The only thing she knew was pain.
Not dead then. Were she dead, the pain would be gone. That was the lesson the priestesses of the Sacred Mother taught. In the afterlife, there was warmth as one rejoined the Sacred Mother, but no pain. Only contentment and peace.
Eris felt none of that.
Panic set in. If she wasn’t dead, it meant she was trapped again.
The last time she’d been captured, the magi had taken her and Jasi, hoping to carry them into the forest, thinking one of them would be able to lower the protections built into the forest enough that the Conclave would be able to destroy the last garden standing against them. Only, they hadn’t counted on Eris being a keeper.
What had she done to free herself then? She remembered begging the bindings to release her when tied to the tree, and then the tree itself seemed to take a breath, draw itself out, and give her a chance to slip free. Could she do the same thing?
If only her feet touched the floor. They hung suspended over nothingness. Eris imagined herself tied to a long board, practically spitted like the hogs Jacen liked to hunt, waiting for the roasting flames.
“Help!” Her voice barely croaked out. Even were anyone near enough to help, she doubted they would hear.
Why? Why would Ferisa do this to her?
The question kept returning. Of her sisters, she’d always felt closest to Ferisa. Partly because Ferisa always seemed at peace with who she was meant to be—the way she’d been destined to join the church from birth, accepting it without question, possessing an almost preternatural calm about her role as if she truly were meant to become a priestess. But there had been more to it. Ferisa never tormented Eris the way their older sisters did, never teased her about her failings in lessons.
Why, then, would Ferisa do this to her?
Why her and not Jasi or Desia? Lira had been teaching them longer than she’d ever taught Eris.
Unless Ferisa had something more planned for them.
She took a few steadying breaths. If she could control her thoughts, maybe she could reach the power of the gardens around her, use it to help her escape. And then she would need to find Lira. Whatever else, Eris realized she was still woefully under trained for what she tried to accomplish.
More than Lira, she needed to find Terran. What would he think if he couldn’t find her?
Could he come for her? He had come for her when the Magi took them. Could he come again? Did the bond of keeper and gardener work like that or would he simply not know what happened?
Eris pushed away the hope of help coming.
She was the keeper. She would have to find a way free on her own.
She swallowed. Her tongued loosened somewhat. Pain still gnawed at her stomach.
How much blood had she lost? She was no physician, but surely she couldn’t survive a knife to the stomach for long, especially bleeding as much as she remembered. Would Ferisa and the priestess leave her here until she died? Was that what she intended?
Frustration surged to the surface. Her mother dying. Her father weakened. Jacen nearly so different as to be unrecognizable. Jasi and Desia.
But this…this was different. How could Ferisa do this to her?
Her fingers twitched. Pain shot through her, starting with her arms and moving up to her neck.
Eris blinked, trying to clear her vision, but failed.
The blackness returned.
* * *
Eris came around long enough to hear sounds near her. Voices, distant and soft, echoed toward her. A flash of yellow at the corner of her vision, like eyes staring at her.
She tried shivering but couldn’t move.
The voices sounded closer. One almost sounded like Ferisa.
“She doesn’t know about it yet.”
“It no longer matters. She returned. That is danger enough.”
“But she’s my sister!”
She heard a sound like a slap followed by a grunt.
“She was once, but no longer. Now, we’re your sisters.”
Eris heard soft mumbling but couldn’t make out the words.
“Because she’s different. The Mistress of Flowers has proven harmless. Her…we see light around her. Dangerous light. This is for the best.”
Eris tried swallowing, but her tongue didn’t work.
“She doesn’t know—”
“She would learn. And when she does, everything will fail.”
The speaker paused. Soft steps shuffled toward her.
“I will do it, if you cannot.”
Someone sobbed. Ferisa? “No. I will do it.”
A sound like metal sliding across metal rang toward Eris’s ears.
“No!” she croaked. She didn’t know if the word came out.
Something struck her again, hitting her on the neck. Blackness overcame her once more.
* * *
Eris dreamed.
Fields of flowers flowed around her, massive spreads of colors. Most she could name, but many she could not. They spilled all along the countryside, running up and down hills in regular waves and creating an undulating pattern. If she only focused, she would understand the meaning of the pattern—it hung just at the edge of her comprehension.
Tucked between the flowers were glimmers of gold, like a pair of glowing eyes.
The image shifted.
Eris felt it shift, so different than a dream should be.
Colors streamed around her, swirls of orange and red and yellow mixed with bright greens and slashes of browns and purples, all moving too fast for her to identify. She thought she should know the flowers, could almost feel them pulling against her, straining toward her, but the image sped past. As it moved, she thought she recognized the pull of the Svanth Forest, but it blurred by too quickly to know. She barely had time to wonder why she would sense the Svanth Forest in her dream before it was gone.
Colors faded into nothing but shimmering lines. Speed, faster than Eris could imagine, pulled them past her. There was motion, but she could do nothing to slow it, no more than she could control her dreams.
At least the pain was gone.
She knew nothing other than the sense of motion and hint of colors, now translucent, a glowing streaming around her, like thousands of shooting stars, slowly building, growing brighter and brighter and brighter…
Finally, it slowed.
Barren earth stretched around her. There was no movement. Even the air was still and stifling.
Eris blinked, letting her eyes open and take in the life around her, but nothing lived. Where grass should be instead was only char. Rocks heaved from the broken ground.
In the dream, she took a step. The ground crunched beneath her bare feet. Hot earth threatened to burn her before crumbling to nothingness. She glanced to the sky, looking for anything with color, but saw only blackness.
Eris shivered.
What was this image?
She turned, hoping for something else, but all around her stretched a vast emptiness.
Eris ran.
The ground hurt her feet, the rock tearing through her flesh before it crumbled away, but she refused to stop. She could see nothing of where she ran. Nothing surrounded her. Perhaps she was nothing.
A charred, misshapen body lay unmoving. Eris didn’t dare slow long enough to look at it.
Finally, she stumbled. A towering rock grabbed at her feet, and she fell forward. She threw her arms up to stop the fall, knowing the rock would rip through her hands, and braced for the impact.
No impact came.
Eris fell an impossibly long time. She felt the motion around her but could see nothing. Not even the rocks around her any longer. There was nothing.
Instead, the blackness faded as she fell.
Speed picked up, the sense of motion dizzying. There was no sense of wind, no colors. It was as if her senses failed her.
A nauseating fear rolled through her, building on the increasing speed.
And then Eris knew no more.
* * *
When her eyes opened again, she found herself with nothing but white surrounding her. There was the sense of something more, almost at the edge of what she could perceive. Warmth flowed through her, and her pain was gone. A flash of color blinked and disappeared.
Her breath caught in her throat. Was she dead?
What had happened at the end? Why had her hand twitched?
She didn’t know, and so closed her eyes, falling back into darkness.
A gnawing ache built in her chest. She frowned. If she were dead, she should not feel pain. This was different than before, slow but building with an agonizing sense, pressure squeezing around her chest, pushing down on her breasts, stabbing through her neck.
Eris realized then that she had forgotten to breathe.
She took a deep breath, and the pain faded.
Her eyes flickered open. She saw only bright light. This looked so different than the darkness—the nothingness—that had surrounded her before. She no longer moved.
But no bindings held her, either.
Eris moved her arms but still did not see them. She moved her legs, kicking them, but could not see where they were. Only the surrounding whiteness.
She took a step.
No pain worked through her feet from the rocks. The only pain came from deep within her chest.
Eris forced another breath and took another step.
Slowly, she moved. Each step sliding forward, carefully feeling her way. She had the sense that if she could reach whatever it was she felt, she might finally escape this…whatever it was. Dream? Nightmare?
Or was it real?
That scared her more than anything.
Another step. And another. Each moved her across the unseen ground.
As she moved, she slowly felt a power drawing upon her. It started slowly, more a nagging sense at the back of her mind, but each step took her closer and closer to what it was she sensed.
Eris kept her hands in front of her. Her mind was blank, like the whiteness around her. Were she to stop, she would have to wonder about her sister, about the slender knife with the strange rune marked on its edge, and about the way Ferisa slipped the knife so easily into her stomach. Eris wanted none of that.
So, she let the light surround her.
As she moved, she imagined the beautiful garden she’d seen earlier in her dream. The massive swells of flowers running over the hillside. Had that been Elaysia? Could she have dreamt of the ancient garden? Or was her vision something else? Only a dream.
She continued forward, but the walk seemed endless, nothing but whiteness around her, never changing. Eris stopped. Had she gone too far? Had the sense of something else changed, shifted away from her? She no longer knew if she traveled in the right direction. But what was the right direction anymore?
Eris took a deep breath and sat.
This was all a dream, some vision she had as she lay dying. If she waited, she would eventually find the Sacred Mother waiting for her, welcoming her toward warmth.
As she sat, she took deep breaths, needing to remind herself to breathe. The image of the flowers she’d seen in the other vision kept returning, mixing with the strange, soft glowing eyes. She hadn’t had long to see them, but flowers—especially patterns to the flowers—stayed with her. In her mind, she built the image back up, putting the flowers around her as if she stood in the wide, sweeping meadow. Color began to seep around her, the yellow of the corinths, the blue of listhanis, a field of red and orange roses, all stretching as far as she could see, and then farther, beyond her field of vision.
The fragrance of the flowers almost touched the air, a hint, nothing more, of what could be with this garden. Eris smiled. She might be surrounded by whiteness, but she could imagine a garden.
But not this garden.
Eris blinked, pushing the garden from her thoughts. This was not the garden of her dreams. The whiteness returned, leaving her feeling the emptiness—the sheer vastness—all around her.
Taking a deep breath, she focused her thoughts, pulling together the image she wanted.
She built massive trees around her, stretching high overhead until they blocked the pale surrounding light. Vines trickled down from some of the branches, and she wove others around the bases of the massive Svanth trees, recreating the heart of the forest, her forest. As she did, the air seemed to change, a trick of her mind, becoming more earthen and damp.
She smiled.
This was her garden.
Eris relaxed, letting the garden surround her. It might not be real, a vision or some trick of her mind, but she no longer cared. If she could be surrounded by the familiarity of the Svanth Forest, could feel the magnitude of the trees rising around her, the heaviness of the air, the sense of calm and quiet she felt while moving beneath the massive canopy, then she would welcome the Sacred Mother.
Imagining her feet, she pressed them into the dirt, pushing past the leaves and detritus her mind created for her, a record of the last time she’d been in the forest. As she did, there was a familiarity of the forest, the energy humming around her. Then she knew she was dreaming.
Sighing, Eris delved, pressing into the roots.
And everything changed.
Chapter 42
The forest tore from her mind, ripping away as it changed around her. The massive Svanth trees receded, twisting and turning into stunted elms and pale-barked birch. Pine trees with thick needles interspersed amidst the others, their aroma rising over everything else. Light diffused through the upper branches, reaching the floor of the forest in a way it never did while in the Svanth. Wind rustled quietly through the trees.
Eris frowned, wondering why her vision had changed.
She stood and took a step. Not just the vision had changed, but her perception of it. Now, her feet touched the ground, different than when touching the stone as it powdered away in front of her. With each step, she sunk softly, toes touching brown, fallen pine needles and decaying leaves from the elms. A few scrub trees rose nearby, attempting to climb toward the light. Thorns twisted around some.
What was this vision?
Letting herself reach into the depths of the forest, she delved.
Power hummed around her. And awareness.
The forest—the garden—was nearly as alive as the Svanth. This felt different than what she experienced in the Svanth Forest. Younger, perhaps, with less a sense of overwhelming age. The roots carried with them a story, different than what she’d learned from her garden. If she traced along them, she could get a sense of where she was…
But something repelled her.
Eris blinked. Always before, she’d been able to access the gardens she’d found. First within the Svanth when she’d learned she was a keeper and then within the Verilain Plains, when she’d used the power of the needlegrass, pulling on it to help dispel the magi. Even within the palace, she managed to access the energy and power stored within Lira’s garden. Why not now?
Could this be real?
How? Eris remembered clearly lying on the table, pain aching through her stomach, and then…blackness. Nothing. Had she died? Was this the afterlife?
But if so, why did it feel so real?
She looked down, taking in the thin shift she wore, so similar to when she’d been abducted by the magi and nearly died. Blood stained the cloth where she’d been stabbed. Eris touched the silky fabric, carefully placing a finger through the hole. When it touched her stomach, she felt no pain.
Tearing away the fabric, she looked and saw her flesh unharmed. How? She had been stabbed—that much was real—but how had she been healed?
Or was she? Could this still be a dream?
Eris looked around the forest. Everything was different than it had been within the visions. The air pressed in around her with its cool, humid touch, smelling distinctly of pine and life and everything she loved about the Svanth. That much seemed real enough. Birds chirped distantly, their songs fading into the trees. And the wind. T
he wind hadn’t blown against her skin while under the influence of her visions.
She took a step. Dried branches crunched painfully beneath her feet. She touched the nearby branches, and thorns pricked her finger.
Real then, and not a dream.
But how had she come here?
This was not the Svanth Forest. It was no forest she knew, too cool to be within Eliara. In spite of the chill on the wind, she did not shiver. The pine trees told her she was someplace in the north, but even Varden was too far south and too flat for these pines. Some grew along the mountains in the west of Eliara, but not forested like this.
Where was she?
And why couldn’t she delve the forest?
Eris tried again. This time, she delved slowly, cycling down within the forest, twisting along the roots as she went, searching for understanding. She listened, letting the forest guide her as she slid along the roots, carefully moving as she searched the patterns she recognized written within the twisting growth. A story, so much like the one written in the Svanth, but different in a way that she barely recognized it. Pressed within the story was the edge of a barrier meant to keep others out, as if the keeper of this forest knew others would come and she meant to prevent them from learning the secrets.
As much as she tried, Eris couldn’t get past the barrier.
“What is this?”
Her voice startled her; she hadn’t meant to ask aloud.
The wind sighed in answer, drawing along her arms and flickering through her hair.
Eris withdrew from delving the roots, but not before she realized something—someone—approached. Somehow, she had been discovered.
If the forest was a garden, it might have a keeper.
Eris waited. If there was a keeper, she could ask for assistance. The first question she’d ask would be how she got here in the first place. And then she needed to return. She could seek out Lira, ask for her assistance, and do whatever she could to help heal her mother.
The keeper came with another sigh of the wind.
Eris felt her arrive, distantly as though a memory of the sense she had within the Svanth, nothing like the awareness her garden granted. It was almost as if the forest tried to shroud the arrival of the keeper. Eris still knew she came.
The Lost Garden: The Complete Series Page 34