by Lexy Wolfe
"Because this Totani was… special. Unique. At first, I thought of her as merely a beast to study. I wanted to learn the secret to her existence. To help my beloved children." His smile filled with self-loathing bitterness. "She taught me so much more. None of it what I thought to learn from her. Or wanted to learn, but what I needed to learn.
"Because of her, I realized what a horrible thing I had done and set her free. After that, I went to the ancient trinity and not only confessed my sins, but I revealed how I and my kin's actions threatened to upset the great balance." He sighed. "The seven of us had reasons… excuses… for our actions that won us this banishment instead of imprisonment."
Marcus chewed on his lower lip. "The punishment isn't… forever, is it?"
"It may as well be," Endarian answered bitterly. "Even if all seven of us could be located, there is only one soul in existence who can argue on our behalf but has no reason to forgive us." He shook his head. "Nor can I find any resentment in my heart because of that. We deserve no forgiveness." He looked up at Seeker and Eptina, dejected. "After we were banished into the mortal realm, we seven sought those we had sworn to watch over. I felt the sundering during what you call the Great War. No doubt the others had as well. But it still took me centuries to find Andar. You cannot imagine my shame when I realized how much my children suffered in the aftermath of the attack on Desantiva."
Seeker growled in his throat, walking to stand in front of Endarian. "The mages do not know the meaning of suffering as we warriors know it." With fists balled, the dark-skinned warrior looked ready to pummel the Trisari, and the Trisari remained where he sat, resigned to his fate. Seeker forced himself to relax. "But we Desanti would not have been forged to be what we are if we had not. Your failings have made us stronger, forged us into the warriors we are now."
Endarian stared at Seeker in disbelief. "You… forgive me? I half expected it from your sister because she is an incredibly gentle soul, but you…?"
The Swordanzen smirked a little. "Forgive you? Eh. I suppose I do. You were the one, after all, who kept the great balance from toppling. But it was a Totani who showed you the way." He crossed his arms, smug with satisfaction. "A Totani taught a Trisari something. That is a revenge that cuts deeper than any Totani-made blade ever could. A scar you will never be rid of."
Endarian smiled sadly, his gaze turning to the window. "Scar? I could only wish. No. A scar implies the wound no longer bleeds." Seeker shrugged with indifference, turning to lean on the wall by the window to stare outside. The others were silent, unsure what to think or do.
Chapter 86
Nolyn peered into the darkness filled with the swirling white of wind-whipped snow. He looked back at the sleeping woman with a sad, gentle smile. "Well, until this storm lets up, we won't be going anywhere." He caressed her hair. "It has been nearly six hours now. You have never slept longer than four, no matter how exhausted you'd been." He tugged his cloak back over her shoulder like a blanket. "Now I know how you must have felt when I slept so long."
She shivered when the wind gusted. He felt around the leaf-covered floor and held his hands out as he spoke, using magic to pull up rocks from the ground. Clearing the leaves back, he stacked the rocks into a pyramid. He used a spell to heat the top rocks to the verge of melting so the radiant heat warmed their shelter. Satisfied when she relaxed into a deeper sleep, he settled back with her head in his lap, gently stroking her hair as he closed his eyes.
When she roused several hours later, looking around in bewilderment, he smiled gently. "Good morning," Nolyn murmured, brushing her hair out of her eyes.
"Not yet. It is still night," she responded automatically, looking around her strange surroundings in some confusion.
He smiled a little. "That is what I love about you, my heart. Irresistably literal."
"I remember you speaking before…" She narrowed her eyes at him. "You used magic on me to make me sleep?"
"I had to," he answered frankly. "You were hurting yourself and you needed to sleep so much."
Conceding the point, she kept looking around their shelter. After some time, she stopped, heaving a relieved sigh, leaning back against the wall, closing her eyes. "The voices. They have stopped. I had not slept since before we fought the Oolak."
Nolyn blinked, frowning. "You were unconscious for…" He sighed. "That wasn't really sleep."
She shook her head. "No, it wasn't. The moment I awoke, they swarmed me, pleading for my help." Eyes fixed on her hands, she said, her confusion apparent, "But why have they gone silent? I have not done as they had been begging."
Nolyn took out his waterskin, took a long drink, then offered it to her. "Bennu had a talk with them after he played translator for me. He convinced them to be quiet for a while so you could rest and give us time to try to figure out how to fix the problem." He held up his finger to silence her. "Just be grateful. Goddess knows I am. I was afraid you—"
Star looked up sharply, tilting her head. "You were afraid for me?"
"Of course I was! You ran out into a blizzard without your cloak or anything to keep you warm while being driven crazy by nagging spirits because you wouldn't talk to anyone about them!" Nolyn glared at her. "Do you think just because I know I will be losing you and can't do a damned about it that I have stopped loving you?"
"I…" She looked away, hugging herself. "I do not know what to think because I could not see your heart clearly. There is so much there. Anger. Upset. Love. Hate. Even when you look at me." Drawing her knees up, she hugged them, hiding her face. "I thought you hated me but I could not tell what for. You say you understand and accept my duties and you speak the truth. But there are feelings of anger and… betrayal and so many things there are no words for in trade common. You loved me. And you hated me. I could not bear seeing it."
She paused for a moment, agonizing. "I do not understand your people at all. You are all so very confusing. You never just say what you think or feel or want very often. When you do it seems like there is more that is not being said that contradicts what you have said that I no longer know if what I see is real or I am mistaken or I am just too stupid to—"
Her voice stopped when she felt his hand on her arm. "Kiya," Nolyn said, his voice hushed but earnest. "My love. My heart." She raised her head to meet his eyes. "It is not easy for my people to speak on what is so far out of our control. Showing our joys invites enemies to destroy them. Showing our pains invites enemies to make it worse or our allies to see us as weak or flawed. Unlike Desanti, we are discouraged from physical aggression, so we attack each other in secret and with malice." He smiled crookedly. "It might solve a great deal if we would just punch each other and get it overwith."
Star could not help but smile at that. "My people have the opposite problem, I think. We are discouraged from… questioning things. We are discouraged from asking why. About learning anything that is not part of one of the sacred Paths. You can go out and learn about so much! For us, if anything leaves an accepted path, we are challenged to defend our deviance. Over time, we have accepted what is because there was nothing but survival and preservation of what had been, in the hope that things would one day be as they used to be."
As Nolyn sat next to her and put his arm around her shoulders, she leaned into him, both for warmth and comfort. "I have finally discovered the other edge of ability to see the heart and I am unsure what to do because of it." He remained silent, waiting for her to continue when she was ready to speak on something she kept so deeply guarded. "My brother and the others who travel with me believe that northerners are cold, without feeling or emotion. But they are wrong. You have made prisoners of yourselves."
The mage blinked. "I think you are misunderstanding the words," he suggested.
Star shook her head. "Trade common is inadequate. Even Desanti does not have the words because we have lost many over the generations." She frowned in silence as she struggled. "Northerners feel as much as we do. But we focus on one aspect of one thing at a time,
so our heart is full of only that moment. Then it is set aside for something else. We cannot allow anything to distract us, else it may be our death. We discipline our minds to be able to set thoughts aside when we need. Your people, though. You think too much."
Nolyn could not repress his laughter. At her bewildered expression turned up at him, he captured her hand to kiss it. "I am not laughing at you, my heart. I laugh at the reality you state so simply."
"But it is truth," Star said earnestly. "The longer I looked, the more I saw, and the more unsure of myself I became." She waved her hand at the rock that radiated the heat from his spell. "Even when you look at something as simple as that, you have many emotions in your heart. I do not know your thoughts, but you have many feelings for it. You are grateful for its presence. It makes you curious. I think when you look at it, you contemplate other things because I sense feelings of reminiscing. It reminds you of something, and you remember what you felt about those things then and what you feel about them now. But you don't release of any of your thoughts. You hold onto them, and hold onto the feelings with them, wrapping them around themselves until you trap yourselves in a tangle and that makes you a prisoner to yourselves."
She tried to look away, but he touched her chin, keeping her eyes turned to his. "After I awoke from the battle with Oolak, you would look at me with so many things crowding your heart. I could not tell anymore what made you feel what I saw within you. It was less and less love and more hurt and betrayal and anger and… hate." Nolyn's smile had faded and her last word made him flinch. "And now you feel guilt."
He opened his mouth, then shut it with a rueful smile. "You are right. Trade common is inadequate. But let me try. You deserve that much." He took a deep breath and exhaled gustily. "Not everything I feel is what I feel. I do not know how your people live with this bond." He held up his right hand. "My brother Ash harbors intense feelings and right now… it has been confusing. Joy, anger, pain, fear. Ever since Storm came into his life, his emotions have magnified and I have to focus to separate what I sense from him from my own emotions, to not react with his feelings..
"On top of that, I have had my own… troubles. A lot of what I was feeling about the Trisari, about myself and my goddess, I put onto you, too. It was not, and is not, justified, but it is what I did. I had been alone a very long time as you once pointed out. You also right that I do not want to be alone anymore, but I want to be not alone with you. You are the most beautiful, honest, gentle yet fierce soul I have ever known and I have never known the peace I have when I am with you.
"You had stated from the moment you came to Forenta that you were going to leave once the Githalin returned because that was your mission. Your duty. All of your people hold to your duty so fiercely it makes my people look like they merely dabble. While I understand and accept your dedication to your duty in my mind, because I have duties that come before me and my own desires, there was part of me that wanted… I wanted you to want to stay here with me. When I found out Ellis asked you to be your people's ambassador to mine, I saw an opportunity for you to choose something else. I refused to see the complications, to see why you could not just accept.
"I became angry that you did not seem to want me enough to even try to find a way to remain here. And I became angry with myself because I knew it was unfair, expecting for you to give up your life's path while not even considering giving up mine." She reached up to touch his cheek, brushing a tear away with an unreadable expression. "Knowing I will lose you… hurts." He closed his eyes and looked away from her. "Gods, it hurts more than anything. And I reacted poorly. I cannot apologize enough for the hurt my tangle of emotions caused you."
After several minutes, Star spoke. "It is not that I do not want to stay with you, Nolyn Lirai. I could not accept Master Ellis's offer because I could not choose to speak for my people without all of their approvals. As I was before, I would have to have returned to Desantiva, wait for the Time of Gathering when all the tribes are together, and ask them. If a majority would have agreed, I could have returned. If not, I would never have been able to leave Desantiva again because the laws state no Desanti may leave Desantiva. Exceptions do not change that.
"But it is different now." She looked out into the darkness beyond their small sanctuary. "I am a Githalin, a mortal servant of the Heart of Desantiva. He is the heart of my people. To speak for Him is to speak for them." She quirked a faint smile. "Most of them. Together, we can be as confusing as one of you treewalkers, though not as confusing as many of you together. The Heart reflects the majority as much as He guides all who cleave to Him."
"As confusing? Maybe. Desanti are more dangerous," Nolyn half teased, wiping his eyes with impatience with himself.
Star shook her head, her expression serious. "Your people are just as dangerous to mine, as mine are to yours. My people are just more immediately dangerous than your people are. Your people are more subtle. You make us think and question ourselves. You force us to have to see beyond what we have always accepted as fact. Distraction and doubt can be fatal to us or others because it can make our discipline falter."
"That explains so much about Storm," Nolyn murmured thoughtfully. Shaking his head to focus back on her, he asked hopefully, "So, you will accept the Se'edai's proposal to be Desantiva's ambassador now?" His heart sank when she looked away. "But, I thought you said…? You don't want—?"
"It is not that!" Star interrupted. "As a Githalin, I can speak for my people, if it is desired by my people. Right now, they are…" She sighed, looking down. "Confused. For two thousand years, all we have known was your people were the defilers of our land. For that time, more generations of my people have lived and died than have yours. Our lives are so much shorter, a flash of brightness in the night instead of your steady warmth. If more time had passed, our hatred of your people would not have been something taught, it would have become instinct. Ingrained from birth such that even a newborn would have known hatred seeing a Forentan."
Nolyn blinked at that. "That is… extreme."
Star managed a wan smile. "We are a passionate people, Master Nolyn. But something changed after Lord Almek Two-Tones came to our land and brought his outlander students with him. The Psia Re is what we called the ancient pain of the land." She shook her head, the heels of her hands on her temples. "My words are not enough to describe it right. All Desanti are born knowing that as their first pain and die knowing it as their last. Even our cousins the Vodani can sense it, though not as much as my people. They must come to Desantiva to feel it; we feel it everywhere.
"When Lord Almek came, something… changed. The pain was not as sharp, not as angry. Many phases of the greater moon after the Githalin left Desantiva, the pain is not pain. The Psia Re remains, but it is much like bayuli-volsha that it is always present, ebbing and flowing with many emotions, sometimes, but not always, pain. It was because of the Dusvet Guardian and his outlander students. The Githalin both spoke to the Elders, to pass their words and knowledge to the tribes as they come to First Home. They say Outlanders returned bearing Naming Blades, and that adds to my people's confusion."
Nolyn tilted his head, puzzled. "I know that your people hold weapons as precious. And there is significance in them, as I saw when Citali gave you the two-bladed dagger you carry now. But what is the significance of a Naming Blade?"
She removed her ornate knife, laying the blade across her palms. "When a Desanti goes into the desert to prove they are ready to be an adult, the Totani give them a Naming Blade. For outlanders to bear such a sacred knife, it means they are no longer seen as outlanders or even foreigners." She looked away, focused on returning the knife to its sheath. "But they are not Desanti, either. They are defilers, but not. Outlanders, but not."
Nolyn opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. "And your tribes sent you to bring back the Githalin Swordanzen in the hopes that they would have answers to offer. A new pattern to teach."
Star made an aggrieved sound. "I do not know anymo
re. When I relayed the spirits' message to my father, he changed their words, but I did not correct him because I thought as he did. As many still do."
"What were you told?" he wondered, caressing her cheek lightly in reassurance.
She sighed. "The A'tyrna Ulan told me the Githalin must come home so Desantiva may be healed. At that time, there were Storm and Skyfire, and they were both Swordanzen. We… assumed it was both Skyfire and Storm who had to return. But Githalin can mean one or many. Now Seeker is Githalin and… and I am Githalin. We think in the present; no one thought the future might be different." She looked up at him. "I asked Citali which Githalin is the one who must return, or must we all. He… he says that I must discover that for myself."
The mage managed to smirk. "How very divinely obscure of him." She muttered under her breath as she curled into his embrace again. "Why didn't you just tell me this? I would have understood."
"And give you false hope I might be able to remain? Your people hold so tightly to hope, and know such pain when it is crushed. It takes everything I am to keep my focus and not dwell on the unknown future. I want to be with you. But the more I want to stay with you, the more I fear I will have to leave you and…" Her voice fell to a harsh whisper. "Now I know I cannot live without you. You are everything to me."
The implication of her words made Nolyn's heart nearly stop. In that brief moment, he understood his brother Ash's urgency in finding Storm when she ran away. Grabbing Star by her shoulders, he looked into her eyes. "Promise me, Kiya. Promise me no matter what happens, you will continue to fight to live. I could not bear the thought of you dying because of me."
Gentle hands rested on his cheeks. "No, Nolyn. I will not promise you that. Living without you would be a wound on my soul that would never stop bleeding. The only way I could forget you and the agony of losing your love is to be reborn in a new life." She hushed him with light fingers on his lips. "I can promise I will endure as long as I can to fulfill my duties to my people if I must leave you. A summer. Perhaps two."
