lead, but Colette did not move. Instead, the lunitata dipped down to a near squat and waited for the girl to return. “Would it be ok if when we are alone you just called me Colette?”
Hazel’s expression brightened. She nodded, squeezed Colette’s hand with a sudden camaraderie, and led the woman to the berida.
~
Brenol placed the tin cup carefully into his sack and cocked his head in consideration. He inhaled the chilly air deeply and nodded to himself. A storm was approaching. His nostrils practically quivered in the certainty of this fact.
He collected the remainder of his meager possessions and tugged a patched cap over his head, his mess of red hair tumbling out the sides in unruly waves. Brenol cropped it himself occasionally, with quick and ind
ifferent swipes of the knife, merely to keep the shaggy locks from blinding his vision. His beard had received even less attention; he had sawn at its end once when it had begun to collect crumbs. He cared little for anything but surviving the present day.
The fire had dwindled, and he—rather unnecessarily—booted the remaining embers with soil and snow. He turned to the surrounding woods with a set jaw and moved south. Hunger was a regular sensation, but recently it had gnawed at him with a more exacting bite. He needed to find food or else make his way to a town to barter, and the warning signs in the air pressed on him.
Brenol wound through the woods, aware of the crunch of his boots upon the snow, the sighing breeze through the bare limbed trees, and the silence that otherwise pervaded deep winter. There were no insects, no song birds, no skittering squirrels jumping through vegetation. He was accustomed to this silence. Now it was the unceasing chatter and din of towns that made him ill at ease. He offered a prayer, hoping he would be able to scavenge food on his own and continued the trek.
By afternoon, the faint rumble of the Barn awakened his ears. He had not passed this far south in seasons, and he peered around the terrain with keen eyes. The river was ahead, but he was unsure of the distance as the trees muffled the current’s mighty thunder. After ten minutes of sliding through the forest, she came into sight. He approached the river with a wary curiosity and allowed the roar to fill his ears and vibrate through his chest. Never before had he seen her at this point in her course, and his eyes pored over every detail and curve. She was lovely, powerful, vigorous. He peered around the bracken and stone that interrupted his vision and spied what he had been seeking: a bridge. Half a matrole down, a rise of black wood touched the earth. Fortuitously, it appeared to be unmanned. Brenol dipped his head beneath bough and branch and crept beside towering rock. He halted abruptly.
An old sensation gripped him, and he shrank at the possibility of this grave error.
He dropped into a crouch and fearfully skimmed the snowy soil with gloved hand. His entire body remained rigid and taut, like a statue suspended in mid-action. Finally, he sighed, relief coursing through his chilled veins.
I’m still in the lugazzi.
He raised himself to a stand and peered ahead to the bridge.
But won’t be soon…
Brenol had tenaciously circumvented the terrisdans, living in the mountainous lugazzi outside of Brovingbune, Selenia, and Conch. His grief and guilt had been enough to chew through without adding more. He harbored no desire to walk the lands and hear their dying whispers, and he had utterly refused to go near the eerily empty soil of Selet. It had been close to his undoing when he had first experienced it. He could barely recall his time of imprisonment without quivering.
But ahead, he faced his resolution anew.
“Do you go or stay, you fool?” Brenol whispered to himself. “Go or stay?”
The bridge taunted him with its lovely curve. It lay less than twenty strides away, but he knew with conviction that one more step, perhaps two, would bring him into the territory of Conch. His skin tingled with the awareness, but he remained ignorant of what lay there.
Is Conch dying? Does it know what I did?
It was like coming upon a creature in the dead of night; one could not know its temperament, nor if it was roused and hungry, but one could feel its hot breath and the mystery of its presence.
“Go or stay?” he mumbled.
His stomach grumbled as if to make its say, and his lip curled in displeasure. The possibilities before him were innumerable, and he disliked most of them.
Conch might have a longer stretch of neutrality, he thought with a weak hope. I might not even feel the eye in that short tract.
Another voice, a hard voice, whispered in his mind, Or maybe it’s nearly dead. Because of you and your sword. Because you couldn’t take care of Chaul the first time.
Colette is gone because you failed.
Brenol swallowed. He had lived with these wrenching thoughts for ages, and guilt forever wrung his insides with knots. He rubbed his tired features with the motion of a far older man.
“I won’t cross,” Brenol said softly, but his jade eyes tarried on the black rise of wood. He could not deny it; he was exhausted, his bones ached in the wintry wind, and he longed for something hot to fill his belly. He lacked the energy to battle his own way across the Barn, and turning back did not seem a viable option.
Without conscious decision, both legs lit forward as though they knew the right course. Halfway to the bridge, Brenol froze again. His eyes darted around, and his shoulders stiffened. He longed to about-face and flee but found his muscles incapable of movement.
A faint whisper brushed through the snowy path. Brenol cringed, afraid to listen.
The sound sighed around him again.
And again.
Finally, he heard it and understood.
“You are Brenol,” it said. “I have been waiting.”
Words choked in the man’s throat, but somewhere in the throttling fear a new hope arose: perhaps Conch would take his life, and he could at last be rid of his crippling guilt. Brenol raised his shaggy head and glanced around with a new expectancy.
“I am Bren. Take your vengeance.” The freedom he suddenly felt was delicious, even if he stood clenched and awaiting the land’s blow. It would be over so soon, and he could finally meet justice.
“Enough. I am passing. But you must know,” Conch whispered.
Brenol arched his neck, listening. It had been so long since he had heard the land. He felt petty at the rush of joy that burst within him as the words materialized. There were few things he loved as he did this unusual connection. He shook his head to clear it of such foolishness.
“What must I know?” he asked, surprised to find his voice tender.
Brenol lit down to his haunches, removed his gloves, and touched the earth as he had so many times in the past. The familiarity of the sensation perilously reminded him of another life.
The snow and soil appeared so light against his blackened palms as he allowed the freezing handful to crumble and fall from them. A peace, as gentle as morning’s light, kissed him, and he found his eyes welling. “You can tell me.”
“Veronia did it for her. For her.”
Brenol’s face furrowed, for her could only be one person, and Colette’s name was like a knife through his insides—he refused to speak it aloud. “For…for her?”
“Yes. She will save the peoples. The Lady of Purpose.”
“Lady of Purpose?”
“Yes. The lady of the blue.”
Brenol sighed in comprehension; Conch did not speak of Colette. This had nothing to do with his soumme. He knew where she lay. He, with Arman’s help, had dug up, hauled, and set her bones anew in the soil at his home in Veronia. He had chiseled her name in a stone to mark the cherished site. All likely now rested under a blanket of snow.
“—you.”
“What?” Brenol asked, realizing the sentences were fumbling from his unpracticed ears.
“Called you.”
He placed his fingers to his temples. “I don’t understand.” The initial high from the connection was wearing away to the sensation of sluggish deduction. The moons and seasons of imposed silence had turned all conversation awkward and forced. He longed to flee back to the lugazzi and the emptiness that surrounded him there. “What do you want from me? Who called me?”
“Veronia called you long ago. For her. You were needed for all.”
He began to consider a new possibility: the land must surely have lost its power to reason. Its words made little sense. “What do you want?” he asked again cautiously.
“Tell her. The lands all knew they would die…”
Brenol’s jaw clenched.
“Fate was approaching. But we drank willingly. We drank the poison of Jerem. To protect you, to protect all people, to protect her.”
“Drank the poison? Protect us?” His mind reeled. “I thought
it didn’t affect creatures…”
“Not after Garnoble and Veronia absorbed the bulk. They chose to—” The wind rushed through, and Brenol’s ears flooded with the biting blast.
“What?” he asked when it had calmed. “They chose death?”
“They drank deeply. And found great bounty.”
“Bounty?” The word barely sounded as it reluctantly passed his lips.
“To save the world—what could be of greater bounty?”
Brenol swallowed. He closed his eyes for a moment in the hopes of gathering his thoughts. This tale did not make sense. “Conch…what about the antidote? Didn’t it mend the lands?”
“In part. It lengthened our time. It healed much. But we were already passi—”
Again, the winds swept across the land.
“The icing—it is the sign of our ending. A symptom of our faltering. It has been coming for seasons, orbits.”
“So all the terrisdans are dying now?”
“They are dead. I am the last.”
Brenol’s insides twisted. “The last?”
“We knew it would come. The day? No. But the fate? Yes. The Three told us at our birth.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You do not have to,” the terrisdan sighed. “Just tell her. Tell the Lady that all was done so she might save.”
“I don’t know who you are talking about.”
“You will.”
Brenol’s face pinched, but suddenly opened in a desperate hope. “Heart Render didn’t do this then?” he asked. He waited with suspended breath, yet no whisper or sigh swept through the wood.
Brenol concentrated again and spoke, “Conch. I still don’t kn—,” but then stuttered to a stop. He glanced around and trembled as he sensed Conch’s eye faltering. The incomprehensible conversation, his emaciated gut, the wintry cold, his confused shame—they all smothered him with crushing power. He jerked himself to a stand, pressed his hands to his ears, and fled back in the direction of the lugazzi.
In his frenzy, Brenol failed to guard his steps, and he tripped and found himself diving face first into bracken and rock. It took a moment for the sensation to blossom, but then his head burst alive in pain, and he smelled the sharp scent of blood and felt it trickling down from his crown. He blinked dizzily.
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