by Sandra Waugh
“Try.”
And he kissed me, once, twice. Then I pulled back and said, “Nay, not sated. It leaves me wanting more. Always.”
“Always.” Laurent nodded. Then he said soft: “From the first time I saw you I was lost to you anyway.” He turned a little and drew a strand of my hair back from my cheek. “Silver-haired, silver-voiced beauty.”
There was that strange little thickening in my throat. I whispered, “I was bound in my heart from the moment I saw you too, Rider.” I no longer needed to qualify with Raif’s memory. My lost love had given me that.
Laurent moved suddenly, getting up on his knees, pulling me up to face him. “We will seal this.” He was smiling, a faint gleam of teeth, his blue eyes so dark. He took each of my hands, pressed his palms against mine. My heart skipped, so full it was nearly bursting. I knew this gesture: ’twas the ritual of betrothal vows.
“Lady Eveline, Guardian of Death,” the Rider whispered, “I pledge you me.”
I whispered back—I could do no more, for my throat was stopped: “I pledge you me, Rider Laurent.”
Laurent hooked my forefingers with his, locking them with his thumbs. I followed, fumbling a little, and both of us laughed. Like links in a chain, like two rings. Warmth of touch, glow of happiness.
Then he hesitated, added a little roughly, “I can’t give you back what you lost, what you miss. But I promise you I will give my life to keep you safe, and all of my heart is yours.”
I said, “I cannot want for more.”
“So it is spoken,” he whispered, and I answered, “So be it.”
Laurent leaned down and kissed me, or I reached to kiss him—wherever it started, it didn’t matter, for it had no end. Love would circle round and round, bind us forever. And we could cling to one another in this dark space in this darkening world, knowing there was still safe haven.
A MORNING BIRD announced the dawn; it was a lusty-throated thing. I burrowed deeper into Laurent’s side, wishing her away. But she trilled on, and so I squinted against the light seeping through the tree canopy. ’Twas not hard to spy her. The remaining leaves rattled as she hopped from twig to twig, too dry for stealth.
“Where is your mate?” I whispered. Sweet as the song was, it was a lonely sound and there was no answering call. ’Twas all dying, I thought. Nothing thrived here. Still, there would be a reason that she perched at the edge of this grizzled terrain.
I sat up and pushed my hair back, reoriented. Next to me Laurent sighed, and I smiled for that, and for how my heart swelled even to look at him. The release of worry, however brief, had softened his brow, made him look innocent even though his sword lay by his fingertips. Arro too nodded in sleep. Almond eyes shuttered by drooping lashes, his mane dusting the ground. I rolled carefully so as not to wake Laurent and crawled my way over.
The horse whickered into my palm. I felt his muzzle and cheek for any fever. I smoothed my hand along his back; gently probed the axe wound. ’Twas not pretty; crusted black between the rude stitching I’d done in torchlight.
We needed water. I looked up at the quivering branch and whispered to the bird, “You would know, little thing.”
Had I been Lark, the creature would have flitted to my shoulder, most likely piped directions in my ear. Instead, the bird only cocked her head and let me search on my own. I took Laurent’s flask with me, and the cloth from his belt and his blood-soaked shirt; I emptied his leather pack to use for a bucket. I shouldered my satchel as well, for it seemed wrong to leave the shell alone anywhere. I thought with another smile: I am like its mother. It needs me.
The trees thinned at a steep bank of grass and rock. I climbed, scouting, smelling. I followed valerian and thyme; I followed moss. Up a bank, down its back and up another. There was a stand of prickles and ivy clotting a shelf of stone, and then there, below my feet, was a crystal clear spring. Much had evaporated—maybe at one time I might have dived in from where I stood, but now it looked only chest-deep.
I slid down the bank, sank on my knees, and plunged my arms deep. I drank my fill and then some. I filled the flask and the Rider’s pack. I washed my skin and hair, rinsed my undershift and tugged it back on wet. I scrubbed the blood from Laurent’s shirt, watched it disappear in the pool. Where a stream would whisk away a blot, still water swallowed it. Saved it. The staining feathered out ’til naught was left but a sheen…and then was gone.
Either way, water absorbed secrets the way death absorbed life.
I reached for my satchel, for the amulet. I was alone; it could not harm anyone. I drew the shell out for the first time since the day I found it, amazed again at how simple it was, how small. How very empty. It fit in my palm, warm, nearly weightless. I ran my fingers over each knob and twist; I dunked it in the spring, brought it up dripping, and watched how the water glistened on its whorls, catching the early sun.
Find the shell’s song; bring rain upon land….I thought again of the seer’s verse and that I had breathed into the shell’s mouth once, to see. This time I lifted the pointed, hollow end to my lips like a horn and blew. A little whisk of air. There was no song, no other sound, and the sky was very bright.
Arro’s wound needed cleaning, I told myself. I returned the shell to my sack and stood up to go.
—
The sun came sideways this early, and so the figure was in silhouette, seated on top of a rock, a cap pointing oddly on an already misshapen body. I don’t know why I felt no surprise. I simply set down my load and walked straight to him.
“You wait for me, Harker. Why?”
The seer smiled. “Ah. ’Tis the mud poppet, all clean. And yet she still plays the fool.”
“If you speak in riddles again,” I warned, “I will not stay.” The seer’s hands were on his knees; my eye fell to them. They were still blistered red, but maybe he was numb to the pain now. “Did you use the heliotrope?”
He nodded.
“Beeswax,” I said. “ ’Twill cover the spots, keep them from burning in the sun.”
“Yes.”
“Then I have given you all knowledge that I have. I am no White Healer. I can no more help you.”
“Help!” His grin could not get any wider. “ ’Twas you who asked for it, not I.”
I frowned. “How? I am here, you are here—mayhap by accident, but I think not, and I need nothing from you. I did not ask for help.”
He stood. “But you did, Guardian.”
“No games, I told you! Speak what you need.”
Harker studied me for a moment and I him. He was so very ugly; his deformed shape and narrow features made even worse by his eerie little thrill at our meeting—a shiver of pleasure exposing those awful teeth. He knew what I was thinking. He whispered, “You could leave, Guardian. There is nothing to stop you, and your young man is more appealing than I. And yet you wait—wait to see what I might say. Ever curious, Guardian of Death. ’Twas how I left you.”
“Maybe so.” I pursed my lips.
“Curiosity.” Harker squinted at me. “What three things did I share with you?”
“You said that they will strike where I am weak, that I hid not from grief, that I was to find the shell amulet.”
“Ah!” He twitched a little, like a puppet. “Backward reasoning and wrong!”
“What?” I nearly shouted it, for every word he uttered seemed a trap. “What have I got wrong?”
“You did not finish—I said that you were to find the shell amulet, and…?”
“And that if I loved my cousin,” I shot back, “I would not ask for help.”
“Yes,” he whispered. “No help.”
I stamped my foot. “I asked for nothing! I retrieved the shell amulet on my own, there was no help.”
“Not so! Not so!” He stamped his foot right back at me and pointed his finger as well, accusing. “You received help.”
“What then? Tell me!”
“Out of the water came things for you to save your pretty man.”
“The knife and the minion. I did not ask for them!”
“But you took them, Guardian.”
“So?” I walked away a few steps, frustrated and torn—I should return to Laurent, return to Arro, but I was compelled to stay, to listen to his nonsense until I could make sense of it.
“When did you use these little treasures?” Harker asked.
“After! They were useful, yes, when we cut the Rider from Hooded Falls, treated his wounds, but that was after—”
“It was because you asked for HELP!” he cackled, bony fingers pointing at me. “You stood on the rock ledge, crying ‘Help me, please!’ ” Harker pushed himself from the rock to stand eye to eye. “ ’Twas your first time, such a request.” And leaning close he taunted, “Not even for Raif did you ask for help.”
That was true. I stood there, shaken. “But the knife, the minion, they were given to me before I begged. I did not know that I would need it, I did not ask specifically—”
“Not specific? The knife and herb were the perfect choices, were they not? Why would your cousin Lark know?”
“She has the Sight!”
“But she does not see you!” he cried. “Nay, Guardian. That was the easy answer, and it is not easy.”
“Then you tell me, Seer. Why did she know to send me those things?”
He shook his head. He was thrilled, and yet not for me. “Curious still, Guardian? Shall I show you what she’s done? She defied the rule. For you. Now she pays. Now we all lose.”
I shook my head, but then nodded. My heart was beating faster, anxious. Something was so very wrong in all of this: the seer’s pleasure, his wagging his finger at me as though I’d misbehaved.
“I show you,” he said, taking off his funny sky-blue cap. “I show you this, Guardian.” He pulled the cap wide open, then pushed it to me. “Look into it. You will see.”
And so I leaned over to look in what he eagerly held out. I think I was expecting a trove of coins. Instead, the cap with the sky-blue outside was deepest midnight within, so dark that it seemed a window into the night sky. It made me dizzy—a dizziness that took my feet so that I was falling into the cap, into the night with the stars all around me. I fell fast, far faster than Arro’s gallop.
I heard Harker’s words echo from a distance: “You must share the gaze of another Healer. You may watch through her eyes….”
In the darkness were pinpricks of light that were not stars. I hurtled toward them; watching the lights form to windows, hint at the outline of an enormous structure. Castle Tarnec. The one I’d seen when I’d done the Insight spell. The walls loomed large and then I was inside, plunging straight down and jerking abruptly to a stop.
But hardly—only the barest breath to reorient and then I was speeding erratically through a long passageway layered in tapestries and lit sconces. Ahead I spied two young women running. That the first was Lark I knew immediately—her bright brown hair swung at her hips, and the gown was her favorite color of moss green, though far more beautiful than any frock we sewed in Merith. There was a little circlet of gold on her brow.
Queen, I remembered before looking to the other lady. She was taller, wore a rich russet color, and had dark curls that fell past her shoulders. She couldn’t have been much older than Lark, no more than one and twenty. She wore no crown.
The Lark I knew kept her distance from people—but not here, not with this lady. Closer and closer I sped, and then I was no longer watching, I was the other lady, seeing through her eyes as Harker had said. Lark turned back to look at her friend—at me—and I tried to cry my cousin’s name and reach to hug, but I could not. ’Twas gaze only; I could not participate.
Lark’s face was determined, eager. “You need not follow, Ilone!” she called over her shoulder. “There’s little time before the swifts return. Find somewhere safe where their noise cannot hurt you!”
Ilone answered. So peculiar that what felt my lips worked her words, and her voice—not mine—rang along the stone hall: “I know what you are after. You mustn’t, you mustn’t.” The words quavered. I felt her throat clenching. “ ’Tis not part of the loan,” she hissed at Lark. “You were told this; I know it. The king said we must leave them to choice. The books are not to be used.”
“The king also said I must aid them as I can, Ilone! This applies! A Guardian is in trouble!”
Them. Guardian. “What trouble?” Ilone panted. Her behavior was so unusual for a Healer. She dreaded something. “You said you saw your cousin!”
Lark stopped all at once at the edge of a descending stairwell and wrapped her arms around her stomach protectively. “I saw Evie because she cast a spell.” She looked up at her friend—at me—who’d stopped in front of her. “Why do you think the swifts attack? She cast a spell, Ilone.”
Them. Guardian. Me.
“A spell!” Ilone looked down at her hands. “But she is not a White Healer.”
“No.” Lark’s voice was hushed. “And ’twas a dark spell. She used yew.”
Ilone’s hands fisted, then wiped against her gown, as if even the word poisoned.
“It brought the Breeders,” Lark whispered. “They spied her. Now they can find her, destroy her.”
“Dark magic.”
“I saw it, Ilone! I went to Trethe. We looked—” Lark clutched her waist, grimacing. “ ’Tis why they send the swifts to us, battering at these walls all day! We are forced to ignore the Guardian, while they do what they need to take her. Evie will be harmed! She cannot. She cannot.” She started for the stairs, then paused, stiffening. “Run back, Ilone, please! Hide! I cannot bear that you suffer these creatures for me.”
But Ilone reached for Lark’s arm, holding her back. “The books are only loaned to us because of the betrayal. We will lose them if we look beyond each first page. ’Twould be our betrayal.”
“What matter if we lose them, Ilone? Do you think I care about books over Evie’s life?”
“That is Evie’s life!”
Lark was shaking her head. “Nay, not life, her fate—”
“Gharain’s fate was altered because his book was opened by the Breeders. Look what it did, Lark! You’re here because of it! We all suffer because of it!”
“We suffer because the Breeders gained advantage. Let us gain the advantage now. We’ll lose the books, not the battle. I’ll use the Sight to find the other Guardians.”
“Use it then for your cousin; don’t do this!”
“I’m too close to her, Ilone! I cannot read her energy, I never could.” Lark rounded on Ilone, fierce with determination. “ ’Tis but the tiniest verse that we’re granted out of each book of Fate! I did not need to use it to know Evie’s Guardian bloodline—I can learn the other Guardians just as well.”
“But you did look, you did read her verse. You shared it with us! Laurent—”
“Laurent will not save her if the Breeders get her first!” Lark turned and disappeared down steps that wound into the castle depths.
Ilone would not be left out. She ran as quickly as Lark, spiraling down and down. Just before the end, though, Ilone gasped, dropping on the stairs abruptly. I felt it: an invisible force, pushing her back.
Lark was at her side in a heartbeat, gripping her arms. “Are you all right? Is it the swifts?”
“No! No. I just—I can go no farther….” Ilone panted. “ ’Tis blocked.”
“Of course—I’m sorry! Guardians and Complements only. I’m sorry.” Then Lark smiled. “Wait here. You followed me this far, I’ll not leave you out.” She turned and ran back down the steps, disappearing.
How strange it was to see Lark so unafraid, so free to touch…so at home. I was the distraction, the cause of all her worry, and I felt twinges of what were envy and guilt. I wanted to cry out, Here I am! Please do not worry for me! And yet I could only see what Ilone craned her head to see, to follow what Lark was doing. ’Twas a room where she disappeared just below, bare of furnishings as far as I could tell, but for the edge of some i
ntricately carved basin that stood in the center. Something was lit in that basin; it gave off a soft glow, different from any candle’s flame.
In a moment Lark returned with a book in her hands. She ran up the steps and sat down next to Ilone, propping the thing on her lap. The book was smallish, ancient-looking and yet unworn. There was some sort of filigree design, but Lark’s hands covered it.
“Please, my queen,” Ilone pleaded, touching Lark’s arm. She said what I was thinking: “Can you not sense something from it? Perhaps you do not have to open the book.”
Lark shook her head. “I imagine this is where the Sight fails—I see what will happen, not what might be.” But she clutched the edges of the book for a moment, as if to be sure.
A moment, ’twas all. She relaxed and smoothed her hands over the cover, studying it. “Handsome, but so simple a binding. To hold one’s fate within the pages of a book, you’d think it would be made of finer stuff.”
Ilone whispered, “What is precious is inside.”
“Or perhaps it is like this just to say: You are not special, Guardian. You might have lived your life simply, unaware, happy in your little garden….” There was a wistfulness in Lark’s voice that I understood too well. But then she shook it off and pulled the book close.
Ilone inhaled. “You are sure of this?” And when Lark nodded she begged, “Then let me share the burden. Do not say no, Lark. You will not tell Gharain; you will not tell anyone, I know it, but someone should share this. Let me.” She reached out and took Lark’s wrist. “This might help lessen any repercussion. Healer hands…”
Lark shook her head, insisting, “I will not let you sacrifice—”
But Ilone countered, gripping harder. “Is that not what you are doing at this very moment, my queen? Are you not sacrificing?”
“Yes!” Lark looked up and shouted to the air, to the stones around her: “To open this book is my choice! Do you understand? Let what comes fall on me! I accept the consequences!”
It caught my breath to hear Lark speak so vehemently. When had I ever heard her protest? Insist? Defy? Even those months ago when she stood in our village square surrounded by too many faces, too many energies, and confronted with the terrifying task of traveling into the unknown, Lark had stood, quaking but accepting. And when others offered to go in her stead she refused because she’d been chosen. She felt obliged to obey the rule. Now Lark was willing, eager even, to do the forbidden.
