by Jenna Rhodes
A bit of errant moonlight struck his blade, and it flashed a cold blue. Quendius moved downslope to the massive aryn trees, small saplings pushing up from between the great, gripping roots of the mature trees, saplings which would be dug up and replanted elsewhere, or the canopy of the parent trees would suffocate and choke all sunlight and rain from them. He chose the branches he wanted with care, for he wanted both strong and pliable wood, well-grained, and the aryn had the trait of drying well and quickly, so he hewed off green branches, ignoring the deadwood which had fallen sporadically about the grove.
Bistel Vantane would try to kill him if he were caught. The aryns lived unhurt and well-nurtured, for it was they who held back the edges of burned-out, chaotic Mageborn magics that ravaged the countryside. How they took it in and cleansed it or absorbed it, no one could quite be sure, only that it was done and had been so for centuries. Quendius had no qualms about taking down the sacred wood. If Bistel wanted so badly to salvage Kerith, why did he not extend the groves deep into the Scars, the blasted lands, to see if they would continue to thrive and cleanse? Or did Bistel have a keen sense of the limitations of his power through the aryns and their Way that had flourished upon his borders? Either way held little concern for Quendius. He would rather see all in ruins if he could not someday hold it under the heel of his boot.
When he held a sizable bundle under his arm, of lengths nearly as tall as he was and as big around as his wrist, he decided he’d hewed enough. He moved back through the trees as the wind of the night murmured through them, and they protested his butchery of them. Twigs snatched and pulled at his hair and vest, tangling as he brushed through them. Roots seemed to buckle upward from the ground to trip him up or rap sharply against his shin when he stepped around them. He knew that none of it was true, only fanciful tales such as the Dwellers might pass among themselves, and the depth of the night only served to give the fancy credence. He did not believe that the woods lived as a man, as a Vaelinar lived. He did not believe that it was a miracle which had caused the trees to spring to life on Kerith, far from the lands in which the aryn had originally been grown and harvested. He believed only that it was an uncommonly fine hardwood, good for working, excellent for crafting. The deadwood was used for jewelry and mosaic tiles, to be inlaid into other woods, but never for weapons, bows, arrows, hafts, or staves, an unwritten decree of the Vantane family. Much of the deadwood was burned on the turning day, when winter melted into summer. Quendius doubted the bonfires made a difference one way or the other. The seasons would come and go as they always had, before the arrival of the Vaelinars and after their final leave-taking.
He slowed as he wandered the groves, enjoying his trespass of Bistel’s grounds without chance of discovery, for Quendius knew Bistel was not at his stronghold though he did not know why. He might be out tracking his eastern borders, looking for sign of the Galdarkan warlord Abayan Diort, once under Quendius’ thumb and now little more than an uneasy ally, but Quendius did not bother about that. He would use Diort, willingly or not, when the time came. And, if now, Bistel tracked him instead of watching his own backyard, so much the better.
A bit of dried wood cracked under his step. The sound popped loudly in the nighttime, and Quendius paused. He heard a rasping shout in response.
“Who goes there? Step out and name y’rself, laddie.”
Quendius stayed a moment longer, weighing his options. Then he decided it might be fun to answer the summons, and so he did, moving in the direction of the breathy voice. A beam of moonlight illuminated the spot where the old gardener stood, leaning on a scythe that was more of a staff or cane than a sharp-honed tool for reaping. He was Vaelinar, his hawklike features sharp and lined, his mahogany skin tanned to a deep, rich cherrywood color like well polished wood, his silvery hair with a pinkish hue that reflected the deepness of his coloring. Quendius knew him to be Bistel’s man, bent and gnarled in his service and that of the aryn groves since he was knee-high and although Bistel was a few centuries older, Magdan looked ancient while the warlord appeared still in his prime. Gardening must take a worse toll than making war, Quendius thought as he moved into the patch of moonlight, forbidden aryn cuttings under one arm and ill-used sword in the other. He dropped the bundle to free himself.
“What have you done?” the old gardener cried hoarsely. He put the end of his scythe out and jabbed the pile of cuttings. “Bistel will have your hide.”
The shadows and the twilight must have hidden him still. Quendius stepped forward closer, making certain that the shaft of light shining down on the small clearing revealed him fully, and Magdan stepped back in answer, with a rough hiss.
“Your lord is not about to flay anyone.”
“He’ll come at my whistle.”
“Even if he does, it’ll not be soon enough to save you.”
Magdan’s jaw flapped a moment as he seemed to draw into himself. Then he put his shoulders back. “The aryns are not to be touched.”
“They’ve not only been touched, I’ve chopped off what I will.” Quendius scanned the trees about them. “It’s been a dry fall so far. I might even torch them before I leave.”
Magdan hissed again. His tough and gnarled hands gripped the haft of his tool tightly. “What do you want from me?”
“Nothing that I can’t have whether you give it to me or not.” With a dry laugh, Quendius lashed out, his sword cutting through the old man’s tunic. Fabric caught and fell in limp shreds. Magdan shook, not with fear but with anger, and his eyes shone fiercely in the dim light, which was anything but dim to Quendius. He pulled his scythe into a defensive position across his body, set his bowed legs, and gritted his teeth.
“I’ve stopped brighter lads than you,” the old gardener forced out.
“Perhaps.” Quendius cut through the air again, this time across the elder’s breeches, leaving his legs bare against the evening air. His legs, like his hands and face, were weathered and etched with the working of the soil and recalcitrant thorns and branches, weeds and rocks, tendrils and lashings. Hard work, gardening and farming. “I’ll give you this, old goat of a man, you’ve backbone. For that, I’ll let you return to your lord. I don’t care if you carry word of me or not. Better perhaps, if you do.” He withdrew his blade slightly. “I am Quendius.”
Whether the old man considered his name to remember it or not, he could not tell, for Magdan’s answer was to lunge at him, business end of the scythe sweeping across the air, catching on his vest of curried wool, brushing across his bare skin with a burning slice, but not deep enough to slow his reaction. He jabbed, and jabbed deeply, the other crumpling in front of him with a bubbling gulp and hiss.
Magdan did not die. Nor would he for a bit. Quendius pulled back. He cleaned his sword in the dry dirt about them before sheathing it. His sharp eyes caught sight of the winter-woolly mountain pony the gardener had staked not too far away, as well as three young saplings dug up and bagged, resting next to a small cart to carry them, gardening by light of the moon like a superstitious old Dweller. Luck for this harvesting, it seemed, had escaped Magdan this time.
Quendius heaved him up, over his shoulder, like a sack of meal and dumped him onto the cart bed. He threw the saplings in as well, and untied the mountain pony from its staking. “You’ll be home by morning,” Quendius told the ashen-faced gardener. “You should live that long.” He tugged the ragged wrappings of the shirt tightly about Magdan’s chest. Then he slapped the cart pony on its rump, hard, and the startled animal jumped in its harness, bolting away and dragging the cart thumping behind it. It would, once the scare left it, find its way back to the stables.
Quendius took up the heavy bundle of cuttings and returned to his own mount. The beast’s nostrils flared at the smell of fresh blood on him, but did nothing more than that, used to the smell although not liking it.
Quendius rubbed his knuckles under the creature’s chin. “You know who the master is,” he told it, before lashing the aryn wood behind the saddle pad.
The horse grunted and shifted its weight unhappily at the burden, but it would bear that, and him, and more if he asked that of it. It had been trained to do so. He turned its head toward his fortress. He wondered if the gardener would live to repeat his name.
Bistel rode in, midmorning winter sun on his shoulders, to find his courtyard in commotion. The gardener’s cart stood in the center of it, ringed by stable and farm lads, and a healer, bloodied rags tossed to the ground, and aryn saplings half falling from the cart. He dismounted. “What is going on?”
“It’s Magdan, m’lord,” the head lad said, swinging about, face pale. “He’s been done for, m’lord, and he won’t tell anyone what happened or let us move him. He says he’s dying, and we’re to clear the courtyard because he’s Returning.”
Bistel felt a coldness in his core that the winter sun would not be able to warm. “Do he says, boys. Take your leavings of him while you can, and keep the yard clear. I’m the only one who stays.” He thrust the reins of his horse into the hands of Verdayne, a tall lad of Dweller blood mixed with something more, who stood quietly at the tailgate of the cart. Verdayne looked up at him, worried lines knotting his brow and the corners of his eyes, but said nothing except to wrap his fist tightly upon the leathers.
“We don’t want to go.” The boys jumbled around, giving him room to approach the cart but hanging about with stubborn looks on their faces.
“This goes beyond death. You don’t know what you ask to witness.”
Their mouths all tightened. The healer, Ninuon, stepped back. Bruises of effort and fatigue cast shadows under her eyes. “I’m sorry, Lord Bistel. I’ve done all I could, but I cannot heal that wound, and I cannot . . . I cannot give him the peace he deserves.”
Bistel looked over the rough-sided cart. Blood seeped into the old wood where Magdan looked as if he’d been thrown in carelessly, and Ninuon had straightened him out as best she could without harming him further. His clothing lay in shreds about him and great pain etched the grooves of his weathered face. Bistel’s hands tightened on the cart.
“Magdan.”
“Lord,” the gardener rasped. “I made it back to you.”
He did not know if waiting for him had begun the change in Magdan’s dying. He hoped not, for what had begun would be excruciating, and he could not change or alter it. None of the powers he had in this world would save Magdan from the Return of his soul before his life had gone. A rare occurrence, a frightening one, and one he would give anything to keep another from experiencing. He could not explain why it happened so, but it would be as if the Gods of their home world and the Gods of Kerith fought for the soul, a physical tug-of-war for something so ephemeral, so precious, so elemental. And it sometimes happened before the flesh died and had become insensitive. Bistel fought on battlefields and he knew a war when he saw one, and he could see one beginning now. One of Gods and spiritual planes and possession.
He could see the edges of the gardener’s dying body blurring, the flesh growing translucent. He put a hand on the back of Verdayne’s neck, the gardener’s apprentice, and the young man looked up at him, eyes brimming with unshed tears. “Look away,” he said.
“I can’t.” Verdayne swallowed tightly. Despite his Dweller heritage, he came nearly to Bistel’s shoulder, his thick, curling black hair hiding ears that, just barely, tipped slightly. His eyes of dark, nearly purple blue sparkled with his grief. Vaelinar blood ran in him. Bistel did not guess that. He knew it well. He nodded to Verdayne before reaching down to grasp Magdan’s rough hand tightly. “I cannot save you.”
“I know.” Magdan coughed. Blood bubbled from his cracked lips. “Home calls for me.”
Bistel tightened his grip. “It should be a blessing.”
“Perhaps it is, on the other side.” Magdan ceased to speak, fighting for a moment. His flesh grew more transparent, the blood running through his veins showing visibly.
“You go where we all yearn to go. You will chase the memories taken from us, greet the loved ones left behind by us, know the mystery of our lives.” Bistel leaned into the cart. He kissed the rough forehead of his old friend.
“I must tell you.” Magdan shuddered heavily. “I was digging up saplings.”
“By the fullness of the moon, no doubt.”
“Aye, Lord. I caught an intruder.”
Or, rather, the intruder caught him, Bistel thought. And did his best to murder him. “Do you know him?”
“No, Lord, but he gave me his name.” His voice was as wispy thin as the snow white hair tousled about his head, barely audible to Bistel’s hearing. “Quendius,” he said.
Bistel’s hands clenched about Magdan’s, causing pain where he did not intend. “Are you sure?”
“He could have lied. But I know a smithy’s hands when I see them, and he held a forge-hot hatred.” The gardener fought for a deep breath, and Bistel could feel the sudden tension in the hand he cradled. Magdan hissed sharply, his back arching, his whole body going stiff.
“Don’t talk.”
“One last.” Magdan’s mouth gaped like a fish brought out of the water. “Take care of Verdayne.”
“You know I will.” He rubbed his hands over Magdan’s rough ones. War had toughened his hands, but centuries of farming and gardening had knobbed this old man’s hands like a cobbled pathway. Magdan clung to Bistel.
He drummed one heel in protest as his form began to disintegrate, skin from flesh, flesh from bone, his soul burning like a fire from the inside out, escaping.
Returning.
The stable and farm boys around him cried out, and Ninuon fell limply to the ground, caught by the wash of agony emanating from Magdan. The healer curled in empathic agony. Bistel braced himself. Magdan’s face contorted. His skull yawned in horror and his throat uttered one last word. “M’lord,” he gasped.
Then his form shredded to nothingness as his soul flared through it, a starburst of colors Bistel would never be able to describe or forget. The gardener’s substance in his hand flared, and then, with a sudden whoosh, the apparition disappeared, leaving him holding nothing. Bistel staggered against the side of the cart. The bloodstains splashed about the boards began to smoke and then burn, and Verdayne dragged him away just before the entire cart exploded into flames taller than all of them, bright red orange against the day, and burned until nothing was left but ash.
Bistel coughed and rubbed his eyes against the smarting of the smoke. He had never before seen a pyre like this although it seemed a blessing. Usually the flesh remained, rended savagely by the struggle. He placed a hand on Verdayne’s shoulder and gripped him tightly. Magdan had fostered Verdayne for decades and the lad would miss him almost as sorely as Bistel and Bistane would. “An uncommon death,” Bistel said quietly. “Magdan did not wish to be uprooted and fought it, just like one of the grand old aryn.”
Verdayne breathed then. “Aye,” he answered as though he understood, a little. He brushed his face with the back of his hand.
Some Vaelinar did not just die. Some Returned, their souls grabbed back by the place where all Vaelinar had once originated, and the phenomenon was not kind or beautiful to watch. Bistel had seen it before, rarely, and he hoped to never see it again. He rubbed his hands against his riding leathers, an uneasiness settling deep within him that his own death would be just as difficult.
He turned his head as two of the lads helped reed-thin Ninuon to her feet.
“Quendius,” he said flatly. “No one here forget that Magdan named his murderer. If I should die before he does, tell it to Bistane.”
Chapter Seven
SUNLIGHT DAPPLED THE treetops fitfully and the morning breeze had stilled when Sevryn caught sight of a landmark which he knew, a broken spike of a granite peak behind the trees. The structure of black and gravelly gray poked out of tree branches as though someone thrust out a hand. Raptors liked to sit upon it, and so it had garnered the simple name of The Perch. There was no mistaking it. He turned his horse’s head toward it, for it stood
sentinel at the edge of a small Way known as Hunter’s Cut, a pass through an otherwise impassable and implacable ridge of stone. Hunter’s Cut stayed open through wind, rain, sleet, snow, and ice, although it was only the width of a horse and man walking abreast. Traders couldn’t use it unless they led beasts of burden on foot through it, and some traders were canny enough to make that sacrifice. Mostly, it guided hunters and trappers home through the harshest of winters, and that alone was enough to ask of it. It would provide a Way home that cut days off the journey through the worst of weather. It would get him where he needed to be.
A hawk sat on the farthest tip of the Perch as they approached, head cocked to take note of his passage through the forest. Keen eyes fixed on Sevryn as they traded looks, then the hawk ruffled his wings slightly to turn his attention elsewhere. Sevryn closed his knees tight, hurrying his mount to the edge of Hunter’s Cut. The forest parted reluctantly as the rocky spire pushed out of the soft dirt of the forest floor, the foot of the mountains which backed it, all sharp, sheer flints of stones that even the surefooted would hesitate to cross. Now and then an evergreen sapling determinedly broke through crevices, growing wherever sun and rain and stone would give enough for one to root. The sheer determination of growth had always been something Sevryn admired. He’d seen it in the cities where he’d run in the shadows. Give the land a week or a season without human hand on it, and growth would spurt. It might be weedy and useless to the eye, but it would then give shelter to other creatures, all banned and unwanted by humans but still a part of their world. There was life that refused to be denied.
The Perch itself only pointed the way to the cut. He rode back and forth a bit before finding it, the overlapping rock front fiendishly hard to spot. He’d been through it once or twice in the dead of winter riding at Gilgarran’s back. He could not describe the eerie feeling of riding on the Way with impassable snow and icy peaks surrounding them, yet the floor of the cut itself had held green shoots of tender spring grass and soft shrub branches catching at the horses’ hooves. No wind had piped through the rocks, but snow droplets would melt and cascade wetly down the stone walls, leaving ice-cold puddles for the horses to splash through. Winter might be held at bay in Hunter’s Cut, but nothing could keep it from sending small reminders that it existed and held sway over the outside world. Gilgarran had once warned him of that, saying nature could only be held at arm’s length at great cost.
