by Marc Secchia
“Well, this is a sore-ribbed, wrung out, and ravenous Wizard,” he said, “and something smells perfectly scrumptious over there. Say, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without a leaf or a twig in your hair.”
“To borrow one of your Earth phrases–thin ice, good Kevin. Thin ice.”
“How are your burns? I’m terribly–”
“They’re minor,” said the Dryad, waving that idea away. “Leaping down my top, now that’s a different issue. But come, everyone is waiting at table for you.”
The creatures gathered around the table greeted Kevin with a great cheer and toast after toast. Kevin soon finished a goblet of berry wine, but after that he gamely moved to fruit juice, despite a great deal of teasing. Lesson learned! The Honeybears brought course after course of delicious foods to the table–vegetable soups and bakes, puff pastries, roasted nuts, dips and nibbles, and a mountain of roast eel for the Lurks. Much laughter and chatter flowed between the creatures of the Forest. Kevin was made to tell the tale of their adventures all over again, with endless interruptions from Zephyr until he and Alliathiune started on one of their good-natured arguments and Kevin shouted both of them down, to his surprise.
Later, replete with good food and feeling his eyelids growing heavy, Kevin stood up and wandered over to examine the great cask–taller than he was–from which the Honeybears were keeping the Lurks supplied with a special type of ale, a great Lurkish favourite called lukêla in their tongue. From there his pensive eye fell upon the gathering. How strange it was for a Human to keep company with Honeybears and Unicorns, Dryads and Lurks, Owls and Cats, he thought! And the strange, dark X’gäthi. He wished Amadorn could have been there to share a song to cheer his spirits, and he missed Akê-Akê, Glimmering of Dawn, and even the Witch. Life would be strange indeed without Father and Brian.
What had become of that Kraleon creature, he wondered? Did it even now stalk the leafy halls of the Forest, seeking another Dark Wizard to raise up against Driadorn? In a way, he pitied Brian. He had been a fool to summon the creature in the first place.
If, as Brian claimed, the creature of shadow in the last chamber had not been Omäirg, then who had he been? Yet another Dark Wizard? An Elemental Dragon of Shadow? Was Alliathiune right, that Humans were easily corrupted into Dark Wizards? Could Kevin Jenkins hope to prevent what somehow seemed inevitable?
“A fig for your thoughts, good outlander?”
Kevin turned. It was the Dryad Queen. She stood a short ways off, not taking his arm this time–perhaps she did not dare. Or was she treating him as her sister Dryads treated Alliathiune? Why, woman, he asked silently, are you blackmailing your niece? And he tried to face her openly, without showing the wariness which clouded his heart.
“I was thinking of the future, good Queen,” he said, “of the battles to be fought, the enemies we defeated and those we learned of, and of the fact that the Sacred Grove is not yet whole.”
“I thank you for all you have done for Driadorn,” said the Queen. “You are truly the champion our Dryad Seer dreamed of. This place–the Elliarana and the Sacred Well–are the heart of all of Driadorn’s magic, the heart and soul of all that is good and unique and holy about this Forest. And I would do anything to protect it.”
“It is not whole,” Kevin said lightly, “and I fear for the Forest’s magic, especially in this time of great trial and upheaval. Surely, it would be better if the Sacred Grove were made whole once more, noble Queen?”
“We Dryads seek the same, with all our hearts,” replied the Queen, her beautiful face serene in the firelight. “The Elliarana are one of the great mysteries of the Forest, good Kevin, and the knowledge of their planting has been lost for many generations of Dryads. But we will seek, and pray, and know that as surely as the seasons turn, Elliadora will supply our need.” She drew a little closer and lowered her voice. “The life of a Dryad Seer is a lonely calling. Alliathiune will need your love more than ever at this time–if, truly, you do love her?”
“I do.”
Suddenly, clearly, he heard the Jasper Cat call out, “Tell me, noble Seer, when will the Elliarana recover from the Blight?”
It was one of those moments when there is a lull in the conversation and a voice rings clear. Though he did not raise his voice, there was not one creature at the celebration who did not hear his question.
Alliathiune’s back stiffened perceptibly as many heads turned to regard her. She said, “To the best of our knowledge, good Jasper Cat, the Forest’s magic will recover when the circle of Elliarana is complete–when there is a new seedling planted in the Sacred Grove.”
“I see. And what happens after that?”
By her reaction, she had expected a different question. After gathering her thoughts, she replied in measured tones, “Well, I suppose we will travel to Thaharria-brin-Tomal, to the Ardüinthäl, for noble Kevin has promised to attempt the resurrection of the Tomalia who are interred there.”
A great hubbub broke out amongst the assembled creatures at these words.
But then Alliathiune excused herself from the table, and hurried off into the darkness. She was almost running.
“Go to her now,” said the Dryad Queen. “She needs your comfort.”
“I will, o Queen.”
The Dryad Queen had lied, too. He had to break the circle of lies.
Kevin stepped away from the circle of light, searching with his eyes. A flutter of cloth down toward the Rhiallandran River caught his eye. He turned to follow the Dryad. Only she held the answers he sought.
* * * *
“Alliathiune?”
She startled. “Kevin?”
“I’m not disturbing you, am I?”
“No. Please, sit down.”
He did, and moreover, draped his arm about her shoulders and ventured a quick squeeze. “I came to see if you were alright. After this lighttime’s events, the Forest just doesn’t seem as safe as before.”
“That’s the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard you concoct, you silly man.”
Kevin drew a breath and teased, “You ungrateful wretch! Here your knight and protector dons arms and sallies into the blackest darktime to rescue his fair maiden, and she’s prattling on about lame excuses. As if we haven’t just been through the hardest lighttime of our lives. Honestly, Alliathiune … words fail me.”
“Are you alright?” she asked. “In two lighttimes you have seen both your father and brother killed. How are you feeling?”
“Fairly rotten about all that,” he admitted. Drat her insightfulness, seeing right through to the thing which had been bothering him all evening. But he answered candidly, “I feel glad that they’re gone from my life, but I feel bad that I feel glad. Having killed Father, I fear that I have in some way become the monster he was. I’m afraid.”
“Oh, Kevin.”
Her sigh was just a breath above the lapping waters, felt rather than heard. Kevin stared blankly over the river to the silhouettes of the trees beyond.
“I learned something about myself this lighttime,” he said. “I learned the power of sacrifice. The only way to defeat Brian, especially with the Magisoul augmenting his powers, was to open myself to the magic and let it sear through me and out into the Forest. If I had resisted him, even one little bit, I would have been annihilated. I was completely vulnerable at that point, yet I was not. Do you understand?”
“I think so.”
“I am naturally selfish, Alliathiune. If there is one thing that I wish I could have changed about me when I first came to Feynard, it would have been that.” He chuckled. “Do you remember how I mangled your name when we first met?”
“Yes, and you told me in no uncertain terms that I should be supremely grateful for your presence in Feynard. You made me so furious!”
Once more, his tongue formed words before he could stop them. “Are you? Are you glad now, after all that we’ve been through?”
“Oh, Kevin!”
Her pent-up emotions came flooding out. A
lliathiune put her head on his shoulder and cried until it seemed that she was a river and her tears the roaring waterfalls running down from the Well. When Alliathiune’s tears had abated and his handkerchief had become a sodden, useless rag, Kevin took her tiny hand and drew the Dryad to her feet.
“Walk with me,” he said.
“Where are we going?”
“Nowhere in particular. Isn’t it a beautiful night?”
“Darktime.”
His emotions were brittle. Kevin felt like the final thread being woven into the pattern, completing it. He knew his part. But would he have the courage to play it to perfection?
“Darktime,” he agreed. “Will you always correct me like that, Alliathiune?”
“Always?” She said it softly. He could have bitten his tongue. But she drew breath, and surprised him. “Good Kevin, I’m ashamed to admit how little I believed that you would become Driadorn’s champion. When I first laid eyes upon you, I thought that the Seeing must have failed, for you were assuredly no warrior! How wrong I was! But remember last time we were here, at the Sacred Grove, how I withdrew to meditate between the Elliarana?”
Moonlight bathed the trees now. Though they were several hundred yards distant, Kevin imagined he could clearly see where Alliathiune had sat that lighttime. They stood and looked for a moment, from within the shadows of the Forest, to the heart of the Forest. Elsewhere, the party continued unabated. But they were hidden here.
“Did I not make some stupid comment about Seeing?”
“Be not bitter,” she replied, squeezing his hand. “Have we not both learned much since that lighttime? For Elliadora did speak, yet she would say but one thing. ‘Trust him,’ she said. ‘Trust the outlander to the very end’. I wish I had done better. So nearly I undid your good work, and many times treated you harshly and unjustly. I have many regrets about our short time together.”
“I–”
“I mean not to dismay you, good Kevin,” she interrupted, gazing imploringly at him. “Do not misunderstand my meaning! Many were the times of laughter, good times, and where there is regret, it is I who is to blame.”
He whispered, “I forgive you.”
“Pardon?”
Kevin laughed aloud, then quieted himself sheepishly. “Alliathiune, you taught me how to forgive. I am merely applying my learning to what is surely a misunderstanding on your part. For if there is to be blame, I must shoulder my fair portion. Walk with me.”
Alliathiune was caught slightly off-balance as they moved into the moonlight. She looked quizzically at him. Too fast, he thought, trying to let the darktime’s peace steal into his heart. He must woo her wisely. As she glanced over to the party he studied her dress, shimmering like star-song reflected off gossamer, and her long tresses falling unsnarled at last to brush her waist; the way the soft moonlight delineated her Dryadic patterning in organic silvery brushstrokes. Why had he never before thought her beautiful?
“An acorn for your thoughts, noble outlander?”
Her hazel eyes were deep, as deep and mysterious as the Sacred Well itself. Wellsprings of sadness. He said, “I was thinking how beautiful you are, Alliathiune.”
“Truly? You are not just flattering me?”
“I was afraid of you before. You seemed alien, powerful and all-knowing, unkind and inhuman,” he replied, with such honesty that she gasped. “I was foolish and wrong. Those thoughts are among my deepest regrets. You are truly beautiful, Alliathiune. And I am not referring to the occasion, although your dress is splendid and you look radiant. Pretty dresses are in the end, just pretty dresses.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that your greatest beauty lies within, dear girl.”
She said, “Romantic words borrowed from poets, good Kevin?”
“Perhaps.” He shrugged. “I wouldn’t say it were I not sincere.”
The Dryad regarded him askance.
“I have, after all, certain … uh, experience …”
“Within my underwear?”
Kevin coughed and felt his face turn a fine shade of purple. He spluttered, “I must thank you for catching me like that, Alliathiune. A lesser woman would not have succeeded.”
“A lesser woman?” She smacked his arm sharply. “Are you implying that I’m fat?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” he nearly shouted. “Do we have to bring up that old chestnut again? I saw you naked at Shilliabär, may I remind you, and I have personally undertaken an exploration of your … of your … oh dear, oh dear!”
Alliathiune’s rich laughter bubbled over the sound of the river. “An exploration of what exactly, good Kevin?”
Kevin wished Amberthurn had gobbled him up rather than face this humiliation. It did not help that she was wearing such a blasted beautiful dress! Or that the Dryad Queen had practically pushed him into Alliathiune’s arms. Do anything to protect the Forest indeed! A hint as subtle as a charging Lurk, that was. He wished he had drunk more wine. Maybe it would have given him the courage–and the lack of inhibition–to do what he had to do next.
He wrenched his thoughts away from the ample delights of her bosom and bit his lip until he found some measure of self-control. The walking helped.
“You were right about the Forest, Alliathiune,” he said. “You were always right. I have come to love your Forest. It is a strange thing, for as an outlander I have hardly spent an eye-blink here compared to a Dryad like you, but somehow I feel that I am part of it all. Especially now. I would give anything to see the Elliarana restored. I would give anything to see the Forest whole again.”
Was this too much? He tried to gauge her reaction, but the Dryad kept silent. “Does it hurt you to look upon the Sacred Grove as it is, Alliathiune? It is incomplete, broken …”
“I have Seen it rise again,” she whispered. “A Seedling must be born.”
“I understand.”
But he felt Alliathiune tremble. She must know she would have to die to have that Seedling. How her heart must be warring within her, he thought. How melancholy, that on a darktime like this, he should have to help the Dryad Seer over the precipice of this most needful sacrifice. Did she understand how it tore him apart, too? How his heart bled?
“Are you cold, Alliathiune?”
“Just an ill thought,” she replied quickly, drawing closer to him. “We have seen so many terrible deeds; it is hard to remember that we are free of the Dark Wizard’s evil.”
“My brother’s evil.”
“Do not brood over that connection, good Kevin. You are not Brian.”
He let a long sigh hiss between his teeth.
“I am glad I am with this brother and not the other,” she said brightly. “When I saw you emerge from that flying machine, Kevin, I cannot tell you how my heart leaped within my breast. Hope sprang afresh.”
“When I saw you hanging there, I was terrified!”
“You poor man. Did my maiden plight cause you great distress?”
“Distress? Yes.” He flashed a grin at her. “And jealousy. Great, green, galloping jealousy. I wanted nothing more than to kill the Dark Apprentice right there and then!”
Alliathiune threw back her head and laughed gaily. “Were you insanely jealous, good Kevin?”
“Of course! My dear Dryad, I will not stand by idly while some empire-building Dark Wizard, least of all my late brother, may he rot forever–” his lip twisted bitterly as he spat out these words “–puts one of my friends through what he had planned for you. You do know what he intended, don’t you?”
“Don’t remind me!”
“Sorry.”
“You do know what I have planned for you, don’t you?”
A muscular shock made his body jerk. What she had planned for him? “No,” he said, carefully neutral. “Tell me more.”
“Nothing ominous,” she said sweetly. “I merely wanted to find a way to thank you, for everything.”
“A kiss rather than a slap?”
“A kiss.”
She was afraid for him. She was saying her farewells. Her whole manner spoke of a kind of parting. Why now? It could not be immediately, for her body would not have time to produce a seed. There had to be time–moons, or even seasons–for that to happen, surely? If a seed was even produced within her body. His assumptions, the careful constructs of his logic, might be fatally flawed.
But her lips were like sweet wine to his senses, sweeping away rational thought in a tide that rose within him until it became a roaring in his ears. His body moved of its own accord to mould her to him within their embrace. Her gasp of wonder seemed mingled with a roll of distant thunder.
For a timeless moment they were a man and a woman, nothing more.
What was he thinking? She couldn’t ever love a man like him! One so tainted and twisted, so wrapped up in his own world; a worthless invalid who had wasted his years sitting in the Library avoiding his father and brother; a shrivelled-up coward through and through, who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to Feynard and be pressed into service for the Forest against his will.
He shook his head.
Alliathiune drew away. “Kevin? Good Kevin? Is ought amiss?”
Moonlight glistened in the corners of her eyes. Her pupils were huge in the semidarkness. His gaze sought to penetrate their depths, divine her secrets, and grasp the mystery of her nature. He wished a lightning bolt of understanding would strike from the heavens and make it all clear.
“Did I do wrong?”
She breathed rapidly, as taken with the moment as he was.
