by Lisa Smedman
Larajin’s mind was made up in an instant. If Goldheart trusted Rylith, so would she.
She pointed at the owl and in the direction the voices outside the tent were coming from, then shrugged a silent question. How were they possibly going to sneak past the guards outside?
Rylith winked, then drew a pouch from a pocket on the front of her vest. Loosening the thong that held it shut, she carefully began to pour out its contents: an orange-red powder that looked like ground crystal and smelled like tree sap. Goldheart watched intently, sniffed at the powder, then sneezed. As Larajin glanced in alarm at the owl—it didn’t appear to have heard the faint noise and was still sleeping on its perch—Rylith scooped the tressym into her arms. She handed Goldheart to Larajin, then continued pouring the powder. When she was finished, a perfect circle had been traced on the ground between Larajin’s bedding and the side of the tent.
Squatting just outside this circle of dust, Rylith held out a hand, and gestured for Larajin to join her. Tucking Goldheart firmly under one arm, Larajin took Rylith’s hand, waiting for further instructions. The druid mimed a descending count, folding fingers and thumb one by one against her palm as she counted down from five to one, then “walked” two fingers in the air, as if they were stepping over something. Larajin nodded, and lifted her foot, moving it slightly toward the circle of powdered tree sap to show that she understood.
Outside the tent, one of the elves called out to another. It sounded as though the guard was being changed. As the owl stirred in its sleep, ruffling its feathers, both women froze, but after a few tense moments it settled again without opening its eyes.
Rylith gave Larajin a purposeful look and began the count. As her thumb joined her fingers against her palm, both women stepped into the circle, and Rylith spoke a single word.
The owl’s enormous golden eyes flashed open, and the ground lurched sideways beneath Larajin’s feet as tent and owl disappeared in a spinning blur. For an instant that stretched impossibly long between two heartbeats, a dark void surrounded her, and she thought she was going to be sick. Goldheart wriggled frantically, scratching Larajin’s arm, then leaped away with an eerie, echoing howl. Larajin was too disoriented to try to catch her. All sense of up and down vanished as forward folded into backward and right into left. For one terrifying instant, she felt as though her body was turning itself inside out and upside down—but then it righted itself as Rylith gave her hand a hard squeeze. Then, with a thud that jarred Larajin’s teeth together, they were on solid ground once more. Rylith released her hand.
Looking around, Larajin saw that she was in a forest. Rylith stood beside her, and Goldheart was perched on the branches of a tree above, intent upon grooming herself, apparently none the worse for wear save for some ruffled fur. Wherever they were, the place didn’t look familiar. Unlike the strong, shady oaks of the Tangled Trees, the trees all around them were leafless and mottled with blight, and several were leaning or had already fallen. The ground under Larajin’s feet was spongy with a putrid-smelling layer of what looked like decayed ferns and moss, and the once-thick underbrush had died back, leaving only skeletal twigs. Through them, Larajin could see a road.
“Where are we?” she asked Rylith.
The druid remained silent, with her lips pressed tightly together. Her only answer was to nod at the long, rectangular shadow that fell across the spot where they stood.
Larajin turned around and saw an enormous slab of gray granite, its front and sides covered in flowing Elvish script. The bottom of the stone looked as though it had been damaged by frost. Bending over, she found she could peer right through the monument’s base, which had a crack in it more than a handspan wide. The fissure narrowed rapidly, but the crack continued all the way to the top of the monument, dividing it in two. It looked as though the two halves were about to topple to either side at any moment.
When she turned back to Rylith, Larajin saw a tear trickle down the druid’s tattooed cheek. She didn’t need to ask what was wrong. As a novice cleric of two goddesses who valued natural beauty above all else, she too was struck by the wrongness of this blighted wood. She whispered prayers to Sune and Hanali Celanil, asking the goddesses to take pity upon this place.
“This monument,” Rylith said in a sad voice, “was erected to commemorate a pact of friendship between human and elf. For centuries, nothing has marred its surface. It has withstood frost and fire and healed itself of the willful damage of blade and hammer. Now it is a cracked mirror, a sad reflection of our current troubles.”
Larajin laid a fingertip against the monument—gently, lest the slight touch topple it. Despite the heat of the sun that glared down through the bare branches overhead, the granite was as cold as ice. She shivered, and withdrew her hand.
“The Standing Stone,” she said, remembering it from a book she’d read.
“You know its history?” Rylith asked. “The story of when it was erected and what it signifies?”
Larajin nodded. “Why did you bring me here?” she asked. “Why did we have to use magic to sneak away? Why wouldn’t the elves let me leave the tent?”
Rylith sighed. “These are difficult times. Not only do the humans march against the forest, but the war has also pitted the council members against each other. There are many on the High Council who ignore the true threat to the forest, who refuse to heed our advice. One would think they had fallen victim to—”
She stopped abruptly, then shook her head, as if to dispel some disturbing thought.
“I have much work yet to do,” she continued. “I can interrupt it for only a short time, and that time would be better spent speaking about your part in all of this than about mine.” She extended a hand to Larajin. “Come. Walk with me. This is not a pleasant spot, and there is more I need to show you.”
They walked for some time through the woods, Goldheart following above, until they had left the monument and the blighted forest behind. Up ahead, Larajin heard the sound of flowing water. It turned out to be a small creek, pebbled with rocks and surrounded by lush greenery. Rylith squatted on a sun-warmed stone, and motioned for Larajin to join her. When Larajin had settled, she pointed at a pool, on which a twig was floating. The twig drifted in a slow, lazy circle, framing their reflections. Rylith’s face, with gray hair and dark tree-branch tattoos; and Larajin’s, with unwrinkled skin and rust-colored hair hanging loose about her shoulders.
“Hazel eyes are very rare among our people,” Rylith said. “Less than ten children in an entire generation have eyes like yours. Twins born with hazel eyes are rarer still.”
Larajin wondered what this had to do with anything but told herself to be patient. Druids were never known to rush anything. Rylith would come to the point in time.
“There is a belief among our people that twins with hazel eyes are an omen of great good fortune, that the twins themselves are specially blessed by the gods—and that they will use this blessing to aid their race.”
“My brother Leifander has hazel eyes?” Larajin asked.
“See for yourself.” Rylith swept a hand over the pool of water, and the twig suddenly halted in place. For the space of several heartbeats, the pool became utterly still. Within it, Larajin could see a third face, that of a wood elf with braided bangs hung with feathers, and sharply pointed ears and almond-shaped eyes that were a hazel color just a shade darker than Larajin’s own. His face was tattooed, but lacked the narrowness of a full-blooded elf. It was also strikingly handsome.
The image was frozen, the eyes unblinking—an illusion then, and not a glimpse of Leifander in that moment.
Larajin stared at her brother’s face, trying to see a resemblance to her own, but could not. As Doriantha had observed, they were as different as day and night. Leifander looked like a full-blood elf, and Larajin a human.
Rylith moved her hand again, and the twig resumed its journey around the pool, making one last circuit, then escaping into the current of the stream. As it slipped away, Leifander’s face
rippled and faded from sight.
“Until quite recently, the truth—that Trisdea bore twins—was known only to a handful of people,” the druid said. “Most of the elves in the Tangled Trees believed that she had borne only Leifander—being half human, he was such a large infant that it was easy to persuade people he’d made such a big bulge in Trisdea’s stomach on his own. That fiction became even more credible when Thamalon Uskevren took you with him, away from the Tangled Trees.”
“Was he supposed to have done that?” Larajin asked.
Rylith ignored the question. “That which is necessary has a way of happening,” she said. “All things come full circle, given enough time.”
She sighed, and continued, “There are some, however, who believe that the hand of the gods can be forced—that you and your brother should be reunited at any cost. When they first found out where you were living, they tried to force you to return to the Tangled Trees. They—”
“The elves who defended me in the Hunting Garden!” Larajin exclaimed, suddenly understanding.
Rylith nodded sadly. “Theirs was a great sacrifice, but they believed in you and in the power of the goddess that flows through you. As do I.”
Larajin shivered, despite the heat of the sun. She had been chosen by two goddesses, it was true, and with their aid had worked magic. That alone made her special, but Rylith was saying that she was more than that. She was a person whom three elves had willingly sacrificed themselves to protect. A person of whom great things were expected—by an entire race. Larajin wondered how she could ever live up to such expectations.
She thought of her twin brother. At least she wouldn’t have to do it alone.
“When I tried to leave the tent, an elf told me I had to wait for Leifander,” she said. “He was worried that I would run away, wasn’t he?”
“He was.”
“But I wanted to meet Leifander. I would have given my word to wait until he came to the Tangled Trees—and kept it. Why didn’t the elves trust me? Is it because of the war? Because I look … too human?”
“No,” Rylith answered. “When I gave the gift of foresight to you at the Turning of the Seldanqith, you did not receive it as I had hoped. You seemed … alarmed and agitated by what you heard. Instead of conveying a message of hope to the people, you—”
“I panicked,” Larajin whispered.
Rylith paused, and shook her head. “It caused great concern—and it was something I should have anticipated. I should have realized that you were not prepared—that the experience might frighten you. Being raised among humans …” She shrugged, and made a circle in the air before bowing her head and touching fingers to her forehead. “What is done is done. Everything is but a spoke in the wheel.”
“I saw my brother’s death,” Larajin said in a pained whisper.
“Leifander’s?” Rylith asked in alarm.
“No, Tal’s—my half-brother.”
“Ah.” The druid made a dismissive gesture.
Larajin felt a rush of anger at the realization that Tal’s death—the death of a mere human—meant nothing to the forest elves, but she forced it down in the hope that Rylith might be able to tell her what to do.
“What were the gods trying to tell me?” she asked. “What message should I have heard?”
“We may never know—but we may conjecture,” Rylith said. “What remains of Cormanthor—of the great wood—is faced with a terrible prospect. A war could decimate our people and destroy the forest itself. The war is also sure to claim the lives of many humans.”
Like Tal, Larajin thought grimly.
“This bloodshed was not meant to be,” Rylith continued. “Someone has tipped the balance. Now the scales must be set level again. That task rests upon you and your brother, who share a great gift. Together, you can put a halt to the slaughter before it begins.”
Larajin frowned, wondering if she was interpreting the druid’s words correctly. “You expect Leifander and I to stop the war?”
Rylith stared into the trees, as if looking past them into a great distance. “Years before you and your brother were born, your sister Somnilthra prophesied that two children born to Trisdea would end her life but would save many more. That they would ‘heal a great rift, and end a great strife.’ That rift can be no other than the one between elf and human. That strife is this war.
“You and your brother are in balance—male and female, human and elf. Who better to balance the scales of fate?”
Larajin felt a tangle of conflicting emotions: relief that the war could still be halted and Tal’s life saved—and dread.
“But … I wouldn’t know where to begin. I couldn’t—”
Not alone.
Startled, Larajin looked around. The voice was achingly beautiful and had come from everywhere at once, its syllables formed from the sighing of wind through branches, from the distant trill of birdsong in the wood, from the gurgle of the stream that flowed past the rock on which Larajin sat. A fragrance filled the air—heady and sweet, the smell of flowers—and not just any blossoms, but those of Hanali’s Heart. Larajin looked down, and saw floating on the pool a single red petal, flecked with gold. For a moment, she thought the locket at her wrist had fallen open, but a quick glance told her that it was still securely fastened. She reached for the floating petal—
And jerked her hand back in alarm as Leifander’s face appeared once more in the pool. This time, the image was moving, not still. Leifander lay on his back on a stone floor, his eyes wide and his mouth opened in a scream. He wrenched his head to the side as a squirming rat landed on the floor beside him. The rat lunged at Leifander’s face, drawing blood. Leifander shook his head violently, dislodging the rat, but three more scurried in to lap at the hot, dark blood that trickled down his cheek.
“Why doesn’t he throw them off?” she shouted, leaping to her feet in alarm as one of the rats ran across the vision in the pool, seemingly toward her own foot. “He’s just lying there!”
Rylith glanced up at Larajin in alarm. “What is it? What do you see?”
Larajin was transfixed by the image in the pool. Standing up had somehow shifted it, giving a view of more than just Leifander’s face. She could see manacles on each of his wrists and ankles, holding him spread-eagled on the floor—and more than a dozen rats, swarming around his body. They didn’t look like ordinary rats.
Larajin dropped to her knees, lowering her face almost to the surface of the water. The result was as she’d hoped—one of the rats loomed larger. Now that she could peer at it closely, she saw that its front legs were hairless and pink, and ended in tiny human hands.
“I recognize that creature!” she cried. “It’s a rat from the sewers under the Hunting Gardens. Leifander must be in the Hulorn’s dungeon.”
Rylith’s face paled.
Larajin stared in horror at the pond. She reached out for Leifander, but as her fingers touched the surface of the pool his image rippled, then was lost among the pebbles at the bottom of the pond. All that remained was the speckled red petal, bobbing amid sparkling reflections of the sun.
A different voice, equally melodic, but pitched in a different key, said, Go to him.
This time, Larajin didn’t look around. She knew where the voice was coming from. It was Sune this time. Scooping the petal from the pond, she turned to the druid.
“That spell you used—the one that brought us here. Can you use it to send me back to Selgaunt?”
“I could, if I had visited Selgaunt, but I have never been to that city. The spell can only deliver me to somewhere I can recall well—to a place I can visualize as clearly as the palm of my own hand.”
“What if I was the one who visualized where we were going? Would the spell work then?”
Rylith shook her head. “It would have to be a place of refuge, a place in which you felt utterly safe, and you would have to be the one to cast the spell.”
“I see.” Larajin scooped the petal from the stream. “Teach me.”
>
Rylith shook her head. “Impossible! Only a druid of the inner circle can cast that spell.”
“Could a cleric do it?”
“One who had studied for many years, certainly.”
“I don’t have years,” Larajin gritted. “Tell me what to do.”
“You will never succeed.”
“I’ve got to at least try.”
Rylith opened her mouth to protest, then set her lips in a grim line. “Yes, I suppose you do.” She took a deep breath. “First, you’ll need something sacred to your goddess.”
“Which one?”
“Whichever favors you more.”
Larajin considered, uncertain of the answer. Would it be Sune or Hanali Celanil? Both had blessed her in the past. Should she use Sune’s red scarf or the locket that symbolized Hanali Celanil? Then she realized that she didn’t need to choose. There was one thing sacred to both goddesses. She held up the red petal.
“That will do. Now use it to draw a circle.”
Larajin frowned. How was she supposed to do that? With several dozen petals, she might construct a circle on the ground, as Rylith had done with her powder. With a lump of coal or a stick of chalk, she might draw a circle on the stone on which she squatted, but this petal was neither.
Then she realized the answer. Carefully, she lowered the petal to the pond, and dropped it so the eddying current would catch it. As before, the petal began to drift in a circle.
Larajin looked up. “What comes next?”
“Visualize a place of refuge—a place where you feel secure and safe. A place you know intimately. Close your eyes, if that helps.”
Larajin did. She could only think of one place, in all of Selgaunt, that fit the description: her bedroom in Storm-weather Towers. She concentrated on it, fixing every detail of the room in her mind. The narrow bed, the table her adoptive father had made her, the three-legged stool near the window, the simple trunk that held her clothes, and the shelf on the wall that held her collection of treasures—snail shells, pretty stones, an eagle’s feather, and a jar of perfume given to her by her friend Kremlar—all came to her mind’s eye.
