by Terry Brooks
“Perhaps. That he is banished reinforces my convictions regarding Balronen’s lack of wisdom.”
“No real surprise. Leopards don’t change their spots.” She looked around. “Perhaps we could sit while we finish this conversation? My bones ache when I stand about for too long.”
They moved over to the two-man and sat within its shadow facing each other in the near darkness. “What magic does this girl have, Drisker?” the old woman asked once more. As if Tarsha weren’t there. As if she didn’t matter. “It must be something special to interest you.”
“Tell me the rest of what you know of this invading army,” he replied without even a glance at Tarsha.
Clizia Porse smiled crookedly. “As you wish.” Then she recounted all that Dar Leah had told Balronen and his inner circle, leaving nothing out. She recounted the specifics of the Blade’s warnings and the total failure of his efforts to convince the Ard Rhys and his inner circle of the danger.
“Surviving when everyone else dies is sometimes a mistake.” Drisker shook his head in disgust. “You have to find a way to convince Ober that he is making a dangerous error. Can you do it?”
She made a dismissive gesture with one withered hand. “He listens to no one but himself these days. That said, I shall repeat your concerns, conveying them as my own. He will listen to me, even if he finds it distasteful. He will do so because he is afraid of me. I might persuade him to change his mind about allies and the safety of the Keep. Is this what you came here for? Dar Leah would seem a poor choice to act as spokesman for your thoughts about this invasion.”
Drisker hesitated, as if uncertain whether or not to say more. “The invasion was not the reason I came to find the Blade. I came for a different reason entirely.”
Quickly and succinctly, he recounted the attacks from the Orsis Guild assassins and his search to discover who had hired them to kill him. Then he provided a description of the man who had come to Tigueron to arrange for the assassins.
Tarsha listened without comment, knowing the Druid wanted her to stay silent and not give away anything to Clizia Porse. Why he felt that way toward someone from whom he was asking help and to whom he was telling everything was confusing, but she respected his judgment about how dangerous, yet perhaps helpful, this old woman might be.
The seamed face with the depthless black eyes, cloaked and hooded and ghostly, showed nothing as he finished. The eyes spared Tarsha another glance; then the old woman nodded. “I don’t recognize the man you’ve described. I would remember him if I’d seen him.” She shrugged. “I think it best you go now. There is nothing more you can do here. I will speak with Balronen in the morning. I will do so without other members of his inner circle present, so they will not be allowed to influence him. If I am successful, I will get word to you.”
She reached into her robes and produced a small globe that gave off a faint blue cast that even the darkness could not diminish. “A scrye orb,” she told him. “I found it among the artifacts recovered from the sorcerer Arcannen over two hundred years ago. If you warm it with your hands and ask for me, I will feel it. There are two; I will be carrying the other. We can communicate with each other as if we were sitting together as we are now.”
“A good sort of magic to have,” Drisker observed. “I am surprised you managed to keep it from Balronen.”
A sneer twisted her lips. “It has been in my possession a long time. I took it from the archives early on when I decided some talismans were better off with me. You were not yet Ard Rhys, but the order was already frayed around the edges. I see things, Drisker. And your fall and Ober’s rise were among them. Here, take it.”
He reached out, and she placed it in his hands, adding, “I will expect it back when this is over.”
“You shall have it.”
She rose. “I should go back inside. If I am out here too long, Balronen will find out. I would rather he does so at a time and place of my own choosing.”
He stood up with her, and Tarsha rose with them. “If you should see this man I described or hear any suggestion of who he might be…”
“You will be told.” Clizia Porse glanced at Tarsha. “I will see you another time, girl.”
Then she shuffled away and disappeared into the darkness.
When she was clearly beyond hearing, Drisker said to Tarsha, “Well done.”
“But I didn’t do anything.”
He looked at her and smiled. “As I said. Well done.”
TWENTY-SIX
Three days later they were back in Emberen. They were walking through the late-afternoon sunlight on their way to the cottage when Tarsha made her decision. She had been debating it with herself ever since they had finished their meeting with Clizia Porse and begun the long flight back to the Westland. It was an agonizing process, and she had changed her mind repeatedly as the hours passed.
“I’m leaving tomorrow to find my brother,” she blurted out. She surprised herself with the vehemence of her pronouncement and quickly tried to smooth it over. “I mean, what choice do I have? I have to know what’s happened to Tavo.”
He looked over, and there was surprise reflected on his face.
“I have to,” she insisted. “If I stay longer, I will hate myself if things have gotten worse. Hearing from Clizia Porse could take days, and there is no guarantee she will contact you even then. I can’t sit around waiting to find out. Nor should you. You promised to come with me. You should do so. Keep your promise as I kept mine.”
“You have to make up your own mind on this,” he said quietly. “But it is not your place to decide my priorities. I will give the matter some thought. That’s all I can promise.”
“You can bring the scrye orb with you, can’t you? Then she can reach you from anywhere. She can tell you whatever she’s learned, and you can return if it is needed.”
He studied her a long time before answering. “We have been away from home for over a week. We are both exhausted. Let’s sleep on it before either of us makes a final decision. Will you wait a day or so?”
She thought back to the past few days, to the search for the Orsis Guild and the confrontation with Tigueron and his men, to the terrible battle they had fought and to their discovery of the boy’s unexpected name. How long had it been since she had not felt tired? She couldn’t remember.
In any case, he was right. Decisions of the sort she was seeking to reach should not be arrived at in haste.
So she said no more about leaving, and when they reached the cottage she went straight to bed and slept through the day and deep into the following night. Sleep was so welcome and so all-enfolding that Tarsha did not dream and did not realize the passing of time. Sleep carried her away to a warm, safe place, and all the dangers and threats and feelings of fear and doubt faded into another time and place.
It was only when she finally woke and saw how dark it was that she realized how long she had been slumbering. She lay where she was for a time, luxuriating in the warmth and comfort of her bedcovers, letting wakefulness surface slowly, letting sleepiness drift away at its own pace. When she felt ready to do so, she rose to leave the cottage and go out into the night. She threw on her cloak over her nightdress and walked in silence through the living area of the cottage and out onto the porch, opening and closing the front door quietly behind her.
Around her, everything was silent.
After a moment, she moved off the porch and down into the yard and stood staring at the stars. It was a clear night, and the absence of any artificial light revealed a vast array of brilliant pinpricks and scatterings of milky swatches decorating the blackness of the great beyond. She smiled in the cool of the autumn air at the majesty of this endless firmament, imagining what it would be like to go there, to visit those worlds, to explore those vast reaches. Once, it was said, men did so in airships they crafted from metals and composites and stood upon worlds where no other humans had ever been.
What must that have been like? How many were there? It wa
s impossible to know. Thousands, millions, more?
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply of the forest—of its green life changing with winter’s approach, of the fecund earth that absorbed what could be used to create new life when the old began to pass. She breathed and held the smells in her nose and lungs, trying to bring wisdom and understanding out of what she had captured. She wished she were smarter, more capable, and less uncertain. She wished her brother could be kept safe from harm, even knowing it was a wish that could not be granted and would never come to pass. The recognition and acceptance of it were harsh and bitter, and she almost cast it away.
But it was too real and necessary to be recklessly discarded, and she knew she must carry its weight from this moment forward until she had found her brother and done whatever she could to bring him back to her.
Not only in the physical sense but also emotionally.
Not in the hope of a curative but in search of an accord.
When she opened her eyes again to look back at the stars, she found Fade only a few feet in front of her, her huge, sleek body sitting back on her haunches, her lantern eyes bright with intelligence and curiosity. Oddly, Tarsha was not frightened to find the moor cat had gotten so close without making a sound. Her appearance provoked no sense of panic or fear, no response beyond the pleasure she found in discovering she was there. The girl almost reached out to pet the great beast but stopped herself just in time. There were boundaries to be observed with creatures as massive and feral as a moor cat. Presumptions of friendship had no place in the mix. They were alien and mostly unknowable to each other, the cat and she, and an acceptance of this truth was important.
“Well met, beautiful thing,” she whispered to the great beast.
To her surprise, Fade began to purr, a rough throaty growl that rumbled up from somewhere deep inside her chest.
“Look at that sky!” Tarsha said impulsively, pointing. “Is it not beautiful?”
But Fade showed no interest in the sky. The lantern eyes remained fixed on her, and only once did they blink, perhaps in acknowledgment of her comment or perhaps just because.
“I would go there one day,” she confessed. “I would go there and see what wonders lie beyond our own world, what creatures I would find that I did not know existed, what it would feel like to experience a meeting. I would give anything for that.”
Fade stayed put a few moments longer and then rose to a standing position, her muzzle only inches away from Tarsha’s face. She saw the cat’s nose twitch and realized it was sniffing her, taking in her smells, reading things about her she could only guess at. The exploration lasted several minutes, a slow and leisurely study of one species by another, a consideration of truths to be learned.
Finally, apparently satisfied, the big cat wheeled away and went back into the trees, disappearing a piece at a time as she did so. Tarsha had long heard that moor cats could do this—come and go right in front of you, simply fading away when it suited them, even in broad daylight—but it was amazing to actually see it.
The elemental magic captivated her. It reminded her again of what Drisker Arc could do, of his ability to disappear and leave only an image behind. A magic that she, too, was just beginning to master. It felt right somehow that it was a skill she and the cat should share.
“I never tire of seeing her do that,” Drisker said at her elbow. “Disappearing as if she were nothing more substantial than a vision.”
Tarsha managed to keep from jumping out of her skin, but only barely. She turned and found him fully dressed and looking off in the direction Fade had gone. “I didn’t know you were awake.”
“I’ve been awake awhile, mostly thinking about what to do. I want you to stay, but I realize you very much need to go. I understand, but I don’t like it.”
She nodded. “I don’t much like it, either. But my brother can’t be left alone much longer. Not safely.”
“Then you must go to him.” The dark features tightened around his smile. “You have a strong sense of responsibility, Tarsha. I can’t help but admire this. Will you at least stay through this day to see if we hear something from Clizia? If nothing happens, we will go to your brother together, you and I.”
She stared at him. “You would come with me?”
“I think I already said I would. I’ve done what I can for the Druids. Now I have to do what I can for you. I realize how important your brother is to you. I want you to know he is well.”
She felt tears come to her eyes as she took his hand and gripped it tightly. “I cannot tell you how much this means to me.”
He reached for her then and hugged her tightly. She curled into the warmth of his embrace, thinking it had been a long time since someone had held her like this, reminded of when she was a little girl and her father had done so.
“Dawn is only an hour away,” he said, releasing her. “Perhaps we should have some breakfast?”
Together, they walked into the cottage, Tarsha feeling as happy as she had been in a long time.
—
They prepared breakfast in the predawn and ate it on the porch while watching the sky slowly lighten with the sunrise. Not much was said, the pair content to look off into the forest and the pale-blue arch of the cloudless sky, reveling in the start of another gorgeous autumn day. Already the season was making its presence known, the leaves of the deciduous trees changing color amid the evergreens, the smells of leaf dust and deadwood filling the air. It was a cause for celebration, a reaffirming of life waiting to quicken with the coming of a new season and the ending of an old. Yet for Tarsha there was regret and worry, and any celebration at the prospect of rebirth had an ephemeral feel to it.
They had finished eating and cleaned their dishes and begun a few housekeeping jobs necessitated by their short absence when a lanky figure walked up from the road leading to the village and stopped at the foot of the porch.
“Well met,” he greeted Tarsha, who was sweeping off the wooden decking. “I’m looking for Drisker Arc.”
On hearing his name, the Druid walked out of the cottage, a smile brightening his dark features when he saw the other. “Dar Leah!” he exclaimed. “I’ve been expecting you.”
“Have you?”
“I’ll explain later. For now, come sit with us. This is my student, Tarsha Kaynin. You may speak freely in front of her.”
The highlander extended his hand and the girl took it in her own in a brief exchange. She already knew who he was, remembering his name from Drisker’s conversation with Clizia Porse. The Ard Rhys’s Blade, released from service for imagined failures connected with events that had involved the invaders and the Druids they had slain. She noticed how blue his eyes were, and how browned and seamed by the sun his face. Striking. His grip was calloused and firm. Here was a man who used his hands for physical work, most likely with weapons given the nature of his former position. She noted the black handle of the sword strapped across his back, and the way his eyes shifted as he took in everything around him.
They sat together on the porch with their chairs drawn close and mugs of cold ale in their hands.
“I understand you are temporarily unemployed,” Drisker said. “Perhaps you come here seeking work?”
“I can think of worse employment.” The highlander smiled. “But I’m not here for work. I’m here to tell you what’s happening at Paranor.”
“Clizia Porse may have beaten you to it. I spoke with her several nights ago, and she told me of your release as Blade and the story behind it. I already knew of the invaders and their threat to the Four Lands. I tried to find a way to warn Ober Balronen about the danger, but he refused to see me.”
“Did you expect anything different?”
The Druid shrugged dismissively. “What else do you have to tell me?”
The highlander bent close, his brow furrowing. “At his best, Ober Balronen is a strange man, but his strangeness seems to have reached new heights. Something is wrong with him, Drisker. I mean, something
besides his usual need to assert his authority and seek reassurance of his status on a daily basis.” The highlander paused, considering. “Before I left with Zia Amarodian and Ruis Quince for the meeting with the invaders, he told me I needed to keep an eye on both, because he thought they were plotting against him. He didn’t elaborate or offer any evidence of this, but he clearly wanted me to find something. When I got back to report them both dead along with all the Trolls who had gone with us, it seemed to matter more to him that I hadn’t found out anything to confirm his suspicions. He didn’t even seem to care much about the possibility that the rash behavior and words of Quince might have drawn the invading army to Paranor.”
Drisker frowned. “Ober has always been paranoid about who might be plotting against him. But Quince and Amarodian were members of his inner circle and supposedly supporters. What do you think?”
“It was nonsense. Zia and Ruis were barely speaking. Ruis went out of his way to embarrass and demean Zia in my presence. There was no indication of any sort of plot. Ober dismissed me from service on the grounds that I failed to protect his Druids, but the dismissal felt arbitrary.” He paused. “He doesn’t seem rational these days. He seems quixotic and short-tempered and struggling to see things clearly. Have you seen him exhibit this behavior before?”
Tarsha caught a glimpse of recognition in her mentor’s eyes. “No. Not in him. But in someone else.” He leaned back in his chair. “Before you left, did Clizia Porse speak with you?”
