The Lost Garden: The Complete Series

by D. K. Holmberg

  “I should return to her sometime. Once we finish with the plantings. There are questions I need answered.”

  Terran tilted his head. “You would go to her rather than search for your mother?”

  “I have searched for Rochelle. Since she’s a keeper, I might not be able to find her unless she wants me to. It’s been years since she last came to Eliara. We don’t even know if she still lives.”

  That was the answer she told herself, the reason for why Rochelle left her for so long without coming and explaining the secret of her birth. And if Rochelle still lived, why had she not revealed herself during the magi attack? After leaving Eris here, wouldn’t she have come forward once the Conclave demonstrated the lengths they were willing to go?

  “I will follow you where you choose to go, you know that.”

  Eris pushed away from him and frowned. “You don’t hide your emotions half as well as you think you do.”

  “Who said I was trying to hide them?”

  “Then what?”

  He shrugged. “You stayed in Eliara only long enough to see your brother buried. Since then, we’ve spent most of our time along the border while you plant svanth trees. The magi can’t attack again—not easily. And now that you’ve returned to Eliara, you’re already looking for ways to go somewhere else.” He kissed her forehead. “You talk about how hard it is for the others to learn that Rochelle is your mother, but I think you’re doing all you can to avoid it, too.”

  Eris closed her eyes and swallowed. “I’m not avoiding it. It’s all I think about,” she whispered. “The only answer I can come up with for why she left me here was that she knew of some danger. Knowing what I do about the magi and the priestesses, I’m inclined to think she was right.” She opened her eyes and looked up at Terran, debating whether to tell him what happened, but he needed to know. “I found a warning in my room today.”

  He frowned. “A warning?”

  “A message worked into an arrangement of flowers and grasses. My mother said she saw a similar warning before she fell ill.”

  “You think it’s from the priestesses?”

  Eris shook her head. “I don’t know. I haven’t been poisoned, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “The last time they didn’t try poisoning you. They went with a more direct approach.”

  Eris nodded. “The last time we didn’t know to fear the priestesses. Now that we know, we can protect ourselves. I can protect us.”

  “You still need to be careful. We don’t know what they’re after, only what they’re willing to do to accomplish it.”

  “Lira would have known had the priestesses returned to the palace.”

  “I hope so, but I’ll poke around and see if anyone saw anything.” He hugged her, letting it linger for a moment before turning and looking over the garden. “So what’s your plan now? You intend to go to Imryll and see what she might be able to teach you?”

  “Eventually,” Eris said. She touched the svanth tree, letting the awareness of it seep through her, the strength of it press into her. As it did, she pushed out and along the roots, tracing through them. “For now I need to—”

  The sense of something different became clearer. The svanth tree had changed. The energy faltered, as if…as if tainted.

  “What is it?”

  She looked over at Terran and pointed to the tree.

  Terran placed his hand carefully atop the bark of the vine. The barbs didn’t press into him, allowing him to run his hand along the surface. As gardener, he couldn’t delve the tree the same way Eris could, but he had a different awareness of his plants. He leaned toward it, sniffing. His nose wrinkled as he did. “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  Terran nodded toward the tree. “This has your signature.”

  “What do you mean it has my signature?”

  “When you do your keeper thing, it affects the plants. With flowers, it changes them, ties them to you in a way. With trees, it isn’t quite so dramatic, though over time you end up with something similar. Maybe not quite the same but close enough. Whatever was done here was because of you.”

  Eris delved through the tree, letting her sense of it work through the roots and up into the upper branches. Whatever had happened here moved all throughout the tree. And it was spreading. It slid through the roots, pressing out through the connections made between the trees. In enough time, whatever happened here would reach the Svanth Forest and the border with Saffra.

  A sharp pain pierced her mind, and she looked up, startled.

  Shadow.

  She sensed him in the Verilain Plains. He didn’t move, lying with the long needlegrass pressing against his fur. Pain worked through their bond.

  “Eris?”

  She turned to Terran.

  “What is it? You’ve gone white.”

  She trembled. “It’s Shadow.”

  “What of him?”

  She shook her head and focused on the svanth tree again. The effect working through it was familiar, but how? Why should she know it?

  She ran her hand along the trunk, focusing on it. Moments passed before she recognized what she felt. The sense reminded her of the way the magi tainted the border, but different. More like what she’d detected when delving through her mother.

  Could this have been the warning?

  Eris pressed down into the roots of the tree, coursing along them. The strange taint worked there, running through the roots all the way to the tree at the heart of the Verilain Plains. To Shadow.

  “Eris?” Terran repeated. “What of Shadow?”

  She looked up at him. He watched her with a worried expression.

  “I don’t know. Something happened to him.”

  Eris looked down at her hands, her heart racing as she remembered the warning. There had been darkness to the arrangement, a strange sensation she felt from the veratrum. She thought that part of the message, but what if it was something more? Her mother had seen a similar arrangement before she had fallen ill. That couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?

  Could she have been used? Ferisa and the priestesses knew how to craft messages in the flowers. They would know of her ability as well.

  But if that were the case, how were they able to do this?

  She trailed along the tree, listening. With each passing moment, it became clearer to her that what happened to the svanth was the result of Eris using the energy of the tree to search for Shadow. Whatever poisoning flowed through the tree would reach the others, it would reach Shadow. And it was her fault.

  Chapter 65

  The bond between Eris and Shadow pulsed weakly. He was injured, the poisoning working through the trees already affecting him as well.

  Could her touching the veratrum have tainted her? Had it caused her to have poisoned the Source?

  Maybe that was the point of the warning, but why leave a warning if the priestesses intended for her to taint the svanth trees? Unless they knew that was the only way she would touch the flowers. The veratrum had hidden among the other flowers. Had she not touched them, she may not have seen it.

  She needed to reach Shadow. If she couldn’t stop this, how much would be lost?

  “I need to go to my room and find the arrangement there,” she told Terran.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s the warning. The flowers left by…” She didn’t know who had left them, only the suspicion that it had been the priestesses.

  “And then? Where do you think to go after?” He shook his head. “I can see from your face you plan something.”

  Eris closed her eyes. Shadow was out there, close enough for her to feel, but the sense of him faded. “I need to reach Shadow. I need to reverse whatever it is I did to him.”

  “We’ll go together. If something happens to you along the way, I need to be there to help.”

  “You think something might happen to me between here and the Verilain Plains?”

  “If you’ve been poi
soned, too…”

  Eris didn’t think she had been poisoned. She felt fine. But delving through the tree told her the svanth was not. The connection between the trees meant whatever poisoning that affected this tree would spread. Already it reached to the svanth she’d planted in the plains. How much longer until it reached the Svanth Forest? Or to the trees along the border?

  She touched the bark. The wilted barbs pressed against her hand, but did not turn away. As she searched along the roots, racing through them, she reached a hard, dark barrier.

  “No.” The voice came from Shadow through their bond, weakened and sickly. But he blocked her from reaching through the tree.

  “Shadow?” She said his name aloud.

  “Stay back, keeper. There is nothing you can do here.”

  The block pushed her out of the roots, like breaking her from a dream, slamming her awareness back out of the depths of the soil. Shadow didn’t want her to come, but she couldn’t leave him there, not without knowing what had happened—what she had done to him.

  Without drawing on the energy from the trees, she wouldn’t be able to reach him as quickly as she needed. But she could use the energy of the flowers and the grasses of the plains.

  Did she dare risk that? If whatever happened was her fault, if she somehow caused the poisoning, did she dare risk the others?

  With Shadow injured, did she dare not risking it?

  “I’ve not been poisoned,” she said to Terran. “But I think I’m the reason the tree was affected. And Shadow.” She shook her head. “Whatever I touched. Somehow it worked its way into the tree through me. Now Shadow is blocking me from accessing the trees.”

  “You are more than just a keeper of trees.”

  “But I don’t know what will happen if I use their energy.”

  Eris felt the pain Shadow experienced. How much time did he have? Her mother held out for months while sick, but this felt different from whatever had affected her. It moved more quickly, racing through the svanth, almost as if gaining strength by feeding off the tree’s energy. But to do that, whoever created this poison would have to have something similar to Eris’s ability.

  Eris looked over at the gardens and considered the energy flowing through them. The power was different than what she found in the forest, not as interconnected, but she could access it. For Shadow, she would access it. Lira would have to understand.

  Eris hurried into the palace, sweeping toward her room. She stared straight ahead, ignoring the portraits hanging on the walls, particularly the shrouded one of her brother that had been covered since his death. As per custom, it would remain shrouded for a year and a day. Eris didn’t need his portrait to remind her of what he looked like. His lifeless expression floated to mind anytime she thought of the last battle with the magi.

  The door to her room was closed, and she pushed it open. Her gaze darted around, catching on the thick green cloak Imryll had given her. She grabbed it and threw it on. A small stack of leather-bound books rested on the table near the door. Works by Feliran that she hadn’t had the time to fully study. The last time she’d spent any time reading through them, she had nearly died the next day. She flipped through the stack until she found the volume she sought. It was covered in deep blue leather, and the pages were worked into a tight scrawl.

  She opened the book and ran her finger along the edge of the page, taking in the intricate detail drawn by Feliran and the descriptions made for each flower. This book detailed much of the way flowers could be used in patterns. She’d started reading it before, but that was when she thought herself as nothing more than a keeper of trees. The knowledge in this book might be needed to use the energy of the flowers to save Shadow.

  She tucked the book into the pocket of her cloak. In her large wardrobe, she found a pair of olive gloves. Once they had been part of the dress required when entertaining guests of state. Now, she had a different use for them. If her touch had tainted the svanth tree, would the gloves protect it, or did it have more to do with how she delved the energy of the tree?

  There was only one way for her to know. She slipped the gloves on and turned to the arrangement. Now that she recognized the warning, it rubbed on her senses, like salt over a wound. She might need the flowers to understand how to undo what was done to her. She tore a long strip of fabric from one of her dresses in her wardrobe and wrapped it carefully around the flowers, then pulled everything from the vase. A length of ribbon taken from the same dress secured it in place.

  Clutching the message, she paused at the door to her room. Memories of when Ferisa attacked her came to mind, haunting her the same as memories of now-dead Jacen. She still had Jasi and Desia, but they were both different than they’d been when growing up. Jasi she understood. With what she had been through she understandably had retreated, becoming more cautious and suspicious.

  Desia had become angry. Part of Eris wanted nothing more than to ignore her, but the keeper part of her—the part she’d learned to trust while running from the magi—knew that wasn’t what she was meant to do. Somehow, she had to help heal.

  Another time. For now, she needed to focus on Shadow.

  Eris pulled open the door. Desia stood on the other side, as if waiting for her.

  Her mouth pursed in a frown as she took in the sight of Eris’ cloak. “You’re leaving again? You have been back only a few days, and now you won’t even remain in Eliara long enough to help Mother cope with Jacen’s passing?”

  Eris shook her head. “I did what I could to help Mother cope.”

  “No. You saw his body home. You stayed for his burial. But you’ve been gone since. And when you’ve been here, you’ve been distracted, so focused on what you claim you need to do as this keeper. What about what you need to do as a member of the family?”

  Eris took a steadying breath, biting back the harsh retort that sprang to mind. Acting like that would not help Desia. “Was there a reason you came here, Desia?”

  Desia tipped her head, touching her hand to her wavy golden hair. Each time Eris saw her, she looked more and more like their mother. At least now Eris understood where her dark hair and eyes came from, so different than the others. At least now she understood why their mother never made her feel guilty for her differences, welcoming them. Her father always made her feel special for her uniqueness, but if he knew the truth, would that change?

  “I came—” Desia paused, as if searching for what to say. She shook her head. “I don’t know why I came, honestly. After what you said in the gardens—”

  “I told you the truth.”

  “—I’m not even sure what to say to you. You’re so different than the way you were.” She looked around Eris’s rooms, her gaze skimming over the wardrobe with the torn dress and narrowing slightly. “You’ve been gone, so you don’t see what’s happened here. Maybe you don’t want to know, but you should. You need to know what’s happened since you left.”

  Eris had focused so much on how different everyone else around her was that it was easy to lose sight of how much she’d changed. She no longer relied upon her family to support her. She no longer needed the permission of her father to leave the palace. She was a keeper, bound to the teary star and to Shadow, a protector of the Svanth Forest. And she had faced the Conclave twice and survived. Of course she would have changed.

  “Where are you going now?” Desia asked.

  This time, Eris hesitated. “There is a place I need to go.”

  “The magi?” She spoke it with trepidation, biting her lower lip as she did.

  Eris shook her head. “Someone needs my help.”

  Desia frowned. “Someone? Another gardener?”

  Eris laughed softly. “Terran is gardener enough for me. No, this is someone else, but also close to me.”

  “Closer than your family?”

  Eris didn’t know how to answer. Shadow was different than her family. They were bonded; somehow her connection to the Svanth Forest had drawn them together. A part of her wond
ered if he was even mortal. He was connected—somehow—to the Source, the store of energy buried deep beneath the Svanth Forest, the energy that stretched beneath much of Errasn. It was this energy the magi had sought to claim with their desolation.

  “Don’t answer,” Desia snapped. “But when you do find yourself able to stay in Eliara for more than a day, remember to check on your family. Maybe then you’ll decide to use your magic for a different reason.”

  She started to turn, and Eris caught her arm. This time, Desia didn’t pull away.

  “What does that mean?” Eris asked.

  Desia breathed out slowly. “Why ask if you don’t really care?”

  “I care, Desia.”

  Desia turned and looked into Eris’s eyes. She shook her head slightly. “It hasn’t all gone well since you healed Mother. She has dreams—dark ones—that wake her at night. She sees visions of Saffra, frightening things that keep her awake. And then, when she’s up, she wanders at night, stopping to peer at Jacen’s portrait.”

  Eris sucked in a breath.

  Desia nodded. “Father? He tries to hide how weary he has become, but still it shows. Jacen knew how to help him, as did you, but as Jacen is gone and you might as well be…” She sighed and looked down at her hands, playing with the cloth of her dress. “He snaps at the staff, his generals, Mother. I think his mind wanders at times. He always apologizes later, but still it happens. And Jasi…”

  “What of Jasi?”

  Desia’s eyes softened. “Jasi has changed the most. She’s scared. They took too much from her. She tries to be strong for Father, but privately, when she thinks no one watches, she breaks down. She won’t be strong enough to be queen. The worst part is I think she knows.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes, they were angry. “So go. Help your friend. Do what you must.”

  It was all too much. Shadow lay injured out on the Verilain Plains and her sister thought she should stay behind and fix her family. What did it matter that Eris had no idea how to fix her family? Maybe Desia was right—maybe she had been gone for too long. But if she hadn’t worked along the border and planted the svanth trees, if she hadn’t developed the barrier between Errasn and Saffra, the Conclave could attack again. The war had only been ended a short while. The Conclave was pushed back, but for how long? If they pressed into Errasn again, would Eris have the strength to stop them?