Eris let her hand smooth over the trunk of the vine before meeting Lira’s eyes. “There hasn’t been time,” she said, hiding the truth from Lira.
“Not even to learn of your mother?”
“Rochelle has never been a mother to me.”
“Perhaps not. I suspect she never could have been a mother to you, or else she would never have left you with Elayne.”
“You knew her.” Eris had avoided questions of Rochelle since learning she was her mother. Knowing did her no good—did nothing but leave her with uncertainty and a nagging sense of being unwanted. A feeling she’d known her whole life.
Lira nodded. “I knew of her. A powerful keeper. Much makes sense knowing that she is your mother.”
This wasn’t the reason she had come for Lira, but now that she was here, Eris couldn’t help the lump that formed in her throat. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know. She and Elayne kept that from me. Even had I known, would that have changed anything for you? Would you have done anything differently?”
“I might have sought her sooner.” Eris turned toward the palace. The setting sun sent swirls of colors, orange and reds that dimpled through pale clouds. The pattern of the light. She shivered, thinking of what would happen were that pattern to fail, were light to fail, especially now that she knew of the Darkbinders.
“To be honest, I thought you would have searched for her by now. Once you learned of her, I expected you to leave Eliara to find her.”
“I searched.”
“With your ability, I suspect you didn’t search long or you would have found her.”
Rochelle was a keeper, and if what Lira said was true, she was powerful. And the truth was, she had searched for Rochelle. The connection she had to the svanth trees—especially those she had planted—gave her the ability to search far. Through that connection, she found no sign of another keeper, save for Imryll.
She turned to Lira, pushing back thoughts of Rochelle. Those would be for another time. “There isn’t time for what I want. Only for what needs to be done.”
Lira’s lips tightened into a thin line. “You have grown, Eris Taeresin. There was a time you would have rushed off, not caring about the consequences.”
“Sometimes I wish I still could.”
Lira nodded. “When Elaysia fell, when the gardens were destroyed, I felt much the same. I spent years hiding, burrowed in the outer edges of the Svanth Forest. Knowing it as you do, you can understand why it seemed the trees only tolerated me. They did not accept me—not as they do you—but the forest allowed my garden to grow.”
Eris could always sense Lira’s garden within the Svanth. The shade flowers planted there were shaped in such a pattern to guide the power generated back to Eliara. Lira could pull on that power, even from a distance. As keeper of the Svanth Forest, Eris could as well, though the energy stored within Lira’s garden paled in comparison to what the trees held.
“The pattern was not always as it is now,” Eris said.
Lira smiled sadly. “It was not. It impresses me that you know. That the forest shares that much with you.”
“The memory of the trees is long. The roots dive deeper than flowers. They feel the influence of the smallest plant.”
Lira tipped her head. She took a deep breath and glanced around the palace gardens. Flowers of all colors bloomed, catching the late afternoon light. A few gardeners worked along the rows of flowers, tending to elevated pots and plucking weeds or grubs from each. The flowers here had changed since Eris first began the search for her flower, but the intent remained the same: to feed off the sun and grow, storing energy that the keeper could use.
“At first I sought revenge,” Lira admitted. “The garden growing within the svanth was meant to harm the magi.” She laughed bitterly. “When the rivenswood was lost, I claimed parisander, a flower equally at home in sun or shade. Or perhaps it claimed me.” She shook her head, and her gaze flickered to the flowers blooming from the teary star vine. “So much time wasted thinking only of revenge.”
“For your garden?” Eris had never asked what happened to Lira’s first gardener. Had she lost him then too?
“My garden…and others,” Lira agreed. “During that time, the Conclave grew stronger, only they didn’t have keepers pushing against them. Had I not wasted that time, I wonder what might have been. Would I have failed as often as I have now?”
Eris looked over at her. “You haven’t failed. Had you come to the palace sooner, what would have happened? Would my mother have sought your help? Would she have asked you to teach?”
Lira shook her head. “I don’t know what would have been. Perhaps, had I not waited, I would not have had the strength needed to defend Eliara as long as I did. I would not have had the chance or motivation to study patterns. I might not have maintained Elayne long enough for you to learn what you needed to save her. Or perhaps, none of it would have been necessary. You might never have needed to become keeper, had I done things differently. You could have lived your life as princess, taken your place as required by your father, without the worry and fear you now feel.”
For the first time in ages, Eris wondered what that would have been like. She could never have been happy living as princess, third born at that. She would have been married to some Varden lord and would have been miserable. At least now she had a purpose. And now she had Terran.
She turned and saw him approaching. He had changed his deep green jacket but still looked much the same as when she first met him. There were differences, though. His dark hair was now cut short, and his deep brown eyes studied her with a hint of concern.
He waited, standing away from her and Lira. He busied himself by turning to a small planter and absently plucking weeds.
Eris looked at Lira. “I don’t want a different life, Lira. Sometimes I want the one I have to be simpler. I would like peace.”
Lira laughed softly. “I have often wished the same. Usually after struggling to get you to choose a flower. But I found myself in Eliara. I found something else to care about.”
Eris touched the teary star. With a quick request to the tree, she plucked the flower from the vine and lifted it to her nose, inhaling deeply. They should not be blooming, not yet, but the power infusing the tree had changed them, leaving the teary star blooming when it should not.
She cupped the flower, inhaling its fragrance and recognizing a subtle change. How much of the taint lingered? The darkness was trapped—she sensed that if she delved—but had it changed the teary star permanently?
“Why did you come back?” Lira asked.
Eris smiled. Always so forthright. She appreciated that about Lira. “I came for you, Lira. I need you to do the task I asked of you before. I need to know if you will return to Elaysia.”
Lira sucked in a soft breath.
“How long has it been since you’ve been there?”
Lira looked away. “Sometimes, I think it has been too long. Other times, I know it has not been long enough.” Her voice was soft and with none of her normal confidence. “I lost everything and everyone I knew when the gardens fell.”
“But much more will be lost without them,” Eris said. “This is not simply about the magi or the priestesses.” She didn’t know how to tell Lira about the Darkbinders; she was not a keeper of light. There might be a way to explain later, but for now, she needed only one thing from her.
Lira turned back. Tears welled in her eyes. “I don’t know if I can do it, Eris. You think me strong, but in this I am weak.”
Eris sniffed. “Is it the magi? Do you fear them so much?”
Lira twisted to face her. “Do you really think I would fear the magi? I came to Eliara to face the magi.”
“The priestesses?”
Lira shook her head slightly.
“Then Elaysia itself? Is it really so hard for you to return to the gardens?”
Lira stiffened. Her mouth tightened, and she took a small breath. “It is more th
an the gardens.”
“What then?”
Lira swallowed and sighed. Then, without saying another word, she hurried away from the svanth tree and the courtyard, not even bothering to lift her dress as she made her way to the palace.
Terran made his way over to her and touched her arm. “That could have gone differently.”
“What is it about the gardens that keeps her from returning? Why won’t she help in this?”
Terran slipped his hand into hers. Warm skin pressed against her palm. “I’ve suggested that you visit the remains, but you’ve always been too busy. I never saw the Gardens of Elaysia when they were full of power, but I’ve heard the stories. My grandfather tells of the beauty and vibrancy that once was there. It was a place of power, but it was more than that.” He shook his head and frowned, looking toward the brightly colored gardens. “He never said as much, but the way he spoke of it made it seem sacred to the keepers in a way.”
Eris tried remembering what she’d learned of the gardens from her time spent within the forest but struggled. Memories were there, drifting through the sense of the forest—of the stories woven into the roots of the forest—but she couldn’t recall them clearly. Even delving the roots left her with an incomplete memory, almost as if the forest hid them from her.
“It’s more than simply visiting the remains of the gardens,” Eris said.
She needed to understand the Darkbinders. The magi and the priestesses were involved—she knew that deep in her core—and she feared when she would finally have to go to Saffra.
There was no part of her that wanted to go south, not after the war where she’d lost Jacen, but how else would she learn what the Conclave had planned? How else to find the priestesses?
Terran squeezed her hand, almost as if he understood.
Chapter 74
The air held a bitter bite to it, more than the wind could explain. Eris stood at the edge of the narrow road staring across an open plain that looked like a sea of green. Once hard-packed and wide, the road was now overgrown with weeds and barely visible. The walk had taken the better part of the day. Longer than it should have, but she avoided drawing more energy than needed from the surrounding plains. Terran stood alongside her, more tense than usual.
“This is where the gardens were?” she asked.
Terran nodded.
She scanned the scenery before her. Through her connection to the grasses and weeds and the few twisted and stunted trees, she knew there had once been more here, but she had little sense of what that had been. No flowers bloomed. No trees arched overhead. Nothing but grasses and weeds grew here now.
But it had not always been this way. She sensed that, though she didn’t know what it meant.
In the distance, Shadow roamed. His broad head swiveled, as if searching for threats Eris could not detect. He seemed more on edge than the last time she’d seen him. The bond that connected them, the bond formed when she first began to understand her role as keeper of the trees and solidified when she named him, passed along only his irritation, nothing more. His yellow eyes glittered in the bright sunlight, and he turned to study her.
He had been more distant since he’d given her a glimpse of the dark. She sensed anxiety from him and knew there was something more he didn’t share. He remained distant, and there remained a darkness within him that wasn’t there before.
“How many keepers were here?” she asked.
Terran shook his head. “I don’t know about the keepers. All that you see here once was gardens. Flowers flowed for miles and miles, from one garden to the next.”
The memory of those gardens remained as nothing more than a hint in the earth. There was another sense here, the angry charred remains of the darkness the magi had worked. The sense resonated against her, leaving an uncomfortable ache in her chest. It was like the desolation they had worked, only different. More raw and with less focus.
“They didn’t stay. The magi destroyed and then departed,” Eris said. “If they were successful, why wouldn’t they have remained?”
The Gardens of Elaysia were far to the north of Errasn, just on the edge of the kingdom. Beyond this land, mountains began climbing, separating Errasn from Varden. For as flat as these lands were, no one lived here. Few creatures bothered to call this place home, as if intentionally avoiding it.
“But they did stay behind. Think of Adrick and how he served as your father’s counselor. Others of the Conclave continued north, some serving in Varden and Kelth, some even farther to the east.” He turned to her and shrugged. “Once the gardens were gone, very little remained to slow them. They had no reason to remain here.”
Eris closed her eyes, sending her focus into the shallow roots around her. Normally, she found it easy to do so, but it came more difficult today, as if the weeds resisted her effort to understand them.
“Magi died here as well,” she said. Something she’d overheard Adrick say reminded her of that. The magi had lost many in the attack on the gardens—more than they expected but not nearly as much as the keepers lost.
“Much blood was spilled here that day.”
Eris opened her eyes to see Shadow pacing near them. His ears twitched slightly, and his tail swished. As far as she knew, she was the only one to understand him when he spoke. Terran heard little more than growls. “You were here?”
Shadow snorted and pawed at the ground. “No. I was not the guardian of this place. I had not been summoned.”
Eris tapped one foot on the hard-packed ground. “There is something wrong here, isn’t there? Much like on the border with Saffra. Whatever they did here was like that.”
Shadow sniffed at the air, wrinkling his nose. “An early attempt at creating the Nothing.”
The Nothing—Shadow’s term for the desolation, the dark poisoning of the land the magi had attempted. Had Eris not intervened, the desolation would have reached Eliara by now.
“What did they hope to accomplish here? Could the magi have used the Source?”
His ears folded backward, and the fur on his neck stiffened. His head swiveled to look up at her, his bright yellow eyes watching her with intensity. “You ask what you already know, keeper.”
She shook her head. “I know nothing about the Source. What does it mean that the magi sought to access it? Would doing so help the Darkbinders?” What would have happened had she failed to prevent the magi from reaching the Source?
Shadow sniffed. “As I said, you ask what you already know.”
“What is the Source?” Terran asked.
“It’s what the magi wanted when they pushed into Errasn. They sought to claim some deep power for themselves. I don’t fully know what it is—or what it can do—only that the Svanth Forest also reaches into the same power. It’s why the Svanth is so powerful. Without the connection to the Source, I don’t know if it would have the same strength.” She looked at Shadow. “I don’t know if it’s what the Darkbinders seek.”
Terran frowned. “I thought the forest gained its power because of the trees?”
Eris nodded. “That’s part of it, though I’m not sure it explains why I was able to stop the magi or why I could reach the same energy so far from the forest. Even with the roots connecting, the energy I could access was immense.”
And without it, the magi would have overwhelmed her. They almost had anyway. Had she not managed to plant the row of svanth trees along the border, she might have failed. The trees prevented the desolation from spreading, but more than that, they helped her tap into the deep power beneath the forest.
She turned to Shadow but spoke to Terran. “And Shadow is connected to it as well.”
Shadow’s tail swished from side to side and then fell still. He crouched on his haunches, studying her. “I have told you, keeper, I do not know the connections any more than you do.”
Eris touched Shadow’s fur, resisting the urge to pet him. “Why can I sense the Source? Is it because I’m a keeper of light? Can Imryll reach the Source?” If
she could, it meant the trees of her forest would be nearly as powerful as the Svanth.
“I have shown you what I can. I am limited in ways you cannot understand.”
Eris released her grip, realizing how tightly she’d been holding onto Shadow. “I’m…I’m sorry. I feel as if I’m still in the forest after learning I was a keeper, and this time, rather than being unable to reach through the connection in the roots, there is some greater truth I should know but don’t. At least when I was in the forest, I felt like I could reach the answers if I pushed far enough.”
Terran touched her arm, and she turned to him. Concern knotted his brow, and his deep brown eyes frowned at her. “And when you were in the forest, you obsessed over what you couldn’t learn. You let it consume you. Rather than paying attention to the rest of the forest around you, you kept delving deeper and deeper. There were times I thought you were lost.”
Eris opened her mouth to argue but closed it again. There were times when she had almost been lost, much like the other keeper in her visions.
“Start with what you planned. What you know needs to be done. Worry about the rest later,” Terran urged.
She drew in a deep breath. “I’m not even sure how to begin. We need to slow the Darkbinders. I’d love to return the gardens to what they once were, but I don’t even know what they were like.”
Shadow snorted and stared at her. “You can be foolish at times, keeper.”
“And you can be obtuse,” she shot back.
Terran laughed.
Eris turned on him, annoyed. “You don’t have to seem so amused by it.”
“Don’t I? Seems like he’s siding with me.” Terran nodded to Shadow.
“I thought you could hear him.”
Terran shook his head. “Not all the time.”
The great beast simply twitched his ears, his gaze drifting slowly from Terran to Eris, as if uncertain which of them to be more bored with.
As frustrated as Shadow made her, she realized he was right. She did know what she needed to do. The connection to the Svanth Forest was weak here, but more than that, it was damaged. She had felt this sort of damage before, a similar sort of poisoning as the magi worked along the Errasn border. There had been only one way she knew to fix the damage then. She didn’t know if it would work here, but it seemed like a reasonable place to start.
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