by K.M. Weiland
Chapter Two
On the banks of the Mistgloam River, Allara Katadin sat on the back of her ebony warhorse and watched the sun sink behind the hills. The Gifted was coming from across the worlds. She had seen him. She had tried to warn him away. But that wasn’t going to be enough. Today would be her last chance to find a way to keep her world safe from the destruction he would have the power to bring with him.
To her right, the Gloamfall splashed into its base pool like chimes in the wind. High in the Illise foothills, the meadow offered perhaps only a hundred paces between the waterfall and the trees, but the gloamwheat here was as tall as her stirrup. In another month or so, the silvered green heads would be ready to bear a wealth of harvest, save that no one would dare put a scythe to this meadow.
The gloamwheat that grew here, leagues from the nearest farm, grew because the Garowai wished it to. As a child, when she had come here for one of her many lessons, she had asked him what he wanted with the wheat. Surely, he didn’t eat it; his teeth, after all, were the teeth of a carnivore.
He had looked down at her out of his great green eyes, with their cat-slit pupils. “I enjoy the smell of it.”
“But that’s of no use.”
“Usefulness, my lovely, reaches far beyond necessity. The gloamwheat is beautiful of sight and smell to me. And that is use enough.”
She hadn’t said aloud what she was thinking, but he probably knew that her mind—a child’s mind forced to face adult problems—was already categorizing the immortal likes of the Garowai and his uses in a far different realm from herself.
Born a princess in a troubled era and chosen by the Garowai himself to be her generation’s Searcher, she lived her life by necessities, not luxuries. She had done so when, at nine years of age, she guided her first Gifted across the worlds, and she did so now, as she tried to prevent the coming of an unwelcome second.
Overhead, the sun went black for a moment, and a shadow fell across the meadow. She looked up from the sway of the grass to the arrival of the Garowai. Four times the size of a Koraudian lion, with massive shoulders that rippled beneath smooth black wings twice again as long as his body, he stole the breath from her chest even now, so many years after her father had brought her to the Gloamfall to begin her training.
The sunset glinted off his blue-gray fur as he glided on a wind current before turning and sweeping into the meadow. His green eyes locked on her face, and she forced air into her lungs. So much depended on the question she had come to ask him. So very, very much.
The wind from his wings brushed through the wheat and swirled her dark hair around her face. Rihawn, her horse, raised his head, then returned to grazing. The big black stallion had been here often enough to know the Garowai presented no threat.
The leathery undersurface of the Garowai’s wings cleared her head by barely an arm’s span. He swept past her and circled around to land on all fours on the riverbank. The wind from his flight caught at the filmy blue sleeves of her tunic.
She dismounted and dropped her reins, leaving Rihawn ground tied. Touching her thumb and her forefinger to her closed eyes, she slid them downward off her face in a gesture of honor and respect.
“Garowai,” she said. The ancient Cherazii word translated “teacher” or “master.” It wasn’t a name, so much as a title, but it was the only name he, or any of the Garowai before him, had ever borne.
There was only ever one Garowai in the world. They rose and fell with the ages, and when one finally passed into the presence of the God of all, a new Garowai would ascend from its body to share heaven’s wisdom, mete its justice, and choose the Searchers who would seek out each generation’s Gifted.
On the shore in front of her, the Garowai dropped into a crouch. He shook his head, ruffling the heavy slate-colored mane that surrounded his face and continued halfway down his back. “Well, now, it’s pleasant to return from a long journey to find a sweet face at the end of the flight.” He tucked his hindquarters under him and eased his front end down, dropping onto the sand with a faint groan. He was very old—almost seven hundred years if legends were to be believed—and arthritis plagued his bones.
She stepped forward, wanting to help him, to ease his pain.
The corner of his sloped muzzle crinkled with half a smile. “Never mind, dearheart. What brings you all the way from Glen Arden to visit my weary self?”
“Not Glen Arden. Réon Couteau.” Glen Arden was the official capital of Lael and the unofficial capital of the civilized world in general. It had been her home since childhood. But, as the Searcher, she spent much of her time in the mountain fortress city of Réon Couteau, high on its cliff above the waterfall that fed Ori Réon, the Lake of Dreams.
After her failure with her first Gifted and his death as a traitor, she had thought never again to use Ori Réon to make contact with the other world. But another Gifted was coming, and no matter how much she wanted to stop him, she had no power to do so.
The Garowai blinked, almost sleepily. He was exhausted, no doubt. But he watched her face, waiting without hurrying her. “If you come from Réon Couteau, then you come for business and not for pleasure, I’ll warrant.”
“Yes.” Sweat prickled her hands, and she rubbed them down the soft doe-colored leather of her breeches. “Time is growing short. The Gifted—I can feel him. He’s coming. He’s almost here. And there’s something I need to know.”
“Always questions. Does it not strike you as rather unfair you always ask and I always answer?” The crinkle in his muzzle spread to the other side.
Her own smile came hard. What was there to smile about these days? The threat of war from neighboring Koraud on the eastern border? The threat of religious and political unrest from the Nateros protesters within Lael’s own borders? The threat of her own failure once again?
She sighed. “Would I were wiser than you, and you were the one who had to come to me for answers.”
He breathed a small laugh. “Would that were. But since it is not, what is worrying you?”
“They say Mactalde is returning.”
He licked a forked tongue across his fangs, lingering on the chip in the left one. “So they’ve said ever since he died almost twenty years ago.”
“They also know another Gifted is coming.” She rubbed her thumb against the crook in her forefinger where she had broken it in a sparring match on her fifteenth birthday—half a lifetime ago. “How can anyone know that?”
“Come now, think. Certainly you’ve told others. Your father the king, for one.”
“He knows better than any how volatile this situation could become.” She dropped her hand to her side. “We sent word to the Cherazii, of course. Who knows where the Keepers are these days, but at least one will return to Réon Couteau with the Orimere.” The beautiful dreamstone was the tool of the Gifted.
She took a breath and voiced the fear that had been running in her head for over a month now. “What if the Cherazii betrayed us? What if they told Nateros or Mactalde’s people in Koraud that another Gifted was coming?”
The Garowai shook his head. “The Cherazii didn’t betray, now or before. But if the Keepers are in Koraud and if they are making their way west to bring the stone to the Gifted, is it not plausible their movements were observed?”
She made herself nod. The God of all knew she didn’t want the Cherazii as enemies, even after what they had done to the last Gifted. Especially after that. Because, really, weren’t they the only ones who hadn’t failed twenty years ago?
She had failed: as an ignorant nine-year-old she had stood by and watched as her Gifted, Harrison Garnett, turned rogue, allied himself with the Koraudian king Faolan Mactalde, and tried to take the throne of Lael.
Her father had failed: he had botched the war into which Harrison and Mactalde had plunged Lael and Koraud, and, even though he had finally brought Koraud to heel by executing Mactalde, hostilities simmered even now under the war-scarred surface of both kingdoms.
In his
own way, even the Garowai had failed: for all his wisdom, his cryptic answers and his passive observances had done nothing to help a bewildered, overwhelmed nine-year-old Searcher stop her Gifted from ripping apart Lael.
Only the Cherazii, as sworn defenders of Ori Réon and Keepers of the Orimere, had succeeded: they had killed the Gifted for his perfidy, banishing him to the other world.
The Garowai was still waiting. He knew these weren’t the questions she had ridden all the way from Réon Couteau to ask.
She wet her lips. “How do I stop the Gifted from coming?”
His nostril flaps quivered.
“There shouldn’t be another Gifted. Not in my lifetime.” Again, she rubbed at her crooked finger. “I fulfilled my duties as Searcher twenty years ago, when Harrison Garnett crossed the worlds.”
“Oh, come, I taught you better logic than that. Just because most Searchers are given only one Gifted doesn’t mean that it is the way it must be.”
She held her body very still. What she wanted was to explode into action, to move, to fight, to do something useful. She needed to make this all stop. How could he be so unaffected?
“Nateros will see this second Gifted’s coming as witchcraft, or heresy,” she said. “It’s been centuries since two Gifted crossed in one Searcher’s lifetime. People will think it unnatural. And what about Mactalde’s prophecy that he would return from the dead?” Her voice came out hoarse, strained.
The Garowai flicked his spiked tail back and forth through the sand. “There is no returning from the dead. Not in this life.” He stood and shook himself again, gingerly. He coughed and limped toward the water.
“And the Gifted?” she asked. “I have no power to hold him back. But is there no way to convince him to hold himself away from us?”
“Neither of you can stop what’s destined to happen. This Gifted will come, and you will search for him and you will find him, just as you did with the last.”
“Just as I did with the last.” She choked. “The God of all forbid.”
At the water’s edge, he twisted his head to look back at her. “You were nine years old, Allara. No one blames you for what happened.”
“I blame me.”
“Let the Gifted come. Perhaps he will bring peace.”
That was something she dared not believe. “One man can’t bring peace to Lael. Not now.”
“You don’t know that. And I didn’t say he would bring peace to Lael.” His muzzle crinkled again, ever so gently. “Perhaps he will bring peace to you. Go along now. Prepare yourself. And when you find this Gifted, bring him to me at Ori Réon. I will know he’s come, and I will be waiting.”
He padded into the lake. When the water reached his chest, he submerged his head and, with one powerful stroke of his wings, disappeared. The bubbles on the surface faded to froth and then to oblivion. He would resurface in his lair behind the waterfall, and he would not reappear to answer her questions, no matter how much she needed him to.
She stood alone on the riverbank. The evening breeze threaded her hair, and her heart thudded dully. She should have known better than to have expected a way out of this impending disaster. She looked down at her crooked finger and forced an exhale.
If she could write the world as she would, life would go on just as it had since the death of her first Gifted. She would need the rest of her life just to put together the pieces from that one fiasco.
The one thing she didn’t need was another Gifted. She didn’t need another volatile outsider throwing the world off its axis.
Ever since she had known he was coming, she had tried to contact him through the lake. She had spoken to him. She had even shot at his reflection in the water. She had done her best to scare him away. Perhaps, after all, that would be enough to keep him away from her.
Perhaps.
She turned to mount Rihawn. As she touched her heel to his side, she looked back at the Gloamfall misting up from its silver pool. The Garowai knew more than he was sharing with her. Always he told her only what he thought she needed to hear, and she had grown up trusting his wisdom. But sometimes she wanted to clench her hands in the mane on either side of his head and demand he tell her everything. She wanted to know. Even if the knowing killed her, it had to be better than this blind and deaf struggle.
With a shuddered breath, she turned back and urged Rihawn forward. As he galloped through the gloamwheat into the trees, his hoofbeats seemed to hammer a single message: You have failed, you have failed, you have failed.
