by JA Andrews
She laughed a self-conscious little laugh. “Oh…I’ll try.” She closed her eyes and he felt her emotions recede a little. She cracked one eye open. “It’s harder around you than it used to be.” She closed her eyes and her brow drew down in concentration. Slowly her feelings drained away until he felt a deep calmness, giving him room to sort through everything.
“Thank you.”
Will started with Evangeline, pushing past the tangle of emotions. Below everything something tranquil caught his attention.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Serenity. The peace that infused forests and mountains and storm clouds. The kind that endured for eons and stretched across the heavens at night.
It did remind him of Ayda. But it wasn’t the elf exactly. It was more like an echo.
He felt a twang of his own disappointment and realized he’d been hoping that he’d find something recognizably her. That somehow the elf was still alive.
What Evangeline carried wasn’t just emotions, though. There was something like vitalle about it. He could feel it sitting like a bubble of energy inside the intangible swirl of feelings.
Will focused on Douglon, reaching past the grief. There it was, the same serenity that Evangeline had, part emotion, part vitalle. Instead of sitting below everything, Douglon’s was completely surrounded by grief and a desperate sort of possessiveness.
Will pulled at it the way he would pull at vitalle, and felt it draw closer to him.
If he wanted, he realized, he could pull it out. Which was interesting, but not necessarily useful. He lingered for a moment, trying to claim a hint of the peace. But there was nothing in himself that was like it enough. The serenity of it was foreign. He could recognize it, but it didn’t resonate with anything inside of him.
“It’s not Ayda,” he said quietly. “It’s just…elfishness. I don’t think there’s anything of her left.”
A flash of disappointment flashed through Douglon’s emotions, but his face stayed impassive. “That’s what I thought.”
Will closed himself off from both of them, the ache of loss from Douglon still ringing in his own chest. The dwarf walked over to the fire, and Evangeline and Alaric moved away together, talking somberly.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Sora, still holding Will’s hand, pulled him toward a side tunnel. They turned down it, and the ethereal blue of the cavern began to darken. The tunnels felt different than they had the first time she’d brought him here. The fear of them had disappeared, replaced with the feeling of being cocooned in something safe. The disappointment of not finding Ayda couldn’t quite follow him in here. It fell off somewhere in the darkening tunnel leaving just himself and Sora and the mountain.
“I’m glad you snuck into my room that first night,” he said.
Sora laughed and led the way around another turn. The tunnel darkened to a deep grey. “You didn’t always feel that way.”
“True. You were too frightening for me to be glad.” He thought back to that night. “When you said, ‘I see you,’ it was the most terrifying thing I’d ever heard. Because I knew you saw more than I wanted you to.” The fear of her felt foreign now. “I’m not sure when it turned from terrifying to freeing.”
“Somewhere on the Sweep for me.” She slowed. “At first it was just frustrating that you seemed to understand me. But it kept drawing me back.”
“Flibbet the Peddler has a rule that says, It is a terrifying thing to be truly seen—but it is infinitely worse not to be. I don’t think I really understood what he meant before I met you.” He laughed. “You managed to teach me both parts.”
She turned toward him and he could just make out her face in the dark. She smiled, but there was a hesitation in her face. “How much past Kollman Pass is your home and Queenstown?”
“Are you in a hurry?”
She paused. “I told Sini and Ilsa that I’d see them to their homes, so I will, but then I need to leave.”
“What?” He clenched her hand. “Why?”
“I need to go back home.” There was an ache in her voice. “You were right. The holy woman from my clan took what was my story, and I’ve let her control it for too long. She controls who I am, who the clan is. I have to go back and stand up to her, tell them all the truth. Or they’ll never be free of her…I’ll never be free.”
“I’ll come with you.” Her fingers felt cold. “I love telling people the truth.”
She let out a little laugh and leaned against him, laying her head on his shoulder. He ran his free hand down her braid, his fingers finally tracing the plaits of copper like they’d wanted to for…how long had he wanted to do this?
“This isn’t something an outsider can be a part of, Will. Especially one that would be chasing after me wanting to record my every word.”
“Oh, this should definitely be written down.” He cleared his throat. “The Huntress and the Holy Woman: A tale of corruption and truth.”
She breathed out another laugh and leaned into him.
He ran the end of her braid through his fingers. “When do you have to go?”
“Not yet. There’s a ceremony on midsummer that I always played a main role in. She won’t be able to stop me from taking that position. If I want to talk to my people, that will be the moment. But I have a couple weeks to help get Sini, Rett, and Ilsa to their homes.”
“Let me come with you,” he pleaded.
She shook her head against his shoulder. “You have things you need to do. Like prepare for a dragon attack.”
Will wrapped his arm around her. She melted against him and he stood there absorbing the feel of her. He caught a scent of leather just like the first night she’d appeared in his room and terrified him. “Would it help if I begged? Or cried like a baby?”
“It might.”
When she started to pull back, he tightened his arms, an ache in his chest. “What if I can’t let go?”
She looked up into his face for a breath, her brow drawing down in concentration, until a rush of longing and resolve and warmth burst into him, all wrapped in a sort of grasping need and desperate hope that caught his breath.
She leaned up and pressed her lips against his, and he opened up to her, letting everything else she felt swirl in. He pushed as much of his own emotions back into her as he could, until it was impossible to tell the yearning and eagerness and hope and heartache apart. It churned around them, a tangle of things beginning and ending in the same moment.
She pulled away and it felt like she tore something out of him. “I’m not leaving until everyone gets home. And it won’t be forever. If we’ve learned anything, it’s that you’re incredibly easy to track.”
“You’ll come find me?” He sounded desperate. “When you’re done?”
She nodded and he pulled her back against him.
“You won’t even have to track me. I’m very famous and important in Queensland. Just ask anyone and they’ll point you in the right direction.”
He could almost feel her eye roll.
Calls that food was ready echoed down the tunnel and Sora pulled away. “Food is still one of the only reasons to leave a tunnel.”
They walked slowly back to the cavern. The sun must have set because the cave had dimmed to a blackness sparkling with the orange glints of firelight.
“I’ve talked to Douglon,” Alaric said, as they drew near, “and he has an exit from the tunnels that will put us less than half a day from the Greenwood. We can get to the Elder Grove and bury Ayda.” He glanced at the group. “Unless everyone’s in a big hurry to get to their homes.”
“We could see the Greenwood?” Sini asked excitedly.
“I haven’t seen many forests,” Ilsa agreed.
“I’m definitely not in a hurry.” Will gave Sora a small smile. “Let’s take the scenic route.”
The group settled down around the fire and the split happened again. Sini, Rett, and Ilsa sat a bit apart. It wasn’t as pronounced as the night before, but it was still there.
/> Will waited for a lull in the conversation before clearing his throat. “The night I was rescued from the rift”—he gave Rass a little bow and she beamed at him —“Killien had demanded a story from me, and I was planning to tell the story of Sable.”
Alaric made an approving noise. “I haven’t heard that one in years.”
“If we’re to have a story, we need wine.” Patlon pulled a wineskin from his bag, and Douglon pulled out another. “The Roven just left these lying around. Everyone seemed too tired last night to enjoy them.”
The dwarves passed the wineskins and Will pulled out the bag of avak. He took a bite of the fruit, letting the freshness wake up a little hope that the gap between them all could be closed. Passing it to Alaric, he began.
“Sable was still small enough to crawl through the broken plaster wall that led under the floor of the abandoned warehouse. And she was still small enough that finding such a place to spend the night was a necessity. Dirt, pebbles, and broken shells jabbed into her hands and bare knees as she scooted in. It was dusty and lonesome, but it was quiet and safe.”
He opened up to the group and felt the normal chaotic swirl of emotions.
“Early the next morning, though, heavy footsteps broke the silence. Terrified that it was one of the dockside gangs, Sable crawled silently backwards until a glitter of fairy light caught her eye through the wood slats. Glints of red and gold and blue. She moved her head slowly, letting the colors shimmer down into the gloom where she lay.”
One by one, the feelings of the people in the cave focused on the story and the first sparks of curiosity formed.
“There was laughter, but it wasn’t the harsh laughter of the street packs. And there were snippets of songs, but not loud, bawdy tavern songs. She’d never heard voices like these. For it was sheer luck that a street mouse from Dockside had slept under the practice room of the Duke’s Figment of Wits traveling troupe.”
Sable’s story continued, and the emotions of the group began to seep out from themselves and mix with those around them, creating a cloud of anticipation and amusement. It filled the cavern, each listener resonating with the emotions of the others until any divisions between them dwindled away.
The rock walls wrapped around them all, glittering with firelight. In here were no slaves, no goblins, no dragons looming on the horizon.
There was nothing but infinitesimally small glints of hope scattering across everything he could see.
THE END
Siege of Shadows
The Keeper Chronicles Book 3
Sunfire
Sini stopped at the cusp of the clearing, pressed back by the presence of the Elder Grove.
Behind her, the Lumen Greenwood stretched out like a sea of shadows. The trees thrummed with life. Strands of energy wove up the trunks and along the branches, spraying out into the leaves. Walking through the speckled green light of the elven forest for the last two days with her new companions, she’d thought those trees were more alive than anything she’d ever felt.
But they were nothing compared to this.
A wide, flat glade lay before them, drenched in sunlight. She stretched her arms into the light and her skin tingled. The stones in the two rings on her fingers—the small orange one for warming and the yellow for illumination—glowed dimly as they always did, leaving thin trails of light behind them as she moved. But the pricks of sunfire that danced along her fingers in pink strands of light were new.
She stared at her hands for a heartbeat before shrinking back into the shadows, rubbing her fingers. Sunlight always held sunfire, falling to the earth like a fine rain. But it had never done that before.
Everyone stopped at the edge of the trees, silent and still.
She glanced at the odd group who had rescued her and Rett from the Sweep just three days before. None of them seemed to feel the sunlight. It wasn’t surprising that Evangeline and Ilsa didn’t, there was no reason the human women would. Or Douglon the dwarf. But she’d thought the grass elf might and had almost expected either Keeper Will or Keeper Alaric to feel it.
Why did no one ever feel the sunlight?
Of course, the sight of the grove was enough to stop them on its own.
Enormous trees lay toppled out from the center of the wide glade. Half their roots jutted up into the air like clawed hands, the rest were still anchored in the churned earth. Deep gashes scarred the ground, and from the torn earth rose a stand of…the only word for them was trees.
Their towering trunks stood side by side in a wide ring, vicious and angry. Dark green leaves, jagged like saw blades, jutted out from between ruthless red thorns. Power thrummed out from them. The air quivered with energy. It called to Sini and unnerved her at the same time.
Even Rass’s usual chatter had grown quiet. Since they’d entered the elvish forest, the grass elf had scampered among the trees, almost wild with wonder at the place. Sini had barely believed Rass was an elf at first, but here her elfishness was obvious. Rass belonged in these woods in a way that Sini didn’t, in a way none of the rest of them did.
Rass had begged Douglon to teach her to hear the trees and to Sini’s surprise, the dwarf had agreed to try. Will had told Sini part of a story in half-whispers when Douglon wasn’t too near about the dwarf and an elf named Ayda. She’d saved his life once by transferring so much of her own energy into him that he gained her skill of hearing the trees.
Ayda was the reason they’d come here. This story Sini had heard in its entirety. Ayda had been the last elf, and she held the power of all her people inside her. She had used it to help Alaric finally destroy Mallon.
It still felt unreal that she was free of the Roven and traveling with Keepers. She’d been almost four long years on the Sweep surrounded by people who hated them, and yet she’d never been convinced Keepers were evil. Certainly neither Will nor Alaric fit the image of a controlling, manipulative monster. In addition to the wild freedom of getting to leave the Sweep, she felt a glorious hope that maybe all the good things she’d believed about her old home really were true.
The unsettling feel of the grove made her shrink back and tuck her hands into her pockets. Her knuckle knocked against the avak pit from lunch. To distract herself, she rolled it between her fingers, focusing on the smooth surface of the pit, thinking about the way the fruit juice burst in her mouth. How it heightened all her senses.
Her fingers paused, caught by an idea. This grove reminded her of avak.
Rett stepped closer to her and she leaned into him, pressing her shoulder against his arm, reassured by his presence. In many ways, Rett was more like a child than a man in his forties, having been hurt in an accident years ago. During her slavery, though, he’d been like an older brother: always nearby, always protective, even as she grew up and he stayed forever childlike. He studied the trees with a scowl. “Don’t like those.”
“Welcome to the new Elder Grove.” Douglon had grown quieter as they neared the grove, and now his voice was hushed. “Ayda made these trees when she found the original grove destroyed. I’ve seen them three times now, and they’re still terrifying.”
His eyes looked straight ahead, unfocused. Despite his words, his expression wasn’t afraid, it was wounded. With a catch in his breath, his gaze dropped to the ground near one of the toppled trees.
A body lay among the roots, white against the forest floor.
It could be no one but Ayda.
After she had helped destroy Mallon, Ayda had sacrificed herself to save Alaric’s wife Evangeline, in the process giving her, too, some of the elves’ knowledge. Evangeline couldn’t call upon the knowledge at will, but sometimes, unbidden, the answers to questions just came to her.
Douglon had brought Ayda back here to the elven wood in preparation for her burial. He knelt down beside her now, bowing his head.
Will, Alaric, and Evangeline stepped closer to Ayda. A thin layer of crystal, clear as glass, covered her body. Rass crept toward Ayda’s feet, the little grass elf peering
down at her larger tree elf cousin with a sorrowful face. Ayda’s skin was pale and smooth and her hair fell over her shoulders and arms in a rich gold. She was dressed in a plain white dress with a thin chain of purple flowers wrapped around it like a belt.
Will frowned at the trees. “We can’t bury Ayda here.” All traces of the wariness that had shadowed the Keeper on the Sweep had fallen away a couple days ago when they had entered Queensland. He was relaxed and confident and happier than Sini had ever seen him. Or he had been until now. “She was too bright and lively to lay in the shadow of these.”
Heads nodded in agreement.
Sini glanced at the vicious trees. The idea of putting anything into the ground near those brooding pillars made her shiver. The trunks were crowded close together, each so wide she couldn’t have wrapped her arms half way around them, even if she could have gotten past the thorns. But from between two trunks, something glimmered. She took a step closer and saw a narrow passage through the trees. There was definitely light inside. Bright, warm light.
Turning sideways, she slipped in, giving the red thorns as wide a berth as she could. Rett called after her, but she didn’t answer. There was something treasure-like about the light, hiding inside the cocoon of the baleful trees that pulled her in.
She broke through into the center of the ring of trunks and stopped, stunned.
The glen was an oasis. Maybe fifteen paces wide, the trees that had appeared so savage outside were utterly different in here. The leaves were still a dark, rich green, but the edges were feathered and rippled gently. The red thorns were replaced with sprays of luminous scarlet petals. Sunlight poured down on thick grass and the light smell of fresh mornings filled the grove. The air shivered with sunfire.
“Sini?” Will’s voice came muffled through the trees, concerned.
“It’s in here!” she called back.
“What’s in there?” Douglon muttered.
