She waved at Arya, where she stood at Walker’s side with her sword and shield up, but Gylther’yel addressed Walker.
“You favor the living, though you and I belong in the cult of the dead. Rhyn, you disappoint me. I had thought your mind broader than that of a mere human.”
“This is my choice,” said Walker.
“You merely confirm my overestimation of your intellect,” said Gylther’yel. “Humans cannot choose. Lyetha could not choose between Dharan Greyt and Tarm Thardeyn until circumstance forced her hand. Dharan Greyt could not choose between weeping for the love he had lost and vengeance against the man—and the boy—who had stolen her, until I called to him fifteen years ago. Meris Wayfarer could not choose between fear of his father and vengeance, until I ordered him to slay his father … and you, his brother.”
She laughed. “Even your little pet there, Arya Venkyr, cannot choose between justice and her heart.” She turned her attention on the knight, who bristled at her words. “How do you justify yourself, Nightingale of Everlund, loving a man who espouses the very darkness and murder you deny? Walker, the avenger, the assassin? Vengeance is not justice, and Walker is nothing if not a vengeful god.”
Arya’s mouth moved, as though to argue with the ghost druid, but she found she could not. She turned her head, shamed.
Gylther’yel smiled. Then she turned back to Walker.
“And you cannot choose between loyalties,” she said. “Loyalty to she who raised you from a child, and loyalty to she who would carry your child, she whom you love.” The ghost druid spat the last word.
There it was. Walker knew the words to be true. His resolution wavered and faltered, stolen by the damning accusation. Desperately, Walker opened his mouth to argue.
“Do not attempt to deny it,” she added, interrupting Walker’s words. “I sense the conflict within you, the struggle to raise your blade. You cannot choose. You claim to dwell in darkness, Rhyn Greyt, you claim resolve and unwavering resolution, but you dwell in ambivalence only.”
“You betrayed me,” said Walker as he lifted the shatter-spike and pointed it toward the ghost druid. His resolution had wavered, but now anger replaced it—a long—simmering rage that had been galvanized by the sound of his blood name. “I was your guardian—and you betrayed me. I have no choice but to—”
Gylther’yel laughed aloud. “And so you allow me to make your choice for you, once again,” she said. “Young fool. You have never ‘chosen,’ all your life—all has been as I have directed, all as I have planned. I created your vengeance, so that you would wipe the truth away. I delayed you these fifteen years so that your foes would not recognize you as the boy they had killed and reveal the truth. The weak-willed Meris was the final test—of your abilities and your loyalties—and you have passed that test. I have made you my willing tool, my dark falcon, my hunting wolf, who claims independence and cannot sense the leash that binds him to me.”
It sounded so preposterous—had not Gylther’yel been the one stopping his vengeance? Had not she tried to kill him with Meris, first in the forest, then in Quaervarr? But something inside Walker, something buried in the depths of his heart, knew—hoped—it to be true.
“Why? How could you do this to me?” asked Walker through clenched teeth.
Gylther’yel assumed a hurt expression.
“Everything I have done, I have done for love of you,” she said. “To strengthen you. To raise the god of ghosts you have become, Son.”
“Son?” asked Walker in complete astonishment. In his heart, though, he felt that she spoke the truth. Or, rather, he prayed with every fiber of his being that she spoke the truth.
The shatterspike shook in his trembling hand and he fell to his knees. The emotions he had kept long suppressed were surfacing with terrible force. Gylther’yel was right—even as she had betrayed him, he had known that his reins belonged to her. As he thought back to every argument, he realized that she had manipulated him into his course. Gylther’yel, the stern, distant mother, controlled his every action with an iron hand and velvet words.
“Walker?” Arya asked, reaching out to comfort him. Gylther’yel’s eyes flicked to her, and she extended a clawed hand toward the knight.
Sudden tremors tore through the grove and threw Arya to the ground. A hulking claw of earth erupted from the ground and caught her between its five fingers. The knight screamed and struggled, but the fingers—each as thick as her body—were too strong. The claw closed around her and held her aloft, even as Gylther’yel closed her hand halfway and smiled.
The ghostwalker, stunned at the ghost druid’s attack, had just leaped to his feet when a ring of fire surrounded him, cutting him off from Arya. He slashed at the flames with his shatterspike, and the tip of the blade glowed red with heat.
“Walker!” screamed Arya. “Don’t give up! Don’t give in to—” Her words were cut off in a screech of pain as Gylther’yel closed her hand tighter and the claws closed around Arya’s body. The vines that bound the unconscious Amra Clearwater reached up and began whipping at the knight, tearing at her metal armor and exposed skin.
Walker instantly retreated into etherealness, meaning to leap through the flames and attack, but Gylther’yel’s fire burned just as brightly there. Walker cursed himself for a fool—of course the ghost druid’s magic pierced the veil between worlds. Such was the nature of the netherworld powers they shared.
Fighting the helpless rage that clawed at his heart, Walker turned back to Gylther’yel and held his sword low to the ground.
Why? he asked, and the words flowed from his mind, but, in his sinking heart, he knew the answer. She had lied. This was an attempt to delay him, not to express any real love. Gylther’yel had indeed sent Meris to kill him. Her words had startled him, and he had fallen into her trap.
Gylther’yel wove her hands in another casting, and the wall of fire began to close around Walker. Once again, and for the last time, I make your choice for you, she said in his head. You have the choice to die, the choice I denied you fifteen years ago, and I choose that you will take it now.
He had been a fool to trust in Gylther’yel, a fool to listen to her coaxing words. Meris had not been a test—he had been Gylther’yel’s attempt to slay her errant guardian. It had all been a trick, a trap designed to stab at his deepest desire—the desire for another.
It was so welcoming, so easy to fall into the embrace of a mother, or a father, or even a lover, and to let his choices be determined by another. So easy….
And now he would pay the price for his dependence, his lack of self-worth, a fault that had been buried beneath years of darkness, vengeance, and hatred. All of his life was coming to an end, all of his strength was unraveling.
The ghostwalker knew himself defeated.
Wriggling, ignoring the crushing pain that threatened to shatter her limbs, Arya finally managed to pull her blade free. She brought the borrowed Quaervarr steel down on the earthen hand, sending sparks and shards flying. Though her arm soon went numb from the ringing vibrations her swings caused, she sent a spider web of cracks across the thumb of the hand.
Suddenly a soul-wrenching cry that broke into a high-pitched wail shattered her concentration. The scream split the boundaries of life and death and jarred her very soul.
Walker’s scream.
Panicked, Arya looked over at the ghost druid and ghost-walker and her breath caught. Walker had vanished, but somehow she could feel him there. Even now, she knew he fought beyond her physical sight, but not beyond the range of her heart.
Nor, she realized, beyond the range of her voice.
Though she could not see him, his ghostsight would allow him to see—and more importantly hear—her.
“Rhyn Thardeyn!” she cried. “Rhyn Thardeyn! I believe in you, Rhyn! I believe in you!”
As she shouted those words, words that did not even break Gylther’yel’s concentration, she brought her sword down on the stone finger with one last mighty blow. The blade was
terribly notched and bent but it held for this one last swing. Cracked beyond endurance, the stone split apart with a scream—a scream that matched Gylther’yel’s own scream. Arya looked to see blood gushing from the torn thumb of the ghost druid’s right hand.
Gylther’yel turned to Arya with murder in her eyes. With a snap of her fingers, Arya’s bent sword suddenly glowed white hot and tumbled from her hand. Even as Arya cursed and drew her belt dagger to throw, Gylther’yel brought down the fires of nature upon the knight.
And Arya screamed as she had never screamed before.
I believe in you!
In the depths of a shaking Ethereal, Arya’s face flashed across his vision, vision that was blurred between the two worlds. At once he saw her body writhing in agony—gripped by the hand of earth, slashed by animate thorn vines, and illumined in a column of fire. Her spirit was screaming one thing: his name. He could feel the pain and terror rippling through the shadowy half-world, but also love—love that burned more brightly than the flames that tore at it.
His first real choice—the choice that brought him from Gylther’yel’s clutches—had been made in Arya’s arms. Arya had become the source of his strength and resolve; in her arms, he knew a stronger power, a greater determination than anything rage or hatred could muster.
He would not give up. He would not yield to Gylther’yel’s lies and deceit.
Then a memory, a memory not of love but of horrible pain, flashed across his mind. A memory long buried in his mind but uncovered in Gylther’yel’s words, the walls chipped away by the chisel of Walker’s love for Arya.
“Greyt could not choose until I sent him….” she had said.
Through newly opened ears, he heard again the ghost druid’s subtle admission that she had met Greyt fifteen years previous.
Suddenly, spirits surrounded him, the spirits of his attackers, speaking again the words he remembered, the words by which he had condemned them. He did not hear them, though.
There was only one cold, familiar voice.
Whether you will or no.
Two spirits appeared over him, those of Lyetha and Tarm. They looked down at him sadly, but he could see the light of hope on their faces—tragic, resigned hope, but hope nonetheless.
And, suddenly, Walker knew what must be done.
Forgive me, Arya, he said to his beloved knight on the ethereal winds. I must pay for my sins. My vengeance must be complete. It has to end.
Walker? came her startled reply. He did not know how she, in the Material world, had even heard, nor how she replied. Then a swell of love, so tragic it tore his cold heart asunder, threatened to overwhelm Walker. He had to let it flow past him. Walker!
You are my perfect melody, he said to Arya, and I shall sing of you forever. The song of the Nightingale—the lay of the ghost she taught to love.
Walker, what are you doing? asked Arya. Then she felt his emotions resonating through the shadows and she knew. He felt her terror, and knew that she realized his desperate plan. Walker, no! Please! Don’t—
But Walker did not reply. Instead, he tore himself out of the Ethereal. The shades vanished from around him as he emerged into the physical world of torment and agony. Outside the ghost world, he knew he could feel physical pain, ansd he wore no healing ring to save him after this. This was the end.
Black hides blood. Black shrouds pain.
Gylther’yel’s fire was stripping the flesh from his bones, but slowly, agonizingly, so that he could feel every tiny bit of his death. He had to feel it in order for this to work, though—he had to feel enough pain to push him to the breaking point, then….
Perhaps she would not realize what she was doing until it was too late.
“Hurt me, false mother!” he called through the inferno. “Punish me, burn me, attack me!”
Gylther’yel looked at him and laughed. The fire did not intensify.
“Your entire life has been a lie!” he shouted. “The love you taught me to ignore, the good of humanity … I found it, but you never did. You cannot!”
She turned furious eyes upon him.
“What?” she snapped, her voice as thunder.
“You always tried … to be a mother to me … but you failed,” said Walker. His words were broken with gasps of agony, but he could not succumb. Not yet. Not while this final task had to be done. “I watched my mother die … you could never … understand … love….”
Gylther’yel screamed with laughter.
“Then teach me, ‘Son!’” Throwing her hands up, she brought down a column of flame upon his head. “Whether you will it or no!”
As the agony gripped Walker with a viselike hold, he felt cold, terrible power fill his body. Though she had spoken his birth name—Rhyn Greyt—she denied his true name, the name that would take away his powers. Some men are born to a name, some men are given a name, and some men name themselves.
Rhyn Thardeyn was one of the last.
In an instant, his mind flashed back fifteen years to that terrible night when the men had killed him. His eyes saw again that terrible scene as through a red lens, blurred by the blood that had burned like fire. He heard again the taunts that had brought his memory back.
Then he saw, in his mind, something he had never remembered until now.
He was lying on his back, choking but alive, and staring upward when he heard a soft voice, speaking to Greyt from the trees.
“I must have that boy,” said Gylther’yel. “The agreement, Greyt.”
“Damned if you will have this boy!” Greyt shouted. “I deny you!”
A rapier drove through Rhyn’s throat, cutting off his breath.
“Let’s hear you sing now,” Meris whispered.
Rhyn Thardeyn opened his mouth but only a bloody rattle emerged.
The ghost druid smiled. “Whether you will it or no,” she said. Then she turned away.
Awake again, Walker turned burning eyes on Gylther’yel, eyes empty of anger, pain, rage, or love.
Eyes that knew only vengeance.
“I remember you,” he said simply. The shatterspike glowed white hot in his burning hands but he felt no pain. “You were there. You let them kill me. You made them kill me.”
The ghostwalker vanished out of the column of fire. Back in the Ethereal, he ran through the flames, his cold anger ignoring the agony, toward the shadowy storm that was Gylther’yel, the only mother he had ever known.
Walker! came a despairing voice. No!
Farewell, Arya. A smile spread across the ghostwalker’s face. Farewell, my love.
Then he burst through Gylther’yel’s ghostly halo of flame and brought his shatterspike down and through the sun elf’s spectral body. The ghost druid gave a scream that tore the veil between worlds and fire exploded forth.
Spectral hands spread to welcome him, those of Lyetha and Tarm, his true mother and father. Smiling, Rhyn reached out.
All went white.
POSTLUDE
Greengrass, The Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)
When Arya awoke, what could have been days later but was merely nightfall, she could see nothing through the darkness that surrounded her.
She did not need her sight, though, for she keenly remembered that haunting scream and the terrible flash of light that went with it. Gripping the grass in front of her, Arya pulled herself hand over hand, toward where she had seen Gylther’yel fall. She did not have far to go.
The grass receded as she reached a scarred swath of land, and Arya knew that she had found where Gylther’yel had died—died in a great explosion nothing could have survived.
Why, then, was Arya alive? Why had she….
Then Arya felt the surprisingly cool metal around her finger, and she knew.
The wolf’s head ring! The damnable ring had kept her alive! Alive, on the very spot….
Had he known it would end this way? Had he known that one of them would die, and chosen to save her? Had he known, all along?
With a moan, Arya
felt around blindly. Long, agonizing moments passed before she realized there was nothing there to find. Walker and Gylther’yel had both vanished.
A wave of love, undying love, washed over her, and Arya wept in agony, great sobs welling up from her aching, torn body. The sound attracted someone else from nearby, who came to her side. Arya felt a momentary swell of hope, that perhaps it was Walker, but even her blurry vision could tell her it was not.
“There, there,” a feminine voice whispered in her ear. Tender arms hugged her. “My name’s Amra Clearwater. You’re safe now.”
“Wh-where is he?” Arya asked in agony, only part of it physical. “Wh-where …?”
“Who?” Amra asked. “There is no one here but you and me. The Ghostly Lady’s gone. There was no one else.”
“He’s gone,” said Arya, her heart sinking. “Gone without me….”
But then there was another sound, cutting her off. Even as Selûne ushered in the dawn of spring, rising silver and full, a lonely wolf howled.
“Seek your redemption,” Arya whispered to the wind, tears sliding down her cheeks. “And if—when—you find it, I’ll be waiting.”
Arya smiled as darkness closed around her and she knew no more.
Amra Clearwater smiled sadly, thinking the now-slumbering knight spoke nonsense.
The wolf’s song to the spring moon was at an end.
The Nightingale’s Song
A cold hand touches my cheek, but it is only wind,
the breeze that caressed us as we lay
peaceful and warm among the shadows,
tangled together and guarded by stars.
In love—in a moment.
Now you walk one way and I the other,
but your voice lingers in my mind—
I hear its broken beauty shattering the stillness,
and I know I would throw my memories away
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