Aelis took a deep, pondering breath, squinted at the wall, then glanced briefly at Kherron. “I have,” she told the healer. “They’re hard to make out.”
Paden nodded. “I know. He pointed them out to me.” He lifted a finger in Kherron’s direction. “Any idea how long they’ve been here?” The man’s curiosity was nearly contagious, and Kherron couldn’t tell if the man had genuinely found a new burgeoning interest in ancient designs or if he merely wished to find more common ground with his abductors—whom he seemed remarkably reluctant to leave.
“Centuries,” Aelis replied. That one word nearly sounded like a growl to Kherron, low and ferocious, carrying warning and secrets and an invitation to explore both. All the memory he heard in that one word made him think immediately of Dehlyn, and he pushed away the connection with more than a little irritation.
The healer seemed not to notice any of this, his mouth lifting in a smirk of satisfaction. “That’s what I thought,” he said, shifting on the floor of the hollow to turn completely toward the wall and study it some more.
Aelis met Kherron’s gaze, squinting again as she seemed to contemplate some recently presented decision. It made him feel rather on display, studied, and he shook the waterskin filled with partially melted snow, just for something to do. “I need to show you something,” she said, and he looked up to confirm she was, in fact, speaking to him. With wide eyes, Kherron nodded, and Aelis stood once more.
When Kherron did the same, Paden finally turned from his rapt study of the wall to glance between the two of them. “What is it?” he asked.
“Where we’re going, healer,” Aelis told him, “you cannot follow.”
The man searched her gaze, then waved a nonchalant hand. “Yes, of course.” He turned back to the wall, running his hand with the slightest pressure over the copper designs and making Kherron wince inexplicably at the sight of it.
“You may go if you wish,” the woman added, eyeing Paden with curiosity and confused amusement. Kherron also found it strangely odd how intent the man seemed on remaining in their company as long as possible—or perhaps avoiding the company of his army.
The healer snorted, not bothering to give them another glance. “I’ll be here.”
Aelis glanced at Kherron again, who felt the only appropriate response was to shrug. Then she stepped not forward toward the hollow’s entrance but back into the darkness, pausing to beckon Kherron with a nod in that direction. His hesitation—born of not having realized the cavern extended much more than a few feet beyond the darkness—was short-lived, and he gladly accepted the invitation.
The darkness into which she led him seemed complete at first, and perhaps it was. But Kherron found himself trusting the whispering breath on his shoulder and the gentle guidance of Aelis’ footsteps beside him. He did not truly need to see, and whether it was due to his own gifts, Aelis’ company, this place, or a combination of them all, he could not discern. He found it did not matter.
He could not have said how long they walked, though it was long enough to seem odd; hidden from the outside and even quite shallow on the inside, the hollow had not seemed remotely large or intricate enough to boast much more than the small cave he’d thought it was, let alone meandering tunnels. Then the ground shifted beneath them, and they stepped down, below the earth, the air taking on a damp coolness that made Kherron’s heart soar. If nothing else about this trek had unnerved him, perhaps that should have, but it did not.
Finally, after what seemed like a very long time in silence and darkness, a light appeared before them, stretching along the wall of the tunnel as they turned. They emerged suddenly into a vast cavern, far larger than the hollow, far larger than perhaps even the grandiose ballroom of Zerod Ophad’s home in Hephorai that had made Kherron feel so interminably small. This did not, however, have the same effect.
Instead, when he looked across the massive cavern, he felt as if he could stretch himself to its full size, expanding across the open space, rising through the air that was no longer damp and cool but thrived with a delicate, nurturing warmth. The cavern didn’t hold much, but what it did meant everything to Kherron, though he could not say what that was or why he felt this way. A few stalactites hung from the cavern’s high ceiling but only where the cavern slanted downward to form the walls. Beyond that, very little of this massive chamber reflected its natural forming, though he had no doubt this place had not been created by human hands.
In the center of the chamber sat a glistening pool, the water clear and still as glass. It almost blinded Kherron to look directly at it, for a hole nearly the exact size existed in the cavern’s ceiling directly above the pool. Through this, sunlight poured into the chamber in a golden column, spilling onto the pool’s surface and spreading just a little wider to illuminate what he would not have believed had he not been staring at it himself. A thick bed of lush, emerald-green grass blanketed the cavern floor around the pool, though it thinned the farther away it grew from the pristine waters. And only a few feet from those waters rose a massive oak tree, its trunk gnarled and bulging, warped and bent just slightly toward the column of light as if a giant hand had twisted it round by its center. The trunk was thicker than any tree Kherron had ever seen—he could stand inside it with plenty room to spare—and a wash of dark moss dappled the old, rough bark, spreading up toward the branches reaching out and up in supplication.
The sight filled Kherron with both awe and a reverent comfort, much like his encounter with the river-woman in the clearing, who had revealed to him as much of his origins as she had the time to share before both the Roaming People and the armored amarach were upon them. That felt like so long ago now—lifetimes, it seemed, and lifetimes it had been for Kherron in that realm of violet mist and unending torture. But here, he felt no confusion, no discomfort or pained longing, only an overwhelming sense of presence and acceptance. Nor did it strike him as odd that such a place existed when, just outside the hollow where Paden waited alone, the air nipped at one’s skin, the ground frozen and damp, snow still piled in pine branches and across the forest floor from the last fall and soon to build again with the next. The clearing to which he’d returned from the violet realm had boasted a similar defiance of nature’s laws. Perhaps it was this previous experience, or the fact that he’d broken some seal within himself when he’d severed Dehlyn’s corded pull, or the presence of the red-haired woman beside him, far fiercer than he’d first realized now that he had seen what she was—either way, he felt himself coming home in a place he understood as little as, if not less than, he understood himself.
The cavern overflowed with primeval silence, disrupted only by his own breath mingling with the sound of Aelis’ beside him. She turned to him then with a raised brow, smirking as if she’d heard his thoughts, and sat at the lip of the tunnel just before it dropped a few inches to the cavern floor. There, she untied the laces of her boots, unclasped her bearskin cloak, and left them there. When she took a few steps forward and watched him with silent expectation, Kherron did the same with his own boots and cloak, then joined her.
Though the grass did not grow this far at the edges of the cavern, the soil beneath his toes, nearly black and incredibly fine, softly invited him forward. He’d thought he would have felt strange moving barefoot in such a place, but it felt far more appropriate now that he’d done it. Together, they padded silently across the gentle, welcoming earth of the cavern floor, and when he stepped upon the agonizingly soft grass, the sigh of relief he tried to suppress pushed its way through his teeth in a hiss. He heard Aelis’ deep breath beside him, and they stopped, side by side, to bask in the serenity provided by what Kherron admitted had to be a sacred place.
“You can speak freely here,” Aelis said after a few more breaths, though she did not turn to look at him this time, instead tipping her head back gently to gaze up at the massive oak’s outstretched branches.
Kherron felt too small, too contained to register everything he felt here, but he attempte
d it anyway, sweeping his gaze in a lazy arc to take it all in—the gnarled, twisted trunk; the leaf-dappled branches; the column of sunlight that looked as if, should he reach out to touch it, his palm would not pass through but would press against a solid warmth; the liquid depths of the glinting pool, reflecting nothing and everything at once in its surface. After a long, releasing sigh, he whispered, “What is this place?”
“A sacred pool,” Aelis replied, as if she’d anticipated his question and had merely wished him to voice it aloud. She did not whisper, but the echo he’d anticipated did not arise, her voice drifting lightly as if it, too, wished to rest unmoving against the tree.
Of course it was sacred; that much was perfectly clear, though he wondered who had created such an incredible place and how it survived, untouched, underground, amidst the harsher, colder climes through which they’d traveled to be here. And he wondered why it called to him so forcefully. But he didn’t have to ask.
“They’ve been here since the beginning,” she said, “and they will remain long after we leave this world.” Her wistful gaze left the oak, and she placed a light hand on Kherron’s shoulder, beckoning him to join her with a nod toward the pool. Kherron stirred at her touch, his shoulder feeling suddenly cold when the weight of it lifted. He had to tear himself away from his wish to stand here forever in order to follow her wordless invitation.
Then they stood beside the pool together, peering at their own glassy reflections, perfectly still, throwing small shadows against the brilliance of the light streaming from overhead. Aelis took a few steps back, leaving Kherron alone to stare at his own wide-eyed expression. “Strip,” she said.
He glanced over his shoulder at her, at once lightheaded and grounded, thinking he’d misunderstood her. “I’m sorry?”
“Your first admittance here is a rite. You have to introduce yourself.” Aelis nodded again toward the pool with a languid tilt of her head, though she seemed to enjoy Kherron’s confusion.
Reluctantly, Kherron clutched the hem of his tunic and raised his brows in question, wanting to ensure this wasn’t some jest on her part. Aelis looked him over from top to bottom, nodded once, and shot him a startlingly feral grin. The sight of it in this place did not jar him as he thought it should have; it stirred a long-dormant sense of abandon in him, as though this woman’s smile had finally opened the gates to his true self and he could now be—and do—exactly as he pleased.
Feeling his own lopsided grin in return, Kherron turned again toward the pool and raised his tunic over his head to toss it gently on the grass beside him. He heard Aelis clear her throat.
“The pools are places of power, of course,” she said behind him. “Some like this, underground, and others like the clearing from which you entered the undying realm.”
Kherron froze, having removed his belt and sheathed dagger and halfway through undoing the laces of his trousers. He took a deep breath, trying to steady himself at her mention of what he’d endured. “How do you know that?” he asked, knowing he stared vacantly at his reflection in the pool but unable now to process any detail of it.
“Kherron,” she said rather sharply compared to the lilting tone of her storytelling. He turned around again. “Where do you think I come from?” It seemed she didn’t expect an answer from him, which was just as well; he had none. “My people are everywhere. We see what others do not. And word travels quickly among us.” Aelis stepped toward him then, eyeing his bare torso, her previous amusement now replaced by a calculating intensity and something very much like sorrow. Kherron swallowed. “And only in that unending place could your body mark itself with your shame.”
The words hit him like a physical blow, and he blinked against the pain of it. Of course, he had no idea what she meant, but he didn’t have time to attempt working it out.
The woman stopped just inches from him, her eyes traveling slowly down his neck, over his shoulders, farther down his chest to where he still clutched the ties of his trousers. Her brows flickered toward each other in understanding, and she raised a hand to trace a finger lightly across the base of his neck, from one collarbone to another. Kherron’s breath hitched in his throat, and he fought to keep it slow and even. The warmth of her fingers nearly burned him, unfading as she drew a line now over his shoulder and down his arm, nearly to his hand. Then she brushed his chest, along one side of his ribs, her touch running up and down, crossing its own path in a pattern he might have recognized if he hadn’t been so distracted by how close she stood. He was acutely aware of how much he towered over her, her head barely reaching the top of his chest. She smelled of earth and a sweet musk, overlaid with the faint tinge of woodsmoke.
“I know because of these,” she said, pressing her palm against his burning chest and finally looking up to meet his gaze.
Kherron clenched his jaw, fighting the urge to press her to him and lay her in the otherworldly softness of the grass—to define himself for a moment in her body and her smell amidst this ancient place that was him and Aelis and everything he could never fully understand. But he didn’t, though he felt himself stiffen beneath his hands still clutching the ties of his trousers.
If Aelis noticed, she gave no indication of it but merely studied his eyes, her palm pressed to his chest. Then she licked her lips, stepped back, and said again, “Strip.” This time, there was no amusement at all. She gave the command with all the reverence he’d expected in such a place as this, as if finally she had been called to some duty with him and meant to fulfill it. Kherron hesitated for only a minute, his fleeting discomfort at the notion now swept away completely by the intensity of the red-haired woman’s gaze on his; she no longer wished to tease him, he realized. With solemn intent, she nodded toward the pool once more, and Kherron turned.
There he dropped his trousers to his feet and slowly stepped out of them, aware of the comfortably warm air and the silence and the odd fact that his nakedness brought no unwanted discomfiture. It felt even better than wearing his clothes, stained with dirt and sweat and the marks of travel—though they’d been fresh when Zerod had gifted them to him. Filled with anticipation and a little fearful excitement for whatever rite Aelis intended to initiate, Kherron took a deep breath, stepped toward the edge of the pool, and glanced down.
What he saw there made him blink, the shock of it pinching at his temples and bringing the blood rushing into his ears before he gained a hold of himself. His flesh had become a canvas of scars, roped masses crossing each other, wide and thick and raised in white bands across his body. These were battle scars no other man would have lived to see formed upon his own skin. But Kherron had. He had died forty-eight times in the violet realm, fighting the grotesque demon who had named Kherron the source of its summoning. And while he himself had not ended with each eternal fall, he had, apparently, retained the proof of it upon his person.
His hand moved of its own accord; he didn’t register lifting it until he saw his fingers at his throat in the pool’s pristine reflection. There, beneath him, he felt the evidence of what he saw—a thick band of scarred tissue where the demon’s claws had sliced through him, no doubt severing his head from his body before the mists had brought him back. Fingers traveling lower, he felt the round knot just above his ribs where the beast had speared him through. White, glistening marks slashed across his chest and belly from countless, eviscerating lances, over and over. When he turned slightly, he found the huge streak of torn-and-healed flesh, running from the base of his neck, down his shoulder, and beneath his arm all the way to the middle of his thigh—the demon had most likely sliced him in two before this particular death. Everywhere he looked, he found some form of scar, some indelible mark upon his flesh to remind him of every wound he received, every torturous undoing. He remembered them all with perfect, terrifying clarity, and now how would he ever forget, boasting the physical marks of them as he did in this moment?
“I know those scars, and I know your pain,” Aelis said from behind him. Her voice jarred him awa
y from his shock, though he could not quite look away yet from his image on the water’s surface. “And I know you are free.”
That drew him back to himself completely, and he turned from the pool to face her and the gnarled oak growing underground. Kherron opened his arms, gesturing to his entirety, and met her gaze. He no longer recognized his nakedness or how he would have felt about it at any other time; this was not about Aelis seeing his flesh or about his body at all. This was about who he was—who he had become at his own hand. “And this is the price,” he said. He realized now how foolish it had been to think he’d returned to the clearing unscathed, that he’d been granted a second chance in this world without having to give something in return. Unknowing, he had sacrificed his physical body as he knew it, and he believed fully he would carry these scars forever.
“No,” Aelis replied. Her brows pulled together in determination and defiance, not of him, it seemed, but of some greater force to which she herself refused to submit. “This is your proof.” She dipped her chin to fix him with the unwavering fortitude behind her brown eyes, offering some understanding he had not known he’d wished to receive. “You paid the price on the other side of the doorway. Whatever you conquered there, whatever you released, will remain in that unending place forever. That is how you returned.”
Kherron clenched his jaw, unable to break away from her gaze. Her eyes did not leave his face once to stare at what his flesh had become, and he found himself indescribably grateful for it. No matter how many times he’d thought it impossible, someone always managed to voice his own hidden thoughts, as if they were painted upon him and clear for anyone to see. But the ensuing discomfort this had sparked in him each time before did not exist now, not in her presence. Not in this place. Fueled by nothing more than an intense curiosity, he asked, “How do you know this?”
Aelis swallowed, then slowly returned her focus to the pool. “Bathe,” she said with a slow nod toward the clear waters. When she met his eyes again briefly, whatever personal discomfort had caused her to evade his question was once more replaced by that calm certainty.
Sacrament of Dehlyn (The Unclaimed Book 3) Page 9