Lady of Mercy

by Michelle Sagara

  Everywhere she walked, she felt his dying presence. Those trees, growing greener with sunlight, might have shaded them while they practiced, swords in hand, Erin the better, always the better, of the two. Those mosses, those wildflowers, those fallen logs—any might have been a place where she and Belfas went for privacy, on the occasions when he could convince her that a day of rest was called that for a reason.

  Elliath’s holdings had been here, across these miles of thick, strange forest, with these trees that had changed in shape and size and color. The shadowed light taunted her cheeks with its gaudy splash between leaves and branches; insects blurred across air, buzzing happily and audibly in their flashes of incandescent color. She knew these; her line’s death was writ large around her in the things that remained alive.

  Every so often she would look at Darin’s bowed head or bent back and then look again more closely. All that she remembered had closed around her tightly, and she knew now who he reminded her of.

  Those that were dead.

  Years had passed since she’d walked the forest this way. The pack at her shoulder held snares and dry supplies; there was a water flask at her hip, twin to the one Darin wore. Bedrolls, a small tent, a few utensils—all of these had been provided. But not only these. A sword, longer than she was used to, two daggers, and her robes had also been left at the gate. By Gervin.

  He, too, was dead.

  It should have been me.

  Why didn’t you take me?

  The answer was too hard to accept.

  chapter three

  “Well?” Lord Erliss’ tone was brittle and chilly; it gave voice to his impatience and anxiety, where mere words did not.

  Tarantas smiled almost beatifically. “Yes. There is one. That person has the strongest taint of our Enemy’s blood that I have yet felt. It will be dangerous.”

  “That,” Erliss said, as he relaxed marginally, “is not for you to decide.”

  The Swords waited the outcome of the discussion in silence—and at a crisp attention usually reserved for the formal sacrifices of the year’s quarters. Erliss was young enough to demand this detail and powerful enough to get it—just.

  The silence stretched thinly; Erliss waited for Tarantas to continue, and the older man waited for Erliss to ask. Tarantas won the quiet contest.

  “Where is that one?”

  “He or she has only just started to move again.” He turned around to gaze northward.

  “And has he visited this fortress that you seek?”

  A white brow rose a fraction over Tarantas’ left eye. “Of course not. Power such as that—the opening of the portal—I could feel without casting my nets. But I do not think it the boy; the woman is the more likely of the two. And we do not know the capacities of either; don’t think in terms of one alone.”

  Erliss found the trees overhead oppressive and annoying; he glared up at them, then wheeled around to study the expressions that lined the faces of his Swords. “Can we move, then?” He asked at last.

  “Do you wish to warn them early?” the priest asked, rising from the soft ground and adjusting his beard’s fall. “No? Good. I have done what I can to obscure our presence—but it will be sought, I assure you. They are on the move, Lord Erliss, but they travel slowly. I think, when next they stop, we will have time to properly prepare.”

  “Very well,” the young lord said, as he slid his hands behind his back and clasped them, hard. “We will wait. But Tarantas?”

  “Don’t lose them,” the old man said. He had heard it at least thirty times since he had begun to trace the path.

  Orvas blossoms pushed white heads up through the shadowed undergrowth. They were fresh and new, and no season’s change would dim their brilliant color. A scent, clinging to breeze, brushed past Darin and his lady as they walked.

  “Sara?”

  “Yes?”

  “We could stop for a bit. I could brew orvas leaves, or try.” He started to bend, and she caught his shoulders, straightening them into a stand. “But it’d help.”

  “After the Woodhall.” She looked over her shoulder, and then back. “Something feels wrong; I’m not sure what. But if I had to guess, I’d say that the priests have been warned. We have almost no time.”

  “But wouldn’t they have been here by now?”

  It was the right question, but the wrong time to say it; her brow rippled, and her face became set. She started to walk forward; he struggled to keep up with her speed. But he cringed as her feet passed almost clumsily over the orvas blossoms, crushing the occasional petal and whole flower. She didn’t seem to notice.

  Orvas blossoms became less rare, and where the trees at the road’s edge had been dark and uniform in height, bark, and color, the trees in the forest’s heart were different. They were no less lofty, no less aged—but they were silver-barked, with golden leaves and white, full flowers; and although their leaves were just as wide and greedy with the sun’s light, the forest floor beneath them was bright with greens and blues and little shocks of color.

  “The Lady’s trees,” Sara whispered, looking up. Her body shivered once and then her muscles relaxed.

  Darin grunted; she suddenly weighed a lot more. “The Lady?”

  “Of Elliath,” she answered—and then looked at his upturned face; her own tightened again for a moment, but this time it passed. “Not of Mercy, Darin. She was the first of the Servants of the Bright Heart.”

  “I know her,” he said, although it had been five years or more since he’d last heard the name. “She built the walls of Dagothrin with the power of God. She promised that they’d never be taken from without.”

  “Dagothrin?”

  “The city. I lived there.”

  “Then it fell.”

  They lapsed into silence as the flowers grew whiter and the trees more majestic. And that silence held pain, but as they walked, Darin felt the warmth and peace of the Lady’s forest; the soothing silence that hinted at sleeping life, and the fragrance of the blossoms that crowned the Lady’s trees. As those trees continued to grow in age and number, he felt as if he were stepping backward in time, into a different season, where the height of summer had not yet given way to the golds and the reds of autumn.

  He thought it would be pleasant to walk, just walk, in these woods forever. He thought that they might be proof against the darkness and the Enemy’s many priests, no matter what Sara might say. He thought many, many things.

  But they vanished when he saw the Tree.

  It rose on a trunk the width of many men and towered into the sky. No mortal spires, he was certain, could ever rise so gracefully or powerfully upward. Even the lowest of the tree’s many branches, thicker than his chest, stood twice or three times his height above the ground—and flowers of gold and white, perfect, and untroubled by even breeze, bloomed everywhere. The bark of the tree was gold with flecks of brown; it was almost smooth to the touch.

  Everywhere that he looked, he could see the faint trace of pale, green light. It reminded him of the Gifting.

  “This is it,” Sara said softly. “The Lady’s Woodhall.” She pulled herself away from Darin’s support and managed not to stumble.

  “But it’s—it’s only a tree.”

  “It’s a door, a gate.” She took a step forward. Her fingers she spread out against the smooth bark; she mouthed words too quick and fleeting for Darin to catch. “But here I must go on alone.”

  “Alone?”

  She nodded almost sadly. “The Hall won’t grant you entrance, Darin. You’re not of my blood—and more important, not of the blood of the Lady.” She began to lift her arms to either side and let them drop. Turning, she gave Darin a fierce, quick hug.

  “You’ll be safe enough here—I’ve never heard of any harm coming to the lines in the Lady’s wood.” She released him and turned to face the tree again. “If I could, I’d take you with me. I—” Shaking her head, she walked forward and wrapped her arms around the tree’s large trunk.

&n
bsp; At least, that’s what she appeared to do. But even as Darin watched, he saw her melt into the wood itself—as if the tree were slowly opening up to swallow her. He started forward, half in alarm, and was halted by Bethany’s voice.

  No, Darin. This is not for you. Do not risk yourself to the spells of the Lady-there would be no contest.

  But she—

  I know. Yet she does what she must. If she must be alone, there is no safer place in the lands for her to be so. Have faith, Initiate.

  Darin stopped moving, but only barely. He wanted to tell Bethany that it was not for her safety that he feared. The priests were about in the forest, searching or waiting, or maybe both. He would rather have dared the Lady’s spell than wait outside, alone. He didn’t tell Bethany; he knew that it would not change the fact that he would not be allowed to enter the Hall. Instead, he pulled the staff from its place at his back and took a seat on the forest floor, facing the tree.

  And as he watched it, he felt what Sara must have felt the first time she had seen the doors to the Woodhall. He let his vision be absorbed by the great Tree until he could see nothing else. And he felt the peace of the Lady touch him with its precarious fingers.

  Erin was certain her teeth had come through her lower lip. She was also certain that she must be splayed out against the marbled floor of the Lady’s Hall; her stomach was still spinning from the awkward transition. She was very surprised when she opened her eyes and found herself standing—or wobbling—on two feet.

  The last time wasn’t this bad. She stretched out one arm and felt a wall beneath her open palm. Of course not, idiot. The last time the Lady waited. Grimly she forced herself to stand apart from the wall. She hadn’t the time for the luxury of confusion.

  Looking ahead, she saw the long, arched hallway before her—a standing monument to the will of the Lady and the power of Lernan’s Gifting. The ceiling was about twenty feet above the ground, and it easily dwarfed her, although she was certain that had she been forced to crouch under a ceiling of dubious height, she would still feel no less dwarfed. Things magical were here; things of the blood that she could never hope to duplicate and that would never be made again. A familiar tingle traced itself along her spine, causing her to shudder. Line Elliath calling its own.

  Turning, she looked hard at the one thing that had remained the same: the trunk of the Lady’s Tree. It did not seem out of place surrounded by cold stone and marble. In the odd, pale glow of the hall, it, too, seemed a monument to the Lady—and one no less hard than the walls around it.

  Latham was not here to guide her, not here to await her return. He would not come again, but his ghost stood watch in her memory. Darin waited instead.

  The walk down the hall was eerie. Her steps rang in the silence, as they had done twice before. But now she was alone, no Lady to follow, and no direction laid out for her.

  Not that she needed one. There were no branching paths from this long hall and no doors to tempt her away from the final destination that lay at its end: the Lady’s garden. The hall seemed to go on forever, but she realized it for illusion—or perhaps fear. If she had ever hoped to come home to Elliath, this was not the manner that she had envisaged. Although they were long dead, she felt the eyes of her line upon her and felt their anger, their sense of betrayal, at all that she had done against them. Not for this had she been made Sarillorn of the line; not for this had she become the vessel for the ancient power of the first matriarch. It would have been better for all concerned if the power had traveled through the line as crown, or staff, or ring, the way it did with any other line. That way, had the power been misused, it could have been passed on, either by will or force, to one less likely to fail it.

  Now, with the destruction of the Lady of Elliath, there was no way that the power of the forebears of the line could be handed down. The power was locked within her blood, and when she died, it would die with her—lost forever to the mortal world. Not that it mattered. Who was left to pass it down to? Silent, she cursed the Lady’s choice. But not so dearly or deeply as she did her own.

  The hall ended, gradually opening out into the garden that Erin remembered. She stepped onto the narrow path, assailed by the fragrance of a hundred different blossoms. Taking a deep breath, she allowed her wonder to show—for this was indeed the garden of her memory. The centuries that had passed had wrought no changes here. More than at any other time, she felt awe at the power of the Servants of Lernan. That the hall had remained untouched by tracery of dust or cobweb did not surprise her; the hall was a dead, solid thing. But these flowers, these plants and smallish trees—they were of the living, and what lived, changed. That was a maxim of all the lines.

  On impulse, she bent down to touch a petal of a large violet flower. It was cool but not cold. She snapped it in two and a thin trickle of sap beaded unevenly across the tear. The flowers were indeed alive. Half-ashamed, she tucked the half petal into a pocket and continued to walk toward the garden’s center.

  She became aware that she approached it when she heard the musical tinkle of water striking water—the fountain of the Lady’s garden. The flowers gave way before her as she stepped onto a patterned patch of stone and marble-work-one that interlocked seamlessly beneath her booted foot. And in front of her, the fountain flowed. Clear, small streams of water fell from either hand of the statue in its center.

  Erin lost control of her knees for a moment, and they folded beneath her.

  In the middle of the fountain, the piece of sculpture that she had once seen as vague and unformed was now a precise, alabaster cast. She knew the lines of the face, with its narrow nose and squared chin. She knew the shape of its rounded eyes, and the way the white, stone hair flowed around its high cheekbones. The only thing that she did not recognize was its expression; a thing halfway between peace and pain—caught and frozen by the hands of the master sculptor that had designed this hall.

  The Lady of Elliath.

  She rose again, and stumbled toward it, until she stood at the edge of the water looking into a mirror that bleached all color from her.

  Erin of Elliath, the last Sarillorn of the line, looked back at her, face unreadable, expression the only thing that was not exact. Even the details of what she wore now were correct.

  Wordlessly she removed her boots and socks. Placing them in a haphazard pile beside the fountain she rolled up her pant legs and took one firm step in. She wasn’t sure why, but she wanted to actually touch the statue—to wring some sort of answer out of it.

  And as her foot hit the water, a brilliant glow engulfed her. It was warm and light, but not blinding. She heard the voice that she most and least wanted to hear, but the words, at first, made no sense.

  “Forgive me, Erin. Forgive God.”

  “Forgive you?” She wheeled around, searching for a glimpse of the figure that had always accompanied the voice, wondering if Stefanos—First of the Sundered—had been too confident of his victory and his work. Her heart quickened with hope.

  “Forgive me if you can.” The voice continued as if it had not been interrupted. “Our time is short, although the essence of my garden will preserve yours for a while.”

  “Lady, please—”

  “I am no longer here. If I had had the chance, or the courage to risk it, I would have conversed with you in times past—but I made my choice, whether fairly or not, and it is only an echo that you hear now, caught and trapped as my garden is, by the power of Lernan. I can only ask again that you forgive me. When I have finished speaking thus, I will take the field against the First of the Enemy—and, child, I shall not survive it. By my choice, and by the vision and hope of God, I will perish.

  “This cowardice, it is such a human thing. I am almost ashamed of it. And I have little enough time to be ashamed.”

  The voice paused, and Erin clenched her fists; the Lady was gone, as dead to her as the rest of the line. Hope’s birth was short and bright—but its death lingered. She listened, afraid to lose a single word of t
he Lady’s last message to her.

  “Some years after the awakening of the Twin Hearts—and the first of our many sacrifices—the Servants of Lernan found a way to discern the difference between time present and time to be; we lost one of our number to this discovery—the veils of time tore him from the grip of the merely present, and we could not call him back. We are not human, child, and the ties that bind us to mortal time are few; we knew that we could not use this odd form of travel and magic without too.much of a risk.

  “We had fought long and hard against the Servants of the Enemy and their Malanthi children, but the ranks of the Enemy seemed to swell and grow, even as ours dwindled. I, and three others whom you have never met, went to the meeting place of Lernan, and spoke with Him. Long and bitter were our words, for if we are not human, there is something of the mortal understanding within us—and those that were dying were the children and grandchildren of our blood.

  “Thus was the Gifting of Lernan granted. Two Servants it cost us, and we paid that price willingly, that our children might have recourse other than death to defend our mutual goals. And so we fought again, some hundred of your years, but although the rate of our loss was less, the Malanthi still gained ground.

  “I went alone to Lernan, to speak with Him again. We spoke long, and the words were painful. For He is God, but His hand could do nothing to stem our losses—nothing beyond the Gifting. But still ... Ah.... ”

  The voice stopped a moment as Erin bowed her head. When it resumed, it was harsher.

  “After that meeting, I made my first attempt to see through the veils that tie the present, like a blindfold, around us. Years I labored in my Woodhall, for I had not the mage-craft of some of the Servants, but I would not ask them to go where the First of their number would not—and I would not ask them to pay the price.

  “The price ... ah, Sarillorn, forgive me.”

  Again the voice fell silent for a moment. Erin’s hands hung slack at her sides as she waited for it to continue.