The Lost Garden: The Complete Series

by D. K. Holmberg

  But another odor lingered. This had an almost bitter scent, one she could practically taste. The more she focused on it, the more it seemed to work through her nose, into her mouth, and fill her lungs.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  She hadn’t expected an answer. Weeks had passed since she’d been to the Svanth Forest. She no longer needed to stand beneath the trees to feel the power of the branches. The connection between the trees she could reach told her all she needed. But she hadn’t sensed anything unusual, certainly nothing that explained the strange odor she barely had words to explain.

  “You smell the Darkbinders,” Shadow said.

  He slipped alongside her, the fur on his back standing on end. Energy thrummed from him, drawn suddenly from a distant reserve—likely the Source—and filled him. His eyes brightened, and his ears twitched as he looked around, almost as if expecting something to jump out at them. He looked healed, but through their bond, Eris could tell he was not. The effort of pulling and holding the power taxed him.

  “They’re here?” Terran asked. His hand went to the hilt of his sword.

  Shadow growled softly. “Not now.”

  She looked down at him. “I thought only keepers could enter the forest.”

  Shadow turned, his ears swiveling as he looked up at her. “They would not have been able to enter the heart of this place—it touches the Source too closely—but the borders would not have restricted them.”

  “Them? How many came through here?” She squeezed Terran’s hand. She shouldn’t feel uncomfortable in the forest. This was her place. A place of safety. But now an edge of anxiety came to her. If these Darkbinders could enter the Svanth Forest, was there any place she would truly be safe?

  “I cannot say,” Shadow answered. “From what you have seen, they gain strength. Perhaps only one. Perhaps more.”

  He moved past her and kept his nose tilted up, sniffing as he made his way through the trees. His ears swiveled constantly, hearing sounds Eris couldn’t. The forest granted her recognition of squirrels and birds and tree lions, but nothing else. No creatures moved other than them.

  “How do you know of the Darkbinders?” Eris asked.

  She had to hurry to keep up with Shadow. He made his way toward the heart of the forest, taking the most direct path, slipping between trees that Eris had to circle around. She didn’t have the same control over the forest as Imryll had over hers; the trees wouldn’t move for her; they never parted to allow her to make her way along. Paths would open, making it so she could move easily through the forest, but it was not the same. With Imryll, it was almost as if the forest bowed before her.

  “There have always been those who seek the dark,” Shadow said.

  “And you’re meant to stop them?”

  Shadow fixed her with eyes suddenly harder than they’d been. The power he pulled radiated from him. “I am a manifestation of this place. Drawn as the guardian, the separation between light and dark.”

  Eris shook her head. “And I don’t understand. You tell me that I’m a keeper of light but you won’t explain what that means. And you tell me you’re my guardian, but a guardian from what?”

  Shadow growled softly. Frustration surged through their connection, and Eris thought she understood the reason. Shadow didn’t know how to explain what the Darkbinders were.

  Even the term Darkbinder wasn’t quite right. Part of him seemed dissatisfied each time he used it, but it was the only one he knew. Her ability to understand Shadow was limited by her language.

  “What do they want?” Eris asked.

  “They want what they have always wanted.”

  “And what is that?”

  Shadow growled, another low sound. “They seek to end light.”

  He loped off, leaving Eris staring after him.

  * * *

  At the heart of the forest, Shadow laid next to the base of a massive svanth tree. It was the same place where the first keeper had rested as she died, a place where the earth of the forest had welcomed her back. Did Shadow know that as well, or had he lain there by chance?

  His chest rose and fell steadily, an occasional grunt coming from him as if snoring. She did not bother to wake him. The return to the forest had exhausted him.

  Terran crouched next to him, taking the opportunity to examine his fur. His hands worked around Shadow’s ears and under his neck, moving carefully and barely disturbing his rest. He even lifted his lips and checked the paws of his feet. Eris had seen her father’s master of hounds do the same, but where would Terran have learned such skill?

  “What are you doing?” Eris demanded.

  He looked up at her, eyes dark. “I thought you wanted him healed.”

  Eris nodded. “I do. I didn’t know that you cared.”

  “I care about you.”

  Eris sighed. She felt no injuries from Shadow, only the nearly incapacitating weakness. How long would it be before he recovered? Days? Weeks? Longer than she wanted to wait, especially now that there had been some sort of attack on her. Again.

  “I don’t think he’s injured,” she said.

  Terran lowered Shadow’s back leg and stood, dusting his hands off on his jacket. He shook his head. “No. I find nothing that tells me of any injuries.”

  “Where did you learn to examine him like that?”

  Terran laughed softly. “I wasn’t always a gardener.”

  “You kept hounds in Helash?”

  She didn’t know much about his home village other than its name and began to wonder if she shouldn’t have questioned him more about it before now. Should he have returned? She had been so focused on her issues, on what happened to her as keeper, on losing her sister and Jacen, that she hadn’t bothered to ask whether he needed to return home. And he had never offered much, keeping that to himself.

  Terran sniffed. “I figured you would have learned more about Errasn from your father.”

  Eris shot him a look. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” Her brother used to tease her the same way, but hearing it from Terran stung a little.

  He shook his head. “Nothing. Only that Helash sits near the western edge of the forest. Not many people were willing to enter the forest, and those who did were chased by…” He trailed off and looked down at Shadow. He shrugged. “Something. Maybe by Shadow or something else. Either way, we trained dogs to help us hunt. They also served as a warning. I lost more than a few dogs in these woods. Never thought I’d walk them so comfortably.”

  He sighed and made his way to the nearest svanth tree. A wide teary star flower bloomed along the vine wrapping along its trunk. He leaned in and sniffed, smelling the fragrance of the flower. “You grow up around dogs long enough, and you learn to care for them and how to check for injuries. Sometimes, there isn’t much you can do. Other times, it takes a little extra care to nurse them back to health. I used to wish the keepers were still around to help. My grandfather told us stories of what they could do, the way the Gardens of Elaysia used to fill the air with the fragrance of thousands of flowers. All my life, I never thought I’d ever meet a keeper. Not after learning the gardens were destroyed.”

  Eris walked over to him and rested her head on his shoulder. “What is it, Terran?”

  He kissed her forehead. “Now, I can’t imagine what it would be like without a keeper in my life.”

  She laughed. “You don’t have to worry. I’m not going anywhere.”

  The corners of his eyes twitched. “Aren’t you? Look at what’s happened in the time I’ve known you. You’ve been attacked by the magi. The priestesses tried to kill you. You were lost in some distant forest. And you risked everything to again stop the magi.” He took a deep breath and shook his head. “You’ll have to excuse me if I find it easy to believe something else could happen.”

  “You don’t have to protect me, Terran.”

  “Don’t I? What else am I to do?”

  Eris glanced down at Shadow. He rested there, still unmoving. “Shado
w is the guardian. I don’t know what all that means, but I think he’s meant to keep me safe.”

  Terran coughed and shook his head. “Shadow. Then what about me?”

  “You’re my gardener.”

  “Which means little.”

  Eris took his hand. He didn’t resist, but she felt the tension in his grip, the way his arms and fingers didn’t welcome her touch as they usually did. “It means everything.”

  He looked down at her and shook his head. “No. It doesn’t. A gardener is meant to work with a keeper, to help grow and expand the garden. To help refine the focus, to suggest plantings. When you worked along the southern border, I felt a hint of that purpose, but that was the only time. Otherwise, all I feel is concern that I will lose you.”

  “You’re not going to lose me,” she said.

  “I can’t protect you from these Darkbinders. I didn’t sense the poison in the flowers.”

  “You don’t need to—”

  She cut herself off. How could she tell Terran that he shouldn’t try to protect her? She didn’t know enough about keeper and gardener roles, but she had seen the way the keepers of the past had pushed away their gardeners. As much as they denied it, Eris sensed they regretted what they’d lost. She wouldn’t lose Terran, not by pushing him away, but would they ever have time to simply live without fear of attack?

  And now, she couldn’t help but think she’d had those visions as a warning. Why would she have had them at all? To access the roots of the forest, she had to delve into them, reach through them intentionally, but when she’d dreamed, there had been no intention. The visions had come unbidden.

  Eris looked over at Shadow resting. Had he been the reason for her visions? She hadn’t known him when she had her first vision. That had come while running from the magi, trying to simply stay alive. The vision had awakened something inside of her and granted her a sense of knowing about the forest. And the second vision she’d experienced came after she left Imryll, again before she met Shadow. But he’d admitted he’d helped her that time, that he had been the reason she escaped from Ferisa and the priestesses.

  “What do you think we should do?” she asked.

  Terran frowned. “Are you asking because you want to know or because you think you need to?”

  “Can’t it be both?”

  He laughed. “I suppose it can.”

  “Well?”

  He pointed to the svanth tree and leaned toward the teary star flower. Again, he sniffed. “When you returned from the border after pushing back the magi, you said you wanted to rebuild the gardens.”

  “Terran—I don’t know that the gardens can do anything to stop the priestesses or these Darkbinders. They didn’t even stop the Conclave when they attacked.”

  “No, they didn’t. But before the magi destroyed them, they existed for nearly a thousand years.”

  Eris started to argue but clamped her mouth shut. He might be right. Hadn’t she seen glimpses of the gardens in her visions? The gardens existed when the first keeper began to grow what would become the Svanth Forest. And they had been attacked during the second vision.

  How much didn’t she know? How much could Shadow teach her, and how much would she need to learn on her own? Unless she could convince Imryll to provide answers.

  Shadow had given her another reason to go to her. While he recovered from the attack, she could go and learn what it meant that she was a keeper of light. She might finally understand why she had a guardian.

  “I’ll have the gardens rebuilt,” she said.

  Terran nodded.

  “But there’s more that I need to do. If I’m a keeper of light, that means you’re a gardener of light. And neither of us knows what that means.”

  He frowned. “What if Imryll won’t help? If she refuses you as she did before?”

  The last time Eris had known even less than she did now. At least now she understood her abilities were meant to heal rather than destroy, that she could only use them against another if she or her garden were threatened. She understood how to draw the energy out of the ground, how to pull from it what she needed and guide it. More than that, she understood she was not simply a keeper of trees.

  “Then I will search for other answers as I rebuild the gardens.”

  Terran looked down at Shadow. “What will happen with him?”

  Eris tested the bond between them, the connection growing stronger with every hour. In time, he would awaken and be refreshed. He could come to her then as he had once come to her along the border. For now, he needed to remain here.

  “He’ll recover here.”

  “And the priestesses? You’re not worried about what they have planned?”

  She closed her eyes. “The priestesses worry me,” she began, watching Shadow once more. “Especially if they’re tied to the Darkbinders. Shadow fears them but won’t tell me why. And for him to be afraid…I need answers. For whatever reason, Shadow can’t offer them. But there are other keepers like me—”

  “Not quite like you.”

  She smiled. “Keepers of the light. Imryll is one. Shadow knows of others but won’t say. Maybe rebuilding the garden will draw others. If we’re strong enough, we can keep back the Darkbinders.”

  “And if it doesn’t work?”

  Eris looked at Shadow. The fear she’d felt from him—the terror—frightened her. “I pray it does.”

  Chapter 69

  They paused at the edge of the forest. Unlike the heart, where the massive svanth trees grew, clumps of oak and elm and poplar all grew along the boundary. With enough focus, she could pick out the pattern of the forest that focused the power growing within.

  Eris no longer knew if the energy of the forest came from the trees themselves or if it came from a deeper place, the Source the Conclave once sought to claim. And maybe they weren’t separate. Maybe the svanth trees were only able to grow because of the connection to the Source. Shadow probably knew, one of many answers he wouldn’t provide.

  Terran ran his fingers along the leaves of an oak tree. The edges of the leaves were curled and blackened. He frowned as he studied them. “We’ve seen this before.”

  Eris touched the tree, delving lightly into it. Resting at the heart of the forest had strengthened her. She might not feel fully well—it would take days to recover from using as much energy as she had—but she felt well enough to delve into the leaves. There, she felt the effect of countless tiny organisms. They slowly multiplied, destroying the tree. In time, they would spread. In that way, it seemed much like the taint the priestesses had tried poisoning the svanth trees with. Could they be similar?

  She drew from the tree itself, still not comfortable drawing from the forest reserves. But she was willing to risk the energy of the tree, energy that could be contained if needed. She focused on the tiny creatures working through the oak and forced the tree to recognize them. With a burst of power, it destroyed them, leaving it cleansed.

  Terran let out a shaky breath. “This can’t be the only one? How many do you think are affected?”

  “There were several the last time I was here. I cleansed them as well.”

  “What do you think causes it?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I thought you would.”

  He shook his head.

  “The magi had asked Master Billiken for books on insects. It’s possible they left this behind.”

  Terran’s face looked troubled. “That’s possible. They did something similar in the gardens at the palace. Nels had me searching through each bed to pick out the mites and beetles crawling through the dirt and leaves. I hated it.”

  Eris pulled her hand back from the oak leave. “You didn’t want me to help.”

  “Because there are things you shouldn’t do as keeper.”

  “I don’t mind getting my hands dirty. I seem to remember that’s how we first got to know each other.”

  He smiled. Not the lopsided smile that once spread constantly across his face. T
his was a tight and determined expression, the smile of a man who worried about her and feared what might happen to her.

  What if the visions weren’t a warning meant for her? What if they were intended for Terran? In the visions, the gardeners had been unable to stay by the keeper’s side. Had it been the keeper’s fault? The first keeper had known she needed to grow the forest, that it would be important in the future. And the other keeper had recognized a secret about the forest, that there was some deeper power she didn’t understand. Even though she didn’t understand, she still served the forest, protecting it, growing it by adding the oaks and elms and the poplars that grew along the edges. It was this keeper who had developed much of the existing pattern.

  “I remember. I also remember you willing to run off to the Svanth Forest to learn more about the teary star flower.”

  “That’s not what happened.”

  He shook his head. “No, but it could have been. I wouldn’t put it past you. Especially now that I know you as well as I do.”

  She shrugged and touched the next tree, a poplar. Staggered with the oaks, the poplars drew strength from the sun, funneling it toward the heart of the forest. She didn’t quite know all the details of the pattern, but she could make out pieces. In time, she suspected she would better understand.

  Shade flowers grew around the bases of the trees. Most were wild flowers, but even these had a sort of pattern. Tall darthshades and their vibrant purple petals poked alongside the tree. Teraspals and piksans grew next to them. Each augmented the power pulled by the trees, and each added to the strength of the forest. The flowers might not send roots quite as deep, but they added to the pattern, and she recognized how that was important.

  Tiny organisms grew within the poplar as well, though not quite with the same freedom she found within the oak, almost as if something about the poplar resisted them. Eris touched the leaves, unrolling them, delving briefly. As she did, she recognized how the darthshades added to the tree’s defenses and the piksans pushed in as well.

  “Are they all like this?” she wondered aloud.