Therin smiled and leaned so close she smelled the hint of mint on his breath. “Few will be able to manage such a reading, mistress. Even among those who live today at the height of the garden’s power, there are not more than a handful who would be able to read what you say will be told by the trees.”
“That is how it should be,” she answered. “Such knowledge can be dangerous.”
“Much like the influence you exert over the growth?”
She laughed, feeling like she had not in many years and wishing suddenly Therin would stay with her among the trees rather than return to the gardens. She knew he would not.
Eris stirred, rolling over. Distantly, she was aware that she was dreaming, but the detail to the dreams drew her back. She blinked again.
The trees were taller, stretching high overhead, their thick canopy blocking the sunlight in the heart of the forest. Vines that had simply twisted around the trunks of the Svanth trees now wrapped around them entirely, completely obscuring the soft bark beneath and leaving the trunk looking grizzled and aged. She did not have to run her hand across the vines to know how sharp the barbs had become. The vines and the Svanth trees had become one, working together as they grew tall and powerful in the heart of her forest.
Flowers blossomed along the vines, petals made of many different colors. She stepped close, and it was clear the vines were braided from many different tendrils forming the thicker vine, as if a rope had been woven and wrapped around the tree.
In her dream, Eris stirred momentarily before settling back into it.
Here, her guidance was nearly complete. Years had passed since she’d first started changing the direction of the growth, helping the roots delve deeper into the soil, twisting and coiling into the arrangement she intended to leave. Now, with her own time nearly spent, she felt a sense of peace over what she had done.
“I wish you would have been here to see this,” she said aloud.
She turned to a small patch that lay free of growth on the floor and knelt before it. The dark green dress she wore swept leaves and fallen twigs along with her, brushing them over the ground. This close to the earth, she smelled the heavy scent of dirt and decay, the natural smells of the forest.
An aged and wrinkled hand stretched out and stroked the soil. He had returned to her at last, spending only his final days with her, but they were enough. Enough to show them both that neither had changed so much since their first meeting so many years before. Now, at the end, she would once again lie next to him, sleep forever in the welcoming blanket of the earth.
For the last time, she delved into the depths of the roots and traced patterns so familiar to her. The history of the trees was traced there, so easy for her to read since she had been there from the beginning. She hoped the history was clear for whoever came next.
Not just the history of the forest had been written in the roots, but the story of her people, the story of their gardens, the secret to accessing the power locked within each sun-kissed flower, a lesson in arrangements only a few would ever read.
She sighed, hoping she had done enough.
Even now, the others faded, the great Gardens of Elaysia not what they once had been. Even Therin saw it, coming to her in his last days. Neither had to speak of it to know what the other thought. Someday, the gardens would be no more. She saw a future when destruction ripped the gardens from the land, leaving them barren and weakened.
Only the trees would live on.
She lay down upon the ground, lying in the spot next to where the ground had taken Therin. In his last moments, the forest had claimed him, welcoming him beneath its now fertile soil. Soil that once had been sand and clay was now so much more. Her head rested on the ground, a pile of fallen and dried leaves her pillow.
A few rattling breaths escaped her lips.
Light barely filtered through the leaves of the canopy, but overhead the sun shone. In spite of what the others thought, much sunlight still reached through the topmost branches. Few knew how many wondrous flowers flourished even in the shadows of the forest, flowers which blossomed in nearly as many colors as found in the great gardens.
She took another sighing breath. She smelled the blossoms as they bloomed on the vines along the Svanth trees, a mixture of pungent and sweet, and their petals, like small stars, blinked on in the night. A single tear drifted down her cheek and dropped to the earth.
Flowers bloomed in full as the earth pulled her beneath it like a warm blanket.
She sighed out her last breath, pleased with the arrangement she had made.
Chapter 22
Eris flickered her eyes open. Sunlight streamed through the branches arching high overhead, just as it had in her dream. The forest even smelled the same, the mixture of fragrances both sweet and pungent, so similar to the flower she’d found growing along the palace wall. It seemed so long ago since she had found that flower. Could it really only have been weeks? Certainly no more than a month, but it seemed a lifetime. And now, after everything she had been through, all the struggles she had trying to learn all she could about the flower, she simply dreamed the story of the flower?
She sat up with a start. Had she just dreamed the origin of the Svanth Forest? Could it really have been as she saw in her dreams?
Was that the secret to the teary star?
The memory of the dream felt so vivid. She had felt as if she had been the flower mage, remembering her thoughts and sorrows, the pang of sadness when Therin first left to return to the great gardens, the joy she felt when he returned tempered by the knowledge he would not stay, the comfortable way the ground claimed her when she finally laid down to rest alongside him…
Eris shook away the memories. A dream—a creation of the forest—and no more than that.
Still, the dreams were powerful and had felt so real.
Brushing a layer of leaves off, Eris stood. She was not as cold as she had been the night before, the sunlight or the leaves warming her. The thin shift she wore, now torn and tattered and stained with crimson streaks from her ride through the needlegrass, was covered with spots of earth and bits of leaves. Eris smoothed her hands along her dress, wiping the remnants free. A few clung to her hair, and she wiped those away as well.
She moved around the clearing, staring at the ground. Though leaves covered this area, nothing else grew, as if the forest preserved this part of it in memorial to the long dead flower mage.
Eris traced a finger in the dirt, remembering how the woman had done the same. Distantly, she recalled how the flower mage delved into the roots, reading them, guiding them to tell their story—her story—so others coming after might share in the knowledge she had gained.
Tentatively, Eris pushed out with her awareness and probed through the ground as she had in her dream. Eris did not know what she was doing. She only mimicked what she remembered so vividly.
A sense of awareness grew around her and stretched out, almost filling the forest around her. Were she to focus, she could sense each tree living within the forest and would know where each of the flowers blossomed under the shadow of the canopy. She could even count the passing of animals through the forest.
And then, there, deep beneath the surface, she felt the thick tangle of roots. A story began to unfold in her mind, a story resembling what she dreamt, a tale of the arranger and the gardener who’d helped her plant these trees, a story that played out just as she had dreamed, but one filled with more sorrow, more a sense of longing and loss than even the arranger had ever admitted, wishing she had been able to share her creation with another—with Therin particularly.
She saw massive gardens where certain colors and combinations of flowers and plants lent great power. Some combinations Eris recognized, having seen similar formations in the garden at the palace, but now she understood how those arrangements could be improved upon, ways in which the colors could be shifted to harness more of the power of the sun. Different plants would augment the others in ways which allowed even mor
e power to be drawn from the soil, even soil as weak and thready as found within the palace. Eris knew where plants could be placed to trap the biting insects, keep their destructive teeth away from the tender buds, and where even now the gardens failed against the force of the magi…
Eris gasped, pulling away.
The force of the vision nearly overwhelmed her. The power of this place, power even now she somehow knew was not utilized to its fullest potential, a potential the arranger recognized so long ago when she first placed these trees into the soil with Therin’s help, filled her.
She understood why the magi feared this place. Enough power grew here to destroy the Conclave, to render even their magic futile.
But how? How did she know this? Was it the forest…or something else?
She dared not consider any other alternative—within her was potential to access the stories held within the roots. Could that be why Lira seemed determined to keep her out of the classes with her sisters?
Did she fear Eris?
No…Lira feared nothing. Not even the magi when she’d been attacked. So she wouldn’t fear Eris. More likely, the forest pushed its ancient presence onto her.
She wiped her hands on her shift, clearing the dirt from them, and stood. Towering trees circled the small clearing, and she regarded them with renewed interest. In her dreams, the trees grew from tiny saplings to the enormous size now around her, the trunks wound with the strange vines, the blossoms bursting into color as she lay upon the ground, taking her last breath…
Eris shook her head, trying to keep her mind clear of the strange pull of the forest. Everything seemed determined to pull her back down, to overwhelm her with these visions and memories that were not her own.
And yet, she recognized the vines growing around them. Not from her dreams—at least not entirely—but from the braided vine from the planter at the edge of the palace garden, the vine she had never been able to find again, the teary star which she had named as her own, a flower Lira seemed not to recognize.
Leaning close, she peered at the vine but kept a cautious distance. Her dreams reminded her of the sharp barbs present along the vine which helped it cling to the tree. Eris circled around the trunk, looking for flowers, but there were none. Not even a tiny bud.
She sighed. Even in the heart of the forest, she hadn’t managed to find the flower.
All around the clearing, other trees were the same. Svanth trees, she knew, certain that part of her dream was accurate. Trees she remembered as tiny saplings, grown to a massive size from trunks once barely more than the width of her finger.
Eris had found the heart of the forest, had found where her flower grew, had even managed to learn about the flower—even if it was through dreams.
Only there were no flowers.
The flower no longer mattered. Not if she wasn’t able to leave the forest and return home to warn her father and Lira, to find Jacen. The magi had said nothing of what happened to him, and Eris knew she needed to reach him—to reach Jasi—but to do it, she needed to leave the forest.
How long had she lain here? It seemed a single night but she didn’t really know. So much life had been lived to be viewed in just one dream.
And if more than just one night had passed, had she lost her sister entirely?
She remembered the forest pulling her toward the heart, the way the trees and the underbrush parted as it pulled her along. But in the process, it separated her from Jasi. Could Jasi have survived the night in the forest?
If only there was some way to find her.
Maybe there was.
If what she sensed was real, could she use the forest itself to help her find Jasi?
Eris stood in the center of the clearing and touched a finger to the soil, kneeling in a position similar to what the arranger had done on her last night in the forest. With the connection to the earth, she pushed into the awareness of the forest as she had in her dreams. Eris did not know why she did, or even if what she sensed was real or simply her imagination.
The awareness of everything threatened to overwhelm her with its sheer enormity. Eris closed her eyes, as if to push back the onslaught of sudden understanding.
She felt the trees most strongly. They were like a rigid fortress, like walls of the palace, meant to protect and guide the forest itself. Past the Svanth trees, she felt smaller oaks and elms, each towering and sturdy in their own right, but nothing like the majestic power of the Svanth trees.
Within the trees came the thready sense of dense undergrowth, that of thorny bushes whose names suddenly cropped into her mind as if she had seen them before: tendersithe, jasline, spiky hawthorne. And maybe she had in the shade book by Feliran that she’d borrowed from Lira. All grew solidly and comfortable under the trees, preferring the shade than the full sun. Those with thorns helped protect the more delicate plants and kept intruders from pressing too deeply into the woods, a different barrier than the trees created.
Then there were the flowers. Eris felt them. Countless species flashed through her mind, flowers of all shapes and colors, some she recognized from her time studying in the library with Master Billiken, others she had never seen or heard of before. In her mind, she even smelled their different perfumes, as if she leaned over them and inhaled, mimicking what she had seen Lira do so many times before. Their scents filled her nose, clung to her tongue, so lifelike she was certain they were real rather than visions in her mind. Vipeslar and taranth, both with potentially deadly toxin flowing through their stems. The spiny loras and sicklethorn, growing with bold reds and blues that stood out in the forest, but their own defenses kept them safe. A flower called the dearthswain, colored with such a dark purple as to almost be black, which created a sticky secretion to trap the insects trying to crawl upon it…
Beyond the flowers, she felt other life, shapes and forces less permanent, moving relatively freely throughout the forest. Small shapes, like the squirrels and rats which pulled the seeds falling from the trees to new places, allowing the forest to grow and flourish, no longer confined by the arrangement made so long ago. Their chatter filled her mind, continuous and busy. Larger shapes, those of wolves and tree lions who prowled, hunting the smaller creatures, were scattered. The wolves rested, preferring to hunt at night. The large tree lions, jumping from branch to branch as they hunted, rested in between their hunts, hiding in the branches high above, not mindful of her presence.
Eris felt even larger shapes, creatures she saw in her mind but had no name for, things that feared neither the wolf or the lion, and minded not that she had entered their realm, a place they considered theirs alone. Still, she sensed were they to find her, they would kill her and eat her with no more concern than were she a wolf or a possum. They were the creatures Terran had warned her about.
Other creatures roamed, though they wandered along the periphery of the forest, less a part of it than simple intruders upon it. The trees worked to push out these intruders, holding out those that did not belong.
Eris sighed and shifted her focus away until she found another shape, something she recognized in her mind. This shape felt small and delicate compared to what surrounded her.
Jasi.
She lay resting against a massive oak out in the forest not too far from her. Eris could tell she breathed steadily and regularly, and knew she slept. Somewhere overhead, one of the stealthy tree lions crept toward, drawn by her strange scent and the fact that she did not move.
Eris started forward, begging the trees to protect Jasi.
With the thought, she sensed a shifting of branches, as if one of the shrubs extended arms to cradle her sister—a spiky hawthorne, she noted. Somehow she knew the tree lion would not try to penetrate that barrier, preferring an easier kill, or simply content in knowing that eventually its prey would have to emerge and then it could pounce.
Eris thanked the forest and felt a sigh of wind in response.
She shivered.
How much of this was imagined?
> Had she been gone so long her mind now played tricks on her, creating thoughts and images that simply could not be to keep her company and to keep her sane?
The idea terrified her. Now she truly was becoming like her Aunt Rochelle.
Eris ran in the direction she felt Jasi. The forest opened a pathway for her, and she hurried along it, not worrying about her safety. The entire time, she felt Jasi sleeping, knew when she came close. Her connection to the forest told her there was nothing in the trees for her to fear. Even the tree lion seemed to have crept away, sensing her coming and preferring an easier target.
When she reached the spot where the hawthorne cradled around Jasi, the spiky bush pulled away, as if freely releasing Jasi.
Her sister rested just where Eris had seen her in her mind.
How could this be real?
She pushed away the question and leaned forward, resting a hand on her sister’s head, brushing a strand of hair away.
Jasi stirred and blinked her eyes open. “Eris? Are we home?”
Eris shook her head. “No. Still in the Svanth Forest.”
Jasi mouthed the words back to her, eyes going wide. “We got separated. I thought you were lost. I tried to call for you—I tried until my voice was hoarse—but when I didn’t hear anything, I think I gave up and went to sleep.” She choked back a sob as she looked at Eris. “How did you find me?”
Eris didn’t know how to answer the question. Now that she’d found Jasi, whatever connection she made with the forest seemed to have faded, leaving her with little sense of what happened around her. For some reason, the absence felt like a physical loss. Part of her longed for its return.
But it was still there, distantly. That sense of so much more. Of the trees and the flowers and the plants and life around her. Were she to delve into the depths of the roots, pull from them the stories the arranger had long ago left and she was able to read, first through her dreams and then through whatever power of the forest made it so she was able to delve deeper, she would know that power.
The Lost Garden: The Complete Series Page 18