“When we reach the gorge, you cannot follow.” She looked up and gazed at Paden, delivering the edict with a wary apprehension.
The healer swallowed his mouthful of pheasant, tipped the waterskin against his mouth before passing it to Kherron, and shrugged. “I was bound to be excluded sooner or later,” he said, remarkably nonchalant. “Am I at least allowed to wait for you two until you’ve concluded”—he waved his hand—“whatever you’ll be doing?”
Aelis raised an eyebrow. “If you like.”
The healer cast Kherron an unreadable glance, then looked back to Aelis and said, “You will return, won’t you? I have no desire to sit about indefinitely on my own like a senseless fool.” Most of the man’s words were delivered in all seriousness, Kherron knew, but he also picked up on the jesting tone behind Paden’s frankness. Both men had realized by now that if Aelis wished in any way to leave them in the middle of the forested mountains and make senseless fools of them both, she could do so quite easily.
The corner of Aelis’ mouth pulled up slightly as she gazed at the healer, not quite allowing herself a full smile. “If all goes as it should, yes, we will return.”
Paden smirked and nodded. “Good.” He glanced back down at the pheasant in his hands. “Very reassuring.” Then he took a huge bite and stared into the fire.
Kherron himself tried not to smile. Then looked back up at Aelis again. She still picked at the strips of shredded pheasant in her hand, but she’d already been studying him from beneath a frown of confusion and something softer—something more akin to curiosity than the annoyance or urgency he expected to see there. When she noticed his gaze upon her, a small smile lifted the corners of her mouth, and she offered a fluid, self-aware shrug—as if to say she simply couldn’t help it—which Kherron found oddly enticing. He wanted to go to her, to sit beside her and ask her about this clanning, if for nothing more than the opportunity to hear her speak to him as she had in the underground cavern before the sacred pool. He found himself hoping that, wherever she led him, it would not differ greatly from what they’d experienced together beside the glassy water and what he had learned. But before he could move to rise and join her side, Aelis popped a handful of shredded fowl into her mouth, asked Paden for the waterskin, and the opportunity had passed.
Chapter 14
Aelis took them farther to the northwest the next morning, a quiet tension quivering in the midst of their party after discussing, however briefly, the impending end to their unexplained journey. Conversation remained fairly nonexistent, which did not seem to bother any of them, though it made Kherron think fondly of his days spent with Uishen the ferryman aboard the Honalei, listening to the man’s ceaseless tales and settling into the unlikely comradery it had formed. These were fond memories, though they did not fail to also bring Kherron a measure of grief and regret. The ferryman was dead, drowned aboard his own barge in the Sylthurst River by the very same dark mass of creatures who had attempted to seize Kherron for their own terrifying uses.
While he would have done whatever he could to avert such an end for Uishen—knowing none of it would have happened if he had not been who the entire world seemed to think he was—he noted now the absence of that heart-crushing guilt he’d carried for so long, flaring whenever he failed miserably to live up to the man he knew now he would never become. Again, Kherron wondered just how closely his broken bond to Dehlyn had been tied to the overwhelming burden of shame he’d endured—until the Roaming People pushed him through the doorway into the violet-misted realm, changing everything.
Yes, he had drastically shifted the course of his own fate by releasing himself from the endless prison of torment at the hands of the noxious, horrifying demon in that place. And still, even after all that—after tasting still the sweetness of freedom in its entirety, belonging to himself and himself alone in a way he never had before—he could not stop the unbidden thoughts of Dehlyn from arising. It was no easier to shut her out amidst the silence, broken only by his own crunching footsteps, those of his two current companions, and an occasional birdcall through the forest. But he had to accept, albeit with a little reluctance, that the green-eyed woman’s claim on his being had clutched him with such a fierce intensity and for just long enough that it would likely take some time to grow accustomed to its absence. He had to practice letting her sift to the back of his mind, and likely, in time, she would become nothing more than a small piece of many comprising whoever he himself wished to become.
THEY TRUDGED ON THROUGH the cold, stopping briefly to repack the waterskin with snow and relish the rare pools of sunlight drifting through the dense gathering of pines. Then around midday and nearly as suddenly as Kherron himself had emerged from the clearing after escaping the violet realm, the landscape around their party shifted yet again. The snow-crusted pines gave way to trees with tall, spreading branches, their verdant leaves full and rustling in the warming breeze. The frozen earth beneath them softened, and a chorus of birdsong rose in the distance. By midday, they’d left the mountainous frost and biting cold entirely, coming now to what Kherron could only assume was another such consecrated place, like the clearing in which the river-woman had appeared to him and the sacred pool Aelis had shown him underground.
Paden gaped at their new surroundings, his mouth hanging open, and stumbled carelessly across the ground as he turned in a slow circle to witness it all. Kherron eyed him and tried to contain his smirk, though he realized he’d most likely looked very much the same when he’d first discovered the sudden transition in climates within these mountains.
Aelis slowed to a halt, taking a moment to gaze at something he couldn’t see until she turned around to face the men. “This is where you wait,” she told Paden.
The healer slowly sank onto a fallen, moss-covered log, staring up into the canopy and at the streaking beams of yellow sunlight illuminating the floor of an entirely different forest. “Of course.”
“Anyone who might come to you here is a friend.”
Paden’s wide-eyed gaze lowered to settle on Aelis’ face then, and he nodded once. “I’ll remember.”
Aelis glanced at Kherron and gestured with a tilt of her head for him to continue with her. Kherron stepped toward the healer, clapped a hand on the man’s back, and offered Paden the waterskin. “We’ll return.”
The man reached out to grasp the waterskin, dazed and silent, and nodded. Then he slowly brought the spout to his lips, as if that bit of familiarity could offset his disbelief.
Kherron joined the red-haired woman, waiting for her to lead the way. For a brief moment, she merely stood there and held his gaze. Her eyes flickered over his body once before she seemed to realize it had happened. She blinked, turned, and led him across the grass-covered ground.
HE HAD EXPECTED TO travel much longer than a few minutes, but Aelis stopped beside a rocky incline just barely after they’d left Paden out of sight. Beside them, a sharp cliff rose impossibly high, blazing as the midday sun shone directly on its face. And before them, the ground dropped off into a deep gorge, which stretched north to south as far as Kherron could see. A river—seemingly small from this massive height—ran through the canyon, white with both crusted ice and spraying foam where the water still ran its fierce course beneath the frozen surface. Its echoing rush just barely reached them where they stood, and while Kherron’s immediate thought had been to call this the northern stretch of the Sylthurst River itself, he recognized how many rivers likely passed through these mountains and the low probability of his knowing any of them.
Aelis turned from the drop into the gorge to offer him a brief smile. “We’re almost there.” Then she steadied herself against the cliff face beside them and disappeared over the edge.
Kherron peered over the cliff to see her picking her way along a narrow cut in the rising wall of the gorge, heading down toward a jutting ledge carpeted in moss and grass. Trying not to look down into the frozen river so very far below, he kept one hand on the cliff and slowly
followed Aelis. The trail was plenty wide for stable footing and a miniscule likelihood of tumbling into the gorge—three or four could have walked abreast at its narrowest point—but he still found his palms sweaty against the loose shale crumbling at his touch as he trailed his hand along the rising wall beside him.
Aelis waited for him on the ledge beside an overhanging curtain of falling moss and ivy clinging to the bluff. When he finally reached her, wiping the thin layer of sweat from his forehead and feeling quite warm, he noticed the open-faced caverns lining this wall of the cliff. The hanging ivy served as a doorway of sorts, and he’d only just stepped inside behind Aelis before he saw what was actually one large, shallow cave stretching along the length of the cliff face. The sun was too high for any light to enter directly, but plenty existed just outside to reveal the smooth walls and floor of such a large space. A few thick, gnarled tree roots protruded from the ceiling, and beyond the curtains of ivy nearly concealing most of it, the place boasted no other growth. Still, he found it beautiful—when he momentarily forgot about the sharp drop beside him to the frigid, rushing river and the deadly rocks below.
He joined Aelis at the far end of the cavern, where an arc of visibility cast an unbelievable view of the canyon and the forested mountains on the other side, as if someone had cut a doorway into the overhanging vines for just that purpose. Blanketed so well by the hanging overgrowth, the cavern was far warmer than the frozen forest through which they’d traveled; while Kherron understood the unnatural transformations around such mystical places, the warmth struck him as particularly odd when he felt it looking out over the ice-patched river below and the snow-topped peaks of the mountains across the gorge.
Aelis turned to shoot him a sly, secretive smile. “Now we wait.”
“For what?” He glanced warily around them and tried to hide his confusion behind his own smile.
“The clanning opens just before sunset.” She dropped to the floor of the cavern and stretched out her legs to cross them at the ankles, leaning back upon her hands.
“There’s a lot of time between now and sunset,” Kherron said. Aelis didn’t look at him, but her smile widened as she stared out across the breathtaking expanse.
Attempting to anticipate what this clanning might bring, whatever it was, brought a nervous tingle through his chest, tinged with excitement; if it were anything like the sacred underground pool Aelis had shown him, he would no doubt learn far more about himself and what it meant to embrace his role as a Blood of the Veil. And then their argument returned to the front of his mind—her surprise and anger over his wish to turn away from everything that had once led him to Dehlyn; his burgeoning resentment towards her having seemed to be one more person who thought it best to tell him what he must do, especially after what she’d shared with him in the underground cavern beneath the aged oak.
Slowly, he lowered himself to the cave floor beside her and gazed out over the gorge, the sun overhead illuminating the cliffs across the river in layered colors of blue-grey, brown, and red stone. Despite expecting that, come sunset, he might be shown still more of what he did not want to see—what would force him back into whatever duty had always been his—his current relief in sitting beside the red-haired woman, alone again, was stronger than his hesitation. They had hours to wait here before the sun sank behind those mountain ridges in the distance, and somehow it didn’t seem like quite enough time.
For a long moment, they sat in silence, taking in the beauty of the dropping cliffs and the forest-covered slopes and the jagged crests in the distance. “Is this place like the hollow?” Kherron finally asked, casting a glance up at this cavern’s ceiling in search of the same rust-colored symbols. There were none.
“No.” The corner of her mouth lifted, but she still did not look at him. “There are many ways to join the clanning. This place is merely one of my favorites.”
“And leaving Paden behind?”
Aelis snorted. “I grew tired of his overwhelming enthusiasm.” Kherron laughed softly. Then, she finally did turn to look at him, tipping her head back slightly. “I thought it best that you and I were alone...” Her eyes widened, and she sat up from leaning back on her hands, returning her gaze to the canyon. “Before we join the others.”
Kherron took a deep breath, imagining quite clearly what they might do together, alone, for the next few hours before sunset. But the wall Aelis had built around herself stood between them, wavering on the fine line between crumbling down around her and only strengthening itself against him. He gazed at her profile, at her small nose beneath her furrowed brow, her firmly pressed lips, her cheek mostly hidden by the wild mass of red hair falling over her shoulder. “I agree.”
Chapter 15
When Kayu had come to her, she could never have denied the truth he’d spoken. A Blood of the Veil still walked, and very few souls who had endured the chaos of this changing age had seen the void as Kherron had—as Aelis had. It was her duty to bring him through it, to guide him toward his purpose and release them all from the ties of an ancient promise none of them fully understood. She had not expected to feel this way about him; she hadn’t felt anything but shame and silent, exhausting regret for so long.
Yet here they were, alone, waiting for the clanning in which her people would lift another burden upon his shoulders—the burden she also shared. That had been her aim, to show him what he should have been shown so long ago, to help him grasp the root of what he’d been put upon this world to do for her own kind, for others, even for himself. The moment she’d told him to strip beside the sacred pool and she’d seen his flesh—scarred beyond recognition as the proof of his sacrifice in that awful, unending place—that sense of duty had given way to a longing she had never fathomed. A physical longing, yes, but that was only the start of it. Aelis saw herself in Kherron’s grief, in the wounds that ran deeper than either of their marred flesh, and she ached to pull him to her and assure him everything would be fine, that his soul would someday heal even amidst the physical reminder of what he had endured. And in turn, she would then be able to reassure herself.
When her people had first tried to comfort her, so long ago, she’d spurned them all. She’d refused to accept both their sympathy and their offers for redemption. She had shut herself off from the world she had loved so much because she could not bring herself to love it without Geyr. Then they all stopped trying—all but Kayu, his bird form the only other part that remained of him—leaving her to her solitude. Though surrendering her anguish and her heartache had released her from the void so many years ago, the guilt lingered. And now, sitting beside Kherron and longing to reach out to him, that guilt writhed anew. Now, when she finally wished for comfort and the shared understanding of how much her sacrifice had truly cost her, she could not find it in herself to believe she deserved it.
In the gentle, unnatural warmth of the open cavern above the gorge, Kherron reached out and took her hand. If they had not already been sitting silent, still, and gazing out over the steep drop before them and the mountains beyond, Aelis would have returned to that state when she felt his warm fingers wrap around hers. A flare of excitement moved through her before it curdled in her stomach, giving way yet again to grief and regret. Attempting to push it all aside, she gave Kherron’s hand a gentle squeeze, but her words belied the seeming comfort behind such a small act. “I only brought Geyr here once.”
As with every time she’d spoken the name aloud, it seemed another arrow pierced her heart, far fiercer and more damaging than the one that had found her shoulder and might or might not have taken her life. In so many ways, she could not help the things she said, the tiny slips and mentions of the one soul who had given her own more meaning in such a seemingly short time than anything else in this world. She had never been one to speak with abandon, had never been loud or free with her opinions and advice. It seemed all the time she’d spent locked away behind the prison of her own making, alone and as her bear, had made it nigh impossible to bury Geyr
’s memory at least insofar as her voice could not reach it. She hadn’t spoken of him to anyone after he was taken from her, and with so much riding on Kherron’s decision once the clanning had its way with him, she could only berate herself for turning his attention to her—her desires, her ghosts, her failures—now of all times.
Kherron had returned the gesture of her tender pressure upon their clasped hands, but after she’d spoken, his fingers nearly went limp in her own, though he did not pull away. “Who is Geyr?” he asked. The question, framed in suspicion and distaste around a complicated curiosity, made Aelis hold her breath until she felt the dizziness stirring at her temples. The sound of his name on another’s lips, even Kherron’s, made her unable to reply at all. “You’ve mentioned him at... rather odd moments,” he continued. “Did you love him?”
“Of course I did.” She sounded even to herself more desperate to convince them both of that truth, and it made her stomach drop. “I still do.”
“Well...” Kherron took a deep, hesitant breath. “Then where is he? Did he abandon you? Wrong you in some way? I just...” He sighed. “I don’t see what mentioning this Geyr person has to do with me, or...”
From the corner of her eye, Aelis caught him glancing briefly down at their clasped hands, which now merely rested against each other with a heavy, unsure wariness. Then she pulled her gaze away from sun-heated stone of the gorge’s high walls above the half-frozen river. She met Kherron’s gaze. “It has everything to do with you.” In the brief, restrained flicker of his frown and his small wince in response, she realized then her error and her foolishness. She knew intimately the things he had experienced in the void and the battle waged there—the price of victory. But when it came to his feelings regarding her, she’d been too blind to recognize the subtleties. “You think I’ve been referring to a lover.”
Sacrament of Dehlyn (The Unclaimed Book 3) Page 15